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Even for an
author writing about recorded facts, consistency is difficult to
maintain in a work as extensive as The Urantia Book. For
hypothetical authors seeking to foist a fake revelation upon the
world--hence relying upon their imagination-- maintaining
consistency would be a nightmare task. For authors presenting
revelatory truth, even upon difficult topics where ambiguity
intrudes, recipients of a revelation would justifiably have the
expectation of a high degree of consistency.
The topic for
this issue, "personality" would have a "top
ten" rating for degree of difficulty in maintaining
consistency. There are more than 1000 references in the book from
which to form a judgment. Those presented are mostly from a paper by
Jacques Dupont, which was written to elucidate the topic of
personality, but not specifically from the point of view of
consistency. Judgment on consistency is in the hands of the reader.
It is probably easier to look out for inconsistencies than to
attempt a consistency analysis. Now from Jacque's paper:
A dictionary
definition of "personality" is: That which defines the
individuality of a moral person.
And for psyche: The
function through which a conscious person understands himself as a
self, a unique and permanent individual.
What is
personality? One answer given in The Urantia Book that needs
to be kept in mind is: "Personality is one of the unsolved
mysteries of the universes." (70-3) The book also tells us
that: "The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of
personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of
personality," (8-5) that, "the personality of the spirit
Son is the master pattern for all personality throughout all
universes," (1263-1) and that, "Havona is the home of the
pattern personality of every mortal type." (162-3)
We learn also that, "the Creator-Son uses the creatures of
Havona as personality-pattern possibilities for his own mortal
children," (162-3) and the Creator-Sons themselves are,
"perfect personalities, even the pattern for all local
universe personality." (28-3)
In The Urantia Book, personality and pattern are
so closely linked that it would seem to be valid to assume, on
occasion, that personality is pattern rather than personality has
pattern. Perhaps that is part of the mystery.
We must be careful about how we interpret the
word "pattern." The master pattern for a car, for example,
may still give rise to an enormous variety of cars that look and
behave differently due to the addition, modification, or removal of
components that leave the basic pattern unchanged.
The concept of personality as pattern may help
with our understanding of other highly unusual characteristics
attributed to personality in The Urantia Book--such as
"changeless," and "without identity."
We Urantians have our unique personality
bestowed upon us by the Universal Father prior to receipt of another
unique gift from the Father, a pre-personal part of himself having
divine personality that the book terms our "Thought
Adjuster." (194-3; 71-1; 1226-3)) Herein may lie a clue to
at least a partial understanding of this mysterious concept of a
personality having no identity of its own.
The "pattern" of the personality
bestowed upon us is capable of being expressed in many ways but in
only one way that will become "perfection." A task of the
Thought Adjuster is to aid us to achieve that perfection while, at
the same time, leaving intact the free will our personality confers
upon us. "The survival of identity is dependent on the
survival of the immortal soul of morontia status and
increasingly divine value. Personality identity survives in and
by the survival of the soul." (195-6) The
"identity" belongs to the living system that will be
reconstituted on the mansion worlds, not to the personality. The
role of the personality is to unify that living system.
(1225-2; 9-1)
There are far too many statements relating
to "personality" for us to be able to explore all of them.
A selection follows that ranges over the whole of the first three
parts of the book. The profound concept of "personality,"
as developed in The Urantia Book, is quite different from the
customary loose usage of the word. It appears on more than 1000
occasions in the book, 86 percent being found in Parts 1-3. The
abbreviated quotations given below may shed some light on the
importance and meaning of the book's "personality" concept
while, at the same time, illustrating the remarkable consistency of
its usage--despite the fact that many individual authors were
involved in the writing of the Urantia Papers.
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