© 2007 Emmanuel Desurvive
© 2007 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Center for Study and Reflection
on Human Destiny
Study Group
from The Urantia Book June 1979
Experience continually shows us that many of us who are gripped by the incomparable dimension to which The Urantia Book introduces find ourselves subject to impulses which are difficult to control.
We have included in Letter No. 1 a particularly enlightening analysis by Meredith Sprunger on this theme.
But it is of such importance to us that we thought it necessary to present in this second Letter an extract from “Unity but not Uniformity”, a study presented on June 29, 1973 by Martin Myers at the first conference in the western United States, which deals more particularly with the spirit in which the creators of the Urantia Foundation and the Urantia Assembly acted. We are making the entire text of this conference available to readers who wish to receive it.
When we look around us, we clearly see the need for a spiritual renewal of man and a material and spiritual reorientation of the evolution of the growth and development of our planet.
There is no doubt that this is a gigantic task - a task of such magnitude that we can hardly realize the immensity of its importance or the explosive potential it contains for the promise of a better existence for future generations of all humanity.
The growth of the Urantia Assembly is in its early stages.
The Urantia Book is beginning to find reliable groups of sincere readers and loyal supporters. We are taking the first steps toward offering to a world languishing in spiritual darkness a new light of hope and guidance, a light that will light the way to salvation and progress in place of spiritual stagnation and material confusion.
We have only to consider the history of our planet—notably the Lucifer rebellion and the innocent, yet undeniable, Adamic failure—and the repercussions of their destructive aftermath to know that our history has been fraught with difficulties and plagued by the unfortunate consequences of world misrule by men of dubious aims and characters who have gained the ascendancy over their more spiritual companions and have at times plunged the world into periods of savagery and barbarism unknown on normal planets.
Even those who have only a little knowledge of the bloody and torn past of this planet know that the Spirit of Truth, although available to all humanity, unfortunately does not yet reign in the hearts of all men.
Attempts have been made periodically to lessen the difficulties of this world, but it must sadly be acknowledged that those who have served as bearers of the new truth have seldom received a cordial reception.
Dr. Meredith J. Sprunger, a professor and pastor, psychologist by profession, and general counsel of the Urantia Assembly wrote:
Every advance in knowledge is a disturbing and painful experience for man. This is true for both quantitative knowledge (science) and qualitative knowledge (religion). Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake because he claimed that the earth was not the center of the universe. Louis Pasteur was denounced by the scientists of his time because he claimed that diseases were caused by microbes. When William Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood most doctors of his time who were over thirty-five ended their lives without believing in this theory. Shortly before Wilbur and Orville Wright flew their first airplane in Kitty Hlawk, N.C., a renowned scientist wrote a convincing paper to prove that it was scientifically impossible to fly with a heavier-than-air vehicle… the list could easily be extended.
“Unity but not Uniformity”: a study dealing with The Urantia Book, the official organizations of the Urantia movement, and Unity but not Uniformity, by Martin W Myers.
Scientists, however, are not the only group afflicted by this kind of myopia. The growth of religious insight has been thwarted by greater resistance and more suffering. Prophets have been stoned, saviors crucified by religious men and women who thought they were doing God’s will.
To prove this we need only look at the time of Jesus. John the Baptist “The greatest prophet of the old order” (UB 136:0.1) was arrested, imprisoned and beheaded.
Jesus of Nazareth, the personal representative of the eternal God, who said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (UB 157:6.13), and the greatest of all revelations to all mankind and the entire local universe of Nebadon, was arrested, ridiculed, vilified, whipped, spat upon, cruelly treated, and then before the unbelieving eyes of a universe, summarily nailed to a cross and hung between two thieves…
Revolting? Absolutely!
But it was into this world of such harsh reality that The Urantia Book appeared.
This Fifth Epochal Revelation was different from each of the previous four, for it appeared in the form of a book. And in this form, this Revelation brought with it the danger of modification and rewriting of the text. As might be feared, this danger could not have been further accentuated by a certain European country which, at about the same time as the appearance of The Urantia Book, was burning books by the ton and rewriting others to conform to the mad thinking of a clique of gangsters who had risen to the leadership of a once proud and powerful nation.
It was obvious that The Urantia Book, like many books before it, including the Bible, would be defenseless under the indiscriminate pens of irresponsible and unprincipled people, in the absence of proper protection.
In addition, contact personalities, who were not only aware of the sad history of the planet, but who had also observed the destruction of the results of the literary, philosophical, and scientific efforts of great geniuses within this European nation, were specially alerted concerning The Urantia Book:
Not since the gospel of Jesus has there appeared on earth such a dynamic nucleus around which such a number of organizations could be built, and which would attract so many diversely motivated men: good, bad and indifferent.
Those who were entrusted with The Urantia Book realized early on that there had not been anything in the preceding nineteen hundred years whose control would be so competitive as The Urantia Book.
The early leaders set about providing and perfecting the means necessary for the protection of the Fifth Major Epochal Revelation. The problem (if it were not difficult enough) was made still more difficult by the fact that The Urantia Book was a religious document of a high class, and the contact personalities knew the sad case of one of the best religions and the way in which it had been traditionalized and overorganized by perhaps sincere but misguided believers down through the years. They had only to look at how the religion of Jesus had been changed into a religion about Jesus, with all the trappings of ecclesiasticalism, to understand that overorganization must be avoided in the religious movement which was sure to develop around the teachings of The Urantia Book.
They knew that:
But as religion becomes institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed, while the possibilities for evil are greatly multiplied. The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the aristocratic “chosen-people” attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrification of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of eternal salvation.
But as religion becomes institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed, while the possibilities for evil are greatly multiplied. The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the aristocratic “chosen-people” attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrification of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it becomes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of eternal salvation. (UB 99:6.3)
But the early leaders had also read in The Urantia Book:
The Jewish religion persisted also because of its institutions. It is difficult for religion to survive as the private practice of isolated individuals. This has ever been the error of the religious leaders: Seeing the evils of institutionalized religion, they seek to destroy the technique of group functioning. In place of destroying all ritual, they would do better to reform it. In this respect Ezekiel was wiser than his contemporaries; though he joined with them in insisting on personal moral responsibility, he also set about to establish the faithful observance of a superior and purified ritual. (UB 97:10.7)
Yet it was clear that while an over-formalized and over-institutionalized organization was undesirable because it stifled the progress of individual believers, without an organization, nevertheless, there would be no sure way to ensure the transmission of moral values and spiritual ideals from generation to generation. However valuable and pure a religion may be, it will be overwhelmed by the old evolutionary beliefs, or simply disappear for lack of renewal and material support, if it has no formal organization.
The early leaders of the Urantia movement devised an ingenious plan. Their strategy was twofold:
To protect the text from editing, alteration, and distortion, they foresaw the necessity of placing the text of The Urantia Book under United States and international copyright protection, thus guaranteeing to future generations the privilege of having the original Fifth Epochal Revelation. The Urantia Foundation was formed for this purpose, and the Book was legally copyrighted in its name.
To avoid over-organization and thus allow each individual “to enjoy religious liberty in the full expression of his personal interpretation of the truths of religious belief and the facts of religious experience” (UB 103:5.12), they decided on a simple social organization. Its purpose was to provide support for the socialization of the Urantia teachings and to serve as a scaffolding for the development of a real brotherhood that would serve as a living transmitter of the Urantia Message.
Moreover, until such time as the Spirit of Truth should reign in the hearts of the world’s population, simple social brotherhood would provide the mechanism for keeping out troublesome and disturbing individuals who would inevitably try to attach themselves to it for destructive purposes, perhaps even to distort and suppress it, or to supplant the Urantia movement. A simple social organization might be a sufficient safeguard.
It appears that the leaders have done a good job so far. The declaration of their group which created the Foundation was well written and allowed the leaders to benefit from the greatest latitude in the accomplishment of the projects defined in it, including the protection of the text of the Book.
The constitution of the Urantia Assembly is in my opinion one of the most harmonious, liberal and equitable plans ever set up for a movement. I do not necessarily mean that it is perfect, but it is capable of correcting itself while continuing to meet its objectives.
The wisdom of the original architects of Urantia Foundation and the Urantia Assembly has already been demonstrated. I very much regret to say that indefensible assaults have indeed been made upon the authority and integrity of The Urantia Book, and some individuals, to the consternation and amazement of their family and close friends, have already sought to break up the Urantia Assembly and introduce confusion into it. While this is not the most pleasant of tasks, I can state that these problems have been solved or are on the point of being solved.
The Message of The Urantia Book is for all religions and all humanity. But please remember this: The Urantia Book was not brought to this planet for selfish or short-sighted individuals, who would like to control The Urantia Book in order to make a name for themselves, or worst of all, who would wish to distort its teachings forever, for the sake of profit, or to conform to their prejudices and limited human point of view.
Yes, The Urantia Book is here to be used by all humanity but used with sound and appropriate safeguards, to ensure the continued existence of its existence and the purity of its text.
The great advantage of having a revelation in book form, and which protects its integrity, is that few compromises need be made with the cults, dogmas, creeds, doctrines of evolutionary religions. There is little chance that truth and lucid teachings will be mixed indiscriminately with the truncated thoughts of mere humans whose point of view is necessarily subject to distortions, prejudices, obscure thoughts, emotional states, and even psychic illusions.
The Urantia Book is the fair, balanced, and never-contradictory presentation of spiritual truth and universe fact forever available to the human race in the form of a Book.
Please note this: Any human commentary on the Urantia Teachings runs the real risk of distorting and weakening the purity of the text and even the meaning of the text. No one wishes to prohibit or discourage serious commentary on the Urantia Message as long as it is possible to discern which is from The Urantia Book and which is from human thought.
This is the reason why we resorted to Copyright.
The Teachings of The Urantia Book, distorted by indiscriminate plagiarism, must not be able to be presented to sincere seekers of truth, in the name of Truth.
By weakening The Urantia Book through all manner of editing and misquotation, we can only return to past errors. Truth is compromised when it adapts to the preconceived or misconceived ideas of an individual or group of individuals. Let us not slide from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The Urantia Book is intended to be read, studied, and considered as a whole and not limited to fragmentary studies. Fragmentation has been the great problem of the past where individuals having had only a fleeting glimpse of Truth and spiritual realities, have not seen the balanced, fair, unified, and never contradictory presentation given in The Urantia Book.
Who can reasonably deny that for thousands of years the world has been crying out in anguish for an authentic model of spiritual understanding and planetary development?
We finally have this model. But there are those who threaten to modify it, to adapt it according to their fanciful taste by the subtle distortion of sentences here and there, by quotations not coming from the text.
In The Urantia Book we have a clear and concise model that not only gives us a starting point for judging our individual spiritual progress, but also tells us, among so many other things, what is best for our souls, in which direction we should go, where we are going, and how we should go about it. The Urantia Book also gives us a wonderful intellectual understanding of the Father, the cosmos, and our planet.
We finally have a model on which we can build our lives, and according to which we can organize the world.
How presumptuous and disloyal for any individual or group to intentionally distort and weaken the Urantia Message and thus defile the Fifth Major Epochal Revelation.
The Urantia Book says:
Law is life itself and not the rules of its conduct. Evil is a transgression of law, not a violation of the rules of conduct pertaining to life, which is the law. Falsehood is not a matter of narration technique but something premeditated as a perversion of truth. The creation of new pictures out of old facts, the restatement of parental life in the lives of offspring—these are the artistic triumphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle—these constitute falseness. But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth. (UB 48:6.33)
This is why it is necessary to have a model that you can count on and whose authenticity is guaranteed.
This is why The Urantia Book was copyrighted and this is why copyright will be enforced. 1
the ever-renewed goal of each stage of earthly life is to devote oneself intelligently and sincerely to the purpose of the inner Spirit working in human thought.
Our thought is almost entirely material, which is why it is virtually impossible for us to grasp in any way the nature of the work of the Adjuster who is a being of pure spirit. One thing is certain: he encounters in his divine task of spiritualizing human thought, great difficulties perhaps because we possess a will of our own and it remains sovereign despite its imperfection, perhaps because we also have our ideas about what we have to do with ourselves, and our personal conceptions more or less erroneous about the will of God; or finally because we lack courage, will, determination which results in a lack of cooperation with our inner spirit.
This situation is even a real conflict!
Here are some antagonists characteristic of our dual nature:
The surge of ambition Animal indolence
The high designs of thought
Primitive hereditary needs
The Monitor’s long-term views
the narrowness of vision linked to time
The “Pressure of the Angels”
The feelings of an animal
Training the intellect
The tendencies of instinct
The flight of genius The weight of mediocrity
The art of beauty The presence of evil
The fountain of faith The poison of fear
Joy Affliction
The joy of anticipation
The bitterness of realization
The joys of life The sadness of death
We also know that all physical poisons greatly hinder the Adjusters’ efforts to spiritualize the mind, as do those other poisons of fear, anger, envy, jealousy, and suspicion…to serve in love rather than to live in fear and terror is the ideal of life. Most inner conflicts result from failure to cooperate with the one who is trying to bring harmony and peace into our agitated and turbulent mind.
Our personal theories about God cannot present a valid point of support for the Adjuster, because they are influenced by a multitude of diverse acquisitions, of necessarily limited scope and quite relative assimilation. All men are equal before God, they must therefore have the same chances of succeeding in knowing him.
The Book teaches us that there are three essential points of support for the Adjuster’s mission: our decisions, our determination, and the firmness of our faith. These three factors help us to “cease to resist him.”
Finally there is a way to consciously increase harmony with the inner Father:
It is only through this long process of maturation that man can arrive at that “perfection of purpose,” which brings him to resemble God and share in experience the eternal perfection of the Father.
Emmanuel Desurvive