© 2021 Claude Flibotte
© 2021 Urantia Association of Quebec
Claude Flibotte
Sainte-Julie
Many discussions on UBIS revolve around the correct understanding of personality. I would like to share with you my very personal vision of the subject!
Human personality is the time-space image-shadow cast by the divine Creator personality. And no actuality can ever be adequately comprehended by an examination of its shadow. Shadows should be interpreted in terms of the true substance. (UB 1:6.1)
This perhaps explains why it is so difficult for us to get a clear idea of what personality is. If, to begin with, we asked ourselves what specifically characterizes personality and what is its function?
Personality is a level of deified reality (UB 0:5.1)
So, like the infinite Father who reestablishes the unification of the Deity by the Paradise Trinity following the trinitization of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, the human personality, gift of the Father, creates the unification of the many constituents of human individuality (physical, hereditary, mental and behavioral). To understand this phenomenon a little more, let us observe what is happening in the animal kingdom. We all agree that animals are not endowed with personality. Let us take a well-liked animal, a beautiful little puppy. This dog is similar to his brothers and sisters of the same litter. They are all endowed with a mind and they have or will eventually have the support of the first five adjutant mind spirits. They all possess an individuality inherited from the mental circuit which gives them the consciousness to live and interact with their environment in addition to the genes of their parents which characterize their physical appearance and their social behavior. This is what allows me to differentiate Fido from Nestor.
Now, how does this work out for the human being? The revelators tell us that the human personality is given to us before the arrival of the Thought Adjuster.
Personality is a unique endowment of original nature whose existence is independent of, and antecedent to, the bestowal of the Thought Adjuster. Nevertheless, the presence of the Adjuster does augment the qualitative manifestation of personality. (UB 16:8.3)
The revealers also describe our personality type as follows:
The Urantia type of human personality may be viewed as functioning in a physical mechanism consisting of the planetary modification of the Nebadon type of organism belonging to the electrochemical order of life activation and endowed with the Nebadon order of the Orvonton series of the cosmic mind of parental reproductive pattern. The bestowal of the divine gift of personality upon such a mind-endowed mortal mechanism confers the dignity of cosmic citizenship and enables such a mortal creature forthwith to become reactive to the constitutive recognition of the three basic mind realities of the cosmos: (UB 16:8.15)
I asked myself, since the Father gives me the personality and the Thought Adjuster, why doesn’t He do it at the same time? After much thought, I came to the conclusion that it was absolutely necessary for me to know myself sufficiently and to unify the various components of my individuality through my personality to allow the Adjuster to come and inhabit my mind. In other words, the personality allows me not only to be conscious, as Fido is, but to be conscious that I am conscious. This addition of consciousness gives me the ability to know myself, to recognize other personalities, to choose morally the good, to become creative, to know my Creator and to seek to become like Him. The personality is in some way an addition of consciousness which attempts to divinize the host individuality by unifying its components in the image of the unity of Deity.
Creature personality is distinguished by two self-manifesting and characteristic phenomena of mortal reactive behavior: self-consciousness and associated relative free will. (UB 16:8.5)
Self-consciousness consists in intellectual awareness of personality actuality; it includes the ability to recognize the reality of other personalities. It indicates capacity for individualized experience in and with cosmic realities, equivalating to the attainment of identity status in the personality relationships of the universe. Self-consciousness connotes recognition of the actuality of mind ministration and the realization of relative independence of creative and determinative free will. (UB 16:8.6)
Through this additional information, we realize that self-consciousness also called the ego is linked to the mind and to the qualitative addition of the personality.
In conclusion, through the gift of human personality, deifying and unifying, let us wisely cooperate with the leadings of our beloved Adjuster to become more and more like him, that is, divine!