© 1994 Meredith Sprunger
© 1993 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By Meredith Sprunger
Fort Wayne, Indiana
When most people start reading The Urantia Book, they are interested in knowing whose Thought Adjuster was used in editing the Urantia Papers and the method used in their materialization. Dr. Sadler candidly discussed any issues, except a detailed answer to these two questions. He said the Contact Commission was asked to take a vow of secrecy regarding these two subjects.
When asked why these restrictions were imposed upon them, he gave the following reasons:
“The main reason for not revealing the identity of the contact personality is that the revelators do not want any human being — any human name — to be associated with The Urantia Book. They want this revelation to stand on its own declarations and teachings. They are determined that future generations shall have the book wholly free of all mortal connections. They do not want a St. Peter, St. Paul, Luther, Calvin or Wesley associated with the book. The book doesn’t even bear the name or any mark of the printer who brought the book into being.”
And secondly: “There is much about the appearance of the Urantia Papers which no human being fully understands. No one really knows just how this phenomenon was executed. There are numerous missing links in the story of how the revelation came to appear in written English. If anyone should tell all he really knows about this technique and the methods employed in getting this revelation, such a narrative would satisfy no one, for there are too many missing links.”
During Dr. Sadler’s investigation of this phenomenon, he consulted men like Howard Thurston, the renowned sleightof-hand artist who devoted considerable time to exposing fraudulent mediums and psychics. He also conferred with Sir Hubert Wilkens, the noted scientist and explorer involved in investigating psychic phenomena. They agreed that the phenomena connected with this individual could not be classified with other types of psychic phenomena, such as automatic writing, telepathy, clairvoyance, trances, channeling, or split personality.
There have been various guesses as to who the contact personality may have been, but nothing can be verified. On numerous occasions, Dr. Sadler told me that he didn’t know how the materialization was accomplished. Almost everything known about the origin of The Urantia Book, he assured me, is found within the book.
Dr. Sadler engaged handwriting experts to determine the origin of these papers. The experts assured him that it was not the handwriting of the contact personality or those associated with this person.
While these questions are interesting to discuss, they have nothing to do with the validity of The Urantia Book, which must be determined by the content of the book itself.