© 2016 Eduardo Altuzarra
© 2016 Urantia Association of Spain
| The aids of the ascension career: internal and physical/material | Luz y Vida — No. 44 — June 2016 — Index | The free will |
The Urantia Book names the word personality 80 times in the Foreword, 875 times in Part I, 300 times in Part II, 669 times in Part III and 220 times in Part IV.
In total, the book refers 2,144 times to personalities and the condition of being a person. From which it follows that the person and his characters, ways, treatment, etc. they are perhaps the most important thing for the Universal Father, for God.
Personality is all potential, it is the quality of being a person, that which, if we achieve it in the development of our evolutionary career, makes us similar to the Universal Father.
Let’s see some references that are made to personality, in documents other than paper 112 that we are going to discuss here today.
¶ FOREWORD
The Universal Father is the best kept secret of reality as a person.
He bestows the personality. He is reached as the destiny of the personality.
The Eternal Son is a person in asiente quarry terms, the return home. absolutes. He is the secret of spiritual energy.
The Infinite Spirit is a person who bestows the mind.
The personality is neither body, nor mind, nor spirit, nor soul, they are the organic vehicle, the system that serves for the personality, the person, to manifest itself.
The human creature as a person is a unique and invariable reality before and under the effects of experience and its consequences, which on the other hand are always exposed to change, throughout and within the existence of the creature.
¶ Document 1 - THE UNIVERSAL FATHER
¶ 5. The personality of the Universal Father
Personality is not simply an attribute of God; it rather stands for the totality of the co-ordinated infinite nature and the unified divine will which is exhibited in eternity and universality of perfect expression. Personality, in the supreme sense, is the revelation of God to the universe of universes. (UB 1:5.13)
¶ 6. Personality in the universe
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)
God is to science a cause, to philosophy an idea, to religion a person, even the loving heavenly Father. God is to the scientist a primal force, to the philosopher a hypothesis of unity, to the religionist a living spiritual experience. Man’s inadequate concept of the personality of the Universal Father can be improved only by man’s spiritual progress in the universe and will become truly adequate only when the pilgrims of time and space finally attain the divine embrace of the living God on Paradise. (UB 1:6.2)
Never lose sight of the antipodal viewpoints of personality as it is conceived by God and man. Man views and comprehends personality, looking from the finite to the infinite; God looks from the infinite to the finite. Man possesses the lowest type of personality; God, the highest, even supreme, ultimate, and absolute. Therefore did the better concepts of the divine personality have patiently to await the appearance of improved ideas of human personality, especially the enhanced revelation of both human and divine personality in the Urantian bestowal life of Michael, the Creator Son. (UB 1:6.3)
¶ 7. The spiritual value of the concept of personality
The higher concepts of universe personality imply: identity, self-consciousness, self-will, and possibility for self-revelation. And these characteristics further imply fellowship with other and equal personalities, (UB 1:7.6)
¶ Paper 16 - The Seven Master Spirits
¶ 7. Morality, virtue and personality
Intelligence alone cannot explain the moral nature. Morality, virtue, is indigenous to human personality. Moral intuition, the realization of duty, is a component of human mind endowment and is associated with the other inalienables of human nature: scientific curiosity and spiritual insight. Man’s mentality far transcends that of his animal cousins, but it is his moral and religious natures that especially distinguish him from the animal world. (UB 16:7.1)
Only a personality can know what it is doing before it does it; only personalities possess insight in advance of experience. A personality can look before it leaps and can therefore learn from looking as well as from leaping. A nonpersonal animal ordinarily learns only by leaping. (UB 16:7.3)
As a result of experience an animal becomes able to examine the different ways of attaining a goal and to select an approach based on accumulated experience. But a personality can also examine the goal itself and pass judgment on its worth-whileness, its value. Intelligence alone can discriminate as to the best means of attaining indiscriminate ends, but a moral being possesses an insight which enables him to discriminate between ends as well as between means. And a moral being in choosing virtue is nonetheless intelligent. He knows what he is doing, why he is doing it, where he is going, and how he will get there. (UB 16:7.4)
When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence. He has failed to avail himself of the superior advantages of that material acumen, moral discrimination, and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being. (UB 16:7.5)
Virtue is righteousness—conformity with the cosmos. To name virtues is not to define them, but to live them is to know them. Virtue is not mere knowledge nor yet wisdom but rather the reality of progressive experience in the attainment of ascending levels of cosmic achievement. In the day-by-day life of mortal man, virtue is realized by the consistent choosing of good rather than evil, and such choosing ability is evidence of the possession of a moral nature. (UB 16:7.6)
Man’s choosing between good and evil is influenced, not only by the keenness of his moral nature, but also by such influences as ignorance, immaturity, and delusion. A sense of proportion is also concerned in the exercise of virtue because evil may be perpetrated when the lesser is chosen in the place of the greater as a result of distortion or deception. The art of relative estimation or comparative measurement enters into the practice of the virtues of the moral realm. (UB 16:7.7)
Man’s moral nature would be impotent without the art of measurement, the discrimination embodied in his ability to scrutinize meanings. Likewise would moral choosing be futile without that cosmic insight which yields the consciousness of spiritual values. From the standpoint of intelligence, man ascends to the level of a moral being because he is endowed with personality. (UB 16:7.8)
Morality can never be advanced by law or by force. It is a personal and freewill matter and must be disseminated by the contagion of the contact of morally fragrant persons with those who are less morally responsive, but who are also in some measure desirous of doing the Father’s will. (UB 16:7.9)
Moral acts are those human performances which are characterized by the highest intelligence, directed by selective discrimination in the choice of superior ends as well as in the selection of moral means to attain these ends. Such conduct is virtuous. Supreme virtue, then, is wholeheartedly to choose to do the will of the Father in heaven. (UB 16:7.10)
A creature with a normal mind is a person who develops all the physical senses while through experience he acquires duty, morality, reason, becomes aware of relative good and evil, evolves in religion, increases spiritual values and ensures survival. The condition of being a person unifies all these aspects of the individual.
¶ 8. Personality on Urantia
. . . Urantia human beings are endowed with personality of the finite-mortal type, functioning on the level of the ascending sons of God. (UB 16:8.1)
Personality is a unique endowment of original nature whose existence is independent of, and antecedent to, the bestowal of the Thought Adjuster. (UB 16:8.3)
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)
The relative free will that defines being aware of oneself as a person is complicit in moral decisions, that is, of elevated wisdom; of spiritual choices, which is equivalent to discerning the truth; of disinterested love, which is transmitted in brotherly service; of intentional cooperation, which results in loyalty to the group; of cosmic insight, the grasp of universal meanings; of involvement as a person, in doing the will of the Father and of adoration, the sincere search for divine values and loving God without conditions (UB 16:8.7-14)
The Urantia type of human personality may be viewed as . . . 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:
- The mathematical or logical recognition of the uniformity of physical causation.
- The reasoned recognition of the obligation of moral conduct.
- The faith-grasp of the fellowship worship of Deity, associated with the loving service of humanity. (UB 16:8.15-18)
¶ 9. The reality of human consciousness
The cosmic-minded, Adjuster-dwelling personal creature possesses the innate ability to recognize and comprehend energy reality, mind reality, and spirit reality. The will creature is thus equipped to discern the fact of God, the law of God, and the love of God. Apart from these three inalienable elements of human consciousness, all human experience is truly subjective, except this intuitive understanding of what is valid linked to the unification of these three responses of cosmic recognition to universal reality.
Self-consciousness is in essence a communal consciousness: God and man, Father and son, Creator and creature. In human self-consciousness four universe-reality realizations are latent and inherent:
- The quest for knowledge, the logic of science.
- The quest for moral values, the sense of duty.
- The quest for spiritual values, the religious experience.
- The quest for personality values, the ability to recognize the reality of God as a personality and the concurrent realization of our fraternal relationship with fellow personalities. (UB 16:9.9-13)
The attitude is the brush with which the mind Colors our Immortal Soul and we are the ones who choose the colors
¶ Workshop on Document 112 The Survival of Personality
¶ Common questions
- How would you explain with your words what personality is?
- Briefly state the most important ideas that appear in this section.
¶ Questions specific to each section
- Personality and reality
- How do you understand the three cosmic dimensions of personality?
- The self
- What does this phrase suggest to you: “Every true relationship of mortal man with other people - human or divine - is an end in itself”?
- The phenomenon of death
- What are the three types of death in regards to the survival of the personality?
- Adjusters after death
- What does an Adjuster do while his subject remains asleep waiting for the end of a dispensation?
- The survival of the human self
- What is the process that a human being goes through when death arrives?
- The morontia self
- What happens to the memory of Spirit-fused mortals?
- Adjuster Fusion
- Where are the decisions about survival to be expressed? And where should they be confirmed?
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| The aids of the ascension career: internal and physical/material | Luz y Vida — No. 44 — June 2016 — Index | The free will |