Books, sutras and myths

Urantia Book

Category: Books sutras and myths

The Urantia Book (1996) is a spiritual and philosophical book that originated in Chicago sometime between 1924 and 1955. The authors introduce the word "Urantia" as the name of the planet Earth and state that their intent is to "present enlarged concepts and advanced truth”. The book aims to unite religion, science and philosophy, and its enormous amount of material about science is unique among literature.

The Urantia Foundation, a U.S.-based non-profit group, first published The Urantia Book in 1955. The book and its publishers do not name a human author, principally because the message was delivered to a man in trance – in fact completely unconscious - who delivered the voluminous messages, on behalf of these anonymous authors. The result is that the book is written as if directly presented by numerous celestial beings appointed to the task of providing an "epochal" religious revelation.

Scientific GOD Journal | August 2018 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | pp. 445-466 Valverde, R., Quantum Theory, Consciousness, God & the Theology of the Urantia Book

The Urantia Book is claimed to be a presentation of truth to us, about the creator and about creation. It greatly expands our view and understanding of the creator and the cosmos, and with this bigger picture, science, religion, and history, and other areas of human knowledge become integrated.
We are not alone in the universe, quite the contrary. The Urantia Book was written by love-respecting, civilized inhabitants of the universe. It was written by a revelatory committee, through a process involving a contact human, for the betterment of our planet. The identity of the contact human is not known, and not considered important. Urantia is the name of our planet (Mullins & Sprunger 2000).

Subject matter and content

Among other topics, the book discusses the origin and meaning of life, humankind's place in the universe, the relationship between God and people, and the life of Jesus.

Scientific GOD Journal | August 2018 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | pp. 445-466 Valverde, R., Quantum Theory, Consciousness, God & the Theology of the Urantia Book

The Urantia Book revelation is not small; the edition quoted has 2,097 pages of fine print. For most of us, it is not a quick study or easy reading. The Urantia Book is valuable, for it reveals a much larger perspective than was previously known on Earth regarding God, the universe’s inhabitants, and the cosmos in which we live.

The Urantia Book consists of a body of 196 "papers" divided in four parts, and an introductory forward:

Part 1, The Central and Superuniverses - is about God, Godʹs relationship to creation, Godʹs relationship to individuals, and the structure and inhabitants of the greater cosmos. It addresses what the authors consider the highest levels of creation, including the eternal and infinite "Universal Father", his Trinity associates, and the "Isle of Paradise".

Part 2, The Local Universe - is about our part of the cosmos. It presents topics including creation, evolution and administration. It covers the origin and personalities of the local universe of "Nebadon", the part of the cosmos where Earth resides. It presents narratives on the inhabitants of local universes and their work as it is coordinated with a scheme of spiritual ascension and progression of different orders of beings, including humans, angels, and others.

Part 3, The History of Urantia - includes information about the origin of our planet, and about its physical, biological, and social evolution. It provides a broad history of the Earth, presenting a purported explanation of the origin, evolution, and destiny of the world and its inhabitants. Topics include Adam and Eve, Melchizedek, essays on the concept of the Thought Adjuster, "Religion in Human Experience", and "Personality Survival".

Part 4, The Life and Teachings of Jesus - is the largest part at 775 pages, and is often noted as the most accessible and most impressive, narrating a detailed biography of Jesus that includes his childhood, teenage years, family life, and public ministry, as well as the events that led to his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. Its papers continue about appearances after he rose, Pentecost and, finally, "The Faith of Jesus".

Background

Around 1911, William S. Sadler and his wife Lena Sadler, doctors in Chicago and well known in the community, are said to have been approached by a neighbour who was concerned because she would occasionally find her husband in a deep sleep and breathing abnormally. She reported that she was unable to wake him at these times. The Sadlers came to observe the episodes, and over time, the individual produced verbal communications that claimed to be from "student visitor" spiritual beings.

This changed sometime in early 1925 with a "voluminous handwritten document," which from then on became the regular method of purported communication. The individual was never identified publicly but has been described as "a hard-boiled business man, member of the board of trade and stock exchange." (Mullins & Sprunger 2000).

The Sadlers were both respected physicians, and William Sadler was a debunker of paranormal claims, who is portrayed as not believing in the supernatural. In 1929, he published a book called The Mind at Mischief, in which he explained the fraudulent methods of mediums and how self-deception leads to psychic claims. BUT, he wrote in an appendix that there were two cases that he had not explained to his satisfaction and one of them was the Urantia case:

The Mind at Mischief - Dr William Sadler

The other exception has to do with a rather peculiar case of psychic phenomena, one which I find myself unable to classify. ... I was brought in contact with it, in the summer of 1911, and I have had it under my observation more or less ever since, having been present at probably 250 of the night sessions, many of which have been attended by a stenographer who made voluminous notes. A thorough study of this case has convinced me that it is not one of ordinary trance. ... This man is utterly unconscious, wholly oblivious to what takes place, and, unless told about it subsequently, never knows that he has been used as a sort of clearing house for the coming and going of alleged extra-planetary personalities. ... Psychoanalysis, hypnotism, intensive comparison, fail to show that the written or spoken messages of this individual have origin in his own mind. Much of the material secured through this subject is quite contrary to his habits of thought, to the way in which he has been taught, and to his entire philosophy. In fact, of much that we have secured, we have failed to find anything of its nature in existence.

Its evolution via the discussion group

Scientific GOD Journal | August 2018 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | pp. 445-466 Valverde, R., Quantum Theory, Consciousness, God & the Theology of the Urantia Book

In 1923, a group of Sadler's friends, former patients, and colleagues began meeting for Sunday philosophical and religious discussions, but became interested in the strange communications when Sadler mentioned the case at their fourth meeting and read samples at their request. Shortly afterwards, a communication reportedly was received about which this group would be allowed to devise questions and that answers would be given by celestial beings through the "contact personality”.

Sadler presented this development to the group, and they generated hundreds of questions without full seriousness, but their claim is that it resulted in the appearance of answers in the form of fully written papers. The Sadlers and others involved, now all deceased, claimed that the papers of the book were physically materialized from 1925 until 1935 in a way that was not understood even by them, with the first two parts being completed in 1934 and the third and fourth in 1935. The last Forum gathering was in 1942 (Mullins & Sprunger 2000).

After the last of Part IV was obtained in 1935, an additional period of time supposedly took place where requests for clarifications resulted in revisions. Sadler and his son William (Bill) Sadler, Jr. at one point wrote a draft introduction and were told that they could not add their introduction.

The Foreword was then "received”. The communications purportedly continued for another two decades while members of the Forum studied the book in depth, and according to Sadler and others, permission to publish it was given to them in 1955 (Mullins & Sprunger 2000).

In Summary

We don’t actually know whether all these revelations came from celestial beings or out of body or remote viewing human beings.

The communications were in English [or America if you prefer], leading one to wonder whether a group of English speaking people were using the ‘subject’ as their channel. And indeed these days the communications would be called ‘channelling’.

It does not make them any less interesting, as inter-composer communication of this complexity, amount and time span is rare. It needs to be remembered that inter-composer communication in one's own language and of this length is generally proved to be very terrestrial and one should perhaps consider what possible motive a bunch of extra terrestrials - even if they had managed to master English - had for divulging all this. Beset with fake news as we are now, we must always bear in mind the possibility of mischief making.

BUT, as you can see from the quotes above, the book has become of especial interest to some physicists and other open minded scientists, as it possibly solves a number of problems now present in quantum theory; as such it doesn't overly matter who it came from, the theories it contains are proving of help in generating discussion.

Scientific GOD Journal | August 2018 | Volume 9 | Issue 6 | pp. 445-466 Valverde, R., Quantum Theory, Consciousness, God & the Theology of the Urantia Book

The Urantia book reveals the nature of human consciousness and supports with its theology the quantum consciousness model paradigm that has been used in recent years to support a multidimensional view of the human mind and modern humanistic and spiritual psychology paradigms such as transpersonal psychology. It also explains that every human is connected to the Universal mind or God through a source of light in a central Universe. The article proposes a quantum consciousness model that explains that our consciousness is immortal and non local.

The model also proposes that our perceived reality is created by our consciousness by interpreting vibrating energy. The Urantia book aims to unite religion, science and philosophy.

This article aims at viewing the Urantia book as key to support the proposed quantum consciousness model paradigm and the Christian belief that a fraction of God resides in us and connects us to his infinite source of light.

References

We have provided a few observations that are of particular interest, but we suggest that those who are intrigued by the content should read the book. The following are freely available via Wikisource

The Urantia Book/Part 1

Observations

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WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

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Books, sutras and myths

Urantia Book

Subject matter and content

Background

Its evolution via the discussion group

In Summary

References

Observations