© 2004 Seppo Kanerva
© 2004 Urantia Association of Spain
Seppo Kanerva
Helsinki, Finland
International Conference of the AIU, Dourdan, France, 4 August 2002
Personality is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universes [UB 5:6.2] (UB 16:8.2, UB 112:0.2). Thus, if we were able to solve this “mystery of the universes” in a discourse of twenty-something minutes, we would be witnessing a miracle of universe-shaking proportions not only to the earth. Fear not! Nothing of that magnitude is going to happen. Instead, what you are about to hear is the understanding of a perplexed person who has studied the matter and implored, in the manner of a “de profundis I exclaim to you, Domine,” that superhuman wisdom guide his mind as he attempts to understand the matter and share his understanding with you.
Before I can undertake any discussion of personality, I need to explain what I mean by “personality.” Personality is that quality or aspect of being human or superhuman that ensures that you will always be you (UB 16:8.4). According to the laws of evolution, all that remains of you is subject to innumerable changes, subject to growth or decline, progress or retrogression, but your personality remains the same, unaltered (UB 0:5.11, UB 112:0.9, UB 130:4.6; UB 140:4.7). You will always be you, throughout eternity. (UB 0:5.11, UB 13:0.5, UB 16:8.4, UB 112:0.1, UB 112:0.8, UB 112:5.20, UB 140:4.7)
In order for us to understand the revealed teachings about personality, it would be helpful to distinguish between what is personality and those who have personality. In revelation, this same word has at least these two meanings. Yet, it is often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine in which sense the word is used.
Personality is neither body, mind, nor spirit; nor is it even the soul (UB 0:6.8). Personality is a value (UB 5:6.3). Personality is a quality (UB 5:6.3). It is not an entity—it has no identity; rather, it is a qualitative endowment or aspect. To be a personality means that one is connected to the Father’s personality circuit. And a created entity is either personal or not; Unlike the soul, personality is not a gradual acquisition or achievement (UB 5:6.3, UB 30:1.113).
Stop and consider what it means when you, throughout eternity, will always be you; that you will always feel that this here is me. The Universal Father is the only source of personality and the only giver of it ( UB 5:6.3, UB 6:5.3, UB 7:7.4), and since His gifts are imperishable and eternal, we can deduce that personality is a guarantee of your eternal existence, if you so desire. Personality is a potentially eternal gift (UB 112:1.1). It is a unique and select gift that the Universal Father, in His unfathomable love, gives to each of us. Our Father loves you, loves you immeasurably. He loves you so much that it is His will to become you, your personality; His will is to merge, to become—in the form of the prepersonal Mystery Monitor, another lovingly bestowed gift—an inseparable part of you, to become one with you. This is the Father’s will. You need only carry it out.
But the Father is not an intruder; he does not impose himself on you; he does not force his love upon you. He always respects your will. If you choose not to be eternal, if you choose not to be you, not to let the Father be an inseparable part of you, if you choose to reject the Father’s love, your will will be done. Your will is absolute concerning this choice. Each of us will have an opportunity to make that crucial choice, and we must make it by exercising our free will, our freedom of choice—one more gift freely given by the Father (UB 54:2.2, UB 542:4.1).
Contact and Relationship with God the Father. Personality is bestowed upon an individual by the Father (UB 0:5.5) sometime between birth and the bestowal of the Mystery Monitor (Thought Changer); thus personality is a gift of the Universal Father, who is original personality itself (UB 0:5.4, UB 0:5.11, UB 5:0.2, UB 6:5.3, UB 7:7.4, UB 21:2.6, UB 33:2.2). Personality is a circuit through which the Father and a personal entity are in direct contact with one another (UB 40:5.3); a personality reacts to the Father’s personality circuit (UB 5:0.2, UB 12:3.1, UB 16:8.19). The Father’s personality circuit also functions as a conduit of creature worship to God (UB 5:3.2; UB 16:8.18-19). Personality is capable of almost unlimited co-ordination with Deity (UB 0:5.2, UB 16:8.19). The very reality of personality, its very existence, is proportional to its relationships to divinity (UB 54:1.4). Personality can consecrate free agency to the doing of the Father’s will, and this is the choicest gift, the one and only present that a mortal can make to God (UB 1:1.2, UB 112:0.10).
Characteristics and attributes that come with personality. Personality can be described as the unifying element of all the physical, mental, and spiritual components of a personal entity or individuality, whether human or celestial; finite, absonite, or absolute (UB 0:5.11, UB 12:6.5, UB 16:8.2; UB 56:4.2).
Each personality is unique; there are no duplicates, no two personalities are alike (UB 16:8.3, UB 103:1.1, UB 112:0.12). Since each personality is distinct from every other, personality as a phenomenon must be subject to unlimited diversification (UB 0:5.2).
The most outstanding characteristic of personality is that it does not change (UB 0:6.8, UB 112:0.15). Personality is unchanging in the presence of change (UB 112:0.9). You will always be you. And this is despite the fact that all of us observe changes in ourselves and in others. Our bodies change, our minds change, our opinions change, our attitudes change, our character changes; understanding increases, response to spirit direction changes, and the very precondition for soul existence is soul growth. But amid all this change, all this growth, personality remains unchanged. Personality, which in itself is unchanging, therefore has the remarkable characteristic of being able to coexist with unlimited change while forever maintaining its identity (UB 130:4.6, UB 112:5.20). Human life is a constant change of the factors of life unified by the stability of the unchanging personality (UB 112:5.20).
Personality is what survives, as the repository of soul identity. Personality has the potential for eternity (UB 112:1.1). But if a free-will creature should choose not to survive, the corresponding imperishable personality would then be absorbed into the oversoul of creation and become part of the Supreme (UB 2:3.4, UB 117:4.2).
Only a personality can be self-conscious (UB 16:8.5). Only a personality is intellectually aware of its reality, and a concomitant feature of self-consciousness is the ability to recognize that not only do I exist, but that there are other personalities as well. This means that a personality has a personal, individual experience with the cosmos and its realities; that it is able to see its place and identity in the vast realm of cosmic personalities (UB 16:8.6). Human personality self-consciousness is characterized by relative free will (UB 16:8.7).
No personality, however, is predestined to act in a certain way or to make predetermined decisions, even though a human being is subject to and conditioned by basic energies both in his physical and biological makeup and in his electrochemical control mechanism (UB 16:8.15). Personal beings are never automatons programmed to act in a particular way. This is due to the fact that the Father-bestowed personality comes with the attribute of free will, the freedom of choice (UB 5:6.8, UB 16:8.5-6, UB 54:2.3, UB 54:3.1, UB 66:8.6, UB 112:3.7, UB 118:7.7). Personality never manifests without human will (UB 112:3.7). Freedom of choice and free agency must be understood to imply a genuine examination of the pros and cons of any action or deed to be undertaken, not a person’s merely wanting something or reacting to some physiological stimulus. However, human choices are influenced by physical constitution, heredity and biological urges, animal characteristics, and so on. And the numerous spirit agencies designed to assist us in our spiritual growth do their best to persuade us, through their unnoticed and unobtrusive efforts, to choose wisely. Thus, human free agency is only relatively free. Yet there is one particular matter in which human will is absolute: the creation or inhibition of the creation of this surviving, eternal self which is his by choice depends upon the will of man. No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the vast universe of universes can interfere in any degree with the absolute sovereignty of mortal free will as it operates in the realm of choice, as it relates to the eternal destiny of the choosing mortal personality. [UB 5:6.8]
Since free will involves a potential and actual separation between the human will and the divine will, free will is therefore the source and origin of evil and sin (UB 54:3.1). This is why many wish that God had not endowed us humans with even the relative free will we now enjoy, but had instead chosen to force us to do his will. Had he done so, it would have been an absolute guarantee against all evil. Ideas such as these are not uncommon, even though they run counter to the Father’s will. It is his will that human personalities should, of their own free will, desire to be Godlike and seek to do his will. God refuses to force man to think or act contrary to the choices he himself has made in the exercise of his free will (UB 66:8.6). If man is to be truly free, he must inevitably enjoy the freedom to do evil and to reject the Father’s will. Under these circumstances, an evolving personality must also have the option of self-confusion, self-disruption, and self-destruction. The possibility of cosmic self-destruction cannot be avoided if the evolving personality is to be truly free in the exercise of finite will (UB 118:7.7). It is God’s will that humans freely and personally participate in the long evolutionary struggle, first to steadily improve their conditions, advance step by step, and ultimately reach the ages of light and life (UB 54:2.3). We must remember, however, that the material mind is the arena upon which human personalities live, are self-conscious, make their decisions, choose or reject God, become eternal, or are destroyed (UB 111:1.3). Personality itself is not an entity, has no identity; personality is not the component part of the human self that makes decisions; that component is mind. But mind is one of the components that personality unifies. There are also minds in the universe that are devoid of free will, minds that cannot make a free choice. Therefore, the mind will be endowed with the prerogative of free will only if it has been granted personality.
Whenever a human personality is making decisions involving moral considerations, or spiritual choices, striving to find truth and grasp universal meanings; whenever it ponders whether to act in a manner reflecting unselfish love, whether to serve its fellow men, whether to be loyal to its group, whether to cooperate with others, whether to do the Father’s will, whether to worship Him, whether to pursue divine values—in all these instances the personality is exercising relative free will (UB 16:8.7-UB 16:9.4). Many of these instances may be defined as situations requiring a moral choice: a choice between evil and good; or an ethical choice between selfish or altruistic conduct that will affect other personalities.
Personality is thus characterized by morality; that conscience which implies that when a person has to make a choice and weigh the pros and cons of a future act, they make a conscious choice between good and evil, taking into account the effect that act will have on other personalities—whether human, cosmic, or divine—forgetting or being unconscious of their own pleasure or interest. A child, devoid of personality, can only act on the premise of their own interest and what gives them pleasure.
The Thought Changer cannot enter a child’s mind until they have made their first moral decision, until they have chosen between good and evil. Since morality only comes with personhood, we can safely conclude that a child must be a personal entity at the time of the Thought Changer’s arrival. It is worth emphasizing that the ability to make a choice and exercise one’s free will does not necessarily imply a moral choice or decision. Nevertheless, free will is an outstanding attribute of personhood. From this, we can conclude that a child has been endowed with personhood and is a personal being as soon as their first act of volition is recorded.
Another characteristic not evident in a young child is the awareness of causality, the realization that everything that occurs has a cause, that every action has a reason, and that this event or action can be or again become the cause of another effect. This capacity to recognize causality is an inherent characteristic of humans; it need only appear in conjunction with the child’s growth. But this is not the case with causally reactive behavior. A human being automatically becomes reactive to the recognition of causality only with the bestowal of personality (UB 16:8.15). Thus, only a person can make conscious use of causality, of the fact that an act has its effect—sometimes the desired effect, at other times, an unexpected effect. Then there is a learning process to see what effect follows each act.
The recognition and use of causality is initially limited to physical causality, causality in the realms of matter and energy. A person quickly learns that physical causes consistently have the same physical effects. But a human also very quickly realizes that their own behavior is the cause of certain effects.
A child begins very early to test his limits and capabilities, learns ways to get his will done, and behaves as if the entire universe existed only for him, in order to accommodate his every wish and whim. Through much trial and error, and as a result of many disappointments and disillusionments, this person begins to recognize that it is in his own best interest to behave in a way that takes other people into account, in a way that considers other people’s rights and desires, in a way that attempts to accommodate and reconcile his will with the will of others. He recognizes the existence of right and wrong, and eventually deduces that he has an obligation to behave morally.
But a personality has the capacity to go further. Personality is a God-given gift, and it comes with the capacity to be conscious of the One making the gift. This is a manifestation of causality. Sooner or later, a personality begins to adjust its conduct in accordance with its awareness of its Father’s existence, with the fact that the Father is the reason for its existence, and of the existence of its human companions, who are therefore its brothers. It begins to determine its conduct in accordance with what it conceives to be the Father’s will. It realizes that loving the Father is the least it can do. It realizes that loving service to its fellow men is the least it can do (UB 16:8.15-17).
There is another aspect to the relationship of personality and causality, and that is relative freedom from the bonds of causality (UB 5:6.8). The bestowal of creature personality confers a relative freedom from slavish reaction to antecedent causality… There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality (UB 5:6.9). This means that personalities can exercise their free will and, to a certain extent, free themselves from the shackles of absolute dependence on antecedent causality. Only a personal being can, to some extent, exploit causality for its own interests rather than being dependent upon it. A personal being need not act or behave in a manner in which causation would predetermine its acts or behavior. Freedom from antecedent causality implies, for example, that a human personality is capable, to a certain extent, of challenging, altering, and ennobling its biological and other material drives and needs. It can resist its animalistic impulses to seek only its own good and instead be altruistic.
Freedom from the shackles of causality enables a personality to be creative (UB 5:6.4). A personality not only creates material things, art, or institutions, organizations, systems, rules and laws, or philosophy, science, religion, etc., but it also creates itself. A personality largely determines who it is, what it is, and what it will be (UB 5:6.6), whether it will, in due time, be a glorified and perfected finaliter or one who is characterized as though it had never existed.
All of the foregoing may help shed some light on, although it does not provide a comprehensive and definitive answer to, the oft-asked question: At what age is personality bestowed? Does a newborn baby have personality? Or perhaps even an embryo or fetus? Is abortion equivalent to killing a human personality? We know that, unlike in the case of the arrival of the Mystery Monitor, the exact time at which personality is bestowed has not been revealed; but we can infer that it must occur before the arrival of the Mystery Monitor. But how soon? An analysis of the characteristics and qualities of personality and the fact that a mind (and the accompanying brain mechanism that enables it to function) must be available before personality can be bestowed may provide a solution to the problem. We are informed that the capacity for human personality is potentially contained in the mind endowment of the human being (UB 5:6.6). But an experiential personality cannot be considered an active, functioning reality until after the mortal creature’s material life vehicle has been touched by the liberating divinity of the Universal Father [UB 5:6.6]. This liberating divinity touch of the Father is mentioned in only this short sentence of revelation. I venture to conjecture that the “touch” signifies the activation of the mind potential for personality, the actual bestowal of personality. It has also been revealed to us that there are two types of recorders: 1. The Census Directors keep a record of all will creatures. They record the existence of a will-endowed creature at the moment the first volitional action is performed (UB 24:2.7, UB 37:8.4), and that Salsatia, the census director of Nebadon, works in close association with the personality recorders. 2. The Archangelic personality archivists, who are concerned with keeping up-to-date the records of each mortal of time from the moment of birth through the universe career until that individual… leaves Salvington. [UB 37:3.7] The Census Directors thus make an entry in their records at the time of a human’s first volitional act, but we are told that the personality archivists make an entry in their records at the time of an individual’s birth. Since will is an inalienable characteristic, personality cannot be bestowed until the first act of will is observed and recorded. I would assume that this first act of will occurs very soon after birth, possibly within a few years, but not at birth, much less before it. To tell us that the personality archivists file “from the moment of birth,”must be only an approximation. Considering that their records cover the entirety of a human’s local universe career, the revelators might consider it sufficiently accurate to refer, in this context, to the instant of birth as the time for making the record; or it might also be that the archivists assume the newborn’s first day as the moment of personhood, so that they begin the corresponding record from the moment of birth, even though the infant is not yet a personality. If we focus our attention on the attributes of personhood enumerated above—self-awareness, exercise of free will, morality, and awareness of causality—it is hardly possible to determine that such a young person could manifest or give expression to any of them. It is therefore prudent to conclude that personhood is still absent at that early epoch.
Another question not often asked, but rather infrequently asked, is this: Since personality, mind, free will, inherited factors of the self such as the body, intellect, etc., are all divine gifts, are divine gifts of such poor quality as to facilitate and allow a person to commit errors, mistakes, evil acts, sin, and iniquity; to be enabled to make poor judgments, make thoughtless choices and decisions, and even to destroy themselves? If a person is guilty of all this, is it not because of the defective and imperfect gifts he was given? This question was partly answered in the previous discussion. It is true that divine gifts are not perfect, because it is God’s will that we be perfecting beings, not perfect beings. Why this is the Father’s will would be a topic for another discussion. For now, it would suffice to say only that it is an incomprehensible, supreme privilege to be imperfect, to be perfecting beings who strive and strive toward divinity and perfection. We are taught that God has provided His children with all the spiritual help and assistance we need in our future struggle, and that we need only accept that help—which is fully and freely available. We are also taught about the immeasurable mercy and justice of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. They know exactly who we are and where we come from; they don’t expect anything excessive from us; they know that our gifts are imperfect. We are never judged by our imperfections.
Personality strives for ever-increasing control over both itself and its ever-changing environment (UB 112:2.15). The goal of the evolutionary universes is the subjugation of energy-matter through mind, the co-ordination of mind with spirit, and all this by virtue of the creative, unifying presence of personality. Thus, in relation to personality, physical systems become subordinate; mind systems co-ordinated; and spirit systems directive (UB 116:6.1). Personality is thus characterized by an inherent quality sometimes called “the evolution of dominion,” meaning progress toward spirit dominance, and this is achieved through free volitional response to the directions and teachings imparted by the Thought Adjuster. The purpose of the entire cosmic evolution is the attainment of spirit domination and control over matter through the mediation of the personal mind (UB 113:6.7; UB 116:6.1). In this evolution, personality is designed to function as the unifier of mind and spirit in the control of energy and matter. The total evolution of the entire grand universe is a matter of the unification, through personality, of energy-controlling mind with co-ordinated spirit intellect, and will be revealed at the time of the full appearance of the omnipotent power of the supreme (UB 116:5.15)
All this is also the concern of the human personality, which is to make progress toward spiritual mind control, and to control and subdue energy and matter through spirit-directed mind (UB 112:2.15).
And that’s what we try to achieve every day, here, now, and forever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Two studies have greatly facilitated my writing of this essay: 1) Personality, Identity, Self, and Selfhood, an article by Jean Royer, 2001; and 2) Sielu – Ajatuksensuuntaajan ja persoonallisuuden yhteistyön tulos, a speech given by Matti Tossavainen in December 2001, published in Heijaste 2/2002, May 31, 2002.