Paper 112 Overview: Personality Survival

The evolutionary planets serve as the starting points for human origin, where mortals begin their ascending career toward spiritual perfection. On Urantia, you have been provided with a perfect guide—your divine Thought Adjuster—and if you faithfully complete the race of time and achieve the final goal of faith, you will be eternally united with this indwelling spirit. This union marks the beginning of your real life, the ascending life that extends through numerous progressive stages toward Paradise.

Personality is a unique quality bestowed directly by the Universal Father that remains unchanging amid constant evolution. It allows humans to make the supreme gift to God—the dedication of their free will to doing God's will. Through the relationship between the Thought Adjuster and the human personality, survival beyond physical death becomes possible, enabling the continuation of selfhood through the morontia realms and eventually into spirit existence.

The evolutionary planets are the spheres of human origin, the initial worlds of the ascending mortal career. On Urantia, you have been endowed with a perfect guide—your divine Thought Adjuster—and if you sincerely run the race of time and reach the final goal of faith, you will be eternally united with your indwelling Adjuster. This union will initiate your real life, the ascending life that progresses through many stages and missions toward Paradise.

While defining personality would be presumptuous, we can describe several of its qualities: it is bestowed by the Universal Father himself; it may be given to any living energy system containing mind or spirit; it is relatively creative or cocreative; it causes spirit to strive for mastery of energy-matter through mind; it unifies identity of any living energy system; it responds only qualitatively to the personality circuit; it is changeless despite all transformations; and it can make a gift to God by dedicating free will to doing God's will. Personality is also characterized by morality, responds directly to other-personality presence, and may survive mortal death with identity in the surviving soul.

Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father as a potentially eternal endowment designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations. It operates efficiently across position status (local universe to central universe), meaning status (finite to absolute levels), and value status (material, morontial, and spiritual realms). This divine gift has an extraordinary range of cosmic dimensional performance.

The finite dimensions of personality relate to cosmic length (meaning), depth (value), and breadth (insight). On Urantia, mortals possess a personality with a potential for seven dimensions of self-expression, with three realized on the finite level, three on the absonite level, and one on the absolute level. When transferred to the morontia level after death, these dimensions are greatly enhanced through the influence of mota and morontia mathematics, creating new dimensional values not possible during material existence.

In the study of selfhood, it is helpful to remember fundamental relationships: physical systems are subordinate, intellectual systems are coordinate, personality is superordinate, and the indwelling spiritual force is potentially directive. In cosmic economy, insight precedes foresight, and in human development, a child first lives and only subsequently thinks about that living. These principles establish proper perspective when examining the self.

The universe fact of God becoming human in the person of Jesus has forever changed all meanings and values of human personality. True love involves mutual regard of whole personalities, whether human or divine, and all attributes of personality are focused in intelligent action when associated with spiritual endowment. The possession of personality identifies humans as spiritual beings since self-consciousness and selfhood unity are gifts from the supermaterial world. In human experience, thinking surrenders to wisdom, and wisdom is ultimately lost in enlightened worship as the individual progresses in spiritual understanding.

On Urantia, there are three types of death: spiritual death occurs when a mortal finally rejects survival and the Adjuster departs; intellectual death happens when the vital circuits of higher mind ministry are disrupted beyond repair and the Adjuster leaves; and physical death takes place when both body and mind cease functioning. In each case, the departure of the Thought Adjuster indicates a significant transition for the mortal personality.

After physical death, two non-material factors of personality persist: the Thought Adjuster returns to Divinington with the memory transcription of the mortal's life, and the immortal morontia soul remains in the custody of the destiny guardian. These components are essential for repersonalization on the morontia worlds, as it is their reunion that reassembles the surviving personality at the time of resurrection. The separated soul remains unconscious during the sleep of death until this reassembly occurs on the mansion worlds.

When death occurs, whether material, intellectual, or spiritual, the Thought Adjuster bids farewell to its mortal host and departs for Divinington. The Universal Censors obtain an epitome of the human's life through the Adjuster's transcription of spiritual values and morontia meanings developed in the indwelt mind. This information, along with seraphic records, is used during the adjudication of the individual and may enable certain ascenders to proceed immediately to the mansion worlds.

If the Adjuster's mortal associate will be repersonalized at the end of a dispensation rather than immediately, the Adjuster may enter one of seven temporary assignments: joining the ranks of vanished Monitors, observing the Paradise regime, training on Divinington, serving as a student observer on sacred spheres, engaging in messenger service, becoming an associate instructor, or being assigned to potential worlds in case the human partner rejected survival. Those mortals who have reached the third circle and have personal guardians may receive advanced standing, allowing immediate passage to the mansion worlds.

Selfhood represents a cosmic reality across all levels of existence—material, morontial, and spiritual. The actuality of personality comes from the Universal Father's bestowal, creating relative individuation within the cosmic organism. What originates from the Father inherits his eternal nature, including personality, which God gives through his own freewill choice, and the divine Thought Adjuster, an actual fragment of God.

Human identity exists primarily in the material sense, manifested through the material mind functioning within the energy system of the intellect. This material identity is temporary, but mortal personality possesses the remarkable power to transfer its identity from the passing material-intellect system to the higher morontia-soul system created in association with the Thought Adjuster. This transfer represents the universe insignia of freewill creaturehood and constitutes humanity's greatest opportunity and supreme cosmic responsibility.

When you awaken on the mansion worlds, your spiritual transformation will be so great that you might struggle to connect with your old identity. At first, much of mortal life may seem like a vague and hazy dream, though time will bring clarity. Your Thought Adjuster will help you recall only the experiences that truly matter for your eternal journey. Experiences without spiritual or morontia value will fade, like scaffolding no longer needed after a bridge is built. But relationships between personalities have lasting value and will be remembered—you will know and be known, remember and be remembered.

Like a butterfly emerging from its caterpillar stage, true human personalities emerge on the mansion worlds, revealed for the first time apart from their material bodies. The morontia career in the local universe involves the progressive elevation of personality from the beginning soul level to higher levels of spirituality. These morontia personality forms are real investments beyond human comprehension, serving the same purpose on the local universe worlds as material bodies do on the planets of human birth.

In physical life, the body somewhat reflects the inner personality, but in morontia life, especially at higher levels, the personality form directly corresponds to the inner nature of the person. On spiritual levels, outward form and inner nature approach complete identification, becoming increasingly perfect on higher spiritual levels. After death, the ascending mortal receives the Nebadon modification of cosmic-mind endowment from the Master Spirit of Orvonton, while certain phases of mind and experiential values from the former human mind are preserved in the surviving soul.

Thought Adjuster fusion imparts eternal qualities to personality that were previously only potential, including fixed divinity quality, past-eternity experience and memory, immortality, and a phase of qualified potential absoluteness. When you awaken after earthly death, you will eventually unite with your faithful Adjuster in an eternal embrace—this fusion constitutes the mystery of making God and man one, the secret of finite creature evolution.

After fusion with the Adjuster, there can be no future danger to the eternal career of such a personality. Fusion may occur on the planet of birth as a transcendence of natural death, on mansion worlds, or even later during the universe journey. When fusion occurs, the mandates of the superuniverse pronounce that human nature has made a final and irrevocable choice for the eternal career. This fusion creates a new kind of being—a member of one of the unique orders of ascending personalities of the Supreme, who will be forever serviceable, faithful, and efficient in the continuing ascent toward Paradise.