Episode:Thought Adjusters—Selfhood, Death, and Survival (Part 5)

From Symmetry of Soul


The universe fact of of God’s becoming man has forever changed all meanings and altered all values of human personality. 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.

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Keywords: Urantia, Indwelling Spirit, Personality, Wisdom, Love

Note: Andrea Barnes filled in for Kermit this week, who was away.

Summary by Kermit

Commentary on last Week

We briefly discussed some of the caveats surrounding the premature or immature exercise of will. The takeaway from the discussion is to exercise humility and caution when eternalizing your thought forms, as there is nothing innately divine about them.

The discussion followed up a loose end from last week surrounding the foundational sentence concerning the manner by which relationships between individuals are accomplished cosmically.

“…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.” [112:1.17]

The four different gravities: material, mindal, spiritual, and personality are also referred to as circuits. Circuits include a conductor and that which is conducted. [0:5.1, p. 8] explains that personality is a level of deified reality, suggesting that Deity is the conductor for the personality circuit, or circuit of volition. Why do we say Mother Deity? [5:2.2, p.64] tells us that the Paradise Sons always have access to the presence of God, “the right hand of the Father”, and all of his creature personalities have access to the “bosom of the Father”, the personality circuit. Thus, technically, we are connected to the Father through the personality circuit—the bosom of the Father. This sounds distinctly maternal.

The question was asked, why Mother Deity is referred to in seemingly veiled terms, in contrast to Father Deity, which is referred to in definitive and explicit language? The Mother can begin to be appreciated in terms of her encompassing wholeness as opposed to the focal type location of the Father, or Michael. The truth of the Father can be discovered through analysis, while the truth of Mother Deity must be attained through synthesis. The process of discovering the Mother begins with an understanding of Deity in contrast with God (personalized Deity). Listen to the archive for some of the details of how the phrase, “In Him we live and move and have our being”, can be seen to refer to the wholeness of the Mother.


112:2. The Self

Here the material is still abstract but somewhat less so in that the self is more tangible than selfhood let alone personality. Remember that the self is a mindal fact, a construct of mind energy and activity. Selfhood conveys a relative completeness, a whole interactive context of the self. Elements of this context include material systems, which are subordinate, intellectual systems, which are coordinate, personality, which is superordinate, and the indwelling spirit force, which is potentially directive.

The material in this section speaks to a number of issues in evolutionary philosophy, which we did not address. Rather we discussed it from the standpoint of an interplay of Mother and Father Deity. Mother establishes the selfhood, and personality (from the Father) subsequently identifies with the selfhood to provide the superordinate perspective allowing you to have consciousness of self.

A caller suggested that the Father is being given short shrift compared to the Mother in our discussions. This led to a most edifying dialogue concerning an age-old theological issue, God as transcendent and God as immanent. Again, listen to the archive for pertinent details.

The universe fact of God’s becoming man has forever changed all meanings and altered all values of human personality. We explored the logic of this statement. With Michael’s completion of his seven bestowals, his creative liaison the Creative Mother Spirit becomes distinctly more personal and this individuality of the whole has contributed a significant upgrade to all relationships of the last two thousand years. And here our author attempts to move our understanding of the word love up the levels of meaning, from mere feelings to unselfish love.

The gift of personality, the superordinate vantage point above the subjectivity of the self enables mortals to conceptualize reality, the objective world external to the mindal self. Everything nonspiritual is a means to an end. Following this idea took us to the philosophic concept of the I AM. The I AM lacks relationship and so, for the universe to have true relationships, there must be true separation. True relationships of mortal man with other persons, human or divine are ends in themselves. This is well illustrated in our universe ascension, the goal of which is our fellowship with the personality of Deity.

Personality identifies man as a spiritual being, the unity of selfhood and self-consciousness of personality being endowments of the supermaterial world. The materialist’s denial of supermaterial realities betrays the presence of the higher functioning of spirit synthesis and cosmic consciousness in his mind. Complete immersion in subjective consciousness would never postulate a supermaterial realm.

The final paragraph of our reading is one of several passages that serve as a smackdown to philosophical materialism. The realm of chemistry and physics can never explain the phenomena of thought of love. Materialism gives no answers into the true nature of consciousness much less self-consciousness. And this cosmic gulf between matter and thought is immeasurably greater between material mind and spiritual love.