© 2004 Ken Glasziou
© 2004 The Brotherhood of Man Library
¶ Summary
Nigel Nunn, an Australian physics boffin, believes the Urantia Book’s description of the Master Universe must be some kind of geometrical projection from a higher dimension. Which seems highly likely. The revelators description of gravity and anti-gravity might also be an adaptation from a higher dimensional viewpoint, in which case there is little point in attempting to comprehend it in the way most of us do–from three spatial dimensions and one of absolute time. General relativity does away with absolute time, substituting a fourth dimension of space-time–which also does away with the force of gravity, substituting a difficult to conceive spatial curvature. And general relativity has stood up to hundreds of tests and never failed.
The Book’s physical description of the mansion and higher worlds must also be an adaptation from the reality, but undoubtedly the reality will be an advance over the description given us.
¶ Content
Do you have trouble imagining the four dimensional universe of relativity? Then imagine the difficulty faced by the Urantia Book revelators in conveying to us a mental concept of a seven dimensional universe. (UB 130:7.6) This problem was highlighted by Australian reader, Nigel Nunn, who comments that the torus-like description given us for the Master Universe must be some kind of geometrical projection or representation as seen from a higher dimension rather than being reality.
The revelators also speak of antigravity as a means by which the Power Directors control energy and mass distribution. But for a considerable period, the concept of antigravity had no place among our physicists and cosmologists.
Observed from within, our universe is expanding, and is either flat, open, or closed. If open, it expands forever, if closed, it ultimately collapses–and flat is in between. Flat is the favorite, but cosmologists have exhausted all the possibilities they can think up to balance the mass-energy density budget required for flatness.
At one time it seemed that vacuum energy could do the trick. This comes from virtual particles popping in and out of reality–and can actually be measured and shown to agree with quantum theory to an accuracy of nine decimal places. But things went wrong when vacuum energy was used to make up for the missing mass of the cosmologists, being a mere 120 orders of magnitude too large!!
With all possibilities apparently exhausted, what was left was either an open universe or one filled with energy of an unknown kind in order to produce flatness.
To make the latter work, we have a re-introduction of Einstein’s long abandoned cosmological constant, which acts to oppose the effect of gravity with a repulsive rather than an attractive force, antigravity. Sounds simple enough, but it now has to be tuned to an accuracy of 123 decimal places–124 will not do. So no wonder that Einstein was pleased to let it go.
Among other things The Urantia Book tells us that, “antigravity is a power of the Infinite Spirit. . . . It can annul gravity within a local frame. It does so by the exercise of equal force presence. It operates only with reference to material gravity, and it is not the action of mind.” (UB 9:3.3) I wonder who has the task of balancing it to the 123rd decimal place?
¶ External links
- Article in Innerface International: https://urantia-book.org/archive/newsletters/innerface/vol11_3/page22.html