FOREWORD
GPT Simplified

Foreword

People on Urantia (Earth) often get confused about what words like God, divinity, and deity mean. They also don't always understand how different divine personalities relate to each other. Because of this confusion, I've been asked to explain these terms and their meanings as they will be used in these papers translated into English by the Orvonton truth revealers.

It's hard to explain big ideas and advanced truths using limited language, but we will try our best. We'll introduce new terms only when there are no suitable English words to explain these new concepts.

To help everyone understand and avoid confusion, we're starting with this outline of the meanings of many English words that describe Deity and related ideas about universal reality.

We need to explain how we'll use these terms later on. This foreword is a guide to help you understand the rest of the papers about Deity and the universe, prepared by a commission sent from Orvonton to Urantia.

Your world, Urantia, is one of many inhabited planets in the local universe of Nebadon. This universe, along with others, is part of the superuniverse of Orvonton. Our commission comes from Uversa, the capital of Orvonton. Orvonton is one of seven superuniverses that revolve around the central universe of Havona, which is perfect and eternal. At the center of Havona is the Isle of Paradise, the dwelling place of the eternal God.

The seven superuniverses and the central universe together form the grand universe, which is organized and inhabited. Beyond this, there are the uninhabited universes of outer space, which are also part of the master universe.

I. Deity and Divinity

The universe shows Deity in many ways, like different levels of cosmic reality, mind meanings, and spirit values. All these activities are coordinated divinely.

DEITY can be seen as God, is before being personal, and is superpersonal in ways we can't fully understand. Deity is always unified, which we creatures understand as divinity.

Deity works on personal, prepersonal, and superpersonal levels. Total Deity functions on these seven levels:

  1. Static—self-contained and self-existent Deity.
  2. Potential—self-willed and self-purposive Deity.
  3. Associative—self-personalized and divinely fraternal Deity.
  4. Creative—self-distributive and divinely revealed Deity.
  5. Evolutional—self-expansive and creature-identified Deity.
  6. Supreme—self-experiential and creature-Creator-unifying Deity, controlling the grand universe.
  7. Ultimate—self-projected and transcending time and space, overseeing the master universe.

Finite reality involves creature life and time-space limits. These realities have beginnings but may not have endings. The Supremacy of Deity relates to finite existences.

Absonite reality involves things and beings without beginnings or endings and transcends time and space. Absoniters are not created but simply exist. The Ultimacy of Deity relates to absonite realities.

The absolute level is without beginning, end, time, or space. For example, on Paradise, time and space don't exist. This level is Trinity attained by the Paradise Deities but is not fully unified. When the absolute level of Deity functions, absolute values and meanings are shown.

Deity can be:

Deity is the source of all that is divine. Divinity is the quality of unity and coordination in Deity.

Divinity can be understood as truth, beauty, and goodness; in personality, as love, mercy, and service; and in impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty.

Divinity can be perfect, imperfect, or relative. There are seven types of perfection:

  1. Absolute perfection in all aspects.
  2. Absolute perfection in some aspects and relative perfection in others.
  3. Absolute, relative, and imperfect aspects combined.
  4. Absolute perfection in some aspects and imperfection in others.
  5. Absolute perfection in no aspects and relative perfection in all.
  6. Absolute perfection in no aspects, relative in some, and imperfect in others.
  7. Absolute perfection in no aspects and imperfection in all.

II. God

Humans feel a strong urge to represent their ideas of God. Moral duty and spiritual idealism are hard to symbolize.

Cosmic consciousness recognizes a First Cause, an uncaused reality. God, the Universal Father, works on three levels:

  1. Prepersonal—as in the ministry of Father fragments like Thought Adjusters.
  2. Personal—as in the experiences of created beings.
  3. Superpersonal—as in certain absonite beings.

GOD refers to all personalizations of Deity. The term has different meanings depending on the level of Deity function:

The term God always means personality. Deity may or may not refer to divine personalities.

The word GOD is used with the following meanings:

  1. God the Father—Creator, Controller, and Upholder; the Universal Father, the First Person of Deity.
  2. God the Son—Co-ordinate Creator, Spirit Controller, and Spiritual Administrator; the Eternal Son, the Second Person of Deity.
  3. God the Spirit—Conjoint Actor, Universal Integrator, and Mind Bestower; the Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity.
  4. God the Supreme—The evolving God of time and space, unifying Creator and creature.
  5. God the Sevenfold—Deity functioning in time and space, including the personal Paradise Deities and their associates.
  6. God the Ultimate—The Deity of supertime and transcended space, unifying absonite and ultimate values.
  7. God the Absolute—The Deity of absolute values and divinity meanings, transcending personal and superpersonal levels.

III. The First Source and Center

Total, infinite reality exists in seven phases and as seven Absolutes:

  1. The First Source and Center.
  2. The Second Source and Center.
  3. The Third Source and Center.
  4. The Isle of Paradise.
  5. The Deity Absolute.
  6. The Universal Absolute.
  7. The Unqualified Absolute.

God, as the First Source and Center, is primal in relation to all reality. The First Source and Center is infinite and eternal, limited only by His will.

God, the Universal Father, maintains personal control over all sources and centers. This control is personal and infinite in potential, though it may not always function due to the perfection of other sources and centers.

The First Source and Center is primal in all domains: personal or impersonal, finite or infinite. Everything exists in relation to the First Source and Center.

The First Source and Center is related to the universe as:

Reality, as understood by finite beings, is partial and relative. The Supreme Being is the maximum Deity reality comprehensible by finite creatures, but there are greater realities beyond this.

When explaining universal reality, we use time-space reasoning to reach the finite mind. Many simultaneous events of eternity must be presented as sequential transactions.

The eternal I AM achieved Deity liberation through free will, creating a tension between infinity and divinity. The Universal Absolute unifies this tension.

The I AM achieved personality by becoming the Eternal Father of the Original Son and the Source of the Isle of Paradise. With the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, the Father avoids being diffused throughout Deity potential. The Father fills all Deity potential through the Trinity.

The I AM concept helps finite minds understand eternity existences. The Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit are coeternal with the I AM; there was never a time when the I AM was not the Father of the Son and the Spirit.

The Infinite represents the fullness implied by the First Source and Center. The I AM is a philosophical extension of the "infinity of will," while the Infinite represents the true infinity of the Universal Father's free will.

Understanding the Father-Infinite is challenging for beings due to their limitations. Only the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit truly know the Father as an infinity; for others, it requires faith.

IV. Universe Reality

Reality develops on different universe levels, originating from the Universal Father's infinite will. It is realized in three main phases:

  1. Undeified reality—nonpersonal values of universal existence.
  2. Deified reality—all Deity potentials, from finite to infinite personalities.
  3. Interassociated reality—a domain of potential and actualizing reality, hard to identify, involving the Universal Absolute.

The Father maintains Reality. The main divisions of reality are deified and undeified, with the Deity Absolute and the Unqualified Absolute representing these. The Universal Absolute unifies them.

From a time-space view, reality can be divided into:

PARADISE refers to the focal point of all universe reality, including personal and nonpersonal aspects. Paradise is the origin, function, and destiny of all values, meanings, and factual existence.

The Isle of Paradise is the Absolute of material-gravity control. It is stationary, the source of physical universes, and more of a controller than a creator. Paradise is unique, exclusive, and isolated, representing nothing but itself.

V. Personality Realities

Personality ranges from mortal to final status, evolving from worship and wisdom to morontial and spiritual levels. There are many orders of universe personalities.

Reality can expand universally, and personality can diversify infinitely. Both can be coordinated and stabilized by Deity. While nonpersonal reality has limits, personality evolution seems limitless.

On experiential levels, all personality orders can associate and even co-create. God and man can coexist in a unified personality, as shown in Christ Michael—Son of Man and Son of God.

Personality is a gift from the Paradise Father, associated only with living energy systems. Identity can be associated with nonliving energy patterns.

The Universal Father is the source of personality, its bestowal, and destiny. The Eternal Son is the source of spiritual energy and perfected spirits. The Conjoint Actor is the source of intelligence and the universal mind. The Isle of Paradise is nonpersonal, the source of physical matter and the master pattern of material reality.

These qualities are manifest in human experience as:

Personality is the unchanging reality that unifies all other aspects of individuality. It survives with the morontial soul.

Morontia is the level between the material and spiritual, involving personal or impersonal realities and living or nonliving energies.

VI. Energy and Pattern

Personal things respond to the Father's personality circuit. Spiritual things respond to the Son's spirit circuit. Mindal things respond to the Conjoint Actor's mind circuit. Material things respond to the material-gravity circuit of Paradise.

ENERGY refers to spiritual, mindal, and material realms. Physical energy involves motion, action, and potential. We use terms like cosmic force, emergent energy, and universe power to describe physical-energy manifestations:

Mind involves living ministry and varied energy systems. Mind intervenes between spirit and matter, illuminating the universe with material light, intellectual insight, and spirit luminosity.

Light (spirit luminosity) is a symbol of the personality manifestation of spirit beings.

PATTERN can be material, spiritual, or mindal, involving personalities, entities, or nonliving matter. Pattern remains constant; only copies multiply. Pattern may configure energy but does not control it. Gravity controls energy-matter.

Pattern shows the individual aspect of energy and personality, caused by God, Deity, or Paradise force endowment.

Pattern is a master design. Paradise is the absolute of patterns; the Eternal Son is the pattern personality. The Universal Father is the source of both. Paradise does not bestow pattern, and the Son cannot bestow personality.

VII. The Supreme Being

The master universe operates with two main aspects of Deity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are eternal beings. Meanwhile, God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and God the Absolute are Deity personalities that are evolving over time and space. These evolving Deities will become eternal in the future as they grow and develop through their experiences in the expanding universes.

Deity has two forms:

  1. Existential—beings that exist eternally in the past, present, and future.
  2. Experiential—beings that are developing now and will exist forever in the future.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are existential (eternally existing), while the Supreme and the Ultimate are experiential (developing through experience). The Deity Absolute is experiential in action but existential in potential. The essence of Deity is eternal, but only the original three Deities are truly eternal without beginning or end. Other Deity personalities have a starting point but will exist forever.

God the Father has shown himself through the Son and the Spirit and is now achieving experiential expression through new Deity levels: God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and God the Absolute. These Deities are still developing and are not fully formed yet.

In Havona, God the Supreme represents the spirit of the Paradise Deity. This relationship is now expanding outward into God the Sevenfold and uniting as the Almighty Supreme in the grand universe. The three persons of Paradise Deity are evolving through these phases, becoming one Lord, the Supreme Being.

The Universal Father has freed himself from the constraints of infinity and eternity by creating the threefold Deity (Father, Son, and Spirit). The Supreme Being is evolving as a unified personality of Deity in the time-space segments of the grand universe.

The Supreme Being doesn't directly create things but coordinates all activities between creatures and creators. The Supreme Being, now developing in the evolutionary universes, is bringing together time-space divinity and Paradise Deity. When fully formed, this Deity will unite finite and infinite aspects, combining experiential power and spirit personality.

Under the influence of the evolving Supreme Being, all finite reality in time and space is working towards perfect unification. This aims to reach higher levels of existence beyond current time and space.

VIII. God the Sevenfold

To help finite creatures understand Deity, the Universal Father has created a sevenfold approach:

  1. The Paradise Creator Sons.
  2. The Ancients of Days.
  3. The Seven Master Spirits.
  4. The Supreme Being.
  5. God the Spirit.
  6. God the Son.
  7. God the Father.

This sevenfold Deity helps mortals reach God, who is spirit. This journey begins with recognizing the divinity of the Creator Son in the local universe and progresses through the Ancients of Days and the Seven Master Spirits, ultimately reaching the Universal Father on Paradise.

The grand universe involves the Trinity of Supremacy, God the Sevenfold, and the Supreme Being. God the Supreme derives his personality from the Paradise Trinity and his power from the Creator Sons, Ancients of Days, and Master Spirits. The Almighty Supreme evolves alongside these beings, merging personal and nonpersonal activities into one reality.

The Creator Sons in the Deity association of God the Sevenfold help mortals become immortal and unite with the Infinite. The Supreme Being facilitates the combination of power and personality, enabling the finite to reach higher levels of existence.

The function of God the Sevenfold began with the formation of the seven superuniverses and will likely expand with the evolution of new creations in outer space. Future universes will witness new approaches to Deity.

IV. God the Ultimate

Just as the Supreme Being evolves from the potentials within the grand universe, God the Ultimate emerges from the potentials in the master universe. The development of Ultimate Deity signifies the unification of the first experiential Trinity and expands Deity expression on new levels. This represents the combination of personality and power, creating new realities beyond current time and space.

The completion of this development will allow time-space creatures who have reached advanced levels through the Supreme Being to attain even higher levels through God the Ultimate.

God the Ultimate represents personal Deity functioning on advanced levels of divinity and in the universe realms beyond time and space. The Ultimate is a higher form of Deity, beyond the Supreme.

The Universal Father, through evolutionary Deity, focuses divine reality values at finite, advanced, and even absolute levels.

The original Paradise Deities—Universal Father, Eternal Son, and Infinite Spirit—will be complemented by the experiential Deities—God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and possibly God the Absolute—in the eternal future.

God the Supreme and God the Ultimate are evolving Deities with beginnings but no end. They are actualizations of eternal Deity potentials but are not fully existential or infinite.

X. God the Absolute

Some aspects of the Deity Absolute's eternal reality cannot be fully explained to finite minds. The actualization of God the Absolute would result from the unification of the second experiential Trinity, the Absolute Trinity. This would mean achieving absolute divinity and unifying absolute meanings, but we are unsure if this includes all absolute values.

God the Absolute is the ultimate goal for superabsonite beings, but the full power and personality potential of the Deity Absolute transcends our understanding.

XI. The Three Absolutes

When the Universal Father and Eternal Son, working through the God of Action, created the central universe, the Father differentiated his presence into the Unqualified Absolute and the Deity Absolute. These two are unified in the Universal Absolute.

Both cosmic and spirit forces are progressively revealed as reality grows through experiential and existential correlations by the Universal Absolute. The Universal Absolute balances the Father's extension of experiential power and identification with evolutionary creatures.

When we cannot fully distinguish the Deity Absolute from the Unqualified Absolute, we refer to their combined function as the Universal Absolute's action.

The Deity Absolute is the all-powerful activator, while the Unqualified Absolute is the efficient mechanizer of the unified universe. The Deity Absolute reacts to situations considering the welfare of the whole creation, including infinite future possibilities.

The Unqualified Absolute is nonpersonal and devoid of divinity and creator prerogatives. It pervades the grand universe and extends into the space regions beyond. The Unqualified Absolute is a positive universe overcontrol in infinity, conditioned by life, mind, spirit, and personality, and the Paradise Trinity's will.

The Universal Absolute balances the differentiation of universe realities into deified and undeified values. This Absolute signifies the adjustment between deity reality and undeified reality, balancing time and eternity, finity and infinity, and reality potential and actuality.

The Absolute concept represents the infinite and eternal relationships between these three Absolutes. On subinfinite levels, they are functionally differentiated, but in infinity, they are one.

XII. The Trinities

The original and eternal Paradise Trinity is existential and was inevitable. This Trinity arose from the Father's will and coordination of personal and nonpersonal realities. Post-Havona Trinities are experiential, created from two subabsolute levels of power-personality manifestation in the master universe.

The Paradise Trinity—Universal Father, Eternal Son, and Infinite Spirit—is existential, but all potentials are experiential. This Trinity encompasses infinity and leads to the actualization of God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and God the Absolute.

The first and second experiential Trinities cannot be infinite because they involve Deities evolved through the experiential actualization of realities created by the existential Paradise Trinity. Divinity is enriched by the experiences of finite and absonite beings.

Trinities represent relationships and coordinated Deity manifestation. Trinity functions encompass Deity realities, always seeking personalization. God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and God the Absolute were potential in the Paradise Trinity but are now emerging through experiential functioning.

The Ultimate Trinity, now evolving, will consist of the Supreme Being, Supreme Creator Personalities, and the absonite Architects of the Master Universe. God the Ultimate will eventually unify this Trinity in the master universe.

The Absolute Trinity, in process of actualization, will include God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and the unrevealed Consummator of Universe Destiny. This Trinity functions on personal and superpersonal levels and aims to unify absolute divinity.

While the Ultimate Trinity may fully unify, we doubt the Absolute Trinity can. However, the Paradise Trinity's example reminds us that Deity trinitization can achieve the otherwise unattainable, suggesting the possible emergence of the Supreme-Ultimate and God the Absolute.

Philosophers suggest a Trinity of Trinities, an existential-experiential Trinity Infinite, possibly representing the Universal Father conceptually as the I AM. Regardless, the Paradise Trinity is potentially infinite as the Universal Father is infinite.

Acknowledgement

In presenting the Universal Father's character, his Paradise associates, the perfect central universe, and the seven superuniverses, we follow the superuniverse rulers' mandate. We use the highest existing human concepts of these subjects, resorting to pure revelation only when necessary.

Each planetary revelation of divine truth includes the highest existing concepts of spiritual values. In preparing these papers, we have used over a thousand human concepts representing advanced knowledge of spiritual values and universe meanings. Where these concepts are inadequate, we supplement them with our superior knowledge of the Paradise Deities and their universe.

We recognize the difficulty of translating divine and eternal concepts into finite human language. But we know that a fragment of God dwells within the human mind, and the Spirit of Truth guides the human soul. These divine spirits help humans grasp spiritual values and universe meanings, enabling the personal experience of God-consciousness.

[This is an AI simplified version of the original foreward which was written by an Orvonton Divine Counselor, Chief of the Corps of Superuniverse Personalities assigned to portray the truth about the Paradise Deities and the universe on Urantia. You can read the original version here.]