© 2023 Urantia Association of Spain
I’m Jan Herca. I live in Valladolid, Spain. I am dedicated to digital cartography. I’m married. I have three children and a puppy.
¶ 1. How did you get to “The Urantia Book” and why do you think you found it?
During my university studies, at a time of much effervescence of ideas and deep study of the gospels, I thought I had come up with a good theory about who Jesus of Nazareth really was. I elaborated this intricate theory inspired by books like Juan Salvador Gaviota and Caballo de Troya. However, my theory had terrible gaps that I could not fill. In the midst of this frustrating experience, I remember that one night I asked the Father for some kind of illumination to find an explanation for my insoluble questions. Just a week later, a friend, seeing many books on Jesus on my bookshelf, suggested that I should read The Urantia Book.
¶ 2. What was your first impression when reading it?
I remember the day as if it were today. My friend told me that the first edition in Spanish had just come out. This was around 1993. I almost didn’t buy it. It seemed to me the book of a sect. But I flipped through the index and saw that a large part of the book was a year-by-year biography of Jesus. I stopped in a park and began to read while sitting on a bench. It goes without saying that since that day I have not been able to stop reading it every day.
¶ 3. At what point in the reading (document, sentence, etc.) did you accept that “The Urantia Book” is really what it claims to be?
I have deep doubts that The Urantia Book is what it claims to be. I find these doubts somewhat reasonable since I understand that it is impossible, by means of a book, to find the absolute certainty of the things it tells. But that does not mean that I consider it absolutely true. I feel a certainty difficult to explain that has never left me since that first day I started reading it in a park. This certainty so difficult to explain means that, with few exceptions, it has never been able to attract anyone to read it.
¶ 4. How has “The Urantia Book” changed your life?
First, it has given me a new purpose: I want to help spread the word and make the book more accessible. Second, it has given me a much longer perspective on life. Now I see this life as the beginning of a next one that I think about very often, remembering my relatives who have already left and imagining the life they will be living. But deep down, The Urantia Book hasn’t magically changed the way I am. I still have many flaws that I would like to correct, and the book has perhaps made me more aware of them, but not easily fixed. The Urantia Book, on the other hand, has brought me many conflicts in a very traditional family environment.
¶ 5. Has the faith you had after reading it changed? If so, in what way?
When I discovered The Urantia Book I had long since abandoned the Catholic religion that my parents had instilled in me. There were too many things that did not seem coherent with the idea that I had of Jesus, and the study of the history of the Church had only strengthened them. I have always longed for a new Christian religion, but as much as I have searched, I have never found it. If someone asks me today about my faith, it is difficult for me to answer because I do not feel close to any current confession. I often say that I am a believer in the Fifth Revelation, but this obviously leaves more questions than answers. If I also explain that faith, for me, is a personal experience that has to be lived, and not assumed as a blind trust in an institution, then hardly anyone understands what I am saying anymore.
¶ 6. Are there any points (or points) of the revelation that you find difficult to accept?
The truth is that I do not intend to accept The Urantia Book. I think of it as one of the many most comprehensive compendiums of truth that the revelators could give us in the early 20th century. But it is not the whole truth, nor is it complete, nor is it the definitive truth. There will be a sixth epochal revelation, a seventh, etc. I try to study the book to understand what they tell us, by what means they have arrived at that teaching, and why they tell us. There are things about burning moral issues that I would like to see answered in The Urantia Book, but otherwise, what it offers us seems immeasurable in size. Studying this book well and the implications of what it tells, I think it will take many hundreds of years.
¶ 7. What is the part that has most deeply impressed you?
Undoubtedly the fourth part, because it is through it that I came to the book. But the part about science has me completely intrigued.
¶ 8. How do you understand “doing the will of the Father”?
I understand that the Father has a universal plan of a scope that we can hardly visualize. It seems that the current universe is just a huge school for beings like us, who in millions of years will evolve to become the rulers and ministers of gigantic universes that are now beginning to be planned. The will of the Father, for me, is to join that plan and make it my own. It is a plan of excessive ambition, and that will require unlimited patience on our part. It will be a true test of “willpower”. But if we are faithful, if we endure the test, a bright future awaits us.
¶ 9. Have you become aware of the presence of your Adjuster?
No never. I felt a very direct response to that plea I made when I discovered The Urantia Book, and sometimes I notice coincidences when discovering certain things in my studies that I think may have some invisible hand behind it. But I would not call that being conscious of my Adjuster.
¶ 10. Have you tried to put the Master’s teachings into practice? What was the result?
The Urantia Book has changed my life in my principles and in my vision of the universe, but when it comes to day-to-day details I am still a disaster in many things, or at least I see myself that way. I would like to be able to apply just one percent of the things that Jesus inspires me to do when reading The Urantia Book, but I haven’t even been able to do that. There are people around me who have not read any of The Urantia Book who are a hundred times kinder and more concerned for their neighbor than I am. I still have a lot to learn and practice in this life.
¶ 11. Do you think that “The Urantia Book” has something “mysterious” that makes not everyone decide to read it?
I believe that The Urantia Book is a premature gift that has been given to the inhabitants of our planet, perhaps because we have been honored to be the planet of the last donation of our father Michael. That’s why I think this book is not for everyone in this day and age. When someone asks me if I should read The Urantia Book I used to say yes, but now I almost always say no because I see few hungry souls prepared to read it.
¶ 12. Is there anything else you would like to say regarding “The Urantia Book”?
I have always seen The Urantia Book as an exciting read, but very complex. My goal for some time has been to find a way to make the book more accessible to others. That is why I have embarked on the adventure of creating a website, urantiapedia.org, where I can bring together the enormous body of knowledge that thousands of readers have been creating for years. My desire is to leave this great heritage for future generations as a project that grows, evolves and reaches many in their own language.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/2023/05/30/cuestionario-urantiano-jan-herca