The Urantia Book

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identity

14 paragraphs · about 5 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under identity, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

0:5.4All subin­fi­nite or­ders and phases of per­son­al­ity are as­so­cia­tive at­tain­ables and are po­ten­tially co­cre­a­tional. The preper­sonal, the per­sonal, and the super­per­sonal are all linked to­gether by mu­tual po­ten­tial of co-or­di­nate at­tain­ment, pro­gres­sive achieve­ment, and co­cre­a­tional ca­pac­ity. But never does the im­per­sonal di­rectly trans­mute to the per­sonal. Per­son­al­ity is never spon­ta­neous; it is the gift of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Per­son­al­ity is super­im­posed upon en­ergy, and it is as­so­ci­ated only with liv­ing en­ergy sys­tems; iden­tity can be as­so­ci­ated with non­liv­ing en­ergy pat­terns.

6:6.2Spirit is ever con­scious, minded, and pos­sessed of var­ied phases of iden­tity. With­out mind in some phase there would be no spir­i­tual con­scious­ness in the fra­ter­nity of spirit be­ings. The equiv­a­lent of mind, the abil­ity to know and be known, is in­dige­nous to De­ity. De­ity may be per­sonal, preper­sonal, super­per­sonal, or im­per­sonal, but De­ity is never mind­less, that is, never with­out the abil­ity at least to com­mu­ni­cate with sim­i­lar en­ti­ties, be­ings, or per­son­al­i­ties.

12:8.16The brighter the shin­ing of the spir­i­tu­al­ized per­son­al­ity (the Fa­ther in the uni­verse, the frag­ment of po­ten­tial spirit per­son­al­ity in the in­di­vid­ual crea­ture), the greater the shadow cast by the in­ter­ven­ing mind upon its ma­te­rial in­vest­ment. In time, man’s body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (iden­tity) and spirit sur­vive while the body does not. A cos­mic re­al­ity can be nonex­is­tent in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence. And so your Greek fig­ure of speech—the ma­te­rial as the shadow of the more real spirit sub­stance—does have a philo­sophic sig­nif­i­cance.

12:9.6Mor­tal man has a spirit nu­cleus. The mind is a per­sonal-en­ergy sys­tem ex­ist­ing around a di­vine spirit nu­cleus and func­tion­ing in a ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment. Such a liv­ing re­la­tion­ship of per­sonal mind and spirit con­sti­tutes the uni­verse po­ten­tial of eter­nal per­son­al­ity. Real trou­ble, last­ing dis­ap­point­ment, se­ri­ous de­feat, or in­es­cap­able death can come only af­ter self-con­cepts pre­sume fully to dis­place the gov­ern­ing power of the cen­tral spirit nu­cleus, thereby dis­rupt­ing the cos­mic scheme of per­son­al­ity iden­tity.

16:9.3If mor­tal man fails to sur­vive nat­u­ral death, the real spir­i­tual val­ues of his hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence sur­vive as a part of the con­tin­u­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the Thought Ad­juster. The per­son­al­ity val­ues of such a non­sur­vivor per­sist as a fac­tor in the per­son­al­ity of the ac­tu­al­iz­ing Su­preme Be­ing. Such per­sist­ing qual­i­ties of per­son­al­ity are de­prived of iden­tity but not of ex­pe­ri­en­tial val­ues ac­cu­mu­lated dur­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh. 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.

27:1.4You en­ter the rest on the fi­nal Ha­vona cir­cuit and are eter­nally res­ur­rected on Par­a­dise. And as you there spir­i­tu­ally reper­son­al­ize, you will im­me­di­ately rec­og­nize the in­sti­ga­tor of rest who wel­comes you to the eter­nal shores as the very pri­mary super­na­phim who pro­duced the fi­nal sleep on the in­ner­most cir­cuit of Ha­vona; and you will re­call the last grand stretch of faith as you once again made ready to com­mend the keep­ing of your iden­tity into the hands of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

40:9.6When a Spirit-fused mor­tal is told about the events of the un­re­mem­bered past ex­pe­ri­ence, there is an im­me­di­ate re­sponse of ex­pe­ri­en­tial rec­og­ni­tion within the soul (iden­tity) of such a sur­vivor which in­stantly in­vests the nar­rated event with the emo­tional tinge of re­al­ity and with the in­tel­lec­tual qual­ity of fact; and this dual re­sponse con­sti­tutes the re­con­struc­tion, rec­og­ni­tion, and val­i­da­tion of an un­re­mem­bered facet of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

49:6.5The group guard­i­ans of as­sign­ment to the sleep­ing sur­vivors al­ways func­tion with the judg­ment Sons on their world ad­vents. “He shall send his an­gels, and they shall gather to­gether his elect from the four winds.” With each ser­a­phim of as­sign­ment to the reper­son­al­iza­tion of a sleep­ing mor­tal there func­tions the re­turned Ad­juster, the same im­mor­tal Fa­ther frag­ment that lived in him dur­ing the days in the flesh, and thus is iden­tity re­stored and per­son­al­ity res­ur­rected. Dur­ing the sleep of their sub­jects these wait­ing Ad­justers serve on Di­vin­ing­ton; they never in­dwell an­other mor­tal mind in this in­terim.

49:6.6–10 · five paragraphs not cited here ·

49:6.6While the older worlds of mor­tal ex­is­tence har­bor those highly de­vel­oped and ex­qui­sitely spir­i­tual types of hu­man be­ings who are vir­tu­ally ex­empt from the mor­ontia life, the ear­lier ages of the an­i­mal-ori­gin races are char­ac­ter­ized by prim­i­tive mor­tals who are so im­ma­ture that fu­sion with their Ad­justers is im­pos­si­ble. The reawak­en­ing of these mor­tals is ac­com­plished by the guard­ian ser­a­phim in con­junc­tion with an in­di­vid­u­al­ized por­tion of the im­mor­tal spirit of the Third Source and Cen­ter.

49:6.7Thus are the sleep­ing sur­vivors of a plan­e­tary age reper­son­al­ized in the dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls. But with re­gard to the non­salv­able per­son­al­i­ties of a realm, no im­mor­tal spirit is pres­ent to func­tion with the group guard­i­ans of des­tiny, and this con­sti­tutes ces­sa­tion of crea­ture ex­is­tence. While some of your rec­ords have pic­tured these events as tak­ing place on the plan­ets of mor­tal death, they all re­ally oc­cur on the man­sion worlds.

49:6.82. Mor­tals of the in­di­vid­ual or­ders of as­cen­sion. The in­di­vid­ual prog­ress of hu­man be­ings is mea­sured by their suc­ces­sive at­tain­ment and traver­sal (mas­tery) of the seven cos­mic cir­cles. These cir­cles of mor­tal pro­gres­sion are lev­els of as­so­ci­ated in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, spir­i­tual, and cos­mic-in­sight val­ues. Start­ing out in the sev­enth cir­cle, mor­tals strive for the first, and all who have at­tained the third im­me­di­ately have per­sonal guard­i­ans of des­tiny as­signed to them. These mor­tals may be reper­son­al­ized in the mor­ontia life in­de­pen­dent of dis­pen­sa­tional or other ad­ju­di­ca­tions.

49:6.9Through­out the ear­lier ages of an evo­lu­tion­ary world, few mor­tals go to judg­ment on the third day. But as the ages pass, more and more the per­sonal guard­i­ans of des­tiny are as­signed to the ad­vanc­ing mor­tals, and thus in­creas­ing num­bers of these evolv­ing crea­tures are reper­son­al­ized on the first man­sion world on the third day af­ter nat­u­ral death. On such oc­ca­sions the re­turn of the Ad­juster sig­nal­izes the awak­en­ing of the hu­man soul, and this is the reper­son­al­iza­tion of the dead just as lit­er­ally as when the en masse roll is called at the end of a dis­pen­sa­tion on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

49:6.10There are three groups of in­di­vid­ual as­cend­ers: The less ad­vanced land on the ini­tial or first man­sion world. The more ad­vanced group may take up the mor­ontia ca­reer on any of the in­ter­me­di­ate man­sion worlds in ac­cor­dance with pre­vi­ous plan­e­tary pro­gres­sion. The most ad­vanced of these or­ders re­ally be­gin their mor­ontia ex­pe­ri­ence on the sev­enth man­sion world.

49:6.113. Mor­tals of the pro­ba­tion­ary-de­pen­dent or­ders of as­cen­sion. The ar­rival of an Ad­juster con­sti­tutes iden­tity in the eyes of the uni­verse, and all in­dwelt be­ings are on the roll calls of jus­tice. But tem­po­ral life on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds is un­cer­tain, and many die in youth be­fore choos­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer. Such Ad­juster-in­dwelt chil­dren and youths fol­low the par­ent of most ad­vanced spir­i­tual sta­tus, thus go­ing to the sys­tem fi­nal­i­ter world (the pro­ba­tion­ary nurs­ery) on the third day, at a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, or at the reg­u­lar mil­len­nial and dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls.

112:5.3Mor­tal iden­tity is a tran­sient time-life con­di­tion in the uni­verse; it is real only in so far as the per­son­al­ity elects to be­come a con­tin­u­ing uni­verse phe­nom­e­non. This is the es­sen­tial dif­fer­ence be­tween man and an en­ergy sys­tem: The en­ergy sys­tem must con­tinue, it has no choice; but man has ev­ery­thing to do with de­ter­min­ing his own des­tiny. The Ad­juster is truly the path to Par­a­dise, but man him­self must pur­sue that path by his own de­cid­ing, his free­will choos­ing.

112:5.4Hu­man be­ings pos­sess iden­tity only in the ma­te­rial sense. Such qual­i­ties of the self are ex­pressed by the ma­te­rial mind as it func­tions in the en­ergy sys­tem of the in­tel­lect. When it is said that man has iden­tity, it is rec­og­nized that he is in pos­ses­sion of a mind cir­cuit which has been placed in sub­or­di­na­tion to the acts and choos­ing of the will of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. But this is a ma­te­rial and purely tem­po­rary man­i­fes­ta­tion, just as the hu­man em­bryo is a tran­sient par­a­sitic stage of hu­man life. Hu­man be­ings, from a cos­mic per­spec­tive, are born, live, and die in a rel­a­tive in­stant of time; they are not en­dur­ing. But mor­tal per­son­al­ity, through its own choos­ing, pos­sesses the power of trans­fer­ring its seat of iden­tity from the pass­ing ma­te­rial-in­tel­lect sys­tem to the higher mor­ontia-soul sys­tem which, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, is cre­ated as a new ve­hi­cle for per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion.

112:5.5–17 · 13 paragraphs not cited here ·

112:5.5And it is this very power of choice, the uni­verse in­signia of free­will crea­ture­hood, that con­sti­tutes man’s great­est op­por­tu­nity and his su­preme cos­mic re­spon­si­bil­ity. Upon the in­tegrity of the hu­man vo­li­tion de­pends the eter­nal des­tiny of the fu­ture fi­nal­i­ter; upon the sin­cer­ity of the mor­tal free will the di­vine Ad­juster de­pends for eter­nal per­son­al­ity; upon the faith­ful­ness of mor­tal choice the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther de­pends for the re­al­iza­tion of a new as­cend­ing son; upon the stead­fast­ness and wis­dom of de­ci­sion-ac­tions the Su­preme Be­ing de­pends for the ac­tu­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­en­tial evo­lu­tion.

112:5.6Though the cos­mic cir­cles of per­son­al­ity growth must even­tu­ally be at­tained, if, through no fault of your own, the ac­ci­dents of time and the hand­i­caps of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence pre­vent your mas­ter­ing these lev­els on your na­tive planet, if your in­ten­tions and de­sires are of sur­vival value, there are is­sued the de­crees of pro­ba­tion ex­ten­sion. You will be af­forded ad­di­tional time in which to prove your­self.

112:5.7If ever there is doubt as to the ad­vis­abil­ity of ad­vanc­ing a hu­man iden­tity to the man­sion worlds, the uni­verse gov­ern­ments in­vari­ably rule in the per­sonal in­ter­ests of that in­di­vid­ual; they un­hesi­tat­ingly ad­vance such a soul to the sta­tus of a tran­si­tional be­ing, while they con­tinue their ob­ser­va­tions of the emerg­ing mor­ontia in­tent and spir­i­tual pur­pose. Thus di­vine jus­tice is cer­tain of achieve­ment, and di­vine mercy is ac­corded fur­ther op­por­tu­nity for ex­tend­ing its min­istry.

112:5.8The gov­ern­ments of Or­von­ton and Neb­a­don do not claim ab­so­lute per­fec­tion for the de­tail work­ing of the uni­ver­sal plan of mor­tal reper­son­al­iza­tion, but they do claim to, and ac­tu­ally do, man­i­fest pa­tience, tol­er­ance, un­der­stand­ing, and mer­ci­ful sym­pa­thy. We had rather as­sume the risk of a sys­tem re­bel­lion than to court the haz­ard of de­priv­ing one strug­gling mor­tal from any evo­lu­tion­ary world of the eter­nal joy of pur­su­ing the as­cend­ing ca­reer.

112:5.9This does not mean that hu­man be­ings are to en­joy a sec­ond op­por­tu­nity in the face of the re­jec­tion of a first, not at all. But it does sig­nify that all will crea­tures are to ex­pe­ri­ence one true op­por­tu­nity to make one un­doubted, self-con­scious, and fi­nal choice. The sov­er­eign Judges of the uni­verses will not de­prive any be­ing of per­son­al­ity sta­tus who has not fi­nally and fully made the eter­nal choice; the soul of man must and will be given full and am­ple op­por­tu­nity to re­veal its true in­tent and real pur­pose.

112:5.10When the more spir­i­tu­ally and cos­mi­cally ad­vanced mor­tals die, they pro­ceed im­me­di­ately to the man­sion worlds; in gen­eral, this pro­vi­sion op­er­ates with those who have had as­signed to them per­sonal se­raphic guard­i­ans. Other mor­tals may be de­tained un­til such time as the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of their af­fairs has been com­pleted, af­ter which they may pro­ceed to the man­sion worlds, or they may be as­signed to the ranks of the sleep­ing sur­vivors who will be reper­son­al­ized en masse at the end of the cur­rent plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion.

112:5.11There are two dif­fi­cul­ties that ham­per my ef­forts to ex­plain just what hap­pens to you in death, the sur­viv­ing you which is dis­tinct from the de­part­ing Ad­juster. One of these con­sists in the im­pos­si­bil­ity of con­vey­ing to your level of com­pre­hen­sion an ad­e­quate de­scrip­tion of a trans­ac­tion on the bor­der­land of the phys­i­cal and mor­ontia realms. The other is brought about by the re­stric­tions placed upon my com­mis­sion as a rev­e­la­tor of truth by the ce­les­tial gov­ern­ing au­thor­i­ties of Uran­tia. There are many in­ter­est­ing de­tails which might be pre­sented, but I with­hold them upon the ad­vice of your im­me­di­ate plan­e­tary super­vi­sors. But within the lim­its of my per­mis­sion I can say this much:

112:5.12There is some­thing real, some­thing of hu­man evo­lu­tion, some­thing ad­di­tional to the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor, which sur­vives death. This newly ap­pear­ing en­tity is the soul, and it sur­vives the death of both your phys­i­cal body and your ma­te­rial mind. This en­tity is the con­joint child of the com­bined life and ef­forts of the hu­man you in li­ai­son with the di­vine you, the Ad­juster. This child of hu­man and di­vine parent­age con­sti­tutes the sur­viv­ing el­e­ment of ter­res­trial ori­gin; it is the mor­ontia self, the im­mor­tal soul.

112:5.13This child of per­sist­ing mean­ing and sur­viv­ing value is wholly un­con­scious dur­ing the pe­riod from death to reper­son­al­iza­tion and is in the keep­ing of the se­raphic des­tiny guard­ian through­out this sea­son of wait­ing. You will not func­tion as a con­scious be­ing, fol­low­ing death, un­til you at­tain the new con­scious­ness of mor­ontia on the man­sion worlds of Sa­ta­nia.

112:5.14At death the func­tional iden­tity as­so­ci­ated with the hu­man per­son­al­ity is dis­rupted through the ces­sa­tion of vi­tal mo­tion. Hu­man per­son­al­ity, while tran­scend­ing its con­stituent parts, is de­pen­dent on them for func­tional iden­tity. The stop­page of life de­stroys the phys­i­cal brain pat­terns for mind en­dow­ment, and the dis­rup­tion of mind ter­mi­nates mor­tal con­scious­ness. The con­scious­ness of that crea­ture can­not sub­se­quently reap­pear un­til a cos­mic sit­u­a­tion has been ar­ranged which will per­mit the same hu­man per­son­al­ity again to func­tion in re­la­tion­ship with liv­ing en­ergy.

112:5.15Dur­ing the tran­sit of sur­viv­ing mor­tals from the world of ori­gin to the man­sion worlds, whether they ex­pe­ri­ence per­son­al­ity re­assem­bly on the third pe­riod or as­cend at the time of a group res­ur­rec­tion, the rec­ord of per­son­al­ity con­sti­tu­tion is faith­fully pre­served by the arch­an­gels on their worlds of spe­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. These be­ings are not the cus­to­di­ans of per­son­al­ity (as the guard­ian ser­a­phim are of the soul), but it is nonethe­less true that ev­ery iden­ti­fi­able fac­tor of per­son­al­ity is ef­fec­tu­ally safe­guarded in the cus­tody of these de­pend­able trustees of mor­tal sur­vival. As to the ex­act where­abouts of mor­tal per­son­al­ity dur­ing the time in­ter­ven­ing be­tween death and sur­vival, we do not know.

112:5.16The sit­u­a­tion which makes reper­son­al­iza­tion pos­si­ble is brought about in the res­ur­rec­tion halls of the mor­ontia re­ceiv­ing plan­ets of a lo­cal uni­verse. Here in these life-as­sem­bly cham­bers the super­vis­ing au­thor­i­ties pro­vide that re­la­tion­ship of uni­verse en­ergy—mor­ontial, mindal, and spir­i­tual—which makes pos­si­ble the re­con­sciou­siz­ing of the sleep­ing sur­vivor. The re­assem­bly of the con­stituent parts of a one­time ma­te­rial per­son­al­ity in­volves:

112:5.171. The fab­ri­ca­tion of a suit­able form, a mor­ontia en­ergy pat­tern, in which the new sur­vivor can make con­tact with non­spir­i­tual re­al­ity, and within which the mor­ontia vari­ant of the cos­mic mind can be en­cir­cuited.

112:5.182. The re­turn of the Ad­juster to the wait­ing mor­ontia crea­ture. The Ad­juster is the eter­nal cus­to­dian of your as­cend­ing iden­tity; your Mon­i­tor is the ab­so­lute as­sur­ance that you your­self and not an­other will oc­cupy the mor­ontia form cre­ated for your per­son­al­ity awak­en­ing. And the Ad­juster will be pres­ent at your per­son­al­ity re­assem­bly to take up once more the role of Par­a­dise guide to your sur­viv­ing self.

112:5.193. When these pre­req­ui­sites of reper­son­al­iza­tion have been as­sem­bled, the se­raphic cus­to­dian of the po­ten­tial­i­ties of the slum­ber­ing im­mor­tal soul, with the as­sis­tance of nu­mer­ous cos­mic per­son­al­i­ties, be­stows this mor­ontia en­tity upon and in the await­ing mor­ontia mind-body form while com­mit­ting this evo­lu­tion­ary child of the Su­preme to eter­nal as­so­ci­a­tion with the wait­ing Ad­juster. And this com­pletes the reper­son­al­iza­tion, re­assem­bly of mem­ory, in­sight, and con­scious­ness—iden­tity.

117:5.5Man does not unite with the Su­preme and sub­merge his per­sonal iden­tity, but the uni­verse reper­cus­sions of the ex­pe­ri­ence of all men do thus form a part of the di­vine ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of the Su­preme. “The act is ours, the con­se­quences God’s.”

Onward

See also personality

Cited alongside: Thought Adjusters, personality, mortal mind, resurrection, survival (of mortal death), resurrection halls, death