© 2003 Robert D. Campbell
© 2003 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
We listened in respectful silence, utterly astonished by the story imparted to us that beautiful summer afternoon at the local swim club. As our neighbor Kris wiped away tears and paused at times to compose herself, we learned that she had never known her father, for he and his team of geologists had disappeared more than four decades ago while exploring the Arctic regions. Now, incredibly, she was one of several people whom the Canadian authorities tracked down after they recently located the long lost aircraft of that ill-fated mission and found identifying items inside it, among them Kris’ father’s wallet. In a few days she would travel towards the North Pole to participate in a ceremony designed to bring closure to the families of that expedition that perished in the frozen wilderness.
It was a unique and heartfelt story; certainly not the usual fare that parents were accustomed to hearing as we circulate in our middle class milieu of playgrounds, PTA meetings, and teenage sporting events. It was, however, not unlike certain passages that I had recently read in Enigma of Exploration, the story of Sir Hubert Wilkins, a true twentieth-century Magellan and one of the earliest proponents of the Urantia revelation.
One redeeming aspect of author John Banton’s untenable effort to explain the mystery of how the Urantia Papers came to fruition is that he guides us towards focusing on Sir Hubert Wilkins, by Lowell Thomas and Enigma of Exploration, by John Grierson. Both biographies conjure up images of a remarkably intriguing character whose adventures were so dramatic that he could easily have stepped onto the set of Casablanca and/or played a staring role in any Indiana Jones film. Of her husband, Lady Wilkins wrote: “Nothing and nobody could hold this man down.” Indeed, it seemed that his constitution was cut out of the same “cloth” as that of those brave men who charted the New World some five centuries ago. His laboratory literally extended to the Four Corners of the earth.
In 1937, long after the Australian-born explorer had established an international reputation by leading an unprecedented expedition under the Arctic ice in the first incarnation of the Nautilus and 16 years after he accompanied Lord Shackleton on his final, fateful voyage, Wilkins piloted a rescue mission to search for Sigismund Levanevsky, the “Soviet Lindbergh,” and his five comrades who were attempting an over-the-pole flight from Moscow to Fairbanks. For five months he searched for this crew of Russian fliers whose plane had been forced down in the Far North during their attempt to establish a Trans-Arctic passenger route. He never found them.
It was during this expedition that Wilkins participated with Harold Sherman in experiments with mind-to-mind communication resulting in their collaborative work Thoughts Through Space. The parameters of those experiments were prearranged and independently observed in New York by Dr. Gardner Murphy of Columbia University.
Earlier in life, Wilkins had been a military cinematographer in the Balkan War and a photographer in World War I, often working in the smoke and dust of battle. His escapades during those conflicts are legendary — from masquerading as a Turkish peasant to avert capture to hanging onto a wire dangling in mid-air as bullets from a German machine-gun whizzed by (and went straight into the basket of his hot-air balloon) to being badly wounded by “friendly fire.” Wilkins evidently saw it all.
In his own words: “My pictures included battle scenes showing Germans attacking, Germans surrendering, Germans running from their trenches, bodies hurtling through the air after shell explosions, and the wrecking of almost every type of equipment. Even amid all this destruction, my thoughts often went back to my wanderings in the Arctic.” (Thomas, pages 104-5)
Through it all, Wilkins had a faith "almost to the extent of fatalism. In the most desperate situations, he simply would not believe that death would strike. This was shown so often: when he was captured by cut-throats in Algeria, tied to a stake before a firing squad for execution as a spy during the Turco-Bulgarian War (as other prisoners around him were struck down by a volley of bullets), or captured by Bazi-bazouks… all these were instances quite apart from the many dangerous situations he survived in exploration.” (Grierson, pages 9 & 212).
Not the least of those was the time when Wilkins befriended, and lived for months amongst, a tribe of cannibals in the wilds of Australia, after they had recently killed and eaten sixteen shipwrecked men who had the misfortune of finding their way ashore near Arnhem Land. Full well knowing the fate of that crew, Wilkins resolved that the natives were “a kindly people,” who “would not harm anyone who did not molest or offend them.” (Thomas, page 160) Besides, he was on a mission to collect specimens and conduct a biological survey of both sides of the Great Dividing Range of Northeastern Australia.
For his many outstanding achievements in science and exploration, Wilkins was received by George V at Buckingham Palace on June 14, 1928, and dubbed Sir Hubert with the symbolic touch of the King’s sword. For our purposes, he should also be credited with writing the first, albeit most truncated, account of the process that led to the revelation of the Urantia Papers.
Although biographer John Grierson clearly misunderstood Wilkins’ involvement with Dr. Sadler et al, he does tell us that on November 1, 1955 Wilkins made a gift of The Urantia Book to his secretary Winston Ross, and with it enclosed this missive:
“For many years I have been associated with a group in Chicago which has been interested in publishing some papers of material revealed to us by visitors from the outer universes. At last we have been able to print and privately distribute the Book and I would like you to have a copy.”
“At present we are not telling many of the recipients of the manner in which the information was received, but I can tell you for your information that the texts of the papers were spoken by the revelators through a man in his sleep who to this day has no idea that he was the medium. Learning that this man was ‘talking in his sleep’ it was arranged to have a stenographer record the statements and soon it was possible for those concerned not only to listen and record, but also to talk with the revelators as you and I might talk.”
“The mass of information in the Book is at first bewildering. To most of us it came piece by piece and was not so overwhelming. The information as to the possibilities of survival after death and the experiences thereafter, as mentioned in the paper Morontia Life, and elsewhere, is most inspiring and comforting.”
For readers that know the revelation to be self-authenticating, this letter is certainly worthy of dissemination half a century after it was written, as it is a gem of early Urantia apocrypha (from the Greek “apykryphos”- literally “hidden” or “secret” writings, the term is used here inasmuch as this account is “outside” the mainstream repertoire of Urantia Book histories and lore). In fact, if you consider the story of this remarkable man you may recognize that for him to be a part of the miraculous events unfolding in Chicago that resulted in the Urantia Papers, was really just another episode in a life replete with adventure. Moreover, he seems almost cavalier in this brief note wherein he states "to most of us it came piece by piece…”
For those readers whose embrace of the revelation has been polluted by the commercial skepticism of Martin Gardner’s Urantia — The Great Cult Mystery, as well as those who are unable to appreciate the veracity of the teachings for whatever personal reasons they may harbor, it is well worth considering that, as to the contents of this letter, of four possible explanations only one may be viable:
When I consider the story of this man’s amazing life, as well as statements attributed to Dr. Sadler concerning his consultations with Wilkins in the early years of the revelatory process, I believe the letter to be based on objective, first-hand experience.
As the revelation continues its gradual growth, let us hope that basic principles of marketing create demand for further printings and future editions of A History of the Urantia Papers, an objective analysis of the revelation. In addition, let us hope that Larry Mullins’ book will be translated into several of the languages that the revelation is currently available in — surely French and Spanish editions are warranted. More and more readers the world over will want to know the facts of how this incredible document came to be. This brief, arguably first-hand account by Wilkins “speaks volumes” about the project that the early pioneers participated in, and it deserves its rightful place in the overall story of the Urantia Papers.
It is of course, highly doubtful that Martin Gardner or Godtalk’s Brad Gooch (someone who did little more than massage Gardner’s message) would ever consider including such hard evidence as the Wilkins’ letter were either of their ‘histories’ ever to warrant a second edition. And, since Donna Kossy, in her otherwise excellent Strange Creations, simply followed Gardner’s and Gooch’s lead, it is entirely likely that she is completely unaware of the famed Arctic explorer and his involvement with The Urantia Book.
Given the wealth of detail that Ernest P. Moyer ferreted out for Birth of a Divine Revelation, it is somewhat surprising that he missed this empirical evidence. He was, however, busy piecing together theories of a more etheral nature. And, inasmuch as Mark Kulieke invites reader input in his preface to Birth of a Revelation, let me herein publicly suggest that the Wilkins letter be included in the next edition of that pamphlet. Kulieke did acknowledge that Dr. Sadler had consulted with Wilkins early on in the revelatory process, something that Mullins clarifies, Sherman’s “flights of fancy” notwithstanding.
In her beautifully worded Epilogue to Thomas’ biography of her husband, Lady Wilkins poignantly described a private moment that Sir Hubert spent with Winston Ross’ mother as she lay in a hospital bed, terminally ill: “… he spoke a few words to her while I was with Winston. We never found out what pased between them, but I know she was very much at peace when Hubert left.”
Upon his own untimely demise, the United States Navy took Wilkins’ ashes aboard the nuclear submarine Skate for one last journey to the North Pole, there to scatter said ashes on March 17, 1959, as an official acknowledgement of his many Herculean achievements. Lady Wilkins later lamented that Hubert died “seventy years young,” with “lots of important work left to do.”
As the “best epitaph” for her husband’s extraordinary life she offered this prayer that Sir Hubert composed for himself:
My Father, I beseech support in my desire to worship,
To enjoy privilege without abuse,
To have liberty without license,
To have power and refuse to use it for selfaggrandizement,
So that the experience of living will lead me and my fellows
To greater spiritual reality.
This is, of course, unalloyed Urantia Book doctrine, directly out of UB 48:7.8 and found amongst a host of other statements of human philosophy enumerated as essential prerequisites for our continued spiritual growth.
Anyone with even a faint familiarity with the exploits of Sir Hubert Wilkins, finding themselves marooned in a remote corner of the world, may well pass away clinging to the hope that a rescuer with an equal constitution will spend months searching for his crew. In the frozen isolation that was the theater for Kris’ father’s death, it may have brought him some solace to have heard or read the words that we are all so familiar with, the words that protean adventurer Sir Hubert Wilkins had found to be “most comforting.” Perhaps this simple passage from UB 91:9.8 of The Urantia Book would have helped: “You must have faith — living faith.”
Robert D. Campbell has been reading The Urantia Papers for 33 years. He lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey.