© 2011 Guy Bourhis
© 2011 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
In a period where the spiritual side of our personality tends to take over, we may be tempted to do an inner search outside of any dogmatism to see which way we lean.
Having myself carried out this quest a very long time ago, I give my testimony here to guide the aspiring researchers. It is enough to turn within oneself and to sift through one’s criticism all the available nourishment. From a very young age, I was tormented by questions of a spiritual nature that no one could ever satisfy.
It was always the: “stick to Catholic dogma and don’t deliver your soul to the devil”, which had the gift of exacerbating my curiosity. I went beyond that and explored on my own everything I could, the Gnostics, Tantrism, mysticism and other movements in ism which I could not but…
I then said to myself that my approach to the Truth was a personal adventure and that it was impossible for me to make my own the systems of thought from which both my “cultural belonging” and my fierce independence distanced me.
I didn’t want to be anyone’s disciple and aspired to build my own model.
So I resumed my “quest” with all the more fervor as I intuitively felt that I was arriving at the port, after all an inner journey of almost 25 years…
In 1978, I was suddenly drawn to “The Doors of the Strange”, a collection of esoteric writings by Robert Laffont.
These were a few weeks of exciting reading marked by a feeling of growing excitement. But nothing decisive happened. I then opened my latest acquisition, “The Lives of the Masters” by Baird T. Spalding and came across a message that seemed intended for me: “When you close The Lives of the Masters”, and if you wish to delve deeper into the enigmas offered to your meditations, the translator allows himself to point out another work that he translated more recently and entitled the “Blue Book”…
You will find a valid answer to the great problem of humanity: Why are we on Earth and what is our destiny? “Having recovered from my surprise, I devoured ”The Life of the Masters“ during the night and obtained from the translator the precious booklets of the Blue Book. From the outset, I felt in harmony with this book. All my barriers of resistance, of reluctance, collapsed. I was there in the credible, the reliable and at the limit, in the ”experimentally verifiable".
With the discovery of the Blue Book, I lost the label that I had given myself of “marginal to esotericism” and I opened myself up to the world in an immeasurable way. My sense of fraternity, of altruism, of commitment to service, which was already quite developed, increased and above all found concrete ways to express myself with the high point of refocusing on a simpler life where the civilization of being always takes precedence over that of having.
In short, the seeker of the absolute, a bit of a Don Quixote in his bravado, had transformed himself in a few years into a citizen of the world aware of his obligations within his great universal family. Above all, knowing roughly where I came from, I knew perfectly well where I could go…
I will not reveal here the real name of this book because a quest remains a personal process and can lead to another and completely different book. All I can say is that this book is neither the Bible, nor the Koran, nor the Torah, nor the reference book of any other religion, sect or philosophy.
Guy Bourhis