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Life as Process
Physical 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.
It 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.
Persons 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."
But 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.
In the human organism the summation of its parts constitutes selfhood--individuality--but such a process has nothing to do with personality, which is the unifier of all these factors as related to cosmic realities.
In the human system it is the personality which unifies all activities and in turn imparts the qualities of identity and creativity.
The Self
In 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.
The possession of personality identifies man as a spiritual being since the unity of selfhood and the self-consciousness of personality are endowments of the super-material world.
As 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.
In 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.
In time, thinking leads to wisdom and wisdom leads to worship; in eternity, worship leads to wisdom, and wisdom eventuates in the finality of thought.
The 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 over-control, the supreme ideas, the supreme motives, the supreme goals, and the indwelling divine spirit of the Father bestowal--the secret of the self-consciousness of man's spiritual nature.
The 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 this planet, 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 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 is effected by the sincerity, persistence, and steadfastness of the God-seeking decisions of the human creature.
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