this innate ability to recognize and grasp the reality of other personality, ranging from the human to the divine.
16:9.8 (196.4) Unselfish social consciousness must be, at bottom, a religious consciousness; that is, if it is objective; otherwise it is a purely subjective philosophic abstraction and therefore devoid of love. Only a God-knowing individual can love another person as he loves himself.
16:9.9 (196.5) Self-consciousness is in essence a communal consciousness: God and man, Father and son, Creator and creature. In human self-consciousness four universe-reality realizations are latent and inherent:
16:9.10 (196.6) 1. The quest for knowledge, the logic of science.
16:9.11 (196.7) 2. The quest for moral values, the sense of duty.
16:9.12 (196.8) 3. The quest for spiritual values, the religious experience.
16:9.13 (196.9) 4. The quest for personality values, the ability to recognize the reality of God as a personality and the concurrent realization of our fraternal relationship with fellow personalities.
16:9.14 (196.10) You become conscious of man as your creature brother because you are already conscious of God as your Creator Father. Fatherhood is the relationship out of which we reason ourselves into the recognition of brotherhood. And Fatherhood becomes, or may become, a universe reality to all moral creatures because the Father has himself bestowed personality upon all such beings and has encircuited them within the grasp of the universal personality circuit. We worship God, first, because he is, then, because he is in us, and last, because we are in him.
16:9.15 (196.11) Is it strange that the cosmic mind should be self-consciously aware of its own source, the infinite mind of the Infinite Spirit, and at the same time conscious of the physical reality of the far-flung universes, the spiritual reality of the Eternal Son, and the personality reality of the Universal Father?
16:9.16 (196.12) [Sponsored by a Universal Censor from Uversa.]
The Urantia Book
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Paper 17
The Seven Supreme Spirit Groups
17:0.1 (197.1) THE seven Supreme Spirit groups are the universal co-ordinating directors of the seven-segmented administration of the grand universe. Although all are classed among the functional family of the Infinite Spirit, the following three groups are usually classified as children of the Paradise Trinity:
17:0.2 (197.2) 1. The Seven Master Spirits.
17:0.3 (197.3) 2. The Seven Supreme Executives.
17:0.4 (197.4) 3. The Reflective Spirits.
17:0.5 (197.5) The remaining four groups are brought into being by the creative acts of the Infinite Spirit or by his associates of creative status:
17:0.6 (197.6) 4. The Reflective Image Aids.
17:0.7 (197.7) 5. The Seven Spirits of the Circuits.
17:0.8 (197.8) 6. The Local Universe Creative Spirits.
17:0.9 (197.9) 7. The Adjutant Mind-Spirits.
17:0.10 (197.10) These seven orders are known on Uversa as the seven Supreme Spirit groups. Their functional domain extends from the personal presence of the Seven Master Spirits on the periphery of the eternal Isle, through the seven Paradise satellites of the Spirit, the Havona circuits, the governments of the superuniverses, and the administration and supervision of the local universes, even to the lowly service of the adjutants bestowed upon the realms of evolutionary mind on the worlds of time and space.
17:0.11 (197.11) The Seven Master Spirits are the co-ordinating directors of this far-flung administrative realm. In some matters pertaining to the administrative regulation of organized physical power, mind energy, and impersonal spirit ministry, they act personally and directly, and in others they function through their multifarious associates. In all matters of an executive nature—rulings, regulations, adjustments, and administrative decisions—the Master Spirits act in the persons of the Seven Supreme Executives. In the central universe the Master Spirits may function through the Seven Spirits of the Havona Circuits; on the headquarters of the seven superuniverses they reveal themselves through the channel of the Reflective Spirits and act through the persons of the Ancients of Days, with whom they are in personal communication through the Reflective Image Aids.
17:0.12 (197.12) The Seven Master Spirits do not directly and personally contact universe administration below the courts of the Ancients of Days. Your local universe is administered as a part of our superuniverse by the Master Spirit of Orvonton, but his function in relation to the native beings of Nebadon is immediately discharged and personally directed by the Creative Mother Spirit resident on Salvington, the headquarters of your local universe.
1. The Seven Supreme Executives
17:1.1 (198.1) The executive headquarters of the Master Spirits occupy the seven Paradise satellites of the Infinite Spirit, which swing around the central Isle between the shining spheres of the Eternal Son and the innermost Havona circuit. These executive spheres are under the direction of the Supreme Executives, a group of seven who were trinitized by the Father, Son, and Spirit in accordance with the specifications of the Seven Master Spirits for beings of a type that could function as their universal representatives.
17:1.2 (198.2) The Master Spirits maintain contact with the various divisions of the superuniverse governments through these Supreme Executives. It is they who very largely determine the basic constitutive trends of the seven superuniverses. They are uniformly and divinely perfect, but they also possess diversity of personality. They have no presiding head; each time they meet together, they choose one of their number to preside over that joint council. Periodically they journey to Paradise to sit in council with the Seven Master Spirits.
17:1.3 (198.3) The Seven Supreme Executives function as the administrative co-ordinators of the grand universe; they might be termed the board of managing directors of the post-Havona creation. They are not concerned with the internal affairs of Paradise, and they direct their limited spheres of Havona activity through the Seven Spirits of the Circuits. Otherwise there are few limits to the scope of their supervision; they engage in the direction of things physical, intellectual, and spiritual; they see all, hear all, feel all, even know all, that transpires in the seven superuniverses and in Havona.
17:1.4 (198.4) These Supreme Executives do not originate policies, nor do they modify universe procedures; they are concerned with the execution of the plans of divinity promulgated by the Seven Master Spirits. Neither do they interfere with the rule of the Ancients of Days in the superuniverses nor with the sovereignty of the Creator Sons in the local universes. They are the co-ordinating executives whose function it is to carry out the combined policies of all duly constituted rulers in the grand universe.
17:1.5 (198.5) Each of the executives and the facilities of his sphere are devoted to the efficient
