Chapter Two
TIME

Through the dawnings of a thousand millennia, humankind has learned to perceive reality as forms of structuration, in which individual objects also exist as their multiple parts . One knows with ancient understanding that a delicate flower has its being in its spreading petals, a rapturous song lives in its swelling notes, and a vibrant human soul exists in its every noble longing.

Motion, as well as objects, is capable of enstructuration. The shadowy, submicroscopic atomic sphere spun out by one or more circling electrons, like the misty disk summoned by a whirling fan blade, is structured motion, an object sculpted out of movement itself. Motion can progressively enstructurate until, becoming a thing one can see and touch, it blossoms in the form of a soft chair, the substance of a great tree, or the intricacy of a supple human body.

Time Existence

Time is a word for motion. The structured motions enclosing echoing volumes of empty space, endowing them with the similitudes of objects, are the stuff of time-bound material reality. Things and beings of time are literally woven out of motion , which is consequently inherent in their existence . Should the ever-present orbital, vibratory, or other structured motions sustaining the existence of a sun-heated rock, a soaring bird, or a spinning planet ever cease, that reality would vanish like a light suddenly gone out.

On an ocean surface, adjacent drops of water bob up and down in sequence to create the illusion of a horizontally moving wave of water, though it is only the pattern that moves, sliding with a non-material touch across its host medium, the water. As with the rising and dipping ocean droplets, so with the structured motions within time-existing substance. These vortical building blocks of matter occur only in standardized patterns, imbuing all reality with a mutual relatedness. Bubbling up to levels of visibility, they manifest as changes of state and position in substance.

The Time Flow

And so the creation waxes and surges, its myriad parts rippling with scintillating changes in color, texture, and shape. Impelled and orchestrated by inherent motion and the universal interrelatedness thereof, change washes the halls of infinity like an inexorable, mysterious flow. Awesome, a restless, resistless force, this synergistic flowering vitalizes the universes. Carrying all things tumbling and spinning in endless causation and change, it is the fabled, mythical, destiny-flowing time stream.

Chemical, physical, and physiological processes, like the matter in which they manifest, are enstructurations of motion in definite, categorized patterns. Accordingly, planetary swings around the sun can be equated to ticks of a clock or generations of human life. An apple on a windowsill will ripen and then turn brown in obedience to the speeding processes in its heart, and will do so during the exact interval in which certain other activities can be accomplished. All things progress, without let, to a single, shared meter of existence.

Timeless Existence

The URANTIA Book reveals that on Paradise, existence does not involve time as time is understood by a creature of time , implying that a somehow different kind of time functions there (120:4). URANTIA Book discussions of time, not further qualified, refer to ordinary time, as in the declaration that an ascending mortal attaining Paradise residency ceases to be a creature of time (135:4; 299:2,4).

Whether to discuss Paradise existences in terms of an alternate form of time or something entirely different is entirely a matter of semantic choice. From the lead in The URANTIA Book, the concept of an alternate form of time seems to be in order.

Paradise realities, either directly or by serving as patterns , frequently ordain realities of ordinary time and space, which then emulate the realities of Paradise. Paradise levels of reality might therefore be referred to as ordinative and ordinary time-space realities as emulative . The time experienced by Paradise beings is ordinative time, or ordinotime, and that experienced by humankind emulative time, or emulotime. The word time , unqualified, is taken to mean emulative time.

Two Flows of Consciousness

Motion on Paradise is not inherent (120:4). Paradise, or ordinative, substance is composed of motionless particles (120:2). Sequence exists on Paradise (120:4); but without inherent motion, duration, as it is known in the time universes, cannot exist.

Paradise, or ordinative, consciousness is sequence consciousness (120:4), without the duration consciousness of emulative time beings. In an ordinative existence, the space between events is squeezed out.

Two Paradise beings could meet on two successive occasions, in the interim one experiencing many events and the other few or none. The two beings would have experienced no common interval , or duration, established by any ticking clockwork of similarly patterned and structured inherent motion. Jesus' divine Thought Adjuster, a Paradise-level being, when separated from Jesus' time-bound mind and personalized, could perceive events but not their time aspects (1516:4-1517:1).

Transport seraphim make journeys lasting several hundred years (260:2-3), remaining fully conscious during transit (433:3). They are known to undergo certain changes of state in connection with preparation for flight (438:7-439:1). Perhaps these ministering spirits of time can avoid experiencing centuries of relative inactivity by entering a type of sequence , or event, consciousness, returning to duration , or interval, consciousness as the need is perceived by the event consciousness.

Kinds of Motion

Paradise motion is not inherent, but rather volitional (120:4), willed into existence by beings at a Paradise level of volition. An ordinative apple or its equivalent, flashing with bright energies on a Paradise windowsill, would not ripen, brown, or change state in any way unless such were willed by a Paradise intelligence. The earth and its entire solar system could have come into being and evolved while such a unique apple awaited its use on Paradise during a typical, perhaps short, Paradise day as measured in uniquely individual reference frames by various ordinative observers.

Each dimension is home to its own type of motion. Spiritual motion, motion Godward, is the increasing qualitative nearness of the human soul to the source of all spirituality through the progressive realization of spiritual values (135:8). Motion in mind is a stream of thought. The motion of mind in the emulative universes is inherent, based in part on motion in the material mechanism. As in ordinative substance , motion in ordinative mind, also, must be volitional , not inherent.

Timeless Thought

At Paradise levels, the only volition above ordinative mind that could initiate the thoughts in ordinative minds is God. God, the divine wellspring of all awareness, must personally place the thoughts in each ordinative mind, which in turn selects its own reaction to these divinely created movements of mind.

God as the direct source of all Paradise thought could explain the exquisite harmony of Paradise in the absence of any integrative time stream. This concept could also explain why ascending beings occupy themselves for long ages in learning to detect and do the will of God: because attunement with the will of God is the inherent functional prerequisite for any kind of activity at Paradise levels.

Secrets of Time

Time, teaches The URANTIA Book, derives from motion (134:6). In the emulative universes, motion can neither be created nor destroyed. All motion is from Paradise (or Paradise levels) and must purposely be willed into being and transported or transformed to enter the universes of time, tasks performed by the Infinite Spirit and his agencies (133:6; 169:2; 469:1-471:8; 652:3-4). The Infinite Spirit creates progenital structured motion fashioned in patterns of changeless Paradise realities, which he injects into the time universes as their basic stuff. There these motions mature, swelling up and pouring from their whirled containments in the actions of time beings and the evolution of the time creation.

Time-bound volition, though unable to initiate motion, can use and control the inherent emulative motions that sustain its existence, by transforming these motions through decisions and actions. Finite beings seeking changeless values and divine fulfillment actualize in their actions eternal realities hidden in the Paradise-initiated, eternity-patterned motions of time. The universes of time gather and flower into ever-changing reflections of changeless Paradise perfection while individual ascenders rise to Paradise levels and enter the eternal shores.

To Enter Eternity

The URANTIA Book teaches that ascenders on Havona can visit Paradise, but they remain creatures of time(135:4; 297:4). Not until they undergo the last sleep of time do they give up the status of time creatures and assume the existence of eternity beings (135:4; 299:2-6: 1244:5).

When the ascender, having become one with the will of God, qualifies for Paradise residency, one thing is yet lacking: an ordinative life mechanism. The ascender's form still carries within its fabric inherent motion, hence time consciousness and the metered changes of time.

In preparation for the ascender's attainment of Paradise, a supernaphim denominated a Complement of Rest comes down from Paradise to Havona to work with the ascender. Subsequently, another Paradise supernaphim, an Instigator of Rest, induces the ascender into the last sleep of time as the Complement of Rest moves over by the ascender's side to enter the rest as one with the ascender (297:5). The ascender subsequently awakens on Paradise as an ordinative being, a citizen of eternity.

Seraphim can enseraphim beings into their forms for transit (147:2). Supernaphim, relatives of the seraphim, have a similar capability (1244:5). Apparently the Complement of Rest, a Paradise being, functions as the living ordinative substance in which temporarily to impress the ascender's life-evolved, eternity-configured pattern of being (1244:5). The ordinative Instigator of Rest, who enfolds and transports the sleeping, ascender-patterned Complement of Rest to Paradise, can then transfer the ascender's soul pattern into a personal ordinative life vessel, bringing the ascender through the portals of eternity into life everlasting.

The irresistibility of time might appear to dwarf and ultimately negate the struggles of volitional beings. But the motions of time are the nursery of human existence and the ladder of human growth. Within their safeguarding depths are the diamond keys to eternity, priceless gems of Paradise meanings and values. Truly it has not entered the mind of man or woman the things that God has waiting for them. But these things have entered into their futures, if they so desire.