A Urantia Book Perspective on Personality and the Self

This is a tricky subject. It has largely to do with semantics. Different people from different backgrounds and experience will give different takes on this. All I can relate is how I look at such things. And keeping in mind that each person needs to define these things for her/himSELF, let me presume to work out the details of my own belief system and then you – the reader – can incorporate whatever you find useful into yours.

God is a great God because he is the highest of the Creators, possessing so much power—infinite power. Yet, he desires nothing more than giving as much of it away to his creatures. The more he gives, the happier he is (as such a thing might be interpreted by us). The first and most critical of all gifts from God is free will. For humans, free will completes their relative liberty as independent beings and dignifies the HUMAN will in the process. Humans are Mortals—they have survival (after death) potential. And it is God's will that the Mortal will should trump all other direction for that being, even if it is temporarily destructive to that Mortal's associates. To God it is more important to let one human be free than to limit the choices of all humans by limiting the choices of even ONE of them. There is an old Negro spiritual that says, “If one of us is in chains, none of us are free.” Humans keep themselves in chains, where God wants nothing more that to see them ALL free.

It is because of all of this that the 'self' comes into consideration. The mind of the animal-human Mortal is an arena of sorts. It is the place where spirit can connect with the material brain, where both function, and both are mutually contactable to each other.

Here is where things need teasing out. I will offer one interpretation out of many for the meaning of certain words as I understand them. Again it will be up to you to integrate them in a way that fits what you believe. These are mostly based upon my study of the Urantia Book.

God, as Father (or Original Parent) is a personality and shares all of his personal power with the Eternal Son (the Second Parent/Son) and the Infinite Spirit. In fact the Father is the bestower of all personality to all beings from the Eternal Son to the lowly Mortal. All personality is linked through the Father's personality “circuit”.

Now we divide “personality”into animal (material) and human (trans-material). Animal personality is only functional between the two ends of that animal's existence; birth and death. Human personality, when integrated with the developing soul, elevates that creature's IDENTITY to a potentially eternal status. It is this personality status that materially and spiritually separates animal from animal-human. It is my belief that the choice of one animal species (our form of a hominid – the first human) to turn its attention inward, away from large, on-rushing predators, etc., and was somehow able to believe in something more than it could see or hear in the “outside” world. Animals, even advanced animals are locked into individual self-preservation. But humans have chosen to preserve their species; though they sure have a funny way of showing it sometimes... And, fortunately or unfortunately, that decision has now put all the other species on our planet in human hands as well.

The mothers of the mammalian orders come the closest to being selfless animals, but their instinct to pass on their genes still can either lead to protecting their young ones even to the death OR let their young die in order that they (the mothers) be able produce future young again. To look beyond genetic desires (through primitive worship) makes an animal more than just an animal. Worship is the high water mark that humans reached as animals, even as their animal cousins were not able to achieve such a thing. According to the Urantia Book this desire to worship qualifies an animal to receive a Thought Adjuster (an entity WITHOUT a personality) and from then on that animal (and each of its descendants) is considered human.

So it is with the assistance of the Thought Adjuster and its embryonic soul-counterpart that the human “personality” survives death. The Thought Adjuster as a spirit strongly desires to become personal. The personality of the human strongly desires to become spiritual, and to thence live forever. Yet...then...what is the “self,” what is the “soul” and what is the “identity”? How do these three different terms find a way to fit coherently into one theory?

Well, here's one idea...

All material creatures have separate identities. No two material creatures are ever the same. This is an extraordinary statement, especially when one considers just how many material creatures there are—every paramecium, every bacterium included. There are more bacterial cells in the human body than there are human cells. Of course a bacterium does not experience self-awareness. But it is STILL unique. Every mammal has some sense of self though, even if it is in a most rudimentary, unconscious and/or nearly-unidentifiable form, as we humans might understand such a thing. Yet, honestly, even the great majority of mammals probably don't actually view themselves as “selfs,” because the capability of their material brains is so limited by the constant and unrelenting processing of dealing with exterior stimuli.

A mouse (for example) is so concerned with material survival that its very sense of identity is never self-realized. However, as one moves up the evolutionary phylogeny (through the higher taxonomic grouping of mammals), one finds animals that have periods of leisure. The great apes, in particular, show an enormous amount of self-identity, due to hundreds of thousands of years of “ape culture,” by being so familiar with their forest life routine, and coupled with their incredible ability (through a relatively high intelligence) to adapt to many varied situations. The lack of adaptability was the death-blow to the much less intelligent dinosaurs. And mammals in between these species (the mouse and the ape) are capable of self-identity but only marginally develop or appreciate any such sense. Cats, for instance, will sometimes realize that their image in a mirror IS them (their self), while others just don't get it and persist in treating the image as another cat.

Naturally, humans have developed a very great tool for understand themselves and each other: spoken language. Nothing has expanded the advancement of human culture so profoundly. Human culture is now SO foreign to mouse, cat or ape culture as to be almost entirely synthetic. Not only does it allow us to examine each other, but also to ask questions about ourselves as individuals, independent of all “lower” creatures. We have gone from being reflective animals to becoming reflecting animals. With our languages, ingenuity (very large brain) and ability to cooperate, we have significantly left our species' childhood as “animal,” becoming truly human. So it may be said that “identity” is common to the mammalian brain. Humans are able to hold on to that identity enough for each to develop a rich sense of self during their material lives.

Even when humans die (presuming that they choose to live on after material death) they retain the mammalian identity, as the human self. But the “soul” becomes the new vehicle for the identity, as self. Most importantly, the personality and the self become one. Thus the existential goal of material life, if not achieved during life in the flesh, is achieved at material death; true self-hood. Similarly once the self and personality have been combined with the liberated soul, the next personal development is for this personality-soul to combine with the Thought Adjuster spirit—as one being. Interestingly, according to the Urantia Book, this soul-spirit “translation” can even occur before material death!

The continuation of the personality to animate a soul (where it had once animated a human body) IS the evolutionary process of that person's identity becoming eternal (where once it was only temporal).

Largely, I have discussed what things look like on the outside of the person. The other side of this coin is the perception that the self (itself) has for inner realities. What does the self see about its own aspects?

When the self looks (hears, tastes, smells, touches...and intuits) the “outside” world as separate from it, it usually remains aloof from that outside world. It has been an evolutionary benefit for humans to demand this separation. Western people have perhaps taken this a bit too far by associating all so-called “developed” society with man-made things—not natural ones. As we develop into a species capable of designing tools that will take care of nearly all of our material needs, we MUST concomitantly become integrated again with the natural world (e.g. our planet) or it is likely that we will utterly destroy it, washing that destruction down with our own extinction as the self-appointed “care-taker” species of our world.

All of our “selfs” are at a historic pivot point that we have to make the correct decisions about, in order to get past. In my view, this transition from material origin to super-material destiny demands that each human self (identity) accept the notion of her/his increasing power over the material world, WHILE also insisting that all human personality be linked more closely, through the Father's circuit, in a sort of over-mind. In other words, self may be independent from other selfs, but through willful intention may submit to the ideals of self-denial in order to be more like the Father (remember that he has so much but gives as much as he possibly can to others).

The Father is SO giving that he let's his very personal aspects be shared equally with two other members. This is something that humans simply cannot do, and can understand even less. He allows the Eternal Son to represent ALL spirit. He gives the Infinite Spirit the power to represent ALL mind. In this way one “God” can function as a Trinity. It allows the Father's thought to be spoken by word of the Eternal Son and acted upon by the Infinite Spirit; thought, word and act.

In this same way, creatures may strive to give as much of themselves to others, whenever they are able. Another term for this giving is: LOVE. In the strictest and simplest sense, to give without the desire to receive IS to love. Because God gives the most, he is the example for all beings of how to give; how to love. God – though being the personality-center of gravity for all personalities – is the eternal and infinite example of selflessness for them too. The human self can find the “peace that passes all understanding” by following God's example, even in the material life.

Each of us - as human beings - should enjoy the fact that we are privileged enough to have be given a personality. We can recognize it and overlay it upon our animal selfs! Then we can give back to God by following his example of self-denial, giving and loving. This is the recipe for eternal soul development and personality survival. There is no greater reward for the self than to achieve a state of voluntary selflessness, and there is no way for human culture to survive if the majority of the species is unable to understand the need for self-denial. THIS is our biggest barrier to individual happiness and world-wide peace in the 21st Century. The situation is completely in our own hands.