• From: A place forgotten
  • Registered: 2006-05-15

Topic: The Urantia Book

I just bought this book the other day, and while reading it, I was surprised that I've never seen it before, let alone heard about it. From what I've read, It seems to be a more "saner" version of ACIM, without the "lessons" that puts one into a hypnotic state, and so far, it runs pretty much congruent with my own beliefs.
I was wondering if anyone has read this book before. What's good, what's bad, and what to look out for. I'm sure I'll find this out myself, but it'd just be interesting to get some feedback to give me a heads up to some degree.
What did I feel? I felt it MAY have been coming from a corrupt source, yet the ideas expressed (so far) don't seem to be suspicious, but I'm always keeping my eyes out.
Doing a brief search on the forums, I came across a thread where a guy named "Doug" mentioned that people were regarding this material as being chanelled from a Service-to-Self source. I thought the same thing too as I was reading the first couple of pages, but then I thought to myself "Well, they certainly are risking quite a bit by putting so much into it."
Anyways,
Troy.

"Don't eat any wooden nickels."

Magical_Mongoose's Website

  • From: Oceania
  • Registered: 2006-12-26

Re: The Urantia Book

I have read The Urantia Book many times.  It is a very interesting book.  The part that I enjoy the most is the part about the life of Jesus. 

Like all channeled material (IMHO) it contains more than enough truth to make the casual believer to accept the whole thing as factual.  I don't believe it to be entirely factual however.  Some of the historical elements I think are quite suspect.

The part about the Lucifer rebellion is particularly interesting.  A unique twist on the garden of Eden.  I’m not sure what to make of that part.

The real red flag (other than the fact that it is channeled) is that in some sections they refer to one world government as the only solution for human planetary problems.  There are references to socialism as a solution as well.

There are elements of white supremacy underlying part of the texts too.

Remember it was recorded in the 1930's.  The book mentions on many occasions that it is hard to translate their great truths into the modern English language and our limited ability to understand infinite concepts etc.  They talk a lot about other dimensional creatures but never refer to them as aliens…..always depicted in a more angelic or demonistic fashion.  They are particularly fond of evolution….but I don’t buy much of their concept of evolution.  Maybe truths are particularly left out because they don’t think we could understand the concepts…..or maybe to perpetuate an underlying agenda.

Don’t take this opinion as an overall condemnation of the Urantia book.  I really value the book and recommend it to people from time to time.  As has been said on this forum many times:  Take what truth from it that you can and leave the rest.  How do discern the wheat from chaff?  By how it resonates with you.

I hope this helps and I know you will thoroughly enjoy the book.  It’s been about six months since I picked it up.  I think I’ll start it again and maybe we can discuss it further as we move along.  One thing for certain is that every time I read it…..I find new truths…and new things that don’t resonate with me.

Enjoy!

Winston

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
  • zenden
  • zenden
  • Synthesizing Analyst Proclaimed Barbarian
  • Offline
  • From: The Athanor
  • Registered: 2005-01-20

Re: The Urantia Book

me too.  i loved the jesus material.  theres some very interesting "lifetime" snippets in there, of him, when joseph died, what the notion of "carpenter" really means, what happened in his life when the kid fell off the roof, how that went, how "they' manipulated time and space, and physics to make things happen FOR him.  how he laarned to do such 'things' himself.  how mary was inseminated  or impregnated? and by who (the C's say it was an archangel, named Tonatha).  they even (well, ?) try to explain how the water turned to wine, and all about the marriage in caanan.  they explain time warping and how thats all done.  that, in itself is worth a read, the bending of physics.

also, check THE DOMA--Daughters of the Way.  its an off-shoot.  u have to see that.  goddess stuff with a twist, of course.  that lucifer rebellion stuff is always a stickler, brings it closer to planetary history, and explanation of the galactic wars, ? the orion wars?  all from space, as its hard to tell who's really who and who is speaking.  and explaining.  its difficult to cull out "galactic history" from whatever, or any sources.  the only way thats ever around, is by channeling, or by myth.  why is it always that way?  so suspicious.   that mystery, where it all started and who and why, and all that always reminds of an orphan child trying to find out about one's birth parents.  like were all orphans and cant find out where "home" really is.

GNOTHI SEAUTON "Know Thyself!"

4 Reply by Magical_Mongoose (edited by Magical_Mongoose 2007-02-25 17:05:11)

  • From: A place forgotten
  • Registered: 2006-05-15

Re: The Urantia Book

Great stuff. I'm listening to the CD right now...it makes it so much easier!
I wish "they" offerred courses on galactic history...maybe in some time, we will. But currently we're in lock-down. I think learning about what has transpired throughout our galaxy will give greater credence to the struggles we're experiencing currently on Earth.

"Don't eat any wooden nickels."

Magical_Mongoose's Website

5 Reply by Adama

  • Adama
  • Guest

Re: The Urantia Book

Hello,
as I wrote on a previous post, I read and studied very carefully ACIM.
It really made me sick even if 95 percent of the book is perfectly corrrect (from my point of view).
The problem lies in the 5 percent left, and it is that part that made me sick...
When a hunter builds a trap, he put REAL food to catch animals, but the problems come AFTER you've eaten it.
This book and all the stuff related are vicious (the most vicious I've encountered) because they have the taste of truth, the aspect of truth and the smell of truth but they are just lifeless theories.

I met a very famous ACIM teacher and he really loved the Urantia book, but this guy was talking about love, spirit and everthing like that but there was just emptiness and no true solutions for people who came to see him.

Have I read somewhere connections between Urantia books and Kellog's family?

  • Registered: 2006-03-10

Re: The Urantia Book

Not much familiar with Urantia (too HUGE to ever feel like I had the time to read all of it and really absorb it), but just saw this the other day in a posting by a fellow named ZS Livingstone who apparently studied in the 70s in the Alpha and Omega Order of Melchizedek and occasionally sends essays to post at educate-yourself.org, reminded me of it:

http://educate-yourself.org/zsl/caligas … eb07.shtml

Both Cliff and I were taught the Urantia Book is 50% correct by the Alpha and Omega Order of Melchizedek. Cliff read UB in the late 1960s. I finally read it in 1995. The UB was key in Cliff's spiritual awakening. For me it is the 3000th book I read. To me the UB reads as another attempt by the souls who set up the Roman Catholic Church 1700 years ago to set up another messianic religion for the new age.

I'd like to hear about the connection between Urantia and the Kellogg's family, too, if anyone has more info on that. smile

Tim

7 Reply by Magical_Mongoose (edited by Magical_Mongoose 2007-02-26 12:41:22)

  • From: A place forgotten
  • Registered: 2006-05-15

Re: The Urantia Book

Yeah, it's pretty tedious even listening to the CD...I'm listening/reading the first part and it just goes on an on about the spiritual hierarchies, the characteristics of them and relationships between them. It'll probably take the same place as ACIM...I read through a couple of hundred pages of it, but then I just put it in my bookshelf and let it gather dust.
Though if %50 of it is correct, as the teachers of the Order of Melchizedek claim, then I think it is worth reading.
Regarding what ZS Livingston said, I did get that feeling as well...UB definitely had the feeling of being an attempt to catalyze "alternative thinkers" in an attempt to form a New Age messianic religion.

"Don't eat any wooden nickels."

Magical_Mongoose's Website

  • From: Oceania
  • Registered: 2006-12-26

Re: The Urantia Book

I'm glad you are delving into the Urantia book.  I can't understand how you could try to absorb the jist of it on cd.  CD books drive me nuts.  I read much faster than anyone talks......regardless....I would suggest using the hard copy so that you can skip around a bit at first.  Start with the sections that interest you most.  Many are "written" by different entities anyhow so it's not really nessessary to read it start to finish.  When you need to re-read something then just do so.  It will save you a lot of time I think.

(reiteration:)  To try to take this volume of information from start to finish is a huge task.  My suggestion would be to break it down into smaller segments that you find interesting and eventually get around to completing the whole thing.

As some of the others have chimed in here.....caveat emptor.  Use discretion,  but again imho it's definately worth the read.  As you go through the material...if you run across things you would like to discuss, just pose a question and a page number (or range of page numbers) and I would like to participate in the discussion.

I've never really discussed in any kind of detail the book with anyone else who has read it and I welcome the opportunity to compare/contrast ideas.  I've tried to explain the book to other people and have reccomended it to others but it has never resulted in the opportunity to have a meaningful dialog about the content.

I look forward to that.

Cheers!

Winston

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
  • Registered: 2005-12-27

Re: The Urantia Book

I really liked a lot of the book at the beginning even though a lot of it was not able to be cross referenced against different sources.   It has since become a tipoff to me that if you can't find a concept in different places the likelihood of it being disinfo is pretty good.  I have read a lot about things in the book that turned out to be false, one being that venus always shown the same force towards the sun.   This was scientifically believed to be true at the writing of the Urantia literature, or I suppose you could say channeling, but it has since been proven to be incorrect.

The stories about the center of the universe are nice as a story, but they don't make sense hyper dimensionally, and mathematics and physics are now indicating that there are more dimensions then 3.   

After getting to the story of jesus is when I really began to have my doubts about the Urantia book.  It made no sense to me why the beings who apparently had full access to jesus's life, only talked about the stories in the bible, and attempted to clarify them.  Surely more could be done in telling the "true" story of jesus's life, then simply correcting misinterpretations of the bible.  Any person can look at a story from the bible and interject their own interpretation of how to explain some miracle.

"...But Nothing is Lost:" "Nothing lasts... nothing lasts. Everything is changing into something else. Nothing's wrong. Nothing is wrong. Everything is on track. William Blake said nothing is lost and I believe that we all move on." - Terrence McKenna - Shpongle - But Nothing Is Lost
  • From: Oceania
  • Registered: 2006-12-26

Re: The Urantia Book

You raise some very interesting points about the commentary on the life of Jesus.  However I would like to point out that UB goes on extensively about his childhood and the year between the ages of 12 and 30 which the bible has no reference to.

The traveling with the rich dude and his son is not recanted in the bible in any way shape or form……however they are detailed in UB.

Made up?  I don’t know. Interesting?  Certainly.

Winston

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
  • Blue
  • Thank you Tom
  • Offline
  • From: The bottom of my heart
  • Registered: 2006-07-10

Re: The Urantia Book

thr33tim3 wrote:

I'd like to hear about the connection between Urantia and the Kellogg's family, too, if anyone has more info on that. smile

Tim

From Wikipedia :

The exact circumstances of the origin of The Urantia Book are not known. There is no known human author of the book. It is written as if directly presented by numerous celestial beings appointed to the task of providing a new spiritual revelation to humankind.

The documented history [3][6][7] is that a person whose identity has remained unknown received the material from celestial intelligences while asleep. The individual, known as the "sleeping subject" or "contact personality", is said to have been kept anonymous in order to prevent undesirable future veneration or reverence for him.

As early as 1911, Dr. William S. Sadler and his wife Dr. Lena Sadler (born Lena Kellogg), both practicing physicians in Chicago, Illinois, became the attending physicians of the sleeping subject after the individual's wife reported that she could not wake him. Over time, the unconscious subject produced communications that seemed to be from entities who claimed to be spiritual beings. Drs. Lena and William Sadler were respected physicians in Chicago and well known in the community. Dr. William Sadler had a reputation as a debunker of paranormal claims and generally is portrayed as not believing in supernatural claims.

A group of Sadler's friends, former patients, and colleagues originally began meeting for intellectual discussions in 1924, but became interested in the strange communications of the sleeping subject when Sadler mentioned the case and read samples at their request. Shortly afterwards, a communication was received that this group would be allowed to devise questions and that answers would be given by the celestial beings through the contact personality.

Blue's Website

  • From: U.S.
  • Registered: 2004-04-08

Re: The Urantia Book

15 or 20 years ago I read through a lot of the Urantia Book (UB).  I don’t know how valid the material is, but I enjoyed reading it - especially the sections regarding Jesus, the Lucifer rebellion, and the plan to civilize earth (in the chapters from planetary prince Caligastia through Adam and Eve).  Having the Concordex (index) on hand was a big help.

I bought a separate book containing UB excerpts relating to Jesus.  I found it to be well organized and more readable than the New Testament gospels. I don’t see that book listed for sale at the Urantia Foundation website, but they have alternative information on Jesus at http://www.urantiabook.org/index_jesus.htm

Last year I read Urantia, The Great Cult Mystery by Martin Gardner.  He gives examples of UB plagiarism.  The Wikipedia entry for the Urantia book has more information on the plagiarism allegations:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Urantia_Book

Gardner’s book provides much information on William Sadler, the Kellogg family and the relationship between Seventh Day Adventism and the Urantia Book.

A few quotes from Gardner’s book:

Sadler was a devout Adventist while attending Battle Creek College, during which time he and Dr. Kellogg became intimate friends. (p. 36)

It was in 1941 that Sherman [author Harold Sherman] and his wife, Martha, joined what was called the Forum, a group of Chicagoans who met on Sundays to discuss the Urantia Papers while their content was being channeled at night by the sleeping Wilfred [Kellogg]. (p. 113)

Although at first intrigued and sympathetic, the Shermans soon became suspicious of how the channeled material was being rewritten and expanded by Sadler. (p. 113)

I am convinced that Sadler was entirely capable of writing large portions of the UB, integrating them with the elaborate cosmology and mythology that had earlier been channeled by his sleeping brother-in-law.  My main reason for believing this is that too much material in the UB comes straight out of early books written by Sadler. (p. 283)

The Urantia Book (2000+ pages) is available free on line at http://www.urantia.org/
Jerry

  • montalk
  • montalk
  • forum-keeper-upper
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2004-03-24

Re: The Urantia Book

I always had trouble reading the Urantia Book. Hundreds of pages of names, numbers, worlds, hierarchies, sectors, levels, history, stages, and other convoluted trivia to memorize and keep straight. Like reading a phonebook, I would get little wisdom or practical understanding in return for the time and energy invested. Today I skipped ahead to the Lucifer Rebellion, thinking it might be useful in my research, but it didn't really explain anything new or correlate with anything important, and the entire account read like a Stargate-SG1 season plot summary. So I don't know... if others can extract useful gems from the Urantia Book, cool... but I gave it a shot and... not really my style sad

Acquiring fringe knowledge is like digging for diamonds in a mine field.

montalk's Website

  • Registered: 2005-01-17

Re: The Urantia Book

Interesting topic. Frighteningly fascinating book. I have had a love/hate/on/off curiosity about it since first learning about it some years back. At one point I swore I'd never pick it up again. Then, last year, I bought a 'nice' boxed copy and put it in my "to read" pile. No idea why. I must look further into my psyche about this.

Because really, I'm afraid the book is misleadingly seductive. Someone else mentioned in this thread white supremacist tones. I have to agree. The section on the earth "races" is very disturbing. Comparing and contrasting, literally, intelligence levels, etc. I take umbrage at this. Not only for myself but also the 'united nations' family of mine back home. And what I find even stranger is that there are people who are considered parts of cultures and ethnic groups who have organized meetings/study groups the world over who would be considered members of the "races" mentioned. And they profess to love the Urantia book and take it as gospel. A puzzlement.

I'll admit, the cosmology is fascinating, the history of mankind compelling - and the life of Jesus as it's told - all fascinating. But I also had to wonder why focus on the Jesus line so much (he is one of my main heroes and light beacons, so nothing against) when there are other amazing souls  who walked the earth as well. It smacks of yet another ego-based bias on the part of the writer(s).

Magical_Mongoose wrote:

.... What did I feel? I felt it MAY have been coming from a corrupt source....

I got that feeling, too. And like many members here, I've learned that intuition should never be ignored. I'd say I'm mostly great at paying attention to this. But, for instance, not sure why I wanted my own copy of this book. Especially when I wanted it placed nowhere near my other spiritual texts.

I came across a thread where a guy named "Doug" mentioned that people were regarding this material as being chanelled from a Service-to-Self source....

The thing is, even if it was channelled - unless there is something to hide - why all the mystery and secrecy around its origins. it just doesn't sit right with me. I think it is entirely possible that the authors(s) wrote the Urantia book for their own egoic purposes. So what to do with this book???

Iriana's Website

  • Blue
  • Thank you Tom
  • Offline
  • From: The bottom of my heart
  • Registered: 2006-07-10

Re: The Urantia Book

The Morontia Power Supervisors are able to effect a union of material and of spiritual energies, thereby organizing a morontia form of materialization which is receptive to the superimposition of a controlling spirit. When you traverse the morontia life of Nebadon, these same patient and skillful Morontia Power Supervisors will successively provide you with 570 morontia bodies, each one a phase of your progressive transformation. From the time of leaving the material worlds until you are constituted a first-stage spirit on Salvington, you will undergo just 570 separate and ascending morontia changes. Eight of these occur in the system, seventy-one in the constellation, and 491 during the sojourn on the spheres of Salvington.

The Morontia Companions maintain ten thousand headquarters in a local universe--on each of the first mansion worlds of the local systems. They are almost wholly a self-governing order and are, in general, an intelligent and loyal group of beings; but every now and then, in connection with certain unfortunate celestial upheavals, they have been known to go astray. Thousands of these useful creatures were lost during the times of the Lucifer rebellion in Satania. Your local system now has its full quota of these beings, the loss of the Lucifer rebellion having only recently been made up.

There are two distinct types of Morontia Companions; one type is aggressive, the other retiring, but otherwise they are equal in status.

All Satania, during times of play, those times when its inhabitants refreshingly resurrect the memories of a lower stage of existence, is edified by the pleasant humor of a corps of reversion directors from Urantia.
..As ascendant beings you are in possession of personal memories of all former and lower existences, and without such identity memories of the past there would be no basis for the humor of the present, either mortal laughter or morontia mirth. It is this recalling of past experiences that provides the basis for present diversion and amusement.

Super! I can't wait.  570 lifetimes of being under the control of piss taking reptiles, and bungling, incompetent system administraors (millions of them).

I was looking at budgie poo the other day.
Perfect little circles.
Smelly evil black on one side.
Pure lovely white on the other.
I used to string them together
and sell them as Yin/Yang necklaces.
"We judge a species by their faeces"
The urinetha book says.
Do you know why human turds are tapered at the end?
.gnab a thiw tuhs t'now elohssa ruoy os
We've had the great big melting pot
BIG ENUFF, BIG ENOUGH, to take
the world and all its got
and we're turning out coffee coloured
faeces, by the score.
So when you get to this place
Pin a turd on your lapel
and flash it at Lucifer as you walk on in.
Only don't do what I did
and sniff a smell of it.

Blue's Website