© 2016 Ivan Stol, Jean Duvau, Georges Michelson-Dupont, Ade Awoyinka, Guy Stéphane Nyasse, Arnaud and Jérôme Pingwende Zoungrana, Robert Mondange, Dominic Ronfet, Philip G. Calabrese
© 2016 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre of Urantia
Hello dear readers,
A person made the following comment (which everyone must have seen, thank you Pascal), I quote:
“And yes, AFFUB is a readers’ association. We are students. Shy, bold, daredevils, reckless, thoughtful, vindictive, optimistic, poets.”
And everyone should feel good here because we are able to understand and discern each other’s goals and therefore accommodate them. For my part, I must ensure that the actions of some do not overshadow the rules of others and that the association remains a neutral ground where everyone can express themselves without feeling in danger or rejected.
Le Lien Urantien is the journal of the French-speaking association of readers of the Urantia Book (AFLUB), a member of the UAI, Urantia Association International.
Head office: 1, rue du Temple, 13012 Marseille. +33 (0)980 978481
Cœurriel: afllu@urantia.fr
Site/Forum: www.urantia.fr and http://forum.urantia.fr
Publication Director: Ivan Stol; ivan.stol@free.fr
Editor-in-Chief: Georges Michelson-Dupont; georges.michelson-dupont@wanadoo.fr
Reading Committee: Jean Duveau; Ivan Stol & Patrick Morelli.
The Link: Published 4 times a year electronically to AFLLU members
Legal deposit: December 1997 — ISSN 1285-1116
All rights reserved. Materials from The Urantia Book are used with permission. Any literary or artistic representation(s), interpretation(s), opinion(s) or conclusion(s) implied or stated are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Urantia Foundation or its affiliates.
Conference Theme: Who is Jesus?
GOING to HUNGARY, although not a European country, is a simple formality and an identity card is sufficient for Europeans.
This conference is an initiative of the BUBE CUBB, which is not an association but an organization of people wishing to bring together readers of the Urantia Book from Europe, and initially mainly German-speaking.
Most of us were accommodated in a Novotel not far from the Danube (far from being blue and quiet) where the conferences and working groups took place.
Given the July and August holidays, we were unable to produce the association’s operating account for 2015 on time.
INCOME STATEMENT — Year 2015 (In Euros)
| CHARGES | PRODUCTS | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase Books | 3066 | Contributions | 2650 |
| Variation in book stock (1) | -6020 | AFLUB donations | 1980 |
| Administrative Supplies | 193 | Sales Books | 280 |
| Printing services | 255 | Miscellaneous sales | 73 |
| Insurance | 104 | Benefits Meetings | 298 |
| Salons | 1332 | ||
| Postage and internet | 1059 | ||
| Bank charges | 1 | ||
| Participation Meeting Canada | 1540 | ||
| Repayment of previous AUI contributions | 1508 | ||
| TOTAL CHARGES | 3038 | TOTAL PRODUCTS | 5281 |
| POSITIVE RESULT | 2243 | ||
| (1) Taking into account UB book stock in 2015 |
Desenzano del Garda
In a quiet hotel on the shores of Lake Garda, which was our view during the meetings, we met for the second time our Italian Urantian neighbors on the initiative of our dynamic Danielle LA SCALA whose translation skills are breathtaking. Without mentioning Danièle, and two non-Urantians, we were four French (Georges, Marlène, Doris and Ivan), five Italians (Nirvana, Serena, Deanna, Dolores and Alberto), two Swiss, Guy and Danielle and the European coordinator Antonio.
The discussions on “the survival of the human self” helped to clarify many questions on the existential questions of “who will survive” and “the real choice of survival”. Similarly, “how to live with others”, “what is love”, “doing God’s will” and “improving oneself” are themes that were addressed with the invaluable help of Georges, who has a great habit of guiding these discussions in the best possible way.
Fertile Land for the Teachings of The Urantia Book
In the article “The French stake in the diffusion of the teachings of the Urantia Book in the world” published in LE LIEN N°75 of June 2016, we highlighted the explosion of Africa’s demographics in the next 80 years. Indeed, according to the official projections of the United Nations, the median hypothesis shows that one human being in three will be African and that the sub-Saharan regions alone will represent 90% of this third of the world population. We are talking here about more than 3.5 billion people.
Youth is the real treasure of black Africa, but it can also be “a time bomb”. According to J. J. Konadje, Doctor of Political Science and geopolitical consultant, "Africa is by far the youngest region in the world in terms of population. According to the latest United Nations estimates, African youth represent more than 60% of the continent’s overall population and just over 40% of the active population. Mathematically, there are 200 million young people between the ages of 18 and 24 on the continent. In twenty years, there will be 340 million young people in Africa. . . . African youth are, as a whole and to a certain extent, in the same boat: unemployment, violence, despair, idleness, precariousness, adventure, illusion, illiteracy, illiteracy and undereducation, to name but a few, constitute their common denominator and most of the time punctuate their daily lives. »
Georges Michelson-Dupont
ADE AWOYINKA is an English-speaking Nigerian (from Nigeria, not the Republic of Niger) who has long since emigrated to the United Kingdom. The short biography she offered before her presentation in Budapest tells us that “she received The Urantia Book on July 1, 1996; she has been reading it ever since and, as her clairvoyance grows, she continues to find truths every day.” She is a civil servant and lives in London.
A few years earlier I had met her at a short readers’ meeting in Ireland but had not had time to really fraternise with her.
I saw Ade again at the Budapest conference last September where she gave a presentation entitled “The Life and Times of Jesus.”
So I sat down with him and we shared some choice bits of our lives. The story of his spiritual quest for God, from the debilitating and paralyzing fear of believing in evil spirits to spiritual liberation through faith in a loving God, was deeply moving and spiritually inspiring to me.
When I became a newborn Christian in the seventies in Africa, I was raised to fear two things: going to hellfire and missing the parousia. There were other fears along the way such as defiling myself through various activities that I won’t bore you with, and also demonic oppression. I refuse to fear the so-called power of witchcraft because I don’t really understand the mechanism, but I do understand the side effects of fear on a person’s mind.
We Africans have much to fear. Our daily lives can seem precarious and dangerous. The risk of ethnic or religious conflict is ever present, poor economic performance can suddenly wipe out financial security, illness without access to adequate medical care can take the lives of our friends, comrades, elders… all too quickly; sudden and unexplained physical or mental illnesses with devastating personal effects; miserable infrastructure that makes travel by road, air or sea unnecessarily dangerous etc. And I could go on. Our fragile existence, I believe, has made us God-fearing and grateful people. This must be respected.
Testimony of Guy Stéphane Nyasse
Douala, Cameroon; October 2016
Cameroon is a beautiful country located in Central Africa. And like all French-speaking countries, we have the French language as an asset. In addition, the English language is widespread, in the northwest and southwest of the country. We are a bilingual people and in fact it is more of a zone bilingualism, with a French-speaking part and another English-speaking part. Cameroon is a peaceful country, Cameroonians are a peaceful people, renowned for being one of the most magnificent host countries in the area.
Testimony of Arnaud and Jérôme Pingwende Zoungrana
October 2016; Ouagadougou; Burkina Faso
Thank you for the encouragement regarding our continued effort to appropriate the rich and sublime Urantia Book which sheds new light on religion and thereby shapes our religiosity. The religious context in our country is marked by the coexistence of several religions (Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam and animism) and various sects, a coexistence not often and always peaceful in the individual register. Here and there, we record a form of religious intolerance between the faithful, even for those who seem close, which is akin to a paradox.
Robert Mondange
Since I left the Air Force many years ago, I have personally traveled to Côte d’Ivoire for humanitarian work, to a village called Assikoi, located 120 km from Abidjan, near the town of Adzopé, made famous by Raoul Follereau. In 1995, there were four religions there: Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Muslims and of course some typically African religions, which sometimes mix with other religions.
When I discovered the village in 1995, for the installation of a library, the young people asked me for Bibles that I did not have, I managed to send them some but with the agreement of the Imam, I also sent Korans. I have been reading the Urantia Book for many years, years when it only existed in the form of booklets. I was part of Guy Antequera’s team that you must know. Moreover, I am still in contact with him. To return to my experiences, other religions have often been established, often evangelists. I would have obviously liked to talk about our Book, but it is very difficult.
Translation: How to live open to the Spirit
About twenty years ago, in my insatiable curiosity, I was looking for a book whose edition was out of print.
(No, it wasn’t The Urantia Book, which I was already reading; besides, the subject of the book doesn’t matter.)
My research led me to contact by telephone a lady who had known the author.
Dominique Ronfet.
by Philip G. Calabrese
We are publishing the second presentation given at the 2016 Chicago Science Symposium. Philip G. Calabrese sheds a completely new light on the concept of “Free Will.”
(Translation: Jean Royer)
1. Free Will.
What is “free will”? Can any amount of “free will” be proven to exist? Can “personal free will” coexist with a mechanistic energy universe of pure antecedent causality? What happens in the brain and neurological system when someone makes a choice? Finally, if free will exists in the cosmos, then what are some implications of its existence?
In recent decades, with the advent of non-invasive methods such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) some of these questions have been scrutinized much more closely by neuroscientists who are now able to observe the activities of the living brain while agents make choices. Many new and well-documented experiments have been done and ideas explored. [^1]