© 2002 Philip Calabrese
© 2002 The Urantia Book Fellowship
Preface: My theme for these reflections is the personal and social reactions by readers to The Urantia Book, and especially to the cosmology of The Urantia Book. Let me start with my own experience.
It was back in the summer of 1970 that my eyes first fell upon The Urantia Book, and it was love at first sight. I read it in its entirety in less than four months, from August to November, and it has made a great difference in my life.
Yet, it was, and still is, easy to react unwisely to The Urantia Book. For instance, in my own case, as a young mathematician and professor, I had to decide whether to incorporate The Urantia Book’s science into my contemporary scientific research program. If not, then I would be giving up the enlightened stance that The Urantia Book affords—not very idealistic. On the other hand, if I tried to incorporate The Urantia Book, then my efforts would be divided between Urantia material and more conventional writing. Somehow I just knew that it would be professionally impossible or at least premature to attempt to publish ideas such as Paradise in conventional scientific peer review journals.
In 1970 The Urantia Book’s full cosmology was far too advanced for contemporary science and it is still too advanced in 2002. Therefore, much of my work has remained unpublished or at best published with exposure only to Urantia Book readers. Nor have I been afforded anything like contemporary scientific peer review or ongoing dialogue and development among scientists who are enthusiastic partners in the research.
Given the contemporary flow of social, scientific, and religious culture, The Urantia Book was written in a form and with a content that had predictable implications on its likely initial acceptance, or more correctly, its lack thereof. The characters and narratives presented in The Urantia Book presume a radical change in perspective by the reader (one familiar to science fiction enthusiasts)—that superhumans have contacted earth in our day and sponsored the publication of The Urantia Book. In 1970 this was just one more cultural shock wave that hit us. But now, as then, it is all too easy for a serious stu dent of The Urancia Book to raise eyebrows in his non-believing associates by professing belief in The Urantia Book’s revelatory claims. But that is just what The Urantia Book asks of the reader. This is not an accident of the writing of the book. It was foreseen. Faith, after all, is required to appreciate every divine revelation.
The authors knew that at first it would be hard for most people to accept The Urantia Book. The universe perspective is so foreign here on Urantia that the truth about the universe as presented in The Urantia Book sounds like a fairy tale to contemporary scientists and even to philosophers and religionists. Recall that almost all of the story of Melchizedek was lost because after hundreds of years during the captivity, the narrative sounded so strange to the religious leaders of the Jews that they expunged almost all of Melchizedek’s exploits lest they be subjected to ridicule!
To get more of us skeptical Urantians to take it seriously, The Urantia Book needs to demonstrate a certain amount of superhuman knowledge. As I will show, The Urantia Book has already done this, and I believe there is much more coming.
The mandate to the superhuman authors from the universe and superuniverse authorities included a positive component of what definitely to reveal, not only an admonition not to reveal what was to be our evolutionary knowledge acquirement during the next one thousand years. I will list these mandated types of cosmological revelation and link them with specific areas of contem-porary scientific thought. This will demonstrate that The Urantia Book is still way ahead of contemporary cosmology and that the book will be recognized more fully by virtue of its cosmological predictions in science about to be discovered. Contemporary scientists, too, will eventually have a reaction to The Urantia Book.
But what should be our own long-term reactions to The Urantia Book? What would be a worthy way to proceed? How might we serve the process of assimilation of The Urantia Book by humanity?
It’s been 47 years from its first publication and still there is no conventionally credible, recognized scientific venue for the scholarly study of The Urantia Book. We have some fine newsletters, periodicals, and websites, but we have nothing of intended long-term social construction to carry our continuing understanding and our continuing presentations to each new generation of the sons of God. It is time for a change. Otherwise, the quality of the discussion of Urantia Book readers will continue to be limited and fragmented instead of the highest quality that our combined minds can muster. We need a unifying mode of service for careful discovering and presenting of The Urantia Book that facilitates learning and discovery and also graciously presents it to others without raising religious or philosophic animosities. My suggestion is for us to resurrect Cymboyton and sponsor the second Urmia University for the study of science and religion.
In the meantime, I’m happy to report that the pressure is building fast for a real revolution in scientific thought (a paradigm shift as we say nowadays) that will find the 1955 Urantia Book still cosmologically well ahead of contemporary science. This shift in thinking is now being imposed upon contemporary science by the increasingly pointed quantum experiments that are forcing scientists to realize the truth. As The Urantia Book puts it, “Human beings are only just beginning to realize that the reactions of existence appear between acts and their consequences.” UB 86:2.3
Think about what this single line implies; many of the consequences of any act will always happen at the speed of light. Just the movement of an arm will cause light to travel in patterns that would not have been present had the arm not moved. Even in the dark, the arm gives off its own energy at the speed of light. Yet, before any of these light consequences can occur, at any distances whatsoever, “existence” has already reacted!
Scientists have been slow to believe in these “reactions of existence.”
My present understanding is that the waves associated with the motions of a particle of matter are instantaneous space force reactions of the universe in perfect synchrony with the motion of that particle. But these associated waves are not the particle. They are in the yet undiscovered space force reactions of the Unqualified Absolute pervading all space, responsible too for the force of atomic cohesion, the so-called “strong force” of contemporary science.
The whole universe reacts to a movement; not only the local parts arc influenced. The parts are, after all, just qualifications of the one primordial whole. The whole is not merely an aggregation of mechanically separated parts.
Pause to consider that our ability to wonder about the totality is so rich in information only because the totality has afforded to each one of us an individual view of that totality! Who are we that reality totality should regard us as important enough to afford us each a personal view of the whole? Perhaps it is because we are each personally regarded by the First Person of Reality, the First Source and Center. We are spiritually encircuited with the totality of reality in many unseen ways, but one way that is seen is how the whole is displayed to each and every human being in the night sky. The infinite One is expressed in the minds and in the eyes of each one of us who walk the earth.
Jesus affirmed such a topology of space, bodies, minds, and spirits when he declared: “The Father in the Son and the Son one with the Father—that is my lifegiving revelation to the world and my saving gift to all nations.” Here is the whole quotation with more enveloping dimensions.
I am this bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead. But this bread which comes down from God, if a man eats thereof, he shall never die in spirit. I repeat, I am this living bread, and every soul who attains the realization of this united nature of God and man shall live forever. And this bread of life which I give to all who will receive is my own living and combined nature. The Father in the Son and the Son one with the Father—that is my life-giving revelation to the world and ray saving gift to all nations. UB 153:2.12
The insideness and outsideness experience of each of our minds constitutes primary experience and is the basis for all concepts of reality—spatial, spiritual, or personal. With this initial context of inner and outer viewpoints, it is possible to formulate additional space dimensions and a different space topology. This topology must allow absolute Paradise to have gravity presence as elastic tension in space. It must also incorporate the absolute source of space force energy—the Unqualified Absolute, which pervades space. And it must also include the motions of space in space initiated by the Absolute Mind, the Third Source. And these actions may be supplemented by the Universal Absolute. The First Person and the Mother-Son and the Deity Absolute complete the seven Absolutes, and these also correspond to spatial dimensions.
Now scientists and others have tried hard to do away with this “spooky action at a distance,” as Albert Einstein would describe such interpretations of quantum experiments. These so-called Bell-type experiments[1] increasingly are being shown to have no explanation other than that an action of measurement in one place can somehow affect measurements made so far away that light speed could not explain the influence. Light could not go from one place to the other in rime for the measurements to be so influenced. So great has been the scientific confusion, some have suggested that probability or logic itself is wrong. In any case, from the standpoint of contemporary science, there is practically no other possible conclusion except that measurement in one place can affect measurements in another place without any possibility of information transfer at the speed of light having caused the influence. This has big implications for all of science and philosophy.
Heretofore, science has tried to build a case for “local” influences aggregated into a universe. Newton’s gravitational attraction was instantaneous, proportional to the two masses involved and inversely with the square of the distance between the masses. Since gravity influence died off with the square of the distance as it spread out like the surface of a balloon, it was a modified local theory. The faraway influence of a body vanished practically to zero. But now scientists are detecting new influences occurring at relatively long distances. Light is much too slow to travel between the two distant measurements in the time taken to mechanically decide what to measure and make those measurements, and pure linear gravity could not produce such affects. Is that spooky? Not if you’ve been reading your Urantia Book.
Only non-locality of action saves classical probability and conditional logic. Why do we resist it so? Answer: Because we take space as absolute nothingness and the universe as an aggregate. Rather than nothingness, space is a transcendental reality that The Urantia Book mentions 851 times and extensively develops. Yet it is just the fleeting shadow of absolute Paradise realities.
The space force concept promises to stop the “endless confusion” over particles versus waves in contemporary physics. A new cosmology is about to be propounded that incorporates the whole of reality into an integrated concept of how a particle affects the totality and so therefore potentially any other particle, as quantum mechanics has already shown.
Even Einstein’s theory of gravitation is a “bending of space” so that objects turn toward an attracting body as they travel through space. But what mechanism accomplishes this bending of space? Is it not instantaneous? Some scientists have carried the claim of local explanations for all phenomena to the point of looking for a “graviton,” a hypothetical particle by which one body mechanically tells another that it is being attracted by the first body.
Einstein’s Special Relativity enshrines the so-called “Principle of Equivalence”—the notion that any two reference frames moving with constant velocity with respect to each other are equivalent to each other for describing the equations of motion. At the same time Einstein discarded the possibility allowed by his equations—a unique reference frame by which to measure all motions, and he does this on esthetic grounds, saying that such a supposition is not intuitively pleasing. Without some absolutely fixed thing to which to tie such a fixed reference frame, choosing one arbitrarily would have been artificial. But The Urantia Book says that there is in fact such a fixed reference frame by which to measure all motion, and the name of this unique non-moving place is Paradise, a word that The Urantia Book uses 1437 times. Where in contemporary science is there any mention of such a reality in the cosmos? Who would dare suggest such a thing?
We already know “up” and “down” as the directions perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way, which is also the plane of Orvonton and that of the whole creation including Paradise. It may also be possible now to observe the other absolute space directions of the master universe—North, South, East, and West by observing the outer space zones and determining the overall shape of the rings of galaxies as ellipsoidal, following the outline of ellipsoidal Paradise itself. The center of gravity of these rings would also determine the location of Paradise at the macroscopic focus of space shrouded by a vertical wall of dark gravity bodies.
There are other exciting predictions, which will make or break The Urantia Book’s prophetic scientific record. But before I mention any more of them, I would like to specifically address an important issue being debated in the Urantia movement. What kind of credence should we give to The Urantia Book’s cosmology, its scientific pronouncements on many matters? How should we react to the cosmology of The Urantia Book?
There are many gradations of belief in The Urantia Book. Some important ones are:
I will not be discussing folks in categories 2 and 3 here. Concerning 1.a I want to say that 1 sometimes read that fine Urantian periodical Innerface International. But I have sometimes winced as I read true believers of the spiritual teachings of The Urantia Revelation make statements along the lines that The Urantia Book’s cosmology is already outdated, being about what was thought in the early part of the 20th century. As a life-long scientist I can say that this simply is not true. Concerning 1.c. I have also flinched when seeing believers who are scientists take the attitude that contemporary science from its position of ignorance is capable of critiquing The Urantia Book’s cosmology.
It may seem like good philosophy of religion and science to caution folks against putting overmuch confi-dence in the cosmology of The Urantia Book, especially with the strong cosmological disclaimer in the book itself about its own cosmology. But it is not right to claim that the eternal spiritual truths in The Urantia Book are accompanied by gratuitously revealed cosmological material that is quite incorrect and already largely superceded by contemporary science. In my opinion, that is a gross misinterpretation of The Urantia Book’s cosmological disclaimer. It seriously degrades and underestimates the value to Urantia of this gift of transient cosmological revelation.
While the sincere folks who regard themselves as debunkers of “Urantia Fundamentalism” always point out that the cosmology of The Urantia Book is definitely not “inspired,” whatever that is taken to mean, they tend to ignore that this revealed cosmology is still of “immense value.” Here is a carefully balanced statement that should not be ignored:
Truth may be but relatively inspired, even though revelation is invariably a spiritual phenomenon. While statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least transiently clarify knowledge by:
- The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
- The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations.
- The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past.
- The supplying of information which will fin in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge.
- Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying rev. elation. UB 101:4.5-10
Now let’s analyze this a bit and explore the implications. Rephrasing this, it says that while we should not treat the revealed cosmology as though it had the ageless, long-term value and application of the relatively inspired spiritual truths of The Urantia Book, we should still gather from the cosmology of The Urantia Book these five items of immense value.
The first thing to notice is how much time will be required for human science to gain these items of immense value. For instance, Item 1 may refer to how human science can reduce its “never-ending confusion” about “wave mechanics” and the common definitions of mass and energy. The Urantia Book author of Paper 42 says he cannot follow our commonly accepted definitions, there being such a paucity of language to describe the origin and metamorphosis of energy from primordial force to mechanical power. Has the promised reduced confusion been received yet by contemporary human science forty-seven years after its publication? I don’t think so. Therefore in this respect the transient cosmology can not yet have been superceded by contemporary science.
Concerning Item 2, what known or about to be known cosmological facts and observations is The Urantia Book transiently coordinating? How long is it likely to take for such facts to be coordinated by human readers of The Urantia Book? We are talking about more than a few years, even more than a few decades. Not many scientists are even taking The Uranria Book seriously, and those that do can’t talk about it openly to their peers except those few that happen to be fellow believers. In these circumstances, working alone, as we tend to do, we may not accomplish something socially and scientifically significant that is also closely related to The Urantia Book.
Shall we consider the mention of a race of non-breather humanoids which “inhabits a sphere in close proximity to Urantia” as about to be learned knowledge under the heading of Item 2? UB 49:3.6 If so, then forty-seven years from publication in 1955 has not been enough time for this benefit of immense value to be received by contemporary science. So far there is little or no evidence for the possibility of such a race. Such a discovery would be completely unprecedented. Such a discovery would draw immediate attention to The Urantia Book for having predicted it.
On the other hand, if no such race were ever to be found after sufficient observation of possible spheres in the solar system, then what else in The Urantia Book should we question? If such a supposedly gratuitous story concerning a fictitious humanoid race in close proximity to our world could find its way into the 1955 edition of The Urantia Book, then it would be reasonable to entertain doubts about many other stories and themes in The Urantia Book. This would not be a simple typo but rather a real falsehood, supposedly purposely put into the Revelation.
I do not share the opinion that such can be the case. There is no good reason that obvious falsehoods would need to be explicitly stated in order to tell the truth. That is sophistry! That is a veiled attack on the veracity and spirit source of the Urantia Revelation. Nothing gratuitously false such as a false time of light travel to M31 needed to have been put into The Urantia Book by the superhuman editors in their request for the reader to pause to reflect about how long ago light left that galaxy. There is no good reason for that time to be purposely incorrect. A number need not have been included at all to make the author’s point. It might be a typo, or yet be correct, but I do not believe it could be a deliberately false and yet justified insertion.
The Urantia Book admits the inability of any document written in English and interpreted by the human mind to be anything more than transiently authoritative on cosmology. But it was not necessary to purposely include errors; they come unbidden. Nevertheless, the transitory cosmology is of immense value to humanity, a value still largely unclaimed by contemporary science, or religion for that matter.
Shall we take the mention of myriads of galaxies in outer space, no less than 375 million, to be information about to be discovered, or just what was thought early last century? Of course it was not what was thought at the beginning of the 20th century. This prediction has already come to pass. At the time of the 1955 publication of The Urantia Book, the galaxies were numbered under one hundred, more like a dozen. During the last sixteen years the number has grown from 5 or 10 million to rough estimates of 50 or 100 million galaxies in outer space. But this is not all. The Urantia Book predicts much more.
Shall we imagine that the outer space level of alternating whirling rings of hundreds of millions of galaxies is old cosmology, or recently partially recognized as the “great wall of galaxies” in outer space limited only by the extent of the observations? Science has not yet looked to see where this wall ends, or if it ends. The Urantia Book predicts this wall extends all the way around in four concentric alternately rotating rings of hundreds of millions of galaxies!
Shall we accept stories about Adam and Eve, the Lucifer Rebellion, and the Caligastia betrayal that go on for pages as more or less literal, or do we imagine that such accounts are meant to be poetic? Do we accept life initiated and evolved by the Life Carriers, and Andon and Fonta as two advanced animals that grew to have personal will dignity and the ability to know God and who became the parents of the human race? If these stories are not reasonably accurate, then how can we learn of forgotten epochal events as Item 3 claims that we can do with the cosmological material in The Urantia Book?
Concerning Item 4, what missing vital gaps in our knowledge have been already filled by The Urantia Book’s cosmology and recognized by contemporary scientists? Have we discovered the tablets of Dilmun lying below the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf off the shores of Iraq?
Have we gotten Item 5, the cosmic perspective, well enough to illuminate the spiritual teachings? Have we understood Jesus’ saying that the Father is in the Son and the Son at one with the Father, and that this is his saving revelation? Have we begun to regard time as the moving image of eternity, and space as the fleeting shadow of Paradise realities? Something tells me that without a shocking discovery, we have a long way to go before human science will routinely recognize Paradise and the existence of other human and even superhuman life. But if that non-breather race is discovered, who knows how fast things will change?
So we can all hope that something will happen to further human religious and scientific recognition of the transiently authoritative cosmology provided by The Urantia Book, perhaps an unlikely discovery corroborating The Urantia Book, forcing scientists and others to take notice. Even Jesus found himself demonstrating his powers for those with weak faith and who needed outward signs. People are impressed by the power to predict. Science predicts. Revelation also predicts but calls it prophecy.
But as a movement we can not live by such efforts. Consider that Jesus had twelve well-taught Apostles. Besides the one who deserted, and putting aside his replacement, none of the other eleven was responsible for building an institution that would carry even a distorted story of Jesus and the memory of his life down through the centuries. Abner and Nathaniel at Philadelphia had the most faithful account of Jesus’ teachings but their development didn’t spawn a surviving institution. While many of the others led heroic lives, their legacy did not provide enough for future generations.
It took Saul, the Christian persecutor, who later became the new Apostle, Paul. I Ie was wise enough to promote an institution of individual churches in different places, to carry the good news of Jesus from one generation to the next. So we got Jesus as Paul understood him. We also got the other Gospel writers and some other writings not granted canonization, together with rituals, traditions, and some continuity for two thousand years. Without Paul, Jesus is hardly remembered by contemporary history. Today we need a similar development to carry on the effort of Jesus to enlighten our world. Our unique circumstances include being alive while the knowledge of the presence of this new divine and epochal revelation called The Urantia Book is hardly recognized or believed by contemporary society. What can we do?
Like Paul, we can initiate an ongoing institution that can he of service for the long haul by gracefully introducing people to The Urantia Book as one of many religious traditions. Along the lines of the Cymboyton school in The Urantia Book, I propose that the Urantia community undertake to host the great discussions with rules like Cymboyton’s for equal treatment and religious equality for all. Only God is spiritual sovereign; Cymboyton was sovereign over the school, but he never took sides in the philosophical discussions except to maintain order. I can discuss in some detail how Cymboyton’s ideas might be adapted to present circumstances; perhaps I will in a future issue of this publication.
Researcher Matthew Block has unearthed an unrevealed number of human sources of the concepts and sometimes even the phraseology used in The Urantia Book. Recently Matthew showed me an important and impressive science source book. There is no doubt in my mind that it was a source book, but The Urantia Book’s use of this human source posed no cause for concern. There were no red flags.
However, there have been a large number of rumors in the Urantia movement and hints of shocking discoveries to be revealed when Matthew finally publishes his research. The most recent of these rumors is the notion that the story of Rodan was lifted word for word from a human author and that this raises serious questions about the historical basis for such a person called Rodan in Jesus’ time. Some people are even drawing conclusions about the superhuman mandate and possible purposeful inclusion of errors before they actually see any hard evidence for such conclusions, without seeing any of the sources. I would strongly caution against jumping to conclusions before we see the evidence. There has been a certain amount of sensationalism associated with this long awaited expose of the human sources of The Urantia Book.
There was a time, fifteen years after publication, that I wrote a paper entitled “Why The Urantia Book was Copyrighted.” My reasons for supporting a copyright on The Urantia Book were that we should take care that the young movement not be monopolized by some powerful individual or group who might decide to appropriate it for his own purposes before many people had even read it or could defend it. A copyright by the Urantia Foundation would be insurance against preemption and usurpation by some opportunistic entity. However I also indicated that I saw long-term dangers with such a strong central organization in control of the presentation of The Urantia Book.
In fact, the first time I visited the Urantia Foundation “headquarters” at 533 West Diversey Parkway in Chicago, I met Christy, and Edith Cook. For some reason, I was moved to ask whether they had plans for Urantia Foundation to self-destruct after about fifty years since it would then avoid the usual fate of such organizations, as described by The Urantia Book itself. Edith smiled, recognizing the passage to which I was referring, and seemed relieved to pass me off to Christy.
Concerning the copyright, some people will worry and fret, but it is past the time for Urantia Foundation to relinquish its control over the book. Let in the fresh air to the movement. No more contention; no more special status for some believers over others not allied with “headquarters.” It’s time for us to put these things away and walk forward together on equal footing. The book has been protected. The fostering can begin a new phase.
I recall with fond memories Julia K. Fendersen in Los Angeles and Berkeley Elliot in Oklahoma City, two pillars of the western Urantia movement, who attracted large numbers of enthusiastic readers young and old from all stripes of life. They sponsored regular conferences that were very well-produced. Yet already were there rumblings of past disputes and talk of present lawsuits and estranged reader groups. I visited Christy and Martin Myers several times in Chicago during the 1970s, including once when there was obviously a dispute going on and Christy was saying to me two or three times, about the second edidon, “I don’t know why we need to change it at all.” The others at the office were trying to quiet her down. I was told of the typos that would be fixed, and I thought that was the issue. But we now know that “corrections” were quietly being made in several places that went beyond typos. A word was changed in a few places because there was a judgment that it was an error in transferring from the manuscript to the plates. Around the same time those plates were destroyed and the reason given was to prevent their idolization.
Whatever the plusses and minuses of the early leaders concerning The Urantia Book, I believe that they did deliver to us a Urantia Book that is essentially identical to the revealed text. While acknowledging human errors “on its face,” this was nevertheless judged good enough by the Revelatory Commission to allow the Urantia Foundation to publish it as the 1955 First Edition. For that we can all be eternally grateful. The project got completed and The Urantia Book is here. Now is the time to expand the understanding of The Urantia Book and the visibility of it as the world community looks for unifying themes.
There is science to be discovered, cosmology to be propounded, and exciting events to be experienced, all waiting for those who will take the initiative to explore these discoveries waiting to be experienced, and present them to others for the benefit and appreciation of all. One way to do all of this in a continuing way is to found a permanent organization to conduct a forum for the presentation, discussion, and possibly scheduled debate by the various schools of belief in science or religion. Since “we Urantians” will be hosting this discussion, we will get to offer our views along with all the others in the spirit of the Cymboyton College at Urmia.
Raised Catholic in Chicago, Phil got a BS, MS, and, in 1968, a Ph.D. in mathematics at IIT. In 1970 he discovered The Urantia Book in California. He has been a professor, an analyst and computer programmer, and now a research mathematician. He has four children.
J S Bell 1964 On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. Physics 1 195-200; Andrew Steane 1997 Quantum Computing, Univerxity of Oxford Clarendon Laboratory, 1-65; R Y Chiao, P G Kwiat. and A M Steinberg 1995 Quantum NonLocality in Two-Photon Experiments at Berkeley, 1-16; A. Zeilinger, Apr 2000 Quantum Teleportation, Scientific American, 50-59. ↩︎