Chapter Seventeen
How Self-Existence Works
(This is an excerpt from the new book Increate Love by John Thwaytes).
In our longer dictionaries we have the word 'aseity', which is often ignored in our modern age. This is the basic scholastic definition of God: it is derived from "Ens a se ipso", meaning "That which exists of itself". There is another expression: "Ens in se ipso", meaning "That which exists in itself". That which exists in itself is not the same as God. If it were, we would have a pantheist situation. Ens a se ipso or God exists by its own intrinsic capabilities. As such its nature is to exist, and so it is said that in God, Essence = Existence. God, therefore, is that which cannot not exist.
God is also The Infinity, the One and only Infinity which includes all possible infinities, such as infinity of dimensionality, eternity of time, infinity of all types of energy, including physical, mindal, spiritual, and personality energies, and combinations of these, potential infinity of space if we include the space beyond space (Unqualified Absolute), infinite variety, infinite powers of creativity, infinite Will, infinite Love, infinite Truth, infinite Beauty, and so on.
For finite beings of our type the question always arises: how could this be possible? The idea of a self-existent being is far beyond anything we can understand. That is quite true, but I believe that we can get some sort of 'preliminary' understanding of it if we go into the stillness and silence and meet God in our sacred centre and ask Him to help us to understand it just a little bit. That is part of the consuming thirst for God that we begin to feel even here from the pull of personality gravity (under the control of the Father), and the pull of spiritual gravity (under the control of the Son), and the pull of mindal gravity (under the control of the Holy Spirit). Once Faith grips our foetal soul we begin to feel the Holy Trinity pulling us towards It like a Gigantic Magnet. We can't prove this, and those who do not feel it themselves may well scoff, but none of that really matters. When you desire God, you desire everything, and will not be content with less. Therefore, you lose all desire for specific worldly things or outcomes. You only desire God and whatever He wants you to have.
In the Self-Existence of God, Increate or Uncreated Love precedes every other identifiable quality. That is why, as Jeshua says, divine Love is the sacred aspect of existence. However, this Love simultaneously includes a vast number of other identifiable qualities. In particular, it is concomitant with the power of Will, or rather it contains the power of Will. This is the Almighty volitional power of the Father, which the Urantia Book calls the scepter of His Primacy that He never surrenders. In Him Love=Will and both are inalienable. Love/Will also defines the core of God's Truth, so in Him Love/Will/Truth is one.
However, in our language, love does not have a precise definition. It includes many varieties of sentiment, some of which are not at all applicable to self-existent love. It is necessary to associate other essential qualities with God's love in order to understand what kind of love it is. The most important of these qualities is Integrity. God is faithful, loyal, reliable, unchanging in His commitments. His love, once given is forever. It will not cease. Even if we refuse it, it does not cease. Among all the types of love that we know of in nature, it is most like the love of a mother for her child. But the prophet Osee told us that even if a mother could cease to love her child, God will never cease to love His children. So the love of God is even more reliable than the love of a mother for her child.
Jeshua says that creation begins in the Void. It begins with BEING, not with substance. Being IS – simply because it says that IT IS. There is nothing more to the beginning than that. The first act of being, and the second of creation, is the creation of space. Energy and matter are mere extensions, changes, and complexities of space. Every being is known by the space that it creates and holds. This is equally true of God and the tiniest insect.
The UB tells us that the material domicile of the Deities is Paradise, and that Paradise is beyond space and time. Although it is the center of the cosmos, it is at rest in a non-space, timeless state of material existence that is the source and pattern of all other material existence. It is controlled by the Father. Therefore the space of our Father is non-space at total rest, so that He can be everywhere at once.
This reminds me of the name of God as revealed to Moses, "I Am That I Am". Perhaps one of the meanings, as Jeshua tells us, could be "I exist because I say that I exist". From that you can derive:"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", as in the first verse of the Gospel of John. If everything begins with awareness of being in a vacuum, then existence must be coming from a point or center of awareness with the will to be and become. God is by definition that original point of awareness, and He finds nothing anywhere to hamper his unlimited and unrestricted internal drive towards becoming. The pattern of His becoming is always in harmony with His original character. This original character must, therefore, pre-exist creation and remain as the seed of creation. The Void also remains because infinity exists in relation to the Void. The Void is neither something nor nothing. It might be thought of as the pre-space that is now organized as the Unqualified Absolute. I would say that the Void does not pre-exist or cause God, but it is a context automatically eventuated by His awareness of Himself as containing the seed of creation. The Void is a pre-space in which all the possibilities of existence are pre-thought before the decision to create something is made. In that pre-space, therefore, is the freedom of the Will of God that is the seed of creation.
The Urantia Book says that He first separates the Infinity from Infinitude, and then eternally engenders the Son as the Absolute pattern of personal spirituality, while at the same time eventuating Paradise as the material dwelling place of the Gods and the pattern of all material creation. Secondly, with the Son, He formulates a plan of creation, and both together engender the Holy Spirit to co-ordinate spirit and matter through the ministry of Mind. The Holy Spirit, as Conjoint Actor, immediately causes the billion eternal worlds of Havona to spring into existence, and then proceeds to actualize the plan of creation of the other universes. Besides the three infinite and eternal Deity Existential Absolutes, God the Father organizes and controls infinity through four other Absolutes that are not personal but are repositories of automated power controls required to manage infinity in an effortlessly efficient and thorough manner. These are called Paradise, the Deity Absolute, the Unqualified Absolute, and the Universal Absolute.We have to remember that while the Holy Spirit is in Himself the Infinite Mind of God, as Conjoint Actor He is the Infinite Spirit of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) in action as One. That is the Ruah! When the Conjoint Actor is in action, the Father and the Son are always acting with Him and in Him. That is why the Holy Spirit is called the God of Action.
We have already seen many examples of the values of faithfulness, loyalty, and duty in the higher realms of spirit. These are paramount qualities of God's own love that He seeks to impart to all his associates. We are among His associates, not merely as creatures, but as sons, partners, co-creators, and even as friends. This kind of love is the basis of unselfish service, and unselfish service to all is the very hallmark of God's own love. It is an unselfish, self-giving, self-sharing love to a degree far beyond our highest ideals. God finds His Joy in service to others, and offers us the same possibility. Therefore, His Joy emanates from the presence of His love, and that Joy is the energizing element of His divine nature.
In sum, I would list the following qualities of God's love:
1) True love is forever. If it is not forever it is not true love.
2) True love is total. God loves each of His children equally, because He loves each one totally, with His whole heart, soul, mind and strength: therefore infinitely.
3) True love is unconditional. It does not depend on your merit. It accepts you just as you are, and, in the case of God, His love itself is what makes you worthy of it. How can the all-wise, all-knowing God love you unless you are worthy? He loves you because His creative act of loving you (by which you exist) makes you worthy of it. That is the hidden fact about you that faith can know, but only the attainment of the Supreme by all humanity together can reveal to us concretely.
4) True love includes integrity of duty, faithfulness, and loyalty.
5) True love finds its greatest joy in service to others.
6) That joy is the energizer of the divine nature.
7) Love is doing good to others. It is based on harmony, and expressed in truth, beauty of all types, and, above all, in goodness.
8) True love is quiet, affectionate, compassionate, patient, and kind; it is not proud or pompous or self-important, seeks not its own, is not irritable or resentful or jealous; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.
To these points I would add from Jeshua the seven spiritual powers of intelligence of the heart that we share with the heart of God:
1) Unity
2) Love
3) Life
4) Respect
5) Justice
6) Honesty
7) Kindness
Of these seven we are not required to work on the Unity of all things that exist, because that is the first priority of God and the job He unfailing does by His own power, whether we want it or not. The other six types of intelligence must be achieved by us at least partly by our own efforts in order to qualify ourselves for union with God. If we fail, our personality will become the property of the evolving Supreme, but we won't be there inside it. As an individual conscious being we will cease to exist. So we must try to develop the intelligence of Love, Life, Respect, Justice, Honesty, and Kindness if we want to become immortal. However, it is enough to have a sincere intention to do so in order to be promoted from this first world of our birth to the heavenly worlds of further probation, training and evolution. So there is no place for guilt and fear in dealing with God, Who is the kindest of the kind.
Connected with each of these seven is a corresponding aspiration:
Sl.No. Intelligence of Aspiration
1) Unity innocence
2) Love compassion
3) Life gratitude
4) Respect wisdom
5) Honesty peace
6) Justice forgiveness
7) Kindness joy
The aspirations augment the corresponding intelligence. Notice that you can't get true peace without honesty, true justice seeks to protect innocence, and kindness is indispensable to joy. A grateful soul is the secret of success in life.This is beyond our normal understanding. It reflects the intelligence of God.
Before I go more deeply into Jeshua's ideas, I want to deal with certain simple concepts that I believe are foundational for a deeper understanding of this subject. First, there is the conclusion I came to myself by contemplating the Unqualified Absolute as the space beyond space: that there is no such thing as nothing. 'Something' has always existed everywhere that is, and without that there would be nothing at all. Secondly, that 'Something' has always been Infinity, but that Infinity has always been developing and expanding. I actually got that idea from Monjoronson. In the Infinity there is constant developmental activity in simultaneity unconditioned by time or space. So there is sequentiality without time. We cannot normally think of sequentiality without time, unless we deliberately push our thinking beyond the normal.
If we realize that "Something" has always existed, and there is no such thing as nothing, and the "Something" that has always existed is the infinitely expanding Infinity, then it becomes much easier for us to understand that something else can come out from "Something" already there, because we generally believe intuitively that ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing can be made from nothing). On that basis I cannot prove deductively that God exists, but I can show that the eternal existence of God is not irrational or illogical. That may help some of those people who find it difficult to believe in God.
When I say that there is no such thing as nothing I am following the principle of the Vedantic sages who say that nothing that is truly real can cease to exist, but what is not truly real never had any real existence. For example, sin is not truly real. It is the absence of sufficient of the reality of true love. It is not so much a reality as a lack of reality. Thus the more we sin the less and less real we become until the point where we cease to exist at all. We were only a brief flicker on the radar screen of reality. We were only a brief potential for existence that aborted itself.
Thirdly, the Infinity is such that it was Infinite from all eternity, yet it has never stopped expanding and developing and never will.
Fourthly, it is inherently spontaneous and simultaneous, so that the very first act of the Infinity is still happening even as the most recent act is happening, and even while, from our viewpoint, the acts of the far future are happening now in a higher reality. That means that our finite reality is a lower form of reality somehow enfolded within a higher reality in which our time sequence is interactive with a permanent stabilization of time-derived experiential values. Since the time/space reality is less real, it can be absorbed into the eternally present character of the higher reality of which it is a mere reflection. Basically, the lower reality is an adjustment of consciousness designed to provide us with free will, and the capacity for choice, growth, and co-creative power. It is a technique by which we can share with God the creation of our own character. That is actually what we are doing down here. All else is chaff.
Fifthly, the meeting point or interface between our reality and the higher reality is the moment of NOW. In that moment, which is actually the Presence of God and Truth, we live and move and have our being. When we realize that, then we can penetrate the higher reality by Faith and awareness.
Sixthly, we should appreciate that the greatness of God far exceeds everything we can imagine. His self-existent being is of an altogether different order of magnitude from 'being' as applied to ourselves or to lesser things. That is why the scholastics use the expression 'analogia entis' for our being in relation to God. Our being is like an analogue of the being of God. In relation to God, the whole of creation is like a tennis ball in the hand of a child. It is not only far smaller, but also equivalently inferior in all other aspects.
Bearing these points in mind, we can now approach some of the deeper truths described by Jeshua. Will is the Life Force of a being. In our individual evolution Spirit first manifests as Will. Then will manifests as your body. Your free will is not will over others but will for the manifestation of your own life. Your will is known to you by your feelings. Unconditionally accept your own feelings, even if there is something that needs to be changed or reformed. Look at your feelings exactly as they are, and then make choices about what you want to do about them : how you want to respond. That is where responsibility comes in.
Will is a kind of 'pre-thought' energy that is moving and carrying your life. It is actually a high frequency sound wave simultaneously containing life, intent, and creation. It springs from the core of your being, far beyond definition or conceptual description. Will is the raw power of creativity, and thought enables it to be examined and developed or revised. The key to creativity is the application of thought to elevate the will.
Infinity is not what lies beyond a quantifiable universe. Infinity is what permeates a universe and integrates subjective and objective awareness into one boundless potential. Infinity is a qualitative dimension of existence that integrates subjective and objective experience. When you know this you will be able to unite truth and reality in an effective way. The challenge we face is to find truth within reality. They are not separate, but they are also not the same.
The stillness behind change is that which embraces truth. 'Be still and know that I am God.' That is the road map to Truth.
Holy Spirit is the pure essence of Truth. Truth does not derive its authority from our actions and feelings. Our lives derive authority from Truth.
Our soul is a vessel created by God to contain the love that we ARE. The soul connects with our mother at the moment of our conception and then works on the creation of our embryo from outside the body. At birth and at the moment of our first breath, our soul enters the body through the heart chakra (the true spiritual heart which is at the centre of the body in the spinal region slightly lower than the physical heart). The mark of our entry endures for life , and remains our connection for higher life and for further communications with the Holy Spirit.
Faith is not a matter of belief systems. It is the recognition that our own true essence is REAL and cannot be lost, because the whole of reality is supporting it now and forever. So we get unshakable confidence in the inherent goodness of life and the universe. We become certain that our true nature cannot be harmed.
The very first act of faith is in claiming the words 'I Am' for your very own. The 'I Am' is the Spirit of God dwelling in you. Your second act of faith is in using those words to call forth your reality. It is your Creator's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. In knowing yourself as 'I Am', you know yourself to be whole and sufficient. This brings unshakable faith that will move all thing towards you. You will not search for things, and yet all that you need will find you.
To all things there is an inner and outer world. Between these two easily perceived realities, there is yet another deeper inner world, which is invisible even to you. This invisible world is waiting to be discovered, begging to be revealed. This is a reality beyong the limits of your dream horizon. This is your true magnetic energy. The invisible world is both majestic and humble. It is shy and elusive, yet powerful as an ocean.
Glenda Green tells us that this invisible world is the Void. The Void is inside and outside everything. We, and all things, are simultaneously inside and outside the Void. The Void is a vacuum of nothingness between all physical particles and even between the inner world of subjective awareness and the outer world of objective reality. The Void is the inner sanctuary of creation where "now" and "forever" are of equal duration. It is the womb of all creation. It is neither nothing nor something. It is less than nothing and more than everything.
Jeshua gives an example of this in the case of an elephant. The outer world of the elephant is the forest, the fields of grass, rivers with lush muddy banks, sunny days and bright starry nights. Its subjective world is made up of feelings and thoughts about all that, to which there are qualities of life, memories, social connections, history and a sense of belonging to the herd and the ancestors of the herd. Beyond that, there is the deep inner world invisible even to the elephant. This is the power of its place in the kingdom. Through a sense of its own place in the kingdom, and the presence of nature and natural elements, the elephant will be drawn mysteriously to where the rains have come. Perhaps he will be carried away mysteriously from where the hunters are, and then beyond life to where the elephant in its glory may serve eternity or re-emerge again into creation. Reverent connection with this deep inner realm is the humility of the soul seeking to know its nobility, and the nobility of the soul seeking to express its faith in the great unknown. The inner world is a Void (a vacuum technically speaking), for there is neither time nor space. The inner world is much more ancient than either the subjective world of thought or the objective world of manifestation. At the heart of the inner world is the seed of all beginnings --- ever able to newly begin from this timeless potential. This is the place where Love as Pure Being is replicated and carried forth to appear in the worlds of thought and manifestation.
Jeshua also says that our Sacred Heart (the heart chakra) contains a neutrally charged singularity called the Zero Point of Infinity, where the Center of God Paradise , but, in the totality of His Presence, He is also centered in the heart of each and every person through His personality circuit, as well as through the Thought Adjusters in the case of those who have them. Through this Zero Point, where we are united with the Infinity, fresh energy constantly pours into cosmos, nullifying the entropy of closed energy systems. But there is no such thing as a physical singularity.
All these points can help us to understand self-existence. But the most important point is that, at the level of absolute reality and truth, the primeval, ancestral realities are still active NOW and always will be. That illustrates the eternal NOW of God. From that standpoint I can understand God the Metatron and how He makes all things new. Every act of the Absolute is still going on NOW and always will be. That means that no matter how much The Infinity expands or is modified as regards manifestation, organization, and experiential values, it was ALWAYS PERFECT in its unchanging principles and always will be. In fact, it exists by reason of its character, which is total perfection.
It is our task, by the help of God, to build our own character as a person of survival value.
Normally, BEING is prior to essence, because at least intelligent beings first exist and then begin to understand what they are from experience. But God is not a thing, so the manner in which He exists is different. In Him both essence and existence are simultaneous, infinite, and eternal. But such Infinity can only be known perfectly by Itself.
The Void is not the opposite of Infinity, but the reciprocal of Infinity. It is the part of Infinity that frees It from necessity and allows for freedom of will. In the Void God can contemplate or try out all different possibilities of creation before deciding which one to select. In the same way our own mind gives us a similar power. We experiment with various alternatives in our mind before making a final choice. It is the final choice that is a moral act, not the speculative alternatives. The final choice is an act of intention, and God judges us by our intentions and attitudes, not by our stray exploratory thoughts, feelings, and spontaneous emotions. Nothing that is beyond our control can possibly be a moral or immoral act. We know our own mind is similar to the void because it experiments with more than a million very divergent and varied thoughts every second, of which only about seven become prominent in our consciousness, and even those we usually recognize as "passing thoughts" of no moral significance.
Space is also a reciprocal of finite being. We tend to think that space is an ocean common to all who inhabit it. But Jeshua says that each of us creates his own space and contributes that to the space he shares with others; and that is one of the reasons that each and every person is essential to the integrity of the whole.
I also feel that by introspection we can realize that our soul is master of both space and time. We seem to carry our own space and time with us, and these are somehow formatted by the prevailing intentions of our soul. That may be why Saint Thomas Aquinas said: "Sapiens homo dominatur et astris." This means literally "Man can control the stars through wisdom", but the deeper meaning is "The wise man is Master of his fate." In astrology the stars were thought to be controllers of fate. That superstition is what he wanted to refute.
Obviously such thoughts of Jeshua go far beyond the fifth epochal revelation (the Urantia Book). But that does not mean they are untrue. It only signifies that no one is under any kind of obligation to believe such ideas. We are not even obliged to believe the fifth epochal revelation itself; but we can enjoy having greater certainty about our beliefs if we do believe it, because it is approved by the Government of the Holy Trinity through the Ancients of Days.
When God told Moses that His name was "I Am That I Am", He may have meant that it was impossible for Him to define Himself in any way that Moses could understand. But in Jesus the invisible Father becomes fully visible to us. In that way He further defined Himself as follows:
182.1.10 I am the bread of life.
182.1.11 I am the living water.
182.1.12 I am the light of the world.
182.1.13 I am the desire of all ages.
182.1.14 I am the open door to eternal salvation.
182.1.15 I am the reality of endless life.
182.1.16 I am the good shepherd.
182.1.17 I am the pathway of infinite perfection.
182.1.18 I am the resurrection and the life.
182.1.19 I am the secret of eternal survival.
182.1.20 I am the way, the truth, and the life.
182.1.21 I am the infinite Father of my finite children.
182.1.22 I am the true vine; you are the branches.
182.1.23 I am the hope of all who know the living truth.
182.1.24 I am the living bridge from one world to another.
182.1.25 I am the living link between time and eternity.
5. The Spirit of Truth
180.5.1 The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of believers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This divine endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptative truth.
180.5.2 Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you
cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind.
180.5.3 Intelligence grows out of a material existence which is illuminated by the presence of the cosmic mind. Wisdom comprises the consciousness of knowledge elevated to new levels of meaning and activated by the presence of the universe endowment of the adjutant of wisdom. Truth is a spiritual reality value experienced only by spirit-endowed beings who function upon supermaterial levels of universe consciousness, and who, after the realization of truth, permit its spirit of activation to live and reign within their souls.
180.5.4 The true child of universe insight looks for the living Spirit of Truth in every wise saying. The God-knowing individual is constantly elevating wisdom to the living-truth levels of divine attainment; the spiritually unprogressive soul is all the while dragging the living truth down to the dead levels of wisdom and to the domain of mere exalted knowledge.
From this teaching we can appreciate that, like divine increate love, divine truth also is a living and dynamic flow from the Father, through his created sons to one another, and, by that means, to a parallel realization in the evolving finite God the Supreme, Who is God the Mother. One may picture both divine Love and Truth flowing as a sacred river of Will
