In this class, Dr. Keislar explains that, after he was informed that Love (that is the Logos) and Light (that is “infinite energy”) are both infinite, he asked how this can be dealt with; is this not shirk (making partners with God)? He reports this is the answer he received:
Allah is one. However, as The Urantia Book says (118.5.3, p.1299), “Ever must God act to break the deadlock of the unqualified unity inherent in existential infinity.” Therefore, multiplicity exists. You may say that this is so in order that Allah may know himself in many ways, not just in himself.
No one is independent of Allah. Everyone, no matter how omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc., is dependent on, is a servant of, and seeks as its/his/her goal, Allah, the only one Source of everything. Allah is the only one who can never be dependent on anyone or anything else; Allah is the only reality which includes absolutely everything within itself; Allah is the only truth that has no other cause, and has no goal but himself/itself/herself.
The “shirk problem” therefore does not arise with the Logos or infinite energy.
However, the “shirk problem” is more difficult to avoid when one considers the internal goal of Allah, which is within the One and co-existent with the One Consciousness Inward in a way that nothing else is. The solution is only in this that this goal is, in every way, Allah himself. In other words, the goal is previous (philosophically, not in time) to the One’s “development” or use or awareness of free will, “previous” to the One’s awareness of manyness or otherness, previous indeed to the differentiation of anything from the One, or [to] its awareness of that possibility.
Then why do we even mention this “goal” as a possible cause of the accusation of shirk? Because this “goal “, which is also, in every way, the original Source of everything, is the only one reality (along with the One) which is not in any way dependent on nor subordinate to anything else, and is even, if anything, superior to the One due to the One’s own internal awareness, even before any expression of free will, or choice, or awareness of another or manyness, or any other action or thought, that there exists within itself a reciprocation so inescapable and refined that there is no way to define or understand itself without reference to this totally co-equal aspect of itself (co-equal to the extent that the One depends on it as much as it depends on him).
In other words, this is the nature of the One, to include reciprocation within itself. This may be impossible of the human mind to comprehend (for doesn’t reciprocation, to the mind, necessarily require two?), yet it is presented to us as an indisputable, if incomprehensible, fact. Nevertheless it is not incomprehensible, if one can only accept it as it is presented. To repeat, reciprocation is the very nature of the One, reciprocation with itself if we must necessarily conceive of it in this way – though this, too, is inadequate. Perhaps we can only say, “It is a mystery.” It is worthy of repetition yet one more time: reciprocation is the very nature of the One.
This means, to try to understand it from another angle, that the One, by its nature, also wants to have a goal. Since that goal can only be the One, the One must have within itself some incomprehensible “mechanism” by which it can be its own goal in such a way that it really “feels” to the One that this goal is something it must strive for, that is, that it is something other than itself. In other words, the One must create, within its own awareness, a sense of another reality that is superior to itself even though there can be no such reality. This entire “activity”, we must explain, exists within the One prior to any activity, or even to any awareness on the part of the One that it has free will or that anything other than itself exists. One final time we repeat, “Reciprocation is the very nature of the one.”
Therefore, “prior” to any external awareness, the One is eternally internally aware of its own reciprocation with its own internally generated goal. It all comes down to being able to appreciate the (perhaps incomprehensible”) fact that the One, although fully self-contained and self-satisfied (for everything is within it) nevertheless feels the need or has the desire, to strive for some greater goal than itself, a feeling that is intrinsic to the very nature and existence of the One. And, amazingly or interestingly, because the One is absolute and omnipotent so everything it thinks or feels has total reality, [therefore] its internal “goal” also “becomes” real (that is, eternally has reality) and has its own consciousness and desires, including the desire to have a goal, which is, of course, the One! Is this shirk? No, because the “goal” is the necessary generation of the One and is, in every way, the One itself, even though (as we have explained) the One feels that it is not, a feeling it must have to fulfill its desire (for a goal) and its nature (reciprocation). To be a little more accurate, we conclude with the observation that the One feels both that the “goal” is not itself, or is separate from itself, and that it is itself, and the goal, who is the only ideally perfect, totally independent and completely self-sufficient worshiper of the One, feels the very same way, namely that the One is both itself and not itself.