Chapter Seven
DESTINY

In the world of humanity, one must communicate through words and concepts. But in the things of God, there is a language of quick-felt awareness that speaks directly to the soul. A caravan of geese arrowing through the bright autumn sky speaks of exciting change. Contentment sparkling in an elderly person's eyes is a bright promise of a far-off tomorrow. An infant taking its first step touches one with deeply felt and happily accepted responsibility.

Like flowers under a single, bright sun, the souls of God-seeking humanity rejoice to one shining stimulation. The divine intention is perceived in the human heart as a song of bright being and a symphony of shared becoming. It is known as destiny.

Beyond Concepts

The things that tug at the hearts of humankind are not random, nor are they only of the moment, to pass and then forever be still. The longing to perpetuate an uplifting relationship, the desire to serve, the determination to exalt something that is beautiful and good, the hope of being part of a high, unending meaning--these are the urgings of the divine purpose, the call of destiny.

The URANTIA Book teaches that the mind knows facts but the soul feels values (42:7; 1219:6). The embryonic soul is the child of the material and spirital minds. It can perceive the facts of material mind and the values of spirital mind insofar as these are mutually parallel. Its own language, the tongue of material mind following spirital mind and spirital mind leading material mind, cannot be perceived by purely material or spirital mind. If one would speak to or hear another soul, it must be through one's own soul.

There is thrill and joy in the truth that following divinity and aspiring to destiny do not mean that one must reject the deep urgings of one's heart in order to pursue lifeless and formulaic undertakings. The URANTIA Book teaches that man's ideals are not necessarily God's ideals: one can be true to one's heart and mind by avoiding the formulation of mentally conceived ideals that frustrate the requirements of the soul (135:10; 1133:2-3).

Texture and Perception

Reality--emotional, intellectual, spirital, or factual--is perceived intuitively through its textural variations and analytically through the themes, such as shape or melody, embodied in the interrelationships of its textures.

Artists are faced with the task of devising and interrelating textures to represent the realities they portray. On a painted canvas, a wooded glen taking form in green swirlings is imbued with excitement by overlaid dapplings of golden sunlight. In an orchestral hall, wending bass frequencies overlaid by soprano trillings are the backdrop for the exquisite message of a dramatic melody line. Similarly, a storyteller builds with excitement, wonder, and expectation, while a spiritual teacher works with soul-evoking symbolism and metaphor.

Destiny, shaped in outlines of transcendent proportion and patterned in textures of personal significance, is a reality. Perceiving the larger themes is the task of the mind; contacting the deeply felt texture is the province of the soul .

The Absolutes and Destiny

Destiny is a word for divinely ordained reality. Only appearing as a future reality when viewed from the finite level, destiny is a maturing reality from an absonite perspective (1159:6-1160:2) and, from an absolute vantage point, an ever present reality (1173:5; 1262:8; 1296:3). The absolute basis of destiny is distant from human experience; however, understanding it is important; for finite realities can only be understood in terms of the higher realities from which they are derived (29:7).

The establisher, developer, and consummator of destiny is Total Deity manifesting at various levels (1169:3). At the absolute existential Paradise level, Total Actual Deity, the Paradise Trinity, originates destiny, ordaining postexistential reality (1298:3-5).

Total Potential Existential Deity, the Deity Absolute , responds. Interpreting the commands of the existential Trinity in terms of absolute potentiality, this repository of all volitional potentiality infuses reality potential into the Unqualified Absolute as coordinated by the Universal Absolute (1298:3-5). Emerging actual reality becomes a part of the realities of the members of the triodity of actuality: the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and Paradise (1151:3-7; 1263:2).

Experiential Deity and Destiny

Potential transmutes to actual through the action of Total Experiential Deity at the level of the Absolute , Ultimate, and Supreme (1264:6; 1298:3-7). Absolute Deity establishes potentiality and consummates the evolved cosmos-infinite (13:4-5; 136:7; 1168:3; 1298:3,5). Ultimate Deity, the architect of reality, conditions the direction of reality-to-be and consummates the time-space-transcended, evolved master universe (136:8; 1166:6; 1298:6). Supreme Deity factualizes finite time-space evolution and consummates the finite, evolved grand universe (1264:6; 1292:10; 1298:7).

As factualizations of Experiential Supreme Deity, human ascenders aspire to an eternal and divine destiny (299:2; 305:2; 1280:5). Each perfected mortal finaliter, evolved in time and space and fused with a fragment of Deity, will express Supreme Deity just as Michael, during his mortal incarnation, expressed the Universal Father (1286:3).

Ascendant Destiny

As eternals existing and functioning outside the time stream (299:4-6; 1271:3), Paradise finaliters, ascended mortals, will traverse the far reaches of space (159:2) on the divine orders of the Paradise Trinity (305:3-4; 345:12; 1292:2). Personalized in living systems of timeless, spaceless reality, these clear prisms of the divine shining will contact reality with forty-nine material, seventy morontial, and seventy to two hundred-ten spirital senses (154:6) in their God-revealing missions of eternity (644:2).

At some time in the distant future, as perceived from a time-space creature's point of view, evolution of the Supreme will be completed and finite growth will be ended (1280:2,5,6). Collectively attuned by then to the total mind of the finite (1269:4; 1286:2) and comprising a phase of Supremacy (1278:3; 1297:6), finaliters will travel to the master universe outer space levels to assist life that will begin developing there to factualize the evolution of space-time-transcendent , or Ultimate, Deity (628:7; 1296:5).

In that future universe, with all finite growth exhausted, Paradise finaliters and other ministers of the Supreme will be indispensable to the realitization of the children of the Ultimate (353:7-10; 1280:6). Making the accumulated values and meanings of time and space available, these personalities of Supremacy (1286:2-3) will engage with the absonite beings in an undertaking to attain time-space-transcended absonite values and meanings, a joint search for the Ultimate (2:13; 353:6; 1293:2).

The Soul of Destiny

As an anticipated reality of the future can be appreciated through an awareness of its projected parts, so the future universe of eternity can be feelingly known through learning of the experiences that will be involved in producing it. Destiny can be felt by brushing the canvas of the soul with textures representing interlinked factual-spirital factors of the anticipated Paradise ascent.

Adventure, though not a goal, is an ever present part of the Paradise ascent (159:7). Even on the eve of Paradise attainment, during the long traversal of the one-billion Havona spheres of eternal perfection, ascenders experience unending astonishment at successive wonders opening to them (159:3,6). Reality awareness deepens through discoveries on real worlds with spreading atmospheres, sparkling lakes, and teeming animal and plant life (156:5; 492:1-493:1). Encountering of origins is a thread rippling through the fabric of the Havona experience. Among the Havona beings, some are patterns for entire orders of time-space creatures (157:10). Certain of the Havona arts are encountered in transplanted form in the local universe constellations (498:4-5).

The Portals of Eternity

Commitment to the Deity ascent intensifies into a growing passion as one is joined by perfecting ascenders from other worlds. The great, the noble, and the transcendent mingle, fraternize, and cooperate--like master mountain climbers, ever gazing, ever climbing, upward (155:2; 158:4; 300:3).

Over the Havona worlds hovers the spirital presence of the Eternal Son, perceived as a sublime coordination (83:6). Unity and harmony swell to limitless proportions (83:6; 500:2,6). Even the animal kingdom is a chorus of harmony, trust, and beauty (157:1; 1157:1). Havona companions and activities (291:4) and a formal course of study (291:2) advance the ascender toward the goal of attaining the presence and perception of Paradise Deity (294:1-2).

After achievement of the Paradise presence of the Infinite Spirit, Eternal Son, and Universal Father comes rebirth from time to eternity. Paradise training and residency follow, and induction into the finaliters under eternal allegiance to the Paradise Trinity (158:8-159:1; 295:3; 298:11-299:1; 305:3-4).

The Bond of Destiny

Destiny is more than individual. It is an overall reality shared by all (52:1; 1290:6-7). Angels denominated Guardians of Destiny (1242:5-6) safeguard potentials of supremacy , ultimacy, and absoluteness, which, though associated with individual souls, are the common heritage of all. As countless finite personalities and interpersonal relationships develop, and as impersonal finite reality becomes unified under Supreme Deity, the Supreme Being increasingly realitizes (1278:3; 1284:3).

An intimate relationship joins Experiential Deity and ascender (1284:5). The ascender's awareness of this relationship is the basis of the measure of his or her progress through the seven psychic circles of cosmic growth (1211:2). The ascender senses the bond with Experiential Deity as noble duty, sacred responsibility, high meaning--and something incomparably close and dear (1100:6; 1284:5; 1285:3).

The Call of Destiny

Humans, provided with material instincts for the interest of self and species, are also endowed with higher urges relating to destiny. The desire to look up to persons of higher status, venerating royalty and those considered great , is designed into humans for those times when they shall associate with higher beings. Love of adventure is put into men and women as stimulation and tonic for the Paradise ascent (159:7). Love of parents and love of offspring prepare one to experience the relationship between Deity and ascender (1603:6). Affection for brothers and sisters prepares a way for awareness of the interrelatedness of all beings (1603:6).

Honor, righteousness, patriotism, religious sentiment--these deep stirrings are preparations for the bright realities of higher realms (51:5-13). The eternal ascent is not in the nature of continuing accumulation of reality by the ascender, but rather continual divestment (1286:4-1287:1) and concomitant expansion into ever more encompassing realities (1285:5-1286:1; 1287:5-6).

Ascenders learn to trust God in all things, discovering and rediscovering with breathless joy and burning hearts that to desire what God desires is wisdom and righteousness. Everything created is to a purpose. Fulfillment for any reality is to be doing that for which it was created. Fulfillment for a wheel is to spin, as its designer intended . A chair fulfills its being in supporting the human frame, as envisioned by its builder. For a man or woman, the highest fulfillment possible is to know and do that very thing for which he or she was created by God.

Destiny calls from infinity and eternity, sweeping as a wind through the hearts of humankind. Humans can choose to respond, becoming expressions of limitless divinity. The melody of responding human souls resonating to this vast stirring is a fragrance that rises with them through the higher halls of reality, now and forever, even to the presence of the Infinite.