© 2000 Andrés Rodriguez
© 2000 Urantia Association International (IUA)
Andrés Rodriguez, Colombia
Recently the Foro-Escuela, the Spanish version of the UBIS, was opened. It is to be found on the recently established Urantia Book website in Spanish. Foro-Escuela is authorized and supported by Urantia Foundation and is available for all those who want to study The Urantia Book in Spanish. The address is www.urantia-latina.org. This website is administered from Chile by Mario Casassus, using the latest techniques and facilities available on the Internet.
This project appears in response to an expressed need for different people and different manners to facilitate the study and deepening understanding of our book, solving the problems of distance, time, and the lack of resources. This project of Urantia Foundation grows from the new experience of the website of urantia-latina and the absence of space for work and study of these characteristics on the worldwide web in Spanish.
The School seeks to generate an atmosphere of the best fraternity and camaraderie possible; that is why all available communication mechanisms have been introduced for the participants to use. The climate we hope to promote is one of a virtual university community with characteristics of pluralism and universality, with a conception of learning based on working together and as a collective. Our concept shuns the hierarchical relationship of professor and student. Neither do we intend to measure anybody’s knowledge or determine anyone’s personal qualifications. This is our way of avoiding dogmatism, fundamentalism, intellectualism, or tendencies of indoctrination.
You can participate in the Foro-Escuela by registering as a user. This requires that you have an email box, where a confirmation of registration can be delivered. Only registered users can participate in the activities of the Foro-Escuela.
The moderators will be selected by the directorate on the basis of the candidate’s own volunteering or as suggested by other participants. The candidates will need to evince great openness and aversion to dogmatism, traditionalism or fundamentalism, and they need to be open to various methods of learning. The participants themselves will collaborate in orienting and moderating the discussion. The moderators are in no manner teachers, professors or interpreters of the Book.
The role of the directorate will be to resolve both regular and special situations and to make decisions in general regarding the participants and the proceedings of the Foro-Escuela. The functions of members of the directorate will be:
The director has the responsibility of representing to Urantia Foundation the general plans, development and evaluation of the project Foro-Escuela.
The assistant directors have the function of supporting the director and also of assuring the function of the technical and administrative aspects of the ForoEscuela.
The directorate, as determined by Urantia Foundation, consists of the following persons: director, Seppo Kanerva; assistant directors, Nadine Loubet and Mario Casassus.
There are four principal levels of participation: In the first level students will study the origin and meaning of words that are fundamental for understanding the Book. Some of the words are already familiar, such as God, truth, goodness, beauty, Trinity; others are new terms, such as bestowal, monota, mota, absonite, and ultimaton.
In the second level, they will concern themselves with the literal interpretation of the text, be they individual phrases or paragraphs.
In the third level, they will study the conceptual contents of the discourse, like the various approaches, including the intentions of the authors.
In the fourth level, they will try to illucidate the profound meaning of the message, analyze the style, and finally, recapture the creative experience of the authors of the text, through an act of deep intuition, not only with regard to the least accessible (most difficult) level of the message, but also with regard to the very spirit of the authors.
The course will use the method of hermeneutics, based on a branch of philosophy of the same name. Availing itself of various methods of analysis, hermeneutics attempts to illucidate and comprehend the distinct levels and the meanings of a written text.
For the purpose of spreading the news of this novel and important effort of Urantist brothers and sisters, Mario Casassus has completed a tour of various countries of South America, among them Colombia and Peru, during Holy Week and Easter.
This new tool has a three-fold function:
We invite all of our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters to join this new and fascinating Urantia adventure in cyberspace.