© 2017 Paul and Gosia Jaworski
© 2017 Urantia Foundation
| Noteworthy Decisions from the January 2017 Board of Trustees Meeting | Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2017 — Index | Report from the Finnish Office |
By Paul and Gosia Jaworski, Australia, and Jolanta Kupiec, Poland
Six years have passed since the first printing of Księga Urantii, the Polish translation of The Urantia Book, in 2010. The third printing of this translation was sent to distributors in Poland in 2016.
At this moment, we are concentrating on spreading the teachings of the book in Poland. It is not easy, since we live in Australia, and electronic media and online communication are the only tools we use in this task. To the best of our knowledge, there are no study groups in Poland. But Polish readers are becoming more active and helpful each year. They have created two Facebook pages about Księga Urantii. On one, a minimum of three quotations from the book are posted weekly. On the other, there is an ongoing discussion about all aspects of the book. We also have a website with the complete text of the book. It has existed since 2006 and has had nearly 230.000 viewings. And for YouTube, a reader created two informative videos about Księga Urantii (totaling nearly two hours).
For the translation itself, the work is a never ending job! A few thousand changes were made to this current printing. The main objective for this revision was to remove any traces of English sentence style from the Polish text. Also, many errors were corrected.
A few years ago, Jolanta Kupiec, a Polish reader, contacted us and sent a long list of typographical errors and other types in the Polish translation. In cooperation, she significantly contributed to the work of the current revison.
Let us allow Jolanta to introduce herself:
I was born in Oświęcim, Poland, in 1950, the same year that Urantia Foundation was established. My love of art allowed me to complete an art history degree at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, as well as postgraduate museum studies. I worked for several years in education and for thirty years in the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim. My work there tremendously enriched my life experience.
Knowledge of the cruel system of genocide taught me humility, compassion, and respect for life. This subject permeated my life from childhood because during World War II, my mother worked in the resistance movement as a liaison officer, close to Auschwitz. In 1944 she was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in Konzentrationslager, Auschwitz, where she was beaten and tortured. In January 1945 , she was evacuated from Auschwitz in the notorious “death march” toward Germany. She was able to escape from this forced evacuation because of great perseverance and a will to return home.
Events sometimes take strange courses. After the war, my mother came to live with family in Oświęcim—today a small but charming city. I worked for many years in the museum created after the war on the grounds of Auschwitz, for the commemoration of the history of these inhuman times and the suffering of thousands. I wrote three books describing life in Auschwitz, based on surviving works of art (pictures and drawings) made by prisoners.
I am a person who is constantly reading history, including ancient history. Since I was a youth, I was fascinated with ancient civilizations as well as legends, myths, and tales from ancient times, and the old “gods” living on earth. Today, in the face of new archeological discoveries, there is emerging the ancient knowledge of humankind concealed in these “legends.” This knowledge is consistent with my current passion for the oldest civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley, Pacific Islands, Mesoamerica, Armenia, Turkestan, etc.
I remember one unusual experience when I was working at the Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1994, I spent three weeks in Israel at a seminar for the workers of my museum. Aside from interesting lectures in Yad Vashem and various meetings, we traveled extensively in Israel with a professional guide who informed us about the history, places, and antiquities that we visited. It was something amazing, particularly when we realized that we were walking practically the same paths that Jesus walked. How many ancient wonders are hidden in various places of our earth? Even their ruins are fascinating.
The Urantia Book has become for me an excellent supplement to this knowledge. It is a remarkable source with logical explanations, which our science is lacking. In 2014 , I had read a few fragments of the book online and decided to buy a printed version. This reading occupied me for an entire year as I meticulously studied the book from beginning to end. I know that an online index exists, but I also created my own index. In the margins of my book, I wrote entries to help me remember important content, and later, from these notes, I created for my own needs an “Index of Names and Persons” (over fifty pages). Thanks to this, I can always find specific information and answers if someone asks me a question.
Explaining the scope, range, and significance of The Urantia Book can be a long story. I compare the knowledge of this book with both scientific and nonscientific studies. The book’s content speaks about spirituality, science (physics and astronomy), evolution, the structure of the universe, our past, and the future. Additionally, as never before, it conveys the beautiful story of Jesus’ life, from his universe identity to his life on Earth, year by year. Despite the enormous number of pages and seemingly difficult content, for me Księga Urantii has opened insights into the perfection and beauty of many worlds with a multitude of variety of life on them. The book unravels the origin and evolution of the oldest race on earth, the origins of the extraordinary and mysterious achievements of ancient civilizations, and their surprising similarity. The book explains the meaning of our existence as well as the meaning of other forms and levels of life in the universe taking origin in our Creator.
When I read any book, I am able to effortlessly find inaccuracies in the text. In reading Księga Urantii, I discovered some typographical and other errors, about 150 of them. I sent all my findings to the Polish translators, and so began a pleasant friendship which is of great value to me.
The Polish monthly Nieznany Świat—a journal dedicated to spiritual development with a circulation of about eighty thousandl—published three of my articles about Księga Urantii: in the February 2016 issue, “Amazing Source and Surprising Discoveries” and “When Gods Walked on Earth”; and in the September 2016 issue, “Evidence from the Other Side.”
I was able to attract the interest of a widely-read Polish author, Igor Witkowski from Warsaw, about some aspects of Ksiega Urantii. Now in a jointly written book called Instructions for Awakening, Vol. 8: Unknown Roots of the Earth Religions there is a chapter written by me, “Księga Urantii, a Source about the Roots of Religion on Earth.” The book was published in February 2017. Earlier, I inserted my text about the Garden of Eden in his book Instructions for Awakening Vol. 2: Distorted Traditions of Christianity.
I have three wonderful children and numerous grandchildren, but all of my free time is spent on my passion—doing research.
¶ References
| Noteworthy Decisions from the January 2017 Board of Trustees Meeting | Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2017 — Index | Report from the Finnish Office |