© 1950 William S. Sadler Jr.
© 2003 Antonio Moya, traducción
© 2024 Urantia Association of Spain
Transcript of a recorded talk by Bill Sadler to a study group.
If you look closely at the Deity and Reality paper, you will have the best discussion of the Urantia Papers.
When I think of the static Deity, I think of a fried egg. This is the I AM. Potentials have not yet been differentiated from manifestations. As the paper describes it, this is the hypothetical static moment of eternity. This is the language they use in the reference I gave you.
But the papers don’t validate what philosophers and metaphysicians call monism, which is not a fried egg, but a scrambled egg. There’s a big difference.
In a scrambled egg, you have a unity, don’t you? But in a fried egg, you have a nucleus and a cytoplasm. The nucleus is the yellow part; the cytoplasm is the white. Always, even in the hypothetical static moment, at the beginning of beginnings (before the beginning of beginnings), the possibility of free will was always there.
When you differentiate potentials from manifestations, do I have to use really childish symbols again to understand it? Do you know what happened? The yolk separated from the white. How many of you have separated the yolk from the white?
(Laughter from the audience)
The yolk moved away from the white. This is the creation, the existence, the emergence of possibility. Something happened. And, of course, the instant the yolk moved away from the white, you no longer have two realities, you have three realities.
You have the white, you have the yolk, and you also have the ratio of the white to the yolk. Doesn’t the fried egg help? I mean, you can’t be afraid of the concept of a fried egg, right?
(Laughter from the audience)
(Audience): Surely not…
(Interruption in the cassette)
The yolk departed from the static situation. By thus departing, the yolk demonstrated its will, and it also modified itself. It took up a new position. The white never moved, right? And it never changed. Hence, it is unmodified. And since we are dealing with absolute realities, I believe this is the genetic derivation of the term “Unqualified or Unmodified Absolute.”
Unchanged because it never moved. And, at this point, the white became an id, because the personal potentials were in the yolk. When you remove the yolk from the white, you remove all the qualities of deity and personality. From now on, the unchanged is “it,” not him.
The yolk (what name shall we give to the yolk?) I like the term Qualified or Modified Absolute. It’s rarely used in papers.
And what name do we give to the relationship between the white and the yolk? The papers give us the name: Universal Absolute, whose function is to interrelate the tensions, the relationships, between the Qualified Absolute and the Unqualified Absolute.
And here lies the beginning of the separation between Deity and non-Deity. The Unqualified Absolute is static reality minus all that is Deity. The Qualified Absolute contains within itself the seeds of the manifestation of Deity.
Will is inherent in the yolk. Reaction is inherent in the white, in the cytoplasm, in the Unqualified Absolute.
You know, one of the most astute critiques of the Book of Genesis was written by an ancient Zoroastrian theologian. It’s found in the Pehlavi texts. And this ancient Persian, Zoroastrian, and of course pre-Muhammad, says: “This creation story is for the birds. God was not alone, because when He commanded something to happen, that means someone was also present to obey those commands.”
What do you think? I think it’s a pretty good definition of the Unqualified Absolute. When the Deity speaks with an absolute voice, the Unqualified Absolute obeys its commands.
Or, to put it another way, when the total Deity takes snuff, the Unqualified Absolute sneezes.
Translated from English by Antonio Moya.
June 2003