© 2019 Jean-Marie Chaise
© 2019 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Warning: This work is primarily intended for people who already have a confirmed knowledge of the content of the Urantia Book, knowledge without which many of the allegations presented here would risk remaining dead letters to them.
However, for those who are not put off by the study of symbolism in general and the symbolism of numbers in particular, this work can represent a structure on which certain ideas can be fixed regarding the difficult concepts that they might encounter in the subsequent, more in-depth study of The Urantia Book.
In no case can this work be related to or identified with a study claiming to be numerology as it is ordinarily practiced with a mantic aim. Indeed, any number is always here representative of a symbolization verified by its numerical value and by its ordinal place in the inevitable sequence of the enumeration of the numeral set. Each of the simple numbers from 0 to 9 receives a symbolic meaning that cannot in any way be interpreted other than according to its participation in the principle elaboration of creation by the divine actors. Any other interpretation would therefore be a falsification.
¶ INTRODUCTION
In paragraph 4 of page 141 of The Urantia Book, a Perfecter of Wisdom informs us that:
“Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance—liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.” (UB 12:9.3)
This is why, being well convinced of these eternal truths, there is no question here of claiming to be carrying out any scientific research. We will simply limit ourselves to exhausting as much as we can the arithmetic data provided to us by the revelation of the Urantia Book in order, with the help of the intellect, to clarify certain points which clearly refer to an arithmetic structure, leaving us the opportunity to think about it in a general arithmetic-symbolic organization of the very foundation of universal realities desired by the Deity in its decision to transcend its existentiality in order to manifest itself eternally in the new form of experientiality.
And if all these personalities, in accordance with the revelations of our dear Book, are not mistaken, Let us see how many kinds of numbers we can find there. On examination, in agreement with Plato, it would seem that there are indeed three which I have renamed for convenience and adaptability to the themes discussed here.
¶ THE THREE CATEGORIES OF NUMBERS IN THE URANTIA BOOK
How many categories of numbers are found in The Urantia Book?
Answer: Three
First category:
the most obvious numbers a priori, those which structure the presentation of the Book, the numbers of pages, of fascicles, even of paragraphs allowing us to refer to them in our exchanges about it. These are numbers which we could say are structural. They structure the presentation of the Book thus allowing us to find our way around easily. (These are the sensible numbers, tools of calculation, of Plato.)
Second category:
the numbers that I will call historical, because they have described history since the past eternity of creation and will continue to do so until future eternity. It is about counting down time, from the billions of billions of temporal units (whatever they may be) to the dating of our calendars which served to describe the Life of Michael-Jesus on earth. They tell the meanings of history at the same time as they explain it. They make it possible to determine measurements, speeds and certain fixed, uncountable or approximate quantities. These are Plato’s mathematical numbers, used for formal operations - the quantifiable.)
Third category:
the numbers that I would describe as unheard of (in the original etymological sense of “never heard” or understood), numbers that The Urantia Book reveals and which form the essential framework for the grandiose panorama of creation to unfold before our dazzled eyes. They concern the creative laws thanks to which the Revelators were able to present universal realities to us in broad outline. They teach us the values of their state of being and through their state of being. (These are the intelligible numbers, principles of existence and knowledge, of Plato.)
Is it not quite natural that we find three categories of numbers corresponding similarly to the three categories of facts, meanings and values? Man is in the image of the Deity, he “has a core of spirit. His mind is a system of personal energy existing around a divine core of spirit and functioning in a material environment.” (UB 12:9.6) Would we not symbolize such a description of human reality by three concentric circles, like the three azure blue circles of our Urantia Book, symbolizing the Three Persons of the Deity?
Now we have to consider what place each of these groups plays in our understanding of Revelation.
¶ THE “PERFECTORS OF WISDOM” AND OTHER REVEALER OF THE UNFATTERABLE HAVE STRUCTURED THEIR MESSAGE IN A SEVENTH MODE. THE PROOF:
While the domain of mathematics is beset with qualitative limitations, it does provide the finite mind with a conceptual basis of contemplating infinity. There is no quantitative limitation to numbers, even in the comprehension of the finite mind. No matter how large the number conceived, you can always envisage one more being added. And also, you can comprehend that that is short of infinity, for no matter how many times you repeat this addition to number, still always one more can be added. (UB 118:0.11)
The table below represents the perfect illustration of what is meant by structural or structuring numbers. It is nothing other than the observation of the Urantia Book as the Revelators wanted it to be presented to our humanity.
They divided their Revelation into four parts, and, while serving us the most attractive truth about our future, and therefore about our Father, about his creation and about ourselves, they did so by scrupulously respecting the directives given to them, those of ordering the distribution of the revealed themes according to septenary sequences. This was decided well before our Urantia Book was published in all the languages of the world with the same pagination. And it is an excellent initiative that was taken from the first translation to present it according to the same pagination as the original.
This is not some numerological invention from an unbridled imagination. It is the structuring of a work addressed to all humanity and according to well-established rules. It had to be ordered according to number, and it is according to the number “7” that it was presented to us.
Since the beginning, teachings have been given to us according to the same rules. Caligastia, Adam, Melchizedek proceeded in this way. This is why the remains of these teachings appeared fragmented at the dawn of our history, this is why Plato was able to write: “Then he (God) thought of making a mobile image of eternity and, at the same time as he organized the sky, he made of eternity which remains in unity this eternal image which progresses according to the number and which we have called time. This is why another philosopher still, a little later, the neo-Pythagorean Nicomachus of Gerase, in his ”introduction to Arithmetic" perfectly expresses what we can understand ourselves of the role of numeration in divine creation.
He writes: “Everything that nature has systematically arranged in the universe appears in its parts as in the whole to have been determined and put in order in accordance with number by the foresight and thought of Him who created all things; for the model was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of number, a purely immaterial number-idea in all respects, but at the same time the true and eternal essence, so that in accordance with number, as according to an artistic plan, were created all things, and time, movement, the heavens, the stars, and all the cycles of all things.”
The Introduction to the Book includes:
18 pages including one blank:
18 pages 4+2 x 7
(These four excess pages are integrated into the very first part, the Introduction - We find them elsewhere, notably in the calculation of the respective numbers of worlds in the different circles of Havona. - Cf. Note 8 page 34) Apart from this characteristic exception, all the parts - pages and fascicles - are presented in the form of seven multiples of “7”, as follows:
| 1. The first part has 336 pages, or | (354.18) 48 x 7 |
| 2. The second part has 294 pages, or | (648 — 354) |
| 3. The third part contains 672 pages, or | (1320 — 648) 96 x 7 |
| 4. The fourth part contains 777 pages, or | (2097 — 1320) 111 x 7 |
| 5. The first and second parts comprise $56(31+25) fascicles, or | 8 x 7 |
| 6. The third part contains 63 fascicles, or | 9 x 7 |
| 7. The fourth part contains 77 fascicles, or | 11 x 7 |
¶ ADDITIONAL NOTE
The symbol 4 seems to play a particular role in the Introduction of the Urantia Book. Now, we can notice that the fourth power of the first four symbols of the numeration results in the total number of pages of the first part, describing God and the great universe, introduction included, namely:
14 + 24 + 34 + 44 = 354
1 + 16 + 81 + 256 = 354
The number 4 is the axial symbol of 7, and the phenomena of symmetry symbolically generate the phenomena of reflectivity, even reflexivity (therefore reflection).
It should also be noted that:
4 x 7 = 28
7 x 28 = 196 booklets
I ask the question: Were the revelators content to communicate to us only the spirit of the created universe, or did they add possibilities for reflection of another order?
Jean-Marie Chaise France