Journey to India:
The Legacy of the Sethite Teachers
Dave Holt

"There is not a Urantia religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth." (92.7.3; p. 1012)

I want to tell you a story of an epic journey, of the descendants of Adam and Eve from out of the "Land Between the Two Rivers." They left the Tigris and Euphrates site that the Urantia Book (UB) calls the Second Garden. The people of this pioneering race migrated with their herds and oxcarts, accompanied by a group of Adamic religious teachers known in the UB as the Sethites. It was 15,000 B.C., the Ice Age. Outside of the Garden, there were no urban cultures, at least not that our archeology has discovered. Most societies were hunter-gatherers. Glacier ice still blocked the trails to the north. A route east to the river floodplains of ancient Bharat, present-day Pakistan and India, was chosen.

As we explore the ancient histories of Iran, Persia and India, I want you to think of this as an encounter with your culture, not a strange and foreign one. We have learned from the Genographic Project (a National Geographic sponsored effort to map DNA) that most of humanity carries the genetic marker (M9) of a Central Asian man from about 40,000 years ago. Think of what must be encoded in that DNA. These are your memories. Your spiritual heritage.

I hope through this study of religious evolution to awake and evoke a new spirit of cooperation within all faiths to seek out our human commonalities, our shared origins, to understand where and why historic religions failed to establish peace between their different communities. Let us pause to worship a moment in the words of the Rishi Svetasvatara.

He is the Supreme Lord, who through his grace

Moves us to seek him in our own hearts.

He is the light that shines forever.

He is the inner self of all,

Hidden like a little flame in the heart.

Only by the stilled mind can he be known.

Those who realize him become immortal.

(From the Svetasvatara Upanishad, III, 12-13)

One of the Rishis of ancient Bharat, the sage Svetasvatara may have been a descendant of the early Adamites migrating out of the Second Garden. He was very likely one of the Brahmin priesthood caste of India. From the UB comes the new disclosure that the Brahmins are the surviving descendants of the Sethites, as the Adamic religious teachers are called in the UB (79:4.6, p. 882). He composed his Upanishad above using the foundation of the older Vedas in the same way that the rest of the 108 Upanishads were. Like only a few of them, it bears his name. Yet almost nothing is known about him. He may have been a poet of his day.

Archaeology is rife with controversies and disputes over dates. The date of origin for the Upanishads varies widely, usually between 900 B.C. to 500 B. C., the only unifying concept being that they come after the Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Atharva Vedas. In this presentation I will occupy a position guided by the UB's account of history, showing where it harmonizes with testimony from the field experts of our day. The Urantia Book portrays "the sixth century before Christ (92:5.9, p. 1009)," as a dynamic and spiritually creative era in India and other Asian localities. It was a period of religious revival. Poets and Rishis, yogis and philosophers gathered together to share the feeling of excitement in the air. The meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, believes they were attempting to recover the fading authority of the ancient Vedas that were still recited from memory. But they did much more. The Vedas came through them in a revitalized language, with a greater force and a renewed energy that provided enough heat to keep the light of truth shining. That Svetasvatara's words still guide modern generations shows his greatness as a teacher and holy man. The UB reveals the information that the Upanishads were written to counteract the Salem missionaries arriving with the new teachings of Melchizedek, "that salvation, favor with God is to be had by faith," and not by blood sacrifice (93:6.4, p. 1021).

Adam and Eve's eldest son, Seth, first organized and led this group of physician, teacher, priest sons of the Second Garden, the Sethites, to carry forth his parent's teachings into the world, preserving the "thread of monotheism. from the teachings of the Adamites." (79:3.3, p. 881) "Their religious concepts of Deity and the Universe were advanced." (76:3.10, P. 850) The Bible preserves a record of Seth's role, teaching them to trust in God (Yahweh), "At that time (the birth of Seth's son, Enos), men began to invoke the Lord by name." (Gen. 4:26) Per the UB, "His son founded the new order of worship." (76:3.4) Oddly enough, there is no mention of women being involved in the corps of the Sethites although we would expect it to be true about women from the First Eden.

"Disposer, Ordainer, Highest Exemplar, there where they say the One is, beyond the Seven Seers, he is our father, he begat us. All worlds he knows; the gods he named, Himself, One only." (Rig Veda, X.82)

The Trinity did not survive well over time and "degenerated into the triune figure of the fire god (Agni)," (Ibid, par. 4). Another trinity arose later: Sat-Chit-Ananda, meaning Being, Intelligence and Joy, but it didn't gain prominence. However, the teachings about the indwelling spirit, the Thought Adjuster, are found in many passages:

"A part of the subtle invisible spirit comes as a messenger to the body . A part of Infinite Consciousness becomes our own finite consciousness.There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. .." (Maitri Upanishad, 2.3-5, 6.19)

"That within which we are is the immortal, the Self,

I go to the palace and assembly hall of Prajapati.

Glory have I won.Thus did Brahma tell to Prajapati, our creator,

Prajapati to Manu, and Manu to his descendants." (Chandogya Upanishad 8)

"The Edenic pair always proclaimed that a Son of God would sometime come and they communicated to their loved ones the belief, at least the longing hope that the world of their blunders and sorrows might possibly be the realm whereon the ruler of the universe would elect to function as the Paradise bestowal Son." (76:5.4, p. 852)This predicted bestowal of the Son of God was remembered in the teaching of the avatars of Vishnu. Krishna, declaring himself to be one of these, tells Arjuna, "For the establishment of righteousness, I come into being from age to age," (Bhagavad Gita, 4:8). Jesus is often placed in the pantheon of Vishnu's incarnations. And the Persian holy book, Avesta, from the land of Zoroaster, known today as Iran, tells us,

"His birth, like the birth of every storm god, is longed for and hailed with joy as the signal of its deliverance by the whole living creation, because it is the end of the dark and arid reign of the demon: 'In his birth, in his growth did the floods and trees rejoice, in his birth, in his growth the floods and trees did grow up, in his birth, in his birth the floods and trees exclaimed with joy.'" (Darmesteter, Ch. 4)

From Adam and Eve's time we inherited the arts of peace: writing, weaving, metallurgy, the engineering skills to build multi-storied buildings, and to design flood control/ irrigation channels for agriculture (76:3.8, p. 850). An undeciphered writing system from 2,300 B.C. was discovered in the Kopet Dagh "Bronze Age" village sites in 2000. These are the lands identified in the UB as Adamson and Ratta's center of civilization. An intriguing question for the Urantia Book student has to be, is it the Adamite alphabet brought north from the Second Garden by Adamson and his companions? The Sumerians are believed to be the source and model for all the writing systems of this era. But it may turn out that the Kopet Dagh writing pre-dates Sumerian writing.

Although they accomplished many great things, the Adamites did not domesticate the horse. Archaeology has shown that this achievement, along with domestication of the camel, took place about 4,000 B.C. Thus we understand how, per the UB, it took almost a year for the First Gardeners to reach the banks of the Euphrates more than 30,000 years before. They were probably using the Onager, a type of wild donkey depicted in ancient Sumerian panels.

The migrations of the Adamic peoples drew to a close in 15,000 B.C. (78:3.9, p. 871). Concurrent with this epic change was the first extensive migration of the Andites into India (79:2.4, p. 880). A millennium earlier, 16,000 B.C., "a company of one hundred Sethites" had already accompanied a group of Dravidian (Mesopotamian) Andites from Turkestan into India (ibid sec 3.4). Whereas much of our world history refers to Aryans as the oldest ancestral race, the UB prefers a new designation ─ Andite, peoples of an earlier time, emphasizing that their racial makeup is pre-Aryan. The Adamites blended with Nodites, known as "Nephilim", the "sons of God," in Genesis 6:4, to form the Andite race; "the term is used to designate those peoples whose racial inheritance was from 1/8 to 1/6 violet. (78.4.1, p. 871)" None of these racial appellations exist outside of the UB. In our world history books, we know the Andites by their tribal names, Scythians, Hittites, Tocharians, Sumerians, and others. Some historians such as India's N. S. Rajaram know there is an earlier layer of civilization from before the rise of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Indus Valley. Zend, the language of the Persian Avesta texts (Zoroastrian), is kindred to the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and both of them are derived from a more ancient language. The Andite classification answers the need for a descriptive handle on this original phase of human culture. The broad overview provided in the UB offers a revealing perspective of the similar "Andite" threads in each tribe's story, common themes that we can understand in spite of the confusing profusion of dizzying political changes encountered in ancient history.

At one time the Vedic religion was a shared Indo-Iranian tradition. From the Kopet Dagh mountains north of Afghanistan, it was carried through Persia (Iran), into North India and Pakistan. Similarities in the names of deities (Hindu Varuna being the Avestan Varona), the language, and the spiritual concepts confirm a strong kinship between Central Asian and Indian cultures. One Indian thinker, Shri Kamakoti, even believes the Sanatana Dharma, the "eternal religion," as Hinduism is also known, existed among the Hebrews of Palestine at one time. He cites his interpretation of the Mundaka Upanishad in which he saw familiar resonances ─ a parable of a tree bearing the fruit of wisdom, the two "friends", one of whom eats the fruit. Another interpretation might understand it as a parable of the relationship between the soul and the indwelling spirit.

Mundaka Upanishad

There are two birds, two sweet friends who dwell on the self-same tree. The one eats the fruits thereof, and the other looks on in silence.

The first is the human soul who, resting on that tree, though active, feels sad in his unwisdom. But on beholding the power and the glory of the higher Spirit, he becomes free from sorrow. (Part 3, Ch. 1)

Eve persisted in the memory of the Andites as an Earth Goddess, and as the Mother of the races. In the early migrations, the Andites were still primarily agriculturalists, not herders. They carried the plow and the yoke bequeathed to them by the Adamites. Among their household gods were figurines sculpted in the image of the Mother Goddess, known to one Andite group, the "peace-loving" Sumerians (78:8.6, p. 876), as the "Queen of Heaven," Inanna of Sumer.

"The people of Sumer parade before the Holy Inanna,

Inanna the Lady of the Morning, is radiant.

I sing you praises, holy Inanna.

The Lady of the Morning is radiant on the horizon." (fr. Sumerian tablets)

The fertility figures representing the mother of all humankind, Ishtar, Astarte, Isis, Eve, are found in ancient sites throughout the Middle East and Asia. Her idols traveled in the ox-carts from Anu-Depe of Turkmenistan over the Hindu Kush, or across Baluchistan, and down into the lush plains where cascading rivers carried glacier meltwater down from the Himalayas. Research and study from before the publication of the UB often describes the key religious conflict of ancient history as a transition between the worshippers of the prehistoric Mother Goddess and the followers of a patriarchal Father God (Zeus, Yahweh, Ahura Mazda). Adam had endeavored, "to teach the races sex equality. The way Eve worked by the side of her husband made a profound impression." (74:7.8, p. 836) Although Hindu literature carries this memory, "where women are honored, there the gods are pleased (The Laws of Manu, III.56)," the Edenic model was gradually forgotten.

This same conflict is reframed in the UB, which describes it as one between an older Adamic culture and its later Andite lineage. As Urantia culture develops, more depictions of male gods begin turning up in the art, idols, and figurines found in archaeological digs, evidence of the gradual diminishing of the Mother God's importance. Andites did not carry on "the Adamic tradition of peace-seeking," but became "skillful militarists," and "cavalrymen." (78:4-5. P. 872) As their civilizations became more militaristic and conquest-oriented, by necessity then, the gods became more warrior-like and predominantly masculine. Adamic migrations had never moved at the pace of an Andite cavalry. The taming of the horse was an Andite accomplishment, and on horseback, armed with weapons, driving chariots, these Andites brought Vedic hymns praising Indra, their warrior god, "the fort-destroyer," into Bharat. This dichotomy between matriarchal and patriarchal social groups can be illuminated if we take into consideration more current terminology about the divide between hawks and doves.

Though aspects of a matriarchy vs. a patriarchy are part of the story, there are more complexities to it. These societies were not homogenous but already deeply stratified so that both worldviews probably coexisted at once, the dirt farmers worshipping Mother Goddess figurines at the family altar while the priestly (Brahmin) and warrior classes, known today as the Kshatriya caste, followed a Father God taught by the Sethites. Already class divisions were being reinforced. The scribes protected their knowledge and ability to read and write from the uninitiated. Wherever grand temples were raised heavenward, the common classes of laborers were forbidden to enter, and the status of the priests and royalty as divine gods was thereby reinforced. In Egypt only members of the royal family received a "ka," the gift of an indwelling spirit. The Brahmins' early efforts to preserve their racial purity have persisted down to the present-day caste system of modern India; "these earlier Andites made a desperate attempt to preserve their identity . by the establishment of rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage." (79:2.6, p. 880) This is not unfamiliar. Our own conservative political movements, though their agendas differ now, had early roots in the effort to maintain "white" dominance in American culture.

Archaeology and ancient literature together give clues to the great age and history of the Andite race. Astronomers analyzed passages from within the Vedas and found they provided "scientific" dating to supplement the C14 carbon-dated discoveries excavated from the ruins. The conventional belief is that the Vedas were written down circa 3,500 B.C., or 4,000 B.C. per the historian, N. J. Rajaram. But the astronomic references in the Vedic scriptures show their origin correlates to a time when Brushaspati (planet Jupiter) crossed the Pushya constellation (Cancer), giving the date 4,650 B.C. In the Rig Veda, according to astronomer B. G. Sidharth, the recorded first vernal equinox of the star Ashini dates the text to 10,000 B. C. The vernal equinox cycle of the Taiteriya Samhita dates as far back as 22,000 B.C. The Vedas, though not yet written down, must have existed in an oral form, spoken, sung, or chanted, much before the conventionally accepted dates.

For the first time in centuries, our own archaeology is pushing the timeline of history back, uncovering more information from before the stubborn barrier of 5,000 B.C. This date, the UB tells us, marks the event of the great flood which wiped out much of our historic past; "these floods completed the disruption of Andite civilization (78.7.6; P. 875)." Global warming in our day reminds us that we are not immune to nature's cataclysmic changes of climate, and more recently, geologic change such as resulted in the Indian Ocean tsunami.

A thousand years before the floods, 6,000 B.C., marked the end of the Second Garden. The pressure of Akkadian and Assyrian invasions from the north drove the inhabitants out, "Five per cent of Andites about the mouth of the Tigris & Euphrates refused to leave and became the Sumerians." (78.6.6; P. 874) And so our history describes the Sumerians as having suddenly appeared on the world stage. They were unusual in the UB's view because they continued to view the Adamites, "as an alien race. Sumerian pride in the more ancient Nodite culture" led them to prize their own "paradisiacal traditions . of Dilmun" above those of the Second Garden (77:4.9, P. 860).

The Sumerians have customarily been considered the builders of the first cities, Eridu, Ur, Erek, Babylon. When the ruins of the old urban centers of Vedic civilization in Pakistan, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, were found in 1921, they were first given the name Indus Valley Civilization. A later modern technology, the LANDSAT Satellite system, determined that the vast majority of the villages were built on the banks of a now-vanished river, the Sarasvati. India's ancient civilization is now more appropriately named the Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization, although Indus-Sarasvati has also been proposed. There was a busy sea trade between the Sumerian ports on the Persian Gulf and those of this "Indian" civilization. One such Harappan port was Lothal, built near the Gulf of Cambay where the Sarasvati River may have once flowed into the Arabian Sea. Seals bearing the yet undeciphered Harappan script have been unearthed at Mesopotamian locations. It is a writing system that scholars believe was imported or derived from Sumer, as many neighboring societies had done. We have deciphered Mesopotamian cuneiform but work is still ongoing to translate the Harappan script. No Rosetta Stone exists to link the two.

We now know that the urban concept of civilization, "a population of specialized workers governed by a complex religious and political hierarchy," (Archaeology Journal's definition, May 2000) predates the Sumerians in many parts of Central Asia. This supports UB descriptions of the continual Andite migrations out of the Second Garden and the lands surrounding it (78:5, p. 872). In the UB, the idea of "a city" is one of the Andites' characteristic contributions to world culture, setting them apart from their neighbors, the Sangiks, Nodites, and Andonites. "Andites did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance." (79:1.4, p. 879) In N. Syria, where Vedic culture and its pantheon of gods is known to have existed, a new urban site, Tell Hamoukar, dated from 4,000 B.C. has recently come to light (May 2000). Possibly it is an urban site built by the Syrian branch of the Nodite civilizations (77:4.2, p. 859).

Just off the West coast of India, the ruins of a great city were discovered in January 2002. Straw bricks from the site yield a carbon date of 9,500 years B.P. The massive stone remains lie below dangerous tidal currents in the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay). Well known sites at Jericho, a city by 7,000 B.C.E., and Catal Hyauk, from 6,900 B.C.E., already dated back to these early days. The cities of Mesopotamia arose later, about 5,500 B.C. According to both the UB and modern historians, the evolutionary change to urban civilizations was partly caused by great climatic changes bringing drought to the plateau grazing lands. Cities evolved among the agriculturalists whose production of surplus food allowed the development of specialized labor groups. Nomadic herders were not freed from the constant labor for food.

The Harappan ruins are notable as much for what was not found, as they are for what was discovered in the excavations. There are no great Ziggurats, the stair-stepped pyramidical towers (mythologized in the Bible as the Tower of Babel) that are found in Babylon and Sumeria; no fancy burials, or monumental displays of wealth so characteristic of Egypt. Instead of a temple, there is a "Great Bath" at Mohenjo-Daro. It may have been the equivalent of a temple, where water was used in a ritual of purification, and prayers were offered to the Vedic deities, Agni, Indra, Mitra (Mithras) and Varuna.

"May the stream of my life flow into the river of righteousness." (Rig Veda, II.28)

The Hindu temples of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India's most southerly state, are known as the Seven Pagodas. They are regarded in some circles as having been constructed in 4,000 B.C., a date that is in dispute. Only one temple now stands on the seashore. The rest are submerged, perhaps due to a rise in sea levels at the end of the Ice Age. If the date of 6,000 years "Before the Present" (BP) is correct, they are a remaining record of the earlier immigrations of Dravidian Andites described in the UB who created "the most versatile civilization then on earth," (79:3.1, P. 881). These early Andites probably spoke a variant of Sumerian; scholars are establishing the kinship between the Tamil language of the southern Dravidians and the Mesopotamian language of old. In our time, the ancient rivalry of the Tamil Dravidians and the northern "Aryans" has grown increasingly bitter. A terrorist group known as the Tamil Tigers regularly attacks the "Brahminist tyranny" of the north.

Freed from the necessity of having all citizens involved in food production, a new class of craftsmen arose in the Harrapan culture. Industry and trade were the main pursuits in the ancient Harappan port city of Lothal, a factory town where jewelry and beads were manufactured for the outside world and exported up the Persian Gulf. Along with ivory and cotton, Lothal's trade goods were exchanged for semiprecious stones and foods from the fertile Euphrates Valley. Again we find no area in Lothal to qualify as a religious center, no great temple structures. Ironically, the most prevalent spiritual practice to survive in Hinduism today is the most ancient form of Vedic religion centered around an altar in the home, presided over by the parents. Perhaps the Sarasvati-Sindhu culture in the cities of Lothal, Mohenjo-Daro, and Harappa was from a time before the priest class, the Brahmins, consolidated their power and gained domination over the other castes.

There was another significant difference between the older Adamic tradition and its Andite descendants. No trace of the horse culture of the northern Aryan Andites has been found in the Sarasvati-Sindhu culture. This suggests that the earlier settlements were more Adamic in character. Thousands of years before the Aryan migration into India, the Andites had overrun Mesopotamia and they "willingly assimilated the residue of the civilization of Mesopotomia," and "quickly revived many phases," of it, "adopting the arts and much of the culture." (77:5.10) The Rig Veda recalls such an era,

"They were the Gods' companions at the banquet, the ancient sages true to Law Eternal..Meeting together in the same enclosure, they strive not, of one mind, one with another. They never break the Gods' eternal statutes, and injure none." (Bk 7: Hymn 76.5)

The UB points out, "Adam left a great intellectual and spiritual culture behind him, .it was not advanced in mechanical appliances." (78:2.4, P. 870) When the later Aryan Andites (2,500 B.C.) were driven into India by land degradation and climatic change on the Persian plateau, they brought the accouterments of war ─ bronze and iron weapons, and horse-drawn chariots. Yet there is no evidence that they came as conquerors ─ no signs of battles or burned cities, no traces of the Aryan Invasion that has been described in the history books of India for decades. They were a proud people however. King Darius of the Persians is notable in history for making the first declaration, "I am an Aryan, of the Aryan race." Was he appropriating an older term, as old as the ancient Rig Veda, that was not meant to be a racial designation before. He now used Aryan to express the dominant pride of the militant Persian Andite, descended from the Elamite Nodite. Aryan had meant "noble born" or "enlightened one" and I believe it was synonymous with what the UB calls Adamic. The people of Elam had recognized and feared Cain as a member of the tribe of Adam because of the presence of his Thought Adjuster. This awe and fear had protected Cain and saved his life. Might Aryan have been a term to designate someone who possessed the gift of an indwelling Mystery Monitor? The archaeology confirms that the Aryan immigration into the fertile river plains took place peacefully, without violence. Was this because the more ancient Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization, carrying a greater percentage of Adamic blood, prized peace above war?

Perhaps one summer morning, boys from the city of Harappa, out hunting rabbits and lizards in the hills, were the first to see the impressive flags that flew in a new wind from the north. They ran back to town, big-eyed with fear and excitement. Scouts were dispatched to verify the sighting of the camp. They confirmed the boys' story of the high-spirited herds of horses. The Harappan leaders, not wanting a battle, then sent ambassadors to greet them. Perhaps the pre-Aryan culture in the Sarasvati Valley possessed remnants of Adamic culture that commanded the respect of the "invaders," such that the idea of military conquest was unthinkable. Marriages between the important families were arranged to seal alliances and solidify the new friendship. One day at the end of negotiations, the Aryan's horse-drawn chariots entered the city ─ it was quite a spectacle. Village dogs chased wheels down the street, as if their rule of the road would never be lost.

The UB echoes the picture from our archaeological records of gradual and ongoing immigrations over hundreds of years. "These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China." (79:1.1, p. 878) However, the arriving Aryans brought with them new metaphors to describe the spiritual search, using references to what may have been a war culture in process of development.

Katha Upanishad

"Know the Atman as Lord of a chariot; and the body as the chariot itself. Know that reason is the charioteer; and the mind indeed is the reins.

The horses, they say, are the senses; and their paths are the objects of sense. He who has not right understanding, and whose mind is never steady is not the ruler of his life, like a bad driver with wild horses.

But he who has right understanding and whose mind is ever steady is the ruler of his life, like a good driver with well-trained horses.

The man whose chariot is driven by reason, who watches and holds the reins of his mind, reaches the End of the journey, the supreme everlasting Spirit.

Beyond the senses are their objects, and beyond the objects is the mind. Beyond the mind is pure reason, and beyond reason is the Spirit in man.

Beyond the Spirit in man is the Spirit of the universe, and beyond is Purusha, the Spirit Supreme."

Although the Andite Aryans from the north continued to emphasize the monotheistic thread from the original teachings of the First Garden, its fabric was coming unraveled in India and throughout the world. The UB records that by about 3,000 B.C., "the concept of God had grown very hazy in the minds of men." (93:1.1, p. 1014) "By 2,500 B.C. mankind had largely lost sight of the revelation sponsored in the days of Eden (92:4.6, p. 1007)."

Just as archaeology helps us to follow the course of the Sethite mission through the centuries, the surviving literatures of Mesopotamia, India, and Iran can be sifted for the remnants of Adam's revelation to humanity. By 2,300 B.C., the Epic of Gilgamesh, written down in Mesopotamia and widely read in surrounding countries, offered its concluding message that salvation, becoming one with God, was beyond hope. The teachings of Adam and Eve had been lost, along with their children's revelations of salvation into an eternal future life, becoming one with the indwelling spirit, the Thought Adjuster. Gradually these teachings were replaced by the "wheel of births," a concept of reincarnation, sometimes transmigration into a lower level of animal life. The stage had been set for the emergency bestowal of the Melchizedek Son who came to Abraham of Ur a few hundred years later.

When the Salem missionaries arrived in India bringing the teachings of Melchizedek from Palestine, these Salemites would ask their new converts to destroy the old household gods (95:5.4, p. 1019). Resistance came from the Brahmins. They began to write down the oral literature to preserve the hymns and rituals, fearing the loss of their influence. They strengthened an already established caste system to preserve their dominance over the other castes (94:1&2, p. 1028). By Svetasvatara's day, 600 B.C., the Brahmins were committed to ritual based modes of worship centered on the older Vedas. The authors of the Upanishads arose as a dissenting group, some from within the entrenched Brahmin priesthood itself. They labored to institute a more personal search for truth outside of ritual recitations of scripture, and a deepening of the individual's relationship with God, perhaps to meet the Hittite missionairies on their own turf. The Upanishads emphasized meditation, worship, discovering God for oneself outside of the confines of priest-led ceremonies. The Rishis set out to free truth seekers from codified rituals that their more conservative fellow Brahmins wished to preserve, to consolidate their privileged position. We know just how strong this desire to maintain power was, because it was forbidden for anyone not of the twice-born castes (all but the Sudras) even to hear the Vedas recited. For women, it became taboo to study them.

Let us go back in time to Svetasvara's day. We join him and his pupils along the Ganges River in the 6^th millennium before the birth of Jesus. It is a mild evening. Svetasvatara stands hip-high in the river's current, offering his evening prayers to Isvara (the Supreme), and meditating beneath the new moon above. From the reeds along the bank, a young man watches curiously. The holy man is being spied on. When the great teacher emerges from the stream, the young boy takes aim with his impertinent challenge, voice strident, shocked. "You offer your devotions outside the ritual."

"Yes," answered Svetasvatara, stepping ashore, unruffled by the boy's attack. "You can do this also. Offer your love and friendship to God at any time. He is always ready to receive you. You were created to be an image-bearer of God. You do not need the priests to speak for you. Haven't you read in the Rig Veda?

'You will not find him who all these begat,

Some other thing has stepped between you,

Blinded by fog and ritual mutterings,

Wander the hymn-reciters, robbers of life!'" (Rig Veda X, 82)"

This was new for the boy; his people didn't have such a teaching.

Svetasvatara continued to offer instruction. "God says, 'be still and look within and know who I am'." But at that, the young man turned and fled, back to the home of his parents. The teacher shook his head. He thought of the Hittite teachers who had come among them, who tried to remind the people of these great truths. Though the boy ran away that night, he returned the next day, seeking to become Svetasvatara's disciple.

In Parthia (Persia), the Magi, as the priest class was known, came from the once independent region of Media, also the birthplace of Zoroaster. They were known in the Bible as the Madai, sons of Jepheth (Gen. 10, 2). Jepheth's sons were patriarchs of Greek tribes. Through a centuries-old privilege of inheritance, they provided priests for the Persian Aryans just as the Sethites did for India. It is likely these Medians or Madai were a Sethite group. They left us a great teaching about the resurrection of the soul. Eventually the Magi rose to political power and instituted a theocracy requiring strict obedience from the populace. When they became a national religion, they imposed strict observances that were too severe for working people, much as the Taliban of Afghanistan did in our century. But like the modern Taliban, the ancient Magi over-reached the mark. Their unpopularity weakened the culture so that it fell to the invasion of the Muslims. "The triumph of Islam was a deliverance." (Darmesteter, Ch. III)

One Upanishads translator, Juan Mascaro, comments that, "the ascension from the many to the one was not yet complete in the Vedas (Upanishads, p. 8)." Islam brought in a clear cut loyalty to the One God. The teaching about God as the Most High, once revealed by Melchizedek, rose again in a new form, El Elyon becoming Mohammed's Allah.

Hinduism failed to achieve the high potential of its teachings about the indwelling spirit. The idea of final absorption, annihilation in Atman clouded the vision of the individual self's ongoing partnership with the indwelling Spirit. Buddhism completed the crystallization of the philosophy, teaching the extinction of the individual personality upon attaining Nirvana. The Sethite heritage had gone as far as it could go. But perhaps the old foundation of the Brahmin-Sethite teaching, coupled with the revitalized monotheism of Islam, and joined with the teachings of Joshua Ben Joseph (Jesus) might one day provide the fertile ground for the establishment of a world religion. History alone fails to reveal the goal of destiny, the divine purpose. (19:1.5, p. 215) The UB predicts that, "the evolution of a world religion . will presage the entrance of the planet upon the earlier phases of settlement in light and life." (71:8.14, P. 807) Does it not make you wonder then, that the UB may have come at another critical juncture in history, to assist with the preservation and the unification of the best in our religions?

"The civilization of the second Eden was an artificial structure ─ it had not been evolved ─ and was therefore doomed to deteriorate until it reached a natural evolutionary level." (78:2.3, p. 870) Stop and consider the import of that remark. It makes the point that the automatic and supremely practical adjustments of evolution constitute the ruling order of things and affairs on our planetary level, the laws of which even override the revelation of a bestowal son. Within the context of a religious text, this is a bold statement, setting the laws of evolution as paramount in the affairs of the spirit. The more common attitude of the religionist is to pray, wait for God to act, to enter human history once again and to set everything right. If the deterioration of the Edenic Garden civilization was anticipated, then does it also make sense that another revelation will come along to compensate for the exhaustion of evolutionary effort in our time or in the future? Yes, though we are given the mandate to grow spiritually, yet we also periodically receive the gift of God entering history through revelations. Evolution's laws determine that social transformation must also come from individuals transformed through devotional worship and prayer, who become engaged in service to their communities.

The Urantia Book is the first revelation to teach a full democratization of the divine spark, revealing that upon the completion of Jesus's (Michael's) mission, such a gift comes into every life to light the path taken by every yearning soul. This universal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters should inspire a new confidence in our abilities to directly access and verify spiritual truth.

The UB sounds the warning that we can't rely on the Christian Church to bring about religious unity in the world. "Christianity, as it is subdivided and secularized today, presents the greatest single obstacle to [the] further advancement of human civilization, especially is this true concerning the Orient.These races do not yet understand that there is a religion of Jesus separate, and somewhat apart from Christianity." (195:10.7 and 15, p. 2085) We must evolve with all the resources we have, to bring unity to all of God's peoples. As the fate of Adam's revelation to Urantia showed, it is by our efforts to evolve that real spiritual growth and attainment is accomplished, yet we have the original foundation of revelation to build upon and to point the way.

How do we continue to foster evolution towards religious unity? Here, I offer some thoughts: 1. by the study of religious texts from other cultures, and the encouragement of individual striving for an understanding of other Urantian religions; 2. the forging of community and interfaith contacts, and occasions for group worship; 3. the establishment of schools of philosophy in association with our churches; 4. the full inclusion of women in the spiritual conversation; 5. the teaching of self-mastery and character building, over and above a simple acquiescence to the security of a saving ideology, especially to young people;

6. learning from Jesus the true gospel of his teachings, "teaching friendship with God," (159:3.9, p. 1766) fraternizing with the spirit within.

Undoubtedly, you will have other ideas as to how we can eventually collaborate to understand the same spiritual mysteries different faiths encounter, to increase our common knowledge and love of God. Understanding our commonalities, we will be able to go to Asian and Mid-Eastern peoples with the religion of Jesus as representatives of his message of salvation, with an enlarged message to include all the worlds peoples. "Spiritual unity is the fruit of faith union with the living Jesus (195:10.11, p. 2086)."

Dave Holt, 2005

Sources:

James Darmesteter, The Vendidad, Sacred Books of the East Vol. 4. (Oxford U. Press, 1880)

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel. (W.W. Norton and Co., 1997)

Eknath Easwaran, The Upanishads. (Nilgiri Press, 1987) for Svetasvatara Upanishad

Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita (Blue Mt. Ctr. Of Meditation, 1975)

Juan Mascaro, The Upanishads. (Penguin Books, 1965) for Katha, Maitri, Mundaka Upanishads, and Rig Veda II.28

Sarvepalli Radakrishan and Charles A. Moore, Indian Philosophy. (Princeton U. Press, 1957) for The Laws of Manu.

N. S. Rajaram, Aryan Invasion. (Hindustan Times, August 26, 1993)

B. G. Sidharth, The Celestial Key to the Vedas, (Inner Traditions Books, 1999)

Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. (Harper and Row, 1983), courtesy of Robert Sarmast's research papers.

R.C. Zaehner, Hindu Scriptures. (J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 1966) for Rig Veda X.82, and Chandogya Upanishad