Personality Survival

Personality Survival
112:0.1 (1225.1)THE evolutionary planets are the spheres of human origin, the initial worlds of the ascending mortal career. Urantia is your starting point; here you and your divine Thought Adjuster are joined in temporary union. You have been endowed with a perfect guide; therefore, if you will sincerely run the race of time and gain the final goal of faith, the reward of the ages shall be yours; you will be eternally united with your indwelling Adjuster. Then will begin your real life, the ascending life, to which your present mortal state is but the vestibule. Then will begin your exalted and progressive mission as finaliters in the eternity which stretches out before you. And throughout all of these successive ages and stages of evolutionary growth, there is one part of you that remains absolutely unaltered, and that is personality—permanence in the presence of change.

112:0.2 (1225.2)While it would be presumptuous to attempt the definition of personality, it may prove helpful to recount some of the things which are known about personality:

112:0.3 (1225.3)1. Personality is that quality in reality which is bestowed by the Universal Father himself or by the Conjoint Actor, acting for the Father.

112:0.4 (1225.4)2. It may be bestowed upon any living energy system which includes mind or spirit.

112:0.5 (1225.5)3. It is not wholly subject to the fetters of antecedent causation. It is relatively creative or cocreative.

112:0.6 (1225.6)4. When bestowed upon evolutionary material creatures, it causes spirit to strive for the mastery of energy-matter through the mediation of mind.

112:0.7 (1225.7)5. Personality, while devoid of identity, can unify the identity of any living energy system.

112:0.8 (1225.8)6. It discloses only qualitative response to the personality circuit in contradistinction to the three energies which show both qualitative and quantitative response to gravity.

112:0.9 (1225.9)7. Personality is changeless in the presence of change.

112:0.10 (1225.10)8. It can make a gift to God—dedication of the free will to the doing of the will of God.

112:0.11 (1225.11)9. It is characterized by morality—awareness of relativity of relationship with other persons. It discerns conduct levels and choosingly discriminates between them.

112:0.12 (1225.12)10. Personality is unique, absolutely unique: It is unique in time and space; it is unique in eternity and on Paradise; it is unique when bestowed—there are no duplicates; it is unique during every moment of existence; it is unique in relation to God—he is no respecter of persons, but neither does he add them together, for they are nonaddable—they are associable but nontotalable.

112:0.13 (1226.1)11. Personality responds directly to other-personality presence.

112:0.14 (1226.2)12. It is one thing which can be added to spirit, thus illustrating the primacy of the Father in relation to the Son. (Mind does not have to be added to spirit.)

112:0.15 (1226.3)13. Personality may survive mortal death with identity in the surviving soul. The Adjuster and the personality are changeless; the relationship between them (in the soul) is nothing but change, continuing evolution; and if this change (growth) ceased, the soul would cease.

112:0.16 (1226.4)14. Personality is uniquely conscious of time, and this is something other than the time perception of mind or spirit.

1. Personality and Reality
112:1.1 (1226.5)Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father upon his creatures as a potentially eternal endowment. Such a divine gift is designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations ranging from the lowly finite to the highest absonite, even to the borders of the absolute. Personality thus performs on three cosmic planes or in three universe phases:

112:1.2 (1226.6)1. Position status. Personality functions equally efficiently in the local universe, in the superuniverse, and in the central universe.

112:1.3 (1226.7)2. Meaning status. Personality performs effectively on the levels of the finite, the absonite, and even as impinging upon the absolute.

112:1.4 (1226.8)3. Value status. Personality can be experientially realized in the progressive realms of the material, the morontial, and the spiritual.

112:1.5 (1226.9)Personality has a perfected range of cosmic dimensional performance. The dimensions of finite personality are three, and they are roughly functional as follows:

112:1.6 (1226.10)1. Length represents direction and nature of progression—movement through space and according to time—evolution.

112:1.7 (1226.11)2. Vertical depth embraces the organismal drives and attitudes, the varying levels of self-realization and the general phenomenon of reaction to environment.

112:1.8 (1226.12)3. Breadth embraces the domain of co-ordination, association, and selfhood organization.

112:1.9 (1226.13)The type of personality bestowed upon Urantia mortals has a potentiality of seven dimensions of self-expression or person-realization. These dimensional phenomena are realizable as three on the finite level, three on the absonite level, and one on the absolute level. On subabsolute levels this seventh or totality dimension is experiencible as the fact of personality. This supreme dimension is an associable absolute and, while not infinite, is dimensionally potential for subinfinite penetration of the absolute.

112:1.10 (1226.14)The finite dimensions of personality have to do with cosmic length, depth, and breadth. Length denotes meaning; depth signifies value; breadth embraces insight—the capacity to experience unchallengeable consciousness of cosmic reality.

112:1.11 (1227.1)On the morontia level all of these finite dimensions of the material level are greatly enhanced, and certain new dimensional values are realizable. All these enlarged dimensional experiences of the morontia level are marvelously articulated with the supreme or personality dimension through the influence of mota and also because of the contribution of morontia mathematics.

112:1.12 (1227.2)Much trouble experienced by mortals in their study of human personality could be avoided if the finite creature would remember that dimensional levels and spiritual levels are not co-ordinated in experiential personality realization.

112:1.13 (1227.3)Life is really a process which takes place between the organism (selfhood) and its environment. The personality imparts value of identity and meanings of continuity to this organismal-environmental association. Thus it will be recognized that the phenomenon of stimulus-response is not a mere mechanical process since the personality functions as a factor in the total situation. It is ever true that mechanisms are innately passive; organisms, inherently active.

112:1.14 (1227.4)Physical life is a process taking place not so much within the organism as between the organism and the environment. And every such process tends to create and establish organismal patterns of reaction to such an environment. And all such directive patterns are highly influential in goal choosing.