© 1997 Arvydas Maciokas
© 1997 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By Arvydas Maciokas, Ph.D.
I am from Lithuania, a country situated near the Baltic sea and Poland. I work in the field of economy, creating competition legislation and economic policy for Lithuania. We became a free country in 1990 when we escaped from a command economy and we are now in the process of creating a free market economy.
The first man with whom I became familiar was Dr. John Lange. I read his articles in the Urania journal published in Russia. I also saw him in photographs taken while the American delegation has stayed in Vilnius, as well as photos from former conferences in the United States and Russia which Mrs. Svetlana showed me.
The next remarkable person with whom I became familiar was Avi Dogim. He became my first foreign guide to the Fellowship, assisting me in communications with this organization. And at last after a few faxes, I have met Steve Dreier, the president of the Fellowshipfor Readers of The Urantia Book.
I hope to acquire at this conference many new friends in order to further co-operation in analyzing, understanding and spreading the wonderful ideas of The Urantia Book. We must learn from the experience of each other to adopt new ideas, methods, and to share our daily experience of working on behalf of the Fellowship.
¶ Economic Situation in Lithuania
For a long time the principles of the economy of Lithuania were rather artificial, not taking into account the real needs of consumers. The main criteria were to produce more commodities, without regard for their variety and quality. Ungrounded economic decisions prevailed, relying upon opinions and wishes of leaders. Many regulatory institutions and economical structures were established artificially and were considered as very stable and long living.
The main requirement was the form but not the content, so there was no relation between form and content. Artificially established forms were filled up with artificially created content. But there was a relative stability in this economic system. At present many persons would say that there was a stability earlier, but now we no longer have this stability because the old structures do not work and the new ones are only recently created. And that stability was associated in the mind of people with prosperity and welfare, that is, stable work, stable salary, stable pension and so on.
With our country’s independence in 1990 the process of liberalization was started in all spheres of life, especially in the economy. Old economical structures had to be destroyed and new ones created. But people do not know what they want from the economy and what goods they want. They simply had not seen a variety of goods.
So our immature market was filled up with various cheap goods supplied from the Far and Middle East (U.A.E., China, Turkey). Economic frauds and unfair trade with false goods became widespread activities. It took a few years for consumers to appreciate that quality of goods is very important and plays a significant role in life.
During that time many decisions on how to reorganize the economy were adopted. Relying upon the aid and experience of foreign countries, many structures and institutions of a free market economy were established.
The process of liberalization in Lithuania’s economy is occurring in two directions. First, the change of the scope of activity to a free market economy and, second, the establishment of new institutions and laws needed for this market economy.
Lithuania has signed a Free Trade Agreement with foreign countries and has become an associate member of the EU. Lithuania is obliged to adjust its law and economic system according to the free market economy model until 1999. So our first goal is integration into the UE, as determined by our geographical location and political situation.
¶ The Spiritual Sphere in Lithuania
Loss of touch between the form and the content displayed itself not only in our economy but also in other spheres of human life — science, art and spiritual life in Lithuania. When I grew up religion and other interesting soul matters were prohibited. So most young Lithuanians remained irreligious. At the same time we were educated in the modern sciences of astrophysics, biochemistry, bioenergetics, genetics and so on.
We are materialists and our growth toward spiritual values proceeds slowly. We must clean our too material minds and learn to be more compliant and tolerant, to have more faith. I think that we shall be able to develop spiritually and I hope that The Urantia Book will help us to do so.
Although the Catholic church has played an active and positive role in our country getting back its independence, it has not become a force to unite all our people. It has actively participated in political elections, economic relations and receiving back former church lands and property as well as providing various services (ordaining objects and places, weddings, christenings, baptism and so on).
Many representatives of various religions started to flow into Lithuania. All of the traditional and modern religions are in Lithuania. You can worship at the Mormon church from the USA various Hindu religions (Osho, Krishna), Buddhism, and even the old faith of pagans has been revived. Besides that, we have many groups that are engaged in spiritual meditation and bioenergetics.
We currently have in Lithuania about 30 political parties and over 50 religious groups. These numbers may not be high for large countries, but there are only 3.75 -million citizens in Lithuania. We have a joke of how three Lithuanians found themselves on a desert island and the first thing they did was establish five political parties.
Many young and middle-aged people choose an independent way of spiritual development. They do not join any religion or other group. Sometimes they read much and have a great amount of knowledge. The spiritual unity of people in Lithuania is split. The active search, even fight for new members of communities is being carried out. It is very hard to attract people to one neutral group.
There should be preliminary work to establish a Urantia group in Lithuania. Our first attempt has failed. We must cooperate with other Urantia groups in neighboring countries such as Poland, Russia, and Sweden in order to learn from their experience.
¶ The Urantia Book in Lithuania
I was introduced to the Urantia Book in the autumn of 1994. Journalist Svetlana Braziene, who now lives in the USA, showed me this great book. It has been the greatest accident in my life. The Urantia Book has become my everyday table-book and I have devoted my free time to it.
Before finding The Urantia Book, I was very interested in paranormal phenomena and data obtained during the experiments of people having extrasensory capabilities as well as the investigation of UFOs, ghosts, and astral and other human bodies (I mean various energetic structures, energetic coats of the body).
There was a rather large and unorganized group at the first presentation of The Urantia Book, but afterwards the number of readers decreased. The first problem is the language barrier; second is the prejudice not to believe in a new kind of information. But soon a small group of enthusiasts established itself. Now we have six interested people. We divided our studies in accordance to the parts of The Urantia Book: cosmology (structure of the universe); God, angels and other divine persons and spirits (their functions, relationships, responsibilities); origin and development of our planet; and, finally, the life of Jesus.
The two people who know the Bible very well rely upon the Paramony to investigate cross-references between The Urantia Book and the Bible. We have also a physicist and an astrophysicist. They study matters of structure of the universe and carry out comparative analysis of physical notions discussed in The Urantia Book (including analysis of morontia material and its comparison with properties of various particles known in physics).
For comparative analysis we also use other sources of esoteric and scientific literature. I think that our work at this initial stage has been too materialistic. So please do not accept and evaluate our thoughts and conclusions very strictly.
Beside that we have a few individuals who read this book for their pleasure. One of them, Mr. Jakubenas, is a journalist who arranged a public reading of this book. But our group is of the opinion that the first necessity for the establishment of a real and steady fellowship is to have a very well translated book. We should not hurry in our conditions of Lithuania.
¶ Thoughts about The Urantia Book
The book is fascinating with its versatilitv and intellectuality. Great religious truths are presented as well as many new facts that might be disputed by the representatives of organized religions. There are presented many scientific facts (for example, about the origin of the earth) as well as cosmological viewpoints (the structure of the universe, its origin and nature). The science still is a strong criterion for many of our people to be involved in reading this book. Also there are presented viewpoints that we consider the esoteric (for example, events following death, passages to other planetary levels and so on).
The different viewpoints presented in The Urantia Book are correlated into a united and indivisible picture of the world. And this picture is extended, covering all the universe and is being directed into the past, and that is extremely important into the future. Thus we can say that this book practically covers the total spectrum of knowledge and contemporary thinking of humanity and gives us the whole system of viewpoints. In this sense The Urantia Book is also extremely unique.
The next unique feature of The Urantia Book is that it is an independent and neutral source of knowledge. Various parts are interesting for the presentations of various spheres of science and religion and for all who are interested in new knowledge and want to extend their range of vision. It is necessary to keep the neutrality of this book. It will allow this book to play a role of joining together people with different views.
The Urantia Book can become one of the most important books (together with the Bible) in the next century. It is obvious that significance of this book will increase. Many of the truths that are presented in The Urantia Book are still waiting to be discovered and substantiated in the scientific sense. In this way The Urantia Book is directed into the future. Together with this future aspect this book has a valuable methodical aspect.
It is necessary to carry out constant comparative investigations that would allow us to illustrate and to substantiate the facts presented in The Urantia Book; to show connections with our present reality and nearest future.
A very valuable feature of this book is that there are introduced many new notions that we have not heard before. It is valuable for thinking, discussions and investigations. The Urantia Book gives us a possibility to believe more deeply, to have strong faith and at the same time to widen our knowledge and imagination of the universe, to seek for more comprehensive understanding of the destination in our world and our lives.
We are happy that such a book was given to us due to the revelation and that the revelation happened in America; it is the only free nation having reasonable sense to accept this comprehensive teaching and spread it all over the world.