Comments on the Nature of Personality

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What do you say we have a little full-dress discussion on personality? And see a bit about what the book says about it. Let's start out with page 1225.

Somewhere in these papers it says personality is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe of universes. So I think appropriately they say it would be presumptuous to attempt a definition of personality. But still, we can describe what personality does. We can tell what we know about it. I looked up personality in Webster. It's defined as, "the quality or state of being personal." It's a beautiful definition, isn't it?

It starts out by saying: "Personality is that quality in reality which is bestowed by the Universal Father himself or by the Conjoint Actor, acting for the Father." (238) Well, let's explore now and see what that means. Let's look over on page 106, just below the middle of the page. (239) It says, "The Father bestows personality by his personal free will."

Why he does so we can only conjecture; how he does so we do not know. "Neither do we know why the Third Source bestows non-Father personality, but this the Infinite Spirit does in his own behalf, in creative conjunction with the Eternal Son and in numerous ways unknown to you. The Infinite Spirit can also act for the Father in the bestowal of First Source personality." So that a being, who is in the Father's personality circuit, may have received this personality by the act of the Universal Father, or he may have received this personality by the act of the Infinite Spirit acting as attorney-in-fact for the Universal Father. That's what that statement means. Now let's take a little excursion. We hit something here that's intriguing.

There are two kinds of personalities. If it's a Father bestowed personality, it's called First Source personality. But there are Third Source personalities, beings who have free will, but are not in the Father's personality circuit. You see, the Infinite Spirit cannot only draw sight (can't understand word) drafts on the Father's account, but he can issue checks in his own name and right. And then these are Third Source personalities. And they're defined in here. They have subjective self-consciousness, but they do not objectively respond to the Father's personality circuit.

They may not be unqualifiedly personal to creature beings. But they are contactable. "All personality is contactable." "There are numerous types of Third Source personalities. The Infinite Spirit bestows Third Source personality upon numerous groups who are not included in the Father's personality circuit, such as certain of the power directors." I'm sure these power centers are volitionally intelligent beings. I know that the Associate Power Directors are personal beings in the Third Source sense.

Now, below that level, I don't think they have free will, in the Third Source sense.

1. "Personality is that quality in reality which is bestowed by the Universal Father himself or by the Conjoint Actor, acting for the Father." This discussion has to do with First Source personality. They're ignoring Third Source personality, because they're talking about us.

2. It may be bestowed upon any living energy system which includes mind or spirit." Now, let's think about that. The use of the word "or" means it could be bestowed upon a living energy system which was wholly non-spiritual. Well, let's see what the papers say about that.

In the second full paragraph on page 334, it says, "We may however state that there are no personalities of ‘pure mind’; no entity has personality unless he is endowed with it by God who is spirit. Any mind entity that is not associated with either spiritual or physical energy is not a personality." That's either, or. And then down at the bottom of the paragraph, "Certain other unrevealed creatures are what might be termed mindal- and physical-energy personalities. This type of being is nonresponsive to spirit gravity but is nonetheless a true personality–is within the Father's circuit." We know nothing of such beings. These beings could be moral beings, because morality's an attribute of personality. So we can say item 2 means you could have a being whose constituent components were physical and mindal. That could be a personal being.

You could have a being whose constituents were physical, mindal, and spiritual–as us–who could be a personal being. You could have a being consisting of an association of mind and spirit in varying percentages. Some, more mindal, with spirit. Others more spiritual, with mind. And these could be personal. Or you could have a being who was wholly spiritual, and this could be a personal being. Can we think of any being who is wholly spiritual and who is a personality? Yes. The Eternal Son. Stop and think. Neither the Father nor the Son have mind. Because there is no mind until you get to the Third Source and Center. No being antecedent to the Third Source and Center is minded, has mind as we understand mind. We'll come to this in a second.

Audience: Bill, can I interrupt you a second? The Father does not have mind?

Yes.

Audience: On page 365, there's a statement, "There is in the mind of God–"

They're using that figuratively.

Audience: Just using it figuratively? Ok.

Yes. A Thought Adjuster doesn't have mind, but a Thought Adjuster is minded. We'll come to this in just a minute.

3. Personality is "not wholly subject to the fetters of antecedent causation. It is relatively creative or cocreative."

Audience: That cocreative is so marvelous, I think.

Yes. With the Adjuster.

Page 70 (par.4) is what I was looking for:

"Personality is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universes. We are able to form adequate concepts of the factors entering into the make-up of various orders and levels of personality, but we do not fully comprehend the real nature of the personality itself." "Capacity for the divine personality is inherent in the pre-personal Adjuster. Capacity for human personality is potential in the cosmic mind endowment of the human being. But the experiential personality of the mortal man is not observable as an active and functional reality until after the material life vehicle of the mortal creature has been touched by the liberating divinity of the Universal Father. Being thus launched upon the seas of experience as a self-conscious and a relatively self-determinative and relatively self-creative personality. The material self is truly unqualifiedly personal."

It's that creativity that constitutes free will. Because out of this series of events a personality may, at any decision juncture, create something that is not wholly predictable by antecedent causation. He may react in some new way. Some non-predictable way. Or some only partially predictable way. Determinism is in the keyboard of the piano. The free will is exhibited when the musician, with those keys, produces the melodies which come from somewhere. That's creativity. And that's free will.

The musician cannot transcend the keyboard, but within the limits of that keyboard, what can't he do? We have twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and consider what William Shakespeare did with those twenty-six letters. That's creativity. And creativity–the very word creativity–implies freedom of action. Some degree of freedom from antecedent causation.

Audience: Within the limits of.

Yes. Right. Our good friend had only seven colors in a chromatic scale to work with, and what he could see. But there's creativity in that picture.

Within the limits of the canvas and the color, he had freedom to record his impressions. And no two artists would make the same recording. But two color cameras would take identical photographs. And there's the difference. Bud and I could set up two color cameras, take the picture, and the difference would be predictable in the nature of the camera and the nature of the film. But if he and I could both paint, we'd sit down, and we'd come out with two different pictures. And there's the difference. The camera has no freedom of choice.

4. "When bestowed upon evolutionary material creatures, it causes spirit to strive for the mastery of energy-matter through the mediation of mind." (246) And here we've come to one of the great fundamentals in these papers. In the time-space universes, energy-matter is dominant, save in personality, where spirit, through the mediation of mind is striving for the mastery. And I think that that principle explains a whole heck of a lot of what's going on out here in time and space. This is a reflection of the whole evolution of the Supreme Being on the Deity level, and of human progression–of the Paradise ascension on the human level.

Spirit can't touch matter. Mind can. And a personality can subordinate that mind which dominates matter to that spirit which must stabilize mind. That the personality can do by free will choice.

5. "Personality, while devoid of identity, can unify the identity of any living energy system." (247)

It dominates the system. It is the yellow of the material object we were talking about. It pervades the whole of that system. It's dependent on the living mechanism for expression, but it expresses itself by dominating the entire system. And again I would go back to the string and the beads. Personality takes an agglomeration of beads and produces a necklace. Personality patternizes such a system.

6. Personality "discloses only qualitative response to the personality circuit in contradistinction to the three energies which show both qualitative and quantitative response to gravity." And that's why the personality circuit is non-computable, as we observed in the paper over in the Universe of Universes. It's on page 133, paragraph 3: "Personality gravity is non-computable. We recognize the circuit, but we cannot measure either qualitative or quantitative realities responsive thereto." There is no mass to personality. But there is mass to mind. There's mass in matter. There's spiritual mass.

The drawing power of the Eternal Son apparently grows greater as we near Paradise, because we are becoming more spiritual, hence more massive at the spiritual level, and our mass is more responsive to spiritual gravity. But the Father's drawing power in the personality circuit is just as strong out here as it is anywhere. It's independent of distance, and there is no mass to vary."

7. "Personality is changeless in the presence of change." It points out that the personality never does change, and if it did, it wouldn't be you anymore. And the thing that does change is your growing soul.

8. Personality "can make a gift to God–dedication of the free will to the doing of the will of God." (250) And I think it's the only thing we can give God. The only possible gift. And actually, this is an expression of love, in the final analysis. If you really love God, holy Toledo, you want to do what he wants.

Audience: What wouldn't you do for him.

Why, sure. You want to do what he wants. This is no chore. This is a delightful and romantic adventure in living in an exciting way. This is no hair shirt that you wear, you know, in self-ostentatious righteousness. This is no manifestation of piosity. This may result in unconscious piety. Gee, whiz. Just imagine Jesus saying, when they called him good, "Why do you call me good?" This is real piety. He wasn't thinking about being good. He wasn't standing in front of the mirror of his mind, in self-admiration, saying, "Hmm. I'm really good!" You know?

9. Personality "is characterized by morality–awareness of relativity of relationship with other persons. It discerns conduct levels and choosingly discriminates between them." We can find something in the papers on that. Are you making notes of these? All right, start with page 191. And just put down ff, meaning the following pages–the whole rest of the paper.

This paper in here is the third full-dress discussion of personality in the papers.

"Intelligence alone cannot explain the moral nature. Morality, virtue, is indigenous to human personality. Moral intuition, the realization of duty, is a component of human mind endowment and is associated with the other inalienable of human nature; scientific curiosity and spiritual insight. Man's mentality far transcends that of his animal cousins, but it is his moral and religious natures that especially distinguish him from the animal world."

And then they point out the true nature of morality: that an animal discriminates, but he discriminates only means, whereas man can discriminate ends. And this moral capacity in human nature enables man to have prophetic vision. He can examine an end of a course of conduct, and he can respond to the stimulus of potential evil. He can choosingly discriminate a better course of conduct without actually involving himself in the evil of a less desirable course of conduct. It is because of this that actual evil does not have to appear in time and space. Potential evil must appear, but we can respond, we can take a look at a situation and say, "Not for me." We make our decision not based on traversing the route, but based on a prior examination of that route. We say, "too many detours."

Animals learn, ordinarily, only from leaping. Humans can learn from looking as well as from leaping. I'll cheerfully concede, most of us learn like the animals do–from leaping. But we could learn from looking. This paper goes on. It discusses Urantia personality.

Audience: Are you back on 1225?

No, I'm sticking on 194. This is a gold mine in here.

On 194, we tie in to statement 10.

"Personality is unique, absolutely unique: It is unique in time and space; it is unique in eternity and on Paradise; it is unique when bestowed– there are no duplicates; it is unique during every moment of existence; it is unique in relation to God–he is no respecter of persons, but neither does he add them together, for they are nonaddable–they are associable but non totalable."

Audience: Denying quantity but verifying quality?

Yes. That's right. Let's read over on page 194 what it says about that. Starting with paragraph 3,

"Personality is a unique endowment of original nature whose existence is independent of, and antecedent to, to bestowal of the Thought Adjuster. Nevertheless, the presence of the Adjuster does augment the qualitative manifestation of personality. Thought Adjusters, when they come forth from the Father, are identical in nature, but personality is diverse, original, and exclusive; and the manifestation of personality is further conditioned and qualified by the nature and qualities of the associated energies of a material, mindal, and spiritual nature which constitute the organismal vehicle for personality manifestation."

"Personalities may be similar, but they are never the same. Persons of a given series, type, order, or pattern may and do resemble one another, but they are never identical. Personality is that feature of an individual which we know, and which enables us to identify such a being at some future time regardless of the nature and extent of changes in form, mind, or spirit status. Personality is that part of any individual which enables us to recognize and positively identify that person as the one we have previously known, no matter how much he may have changed because of the modification of the vehicle of expression and manifestation of his personality."

Yellow is yellow. And no matter how he changes in shape, he's still the same hue. And it's the hue that we recognize as him. "The great challenge that has been given to mortal man is this–"

Audience: What page, Bill?

1284.

"The great challenge that has been given to mortal man is this: Will you decide to personalize the experiencible value meanings of the cosmos into your own evolving selfhood? or by rejecting survival, will you allow these secrets of Supremacy to lie dormant, awaiting the action of another creature at some other time who will in his way attempt a creature contribution to the evolution of the finite God? But that will be his contribution to the Supreme, not yours."

"The great struggle of this universe age is between the potential and the actual–the seeking for actualization by all that is as yet unexpressed. If mortal man proceeds upon the Paradise adventure, he is following the motions of time, which flow as currents within the stream of eternity; if mortal man rejects the eternal career, he is moving counter to the stream of events in the finite universes. The mechanical creation moves on inexorably in accordance with the unfolding purpose of the Paradise Father, but the volitional creation has the choice of accepting or of rejecting the role of personality participation in the adventure of eternity. Mortal man cannot destroy the supreme values of human existence, but he can very definitely prevent the evolution of these values in his own personal experience. To the extent that the human self thus refuses to take part in the Paradise ascent, to just that extent is the Supreme delayed in achieving divinity expression in the grand universe."

"Into the keeping of mortal man has been given not only the Adjuster presence of the Paradise Father but also control over the destiny of an infinitesimal fraction of the future of the Supreme. For as man attains human destiny, so does the Supreme achieve destiny on deity levels."

"And so the decision awaits each of you as it once awaited each of us: Will you fail the God of time who is so dependent upon the decisions of the finite mind?" This is cosmic morality. "Will you fail the Supreme personality of the universes by the slothfulness of animalistic retrogression? Will you fail the great brother of all creatures, who is so dependent on each creature? Can you allow yourself to pass into the realm of the unrealized when before you lies the enchanting vista of the universe career–the divine discovery of the Paradise Father and the divine participation in the search for, and the evolution of, the God of Supremacy?"

"God's gifts–his bestowal of reality–are not divorcements from himself; he does not alienate creation from himself, but he has set up tensions in the creations circling Paradise. God first loves man and confers upon him the potential of immortality–eternal reality. And as man loves God, so does man become eternal in actuality. And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality– actuality–of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly he approaches nonreality–cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father's will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is."

Audience: That's when he gets the spiritual strength to grow?

That's when you grow. Your soul grows. Then you become a little less animal, a little more human, and in time a little more spiritual. This is how man becomes a finaliter.

Audience: Isn't it the simple thesis of just how could anyone choose cessation?

I don't know.

Audience: I can't comprehend that at all. That seems–

I don't know. It's evidently possible.

Audience: There's evidently two choices, cessation or God's way. How in the world could anyone choose –

I'll tell you Julia, how it could be done. The thing can happen because of the slothfulness of animalistic retrogression. I don't think any human being ever would choose not to survive. But I think a human being might start a series of choices.

Audience: Just being slothful–

In each instance, choosing the easy way, the lower way, and eventually the cumulative effect of those choices would make it impossible for him to stop the momentum of choice.

Audience: Bill, in your early life, you were raised out of any church, right?

Yes.

Audience: Without any religious training whatsoever?

No. I had religious training. I got it from my mother. I know the sheiks of Israel.

Audience: OK.

The judges, pardon me. But there were sheiks.

Audience: I was going to say that if someone was raised without any religious training whatsoever, without any concept of a First Cause, or God, then they couldn't really make a choice, until they had the concept to choose– I don't know.

They've got a Thought Adjuster.

Audience: How about moral–?

I'll tell you this. The training which I had was Bible training, and it was at a very childish level. We never got into the Bible, per se. I had something called "Child's Book of the Bible." With wood cuts in it. And when I was 17, I was in the service, and I woke up to the fact that I was a real agnostic. The anthropomorphic picture I had of God was a quite (can't understand tape) version of my old man, king size, and just like the proofs that you get from a photographer, you know, the red ones? This thing had faded out imperceptibly so when I got the old picture out, it was blank. I never had any struggle.

My anthropomorphic God just faded on me. It was gone. I got interested in the whole idea listening to a debate in the barracks between a real sharp atheistic friend of mine and a fairly dumb Catholic. And the atheist won the debate. But I was very conscious of the fact that he won it because he was far more clever. He could twist the Catholic in knots. And my Catholic buddy blew his stack, and in a profane and vulgar way said that the priest could prove there was a God, and my atheist friend with equal profanity said he couldn't. And my Catholic friend, with still more profanity, allowed as how this could be arranged, and my atheist friend took him up, and I spoke for the first time. I said, "I want to come along."

Because it suddenly hit me that it was very important to listen to this debate. And that, of course, was a draw. I was very impressed with the fact that Jerry couldn't prove there wasn't a God. And old Father Murdock couldn't prove that there was. And I set about thinking. I used to have a girl in Georgetown. When I took her home, I had a lot of time to kill, because by that time I'd missed all the trains for Quantico. The next one was at 3:15 in the morning, and I used to go to a place which I now think of as my church. My church is the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. And I'd roll Bull Durham cigarettes.

I've sat there during cherry blossoms, and I've sat there when it was snowing, and I've sat there when it was darn hot, and darn cold. And I would meditate, looking at the Washington Monument, and the dome of the Capitol, and the moon, and the stars, and old Abe sitting up there in the shadow. And, somewhere along at that time, I came to the realization that there was a God.

I symbolized him in my thinking with a rather peculiar name. I called him the Great Source and Center. I put that in writing, so that I know I'm not reading that back into the thing. And I became just as certain about him as I am today. And that's before I read any of this blue book business. And this became a settled thing, like dried apples and rainwater, and you use bricks for construction on some buildings, and gravity, and two and two is four. I mean, this didn't strike me as being any particular unusual discovery. It was like suddenly realizing that you're breathing, you know? A very common thing. And a very finally settled thing.

You know, I've learned a lot about God since, but I've never been more certain about God since that time. I put it to you this way: If every human being I met told me this is wrong, I would suspect my sanity, but I would not doubt God. I would simply say, I guess I'm paranoid on this subject. But as I check over with my fellow men, I discover that there's a lot of people know God, in that sense. When God sends personality out here, he doesn't kick it out, he encircuits it. He encircuits it. I think this. When man worships God, when man worships God–and let's say that in a simpler, more understandable way–when man discovers his love for God– worship, to me, is synonymous with love. It is a special word which we use to express the love which a creature would have for a Creator.

If it isn't love, then I don't know anything about worship. This love seeks nothing, asks for nothing, simply is an outpouring of attitude. I think that goes over the personality circuit. I think this is how God knows his creatures love him. And this would apply to creatures who were not indwelt by Thought Adjusters, like an Adam, for example, or a seraphim, who are in the personality circuit centering in the Father. All moral creatures are in that circuit. Well, shall we go on with our inventory? "Personality responds directly to other-personality presence."

We were discussing that the other day when we hypothesized Bud and Betty up on the second mansion world. He's strolling down Glory and Hallelujah Blvd, and she's fishing in one of the streams, and all of a sudden he stops, and Betty looks up from her fishing. I'm sure that happens. I've got another theory. Have you ever been working all alone, in your study, perhaps, and suddenly the hairs get stiff on the back of your neck, and you have a feeling that you're not alone. And you look around and laugh, because you are alone? But then you weren't. Only maybe your personality is registering the presence of another personality, only that other personality doesn't have skin on him, see?

Now, I don't want to make a "thing" out of this, but I have a feeling that sometimes this feeling we get is for real. A personality did come near us, and the only equipment we've got that would register that is our own personality, and I think it registers. I think we tend to inhibit this. Let's say we know we're alone. This feeling tends to rise, and good common sense tells us there isn't anybody in the house, so we stifle it. That's a sophisticated response to that feeling. And we might as well be sophisticated, because if we get up and look, we aren't going to find anything. You know? I think this is how we know up on the mansion worlds. This is a sense which is attached to personality when it is operating a life vehicle.

Audience: Bill, they state in the papers that many, many people have made the third circle. When I first read it, I thought, nobody makes it, hardly, and then I went on and found out that many make it. And they have a guardian seraphim.

True.

Audience: There's personality.

True. But if it was there all the time, I don't think they would sense the arrival.

Audience: Is it there all the time?

I don't know. Oh, yes, I think so. There's two of them are there all the time. Because they've got two cherubim associated with them who can stand in when one of the seraphim has to–you know–stop to gas up. Well, we'll read on.

12. Personality "is the one thing which can be added to spirit, thus illustrating the primacy of the Father in relation to the Son. (Mind does not have to be added to spirit.)" And I'll add, thus illustrating the primacy of the Son in relation to the Conjoint Actor.

Spirit is always conscious, minded in some way. Because God, who is spirit, is always minded. But spirit is not necessarily personal, unless the Father bestows personality upon such a spirit. In other words, this goes back to our sequence story, the origin of Deity.

13. Here's the quote I was looking for and couldn't find. It's right here. "Personality may survive mortal death with identity in the surviving soul. The Adjuster and the personality are changeless; the relationship between them (in the soul) is nothing but change, continuing evolution; and if this change (growth) ceased, the soul would cease." The divinity of the Adjuster is changeless. The identity of the personality is changeless. And the relationship between them is nothing but change.

And then number 14 intrigues me very much. "Personality is uniquely conscious of time, and this is something other than the time perception of mind or spirit." Want to note down page 135? About the middle of the page, the text reads:

"There are three different levels of time cognizance:"

1. "Mind-perceived time–consciousness of sequence, motion, and a sense of duration."

Now, I think that's what we talk about when we speak of time-consciousness. Number 1.

2. "Spirit-perceived time–insight into motion Godward and the awareness of the motion of ascent to levels of increasing divinity."

I think an Adjuster has that kind of time- consciousness. But that's not what we call time-consciousness.

3. "Personality creates a unique time sense out of insight into Reality plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration." "Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt man has powers of pre-vision (insight); he may visualize the future. Only forward-looking and progressive attitudes are personally real. Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly superanimal. Nor is stoicism a high order of self-realization. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality."

Let's take another quote here. They're discussing, "Time and Eternity." "In the evolutionary universes, eternity is temporal everlastingness–the everlasting now." "The personality of the mortal creature may eternalize by self-identification with the indwelling spirit." "Such a consecration of will is tantamount to the realization of eternity-reality of purpose. This means that the purpose of the creature has become fixed with regard to the succession of moments." Or the passage of time. "Stated otherwise, that the succession of moments will witness no change in creature purpose. A million or a billion moments makes no difference."

"Number has ceased to have meaning with regard to the creature's purpose. Thus does creature choice plus God's choice eventuate in the eternal realities of the never- ending union of the spirit of God and the nature of man in the everlasting service of the children of God and of their Paradise Father."

What they're saying there is this: If you make a final choice for God, that choice transcends time, because no amount of time will witness any change in your choice. This is an eternal choice. Number doesn't have any meaning any more as concerns that purpose. This is going to be true a billion years from now, a trillion years from now, a gazillion years from now. Time makes no difference.

"There's a direct relationship between maturity and the unit of time consciousness in any given intellect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer period, but inevitably it is the criterion by which the conscious self evaluates the circumstances of life, and by which the conceiving intellect measures and evaluates the facts of temporal existence." I think personality's involved in this. "Experience, wisdom, and judgment are the concomitants of the lengthening of the time unit in mortal experience."

"As the human mind reckons backward into the past, it is evaluating past experience for the purpose of bringing it to bear on a present situation. As mind reaches out into the future, it is attempting to evaluate the future significance of possible action. And having thus reckoned with both experience and wisdom, the human will exercises judgment-decision in the present, and the plan of action thus born of the past and the future becomes existent."

Do you see how you're gradually rising above time in your thinking? "In the maturity of the developing self, the past and future are brought together to illuminate the true meaning of the present. As the self matures, it reaches further and further back into the past for experience, while its wisdom forecasts seek to penetrate deeper and deeper into the unknown future. And as the conceiving self extends this reach ever further into both past and future, so does judgment become less and less dependent on the momentary present. In this way does decision-action begin to escape from the fetters of the moving present, while it begins to take on the aspects of past-future significance."

And then that wonderful statement:

"Patience is exercised by those mortals whose time units are short; true maturity transcends patience by a forbearance born of real understanding." "To become mature is to live more intensely in the present, at the same time escaping from the limitations of the present. The plans of maturity, founded on past experience, are coming into being in the present in such manner as to enhance the values of the future." "The time unit of immaturity concentrates meaning-value into the present moment in such a way as to divorce the present of its true relationship to the not-present– the past-future. The time unit of maturity is proportioned so to reveal the co-ordinate relationship of past-present-future that the self begins to gain insight into the wholeness of events, begins to view the landscape of time from the panoramic perspective of broadened horizons, begins perhaps to suspect the nonbeginning, nonending eternal continuum, the fragments of which are called time."

Audience: I think that is so clarifying.

This is writing. This is writing.

Audience: It's thinking, too.

"On the levels of the infinite and the absolute the moment of the present contains all of the past as well as all of the future. I AM signifies also I WAS and I WILL BE. And this represents our best concept of eternity and the eternal." "On the absolute and eternal level, potential reality is just as meaningful as actual reality. Only on the finite level and to time-bound creatures does there appear to be such a vast difference. To God, as absolute, an ascending mortal who has made the eternal decision is already a Paradise finaliter. But the Universal Father, through the indwelling Thought Adjuster, is not thus limited in awareness but can also know of, and participate in, every temporal struggle with the problems of the creature ascent from animallike to Godlike levels of existence."

You know, real English moves the heck out of me. And they have come awfully close to saying something that couldn't be said there. You see, this is what it means when it says personality creates a unique time sense out of insight into reality plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration. Now, confound it, as we experience this process, and it's begun in life, and each of us has lived long enough to be aware of it. We do reach back in the past for experience. We do think ahead into the future. And it is the past-future which conditions our present judgments.

Now you let that process begin to involve a very large number of years–something more than many–you know? When you can think back a billion years, and think ahead a billion years, you are beginning to react to things which are not but will be. And as your wisdom becomes accurate, you're beginning to live outside of the present moment. And this is a kind of intellectual transcendence of time. I get a little feeling of what an absonite would be.