Paper 112 Overview: Personality Survival

The evolutionary planets are where humans begin their journey toward eternal life. If you sincerely follow the path of faith, you will eventually be united forever with your divine Thought Adjuster. This is just the beginning of your real life, which will continue through many stages in your journey toward Paradise.

Personality is a special gift from the Universal Father. It remains unchanged even as everything else changes. The human personality can make the choice to survive death and continue on an eternal journey through the universe.

The evolutionary planets are where human beings start their journey toward spiritual growth. On Urantia (earth), you have been given a perfect guide—the Thought Adjuster that lives in your mind. If you run the race of faith and reach the goal, you will be eternally united with your Adjuster. This is when your real life begins, continuing through many stages of growth toward Paradise.

Personality is hard to define, but we can describe some of its qualities. It comes from the Universal Father, can be given to any system with mind or spirit, and is relatively creative. Personality remains unchanging even as everything else changes, and it can make a gift to God by choosing to do his will.

Personality is given by the Universal Father as a potentially eternal gift. It can work on many levels, from the lowest finite level to the highest levels of reality. It functions effectively in local universes, superuniverses, and the central universe.

Human personality has many dimensions. On the finite level, there are three dimensions—length (direction and progression), depth (drives and attitudes), and breadth (coordination and organization). When humans move to the morontia level after death, these dimensions are greatly enhanced with new values.

When studying selfhood, remember that physical systems are lower, intellectual systems are equal, personality is higher, and the indwelling spirit can potentially direct them all. In human experience, life comes first, and thinking about that life comes later. In the cosmic plan, insight comes before foresight.

The universe fact of God becoming man (Jesus) has forever changed the meaning of human personality. When humans love another being unselfishly, they use their whole personality. Personality connects humans to the spiritual world, and the unity of selfhood comes from the non-material world.

There are three kinds of death for people on Urantia. Spiritual death happens when a person completely rejects survival and their Adjuster leaves. Intellectual death occurs when the mind circuits are so damaged they cannot function, and the Adjuster leaves. Physical death happens when both body and mind die.

After physical death, two things survive: the Thought Adjuster returns to the Paradise Father, and the immortal soul of the person is kept safe by their guardian angel. These two factors will reunite on the mansion worlds to recreate the surviving personality. The person will wake up there with a new type of body.

When death happens, the Adjuster leaves the human and travels to Divinington. The Universal Censors get a record of the human's spiritual qualities from the Adjuster. This information helps decide if the human can immediately go to the mansion worlds.

If the human will be resurrected at the end of an age instead of right away, the Adjuster may have different assignments while waiting. These include service in the ranks of vanished Monitors, observation of Paradise, training on Divinington, being a student observer, messenger service, becoming a teacher, or being assigned to other worlds.

Selfhood is real and lasting, even though human identity on earth is short. Personality comes from God and has eternal value, but each person must choose if they want to continue their journey after death. The human mind is only temporary, but with the help of the Thought Adjuster, a new and lasting soul can be formed. This soul is made when the human will works together with the divine spirit.

When a person dies, the body and brain stop working, and the soul goes into a quiet sleep. The soul is kept in the care of guardian angels until it is reassembled and awakened on the mansion worlds. There, a new form is made and, with the help of many universe beings, memory, identity, and personality are fully brought back.

At first, old memories may seem like a dream, but over time they become clearer. The Thought Adjuster helps recall only the memories that matter for eternal life. Many past experiences will fade, but memories of people and love will last forever. On the mansion worlds, each soul will know and be known, remember and be remembered.

Just as a butterfly emerges from a caterpillar, human personalities emerge on the mansion worlds for the first time outside their physical bodies. The morontia career involves raising the personality from the beginning soul level to higher spiritual levels. After death, humans get new morontia forms that are investments beyond human understanding.

In the physical life, the body somewhat reflects the personality inside. In the morontia life, the personality form directly shows the nature of the inner person. In the spiritual level, the outer form and inner nature become almost completely identified. The higher the spirit level, the more perfect this identification becomes.

When Thought Adjusters fuse with humans, they bring eternal qualities to the personality. These include fixing of divinity quality, past-eternity experience and memory, immortality, and a phase of qualified potential absoluteness. When you awaken on a better world after death, you will eventually unite with your faithful Adjuster in an eternal embrace.

After fusion with the Adjuster, there is no danger to your eternal career. Fusion can happen on your birth planet, on a mansion world, or even later in your universe journey. After fusion, you have made your final choice for the eternal career. You and your Adjuster become one being that can never be separated throughout all eternity.