Personality and Will:
Increasing Personal Mastery of the Inner and Outer Worlds
by David N. Elders
At some unimaginable level of reality, God is alone in the universe. There is none other beside him. But inherent IN God is the potential for the manifestation of differential forms of his existence. By the simple choosing of his unfettered and absolutely free will, God gives life to an infinity of unified, yet diverse, expressions of his being: potential and actual, personal and nonpersonal, finite and infinite, material, mindal, and spiritual. This is not a linear occurrence. This process is an inherent part of God and simply is always.
One consequence of this eternal process of God's self-existence is the qualification of a segment of God's infinity into an expression bounded by time and space, limited to the experience of his material, mindal, and spiritual realities, and unified by personalitya four-dimensional expression of God in the finite, that is, "in finity." Called by some, "Supreme," it all takes place in a space called the Grand Universe.
What is this place called the Grand Universe? What is its purpose? Who knows that they live here? In whom does its value reside? Which thoughts are thought here? What matters here? These are some of the questions of the four dimensions.
God looks from an infinite distance into a Grand Universe mirror which is framed by time and space. In it he sees a reflection of himself, a reflection though not infinite and absolute, yet still reflective of the essence of his existence. As he moves closer to the mirror, he knows in it the fullness of those aspects of his being which can be expressed in such a mirror. Closer yet, he chooses to experience those aspects of his being which have been selected to interact for a time in such a space. Closer still to the mirror God sees himself as many sons, per-sonsa reflection of himself through each of whom he is expressed uniquely and from each of whose unique perspective he is known as God. At the end of time and throughout this space, each son recognizes his Father and once again, as always, God is aloneand yet accompanied by an infinite number of sons who are a part of his personal presence and who share his will, the very same will which gives these sons their lives.
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"God is personality." (*28) "Personality is the exclusive gift of [NOT FROM] the Universal Father." (*77) Could it be that even though each one of us is not God, that God is--LITERALLY--each one of us? I AM Dave; I AM Steve; I AM Berkeley; I AM Melissa; I AM Marta.
"Mortal man is more than figuratively made in the image of God. From a physical standpoint this statement is hardly true, but with reference to certain universe potentialities it is an actual fact. In the human race, something of the same drama of evolutionary attainment is being unfolded as takes place, on a vastly larger scale, in the universe of universes. Man, a volitional personality, becomes creative in liaison with an Adjuster, an impersonal entity, in the presence of the finite potentialities of the Supreme, and the result is the flowering of an immortal soul. In the universes the Creator personalities of time and space function in liaison with the impersonal spirit of the Paradise Trinity and become thereby creative of a new power potential of Deity reality." (*1281) Is the willful choice we make to do God's will a literal part of that same will which separated the evolutionary finite from God's infinity and will cause the final actualization of its potentials?
"Man attains divine union by progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, by personality intercourse with the personal God, by increasingly attaining the divine nature through wholehearted and intelligent conformity to the divine will. Such a sublime relationship can only exist between personalities." (*31) Does not divine union with God imply the final mastery of those aspects of the divine nature which we experience in time and space?
"The progressing personality leaves a trail of actualized reality as it passes through the ascending levels of the universes. Be they mind, spirit, or energy, the growing creations of time and space are modified by the progression of personality through their domains. When man acts, the Supreme reacts, and this transaction constitutes the fact of progression." (*1286) Does not true mastery of the inner and outer worlds take place as each per-son-ality allows the gifts of God to be realized in self-consciousness, that is, as the growth of the soul?
"The Supreme is God-in-time; his is the secret of creature growth in time; his also is the conquest of the incomplete present and the consummation of the perfecting future. And the final fruits of all finite growth are: power controlled through mind by spirit by virtue of the unifying and creative presence of personality. The culminating consequence of all this growth is the Supreme Being." (*1280) When God looks in his mirror, does he actually see evolution in time, or is the self he sees reflected in the already-complete Supreme?
"Man, the civilized, will someday achieve the relative mastery of the physical forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be effectively outpoured as love for his fellow men, while the values of human existence will be nearing the limits of mortal capacity." (*1306) Is it not through the choosing of a relatively free-will personality that this mastery takes place and the true potentials gifted by the Father have therefore and thereby been fully actualized in human experience?
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One day in time a birth takes place. A new child is born to finite, material parents. Soon the child, vaguely aware that she's not the creatures around her, sees her reflection in a mirror. Her immature vision stops at the mirror's edge and she sees her body and believes that's who she is. As she grows tall and strong, she moves closer to the mirror to see herself more deeply. Though her eyes see the image reflected, her thoughts and feelings tell her more about her self, and she comes to believe that what she thinks and feels is who she is. But a quiet voice within her adjusts her vision so that she can look deeper still into the mirror of her mind. She doesn't know it yet, but she seeks the Father in whose image she is made. She seeks the existence of her source and the source of her existence. She seeks God. And as her knowing sharpens and her inward sight focuses, she moves closer still to the mirror and in finality finds God's face looking at her and she recognizes it as her own. She is one of the sons God sees reflected in his Grand Universe mirror in finity.
Even now, as always, in response to existential choice the vaults of God's reality, though not asleep, awaken to mirror God's reflection. The Supreme, the living mirror which reflects the selves of God in finity, the universal grand in which is shown the strains of conscious self and sonship, begins its soul-filled symphony of light. Toward God, Supremacy reflects the finished fusion of a multiplicity of sons. Toward sons, Supremacy reflects a single face, the personality of God. Each son can see this fact of God as a reflection of her own; and God can see each face he sees as a reflection of his own. Supremacy is the looking glass in which potential actuals are fused into an infinite visage by the unity of will--the will of God above and the wills of God below.
And the existential unified diversity of God's eternal self-existence is, as always, one.
A service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship