117:4.10 The great challenge that has been given to mortal man is this: Will you decide to personalize the experiencible value meanings of the cosmos into your own evolving selfhood? or by rejecting survival, will you allow these secrets of Supremacy to lie dormant, awaiting the action of another creature at some other time who will in
117:4.11 ¶ The great struggle of this universe age is between the potential and the actual — the seeking for actualization by all that is as yet unexpressed. If mortal man proceeds upon the Paradise adventure, he is following the motions of time, which flow as currents within the stream of eternity; if mortal man rejects the eternal career, he is moving counter to the stream of events in the finite universes. The mechanical creation moves on inexorably in accordance with the unfolding purpose of the Paradise Father, but the volitional creation has the choice of accepting or of rejecting the role of personality participation in the adventure of eternity. Mortal man cannot destroy the supreme values of human existence, but he can very definitely prevent the evolution of these values in his own personal experience. To the extent that the human self thus refuses to take part in the Paradise ascent, to just that extent is the Supreme delayed in achieving divinity expression in the grand universe.
117:4.12 Into the keeping of mortal man has been given not only the Adjuster presence of the Paradise Father but also control over the destiny of an infinitesimal fraction of the future of the Supreme. For as man attains human destiny, so does the Supreme achieve destiny on deity levels.
117:4.13 And so the decision awaits each of you as it once awaited each of us: Will you fail the God of time, who is so dependent upon the decisions of the finite mind? will you fail the Supreme personality of the universes by the slothfulness of animalistic retrogression? will you fail the great brother of all creatures, who is so dependent on each creature? can you allow yourself to pass into the realm of the unrealized when before you lies the enchanting vista of the universe career — the divine discovery of the Paradise Father and the divine participation in the search for, and the evolution of, the God of Supremacy?
117:4.14 ¶ God’s gifts — his bestowal of reality — are not divorcements from himself; he does not alienate creation from himself, but he has set up tensions in the creations circling Paradise. God first loves man and confers upon him the potential of immortality — eternal reality. And as man loves God, so does man become eternal in actuality. And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality — actuality — of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly he approaches nonreality — cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father’s will, when man gives God all that he
5. THE OVERSOUL OF CREATION
117:5.1 The great Supreme is the cosmic oversoul of the grand universe. In him the qualities and quantities of the cosmos do find their deity reflection; his deity nature is the mosaic composite of the total vastness of all creature-Creator nature throughout the evolving universes. And the Supreme is also an actualizing Deity embodying a creative will which embraces an evolving universe purpose.
117:5.2 The intellectual, potentially personal selves of the finite emerge from the Third Source and Centre and achieve finite time-space Deity synthesis in the Supreme. When the creature submits to the will of the Creator, he does not submerge or surrender his personality; the individual personality participants in the actualization of the finite God do not lose their volitional selfhood by so functioning. Rather are such personalities progressively augmented by participation in this great Deity adventure; by such union with divinity man exalts, enriches, spiritualizes, and unifies his evolving self to the very threshold of supremacy.
117:5.3 ¶ The evolving immortal soul of man, the joint creation of the material mind and the Adjuster, ascends as such to Paradise and subsequently, when mustered into the Corps of the Finality, becomes allied in some new way with the spirit-gravity circuit of the Eternal Son by a technique of experience known as
117:5.4 In the eternal future, God the Supreme will be actualized — creatively expressed and spiritually portrayed — in the spiritualized mind, the immortal soul, of ascendant man, even as the Universal Father was so revealed in the earth life of Jesus.
117:5.5 ¶ Man does not unite with the Supreme and submerge his personal identity, but the universe repercussions of the experience of all men do thus form a part of the divine experiencing of the Supreme. “The act is ours, the consequences God’s.”
117:5.6 The progressing personality leaves a trail of actualized reality as it passes through the ascending levels of the universes. Be they mind, spirit, or energy, the growing creations of time and space are modified by the progression of personality through their domains. When man acts, the Supreme reacts, and this transaction constitutes the fact of progression.
117:5.7 The great circuits of energy, mind, and spirit are never the permanent possessions of ascending personality; these ministries remain forever a part of Supremacy. In the mortal experience the human intellect resides in the rhythmic pulsations of the adjutant mind-spirits and effects its decisions within the arena produced by encircuitment within this ministry. Upon mortal death the human self is everlastingly divorced from the adjutant circuit. While these adjutants never seem to transmit experience from one personality to another, they can and do transmit the impersonal repercussions of decision-action through God the Sevenfold to God the Supreme. (At least this is true of the adjutants of worship and wisdom.)
117:5.8 And so it is with the spiritual circuits: Man utilizes these in his ascent through the universes, but he never possesses them as a part of his eternal personality. But these circuits of spiritual ministry, whether Spirit of Truth, Holy Spirit, or superuniverse spirit presences, are receptive and reactive to the emerging values in ascending personality, and these values are faithfully transmitted through the Sevenfold to the Supreme.
117:5.9 ¶ While such spiritual influences as the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth are local universe ministrations, their guidance is not wholly confined to the geographic limitations of a given local creation. As the ascending mortal passes beyond the boundaries of his local universe of origin, he is not entirely deprived of the ministry of the Spirit of Truth which has so constantly taught and guided him through the philosophic mazes of the material and morontial worlds, in every crisis of ascension unfailingly directing the Paradise pilgrim, ever saying: “This is the way.” When you leave the domains of the local universe, through the ministry of the spirit of the emerging Supreme Being and through the provisions of superuniverse reflectivity, you will still be guided in your Paradise ascent by the comforting directive spirit of the Paradise bestowal Sons of God.
117:5.10 How do these manifold circuits of cosmic ministry register the meanings, values, and facts of evolutionary experience in the Supreme? We are not exactly certain, but we believe that this registry takes place through the persons of the Supreme Creators of Paradise origin who are the immediate bestowers of these circuits of time and space. The mind-experience accumulations of the seven adjutant mind-spirits, in their ministry to the physical level of intellect, are a part of the local universe experience of the Divine Minister, and through this Creative Spirit they probably find registry in the mind of Supremacy. Likewise are mortal experiences with the Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit probably registered by similar techniques in the person of Supremacy.
117:5.11 Even the experience of man and Adjuster must find echo in the divinity of God the Supreme, for, as the Adjusters experience, they are like the Supreme, and the evolving soul of mortal man is created out of the pre-existent possibility for such experience within the Supreme.
117:5.12 In this manner do the manifold experiences of all creation become a part of the evolution of Supremacy. Creatures merely utilize the qualities and quantities of the finite as they ascend to the Father; the impersonal consequences of such utilization remain forever a part of the living cosmos, the Supreme person.
117:5.13 What man himself takes with him as a personality possession are the character
