© 1971 Urantia Foundation
¶ Paradise
At the center of the universe of universes is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity, and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit.
Paradise is the absolute source and the eternal focal point of all energy-matter in the universe of universes. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all the master universe. Paradise is motionless. It is ellipsoid and essentially flat.
The immensity, material beauty, and spiritual glory of Paradise are beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of man. Since you are beginning to glimpse the enormousness of the material universe, it should become evident to you that such a tremendous material universe must have an adequate and worthy capital, a headquarters commensurate with the dignity and infinitude of the universal Ruler of all this vast and far-flung creation of material realms and living beings.
After all, to mortals the most important thing about eternal Paradise is the fact that this perfect abode of the Universal Father is the real and far-distant destiny of the immortal souls of the mortal and material sons of God.
Revolving clockwise about Paradise are three seven-world circuits, the sacred spheres of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, enormous worlds of unexcelled grandeur and unimagined glory.
¶ The Central Universe of Havona
The central universe of Havona revolves clockwise about Paradise and its 21 satellites. It is of enormous dimensions and almost unbelievable mass and consists of one billion perfect worlds of unimagined beauty and superb grandeur. These worlds are arranged in seven concentric circuits represented in blue on the drawing. The circuits are not superimposed; their worlds follow each other in linear procession in one vast plane. Havona is not a time creation; it is an eternal existence. Each Havona world is different-no two are alike.
Surviving mortals in their ascension to Paradise, will pass through each of these billion worlds. Continuing astonishment, unending wonder, is the experience of those who traverse these gigantic spheres. Not until you visit the last of the Havona worlds, will the tonic of adventure and the stimulus of curiosity disappear from your career. And then will the urge, the forward impulse of eternity, replace its forerunner, the adventure lure of time.
Out beyond Havona there swirl two elliptical circuits of enormous dark gravity bodies pictured in gray on the drawing. The inner circuit is tubular in arrangement. The outer circuit is arranged perpendicularly, being 10,000 times higher than the inner circuit. These gravity bodies neither reflect nor absorb light; thus they completely enshroud Havona and hide it from view of the nearby superuniverses. They so effectively equalize the lines of Havona gravity as to render the central universe a physically balanced and perfectly stabilized creation.
¶ The Grand Universe
The grand universe is the presently organized and inhabited creation. It consists of the perfect central universe of Havona and the seven evolutionary superuniverses revolving about it. The superuniverses are unfinished; new nebulae are constantly being organized. When finished, each superuniverse will contain 100,000 local universes, each of which will contain about 10,000,000 inhabited planets.
Our superuniverse, the seventh, is called Orvonton, which has a diameter of approximately 500,000 light years and contains more than ten trillion suns. Practically all of the starry realms visible to the naked eye belong to the superuniverse of Orvonton. The vast Milky Way starry system represents the central nucleus of Orvonton. This great aggregation of suns, dark islands of space, double stars, globular clusters, star clouds, spiral and other nebulae, together with myriads of individual planets, forms a watchlike, elongated-circular grouping of about one seventh of the inhabited evolutionary universes. When the angle of observation is propitious, gazing through the main body of this realm of maximum density, you are looking toward Paradise.
Our local universe, Nebadon, is located near the edge of Orvonton. Our planet, Urantia, belongs to the system of Satania, which is well out towards the borderland of Nebadon. The location of Urantia is indicated on the drawing by a dot and the letter U.
Christ Michael, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Sovereign of our local universe of Nebadon.
¶ The Master Universe
The master universe encompasses all of material creation. This includes the central universe of Havona, the seven superuniverses, and the four uninhabited outer space levels, which revolve alternately clockwise and counterclockwise. The immensity of the far-flung creation of the Universal Father is utterly beyond the grasp of finite imagination.
In outer space millions of new galaxies are in the process of formation. The first outer space level is about 500,000 light years beyond the periphery of the grand universe. Between the seven superuniverses and the first outer space level and between each of the space levels are enormous elliptical zones of quiescent space activities. They are free from star dust-cosmic fog.
The sizes of the outer space levels are enormous-millions of light years in width. Improved telescopes will reveal to the wondering gaze of our astronomers no less than 375 million new galaxies in outer space. There are already in outer space 70,000 aggregations of matter, each of which is greater than any one of the seven superuniverses-and this is just the beginning of stellar evolution in these regions. We can imagine the immensity of outer space, we can sense its extent and its majestic dimensions, but otherwise we can know little more about these realms.
It is believed that surviving mortals born on the planets of space (like Urantia) in their ascent to Paradise are being trained to take part in the future administration of these outer space levels.
¶ References
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