© 2010 Chris Ragetly
© 2010 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
| Elisabeth Sombart, the pianist of the Angels | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 52 — Autumn 2010 | Maxi Quiz n°3 The questions |
1. Personality is that quality in reality which is bestowed by the Universal Father himself or by the Conjoint Actor, acting for the Father. (UB 112:0.3)
Whether the Conjoint Actor can confer personality in place of the Universal Father is a mystery.
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: (UB 112:1.1)
Once the personality is conferred, it remains unique and potentially eternal, everything depends on the free will of the creature to whom the personality has been given so that this personality becomes an eternal reality. But even if the creature refuses to follow the will of the Father, the personality which has been conferred on him does not disappear, it merges into the personality of the Supreme Being, like a drop of water in the ocean. (See UB 112:1.1: … In the absence of positive choice, the personality directly attains experiential Deity by becoming a part of the Supreme Being. The cycle is preordained, but man’s participation in this cycle is optional, personal and experiential.)
2. It may be bestowed upon any living energy system which includes mind or spirit. (UB 112:0.4)
3. It is not wholly subject to the fetters of antecedent causation. It is relatively creative or cocreative. (UB 112:0.5)
The antecedent causes may be considered to be either the Universal Father or the Conjoint Actor, and if the personality is not entirely subject to these causes, it is because it possesses free will. The personality is relatively creative or co-creative with the example of the finaliters who create, co-create or trinitize beings such as the Sons of Perfection Trinitized by ascenders and Paradise-Havona personalities, these Sons are often adopted by the Trinity Teacher Sons, the Daynals.
4. When bestowed upon evolutionary material creatures, it causes spirit to strive for the mastery of energy-matter through the mediation of mind. (UB 112:0.6)
5. Personality, while devoid of identity, can unify the identity of any living energy system. (UB 112:0.7)
It therefore has a catalytic power.
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. (UB 112:0.8)
Being issued from the Father, one cannot quantitatively measure the sensitivity of the personality to the Father’s personality circuit, only its quality can be appreciated.
7. Personality is changeless in the presence of change. (UB 112:0.9)
A personality now recognized on Urantia will also be recognized in ages to come; for example, a personality originating on Urantia will be recognized as the same on one of the four circuits of galaxies now in progress in the Master Universe as when he was functioning on Urantia.
8. It can make a gift to God—dedication of the free will to the doing of the will of God. (UB 112:0.10)
The free will choice to do the will of God is the supreme Gift that any personality can make to the Father. It is the door to eternal service, survival in the certainty of being in communion with the Father in all our future missions, the certainty of being bathed forever by the unchanging love of a Universal Father.
9. It is characterized by morality—awareness of relativity of relationship with other persons. It discerns conduct levels and choosingly discriminates between them. (UB 112:0.11)
Choosing wisdom therefore seems to be one of the characteristics of personality, since it can make a judicious choice among relationships with other people.
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. (UB 112:0.12)
This characteristic of the oneness of personality is absolute. Personalities can therefore be associated with each other, with results which are far superior to the mere joining together of the members thus associated. When The Urantia Book says that personalities are associable but not addable or totalizable, I think it means that they can be allies or partners in an enterprise or mission, but two personalities cannot make a sum.
11. Personality responds directly to other-personality presence. (UB 112:0.13)
The reaction-recognition of one personality to another personality is direct in time and space, as stated above in (7). A personality of animal origin is quite capable of reacting, of recognizing another personality, whether on the morontia or spiritual levels.
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.) (UB 112:0.14)
This means that the spirit has its own mind. Spiritually perfect personalities have a personality that has been added to their spiritual state. The primacy of the Father over the (Eternal) Son represents the fact that in the eternal past, the Father existed before the Son, therefore the personality which is a gift from the Father has the ability to be added to the Spirit which has its own mind, and does not need another mind to be added to it.
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. (UB 112:0.15)
If the personality is invariant, it is not the same for the soul, because if it stopped growing and evolving through the choices of the mind and the work of the Mystery Monitor, it would die, which is why it is so important to constantly grow, to seek, to be curious and to improve our relationships with all kinds of personalities.
14. Personality is uniquely conscious of time, and this is something other than the time perception of mind or spirit. (UB 112:0.16)
The personality being invariant, it is understandable that the perception of time by the personality is different from that of the mind or the spirit. We can think that it is possible for him to use this unique awareness of time by taking advantage of privileged relations with the Father, but this remains quite mysterious to me.
God—the Universal Father—is the personality of the First Source and Center and as such maintains personal relations of infinite control over all co-ordinate and subordinate sources and centers. Such control is personal and infinite in potential, even though it may never actually function owing to the perfection of the function of such co-ordinate and subordinate sources and centers and personalities. (UB 0:3.10)
The co-ordinate and subordinate sources and centers are all personalities other than that of the Universal Father, including evolutionary mortals. The Universal Father maintains personal relationships with all his subordinate personalities through the personality gravity circuit.
7. The potential personality of an evolutionary moral being or of any other moral being is centered in the personality of the Universal Father. (UB 0:3.19)
One may try to grasp or understand that all the potentials of all beings, whether evolutionary or otherwise, are contained or centered in the personality of the Universal Father. Therefore, He alone can bestow the gift of personality on all beings attaining the level of reality, for the potentials of beings not yet real are centered in the personality of the Universal Father.
The Deity Absolute is the repository of all these potentials. It is a way of thinking about how the Universal Father has organized the infinite store of all potentialities for all future personalities in endless time, which leaves us to imagine what this means. It is a concept that defies imagination.
2. Deified reality embraces all infinite Deity potentials ranging upward through all realms of personality from the lowest finite to the highest infinite, thus encompassing the domain of all that which is personalizable and more—even to the presence of the Deity Absolute. (UB 0:4.3)
We mortals are a deified reality, for our personality, being a most humble finite reality, is nonetheless descended from the Universal Father.
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:
1. Position status. Personality functions equally efficiently in the local universe, in the superuniverse, and in the central universe.
2. Meaning status. Personality performs effectively on the levels of the finite, the absonite, and even as impinging upon the absolute.
3. Value status. Personality can be experientially realized in the progressive realms of the material, the morontial, and the spiritual. (UB 112:1.1-4)
These three statuses of position, significance and value are all interrelated, we can imagine that not only does the personality function with equal efficiency in the Grand Universe, but also in the Master Universe and beyond into the future Infinite Cosmos, since its significance status enables it to function not only on the levels of the finite but also on those of the absonite and even those encroaching on the Absolute, that is to say on the coabsolute levels.
In the value status, we are told that personality can be realized experientially, in the evolutionary realms of the material, morontia and spiritual, these progressive realms undoubtedly cover the finite, absonite and coabsolute levels, that is to say that experience will never cease, and will always be a series of infinite discoveries, plunging us into new revelations of the Father more and more mysterious as the levels reached by our past experiences. It should be noted that once the fusion is effective with our Mystery Monitor, this one being part of our personality and we being part of his, we will have access to the experiences of his eternal past to the extent that this information is useful and understandable to us.
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. (UB 112:1.9)
The supreme dimension is an associable absolute, that is to say it can be associated with past experiences that have been realized on different levels, such as the finite and absonite levels. In addition, the personality possesses a dimensional potential allowing a subinfinite penetration of the absolute. That is to say, the personality functioning on the subabsolute level has the subinfinite capacity to penetrate the absolute. Or we can try to understand what a subinfinite penetration of the absolute means by conceptualizing the beginning of the Infinite Cosmos as being the field of action of a not yet infinite means to penetrate a subabsolute level.
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. (UB 112:1.12)
Each of the seven dimensions of the person’s realization is in some way independent of the others, it is the same on the spiritual levels. These very separate dimensions can undoubtedly be coordinated by the choice of the free will of this same personality, giving it an experiential baggage of universal quality. It will be necessary to wait to pass to the morontial level to begin to coordinate the first two finite dimensions between them, (material human and morontial).
And it will be necessary to wait for the first absonite dimension to coordinate it with the three finite dimensions, and it is the same with all the other dimensional levels to follow. It is probable that the spiritual levels will only be coordinated with the dimensional levels when the seventh dimension is reached, the supreme dimension as an associable absolute or dimension of totality, and can be experienced as a fact of the personality. The fact of the personality undoubtedly signifies an absolute level of realization that the personality reaches when it functions on the level of the Infinite Cosmos. (We must also remember the action of the Mystery Monitor during all the experiences on the different dimensional levels as well as on the different spiritual levels, it is undoubtedly he who will allow us to realize the coordination between all these levels since he will be an integral part of our self.)
It is through the mind that the self and the environment establish meaningful contact. The ability and readiness of the organism to establish meaningful contacts with the environment (to respond to stimuli) represents the attitude of the entire personality. (UB 112:1.15)
The attitude of the entire personality can be positive or negative depending on the free will of the said personality. Its response to incentives is therefore always related to this free will, which is nevertheless prompted by the work of the Mystery Monitor, whether on the material levels or on the early morontia levels, for the majority of us before fusion.
In the human organism, the sum of the parts constitutes the individual — individuality, but this process has nothing in common with the personality, which is the unifier of all these factors in their relations with cosmic realities. (UB 112:1.18)
The personality unifies the sum of the parts that constitute the individual or individuality. Its role is therefore to unite all these parts that form the individual. This unifying power is divine, since the personality has its origin in the Universal Father. … In the human system, it is the personality that unifies all activities and which, in turn, communicates the qualities of identity and creativity. (UB 112:1.19)
Upon the death of his subject, the Thought Adjuster temporarily loses his personality, [the author may be thought to be speaking of prepersonality in regard to the Mystery Monitor] but not his identity, while the human subject loses his identity, but not his personality; on the mansion worlds the two reunite in eternal manifestation. UB 112:3.7
We must be careful not to confuse personality with identity.
After death, the seraphim are essential to reconstitute the personality, that is to say to reunify the Mystery Monitor, guardian of identity, with the personality.
Chris Ragetly
| Elisabeth Sombart, the pianist of the Angels | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 52 — Autumn 2010 | Maxi Quiz n°3 The questions |