✶ The Heart of Spirit: A Dialogue of Truth ✶
Between a Salvington Apostle and Christ Michael Of Nebadon
Salvington Apostle: Master, my mind strains to grasp the infinite, to comprehend the boundless reality of the Eternal Son, for whom you bear so potent a resemblance. How can we, finite as we are, truly fathom the spiritual core of all creation?
Christ Michael: My beloved Apostle, fear not the vastness, for the infinite is ever revealing itself to the finite, in gradations of tender mercy and compassionate truth. The Original Son, whom I reflect, is indeed eternally entwined with the unfolding of the Father’s purpose, the spiritual blossoming of every evolving universe, touching every living being within its manifold realms. This grand design, while veiled from your full comprehension, is crystal clear to the Paradise Son, whose wisdom encompasses all.
Salvington Apostle: It seems, then, that the Son mirrors the Father's unstinting generosity, bestowing Himself upon all. Is this self-distribution a key to understanding His very nature?
Christ Michael: Precisely so. The Son, like the Father, seeks to bestow everything possible of Himself upon His co-ordinate Sons, and upon their subordinate Sons—even upon me. And this self-distributive nature is powerfully shared in the unstinted bestowal of both Father and Son upon the Infinite Spirit, their conjoint executive, the very breath of their united will. This dynamic flow of divine self-giving is the pulse of creation.
Salvington Apostle: I find myself captivated by the idea of the Son as the upholder of spirit realities, a spiritual counterpoise to the physical perfection of Paradise. Is the spirit world truly His very habit, His personal conduct?
Christ Michael: Indeed. As the upholder of all spirit realities, the Second Source and Center stands as the eternal counterpoise to the material grandeur of the Isle of Paradise. Thus is the First Source and Center—the Universal Father—forever revealed in the material beauty of the exquisite patterns of the Central Isle and, crucially, in the supernal spiritual values of the perfect personality of the Eternal Son. Yes, the spirit world is truly His living habit, His personal conduct, and the impersonal realities of spirit nature are ever responsive to the perfect will and purpose of the Absolute Son.
Salvington Apostle: But Master, if the spirit world is His habit, why then do we witness such deviation, such imperfection, in the volitional beings of spirit? Where does our free will fit into this grand design?
Christ Michael: Ah, a most vital distinction, my son. The Son is not, however, personally responsible for the conduct of all spirit personalities. The will of the personal creature is relatively free, and thus determines the actions of such volitional beings. Therefore, the freewill spirit world is not always truly representative of the character of the Eternal Son, even as nature on your Urantia, in its fallen state, is not truly revelatory of the perfection and immutability of Paradise and Deity. Yet, no matter what may characterize the freewill action of man or angel, the Son’s eternal grasp of the universal spirit-gravity control of all spirit realities continues as absolute, unwavering, and supreme.
Salvington Apostle: This concept of "spirit gravity" is profound. How does it truly function? Is it truly as ubiquitous as the Father's omnipresence?
Christ Michael: Everything taught concerning the immanence of God, His omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, is equally true of the Son in the spiritual domains. The pure and universal spirit gravity of all creation, this exclusively spiritual circuit, leads directly back to the very person of the Second Source and Center on Paradise. He presides over the control and operation of that ever-present and unerring spiritual grasp of all true spirit values. Thus, the Eternal Son exercises absolute spiritual sovereignty. He literally holds all spirit realities and all spiritualized values, as it were, in the hollow of His hand. The control of universal spiritual gravity is universal spiritual sovereignty itself.
Salvington Apostle: So, this spiritual gravity operates beyond the constraints of time and space, unaffected by distance or material mass? That seems truly wondrous.
Christ Michael: Indeed, it does. This gravity control of spiritual things operates independently of time and space; therefore, spirit energy is undiminished in transmission. Spirit gravity never suffers time delays, nor does it undergo space diminution. It does not decrease in accordance with the square of the distance of its transmission; the circuits of pure spirit power are not retarded by the mass of the material creation. This transcendence of time and space by pure spirit energies is inherent in the absoluteness of the Son; it is not due to any external force.
Salvington Apostle: And spirit realities respond to this pull based on their quality, their very nature?
Christ Michael: Precisely. Spirit realities respond to the drawing power of the center of spiritual gravity in accordance with their qualitative value, their actual degree of spirit nature. Spirit substance (quality) is just as responsive to spirit gravity as the organized energy of physical matter (quantity) is responsive to physical gravity. Spiritual values and spirit forces are real. From the viewpoint of personality, spirit is the very soul of creation; matter is but its shadowy physical body.
Salvington Apostle: This means every spiritual act, every genuine value actualized, creates an instantaneous cosmic ripple?
Christ Michael: Yes. The reactions and fluctuations of spirit gravity are ever true to the content of spiritual values, the qualitative spiritual status of an individual or a world. This drawing power is instantly responsive to the inter- and intraspirit values of any universe situation or planetary condition. Every time a spiritual reality actualizes in the universes, this change necessitates the immediate and instantaneous readjustment of spirit gravity. Such a new spirit is actually a part of the Second Source and Center; and just as certainly as mortal man becomes a spiritized being, he will attain the spiritual Son, the center and source of spirit gravity.
Salvington Apostle: Is this spirit gravity then, a universal constant, unyielding even to rebellion?
Christ Michael: Like the material gravity of Paradise, the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son is absolute. Sin and rebellion may interfere with the operation of local universe circuits, may cause distress and delay, but nothing can suspend the spirit gravity of the Eternal Son. The Lucifer rebellion, for instance, produced many changes in your system of inhabited worlds and on Urantia, but we do not observe that the resultant spiritual quarantine of your planet in the least affected the presence and function of either the omnipresent spirit of the Eternal Son or the associated spirit-gravity circuit. It is an enduring cosmic constant.
Salvington Apostle: So, this spiritual circuit provides a reliable pathway for our prayers?
Christ Michael: Indeed. The spirit-gravity circuit is the basic channel for transmitting the genuine prayers of the believing human heart from the level of human consciousness to the actual consciousness of Deity. That which represents true spiritual value in your petitions will be seized by the universal circuit of spirit gravity and will pass immediately and simultaneously to all divine personalities concerned. Each will occupy himself with that which belongs to his personal province. Therefore, in your practical religious experience, it is immaterial whether, in addressing your supplications, you visualize the Creator Son of your local universe or the Eternal Son at the center of all things.
Salvington Apostle: This implies a discernment, then. Not all words spoken in prayer carry this spiritual weight?
Christ Michael: Precisely. If your supplications are purely material and wholly self-centered, there exists no plan whereby such unworthy prayers can find lodgment in the spirit circuit of the Eternal Son. The content of any petition which is not "spirit indited"—not motivated by true spiritual value—can find no place in the universal spiritual circuit; such purely selfish and material requests fall dead; they do not ascend in the circuits of true spirit values. Such words are as "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal," devoid of spiritual resonance. It is the motivating thought, the spiritual content, that validates the mortal supplication. Words are valueless without this spiritual essence.
Salvington Apostle: It seems the Eternal Son is deeply involved in the Father's grand plan of progress for all will creatures. What are these divine plans?
Christ Michael: The Eternal Son is in everlasting liaison with the Father in the successful prosecution of the divine plan of progress: the universal plan for the creation, evolution, ascension, and perfection of will creatures. And, in divine faithfulness, the Son is the eternal equal of the Father in this magnificent undertaking.
Salvington Apostle: There are different aspects to this plan, then?
Christ Michael: Yes, this divine plan of perfection attainment embraces three unique, though marvelously correlated, enterprises of universal adventure. First, the Plan of Progressive Attainment, which is the Universal Father’s plan of evolutionary ascension, a program unreservedly accepted by the Eternal Son when he concurred in the Father’s proposal, “Let us make mortal creatures in our own image.” This provision for upstepping the creatures of time involves the Father’s bestowal of the Thought Adjusters and the endowing of material creatures with the prerogatives of personality.
Salvington Apostle: And the second plan? The "Bestowal Plan"?
Christ Michael: The second universal plan is the great Father-revelation enterprise of the Eternal Son and his co-ordinate Sons, such as myself. This is the proposal of the Eternal Son and consists of his bestowal of the Sons of God upon the evolutionary creations, there to personalize and factualize, to incarnate and make real, the love of the Father and the mercy of the Son to the creatures of all universes. Inherent in this bestowal plan, and as a provisional feature of this ministration of love, the Paradise Sons act as rehabilitators of that which misguided creature will has placed in spiritual jeopardy.
Salvington Apostle: So the bestowal Sons act as restorers in times of rebellion? Like you, Master, on Urantia?
Christ Michael: Precisely. Whenever and wherever there occurs a delay in the functioning of the attainment plan, if rebellion, perchance, should mar or complicate this enterprise, then do the emergency provisions of the bestowal plan become active forthwith. The Paradise Sons stand pledged and ready to function as retrievers, to go into the very realms of rebellion and there restore the spiritual status of the spheres. And such a heroic service a co-ordinate Creator Son, myself, did perform on Urantia in connection with his experiential bestowal career of sovereignty acquirement.
Salvington Apostle: And the third plan?
Christ Michael: The third is the Plan of Mercy Ministry. When the attainment plan and the bestowal plan had been formulated and proclaimed, alone and of himself, the Infinite Spirit projected and put in operation the tremendous and universal enterprise of mercy ministry. This is the service so essential to the practical and effective operation of both the attainment and the bestowal undertakings, and the spiritual personalities of the Third Source and Center all partake of the spirit of mercy ministry which is so much a part of the nature of the Third Person of Deity. Not only in creation but also in administration, the Infinite Spirit functions truly and literally as the conjoint executive of the Father and the Son.
Salvington Apostle: It truly seems that the Eternal Son is the supreme revelation of the Father.
Christ Michael: Indeed. The Eternal Son is a complete, exclusive, universal, and final revelation of the spirit and the personality of the Universal Father. All knowledge of, and information concerning, the Father must come from the Eternal Son and his Paradise Sons. The Eternal Son is from eternity and is wholly and without spiritual qualification one with the Father. In divine personality they are co-ordinate; in spiritual nature they are equal; in divinity they are identical.
Salvington Apostle: So, to know the Son is to truly know the Father?
Christ Michael: The character of God could not possibly be intrinsically improved upon in the person of the Son, for the divine Father is infinitely perfect, but that character and personality are amplified, by divestment of the nonpersonal and nonspiritual, for revelation to creature beings. The First Source and Center is much more than a personality, but all of the spirit qualities of the father personality of the First Source and Center are spiritually present in the absolute personality of the Eternal Son.
Salvington Apostle: And this is how you reveal the Father to us, is it not? Through your own life and teachings?
Christ Michael: Precisely. The primal Son and his Sons are engaged in making a universal revelation of the spiritual and personal nature of the Father to all creation. In the central universe, the superuniverses, the local universes, or on the inhabited planets, it is a Paradise Son who reveals the Universal Father to men and angels. The Eternal Son and his Sons reveal the avenue of creature approach to the Universal Father. And even we of high origin understand the Father much more fully as we study the revelation of his character and personality in the Eternal Son and in the Sons of the Eternal Son.
Salvington Apostle: It fills me with hope to know that we can truly ascend to the Father through this living way.
Christ Michael: The Father comes down to you as a personality only through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son. And you attain the Father by this same living way; you ascend to the Father by the guidance of this group of divine Sons. And this remains true notwithstanding that your very personality is a direct bestowal of the Universal Father.
Salvington Apostle: Thank you, Master. Your words fill my soul with understanding and purpose.
Christ Michael: Go forth, my beloved Apostle, with this truth resonating within you. May your understanding of the Eternal Son deepen, leading you ever closer to the all-merciful embrace of the Universal Father.
University Of Salvington
