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Contents:

• A New Model of Humankind
• The Hindu Discovery of Personality
• A Psychologist Discovers the Thought Adjuster
• The Unparalleled Insights of Viktor Frankl
• Abraham Maslow, Meta-Values and Meta-Motivations
• The Forbidden Religion
• Jesus in Context
• Too Great a Paradigm Shift
• A Philosopher Refuses to Read the Urantia Papers
• A Catholic Priest Confesses
• The Scientist's Perspective
• God's Quantum-Mathematics Joke
• At Last We Discover TOE
• A New Religion?
• The Evangelical Idea
• Living the Teachings
• The Invisible Fellowship
• A Search for Benevolence
• The Most Serious Conflict for Urantians Today
• A Urantian Esperanza
• Additional Quotes Relating to The Urantia Revelation as a Coordinator of Religion

Introductory Note:

Science, especially psychology, has long sought a "model" to represent, and help explain, the psychic dynamics of a human being. One could argue that we really have no idea what a soul looks like, or how to represent "mind" as a concept. Yet, it is equally true that no one has seen an atom, nor an electron. All we really observe on quantum levels are blips and glows on a monitor screen. Yet we readily design graphic representations of the quantum world in order to better understand it.

The Urantia Papers establish a completely unique concept of a mortal being. Nothing has ever been proposed by psychology or philosophy that is close to the Urantia Papers presentation. 

On the other hand, a great many wonderful minds have independently discovered many of the components of the "Urantian" model. Most modern thinkers will grant that a human is more than simply a more complicated animal. An accurate model of the inner "components" of a mortal would help us better "see" the relative positions and relationships of all of the elements that make up what we call a person. For these reasons, we offer the following few pages to those readers who are interested.

Many philosophies have suggested that a part of God, an inner spiritual essence, dwells within us. In fact, the Urantia Papers state that without factoring-in this spiritual component, science will never understand the human mind. Those philosophies that agree that a spiritual component is a factor of the mortal being, do not necessarily refer to this component as "God." They may perceive a spiritual component as the "higher self" or the "essence" — or as an impersonal oversoul or force. Some make a purely semantic distinction. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, usually prefer the term "Higher Power" to that of God.

In psychology, of all the great individuals who studied the human mind, only Viktor Frankl grasped the insight that both a personal and an objective presence of God are necessary requisites to understand how the healthy mind works. The Urantia Papers propose the same idea, an astonishing, seamless concept of two spiritual realities in collaboration to achieve — with the co-operation of an ordinary mortal mind, the creation of a new cosmic being that has survival potential. The Thought Adjuster and the Personality are the two cosmic reality factors of a mortal being. Working together, they set the stage for a third conditional reality: the human personality, or seat of consciousness. The success of this venture depends solely upon the choices that the evolving human personality makes.

One of the most fascinating and original concepts of a mortal being was developed by the Hindu Yogis, and was co-discovered or adapted in various forms by other philosophies.

Their idea professes the existence of an inner essence at the core of each human being. This essence is changeless, perfect, and a part of the divine oversoul. Each human being is "connected" in the "One," much as the tip of each wave of the ocean is individual and yet is joined to the whole of the ocean.

Yogi candidates are taught to achieve through meditation a consciousness of the core "essence" within, or the "real self." The "real self" is experienced as something transcending body, mind, and emotions. In meditation, the yogi imagines the higher self as capable of existing independent of the body, mind and emotions. This higher self, they believe, can thus be "experienced" as being timeless, transcendent and immortal. Yet, the yogi emphasize that this "self" cannot be examined, for it is really you, and is the "observer that cannot be observed."

Although Yogis believe the "essence" within to be indefinable, by mentally "removing" what it is not essence (mind, body and emotions), they can gain a sense of what this essence of self is.

The Yogi teachers further postulate that there are seven stages of human realization of this inner core of selfhood. As wonderful as this insight of the inner essence is — unlike the pure Urantian concept of personality — the Hindu "inner self" merges together the concept of an objective presence of God with the concept of selfhood. In a sense, the Hindu master is a "God" unto himself. An "advanced" karma yoga precept is: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" Viktor Frankl suggested that a mortal being with such grandiose license would be a dangerous entity. He perceived the need for a transcendent conscience, a "transcendent necessity," as have several philosophers. Yet Frankl also saw the need for this objective conscience to be apart from the ego. In other words, Frankl saw the need for a Thought Adjuster. Otherwise, as Frankl observed in The Unconscious God, the concept of the inner core essence of being — in and of itself — can lead to identity confusion and egoism. 

In 1943, another great psychologist, Abraham Maslow, published his famous paper on Human Motivation. He proposed a hierarchy of human needs. He arranged human drives in the order of their biological and psychological dominance. Dr. Maslow placed biological needs (food, air, water) as primary to survival, and so the strongest. Then, as drives and needs are satisfied, new needs emerge. After biological needs are met, then — in turn — come safety needs, social needs, esteem and power needs. Maslow also introduced the startling new concept of Self-Actualization, the REAL-ization of the potential inner self. He studied healthy, successful people and proposed a Self-Actualizer is a fully human, healthy, mature, value-driven individual driven by higher values rather than basic "needs."

"There are present in all normal mortals certain innate drives toward growth and self-realization which function if they are not specifically inhibited. The certain technique of fostering this constitutive endowment of the potential of spiritual growth is to maintain an attitude of wholehearted devotion to supreme values." [1095] 

Maslow’s premises: [1] A human is a wanting creature that is never satisfied for long. [2] A human strives to satisfy wants and needs. [3] When a need is satisfied, it no longer motivates and a new need emerges. [4] Lower needs are more related to survival, higher needs to happiness. 

Self-Actualizers, without exception, were discovered to be committed to a cause higher than self. Like the Urantia papers, Maslow even perceived that such individuals are more real as they mature and identify to higher values. But Dr. Maslow was to die before he could fully develop his new Science of Values.

Although, as a scientist, he did not believe God was part of this process, Maslow did establish that the metavalues of Truth, Beauty and Goodness are an intrinsic part of a healthy human being. Dr. Maslow thus did much to liberate humankind from Freud’s dismal, purely materialistic theories. Maslow’s ideas also insisted that human beings are responsible for what they do, and not simply puppets driven by mysterious forces of the unconscious. A new, optimistic model of a human being was now possible. 

Viktor Frankl survived several Nazi death camps in World War II. He lost his wife and all of his family to the gas chambers, with the exception of one sister. All his possessions, including a manuscript of his life’s work, were confiscated and never returned. How Frankl survived is a noble testament to the spirit of human beings.

Frankl declared he lived through four years of the death camp because he learned that the ultimate freedom of human beings is the right to choose their attitude toward any given situation. The day he acquired this deep insight into his suffering changed him completely. On this day he had stood in a formation at three a.m., a freezing drizzle chilling him to the bone. Suddenly he saw that, although the Nazis had taken virtually everything from him, there was one thing they could never take. He realized that he was completely free to decide his attitude toward this situation and his captors. This sovereignty of the inner life was what Frankl was to call the "ultimate freedom." It led him to understand that all human failure is ultimately a failure of will. This is not far from the second cardinal principle of the kingdom of heaven.

For example, Frankl noted that when a prisoner in the camp gave up and died, each one first said something along these lines: "Life has no meaning; life has nothing to offer me anymore." Frankl came to the realization that the question: What is the meaning of life? is a question that we must answer, not ask.

Viktor Frankl would survive the death camps to write several books, countless articles, and to visit college campuses all over the world to tell his story. Frankl’s most famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning was translated into a couple dozen languages, and has sold millions of copies. The book is still in print.

Frankl also wrote The Unconscious God, a collection of talks he had given his psychiatric peers in Vienna. In this deep and intriguing book Frankl postulates that he had observed clear evidence in patients that there are two irreducible essences within the human psyche. One of these essences is a personal factor, the presence of a personal being. The second is an objective presence of a transcendent conscience that had no connection with human mores and moral codes. He believed this transcendent conscience operated in the now, and could be a perfect guide in specific situations.

It is reasonable to consider that Frankl’s insights are parallel to the dynamic human model in the Urantia Papers that features the Thought Adjuster as the objective presence of God, in "opposition" to the Personality essence (with its direct link with God through the personality circuit).

Long time readers of the Urantia Papers recognize that the drawing shown on this page [See preliminary note] is like a miniature of the Supreme Being. On page 1282 we are reminded that: "The Supreme Being evolves by virtue of his liaison with the paradise Trinity and in consequence with the divinity successes of the creator and administrator of that Trinity." We are told: "Man’s immortal soul evolves its own eternal destiny by association with the personality decisions of the human mind. What the Trinity is to God the Supreme, the Adjuster is to evolving man."

One of the most astounding things about the Urantia Papers is that they address many questions that only a student of philosophy knows are a problem. One of the perplexing questions that confronts a philosopher who believes in God, is How does the spiritual interact with the material mind? The Urantia Papers tell us that time and space was made possible when God "moved" (so to speak) and created a cosmic tension between the Unqualified Absolute and the Qualified Absolute. This triad is repercussed throughout the book in many ways, Truth, Beauty, Goodness, — body, mind, spirit, — things meanings and values. In the mortal being this triad appears as the Thought Adjuster, the Personality, and the evolving Mortal Being. The tension between the unique perfection of Personality and the Prepersonal perfection of the Thought Adjuster creates the cosmic loom upon which a mortal being creates his or her own destiny. Such a concept is original, and has never been suggested before. This is also an example of how the Revelators skillfully blended existing knowledge and knowledge that was earned but in danger of being lost with revelatory information. (Frankl’s book The Unconscious God is now out of print).  

Compare these levels with the following:

"The Master on this occasion placed emphasis on the following five cardinal principles of the kingdom: [1] The pre-eminence of the individual. [2] The will as determining factor in man’s experience. [3] Spiritual fellowship with God the Father [4] The supreme satisfactions of loving service to man. [5] The transcendence of the spiritual over the material in human personality." [1863] 

The premises of spiritual motivation by values, after Maslow] : [1] A human personality is driven by its core essence to seek perfection. [2] Once a lower domain is mastered, it no longer is the primary motivation, and a higher need begins to emerge as dominant. [3] Spiritual transcendence is never satisfied, its potential is unlimited. [4] Lower needs are more related to material and psychological well-being, higher needs to spiritual growth.  

The Urantia Papers teach us that God, as the prepersonal Thought Adjuster, seeks to attain union with Personality. To achieve this, the T.A. is totally dependent upon the free-will moral decisions of the mortal being. 

"The midway creatures have long denominated this evolving soul of man the mid-mind in contradistinction to the lower or material mind and the higher or cosmic mind. This mid-mind is really a morontia phenomenon since it exists in the realm between the material and the spiritual. The potential of such a morontia evolution is inherent in the two universal urges of mind: the impulse of the finite mind of the creature to know God and attain the divinity of the Creator, and the impulse of the infinite mind of the Creator to know man and attain the experience of the creature." [1218]

Only in the higher levels of the superconscious mind as it impinges upon the spirit realm of human experience can you find those higher concepts in association with effective master patterns which will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring civilization. Personality is inherently creative, but it thus functions only in the inner life of the individual. [1220] 

The Urantia Papers establish a revolutionary model of humankind, and then they go yet farther. In Paper 170, The Kingdom of Heaven, new clues are left for the psychologist and philosopher who seek to define the seven cosmic circles.

Abraham Maslow established a hierarchy of human needs, and sought to extend this hierarchy into the realm of metavalues. He was not successful.

However, we can if we configure the five cardinal principles of the kingdom of heaven into such a hierarchy. This model is reasonably plausible, and seems to have a degree of truth. Recall the five cardinal principles of the kingdom: The Master on this occasion placed emphasis on the following five points as representing the cardinal features of the gospel of the kingdom:

1. The pre-eminence of the individual.

2. The will as the determining factor in man's experience.

3. Spiritual fellowship with God the Father.

4. The supreme satisfactions of the loving service of man.

5. The transcendence of the spiritual over the material in human personality.

Compare these five principles with the proposed hierarchy of human transformation below. We have seen in the previous material in this study guide that the Urantia Papers concede that: "Perhaps these psychic circles of mortal progression would be better denominated cosmic levels . . ." We can then ponder that it utterly consistent with the Urantia Papers that the First Cosmic Circle is spiritual transcendence, which would correspond to the top of the pyramid. Readers know the Third Circle is of great importance, because we are able, to a more effective degree than ever before, commune with the indwelling adjuster: "The third circle. The Adjuster's work is much more effective after the human ascender attains the third circle and receives a personal seraphic guardian of destiny." [1210] This would certainly not conflict with the third cardinal principle of the kingdom: Spiritual Fellowship with God the Father. Since there is at least a degree of agreement between the five cardinal principles of the kingdom and the cosmic circles, let’s try a bold new paradigm. Let’s take the new cosmic pyramid and place the principles of the kingdom atop the original pyramid, where Maslow left off. The result is most intriguing.

Seventh Circle: Will dignity is achieved, T.A. arrives, personality begins full functions. 

Sixth Circle: Social, belongingness needs. 

Fifth Circle: Respect for self and others, first kingdom principle. 

Fourth Circle: Responsibility for the inner life experience, 2nd kingdom principle. 

Third Circle: Fellowship, partnership with God, 3rd kingdom principle. 

Second Circle: Loving service, 4th kingdom principle 

First Circle: Transcendence of the spiritual over the material in human personality is achieved, the 5th kingdom principle.  

"But there is also a domain of prayer wherein the intellectually alert and spiritually progressing individual attains more or less contact with the superconscious levels of the human mind, the domain of the indwelling Thought Adjuster. "[996] 

Human "Selfhood" [The seat of human consciousness]

[Note] The human is both driven by the personality essence, and also seeks to achieve it:

Personality endowment comes from the Father and imparts unique prerogatives of choice to the living system. [1301]

The indwelling Thought Adjuster unfailingly arouses in man's soul a true and searching hunger for perfection together with a far-reaching curiosity which can be adequately satisfied only by communion with God, the divine source of that Adjuster. The hungry soul of man refuses to be satisfied with anything less than the personal realization of the living God. Whatever more God may be than a high and perfect moral personality, he cannot, in our hungry and finite concept, be anything less. [1119]

But worship is undoubtedly encircuited and dispatched to the person of the Creator by the function of the Father's personality circuit. [65]

And the eternal God has also reserved to himself the prerogative of bestowing personality upon the divine Creators and the living creatures of the universe of universes, while he has further reserved the prerogative of maintaining direct and parental contact with all these personal beings through the personality circuit. [62] 

Deity is unity, existential in the Trinity, experiential in the Supreme, and, in mortals, creature-realized in Adjuster fusion. The presence of the Thought Adjusters in mortal man reveals the essential unity of the universe, for man, the lowest possible type of universe personality, contains within himself an actual fragment of the highest and eternal reality, even the original Father of all personalities.

Will Scientists, Philosophers, and Religionists ever understand and accept the teachings of the Urantia Papers?

Will the Urantia Movement? 

A new reader of the Urantia Papers is often perplexed because long-time students of the Papers seem unable or unwilling to give reasonable answers to his or her questions. What are the Papers about? Where did they come from? What theory do they offer? The answers to such basic, reasonable inquiries are either so short, abrupt and smug as to be annoying, or so long and confusing — and containing so many unfamiliar terms — as to be useless. Why is this so?

Believe the answer is that the Urantia Papers collectively provide the most complex and difficult reservoir of knowledge ever assembled upon this planet. The paradigm shift is simply too great. A third generation of readers is now seeking to unlock the mysteries of the Revelation, and we are just beginning to scratch the surface.

Over the years some brilliant minds have penetrated certain areas of the Urantia Papers with impressive degrees of success. We have had the amazing insights of Urantian philosophers, scientists, theologians, and psychologists. Yet a single, clear answer to even the simplest of the three questions above: What is this book about? seems elusive. Not only does each discipline offer different answers, each individual student offers different answers. 

After 30 or so years of study, I have become convinced that the Papers are about Jesus and his teachings. Clyde Bedell, who gave me the book in 1969 also believed this. He was one of the original Forum members joining as a young man in Chicago, in 1926. Dr. Meredith Sprunger — a student since 1956 — has also offered the opinion that Urantia Papers are generally a representation of the life and teachings of the Master, with the added caveat that, for the first time, the Master’s career is revealed in an appropriate cosmological setting.

This opinion of the theme of the Urantia Papers is supported by pure mathematics. Consider that about 700 pages of the Urantia Papers are devoted to just 33 years of a man’s life. The balance of the papers cover 400 billion years of the history of the local universe, and actually penetrate the mystery of what took place before evolutionary time and space began. Percentage-wise, at least several million times more space is devoted to the life and teachings of Jesus than to the cosmological and historic context of his career.

It is within the realms of justifiable logic then, to state that the Urantia Papers are indeed a book about Jesus in an appropriate cosmological context. As Dr. Sprunger has written, without this astonishing "background information," the Life and Teachings of Jesus would have vastly less epochal significance.  

Yet the Urantia Papers require so profound a paradigm shift by theologians that, in general, the Papers simply cannot be recognized for the epochal revelation that they are.

No one has all the answers. So, while I personally profess the belief that the Urantia Papers are the story of our Creator Son, I know there are many other equally valid perceptions. To the Urantian philosopher, for example, the Papers are a replete new system of philosophy that answers, or at least addresses, virtually all of the important and unsolved philosophical questions. Indeed, perhaps the amazing feature of the Papers, from a philosophical perspective, is that they address profound philosophical questions that challenge the discipline of Religion itself. The casual lay reader does not know these questions even exist.  

I should state here that I am a lay reader myself. The reason I know that the Urantia Papers address the great, unsolved puzzles of philosophy is that I was told this by a philosopher-friend, many years ago.

This is not to say that my friend read the Urantia Papers, because he would not. But over the course of our conversations he explained some of the unsolvable mysteries of philosophy. He gave me a long list of necessary reading, so that I could begin to understand what these questions are. Since, at the time, I had only been reading the Urantia Papers for eight or nine years, I did not know enough about them to point out that whoever wrote the Urantia Papers had a profound knowledge of these (and many other) philosophical questions, and addressed them:  

How can the spiritual realm, if it exists at all, affect the material realm? How can mind interface with matter, or brain? Can a mortal being be proven to be more than simply a complex animal? How can anything as material-based and gross as a human survive as a self-conscious entity? Do values, such as truth, beauty and goodness exist in reality? How? The list could easily take up many pages of this booklet. These authors of the Papers were at least philosophers, else they would not have been able to address such inquiries at all — yet alone answer them with such replete understanding, consistency and authority.

My philosopher-friend examined the Book for about fifteen minutes. He flatly refused to invest the time it would take to thoughtfully read the Urantia Papers.

The answers to many challenges of philosophy are contained in the pages of the Revelation, but in the context of other disciplines with which my friend was not familiar — nor particularly interested. He would be required to unlearn far too much to understand the Urantia Papers; the paradigm shift was too vast. He had far too much invested in the comfortable, logic-tight academic precepts of secular philosophy.

I had no better luck, over the years, interesting religionists in the Urantia Papers. Later, I was to have an experience with a Catholic Priest that was parallel to the one I had with the philosopher. The priest seemed an excellent candidate for the Urantia Papers, even coming from so unlikely a source as a lay person such as myself. He was liberal, enlightened, and had a profound sense of humor about Catholic dogma. When I offered him a Urantia Book one day, he examined it thoughtfully for several minutes, and then handed it back to me.

Sensing my disappointment, he made a startling comment: "Larry, I believe this book is everything you say it is. But at my age, I am not about to try to understand something this difficult. I’m 55 years old. You say you have been reading this book for ten years, and you still don’t understand it. In ten years I will be in a retired priest’s home. What good will knowing all this stuff do me there? Besides, I have enough dogma to confuse me as it is." 

My experience has been that, in general, scientists are far more open to examining the book than either philosophers or religionists. But even long time Urantian scientists generally restrict their deepest study of, and commentary on, the Urantia Papers to the areas of expanded astronomy or cosmology, geology, zoology, or to the quantum physics representations. There is also a tendency by scientific students of the Papers to defend the science of the book, which we were cautioned by the revelators would soon be in need of updating.

There are, however, a few "smoking guns" of revealed scientific facts to be found in the Urantia Papers. But, when these are pointed out by our Urantian scientists, they are quickly discounted by nonbelievers as lucky hits. However, like philosophy, it is the questions addressed, and conceptual framework formed by the Urantia Papers that may be more revealing than the debatable "factual" statements they contain.

The Papers offer the lay person convincing evidence of their remarkable scientific vision and insight. A few examples: In geology, the continental drift theory is stated as simple fact, long before it was a generally accepted and proven [668-9]. Modern scientist-philosophers such as David Foster, Hoyle and others have mathematically refuted the idea of random-selection evolution as presented by Darwin. In his book, The Philosophical Scientists, [Barnes & Noble, 1985,1993,] Foster goes so far as to postulate that life must have somehow come from — or been manipulated by — intelligent protagonists from outer space. He writes that the original life plasm must have been programmed with a complete evolutionary "clock" to trigger new species at specific times. This is precisely what the Urantia Papers stated circa 1935! In psychology, the Urantia Papers revealed a two-brained human long before the experiments of Roger Sperry in the sixties. Sperry demonstrated, by radical surgery, that each hemisphere of the human brain is quite specialized in conceptual activity. Circa 1935 statements in the Urantia Papers postulate that we are two-brained creatures, and one hemisphere is specialized in intellectual functions and the other in "spiritual counterparting" activities with the Thought Adjuster [566].

Yet, for me, the most astonishing revelation is something that indicates the Creator has a scientific sense of humor. 

One of the historically renowned quantum physicists, Richard Feynman, once suggested that all physicists should put up a sign in there office with a particular three-digit number on it that would remind them of how much science doesn’t know. Werner Heisenburg, crafter of the famous uncertainty principle, declared that all the quandaries of quantum physics would shrivel up if this same three-digit number was ever explained! In The God Particle by Nobel prize-winning quantum physicist, Leon Lederman, the same perplexing three-digit number is referred to as showing up: " . . . naked all over the place. This means that a scientist on Mars, or the fourteenth planet of star Sirius, using whatever god-awful units they have for charge, speed, and their version of Plank’s constant, would get [the same three digit number]. It is a pure number." Lederman goes even further: "Physicists have agonized over [this three digit number] for fifty years . . . I tell my undergraduate students that if they are ever in a major city anywhere in the world, they should write [this three digit number] on a sign and hold it up on a busy street corner. Eventually a physicist will see that they’re distressed and come to their assistance."

Long-time readers may laugh aloud, as I did, when they learn that the mysterious number is 137.  

To readers of less experience, 137 is the key number that would represent the primary distribution of the First Source and Center. In the Urantia Papers: number one representing the First Source and Center, number three representing the Paradise Trinity, and number seven representing the Sevenfold Relationship, God the Sevenfold. (Seven exhausts all possible combinations of the Trinity).

But how could the cosmic revelatory significance of number 137 be explained to a scientist like Lederman? He would have to read the Urantia Papers for years to grasp it. Even if he chose to do so, what value would the information be to his career? If he sought to disclose it publicly he would be disgraced in his chosen profession.

And therein lies the problem of the many experts of particular disciplines who are potential readers of the Urantia Papers. The quantum physics scientist peers at gauges and screens to study the world of the very, very small, and is baffled. A good student of the Urantia Papers might explain to her: "Of course what you are seeing here violates the precepts of what we know as time and space. You are looking into the emerging Unqualified Absolute. The puzzling transactions you see are simply the mind of God engaged in the cancellation of both past and future to ‘make room’ for time and space — the Universe Absolute." However, would any scientist spend the months of study required to grasp this principle of how the Absolute "makes room" for the finite?

So, perhaps the lay reader, who is hungry to learn, may have an advantage over the deeply educated reader who is accomplished and focused in a single discipline.

Dr. Meredith Sprunger is a rare exception. For although Meredith has a degree in theology and psychology, he remains (at past eighty years of age), as hungry for new knowledge as any lay student. Unfortunately, Meredith Sprungers are very rare. 

To the modern scientist, TOE is the Theory of Everything. It is the long-sought single theory that will unify and explain all of the unsolved riddles of science.

The Urantia Papers present TOE not only for the scientist, but for the philosopher and religionist also.

The mysteries of the so-called "Big Bang" are a small part of the total palette of the Urantia Papers. For the scientist-philosopher-religionist, the supreme transactions before the dawn of time are addressed in the Papers, as is the reason the universe expands with just enough equilibrium and gravity mass. The "missing matter" is detailed out as the wondrous existential universe of Havona that exists behind the shroud of concealing gravity belts — a question addressed in the Papers before scientists even knew the matter was "missing." In the Urantia Papers we learn how material life comes to the universe, and how mind is bestowed upon living systems. We are told how human will develops, and how cosmic maturity requires a balance of mind, matter and spirit.

However, for the time being, the quantum scientist seems to prefer to believe in multiple, simultaneous universes — or cats that can be both dead and alive until we look at them — than to acknowledge a First Source and Center, and bend his knees before God. [Yet, the sad truth is that very few scientists actually believe in multiple universes or cats that are potentially both dead and alive. They must pretend to believe in such dogma or risk being branded "heretics."]

Likewise, very few enlightened professional clergy really believe in the atonement doctrine or in the virgin birth. And, the philosophy professor who teaches Hume (with a straight face) and declares we each create our own reality, and for each of us this reality is different — this professor does not live by such a silly code. He stops at red lights on his way to work just as you do, and knows that when he watches a football game everyone else watching will agree that the score was what was posted on the scoreboard.

Indeed, with the disciplines of science, philosophy and religion teaching many things no one believes anymore, it is unlikely that the Urantia Papers will soon be accepted to any significant degree on any academic level.

It is far more probable that the spiritual renaissance must await the time when a critical mass of lay students who have discovered these answers begin to teach the world what they have learned. There are many of these teachers in the Urantia movement now. They are ready to teach and lead as the new epoch dawns, but they are largely unaware that they are ready. It is too great a paradigm shift. 

We must understand that there is nothing new about the reluctance of the various disciplines to understand the limitations of their particular modes of inquiry. Nor is it unique that they should reject, even without examining, knowledge that comes out of their normal realms of acquisition. Paradigm shifts are difficult for uncreative minds. Someone once declared: "Never underestimate the power of the human mind to avoid enlightenment." The Urantia movement is a clear example. 

Long-time Urantians and readers of the Urantia Papers are as reluctant to grasp new ideas as are entrenched scientists, religionists, and philosophers. Consider religion. The mention of the word causes strong negative reactions among many old-time readers. Yet, the Urantia Papers are very clear about what constitutes true religion:  

"Since true religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own and personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual experience. Let the term "faith" stand for the individual’s relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of what some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common religious attitude." [1091] 

"Religion cannot be bestowed, received, loaned, learned, or lost. It is a personal experience which grows proportionally to the growing quest for final values. Cosmic growth thus attends on the accumulation of meanings and the ever-expanding elevation of values." [1095] 

"Only the real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the present crisis of civilization." [1087]

[NOTE] Is there one word here about establishing churches, or authorities, or controls? Of course not. The "churchification" fear is a straw man that has nothing to do with the desire of Urantians for authentic religious expression. There will be Urantian churches one day, but, in my judgment, this may not be the principle form of Urantian religious expression that will revolutionize the world and lead the new religious renaissance. I believe it is the new Urantian lay-person deacons and deaconesses who will form a corps of leadership for the spiritual renaissance that is dawning.  

The evangelical idea is one that is proposed so that Urantia teachers can begin to speak up and attract other believers. The religious concept is suggested not to develop a new system of clergy and authorities, but to challenge the readers and believers to embrace the true religion of Jesus as it is taught in the Urantia Papers.

If this is done, we will not need new authorities and gurus, but, on the contrary, we can divest ourselves of the ones we now have — those self-professed "authorities," some of whom have become the sacred cows of the movement.

For Urantians who commit to the religion of Jesus, not only will there need be no new organizations of control, but we can go our own way as individuals, and ignore those old fashioned, self designated "Urantia" institutions that already exist.

All of the existing Urantia organizations are designed and function as though the second half of the twentieth century never happened.

The first half of the century featured "organizations" that were designed to control, configure, and direct human activities. The emergence of a new organizational structure began in the sixties, with the concept that an organization should be designed to empower and nurture its members to actualize their potentials.

We do not have a true working model for an enlightened democratic religious structure that could supplant the current Urantian oligarchies, nor are any true religionists interested in doing this. Many Urantians are now working on structuring various kinds of truly representative religious organizations. The mission and objectives of these new organizations would not conflict with the current secular-focused Urantian organizations. 

The Living the Teachings idea for a socializing of the Urantian religion is quite different from these formal approaches. The Living the Teachings concept proposes small, informal but intimate groups of reader-believers who seek to live the teachings of the Master. There are no authorities in these groups, no advice is given unless asked for. In these groups we discuss our inner lives, and we are the sole authority on our personal religion. We are all equal children of God who want to live at our highest.

The closest thing to such an idea is Alcoholics Anonymous. Millions of people belong to AA all over the world. Without authority figures, and with only their Thought Adjusters to guide them, the people of AA change their own lives and the lives of many people who have lost their way, and who are ready to ask for help. They have hit bottom, and are desperate.

In my judgment, many people have likewise "hit bottom" spiritually. There is an immense hunger for fresh spiritual hope. Living the Teachings groups are not replete answers to all religious needs. For many people, such a group might be only a supplement to more social forms of worship and religious expression. A Living the Teachings group — as currently designed — meets the needs of certain reader-believers who are focused upon self-actualization and active service.  

Yet, beyond question the impulse to evangelize is a very powerful one. As Rodan stated, outreach is very important to all who have a true religion and not a mere philosophy. So we of Living the Teachings reach out to those Urantians who resonate to our drum beat. We also reach out to Christians who have lost Jesus. The Living the Teachings group, then, as now designed, is thus a Michael-focused part of the outreach potential of the Invisible Fellowship of Urantians. New ideas and concepts are needed to revise the Living the Teachings format to make it possible to form more universal groups for non-Urantians and Urantians who may see the Revelation differently than we do.

We know there are many who challenge the religious energy that is beginning to burn in the hearts of "ordinary" Urantians. We of the Living the Teachings group must again answer the basic questions that are asked over and over again, until our brothers and sisters understand:

Am I saying that the Urantia Papers are a religion? No, no more than Jesus of Nazareth was a religion. The Papers are a revelation. As a revelation they are designed to co-ordinate and augment existing science, religion and philosophy. The Papers make this clear:

"The truth--an understanding of cosmic relationships, universe facts, and spiritual values — can best be had through the ministry of the Spirit of Truth and can best be criticized by revelation. But revelation originates neither a science nor a religion; its function is to co-ordinate both science and religion with the truth of reality." [1138]

Is the Urantia Book, then, a Religious Book? Yes, because although it did not originate the religion of Jesus, no knowledgeable reader would dispute that it vastly expands, richly augments, and even revolutionizes what it calls the greatest religion ever known:

"Christ was about to become the creed of the rapidly forming church. Jesus lives; he died for men; he gave the spirit; he is coming again. Jesus filled all their thoughts and determined all their new concept of God and everything else . . . they were filled with joy, and they lived such new and unique lives that all men were attracted to their teachings about Jesus. They made the great mistake of using the living and illustrative commentary on the gospel of the kingdom for that gospel, but even that represented the greatest religion mankind had ever known. [2067]

Many people say they want to keep the Urantia Movement non-religious. What is wrong with a purely secular Urantia movement? In the sense that the Urantia Papers define Religion, a great deal. Very early in the Urantia Papers we are told:

"God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man's eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman." [67]

Arguably, when an organization that purports to be serving the Revelation defines itself as nonreligious, it becomes [according to the Urantia Papers] a self-declared oxymoron.

To Return To Our Original Questions:

Will Scientists, Philosophers, and Religionists ever understand and accept the teachings of the Urantia Papers? Will the Urantia Movement?

The answer, in my judgment is: Scientists, Philosophers, and Religionists will begin to understand and accept the teachings of the Urantia Papers when a critical mass of "ordinary" Urantian Believers begin to teach and evangelize their religion.

What Can We Do Now?

How then, do we go forth as Urantians now, without any enlightened religious organizational infrastructure to support and serve us, into a largely cold and indifferent world? We Urantian Believers, with our tiny grasp of Light and Life, face a problem of credibility. We are able to believe far more than we could ever convince others of. Actually, as mortals, we believe more than we can ever know for certain is factually true. How then should a Urantian evangelist act? How do we really live up to our lofty ideals?

Leon Lederman, the Nobel-winning quantum physics scientist I referred to earlier, may offer us a clue. In defining science, he made this observation: "When Coleridge defined beauty, he always returned to one deep thought: beauty, he said, is "unity in variety." Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wide variety of nature — or more exactly, in the variety of our experience."

It is not inconsistent with the Urantia Papers to agree with Lederman, and to observe that science is a search for the Meta-Value of Beauty amid gross material reality. In a vast cosmos that seemed to be still emerging from pure chaos, as Lederman sees it, the scientist seeks order and unity. To such a scientist, between the unity of Beauty and the blind chance of chaos, unity is the greater, transcendent material reality, and she seeks to find it. If the search for beauty is the task of the true scientist, then what is the task of the Religionist of the New and Everlasting Religion of Jesus? It is three-fold.

First of all, we Urantians seek benevolence in a universe that appears to be cold and indifferent. For, hate is not the opposite of Love. Indifference is the opposite of Love — just as darkness is the absence of light, indifference is the absence of Love. In the face of much contrary evidence, we believe the promise of Jesus: we believe we live in a benevolent universe. And we seek to find benevolence, and nurture it whenever it emerges in an evolutionary universe of free choice.

Second, Urantian Religionists are visionaries and creators as well as discoverers. Urantian Religionists dare to dream the impossible dream, and dare see things not simply as they are, but also as they ought to be. Urantians are the "new" religionists of action. Urantian religionists have different concerns than scientists, theologians, and Urantia Book "readers." Understanding that God has delegated creative prerogatives to his evolutionary children, the Urantian religionist must do more than discover God, she must also act, for there can be no religion apart from an active life.

As Beauty is more real to the scientist than chaos, to the active religionist, the Meta-Value of Goodness or benevolence is more real than the passive attitude of indifference.

Third, as Urantians, we utilize our Revelation to continually establish a correlation between Beauty and Goodness — science and religion. We should arduously extract the bits of Truth that emerge as the benevolence of the Universe and the order of the Universe are found to correlate, complement and agree with one another. Thus do Urantian Religionists fulfill the promise of our revelation:

"The proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit." [1106]

In elegant precision, this quote expresses all of the things I have crudely attempted to express upon these pages. A large book could not exhaust its astounding depth. 

The conflict between the nonreligious and the religious Urantian is not simply an academic conflict. It is a passionate conflict of Values. A Religionist sees great risk to humanity when its "leaders" casually entertain materialistic sophistries that belittle or negate the spiritual dignity and destiny of human beings.

The advocacy of higher religious values is the duty of every Urantian. When a Religionist is ridiculed and silenced, the advocates of nonreligion take over. And, "All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self . . ." If Urantians do not fearlessly advocate their religion — which is the very thing that our "apparently indifferent" youth and our tired and disillusioned adults need the most — then the new and everlasting religion of Jesus will remain comatose.

There are many difficult and perplexing concepts in the Urantia Papers. Likewise, many listeners to Jesus went away wondering what it was he meant by this or that. But no sincere listener ever wondered HOW Jesus wanted him to live.

There is nothing esoteric or mysterious about how Urantians should express their religion. The great enigma of what we are to do — our own mission in life — may continue to baffle and elude us. But there is no question about how we are to go on living. We can become masters of the how. And, contrary to popular belief, transcendence of the spiritual over the material in human personality is far more dependent upon the how than the what.

The Urantian Religion is expressed by simple methods, without aggression, persuasion, or coercion. No special training, degrees, equipment nor laboratory is needed. There is no waiting period. The Urantian Religion can be expressed individually by a homemaker or a trash collector as readily as by a minister, priest, guru, or Urantian "authority."

[There has never been, nor is there now, a mortal authority on the Urantia Papers. You need not ask any human being for permission to be a Urantian Religionist.]

But make no mistake. The Urantian who dares to base his or her life on the religious teachings of the Urantia Papers cannot be tentative or faint-hearted. For: " The spiritual forward urge is the most powerful driving force present in this world; the truth-learning believer is the one progressive and aggressive soul on earth." [2063]  

Does this mean we should be confrontive and reactive to nonreligious Urantians? No, for:

"The spirit of the Master's injunction consists in the nonresistance of all selfish reaction to the universe, coupled with the aggressive and progressive attainment of righteous levels of true spirit values: divine beauty, infinite goodness, and eternal truth — to know God and to become increasingly like him." [1950] 

The second most effective way we can express our Truth as Urantian Religionists (other than striving to live it) is to tell others about it.

Evangelize. Don’t be afraid of persecution. Joan and I recently gave a funeral service at the request of two Urantian friends. Their mother and sister had died in a tragic accident on Christmas Eve. Although they were not Urantians, the mother was a passionate searcher and these two Urantians courageously told us to do the service as a Urantian Service, which we agreed to do.

Meredith Sprunger helped us with the structure . We devised a complete funeral service almost exclusively from the Urantia Papers. At the service, Joan and I read the several dozen passages of the words of our Revelation, and especially the words of the resurrected Jesus, to about 200 non-readers. The result was electric. The glory and grace of Jesus touched those spiritually hungry people.

We experienced the promise that The Spirit of Truth will always go before us, even when we are over our heads. 

The bottom line to this long paper is that the Revelation does not belong to any Foundation or Fellowship. The Urantia Revelation cannot change the world as a nonreligion, nor as a nonreligious book club nor as philosophical discussion groups. Nonreligionists will not, or cannot, lift up Jesus with sufficient passion and energy so that He will draw the world to Him.

The Urantia Papers belong to the people — "ordinary" people. The Revelation is rooted in the needs and hearts of all the people. In this, there is hope. We Urantians can go forth now, and as we pass by, astound non-Urantian strangers, friends, and even "enemies" with fearless, creative, loving actions that benevolently impact the course of events and positively change lives.

And even more important than what we do, is the way we will fulfill our planetary destinies, with remarkable grace, precision, confidence, and joy.

As Mother Teresa expressed it: "We cannot do great things. We can only do ordinary things with great love."

There will come a time, I know, when Urantians will go forth into the world to establish a religion that belongs not to a race, a nation, nor to a special group of teachers or preachers.

These Urantian Leaders of the New Spiritual Renaissance will teach a gospel of the kingdom that belongs to both Jew and gentile, to rich and poor, to free and bond, to male and female, even to the little children. And Urantians will proclaim this gospel of love and truth by the lives which they live, for Jesus shall live again through them.

By observing these new Urantians, those who have not heard, shall hear, and those who have not seen, shall see the Master, and they will learn of his life-giving teachings.

There will come a time, I know, when Urantians shall love one another with a new and startling affection, even as Jesus loved when he walked among us. And these new Urantians will serve humankind with a new and amazing devotion, even as Jesus served men and women when he lived in the flesh.

And when this hour has come, the new and everlasting religion of Jesus will at last blaze across the earth in the lives of the men and women who believe it.

Perhaps you are the Urantian who will set into motion a new outreach idea that will penetrate deep into other religions. Perhaps you are one of those great new Urantian teachers of whom Jesus spoke of when he made that stirring statement on page 2044.

If not you, then who?

In the local universe mind bestowals, these three insights of the cosmic mind constitute the a priori assumptions which make it possible for man to function as a rational and self-conscious personality in the realms of science, philosophy, and religion. Stated otherwise, the recognition of the reality of these three manifestations of the Infinite is by a cosmic technique of self-revelation. Matter-energy is recognized by the mathematical logic of the senses; mind-reason intuitively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (worship) is the religion of the reality of spiritual experience. These three basic factors in reflective thinking may be unified and co-ordinated in personality development, or they may become disproportionate and virtually unrelated in their respective functions. But when they become unified, they produce a strong character consisting in the correlation of a factual science, a moral philosophy, and a genuine religious experience. And it is these three cosmic intuitions that give objective validity, reality, to man's experience in and with things, meanings, and values. [192] 

The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious experience of rational and average human beings. And this is the only sense in which religion can ever be regarded as scientific or even psychological. The proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit. [1106] 

Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy. Revelation compensates for the absence of the morontia viewpoint by providing a technique for achieving unity in the comprehension of the reality and relationships of matter and spirit by the mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical. [1106] 

Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos. Religion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the entire cosmos. Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments of science with the spiritual-insight concept of the whole. Wherein philosophy fails in this attempt, revelation succeeds, affirming that the cosmic circle is universal, eternal, absolute, and infinite. [1122] 

Science indicates Deity as a fact; philosophy presents the idea of an Absolute; religion envisions God as a loving spiritual personality. Revelation affirms the unity of the fact of Deity, the idea of the Absolute, and the spiritual personality of God and, further, presents this concept as our Father--the universal fact of existence, the eternal idea of mind, and the infinite spirit of life. [1122] 

Science is only satisfied with first causes, religion with supreme personality, and philosophy with unity. Revelation affirms that these three are one, and that all are good. [1122-3] 

Out of his incomplete grasp of science, his faint hold upon religion, and his abortive attempts at metaphysics, man has attempted to construct his formulations of philosophy. And modern man would indeed build a worthy and engaging philosophy of himself and his universe were it not for the breakdown of his all-important and indispensable metaphysical connection between the worlds of matter and spirit, the failure of metaphysics to bridge the morontia gulf between the physical and the spiritual. Mortal man lacks the concept of morontia mind and material; and revelation is the only technique for atoning for this deficiency in the conceptual data which man so urgently needs in order to construct a logical philosophy of the universe and to arrive at a satisfying understanding of his sure and settled place in that universe. [1137] 

The truth--an understanding of cosmic relationships, universe facts, and spiritual values--can best be had through the ministry of the Spirit of Truth and can best be criticized by revelation. But revelation originates neither a science nor a religion; its function is to co-ordinate both science and religion with the truth of reality. [1138]