© 2021 Olga López
© 2021 Urantia Association of Spain
Newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain
Light and Life — June 2021
¶ In this number
- Editorial Light and Life - June 2021
- Works – our recommendations of the month
- History and teachings – Chronicles of the life of Jesus
- Books – our recommendations of the month
- Recommended blog: Agora 2.0
- Video – our recommendation of the month
- The quality of a better society
- Urantia Questionnaire: José Luis Navarro
- Urantia Talks for the month of June
- About the Light and Life newsletter
¶ Editorial Light and Life – June 2021
Maria Jose Sanchez Santamaria
A striking feature of the Urantia movement is that many of us come to this revealed book after seeking answers from various sources. We are talking about a large number of people who are curious to discover the meaning of our existence on this blue planet.
In this very heterogeneous group that we form readers from all over the world and that we could label as spiritual seekers there is a desire to discover the ultimate Reality and achieve that mandate that resonates in the Universes.
“Be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”
Not all of us respond in the same way to this call that our divine Adjuster makes to us from within. Accordingly, not all of us interpret and read The Urantia Book in the same way.
This extensive and hopeful text that is The Urantia Book I believe lends itself to being approached in two ways that, in a very brief way, I would call:
- Superficial searchers
- True Seekers
Superficial seekers are satisfied with mere theories. They listen to lectures or read about spiritual truths, but they do NOT make an honest effort to APPLY those teachings in their daily lives. We would speak of seekers driven by curiosity, by the excitement of discovery, but they stay on the surface of this vast ocean that is The Urantia Book.
A simile would be the following: it would be as if we were happy just by reading or listening to lectures on the wonders of honey, but we never got to taste it.
Seekers or true students only find satisfaction when they can understand the truth within, as a PERSONAL and direct EXPERIENCE. They feel that the desires of their soul are satisfied, since their daily life is a succession of causalities and wonders that manifest the unconditional divine Love. Moreover, they have finally understood The Urantia Book because they have grasped its meaning in a manifest way in the life of a Master, our beloved Michael of Nebadon.
Do we feel portrayed in one of these two classes of readers? Are we readers who love to gobble up good and beautiful ideas, but without worrying about making them part of our lives? Do we suffer from some kind of indigestion of theoretical content, which keeps our mind restless?
Serve this personal reflection that we propose from our monthly bulletin to focus the study of The Urantia Book from a broader perspective. Our goal is to spread the teachings of the Fifth Revelation, showing an original and very beautiful way to find ourselves: the religion of conscious communion with God, the religion that offers us to perceive unconditional Love in our daily lives.
There are hundreds of works that dissect The Urantia Book in multiple details. In this monthly newsletter of Urantia Association we are going to show you many of them, but none of this would make sense if you, dear reader who read these lines, do not encourage you to connect with who nourishes us and makes our existence possible. , just as Jesus of Nazareth lived his existence:
“In the very face of all the natural difficulties and the temporal contradictions of mortal existence, he experienced the tranquillity of supreme and unquestioned trust in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by faith, in the very presence of the heavenly Father.” (UB 196:0.3)
Cheer up, then, on this journey of life and in which we want to accompany you with our newsletter. Discover the small treasures that we offer you and that we hope will allow you to discover the wonders of the divine plan in our universe: from discovering unprecedented aspects of the Sun, characteristics of planetary life in another inhabited world, beautiful books or an original video on the origin of El Urantia Book.
God hears the call of our hearts and has provided us with this beautiful blue book. Let’s enjoy it!
¶ Works – our recommendations of the month
Letter to astronomers and astrophysicists (author unknown)
In this extensive and extremely interesting work, translated by Jan Herca, the author addresses different aspects of the cosmology of The Urantia Book and compares it with what astronomy has discovered so far: the location of the seven superuniverses, the distribution of the different types of space (penetrated and non-penetrated), the shape of the Orvonton superuniverse, outer space levels, and much more.
The Sun and its destiny (Jan Herca)
As an introduction to this interesting and entertaining work, what better than to recover here the introductory words of its author:
«The scientist in all of us is inevitably assailed by a question: Will the Sun continue to be that invaluable source of energy in the ages to come? Will its fuel run out one fine day and it will die, turning into a sad white dwarf? What will then happen to the future civilization that lives in our solar system? Will he have to emigrate to other suns? What is the fate of the Sun, and therefore, our fate?
“The Urantia Book already gave very elaborate answers to these intriguing questions in 1935, when it was written. And the torrent of information that populates its pages was in many respects ahead of what science at that time was capable of theorizing, and even ahead of today’s knowledge. In this report we are going to review some of the most surprising information that the book offers about the Sun, to contrast it with what current science has been able to determine.”
The government of a neighboring planet: the possible utopia (Olga López)
Document 72 is the source of many useful ideas for developing healthy societies that allow their members to grow at all levels. In this work, the author analyzes each of the aspects as they have developed on that neighboring planet that the developers tell us about, under the premise that many of these improvements could be put into practice as soon as the will to do so exists. . The government of a neighboring planet does not describe a society in light and life, but a possible utopia from which we can learn a lot.
The world of the cross (Carmelo Martínez)
In this work, the author addresses the interesting exercise of locating the places where the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth occurred as they are today, based on the clues offered by the revelators in The Urantia Book.
¶ History and teachings – Chronicles of the life of Jesus
We present the following installment of the chronicles of the life of Jesus, which on this occasion contains what the revealers tell us in document 123. Within the PDF you will see a button from which you can access the text of the document from the Foundation’s website Urantia.
¶ Books – our recommendations of the month
Living in truth, beauty and goodness (Jeffrey Wattles)
This essay develops in its pages what should be the philosophy of living (inspired by The Urantia Book) that allows us to incorporate truth, beauty and goodness in our lives. To do this, he supports his reflections on examples of well-known people, who personified the integration of these values in their life and work, including Socrates, Johann Sebastian Bach, Charles Darwin and Jesus of Nazareth, among many others.
Link with more information about the book and its download
The Gardens of Eden: The Life and Times of Adam and Eve (Richard Warren)
This novel by reader and writer Richard (Rick) Warren focuses on an episode that is narrated in great detail in The Urantia Book, how was the arrival of Adam and Eve on our planet and the development of events that led to the missing and the foundation of the second Eden. Highly recommended to introduce other people to the story that lies beyond the myth of the creation of humanity.
Link with more information about the book and its download
¶ Recommended blog: Agora 2.0
In June 2020, a group of six Spanish-speaking readers (three men and three women) wanted to recover the spirit of Urmia and create a space for confluence and fraternity with other religions, remaining neutral and without expressing their personal beliefs. That space is called Agora 2.0 (in honor of the agora or square of ancient Athens where the Athenians met to discuss their laws and decide the political future of their city).
The Agora 2.0 group organizes biweekly virtual conferences in which it proposes a topic that the speakers of the invited religions and doctrines must develop in accordance with their beliefs. In this blog the announcements to the next presentations appear, as well as a link to see the videos of the presentations once they have been held. The presentations are on his YouTube channel and on the iVoox platform in podcast format.
https://agora-20.blogspot.com/
¶ Video – our recommendation of the month
¶ The origin of The Urantia Book. Is it a revelation?
In this video of the channel Proyecto Orion there is an interesting explanation about how the fifth revelation came to us, taking as sources the writings that in their day were made by prominent readers of The Book of Urantia. The video details the course of events over the years and clears up much confusion about the origin of the Urantia Papers.
¶ The quality of a better society
L. Coll
The state of the world is pathetic and pitiful, but all things have their causes and effects. The bad actions of the world and people in general bring their consequences and we see that clearly in wars, political corruption, tremendous economic inequalities, corrupt nationalism, political blindness… and all these things are based on selfishness and self-interest.
Crisis? COVID-19? Conspiracies? Poverty and wealth? The masters of the world? Political parties with magical solutions to fix things? The way the world is going, many people are tired of always hearing the same thing, and all this is not going to be solved in any way and it will continue to be a waste of time until there is a serious and profound radical change. A change in moral, intellectual and spiritual values, and no matter how many times you think about all of this, this world will remain the same if you don’t seek other values and other ways of governing and doing things.
There is too much tendency to always blame others: the politician on duty, economic problems, the media, conspiracies, etc. This world will not progress until each individual learns to be responsible for himself and understands that the quality of a better society has to be put into practice by himself in the first place and in his own life.
¶ Urantia Questionnaire: José Luis Navarro
José Luis Navarro was born in Vitoria in 1977 and currently resides in a town in Huesca located halfway between the capital Huesca and Zaragoza. He is a draftsman by profession and designs furniture for the trade. He is married and has an 8-year-old son. He is currently secretary of the board of directors of the Urantia Association of Spain.
1. How did you get to The Urantia Book and why do you think you found it?
I started reading the Trojan Horses when I was eleven years old because my father passed them on to me. He was a great seeker of the truth, his library demonstrates this with titles such as Lucifer’s Rebellion, Looking into the distance of the universe, Life after life, etc… Around the year 2000, after finishing reading one of the Horses of J.J.Benitez, I wanted to find more and I started doing searches on the internet. In a forum someone answered with a very concise sentence: “Trojan Horse is a plagiarism of The Urantia Book”. After that discovery I found the Urantia Foundation website and The Urantia Book was right there to read. I studied it for years, because I did it very calmly. I’m still on it…
2. What was your first impression when reading it?
The first few days I looked at it by leaps and bounds. He was amazed at the amount of information he had and also a little scared, because it was clear that he did not understand a lot of the things on it. It had never happened to me before, so that even more motivated me to read it.
¶ Urantia Talks for the Month of June
The Association is organizing Urantia Talks so that all who wish can join and discuss topics that interest them. The idea is that the moderators propose a starting topic, which can then be followed by others at the proposal of the attendees.
At the moment these talks will be biweekly (every other Friday) and their purpose is to maintain contact between readers in the absence of face-to-face events, as well as to share the teachings in an atmosphere of fraternity and camaraderie.
Meetings will be held in the Association Zoom room.
This month, the meetings will be on Fridays June 4th and 18th at 7pm (Spanish peninsular time). We wait for you!
¶ About the Light and Life newsletter
Light and Life is the newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain. From 2005 to 2016 it was published in PDF format and distributed by mail and email to the association’s reader list, but it is currently distributed in newsletter format from content in HTML format.
If you want to receive the newsletter in your email, contact the association to subscribe to the mailing list.
All papers and news from readers and study groups are welcome, so if you want to share any side work, writing, outline, image, etc., you can send it to the association and we will publish it previous evaluation of its suitability. Likewise, the Communication commission of the board of directors of the Urantia Association of Spain reserves the right to edit it so that it meets minimum spelling quality.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/newsletter/luz-y-vida-junio-2021/