creation

• creator thought invariably precedes creative action

2:7.5Philoso­phers com­mit their gravest er­ror when they are mis­led into the fal­lacy of ab­strac­tion, the prac­tice of fo­cus­ing the at­ten­tion upon one as­pect of re­al­ity and then of pro­nounc­ing such an iso­lated as­pect to be the whole truth. The wise philoso­pher will al­ways look for the cre­ative de­sign which is be­hind, and pre-ex­is­tent to, all uni­verse phe­nom­ena. The cre­ator thought in­vari­ably pre­cedes cre­ative ac­tion.

6:0.1The Eter­nal Son is the per­fect and fi­nal ex­pres­sion of the “first” per­sonal and ab­so­lute con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Ac­cord­ingly, when­ever and how­ever the Fa­ther per­son­ally and ab­so­lutely ex­presses him­self, he does so through his Eter­nal Son, who ever has been, now is, and ever will be, the liv­ing and di­vine Word. And this Eter­nal Son is res­i­den­tial at the cen­ter of all things, in as­so­ci­a­tion with, and im­me­di­ately en­shroud­ing the per­sonal pres­ence of, the Eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

6:0.2We speak of God’s “first” thought and al­lude to an im­pos­si­ble time ori­gin of the Eter­nal Son for the pur­pose of gain­ing ac­cess to the thought chan­nels of the hu­man in­tel­lect. Such dis­tor­tions of lan­guage rep­re­sent our best ef­forts at con­tact-com­pro­mise with the time-bound minds of mor­tal crea­tures. In the se­quen­tial sense the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never could have had a first thought, nor could the Eter­nal Son ever have had a be­gin­ning. But I was in­structed to por­tray the re­al­i­ties of eter­nity to the time-lim­ited minds of mor­tals by such sym­bols of thought and to des­ig­nate the re­la­tion­ships of eter­nity by such time con­cepts of se­quen­tial­ity.

6:0.3The Eter­nal Son is the spir­i­tual per­son­al­iza­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s uni­ver­sal and in­fi­nite con­cept of di­vine re­al­ity, un­qual­i­fied spirit, and ab­so­lute per­son­al­ity. And thereby does the Son con­sti­tute the di­vine rev­e­la­tion of the cre­ator iden­tity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The per­fect per­son­al­ity of the Son dis­closes that the Fa­ther is ac­tu­ally the eter­nal and uni­ver­sal source of all the mean­ings and val­ues of the spir­i­tual, the vo­li­tional, the pur­pose­ful, and the per­sonal.

6:0.4In an ef­fort to en­able the fi­nite mind of time to form some se­quen­tial con­cept of the re­la­tion­ships of the eter­nal and in­fi­nite be­ings of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, we uti­lize such li­cense of con­cep­tion as to re­fer to the “Fa­ther’s first per­sonal, uni­ver­sal, and in­fi­nite con­cept.” It is im­pos­si­ble for me to con­vey to the hu­man mind any ad­e­quate idea of the eter­nal re­la­tions of the De­i­ties; there­fore do I em­ploy such terms as will af­ford the fi­nite mind some­thing of an idea of the re­la­tion­ship of these eter­nal be­ings in the sub­se­quent eras of time. We be­lieve the Son sprang from the Fa­ther; we are taught that both are un­qual­i­fiedly eter­nal. It is ap­par­ent, there­fore, that no time crea­ture can ever fully com­pre­hend this mys­tery of a Son who is de­rived from the Fa­ther, and yet who is co-or­di­nately eter­nal with the Fa­ther him­self.

• of Eternal Son

8:0.1Back in eter­nity, when the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s “first” in­fi­nite and ab­so­lute thought finds in the Eter­nal Son such a per­fect and ad­e­quate word for its di­vine ex­pres­sion, there en­sues the su­preme de­sire of both the Thought-God and the Word-God for a uni­ver­sal and in­fi­nite agent of mu­tual ex­pres­sion and com­bined ac­tion.

• of Infinite Spirit

8:0.2In the dawn of eter­nity both the Fa­ther and the Son be­come in­finitely cog­nizant of their mu­tual in­ter­de­pen­dence, their eter­nal and ab­so­lute one­ness; and there­fore do they en­ter into an in­fi­nite and ev­er­last­ing covenant of di­vine part­ner­ship. This never-end­ing com­pact is made for the ex­e­cu­tion of their united con­cepts through­out all of the cir­cle of eter­nity; and ever since this eter­nity event the Fa­ther and the Son con­tinue in this di­vine union.

8:0.3We are now face to face with the eter­nity ori­gin of the In­fi­nite Spirit, the Third Per­son of De­ity. The very in­stant that God the Fa­ther and God the Son con­jointly con­ceive an iden­ti­cal and in­fi­nite ac­tion—the ex­e­cu­tion of an ab­so­lute thought-plan—that very mo­ment, the In­fi­nite Spirit springs full-fledgedly into ex­is­tence.

8:0.4In thus recit­ing the or­der of the ori­gin of the De­i­ties, I do so merely to en­able you to think of their re­la­tion­ship. In re­al­ity they are all three ex­is­tent from eter­nity; they are ex­is­ten­tial. They are with­out be­gin­ning or end­ing of days; they are co-or­di­nate, su­preme, ul­ti­mate, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite. They are and al­ways have been and ever shall be. And they are three dis­tinctly in­di­vid­u­al­ized but eter­nally as­so­ci­ated per­sons, God the Fa­ther, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

• of Havona

8:1.4The God of Ac­tion func­tions and the dead vaults of space are astir. One bil­lion per­fect spheres flash into ex­is­tence. Prior to this hy­po­thet­i­cal eter­nity mo­ment the space-en­er­gies in­her­ent in Par­a­dise are ex­is­tent and po­ten­tially op­er­a­tive, but they have no ac­tu­al­ity of be­ing; nei­ther can phys­i­cal grav­ity be mea­sured ex­cept by the re­ac­tion of ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties to its in­ces­sant pull. There is no ma­te­rial uni­verse at this (as­sumed) eter­nally dis­tant mo­ment, but the very in­stant that one bil­lion worlds ma­te­ri­al­ize, there is in ev­i­dence grav­ity suf­fi­cient and ad­e­quate to hold them in the ev­er­last­ing grasp of Par­a­dise.

8:1.5There now flashes through the cre­ation of the Gods the sec­ond form of en­ergy, and this out­flow­ing spirit is in­stantly grasped by the spir­i­tual grav­ity of the Eter­nal Son. Thus the two­fold grav­ity-em­braced uni­verse is touched with the en­ergy of in­fin­ity and im­mersed in the spirit of di­vin­ity. In this way is the soil of life pre­pared for the con­scious­ness of mind made man­i­fest in the as­so­ci­ated in­tel­li­gence cir­cuits of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

8:1.6Upon these seeds of po­ten­tial ex­is­tence, dif­fused through­out the cen­tral cre­ation of the Gods, the Fa­ther acts, and crea­ture per­son­al­ity ap­pears. Then does the pres­ence of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties fill all or­ga­nized space and be­gin ef­fec­tively to draw all things and be­ings Par­adis­e­ward.

• of Infinite Spirit

9:0.1A strange thing oc­curred when, in the pres­ence of Par­a­dise, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son unite to per­son­al­ize them­selves. Noth­ing in this eter­nity sit­u­a­tion fore­shad­ows that the Con­joint Ac­tor would per­son­al­ize as an un­lim­ited spir­i­tu­al­ity co-or­di­nated with ab­so­lute mind and en­dowed with unique pre­rog­a­tives of en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tion. His com­ing into be­ing com­pletes the Fa­ther’s lib­er­a­tion from the bonds of cen­tral­ized per­fec­tion and from the fet­ters of per­son­al­ity ab­so­lutism. And this lib­er­a­tion is dis­closed in the amaz­ing power of the Con­joint Cre­ator to cre­ate be­ings well adapted to serve as min­is­ter­ing spir­its even to the ma­te­rial crea­tures of the sub­se­quently evolv­ing uni­verses.

• first Paradise record is trinitization of Ancients of Days

18:3.4The An­cients of Days were all trin­i­tized at the same time. They rep­re­sent the be­gin­ning of the per­son­al­ity rec­ords of the uni­verse of uni­verses, hence their name—An­cients of Days. When you reach Par­a­dise and search the writ­ten rec­ords of the be­gin­ning of things, you will find that the first en­try ap­pear­ing in the per­son­al­ity sec­tion is the recital of the trin­i­ti­za­tion of these twenty-one An­cients of Days.

• first Paradise record is personification of Infinite Spirit

25:6.6On Uversa these se­nior Ce­les­tial Re­cord­ers can show the rec­ords of ev­ery­thing of cos­mic im­port in all Or­von­ton since the far-dis­tant times of the ar­rival of the An­cients of Days, while on the eter­nal Isle the Cus­to­di­ans of Rec­ords guard the ar­chives of that realm which tes­tify to the trans­ac­tions of Par­a­dise since the times of the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the In­fi­nite Spirit.

74:8.1The story of the cre­ation of Uran­tia in six days was based on the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their ini­tial sur­vey of the Gar­den. This cir­cum­stance lent al­most sa­cred sanc­tion to the time pe­riod of the week, which had been orig­i­nally in­tro­duced by the Dala­ma­tians. Adam’s spend­ing six days in­spect­ing the Gar­den and for­mu­lat­ing pre­lim­i­nary plans for or­ga­ni­za­tion was not pre­ar­ranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choos­ing of the sev­enth day for wor­ship was wholly in­ci­den­tal to the facts here­with nar­rated.

74:8.2The leg­end of the mak­ing of the world in six days was an af­terthought, in fact, more than thirty thou­sand years af­ter­wards. One fea­ture of the nar­ra­tive, the sud­den ap­pear­ance of the sun and moon, may have taken ori­gin in the tra­di­tions of the one­time sud­den emer­gence of the world from a dense space cloud of minute mat­ter which had long ob­scured both sun and moon.

74:8.3The story of cre­at­ing Eve out of Adam’s rib is a con­fused con­den­sa­tion of the Adamic ar­rival and the ce­les­tial surgery con­nected with the in­ter­change of liv­ing sub­stances as­so­ci­ated with the com­ing of the cor­po­real staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince more than four hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously.

74:8.4The ma­jor­ity of the world’s peo­ples have been in­flu­enced by the tra­di­tion that Adam and Eve had phys­i­cal forms cre­ated for them upon their ar­rival on Uran­tia. The be­lief in man’s hav­ing been cre­ated from clay was well-nigh uni­ver­sal in the East­ern Hemi­sphere; this tra­di­tion can be traced from the Philip­pine Is­lands around the world to Africa. And many groups ac­cepted this story of man’s clay ori­gin by some form of spe­cial cre­ation in the place of the ear­lier be­liefs in pro­gres­sive cre­ation—evo­lu­tion.

74:8.5Away from the in­flu­ences of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, man­kind tended to­ward the be­lief in the grad­ual as­cent of the hu­man race. The fact of evo­lu­tion is not a mod­ern dis­cov­ery; the an­cients un­der­stood the slow and evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter of hu­man prog­ress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this de­spite their prox­im­ity to Mes­o­po­ta­mia. Al­though the var­i­ous races of earth be­came sadly mixed up in their no­tions of evo­lu­tion, nev­er­the­less, many of the prim­i­tive tribes be­lieved and taught that they were the de­scen­dants of var­i­ous an­i­mals. Prim­i­tive peo­ples made a prac­tice of se­lect­ing for their “totems” the an­i­mals of their sup­posed an­ces­try. Cer­tain North Amer­i­can In­dian tribes be­lieved they orig­i­nated from beavers and coy­otes. Cer­tain African tribes teach that they are de­scended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the par­rot.

74:8.6The Baby­lo­ni­ans, be­cause of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the rem­nants of the civ­i­liza­tion of the Adamites, en­larged and em­bel­lished the story of man’s cre­ation; they taught that he had de­scended di­rectly from the gods. They held to an aris­to­cratic ori­gin for the race which was in­com­pat­i­ble with even the doc­trine of cre­ation out of clay.

74:8.7The Old Tes­ta­ment ac­count of cre­ation dates from long af­ter the time of Moses; he never taught the He­brews such a dis­torted story. But he did pre­sent a sim­ple and con­densed nar­ra­tive of cre­ation to the Is­raelites, hop­ing thereby to aug­ment his ap­peal to wor­ship the Cre­ator, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, whom he called the Lord God of Is­rael.

74:8.8In his early teach­ings, Moses very wisely did not at­tempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the su­preme teacher of the He­brews, the sto­ries of Adam be­came in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with those of cre­ation. That the ear­lier tra­di­tions rec­og­nized pre-Adamic civ­i­liza­tion is clearly shown by the fact that later ed­i­tors, in­tend­ing to erad­i­cate all ref­er­ence to hu­man af­fairs be­fore Adam’s time, ne­glected to re­move the tell­tale ref­er­ence to Cain’s em­i­gra­tion to the “land of Nod,” where he took him­self a wife.

74:8.9The He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage in gen­eral us­age for a long time af­ter they reached Pales­tine. They learned the use of an al­pha­bet from the neigh­bor­ing Phil­is­tines, who were po­lit­i­cal refugees from the higher civ­i­liza­tion of Crete. The He­brews did lit­tle writ­ing un­til about 900 B.C., and hav­ing no writ­ten lan­guage un­til such a late date, they had sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries of cre­ation in cir­cu­la­tion, but af­ter the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity they in­clined more to­ward ac­cept­ing a mod­i­fied Mes­o­po­ta­mian ver­sion.

74:8.10Jew­ish tra­di­tion be­came crys­tal­lized about Moses, and be­cause he en­deav­ored to trace the lin­eage of Abra­ham back to Adam, the Jews as­sumed that Adam was the first of all man­kind. Yah­weh was the cre­ator, and since Adam was sup­posed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to mak­ing Adam. And then the tra­di­tion of Adam’s six days got wo­ven into the story, with the re­sult that al­most a thou­sand years af­ter Moses’ so­journ on earth the tra­di­tion of cre­ation in six days was writ­ten out and sub­se­quently cred­ited to him.

74:8.11When the Jew­ish priests re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, they had al­ready com­pleted the writ­ing of their nar­ra­tive of the be­gin­ning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a re­cently dis­cov­ered story of cre­ation writ­ten by Moses. But the con­tem­po­rary He­brews of around 500 B.C. did not con­sider these writ­ings to be di­vine rev­e­la­tions; they looked upon them much as later peo­ples re­gard mytho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tives.

74:8.12This spu­ri­ous doc­u­ment, re­puted to be the teach­ings of Moses, was brought to the at­ten­tion of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it trans­lated into Greek by a com­mis­sion of sev­enty schol­ars for his new li­brary at Alexan­dria. And so this ac­count found its place among those writ­ings which sub­se­quently be­came a part of the later col­lec­tions of the “sa­cred scrip­tures” of the He­brew and Chris­tian re­li­gions. And through iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with these the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, such con­cepts for a long time pro­foundly in­flu­enced the phi­los­o­phy of many Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples.

74:8.13The Chris­tian teach­ers per­pet­u­ated the be­lief in the fiat cre­ation of the hu­man race, and all this led di­rectly to the for­ma­tion of the hy­poth­e­sis of a one­time golden age of utopian bliss and the the­ory of the fall of man or super­man which ac­counted for the nonu­topian con­di­tion of so­ci­ety. These out­looks on life and man’s place in the uni­verse were at best dis­cour­ag­ing since they were pred­i­cated upon a be­lief in ret­ro­gres­sion rather than pro­gres­sion, as well as im­ply­ing a venge­ful De­ity, who had vented wrath upon the hu­man race in ret­ri­bu­tion for the er­rors of cer­tain one­time plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors.

74:8.14The “golden age” is a myth, but Eden was a fact, and the Gar­den civ­i­liza­tion was ac­tu­ally over­thrown. Adam and Eve car­ried on in the Gar­den for one hun­dred and sev­en­teen years when, through the im­pa­tience of Eve and the er­rors of judg­ment of Adam, they pre­sumed to turn aside from the or­dained way, speed­ily bring­ing dis­as­ter upon them­selves and ru­inous re­tar­da­tion upon the de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gres­sion of all Uran­tia.

74:8.15[Nar­rated by Solo­nia, the se­raphic “voice in the Gar­den.”]

• genesis of reality

105:1.5To the fi­nite mind there sim­ply must be a be­gin­ning, and though there never was a real be­gin­ning to re­al­ity, still there are cer­tain source re­la­tion­ships which re­al­ity man­i­fests to in­fin­ity. The pre­re­al­ity, pri­mor­dial, eter­nity sit­u­a­tion may be thought of some­thing like this: At some in­finitely dis­tant, hy­po­thet­i­cal, past-eter­nity mo­ment, the I AM may be con­ceived as both thing and no thing, as both cause and ef­fect, as both vo­li­tion and re­sponse. At this hy­po­thet­i­cal eter­nity mo­ment there is no dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion through­out all in­fin­ity. In­fin­ity is filled by the In­fi­nite; the In­fi­nite en­com­passes in­fin­ity. This is the hy­po­thet­i­cal static mo­ment of eter­nity; ac­tu­als are still con­tained within their po­ten­tials, and po­ten­tials have not yet ap­peared within the in­fin­ity of the I AM. But even in this con­jec­tured sit­u­a­tion we must as­sume the ex­is­tence of the pos­si­bil­ity of self-will.

• genesis of reality

105:2.2In fol­low­ing the chrono­log­i­cal por­trayal of the ori­gins of re­al­ity, there must be a pos­tu­lated the­o­ret­i­cal mo­ment of “first” vo­li­tional ex­pres­sion and “first” reper­cus­sional re­ac­tion within the I AM. In our at­tempts to por­tray the gen­e­sis and gen­er­a­tion of re­al­ity, this stage may be con­ceived as the self-dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of The In­fi­nite One from The In­fini­tude, but the pos­tu­la­tion of this dual re­la­tion­ship must al­ways be ex­panded to a tri­une con­cep­tion by the rec­og­ni­tion of the eter­nal con­tin­uum of The In­fin­ity, the I AM.

105:2.3This self-meta­mor­pho­sis of the I AM cul­mi­nates in the mul­ti­ple dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of de­i­fied re­al­ity and of un­de­i­fied re­al­ity, of po­ten­tial and ac­tual re­al­ity, and of cer­tain other re­al­i­ties that can hardly be so clas­si­fied. These dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions of the the­o­ret­i­cal monis­tic I AM are eter­nally in­te­grated by si­mul­ta­ne­ous re­la­tion­ships aris­ing within the same I AM—the pre­po­ten­tial, pre­ac­tual, preper­sonal, mono­thetic pre­re­al­ity which, though in­fi­nite, is re­vealed as ab­so­lute in the pres­ence of the First Source and Cen­ter and as per­son­al­ity in the lim­it­less love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

105:2.4By these in­ter­nal meta­mor­phoses the I AM is es­tab­lish­ing the ba­sis for a sev­en­fold self-re­la­tion­ship. The philo­sophic (time) con­cept of the soli­tary I AM and the tran­si­tional (time) con­cept of the I AM as tri­une can now be en­larged to en­com­pass the I AM as sev­en­fold. This sev­en­fold—or seven phase—na­ture may be best sug­gested in re­la­tion to the Seven Ab­so­lutes of In­fin­ity:

• genesis of reality

105:4.1The uni­verse philoso­phers pos­tu­late the eter­nity ex­is­tence of the I AM as the pri­mal source of all re­al­ity. And con­comi­tant there­with they pos­tu­late the self-seg­men­ta­tion of the I AM into the pri­mary self-re­la­tion­ships—the seven phases of in­fin­ity. And si­mul­ta­ne­ous with this as­sump­tion is the third pos­tu­late—the eter­nity ap­pear­ance of the Seven Ab­so­lutes of In­fin­ity and the eter­nal­iza­tion of the du­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion of the seven phases of the I AM and these seven Ab­so­lutes.

• genesis of reality

105:5.1Just as the orig­i­nal di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the I AM must be at­tributed to in­her­ent and self-con­tained vo­li­tion, so must the pro­mul­ga­tion of fi­nite re­al­ity be as­cribed to the vo­li­tional acts of Par­a­dise De­ity and to the reper­cus­sional ad­just­ments of the func­tional tri­uni­ties.

105:5.2Prior to the deiti­za­tion of the fi­nite, it would ap­pear that all re­al­ity di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion took place on ab­so­lute lev­els; but the vo­li­tional act pro­mul­gat­ing fi­nite re­al­ity con­notes a qual­i­fi­ca­tion of ab­so­lute­ness and im­plies the ap­pear­ance of rel­a­tiv­i­ties.

105:5.3While we pre­sent this nar­ra­tive as a se­quence and por­tray the his­toric ap­pear­ance of the fi­nite as a di­rect deriva­tive of the ab­so­lute, it should be borne in mind that tran­scen­den­tals both pre­ceded and suc­ceeded all that is fi­nite. Tran­scen­den­tal ul­ti­mates are, in re­la­tion to the fi­nite, both causal and con­sum­ma­tional.

105:5.4Fi­nite pos­si­bil­ity is in­her­ent in the In­fi­nite, but the trans­mu­ta­tion of pos­si­bil­ity to prob­a­bil­ity and in­evitabil­ity must be at­tributed to the self-ex­is­tent free will of the First Source and Cen­ter, ac­ti­vat­ing all tri­unity as­so­ci­a­tions. Only the in­fin­ity of the Fa­ther’s will could ever have so qual­i­fied the ab­so­lute level of ex­is­tence as to even­tu­ate an ul­ti­mate or to cre­ate a fi­nite.

105:5.5With the ap­pear­ance of rel­a­tive and qual­i­fied re­al­ity there comes into be­ing a new cy­cle of re­al­ity—the growth cy­cle—a ma­jes­tic down­sweep from the heights of in­fin­ity to the do­main of the fi­nite, for­ever swing­ing in­ward to Par­a­dise and De­ity, al­ways seek­ing those high des­tinies com­men­su­rate with an in­fin­ity source.

105:5.6These in­con­ceiv­able trans­ac­tions mark the be­gin­ning of uni­verse his­tory, mark the com­ing into ex­is­tence of time it­self. To a crea­ture, the be­gin­ning of the fi­nite is the gen­e­sis of re­al­ity; as viewed by crea­ture mind, there is no ac­tu­al­ity con­ceiv­able prior to the fi­nite. This newly ap­pear­ing fi­nite re­al­ity ex­ists in two orig­i­nal phases:

• genesis of reality

105:7.18In the eter­nity of the past the forces of the Ab­so­lutes, the spir­its of the De­i­ties, and the per­son­al­i­ties of the Gods stirred in re­sponse to the pri­mor­dial self-will of self-ex­is­tent self-will. In this uni­verse age we are all wit­ness­ing the stu­pen­dous reper­cus­sions of the far-flung cos­mic pan­o­rama of the sub­ab­so­lute man­i­fes­ta­tions of the lim­it­less po­ten­tials of all these re­al­i­ties. And it is al­to­gether pos­si­ble that the con­tin­ued di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the orig­i­nal re­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter may pro­ceed on­ward and out­ward through­out age upon age, on and on, into the far­away and in­con­ceiv­able stretches of ab­so­lute in­fin­ity.