Becoming Perfect and Divine

Attaining Divinity

Deity and Divinity Divinity is the characteristic quality of Deity to unify and coordinate. Deity activity in the universe of universes occurs on many levels of cosmic reality, mind meaning, and spirit value. The network of control on all supermaterial levels of reality requires intense coordination. This coordination is possible because of deity's quality of unity, both actual and potential. Divinity is perfect on existential and creator levels of Paradise perfection. Divinity may be imperfect, as on experiential and creature levels of time-space evolution. Divinity may also be relative, neither perfect nor imperfect, as on certain Havona levels of existential-experiential relationships.

Understanding Divinity   The unifying quality of deity is best understood by creatures as divinity.   Divinity is comprehensible to creatures as truth, beauty, and goodness; paralleled in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty.   Deity is the source of all that is divine. While deity is characteristically and invariably divine, all that is divine is not necessarily Deity, though it will be coordinated with Deity and will tend towards some phase of unity with Deity - spiritual, mindal, or personal.

A Succinct History of Universe Creation 1  The Master Force Organizers travel out into space and mobilize its energies making them gravity responsive to the Paradise pull of the Universal Father. Subsequently, the Creator Sons arrive to organize these gravity-responding forces into inhabited universes. In partnership with the Divine Ministers, The Creator Sons bring into being and enable the evolution of intelligent creatures who receive the spirit of the Paradise Father (the Thought Adjusters) and subsequently ascend to the Father to become like him in all possible divinity attributes. 1 Click here for an in-depth flowchart depicting universe creation. See Appendix IX - Urantia Book Flowchart.

Perfection in Perspective Earth mortals can hardly hope to be perfect in the infinite sense, but it is entirely possible for human beings, starting out on planet Earth, to attain the celestial and divine goal that the infinite God has set for mortal man. When mortals do achieve their divine destiny, they will, in all that pertains to self-realization and mind attainment, be just as replete in their sphere of divine perfection as God himself is in his sphere of infinity and eternity. Such perfection may not be universal in the material sense, unlimited in intellectual grasp, or final in spiritual experience, but it is final and complete in all finite aspects of divinity of will, perfection of personality motivation, and God-consciousness.

Evolutionary Repercussions The steady progress of evolution in the time-space universes is accompanied by ever-enlarging revelations of Deity to intelligent creatures.  The attainment of the height of evolutionary progress on a world, in a system, constellation, universe, superuniverse, or in the grand universe signalizes corresponding enlargements of deity function to these progressive units of creation.    Extending outward from Paradise, each new domain of realized and attained evolution constitutes a new and enlarged revelation of experiential Deity to the entire universe of universes.

Tasks of the Supreme Being  The Supreme Being has a threefold function in the experience of mortal man.  First, the Supreme Being is the unifier of time-space divinity. Second, he is the maximum of Deity that finite creatures can comprehend. Third, he is mortal man's only avenue of approach to the transcendental experience of consorting with absonite (ultimate) mind, eternal spirit, and Paradise personality. The absonite level of reality is characterized by things and beings without beginnings or endings and by the transcendence of time and space.

Eventual Ages of Light and Life In the glorious ages of light and life, the chief pursuit of the ever-advancing mortals is the quest for a better understanding and a fuller realization of the comprehensible elements of Deity (truth, beauty, and goodness). This represents man's effort to discern God in mind (truth), matter (beauty), and spirit (goodness). As the mortal pursues the quest for truth, beauty, and goodness, he finds himself increasingly absorbed in the experiential study of philosophy (mind), cosmology (matter), and divinity (spirit).

Mortal Destiny Ascendant mortal finaliters, having been born in a local universe, nurtured in a superuniverse, and trained in the central universe, embrace in their personal experiences the full potential of the comprehension of the time-space divinity of God the Sevenfold unifying in the Supreme. Through the ministry of the indwelling Thought Adjusters, mortal finaliters are enabled to find the Universal Father. Mortal finaliters serve successively in superuniverses other than those of their nativity, thereby superimposing experience upon experience until the fullness of possible creature experience has been encompassed. By these techniques of experience, finaliters come really to know the Supreme Being, and they are destined to the service and the revelation of this Supreme Deity in and to the future universes of outer space.

Understanding Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Earth mortals have some grasp of philosophy, the study of truth. Mortals too often limit their study of beauty to man's crude artistic endeavors.   Beauty is largely a matter of the unification of contrasts.   Variety is essential to the concept of beauty. The supreme beauty, the height of finite art, is the drama of the unification of the vastness of the cosmic extremes of Creator and creature, i.e., man finding God and God finding man - the creature becoming perfect like the Creator. This beauty is the celestial achievement of the supremely beautiful, the attainment of the apex of cosmic art.   Man comprehends divinity in worship, social service, and personal spiritual experience. Goodness is the mental recognition of the relative values of the diverse levels of divine perfection. The recognition of goodness implies a mind of moral status, a personal mind with ability to discriminate between good and evil. The possession of goodness, (greatness), is the measure of real divinity attainment.

Understanding Matter, Mind, and Spirit Physical matter is the time-space shadow of the Paradise energy-shining of the absolute Deities (the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit). Truth meanings are the mortal-intellect repercussions of the eternal word of Deity - the time-space comprehension of supreme concepts. The goodness values of divinity are the merciful ministries of the spirit personalities of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit to the time-space finite creatures of the evolutionary spheres.

Understanding Love The reality values of divinity are blended in the Father's relation with each personal creature as divine love. To finite man, truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. In the comprehension of Deity, love finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals. There is generated a return for efforts expended (the fruits of divinity): intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. Advanced mortals know that love is the greatest thing in the universe. They know that God is love. Love is the desire to do good to others.

Understanding Freedom   Narrowing the limits of personality choice provides increased safety throughout the lower levels of existence.  Choice becomes increasingly liberated as the universes are ascended. Choice eventually approximates divine freedom when the ascending personality achieves divinity of status, supremacy of consecration to the purposes of the universe, completion of cosmic-wisdom attainment, and finality of creature identification with the will and the way of God. Man's great universe adventure consists in the transit of his mortal mind from the stability of mechanical statics to the divinity of spiritual dynamics. Man achieves this transformation by the force and constancy of his own personality decisions, in each of life's situations by declaring, "It is my will that your will be done."

Evolved and Revealed Religions The morality of the religions of evolution drives men forward in their quest for God through fear. The religion of revelation (true religion) allures men to seek for a God of love because they crave to become like him. True religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origin. It represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while in the flesh.

Revelation Revelation for an entire world is periodic. Revelation as a personal human experience is continuous. Divinity functions in the mortal personality as the Thought Adjuster (the gift of the Father), as the Spirit of Truth of the Creator Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Universe Spirit (the Divine Minister). These three supermortal endowments are unified in human experiential evolution as the ministry of the Supreme.

Stability and Divinity The universe is not static. Stability is the product of balanced energies, cooperative minds, coordinated morontia souls, spirit overcontrol, and personality unification. Stability at the universe or planetary level is wholly and always proportional to divinity.

Righteousness of Divinity Mediocre effort is repugnant to perfect beings.

Religious Philosophy The unity (divinity) of religious experience among a social or racial group derives from the identical natures of the God fragments (the Thought Adjusters) indwelling individuals. However, since personality is unique (no two mortals are alike), it follows that no two human beings can interpret the leadings and urges of the Thought Adjuster (who is the spirit of divinity that lives within their minds) alike. A group of mortals can experience spiritual unity, but they can never attain philosophic uniformity. In reality, every human being defines religion in the terms of his own experiential interpretation of the divine impulses emanating from the Thought Adjuster. The religious philosophy of each mortal is unique and wholly different from the religious philosophy of all other human beings.

Endless Exploration Sooner or later, all universe personalities realize that the quest for eternity is an endless exploration of infinity, a never-ending voyage of discovery into the absoluteness of the First Source and Center. Eventually, everyone becomes aware that all creature growth is proportional to Father identification. In time, everyone understands that living the will of God is the eternal passport to the endless possibility of infinity itself. In this universe age, the realities of the Father are revealed within the qualities of divinity. The qualities of divinity are personally appropriated by universe creatures in the experience of living divinely. To live divinely means to live the will of God.

Faith Is the Trigger Faith acts to release the superhuman activities of the divine spark of divinity (the Thought Adjuster), that lives within the mind of man, and is the potential of eternal survival. Plants and animals survive in time by the technique of passing on identical particles of themselves from one generation to another. The human soul (personality) of man survives mortal death by identity association with the immortal Thought Adjuster, and functions to perpetuate the human personality upon a continuing and higher level of progressive universe existence.

No Substitute for Experience There is no cosmic substitute for actual living experience. No amount of divine endowment can absolve mortals from the necessity of securing life experience. In common with all beings living and functioning within the present sphere of the Supreme, even Thought Adjusters must acquire experience. They must evolve from the lower, inexperienced, to the higher more experienced groups. The first stage of Adjuster evolution is attained in fusion with the surviving soul of a mortal being. While men are evolving inward and upward from man to God, the Adjusters are evolving outward and downward from God to man. The final product of this union of divinity and humanity will eternally be the son of man and the son of God.

Joyful Living Many mortals spend too much time and thought on the mere trifles of living, while overlooking the accomplishments concerned with the development of a more harmonious working agreement between themselves and their Thought Adjusters. The goal of human existence is to attune to the divinity of the indwelling Adjuster. A devoted and determined effort to realize eternal destiny is wholly compatible with a light-hearted and joyous life and with a successful and honorable career on earth. Cooperation with the Thought Adjuster does not entail self-torture, mock piety, or hypocritical and ostentatious self-abasement. The ideal life is one of loving service rather than an existence of fearful apprehension.

Defining Cooperation Cooperation with the Adjuster is not a particularly conscious process. Personal motives, decisions, faithful determinations, and supreme desires, constitute real and effective cooperation. Mortals can consciously augment Adjuster harmony by: 1. Choosing to respond to divine leading; sincerely basing the human life on the highest consciousness of truth, beauty, and goodness, and then coordinating these qualities of divinity through wisdom, worship, faith, and love. 2. Loving God and desiring to be like him - genuine recognition of the divine fatherhood and loving worship of the heavenly Parent. 3. Loving man and sincerely desiring to serve him - wholehearted recognition of the brotherhood of man coupled with an intelligent and wise affection for each fellow mortal. 4. Joyful acceptance of cosmic citizenship - honest recognition of one's progressive obligations to the Supreme Being, awareness of the interdependence of evolutionary man and evolving Deity. This is the birth of cosmic morality and the dawning realization of universal duty. The final penetration of the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Supreme Being opens up to the progressing creature those absonite qualities of ultimate divinity which lie beyond the concept levels of truth, beauty, and goodness.

Graduation From Time and Space When, through and by the ministry of the helping hosts of the universal scheme of survival, mortals are finally deposited on the receiving world of Havona (the Central Universe surrounding Paradise), they arrive with only one sort of perfection - perfection of purpose. The purpose of each mortal has been thoroughly proved. Their faith has been tested. They are disappointment proof. Their sincerity has become sublime. Perfection of purpose and divinity of desire, with steadfastness of faith, have secured entrance to the settled abodes of eternity. Deliverance from the uncertainties of time is full and complete. Ascenders now face the situations of Havona and the immensities of Paradise for which they have trained in the experiential epochs of time in the schools of space.

Measuring Progress When an evolving mind becomes attuned to the circuits of cosmic mind, when an evolving universe becomes stabilized in the pattern of the central universe, when an advancing spirit contacts the united ministry of the Master Spirits, when an ascending mortal personality finally attunes to the divine leading of the indwelling Adjuster, then has the actuality of the Supreme become real by one more degree in the universes; then has the divinity of Supremacy advanced one more step toward cosmic realization.