Personality Survival

112:2.1It would be help­ful in the study of self­hood to re­mem­ber:

112:2.21. That phys­i­cal sys­tems are sub­or­di­nate.

112:2.32. That in­tel­lec­tual sys­tems are co-or­di­nate.

112:2.43. That per­son­al­ity is super­or­di­nate.

112:2.54. That the in­dwelling spir­i­tual force is po­ten­tially di­rec­tive.

112:2.6In all con­cepts of self­hood it should be rec­og­nized that the fact of life comes first, its eval­u­a­tion or in­ter­pre­ta­tion later. The hu­man child first lives and sub­se­quently thinks about his liv­ing. In the cos­mic econ­omy in­sight pre­cedes fore­sight.

112:2.7The uni­verse fact of God’s be­com­ing man has for­ever changed all mean­ings and al­tered all val­ues of hu­man per­son­al­ity. In the true mean­ing of the word, love con­notes mu­tual re­gard of whole per­son­al­i­ties, whether hu­man or di­vine or hu­man and di­vine. Parts of the self may func­tion in nu­mer­ous ways—think­ing, feel­ing, wish­ing—but only the co-or­di­nated at­tri­butes of the whole per­son­al­ity are fo­cused in in­tel­li­gent ac­tion; and all of these pow­ers are as­so­ci­ated with the spir­i­tual en­dow­ment of the mor­tal mind when a hu­man be­ing sin­cerely and un­selfishly loves an­other be­ing, hu­man or di­vine.

112:2.8All mor­tal con­cepts of re­al­ity are based on the as­sump­tion of the ac­tu­al­ity of hu­man per­son­al­ity; all con­cepts of super­hu­man re­al­i­ties are based on the ex­pe­ri­ence of the hu­man per­son­al­ity with and in the cos­mic re­al­i­ties of cer­tain as­so­ci­ated spir­i­tual en­ti­ties and di­vine per­son­al­i­ties. Ev­ery­thing non­spir­i­tual in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­cept­ing per­son­al­ity, is a means to an end. Ev­ery true re­la­tion­ship of mor­tal man with other per­sons—hu­man or di­vine—is an end in it­self. And such fel­low­ship with the per­son­al­ity of De­ity is the eter­nal goal of uni­verse as­cen­sion.

112:2.9The pos­ses­sion of per­son­al­ity iden­ti­fies man as a spir­i­tual be­ing since the unity of self­hood and the self-con­scious­ness of per­son­al­ity are en­dow­ments of the super­ma­te­rial world. The very fact that a mor­tal ma­te­ri­al­ist can deny the ex­is­tence of super­ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties in and of it­self demon­strates the pres­ence, and in­di­cates the work­ing, of spirit syn­the­sis and cos­mic con­scious­ness in his hu­man mind.

112:2.10There ex­ists a great cos­mic gulf be­tween mat­ter and thought, and this gulf is im­mea­sur­ably greater be­tween ma­te­rial mind and spir­i­tual love. Con­scious­ness, much less self-con­scious­ness, can­not be ex­plained by any the­ory of mech­a­nis­tic elec­tronic as­so­ci­a­tion or ma­te­ri­al­is­tic en­ergy phe­nom­ena.

112:2.11As mind pur­sues re­al­ity to its ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, mat­ter van­ishes to the ma­te­rial senses but may still re­main real to mind. When spir­i­tual in­sight pur­sues that re­al­ity which re­mains af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of mat­ter and pur­sues it to an ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, it van­ishes to mind, but the in­sight of spirit can still per­ceive cos­mic re­al­i­ties and su­preme val­ues of a spir­i­tual na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly does sci­ence give way to phi­los­o­phy, while phi­los­o­phy must sur­ren­der to the con­clu­sions in­her­ent in gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Think­ing sur­ren­ders to wis­dom, and wis­dom is lost in en­light­ened and re­flec­tive wor­ship.

112:2.12In sci­ence the hu­man self ob­serves the ma­te­rial world; phi­los­o­phy is the ob­ser­va­tion of this ob­ser­va­tion of the ma­te­rial world; re­li­gion, true spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, is the ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­iza­tion of the cos­mic re­al­ity of the ob­ser­va­tion of the ob­ser­va­tion of all this rel­a­tive syn­the­sis of the en­ergy ma­te­ri­als of time and space. To build a phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse on an ex­clu­sive ma­te­ri­al­ism is to ig­nore the fact that all things ma­te­rial are ini­tially con­ceived as real in the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man con­scious­ness. The ob­server can­not be the thing ob­served; eval­u­a­tion de­mands some de­gree of tran­scen­dence of the thing which is eval­u­ated.

112:2.13In time, think­ing leads to wis­dom and wis­dom leads to wor­ship; in eter­nity, wor­ship leads to wis­dom, and wis­dom even­tu­ates in the fi­nal­ity of thought.

112:2.14The pos­si­bil­ity of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the evolv­ing self is in­her­ent in the qual­i­ties of its con­sti­tu­tive fac­tors: the ba­sic en­er­gies, the mas­ter tis­sues, the fun­da­men­tal chem­i­cal over­con­trol, the su­preme ideas, the su­preme mo­tives, the su­preme goals, and the di­vine spirit of Par­a­dise be­stowal—the se­cret of the self-con­scious­ness of man’s spir­i­tual na­ture.

112:2.15The pur­pose of cos­mic evo­lu­tion is to achieve unity of per­son­al­ity through in­creas­ing spirit dom­i­nance, vo­li­tional re­sponse to the teach­ing and lead­ing of the Thought Ad­juster. Per­son­al­ity, both hu­man and super­hu­man, is char­ac­ter­ized by an in­her­ent cos­mic qual­ity which may be called “the evo­lu­tion of dom­i­nance,” the ex­pan­sion of the con­trol of both it­self and its en­vi­ron­ment.

112:2.16An as­cend­ing one­time hu­man per­son­al­ity passes through two great phases of in­creas­ing vo­li­tional dom­i­nance over the self and in the uni­verse:

112:2.171. The pre­fi­naliter or God-seek­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of aug­ment­ing the self-re­al­iza­tion through a tech­nique of iden­tity ex­pan­sion and ac­tu­al­iza­tion to­gether with cos­mic prob­lem solv­ing and con­se­quent uni­verse mas­tery.

112:2.182. The post­fi­naliter or God-re­veal­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the cre­ative ex­pan­sion of self-re­al­iza­tion through re­veal­ing the Su­preme Be­ing of ex­pe­ri­ence to the God-seek­ing in­tel­li­gences who have not yet at­tained the di­vine lev­els of God­like­ness.

112:2.19De­scend­ing per­son­al­i­ties at­tain anal­o­gous ex­pe­ri­ences through their var­i­ous uni­verse ad­ven­tures as they seek for en­larged ca­pac­ity for as­cer­tain­ing and ex­e­cut­ing the di­vine wills of the Su­preme, Ul­ti­mate, and Ab­so­lute De­i­ties.

112:2.20The ma­te­rial self, the ego-en­tity of hu­man iden­tity, is de­pen­dent dur­ing the phys­i­cal life on the con­tin­u­ing func­tion of the ma­te­rial life ve­hi­cle, on the con­tin­ued ex­is­tence of the un­bal­anced equi­lib­rium of en­er­gies and in­tel­lect which, on Uran­tia, has been given the name life. But self­hood of sur­vival value, self­hood that can tran­scend the ex­pe­ri­ence of death, is only evolved by es­tab­lish­ing a po­ten­tial trans­fer of the seat of the iden­tity of the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity from the tran­sient life ve­hi­cle—the ma­te­rial body—to the more en­dur­ing and im­mor­tal na­ture of the mor­ontia soul and on be­yond to those lev­els whereon the soul be­comes in­fused with, and even­tu­ally at­tains the sta­tus of, spirit re­al­ity. This ac­tual trans­fer from ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tion to mor­ontia iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is ef­fected by the sin­cer­ity, per­sis­tence, and stead­fast­ness of the God-seek­ing de­ci­sions of the hu­man crea­ture.