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Consistency in The Urantia Book: Personality.
From a paper by Jacques Dupont, Recloses, France
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.
bestowed by the Universal Father himself or by the Conjoint Actor, acting for the Father.(1225-3)
Personality (of mortal man) is neither body, mind, spirit; nor the soul. (9-1)
Personality is bestowed upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and survives with the survival of the morontial soul. (9-1)
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