My Friend:

In this letter I would like to introduce you to ideas and specifications regarding the reality mechanism called a unity. I would also like to share with you some conceptual and graphical representations of Deity-related unities described in The URANTIA Book.

Unities and Unitants

You and I are one, utters the mystic to all. You and I are one, vow the husband and wife to each other. You and I are one, proclaim the committed associates to one another. Such statements of oneness pertaining to apparently separate realities can touch hearts--while leaving minds groping for understanding. In a clearer, more detailed perception of the unity mechanism lies a key to comprehending much of what we would call higher reality and also to perceiving more clearly some of the things around and within us.

In a unity, multiple realities are one reality but are still separate, individual realities. They do not lose individual identity in their union as do drops of water which merge together. This simultaneous multipleness-of-being and yet oneness-of-being is the hallmark of the mechanism called a unity.

Figure 3-1 shows the homolevelate perspective of the unity, a simplification of the heterolevelate perspective, which I shall describe to you in another letter. The multiple realities which combine to form a unity are called unitants. Their single overate reality is called a unity.

Unitants do not join together spontaneously on their own, without the urging and assistance of some shared unifying influence. When one thinks about it--how could they? What would bring rocks and dust together as a planet or asteroid without the collecting presence of gravity? And what would bring persons together in affectionate and intelligent selflessness without the empowerment of some presence analogous to gravity? You and I shall refer to this unifying influence as the unifier.

A unifier is not a part of the unity it brings into being; the unifier is external to the unity. Because of this, a unity can be thought of as a projection of the unifier into the reality phase, or plane, of the unitants. The unity is the presence of the unifier. The unitants are the responsive material through which the unifier projects into the plane of the unity.

The unifier does not act as an influence directly upon the overate unity, but rather upon each individual unitant. The unifier is perceived in and over the unity as a pervasive harmony over and between the unitants. Since the unifier is present over and between all of the unitants, the unity is supersummative with respect to the unitants and displays synergistic realities, as measured in the reference frame of the unitants.

If you and I keep in mind that the homolevelate view of the unity is only a simplistic approximation, we might visualize an orchestra as a unity. The musicians are the unitants. The conductor is the unifier. Within and over the orchestra, the conductor is present as a pervading harmony. The influence of the conductor is applied individually to each musician. The musicians are the responsive material through which the conductor manifests as the functioning of an overate orchestra, thus projecting into the pland of the orchestra.

Deity and Deity Levels

The concept of the Paradise Trinity as portrayed in The URANTIA Book can be understood in a rudimentary sense in terms of the homolevelate unity, as in Figure 3-2. The Paradise Trinity is the unity of three unitants. In the homolevelate view, the three unitants are: The Deity of the Universal Father, the Deity of the Eternal Son, and the Deity of the Infinite Spirit (112:7; 1167:5-6). (This definition of the unitants is refined in the heterolevelate view.) The unity itself is a single Deity, the Paradise Trinity (640:6)--not a personality (1145:6). That which is joined in this unity--each unitant--is not personality, but Deity (1167:5-6). The Paradise Trinity is supersummative of its three unitants (1145:6). In Figure 3-2, I have shown the I AM, or Original Deity--which is the unifier and hence is external to the unity--as a point above the plane of the unity, projecting down into the plane, through the unitants, as the unity, the Trinity.

You might ask, "What is this Deity, which the Father, Son, and Spirit possess individually and which they join together in the Paradise Trinity?" A fuller answer to this question lies in a heterolevelate understanding of unities, which you and I will address in a subsequent letter.

To approach the concept of Deity at this time, without the assistance of the concepts and terminology of the heterolevelate unity perspective, is analogous to the task of visualizing a tree, with its variety of depth, texture, and intrarelationships, from an inspection of its shadow. The homolevelate unity perspective is a collapsed view of the three-dimensional heterolevelate unity model as projected into a two-dimensional plane.

Imagine, if you will, a primal unity--a one and yet also a oneness. No dimensions exist at the primordial levelate of this oneness to restrict or qualify it; the oneness is inseparable from, and is, infinity inself. The oneness is not only that which is unified but, to subinfinite reality, the quality of unity itself. Pouring out and down, it splashes like a waterfall over subinfinite vessels which, upon receiving it and unifying with it and under it, become new manifestations of this primal unity to even more derivative levels of being. This primal unity is Original Deity, which manifests as Derivative Deity on ever more finalateward levelates.

Though unity is a projection of a unifier over a group of unitants, the unifier of the unity must itself, either directly of indirectly, be a partaker of the unifying quality of the original unifier. It must be positioned in the unity waterfall which pours down in unimaginable power from infinity. For this reason, not just anyone or anything can be considered to be a unifier. Similarly, the unitants must be responsive to the unifier: they, too, must possess a quality somehow associated with the original unifier. These matters will clear up for you greatly in the next few letters.

In the larger sense, there is only one unity. Were more than one unity to exist as individual unities which were not parts of a single, greater unity encompassing them all, the very meaning of the word, unity, would be denied.

The outstanding characteristic of Deity, relates The URANTIA Book, is unity (2:3). Deity is unity (1138:2; 1282:5).

The outstanding characteristic of divinity is unity (2:3; 31:6; 641:3). Divinity is the unifying quality of Deity (3:3).

The outstanding characteristic of personality is unity (102:6; 640:2). Personality is a unifier (9:2; 102:6; 1225:7). And these unity-related realities--Deity, divinity, and personality--are intimately interrelated.

Perhaps the best summation of all this is the URANTIA Book declaration, God is unity (637:1).

The Paradise Trinity is a unified reality, a unity, one ever-existent, imperishable, immutable Deity (640:6). The Paradise Trinity is total Deity at the existential level (113:8; 116:4-5). Being unity, the Paradise Trinity can function as a unifier of realities at a derivative level from it, as is shown in Figures 3-3 and 3-4.

At any given level, Experiential Trinity is Total Deity; it is the Deity projection of the Paradise Trinity into that level as an influence through and over the Experiential Trinity's combining unitants, or Deity realities (113:5-8). The unity of the total at any level--Supreme, Ultimate, Existential Absolute, or Experiential Absolute, is Total Deity at that level: Supreme Deity (2:10; 4:10; 113:6), Ultimate Deity (2:11; 4:12; 113:7), Existential Absolute Deity (113:8; 116:5), or Experiential Absolute Deity (2:14; 13:4-5).

In the heterolevelate unity perspective, as you shall see later, the levelate-of-being changes as one moves in concept from the unitants to the unity. In the first experiential Trinity, for example (Figure 3-3), the unitants are finite Deities; the Deity of the Supreme Creators, the Deity of the Architects of the Master Universe, and the Deity of the Supreme Being. These manifestations of Deity are part of the Deity of Supremacy (2:10), which is total Deity function at the level of the finite. Their unity, however, the first experiential Trinity, is called the Ultimate Trinity (16:4), for it exists at the next levelate finalateward from the finite, the absonite, and is the Deity of God the Ultimate (12:5-6; 1166:3; 1166:5-6).

Unity as the Absolute Value

With ideas of unity, you and I are approaching the conception of the utmost in reality. We naturally tend to think of personality as the maximum of being. But personality is simply a unifier. Like any unifier, it is given identity at a finalateward levelate from it--the levelate of the unity which it unifies--in the unitants of that unity and also in the unity itself (1225:7). To illustrate: I possess a personality--also a body, mind, spirit, and soul. The I to which I refer is a person, an overate unity. My personality is the unifier. My body, mind, and soul are the unitants--personality realities.

Personality, though it is a unifier, is also a unitant in a unity which is situated closer than is personality to the infinite unity. This higher unity is referred to in The URANTIA Book as the personality circuit. Its unifier is the Universal Father, and its unitants are personalities. The Universal Father is personally conscious of all personalities at every level of existence (71:5; 640:2). To respond to the Father's personality circuit is to be a personality; to be a personality is to respond to the Father's personality circuit (9:4; 106:7). Personality comes from Deity--specifically, from the Universal Father (62:2; 70:3; 71:5)--and is never apart from the Father. Deity always seeks expression as personality (16:2); and personality is a level of deified reality (8:1).

Like personality, Deity has consciousness (29:5; 69:7; 84:3). This is not consciousness of mind. Consciousness progresses higher and higher, from mind consciousness (69:7; 140:8) to soul consciousness (69:7; 1219:4) to spirit consciousness (69:7; 78:5; 102:2) to personality consciousness (71:5; 135:9; 451:5) to Deity consciousness (29:5; 69:7; 84:3). The more the unity--in whatever way we measure it--the more real the reality. God, we are told, is at least a personality but much more (27:5). He is a higher unity (637:1). You and I will sometime achieve the transcendence of consciousness, even to the insight of absonity, in our progress to divinity (69:7; 1281:6). In discussing such high realms of being, the writers of The URANTIA Book tell of the impossibility of communicating certain concepts of divine personality to material creatures whose maximized concept of being is personality (27:5; 334:8).

There is one absolute unifier/unity, and only one. All other unifiers and unities are its finalateward projections. Among the characteristics of this universal unity is consciousness. This unity manifests itself not only in descending levelates of manifestation, but also in a qualitatively descending series of categorically differentiated realities, among which are those called Deity and personality. Unity is the maximum of being.