© 1997 François Dupont
© 1997 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
The following reflection aims to shed light on the functioning of the personality at the level of different cosmic, universal and divine realities. Jacques Dupont’s article offers us a broad overview of the characteristics of the personality.
This essay aims to study the personality only in its links with other realities, put in place for the evolution, advancement, and progress of the ascender.
1) Deified reality
“Personality is a level of deified reality and ranges from the mortal and midwayer level of the higher mind activation of worship and wisdom up through the morontial and spiritual to the attainment of finality of personality status. That is the evolutionary ascent of mortal- and kindred-creature personality, but there are numerous other orders of universe personalities.” (UB 0:5.1)
“3. Interassociated reality. Universe reality is supposedly either deified or undeified, but to subdeified beings there exists a vast domain of interassociated reality, potential and actualizing, which is difficult of identification. Much of this co-ordinate reality is embraced within the realms of the Universal Absolute.” (UB 0:4.4)
The personality is therefore an invariable reality whose potential content will begin to manifest itself as soon as it is attributed to an ascender, to reach complete actualization (?) at the end of the cosmic journey. By its potentials, this reality in the process of deification is able to function on and within all levels of cosmic, universal and divine realities.
2) Cosmic reality
“In order to facilitate mortal comprehension of the universe of universes, the diverse levels of cosmic reality have been designated as finite, absonite, and absolute. Of these only the absolute is unqualifiedly eternal, truly existential. Absonites and finites are derivatives, modifications, qualifications, and attenuations of the original and primordial absolute reality of infinity.” (UB 115:1.3)
3) Universal reality
There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith—physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value. (UB 196:3.2)
4) Divine reality
“Paradise values of eternity and infinity, of truth, beauty, and goodness, are concealed within the facts of the phenomena of the universes of time and space. But it requires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mortal to detect and discern these spiritual values.” (UB 195:7.4)
The personality is identified by its triple status:
It plays a role, is expressed and realized through the three elements of universal reality: facts, ideas (or meanings) and relationships (or values).
To clarify our reasoning, let’s take the example below, which is certainly imperfect but sheds some light on our point.
Here below and later in the afterlife, we become aware of the facts of our immediate and distant environment (home, neighborhood, school, nation, etc.). We learn about the conflicts that shake our earth and if we study history, we will not fail to store a large number of facts, which can be grouped into sciences.
Through our analyzing and synthesizing mind, we will forge meanings, a conception of the world, a philosophy around the facts of our life and of our fellow men.
Through another capacity of our mind - the one that criticizes, evaluates, gauges and judges - we (=soul and personality) will attach a sentimental, intellectual, cosmic or spiritual value to the meanings perceived through our level of understanding of the moment. This last function of the mind constitutes religious consciousness, or at least its beginning.
Let’s continue our reasoning.
1) Position status (UB 112:1.1)
By positional status, the personality functions with equal efficiency in the local universe, in the superuniverse, and in the central universe. Why not on Paradise, the absolute level?
An open and unresolved question, I believe, within the limits of this revelation.
Isn’t Heaven part of universal reality?
Are the facts (part of universal reality) in Heaven above all meaning and beyond all value?
Are we in the heavenly realm of infinite and eternal value without the possibility of interpretation?
In any case the universal reality of the facts can be understood here, in the entire local universe, within the superuniverses and in the central universe [1].
2) The status of meaning (according to the 2nd element of universal reality)
Here we do not encounter the same difficulty as for the status of position, since the status of signification encompasses the levels of the finite, of the absonite and even encroaches on the absolute.
3) Value status (corresponding to the 3rd element of universal reality)
This status enables the personality to experience the values deduced from the meanings in the progressive realms of the material, morontia, and spiritual.
The field of action of the personality has three cosmic dimensions in the finite, three in the absonite and one in the absolute. This demonstrates once more the potential vastness and range of action included in the personality.
The three finite or spatiotemporal dimensions are called:
The absonite or transcended space-time level also has three cosmic dimensions expressed at a higher level.
At the absolute level, independent of spatio-temporal, the three dimensions are reduced to one.
Does this indicate a link with II. 1 positional status, excluding Paradise? Which of the three dimensions are excluded and what characterizes the one that remains?
Statuses, levels and dimensions already exist inside and outside each of us. Internally, they are in a state of latent potentiality, and await activation by our voluntary maturation and by the experiential accomplishment of our individuality, the growing unity of which is guaranteed by our personality.
It is true that we have the precious support of a Thought Adjuster, guardian angels, the Spirit of Truth, and many unknown or unrevealed spiritual influences. Their action is unified, we know that. But what unifies their action?
Would this not be the path of a continual approach towards the divine realities of truth, beauty and goodness, unified by the love of one God, universal, infinite and eternal Father?
In other words, we are guided to the divine realities of truth, goodness, and love through the universal realities of facts, meanings, and values on the finite, absonite, and absolute levels of cosmic reality. Our personality, a potentially deified reality, participates in and promotes this whole process of progressive divination of our individuality by unifying us and holding the bar.
This article aims to provide a little better understanding:
Given the difficult nature of this subject and my limited understanding of how the personality works, I desire and dare to hope to learn much more through the remarks, clarifications and questions of interested readers.
In any case, the more we delve into the undergrowth of this subject, the more we raise questions and interrogations, where we are free to risk our imaginative but never decisive response. Finally for us, sincere and persevering ascenders, the personality will keep its secrets for a long time to come and its mystery will perhaps remain eternally hidden.
Francois Dupont
The position status, as I understand it, allows us to recognize the places and facts of a position, a parking lot, a given residual location. ↩︎