The Urantia Book Fellowship
Booth Activities at the New Delhi World Book Fair, 2008
Buck Weimer for the International Fellowship Committee
Introduction
It is a new India. With more than 1,129,000,000 spiritually endowed souls, India is second in population only to China. India is the world’s largest democracy with a middle class larger than the entire population of the United States. It is also the home of the biggest youth population on earth with over 600 million under the age of 25, most of whom used the 72 million cell phones sold there in 2007. Its diverse population has Hindus (80.5%), Muslims (13.4%), Christians (2.3%, over 20 million), Sikhs (1.9%), and other; Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, Jews and Baha'is.
On the down side, one out of three of the world’s malnourished children lives in India, and over 800 million people live on less than $2.00 per day. India is the largest arms importer in the developing world, has extreme social inequality (we saw women doing most of the unskilled labor), faces a growing energy crisis, poor air quality in most cities, and sustains regular terrorist attacks.
The primary goals of this mission were to expose The Urantia Book as the Fifth Epochal Revelation to the people of India, to get the book and secondary materials into the hands of as many willing readers as possible, and to build a database of truth-seeking contacts when possible. A secondary goal was to develop contacts in the book distribution/printing industry in India and gather information.
Getting Started
Armed with these goals and this information, our intrepid team headed for New Delhi, India. Paula Thompson, Charlene Morrow, Arlene and I arrived early in the morning of February 1st schlepping a full complement of personal belongings, 64 UB’s (we purposely carried the hard-back books so we could experiment with having the dust-covers on or off), one case each of “Jesus, A New Revelation” and the “Urdu Sampler”, 500 Hindu/Urantia Book brochures, 500 Fellowship brochures, 100 coupons, 25 UB DVD’s, a handful of the Jesusonian “Life After Death” booklets, and 9,000 of the magical spiritual vitamins. Additionally, we had nearly 200 of the “Discover The Urantia Book” handouts and 25 of the same in Spanish and Chinese; 4 recently translated “Lo Básico de El Libro de Urantia”; 1 copy of the just-received Hindi translation of 2,000 quotes from the UB by Dr. Rajan Chauhan; 2 very large Urantia Book banners, and several of the large Byron series posters. Agustin Arellano and Mario Trevino arrived the next day with 4 extra books, the invaluable laptop, and much good energy.
Our booth space was about 10’ X 10’ with all the racks needed for displaying our books; a small table for the brochures and the spiritual vitamin containers and 2 chairs. (We rented an additional round table and 2 extra chairs.) Many other booth participants visited our booth to inquire about the book and the posters before the Fair was officially opened. We were in the halls designated for foreign publishers.
The organizers of the 18th New Delhi World Book Fair 2008, The National Book Trust, India, began the inauguration ceremony promptly at 11 A.M. February 2nd at the Hamsadhwani Theatre. Pragati Maidan declaring the Fair open and affirmed the duration of the Fair to be until 8 P.M. February 10th. The biennial New Delhi World Book Fair has become the second largest in the world, second only to the one held in Frankfurt, Germany. India ranks 3rd in the publication of English books after the U.S. and the U.K. and publishes 20,000 new titles in English every year. A total of 22 countries had 62 stalls and 2 stands in our area.
Booth Activities
Our experiences at the booth were so many, so varied, so interactive, so uplifting and hopeful that it will take months, perhaps years, to fully assimilate. Each team member has his or her stories to tell. But the interactive exchanges with the Asian psyche and engaging with the Hindu mind were truly remarkable and memorable. In Paper 94 the Urantia Book informs us that, of all the peoples who rejected the Salem doctrine of the Melchizedek teaching of salvation through personal faith, the Vedic-Aryan people paid the most terrible price. In their efforts to blunt the Salem teachings, the Brahmans created the Rig-Veda – probably the oldest of ancient texts - followed by the three other Vedas. They created a pantheon of gods and a trinitarian concept as Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, and, in an attempt to deanthropomorphize deity they inadvertently depersonalized God. The Hindu belief in salvation is based on liberation, the eternal escape from self when their soul is absorbed into the oversoul of all creation – Brahman; much as a drop of water returns to the ocean.
While the Vedas contain some concepts of Deity which might be strange to the Western mind, they also present some of the highest. While not much of a theology, Brahmanism made what is perhaps the greatest reach of mortal mind into all phases of philosophy and metaphysics. Brahmanism conceived of an Absolute, and the one universal oversoul. Hinduism is a tolerant and adaptive religion, and many Hindus believe Christ to be a reincarnation of Vishnu. Because they have no hierarchy or doctrine they focus on living and how to live the best life. This paves the way for a genuine interest in the life of Jesus.
In presenting the much-needed gospel of Jesus, we often found ourselves in uncharted waters. That we are all brothers and sisters was not a problem. Discussions about God were ended in semantics. It was the discussion of the soul, and the ultimate destiny of the soul, that proved to be the greatest challenge. In our efforts to navigate past their long-held belief in the loss of soul and self by absorption into the oversoul, we could only appeal to their Spirit of Truth and share the revelation of the eternal survival of the individual soul in relationship with a personal God as a father. Not easy! But, after hearing the good news of eternal survival, there could be seen in the eyes of many, a glimmer of hope.
The Big Change
The team had dinner together after the first full day of activities to review our experiences and to discuss strategy. We agreed to experiment more and take off the dust covers from all the books – to see if there was any difference in how this may affect the curious seekers into our booth to look at or discuss The Urantia Book. The difference was very obvious! The next day, hordes of people came to our booth and we had a constant stream of truth-seekers reading and discussing the book, wanting to know if we were a new religion, and if we liked India. The dust cover, with its western-Christian images, may have led Indians away from our booth more for social reasons rather than personal beliefs. Whether Hindu, Islam, Sikh, or Jain they likely did not want to be seen at our booth because of the embarrassment of being observed in a booth that could be perceived by others as a western-Christian booth. Otherwise, they had no problems being seen at a booth full of big blue books and posters showing planets and galaxies, and reading quotes on a strip of paper (spiritual vitamins). We also saw no issues with Jesus: A New Revelation, its cover design or with having several of them displayed near the Urdu sampler. At least two visitors said they liked the picture on cover because it viewed God “looking down on us”. An Islamic stall across from us had a book and a poster-board with a heading “Jesus and Mary in the Qur’an”.
Personal friendships developed quickly. Gopi Krishna, working at a booth on international labor relations around the walkway from us, met with me daily for in-depth discussion on just about everything pertaining to religion and the Hindu way of life. He gave me books for a greater understanding of the Vedas and explained the role of stories in these sacred texts and their importance in the daily lives of Hindus. He soon became a friend of the revelation, spending more time at our booth, talking to other Hindus about the poster “Journey to Paradise,” selling books, and even buying one himself. He extended his friendship by printing one thousand copies of each of our two brochures – gratis. What a guy!
Then there was Amit Paul, a social worker, who also wrote poetry. He stopped by our booth regularly to chat about God, and especially the love of God. He offered his three bedroom home to us to stay at during any subsequent visits to New Delhi. He stopped by the hotel for a visit on our last night in New Delhi.
The day after Paula left to return home, Swami Garfield Jansen showed up from Coimbatore, in the Tamil Nadu state in southern India. (At birth, his father named him after the most famous cricket player of that time, hence the name Garfield.) I had been in regular telephone contact with Garfield for the past several months and we made arrangements in advance for his attendance at the booth. Though just beginning to read The Urantia Book, he enthusiastically enticed Hindus into the booth with his excitement and once walked into a crowd of passers-by handing out spiritual vitamins. He returned to Coimbatore with four Urantia Books and five coupons, and on fire with the revelation.
A moment of pause came for me when an Oriental-looking young man approached our booth and asked to look at a Jesus: A New Revelation. I asked him from which country he hailed; thinking China or Southeast Asia. When he said, laughingly: “I’m from India.” I was shocked and embarrassed. He was from the northeast region of India, a group of seven states surrounded by the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, and Tibet. Though sparsely populated by most Indian standards, the entire region is predominantly Christian, up to 90% in one of the states - Nagaland. Needless to say, each time we saw anyone who had the physical appearance of coming from the northeast India area, we quickly attempted to draw them to the booth, usually with success.
Our attempts to have discussion groups on The Urantia Book were less than successful. We schedule space for a discussion meeting on two occasions with only a total of five people coming to participate, and the discussion usually drifted toward other concerns.
We experienced another interesting phenomenon that may be unique to this book fair. It would happen after the reading of a spiritual vitamin quote. Many, especially the young college students, wanted us to help them search the opened Urantia Book and find that particular quote to read it in context, sometimes noting the section name and the paper title. So not only did many get to read a single statement from the revelation on the spiritual vitamin, but were treated to an extra paragraph, or more. The curious intellect and fearless spirit of the Indian people continued to fascinate, amaze, and stimulate us.
Agustin did a great job of building a database of the names of individuals purchasing books, requesting an E-mail copy of the Hindi quotes, or just wanting more information. A continuous running of the PowerPoint presentation of Charles Montgomery’s “Ascent to Paradise” from the Square Circles site on his laptop proved most effective for drawing onlookers to the revelation. We had one Spanish language professor and several students studying Spanish asking questions about “El libro azul grande.” – The big blue book.
Each team member had an ongoing relationship with three young boys, around the ages of nine or ten, who came to the booth every day in an attempt to get a free pen (stealing would be too harsh a word, ha). It soon became a “game” we played with them - sometimes chasing them away - sometimes giving them something. It was all very endearing. A similar relationship developed with a cleaning lady of low caste wanting to clean our booth every day, even though she was part of the agreement to have it done only every third day. We sometimes allowed her to clean more often than agreed upon, and sometimes paid her more than the amount owed. And we will all remember Salim, the young Muslim man of questionable intellect wanting to do daily errands for us for pay.
Winding Down
Near the end it became apparent we soon would be completely out of everything. Soon all the books (except six saved for Dr. Chauhan in Jabalpur), all the JANRs and Urdu samplers were gone; all the brochures, DVDs, and business cards. In the middle of the last day – which turned out to be the busiest – we ran out of spiritual vitamins. The “Life After Death” booklets were long gone. Except for the posters on the walls, and the single copy of the Hindi quotes, nothing was left – save a few of the Chinese handouts. Even then, people came to our booth, probably attracted by the posters and to interact with foreigners, wondering what we had to offer.
Near 8 PM on Sunday. February 10th, we said farewell to our loving neighbors in nearby booths, received our exit pass from the Deputy Director of the National Book Trust, India and returned to our hotel. The next day our team separated: Agustin and Mario going to Mumbai (Bombay), Charlene, Arlene, and I flying to Jabalpur for a rendezvous with Dr. Rajan and Ivy Chauhan.
Continued: A visit to Central India