Personality Survival

112:1.1Per­son­al­ity is be­stowed by the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther upon his crea­tures as a po­ten­tially eter­nal en­dow­ment. Such a di­vine gift is de­signed to func­tion on nu­mer­ous lev­els and in suc­ces­sive uni­verse sit­u­a­tions rang­ing from the lowly fi­nite to the high­est ab­so­nite, even to the bor­ders of the ab­so­lute. Per­son­al­ity thus per­forms on three cos­mic planes or in three uni­verse phases:

112:1.21. Po­si­tion sta­tus. Per­son­al­ity func­tions equally ef­fi­ciently in the lo­cal uni­verse, in the super­uni­verse, and in the cen­tral uni­verse.

112:1.32. Mean­ing sta­tus. Per­son­al­ity per­forms ef­fec­tively on the lev­els of the fi­nite, the ab­so­nite, and even as im­ping­ing upon the ab­so­lute.

112:1.43. Value sta­tus. Per­son­al­ity can be ex­pe­ri­en­tially re­al­ized in the pro­gres­sive realms of the ma­te­rial, the mor­ontial, and the spir­i­tual.

112:1.5Per­son­al­ity has a per­fected range of cos­mic di­men­sional per­for­mance. The di­men­sions of fi­nite per­son­al­ity are three, and they are roughly func­tional as fol­lows:

112:1.61. Length rep­re­sents di­rec­tion and na­ture of pro­gres­sion—move­ment through space and ac­cord­ing to time—evo­lu­tion.

112:1.72. Ver­ti­cal depth em­braces the or­gan­is­mal drives and at­ti­tudes, the vary­ing lev­els of self-re­al­iza­tion and the gen­eral phe­nom­e­non of re­ac­tion to en­vi­ron­ment.

112:1.83. Breadth em­braces the do­main of co-or­di­na­tion, as­so­ci­a­tion, and self­hood or­ga­ni­za­tion.

112:1.9The type of per­son­al­ity be­stowed upon Uran­tia mor­tals has a po­ten­tial­ity of seven di­men­sions of self-ex­pres­sion or per­son-re­al­iza­tion. These di­men­sional phe­nom­ena are re­al­iz­able as three on the fi­nite level, three on the ab­so­nite level, and one on the ab­so­lute level. On sub­ab­so­lute lev­els this sev­enth or to­tal­ity di­men­sion is ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble as the fact of per­son­al­ity. This su­preme di­men­sion is an as­so­cia­ble ab­so­lute and, while not in­fi­nite, is di­men­sion­ally po­ten­tial for subin­fi­nite pen­e­tra­tion of the ab­so­lute.

112:1.10The fi­nite di­men­sions of per­son­al­ity have to do with cos­mic length, depth, and breadth. Length de­notes mean­ing; depth sig­ni­fies value; breadth em­braces in­sight—the ca­pac­ity to ex­pe­ri­ence un­chal­lenge­able con­scious­ness of cos­mic re­al­ity.

112:1.11On the mor­ontia level all of these fi­nite di­men­sions of the ma­te­rial level are greatly en­hanced, and cer­tain new di­men­sional val­ues are re­al­iz­able. All these en­larged di­men­sional ex­pe­ri­ences of the mor­ontia level are mar­velously ar­tic­u­lated with the su­preme or per­son­al­ity di­men­sion through the in­flu­ence of mota and also be­cause of the con­tri­bu­tion of mor­ontia math­e­mat­ics.

112:1.12Much trou­ble ex­pe­ri­enced by mor­tals in their study of hu­man per­son­al­ity could be avoided if the fi­nite crea­ture would re­mem­ber that di­men­sional lev­els and spir­i­tual lev­els are not co-or­di­nated in ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­son­al­ity re­al­iza­tion.

112:1.13Life is re­ally a pro­cess which takes place be­tween the or­gan­ism (self­hood) and its en­vi­ron­ment. The per­son­al­ity im­parts value of iden­tity and mean­ings of con­ti­nu­ity to this or­gan­is­mal-en­vi­ron­men­tal as­so­ci­a­tion. Thus it will be rec­og­nized that the phe­nom­e­non of stim­u­lus-re­sponse is not a mere me­chan­i­cal pro­cess since the per­son­al­ity func­tions as a fac­tor in the to­tal sit­u­a­tion. It is ever true that mech­a­nisms are in­nately pas­sive; or­gan­isms, in­her­ently ac­tive.

112:1.14Phys­i­cal life is a pro­cess tak­ing place not so much within the or­gan­ism as be­tween the or­gan­ism and the en­vi­ron­ment. And ev­ery such pro­cess tends to cre­ate and es­tab­lish or­gan­is­mal pat­terns of re­ac­tion to such an en­vi­ron­ment. And all such di­rec­tive pat­terns are highly in­flu­en­tial in goal choos­ing.

112:1.15It is through the me­di­a­tion of mind that the self and the en­vi­ron­ment es­tab­lish mean­ing­ful con­tact. The abil­ity and will­ing­ness of the or­gan­ism to make such sig­nif­i­cant con­tacts with en­vi­ron­ment (re­sponse to a drive) rep­re­sents the at­ti­tude of the whole per­son­al­ity.

112:1.16Per­son­al­ity can­not very well per­form in iso­la­tion. Man is in­nately a so­cial crea­ture; he is dom­i­nated by the crav­ing of be­long­ing­ness. It is lit­er­ally true, “No man lives unto him­self.”

112:1.17But the con­cept of the per­son­al­ity as the mean­ing of the whole of the liv­ing and func­tion­ing crea­ture means much more than the in­te­gra­tion of re­la­tion­ships; it sig­ni­fies the uni­fi­ca­tion of all fac­tors of re­al­ity as well as co-or­di­na­tion of re­la­tion­ships. Re­la­tion­ships ex­ist be­tween two ob­jects, but three or more ob­jects even­tu­ate a sys­tem, and such a sys­tem is much more than just an en­larged or com­plex re­la­tion­ship. This dis­tinc­tion is vi­tal, for in a cos­mic sys­tem the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers are not con­nected with each other ex­cept in re­la­tion to the whole and through the in­di­vid­u­al­ity of the whole.

112:1.18In the hu­man or­gan­ism the sum­ma­tion of its parts con­sti­tutes self­hood—in­di­vid­u­al­ity—but such a pro­cess has noth­ing what­ever to do with per­son­al­ity, which is the uni­fier of all these fac­tors as re­lated to cos­mic re­al­i­ties.

112:1.19In ag­gre­ga­tions parts are added; in sys­tems parts are ar­ranged. Sys­tems are sig­nif­i­cant be­cause of or­ga­ni­za­tion—po­si­tional val­ues. In a good sys­tem all fac­tors are in cos­mic po­si­tion. In a bad sys­tem some­thing is ei­ther miss­ing or dis­placed—de­ranged. In the hu­man sys­tem it is the per­son­al­ity which uni­fies all ac­tiv­i­ties and in turn im­parts the qual­i­ties of iden­tity and cre­ativ­ity.