© 2006 Jean Royer
© 2006 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Why did The Urantia Book appear in the 1930s and perhaps also appear in Chicago? One possible answer is found in the following facts.
There is no such thing as coincidence. Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950) is the founder of the Institute of General Semantics in Chicago in 1938. This extraordinary character, originally from Poland and a former intelligence officer in the Second Russian Army, overturns the vision of language and reality by introducing concepts developed in particular by Russel in mathematics on the principle of non-identity. This is non-Aristotelian reasoning. It is the differential structure or three-dimensional model of the differences between orders of abstraction, between verbal and non-verbal levels, between descriptions and inferences, between what we see and external stimuli, between my abstractions and your abstractions…
What connection can we make between this new way of thinking and the Urantia Book?
Well, although the Urantia Book never claims to be innovative in linguistic matters, except by proposing a certain number of neologisms, with a different vocabulary, the Urantia Book does indeed use Korzybski’s method.
Korzybski’s expression that has remained is “The map is not the territory”. He meant that the expression of identity is not true when we limit ourselves to stating one thing. To take a simple example, saying that salt is sodium chloride is not defining salt, but only indicating its chemical classification. The true definition of salt for an individual will only come from having tasted it.
We can also notice the simultaneity of artistic perception with the famous “The Treachery of Images” This is not a pipe by Magritte. This work dates from 1928.
Let’s put it in terms of The Urantia Book: You will not know salt until you have tasted it, or only the experience of tasting salt will allow you to know personally what salt is, but this experience is personal to you and cannot be transmitted by word of mouth. There can be agreement on salt only among those who have had this experience.
In other words: the Urantia Book which distinguishes things, meanings and values where Korzybski speaks of levels of abstractions, tells us that values must be experienced to be understood, but the method is the same.
Another aspect of Korzybski’s method is what he calls “temporal liaison”. A being or a thing is not the same in time. Another simple example that we borrow from Steven Lewis, author of “The Structural Difference”: Judge Hugo Black of the Supreme Court of Justice, who was known for his defense of minorities, had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his youth. The name Hugo Black does not allow us to define the person if we do not specify the time of his life.
For The Urantia Book, the Mother Spirit of the universe is not the same at the time of universe construction and after the seventh bestowal.
Another example given by Steven Lewis: our name does not indicate our different personalities in different contexts. My name implies one person and yet I am a different person when I am with my mother, with a superior, with my colleagues, with my students or with the one I love. I am different at a funeral or at a party.
The Urantia Book often recalls the principle of reasoning by levels. The word level in the singular or levels in the plural is used more than 800 times in the book. We will only cite three here.
Deity functions on personal, prepersonal, and superpersonal levels. Total Deity is functional on the following seven levels: (UB 0:1.3)
Cosmic consciousness implies the recognition of a First Cause, the one and only uncaused reality. God, the Universal Father, functions on three Deity-personality levels of subinfinite value and relative divinity expression: (UB 0:2.2)
GOD is a word symbol designating all personalizations of Deity. The term requires a different definition on each personal level of Deity function and must be still further redefined within each of these levels, as this term may be used to designate the diverse co-ordinate and subordinate personalizations of Deity; for example: the Paradise Creator Sons—the local universe fathers. (UB 0:2.6)
It would take a serious study of Korzybski’s “Mental and Psychic Health” (1933) to realize that the evolution of mentalities, at least among 20th century researchers, was a sine qua non condition for the publication of the book. This perhaps also partly explains why we had to wait until this time to have a revelation advocated for several centuries by our invisible friends.
Jean Royer