© 2013 Steve Dreier
© 2013 The Urantia Book Fellowship
The following is a plenary speech given at The Urantia Book Fellowship’s International Conference at Villanova University in Philadelphia, PA, in 2005.
Personality is the basic human reality. The Urantia Book informs us that all personality is directly bestowed by the Universal Father. Therefore, when we say God is our father, we do not speak figuratively; it is a literal statement of fact. It has always been so and will always be so. The traditions we have in Genesis for example, where God created the first two human beings—those traditions don’t go nearly far enough. God did create the first two human beings—the same way that he’s created each of us—by directly bestowing upon each of us the gift of unique personality. He created the first two persons, and every one since, and every person that will ever be. And not only human beings, but angels and midwayers and Melchizedeks and any being who is a person—who possesses personality. All personality is a gift of the Universal Father.
And we are all woven together, held together in this vast field of personality. At the center is the Universal Father, the direct source of each and every personality. We are brothers and sisters without question. And not only amongst ourselves, but with the angels, and the midwayers, and the Melchizedeks, and every other personality you can think of, right up to the Eternal Son—all are God’s children, literally.
What does it mean though? What is personality? Well, the revelators say it’s one of the unsolved mysteries of the cosmos. They can’t define it, but they can tell us a lot about its properties and characteristics.
If we look carefully, we can observe some of the characteristics of personality. For example, each personality is unique, one-of-a-kind, no duplicates. Inherently we know this. Each of us directly knows the experience of personality and we know that we are unique. There is only one of us; there never will be a duplicate.
We don’t usually spend much time contemplating our status as unique personalities. People don’t usually inquire into the origin of their unique personalities. But a little reflection suggests it’s a genetic thing! It’s spiritual genetics.
Here’s the reasoning. We know the Universal Father is a unique person. “I am God. There is none beside me. I am God alone.” He is the First Person, and also the creator of all other persons. We are created “in the image of God.” He creates each of us by bestowing personality upon us, and in this transaction we inherit from him some aspects of his own nature. One of these is uniqueness.
Another characteristic of personality is “changelessness.” Personality never changes. Now personalities can and do cause change, and personalities can observe change, but personality itself never changes. A personality is the unchanging subject of all change, the unchanged changer. It’s another spiritual genetic inheritance factor. The Universal Father is a changeless person and when he creates us as persons we inherit from him the quality of personality changelessness. This quality of changelessness is something we inherit from the Universal Father because we are his personal children.
A third quality—one might say privilege—of personality is self-reflection, or self-consciousness. We’re not only conscious, but we are conscious that we are conscious. We possess self-awareness.
This is another spiritual genetic quality, another birthmark or sign of where we come from. The Universal Father is totally self-aware. He is the only being that possesses a full, complete and perfect appraisal of himself. We are also selfaware, but only in a limited way. With respect to uniqueness, and changelessness we’ve inherited a full portion; but with respect to self-awareness a limited portion.
Self-awareness obviously allows us to examine ourselves, to consider what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. It’s even more complicated than that. For example, as we’re sitting here we can think to ourselves, “Well, I’m conscious. I can see all these people and all this stuff around me. But even more than that, I’m conscious that I’m conscious. I’m aware that I’m aware that I can see all this stuff around me.”
And while it might be a little stretch, you could take a third step if you like and think “I’m conscious that I’m conscious that I’m conscious.” We can do that too. And we can continue—it’s tortoises all the way down. That is, it goes on without limit. It may be hard to hold right now, but there is an infinite like property there. Why is it there? Isn’t it enough to experience consciousness of consciousness? Why do I possess this consciousness property that seems to go off into infinity? Well, I don’t know, I don’t know.
I read a little statement by a man awhile back who said, “I lived by this lake in the Midwest, a little lake, and I walked out there one evening and there was this enormous bird resting on the lake. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was sure it wasn’t native to this area. It was huge, enormous beak, powerful neck, big wings.” And he thought to himself, “Well, of course it’s not native to here, it’s on its way somewhere; it’s coming from somewhere and it’s going somewhere and it’s resting here for the evening.” And he thought to himself, “There’s a place where this bird is going, that is fitted to this creature, a great sea, a great ocean; and even if I never see it—even if I never see it myself—I know it’s there; that bird is evidence that it’s there.”
And so when I come across these properties of personality that I observe, and I can’t explain—that’s what I think. There’s a great sea out there; someplace that right now is inconceivable. And we’re on our way from here, and we’re resting for the night. And some of the properties that we experience about ourselves are there because they are fitted to that place. We’ll do something with those properties some future time in some future place. But can’t imagine what right now -consciousness of consciousness of consciousness.
So here are three spiritual genetic markers that prove, by faith (you’re not going to prove this to any scientist) that we are literally children of the Universal Father.
Moral awareness is another property that comes with personality. All personalities are morally aware, which is simply to say they recognize distinctions of right and wrong. Most of the time this property is used with respect to human institutions, customs, conventions, and traditions. We often establish our standards about right and wrong based on how we’ve been raised, where we’ve been raised, and what we’ve been taught. Sometimes it’s based purely on personal wants and desires.
It’s interesting that animals don’t make moral decisions, only persons do that. When we get around to exercising this ability more thoughtfully, growing up a little, becoming a little more adult, we might even stop thinking in terms of right and wrong and begin to think in terms of good, better, and best. What’s moral becomes not just what’s good, not if there’s something better. And what’s moral is not what’s better, not if there’s something that is the best. It’s not something you can explain to a cat. It’s a property of personality and appears and functions only in human experience.
There’s another level of moral awareness that we might name spiritual morality. This is somewhat less relative, less dependent on human traditions and customs. Spiritual morality also recognizes the distinctions of good, better, and best, but as we imagine the Universal Father or Jesus might see things. We are endowed with this level of moral awareness also. We can see things as God sees things because we are indwelt by him and, if we are willing, guided by the spirit of the Universal Father. Once again we can see things as God sees things because as his personality children we inherit this ability. Now we can’t do this to the extent that God does it; of course not. But we can do this to an extent that far eclipses what we generally imagine. We grow in this ability through faith and action, by practice, by believing, by acting on our beliefs.
In most people’s lives, those moments when they make those decisions, when they follow the best instead of the better, those are the high points of life. That’s when you feel you are alive; that’s when the feeling of self-respect is at its absolute highest because you have the conviction, the sense, the experience of being in tune with the cosmos—doing the right thing. Those are among the most precious moments of personal existence. Jesus knew those moments regularly; we know them perhaps not so frequently, but we will know them, and will continue to know them, with greater and greater frequency.
Freedom is another property of personality. Personalities come with freedom built-in. This means they are capable of genuine creativity, which means they can make something out of nothing. They need no cause, no cause at all to produce an effect except their own decision to produce that effect; that’s all that’s required. It’s a level of cosmic dignity of unimaginable potential. And it’s of course another indication of our genetic relationship to God.
God is creative in the absolute sense; we are creative in the finite sense and, at the present moment to a highly circumscribed degree, and that’s a good thing too. If we were totally creative, and could manipulate physical reality at will, the temperature in this room might be jumping up and down about as fast as you could follow it. The sun would be going up and down about as fast as you could follow it because there would be all different opinions about whether or not the sun should be up or down. Our creative capacity is limited. Primarily this creativity is limited to our intellectual and spiritual life. That’s where creative choice takes place. And then of course we can attempt to express those choices in the outer life because we are the unchanging changers. We can change things.
We exercise these creative experiences in the intellect, in the imagination, in the inner experience, and then we move to act in the outer world; we change things. Of course the problem with creativity is that change can be constructive or destructive. Freedom is freedom. Freedom to change is freedom to change constructively or destructively either way, which is probably why the facility is limited right now. How to change things? How to use this unique unchanging self-aware, spiritually conscious, creative personality to change things? That’s a decision we each have to make every day.
And then there’s love. We all know some of the things that The Urantia Book says about love; love is the desire to do good to others, the secret of beneficial association between personalities, and many other things including, ”God is love.” Love is a reality that transpires only between personalities; it’s probably the highest privilege of personality. The fact that we can love and be loved is a gift of God in personality, the greatest gift I think. In life the things that matter most are the relationships we have with other persons, other persons, either directly or indirectly. Either directly through immediate relationships or indirectly through the things that you do that enrich the lives of other persons. What purpose would the various things we do, the various occupations that we have, what purpose would they serve if they were not somehow related to other persons?
In general the things we treasure most, the things we value most, the last things we would want to part with in life are persons. Everything else can go; it doesn’t matter. What matters when it comes right down to it, is other persons. And where do these persons come from, these persons that we value most? Well they also come from God. God has given us ourselves as persons and he has also given us all the other persons who constitute the true value in our lives.
Everything we have that matters most comes from God, everything. And when you sit down in a quiet moment and you realize, and you understand, and you’ve answered the basic questions of “Who am I? How did I get here? What is my purpose? Who is everybody else? Where am I going? What’s does it all mean?”—you might have the experience, the experience of overwhelming gratitude. I often think and say to God “Everything I have that means anything to me I owe to you. I didn’t ask for it, you just gave it to me.”
I did not realize this for a long time. I did not realize that the Universal Father gave me everything I value most. And now that I understand this I want to do something for the Universal Father. It’s a matter of self-respect. I think, “I cannot possibly remain indifferent to this situation; I have received so much. I just want to give back.” “I want to follow you. I want to use these powers that you’ve given me, that come directly from you, in the way you think they ought to be used. Show me how to use them, how to maximize the potential resident in these abilities.”
One of the great truths in The Urantia Book is about the goodness of God, it is the goodness of God that leads us into the light, that and that alone. There is no trace of compulsion, not a trace. The Universal Father stakes everything on the attractive power of goodness and love, everything. He knows there is no greater power in the universe, and he knows that when we wake up and we begin to realize more deeply the treasures that he has bestowed upon us, the desire to live with him and according to his way will take place quite naturally.
There’s a lot more to say about personality; here we’ve just scratched the surface. But in the things that we talked about here we examined a vision of personality that needs to more fully realized in our own lives, and shared with the world.
_Every person is a directly created child of God, every person. Every person is a holy reality, every person. A world that does not recognize that is blighted in ignorance. _
Over two hundred years ago the philosopher Emmanuel Kant, one of the seminal thinkers in Western thought, was trying to resolve some of the intractable problems of philosophy and he developed what he called imperatives, the critical and essential starting places for thought. And the imperative he placed right at the top, right at the very top was to always, always, treat another human being as an end, never as a means. He put that right at the top. A human being, a person, is never a means, never; persons are always ends in themselves. The Urantia Book says the same thing: Everything that is not spiritual in human experience is a means to an end, except personality which is an end in itself.
It’s critical to begin to experience persons as ends and never as a means to ends. Much of the tragedy and dysfunction that we see in the world is a consequence of treating individuals as means, as means to some end, and not as ends in themselves.
In my opinion, the fuller the understanding and experience of reality personality is the most important element in improving human relationships. We’ve got to learn to treasure personality whenever and wherever it appears, remembering that personality is a gift of the Universal Father. Now a personality, a person, may sometimes cause changes that are not particularly admirable or are made out of ignorance or some other malady of society, but the change that the person causes must never be mistaken for the person, ever.
Jesus never made that error. One example of this was when the woman at Simon’s house broke the flask of perfume and washed his feet. Simon and the other folks there wondered how he could allow this low quality, low morality woman to touch him—obviously he’s not a prophet. And in that discussion Jesus says it isn’t so much where a person stands; that’s not what’s critical; what’s critical is where they are going. They are full of potential; the critical thing is not where they are at this moment, but where they’re going, and this woman is going forward. That’s all you need to know; she’s doing fine. It’s going to take a while; she’s not immediately going to rise to your level, Simon, with all your culture and understanding. But she may surpass you pretty soon because you’ve settled down; you’re not moving anymore.
These are the understandings that made him so extraordinarily effective. He was never deceived by the appearance of things; he always tried to understand things within the context of reality. And in every case, when he dealt with a person, he knew he was dealing with something holy, every time.
Personality is central. I don’t think we focus on it nearly enough. We need to think more about it, study it more, and act decisively on what we discover. The Urantia Book has many wonderful teachings about personality and as we read through and examine those, I think we’ll find added insight and added creative possibilities for living as persons, personal children of the Universal Father Person, in this cosmos of persons.
Steve Dreier has studied The Urantia Book since 1971. He has participated in many Urantia Book conferences and served in a variety of organizational roles with The Urantia Book Fellowship. Steve and Bobbie Dreier, also a longtime student of The Urantia Book, recently celebrated their 50th anniversary.
“It is not possible to respect yourself more than you love your neighbor; the one is the measure of the capacity for the other.” UB 156:5.14