© 2003 Linda Buselli
© 2003 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| When Belief Becomes Faith | Volume 5, Number 1, 2003 (Summer) — Index | The Difficulty of Being Objective |
To a Urantia Book reader, the subject of revelation has many meanings and many levels within each meaning. Most modern religions already have their holy scriptures, consider them inviolate, and do not really expect any new “scriptures” to be revealed. Yet within the last century, a spiritual awakening has swept the world, bringing with it not only The Urantia Book, but a number of other writings believed to be new revelations of God. What is this spiritual awakening and what is The Urantia Book’s place in it?
To gain a clearer view of the present, it might be helpful to review the main features of the first four epochal revelations. There are decided differences between the first two and the second two. Both the arrival of the Planetary Prince and his staff and the later coming of Adam and Eve involved large numbers of people settled in one place. Both revelatory groups, the Prince’s staff and the Adamites, were not able to communicate much of religion to the primitive peoples they encountered. They taught very simple spiritual concepts and spent most of their time civilizing and socializing these tribes. Gifted individuals from the different tribes were brought to a central place, trained, and then sent back to their people to uplift them.
By contrast, the epochal revelations of Machiventa and Jesus were bestowals of a single individual and occurred within a much shorter time frame than the first two. Machiventa established Salem as a base of operations, brought students in, trained them, and sent them out as missionaries. But Jesus went one step further; he never established a center or “school” at all. He trained the apostles and disciples and they went out into the world much as Machiventa’s missionaries had done. The pattern of epochal revelation was changing.
Two thousand years later, another giant step was taken with the publication of The Urania Book This was not only a totally new type of revelation for Urantia, but it was a rare departure from the general method of bringing a revelation to any inhabited world. We can suppose that the isolation of Urantia from the universe circuits would make it very difficult for the usual pattern of revelation to be followed, but why would the revelators choose to give us these truths in this manner? There may have been a number of reasons. (I do so love to speculate on how our unseen friends might. think.)
Present readers and those who come after us will have to deal with the following issues.
Just as English is the most widely spoken language on the planet, it may also be the most quickly changing one. One of the reasons its vocabulary is so extensive is that it adapts words from other languages, and even invents its own, at a very rapid rate. The English language is only about one thousand years old, and it continues to evolve rapidly. Even in the fifty years since the publication of The Urantia Book, some of the terms in the book have begun to change slightly in meaning, or in usage; for instance, let’s take the term “weeping.” While it is still clearly understood, it has been replaced in ordinary speech by other terms, such as “crying,” or “sobbing.” Also, words such as “galaxy” are being used somewhat differently than in the 1920s, which has caused some confusion among readers who are interested in astronomy. Most people associate the word “psychic” with mindal phenomena or ESP; however, the book uses the term “psyche” or “psychic” in its original meaning in the Greek language, which is “spirit” or “soul.” Thus, the seven psychic circles deal not just with intellectual understanding, but with the growth of the soul. We might be more likely to term them “soul circles” in the use of language today.
English has no singular gender-neutral pronoun for persons. This means, in order to be politically correct, one must use he/she, etc. Some people already prefer “humankind” to “mankind,” and the head of a committee is a “chair” rather than a “chairman.” This difficulty will bring increasing problems as social conditions change.
Translators will always face the problem of variations in local or regional dialects. We have two Spanish translations of the book now, reflecting differences in usage between Spain and Latin America. Also, the literal translation from one language to another can be very misleading, depending on idiomatic terms.
As all of these languages change, updates will have to be made to maintain the clarity of the concepts presented in the book; and this will create problems in precise definitions. This will also be difficult for those who want the original text kept inviolate, for it will become less and less readable over a long period of time unless it can be expressed in the language of each new generation. We’ve been told The Urantia Book is to provide spiritual guidance for the next thousand years; but a thousand years from now, perhaps much sooner, the English of the book may well be unrecognizable.
In all four of the earlier epochal revelations, truth was carried by word of mouth. Eventually, in the third and fourth revelations, “scriptures” were produced; but the written word has always been subject to errors in interpretation and translation, as cited above. We have six different bibles in our house, and that means for any given verse, we can find six separate versions.
However, worldwide electronic communication offers us some very promising ways of disseminating the teachings of The Urantia Book. Thousands of people contact our website each day, and websites are interconnecting at an astonishing rate. We have a powerful new tool for transmitting the teachings of the book at a faster rate than ever before.
All five epochal revelations have certain aspects in common:
The Urantia Book will have an important role in the spiritual awakening of this planet. Since we cannot see how this will work out, we must be careful not to limit our vision for either the immediate or the distant future. Just as the teachers of former revelations could not know the permutations their teachings would take, we cannot predict how these truths will be interpreted and taught by our successors.
“However wise it may be to glean wisdom from the past, it is folly to regard the past as the exclusive source of truth. Truth is relative and expanding, it lives always in the present, achieving new expression in each generation of men—even in each human life.” [UB 79:8.8]
The patterns of revelation seem to remain the same; it is the expression of them that has altered, dependent on the reasons listed above and others unknown to us. The one factor we can confidently expect to be present throughout the future is change. “All static, dead, concepts are potentially evil. The finite shadow of relative and living truth is continually moving. Static concepts invariably retard science, politics, society, and religion.” [UB 130:4.15] and “The fact of God, the divine late, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.” [UB 102:7.2]
Change is one of the most difficult steps for us to take. Our inability to change delays our reception of truth, both as individuals and as entire cultures; our openness to change gives our Adjusters more leeway in their tasks and allows for more rapid cultural adaptations. We are living in a changing society, one that is searching for truth, that is perhaps more open to advanced spiritual teachings than it has been for some time. We will have to be adaptable to new ways of expressing ourselves and sharing our experiences within the context of our new opportunities for communication.
Truth is living; the Spirit of Truth is ever leading the children of light into new realms of spiritual reality and divine service. You are not given truth to crystallize into settled, safe, and honored forms… What a sorry sight for successive generations of the professed followers of Jesus to say, regarding their stewardship of divine truth: ‘Here, Master, is the truth you committed to us a hundred or a thousand years ago. We have lost nothing; we have faithfully preserved all you gave us; we have allowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the truth you gave us.’ [UB 176:3.7]
Is The Urantia Book a revelation? Yes. Does the discovery of human source material dilute the meaning of that term? No. I suspect that it is our own erroneous definitions of what constitutes a “revelation” that have led to the disappointment of some readers. After all, the apostles also had a great deal of trouble understanding the real nature of many of Jesus’ teachings. The authors of The Urantia Book have done exactly what they said they would do. They have followed an established pattern of revelation: “…we are to be guided by the mandate of the superuniverse rulers which directs that we shall, in all our efforts to reveal truth and co-ordinate essential knowledge, give preference to the highest existing human concepts pertaining to the subjects to be presented. We may resort to pure revelation only when the concept of presentation has had no adequate previous expression by the human mind.” [UB 0:12.11]
And from a midwayer: “The memoranda which I have collected… embrace thought gems and superior concepts of Jesus’ teachings assembled from more than two thousand human beings who have lived on earth from the days of Jesus down to the time of the inditing of these revelations, more correctly restatements. … I well know that those concepts which have had origin in the human mind will prove more acceptable and helpful to all other human minds…In many ways I have served more as a collector and editor than as an original narrator.” [UB 121:8.12,13,14]
The Urantia Book, like previous revelations, is a repository of both human wisdom and advanced spiritual insights. It is not just a revelation in and of itself, but it precipitates revelation in us. It engenders within the human soul that which will help to usher in light and life. It must be given new life and new meaning in each generation. The truth of the revelation of the book is not in the precise words written on its pages, but in the living human experience of its ideals.
Linda Buselli has been studying and teaching The Urantia Book for over 30 years. She is currently serving as a Fellowship General Councilor and Chair of the Publications Committee.
| When Belief Becomes Faith | Volume 5, Number 1, 2003 (Summer) — Index | The Difficulty of Being Objective |