© 2017 Saskia Praamsma Raevouri
© 2017 Antonio Moya, traducción
© 2017 Urantia Association of Spain
(Excerpts from the book How I Found The Urantia Book, written by Saskia Praamsma, 279 pages. Copyright Square Circles Publishing, Inc. 2001)
Saskia Praamsma has been a reader of The Urantia Book since 1977. On the website squarecircles.com she has published a book entitled How I Found The Urantia Book, and How It Changed My Life, which collects the testimonies of 324 readers who decided to write down their (sometimes long) journey in search of the truth, and how they finally found the book (or how the book found them).
After reading each testimony, and due to the undoubted interest they present to other readers, I came up with the idea of extracting those paragraphs that I considered most interesting or significant, or that could teach us something.
These stories begin in 1924 and end in 2000. The year they discovered the book is listed next to the reader’s name.
In almost all of these testimonies, I have observed the existence of a common denominator: most of these readers were seekers who wondered, some for years, what the meaning of life and the reason for existence is.
As I read the stories, I identified with some people, sometimes with others. In the end, I discovered that other people, distant in time and space, have lived, experienced, or thought things very similar, if not identical, to my own.
There are many readers who have been through UFOs, the Ouija board, Rosicrucianism, Set Speaks, spiritualism, reincarnation, the New Age, yoga, Eastern religions, Freemasonry, Edgar Cayce, Oahspe, etc., etc., before coming to The Urantia Book. Just like many of us.
Some of these people, initially disconnected from the spiritual world, suffered all sorts of serious problems in their lives, anguish, bad times, despair, alcoholism, drugs, and some even considered suicide. They were undoubtedly “disoriented,” like so many of us.
Many others began reading the book with a loaded shotgun, trying to find errors, falsehoods, and contradictions. Some of us did the same.
And others, in short, found the book as an answer to a prayer or a petition. There’s a bit of everything; the stories are varied, and almost all of them are interesting. Very human, personal experiences, shared by readers like you and me.
Website where you can read the full testimonials in English:
http://squarecircles.com/UrantiaMovementHistory/hiftub.htm
How can a man or woman be so fortunate as to become intimately associated with an epochal revelation, as is the case with every reader-believer of this generation?
The first Sunday I returned to Chicago (the last Sunday in September 1924), I attended my first Sadler Forum meeting. Afterward, I asked the doctor if I could bring a young woman next time. He said yes. The following Sunday, Florence Evans came with me, and from that day on, we were part of the Forum that later received the Urantia Papers.
In my early years, I found it difficult to accept the message of being redeemed by the blood of Jesus. I constantly searched for the truth. I searched many libraries for books that could give me what I wanted and needed.
In 1925, I went to the Chicago Diagnostic and Research Institute on Diversey Parkway for a complete physical examination. One of the appointments was with the co-owner, Dr. William Sadler, for a psychological test. He asked me many questions about my thoughts and desires. The conversation led to talk about the truth. I said I would like to stay locked in a room reading and reading until I found the truth I was seeking. Shortly thereafter, I received a note in the mail inviting me to attend a Sunday meeting called the Forum at Sadler’s home.
We were greeted by Dr. Lena Sadler, the doctor’s wife, who told us, “These beings told us to build the scaffolding, and they’ll do the rest.”
When the meeting began, we were fortunate enough to hear Document 1, “The Universal Father.” I was amazed. I had never imagined it could tell us so much about God. I had found what I was looking for.
Our lives have changed since then.
(Dr. Sadler) helped her find a job and gave her some books to read, including The Mind at Mischief, but he didn’t tell her anything about the Urantia Papers. Julia read it all, and when she returned to see Dr. Sadler, she asked him about the case referred to in the Appendix to The Mind at Mischief. Sadler was evasive, but Julia was so persistent that finally, almost in exasperation, he said, “Julia, sit down and I’ll tell you the whole story.” He told her about the Urantia Papers, and she couldn’t sleep that night.
Julia became an avid student of the Papers and a member of the Forum. She said, “The more I examined them, the more I believed in them.” The caliber of the people who read with her also fostered her belief in the Urantia Papers. She described Dr. Sadler as “one of the most intelligent men I have ever met.”
There was also Sir Hubert Wilkins, an English authority on Arctic exploration. Julia frequently read with him during breaks from Sunday meetings, and she asked him why he believed. “It’s their total consistency from beginning to end,” he said. “No human being could have written these documents with such consistency in detail… there would have been a crack somewhere.”
Julia said, “Basically, The Urantia Book is between the reader and God; it’s an individual thing.”
Later I found a book by a German professor that was quite profound. I asked my physician, Dr. William Sadler, if he had read that book, because I felt he knew something. He said he had read the book and then added, “I have something I think might interest you.” He told me about the Urantia Papers, and when I showed interest, he said, “What are you doing on Sunday? Could you come to the Forum next Sunday afternoon?”
I began reading the Papers in 1945. I started with the Jesus Papers, reading only one at a time, and then I began reading from the first part of the book. I was convinced that what I was reading was true, because the story of Jesus’s life as the father of his brothers and sisters addressed many of the same issues I had faced in my own life.
Once, when I was first beginning to read, I went up to Mrs. Kellogg, who was in charge of the writing, and asked her, “Do you really believe all this?”
“Of course!” he replied.
The Urantia teachings literally changed my life.
I never had the experience of finding The Urantia Book. That distinction belongs to my grandmother, Elizabeth James, and my parents, William and Mary James. Thanks to their efforts, The Urantia Book has always been a part of my life.
When I was 15, my grandmother asked me if I would like to become a member of the Forum. Although I read all the documents on my own, I can’t say I understood much of what I read.
When the book was published and I began attending a study group founded by Al Leverenz, I began to gain a fuller understanding of the teachings. It was now possible to read the book as slowly as I liked, talk with others at various stages of reading and understanding, and hear their stories about how they had encountered the book. It was then that I began to appreciate The Urantia Book more fully—not the facts, but the truths in the book.
My father was introduced to Dr. Sadler by Fred Leverenz, and he joined the initial Forum in 1932. It took some time, but he finally told my mother to come with him. For many years afterward, she couldn’t shake the feeling that “This is all so wonderful, and I believe it, but how can something so wonderful be true?” Then one day she realized she no longer had that feeling: she knew it was true.
At the time I began attending Sunday meetings, when I was about 13 years old, a number of partial documents had been received and typed. They were not complete as they are now in The Urantia Book, but they were completed as more and more questions were asked. I remember my father spending many hours typing questions to propose to the contact personalities so they could give us new information that might be especially significant to human beings.
During Christmas 1955, as soon as the Papers were published in English under the title “The Urantia Book,” Miss Brown sent me a copy. I spent the first few months of 1956 reading the book.
Like many French people, I had been searching for a philosophy that could unite science and religion. After a thirty-year search, I found it in The Urantia Book.
After spending years developing sermons and documents that expressed my own spiritual experience, which was centered on the religion of Jesus rather than the religion about Jesus, I realized that mainstream Christian theology needed a new spiritual focus. I tentatively outlined a couple of books I would write, and after some procrastination, I finally forced myself into the discipline of writing them. Shortly after making this decision, The Urantia Book was placed in my hands.
As I looked at the table of contents, I saw a section on the life and teachings of Jesus. I thought with my theological training I could breeze through that section. When I began reading, I didn’t find what I had expected to find—something like Levi’s Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. The account of Jesus’s early life was more believable than the explanations found in the apocryphal stories about Jesus’s childhood. It was something that could reasonably have happened. As I continued through the New Testament aspect of Jesus’ life, I became even more impressed. The events in the account dealt with some of the traditional theological problems in a way that made more sense than anything I had ever read. I found the narrative in The Urantia Book to be solidly rooted in New Testament realities. There were times when I read with tears streaming down my cheeks. When I finished reading “The Life and Teachings of Jesus,” I felt theologically and spiritually challenged. “Whoever produced a life of Jesus of this quality,” I thought, “must have something important to say in the rest of the book.”
Thus motivated, I began with the Prologue and read the entire book. I discovered that the first three-quarters of the book was even more impressive and profound than “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.” The essence of the two books I had planned to write was far better expressed here than I could have done. I said to myself, “If this is not an authentic description of spiritual reality, this is how it ought to be!” Science, philosophy, and religion were more effectively integrated in The Urantia Book than in any other philosophical or theological system known to me. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the most authentic and inspiring description of spiritual reality available to humanity.
In the spring of 1956, my husband and I stopped to pick up our friends Agnes and Bob so we could all attend a play in Dallas. I still remember Agnes’s exact words as we walked into her house: “Gene, come see that crazy book a friend of Bob’s sent him from Australia.” It was accompanied by a note that read, “This book has meant so much to me and my family, I wanted you to have a copy,” and was signed “Clyde Bedell.”
Since I was nine years old, when my mother died, questions about survival after death and issues related to religion had plagued my mind. I wanted to know why we are here, where we are going, and what the purpose of it all is. Although I believed Jesus was the Son of God, I didn’t much like the Bible’s version of his personality. I looked for acceptable answers to my questions among Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and Lutherans. And they either didn’t have answers or the answers they gave didn’t make sense to me.
After reading The Urantia Book for 10 years as a magnificent work of science fiction, I decided it was exactly what it claimed to be, and it began to change my life.
I don’t remember how I learned about the annual UFO conferences at Giant Rock Airstrip in the high desert of Southern California near Yucca Valley, but I traveled there from Kansas in 1953 to investigate.
It was during our last visit (to Giant Rock) in 1958 that I found The Urantia Book. While browsing through other books, I saw a large blue book containing a document titled “A Government on a Neighboring Planet.” I knew I had to have that book. We spent our last $12 on it. It was the first edition, published in 1955.
I began meeting other truth seekers who enriched my life, including Loren and Ila Hall. The Halls had discovered their first Urantia Book at a UFO meeting in Missouri, so we had something in common.
The Urantia Book has been a blessing in my life. It answers my childhood longings. Through The Urantia Book, God tells me what I’ve always wanted to know. And I’ve learned that I am a cosmic citizen immersed in an eternal adventure.
In the fall of 1959, I picked up a copy of The Urantia Book while browsing in a Chicago bookstore.
After several decades of reading and thinking about The Urantia Book, I had little doubt that spiritual guidance was the decisive factor in my finding and studying the book, and that the same spiritual guidance was what influenced my human mind to persevere in the search for truth for several decades before I found and received the revelatory message of the book.
During my long search for mental and spiritual enlightenment, I had learned many things about life and thought from spiritual teachers and leaders, philosophers, theologians, and scientists.
In short, a continual thirst for truth led me to find The Urantia Book and stay with it.
My mother, Grace Walker, was a member of the Forum in the 1940s, but I wasn’t at all interested in its activities at the time. I was an intensely independent teenager who thought her mother was nice, but a bit crazy for her age.
I moved from Illinois to California and became a Valley Girl. My mother, once again sharp-eyed, sent me a copy of the 1955 first edition of The Urantia Book. I put it on my junk shelf, and it stayed there for about five years.
Sometime in 1960, when I was going through a period of poor physical health and mental uncertainty, I took the book off the shelf, drew the curtains in the room, closed the door, and began to read in secret. I was going to prove it was all a hoax and expose the real writers—whoever they were!
Well, the real truth slowly started to come to me in a big way.
The teachings (of The Urantia Book) have become an inseparable part of me.
During my youth, my mother steered me toward Christian Science; I’ve been a Sunday school teacher, a supervisor, a president of Christian Education, an elder, and a trustee of a large Presbyterian church; I’ve studied reincarnation, Edgar Cayce, the pyramids, and UFOs, but there was always something missing and I was ready for something new.
In the early 1960s, I was working in my dentist’s chair with a fine old gentleman named Fred Squires, and we were talking about philosophy and religion. At one point, Fred said, “I have a book I think might interest you.” He then told me a little about it. It sounded quite interesting.
I made a trip to the Vroman Bookstore in Pasadena to buy one… After skimming the table of contents and glancing at the author list with all its strange names, I decided I had a huge, expensive package of science fiction. I liked science fiction, so I started with the geological development of our planet. It was fascinating, and within a couple of weeks I was hooked on The Urantia Book as fact, not fiction.
Now the blanks of my faith are filled.
The following year (1960), my roommate introduced me to Jeffrey Bedell, son of Clyde and Florence Bedell. We fell in love and were married the following year. Jeff introduced me to The Urantia Book. Clyde and Florence spoke highly of it, and I was very impressed by Clyde’s devotion to it. During this time, I would occasionally pick up The Urantia Book, more out of curiosity than anything else, and read at random an interesting paragraph or a few pages.
For many years my patient Instructor was waiting for me to pick up this superlative book, not to dust it off, but to learn from it, to delight in its teachings, and to satisfy my lifelong quest.
Upon awakening one morning, I meditated as usual and had a special thought for truth, calling for a more intense answer than I had yet found. Before even looking at the morning paper, I picked up The Urantia Book, which my friend Marion had left for me the night before. I had known Marion for only a few months, but she was a responsible and generous friend. Knowing my interest in religion and philosophy, she had left a stack of books from her own library on my table when she called on me the previous evening.
I don’t regret my search or my studies. Years of experience in various churches and studies of all kinds paved the way for me to accept The Urantia Book.
For several years, I was a member of an international Rosicrucian order. Then, in 1961, I became deeply interested in UFOs after reading the book “Inside the Spaceships” by George Adamski. Together with other enthusiasts here, we formed the Interplanetary Society and began gathering more UFO information from Finland and around the world. We were primarily interested in cosmic messages from contact personalities like Adamski, Fry, and others.
I opened The Urantia Book in the summer of 1966, was greatly fascinated by it, skimmed through it in a few days, and saw at once that this book truly contained the supermessage.
For many of us, interest in UFOs waned when we began to focus on The Urantia Book.
At first I found the book extremely interesting, but after discovering what I believed to be errors in some astronomical matters, my interest remained only relative for several years.
I worked as an engineer and astronomer for a long time. As the years went by, I learned more about astronomy, and several of the “errors” I had found in The Urantia Book were justified by the development of astronomical knowledge.
The vast amount of scientific material and the scientific convergence of facts that I have investigated over the years in a variety of branches of human knowledge undoubtedly indicate the fact that The Urantia Book is an authentic cosmic message for humanity.
Throughout my childhood, I had an avid interest in science and science fiction. When I was 12 or 13, I read the theory that life could have originated in a “chemical soup.” That seemed plausible enough, and I had to consider that life could have arisen on its own. I then became agnostic.
Then, when I was 19, a friend returned from Hawaii excited about a book called The Urantia Book. We looked for it in local bookstores but couldn’t find it, so he ordered it from the publisher, the Urantia Foundation. When it arrived, we began reading it avidly. I knew I had found something I had been searching for all my life.
Sharing this book with many other readers has changed my life greatly since that time. It continues to speak clearly to me about the fundamental issues of human life.
It was 1968, and I was 37 years old. Around that time, my mother started telling me about a wonderful book she’d received from a friend. She said it was written by angels and told the complete story of Jesus. She said the book answered all her questions about God and the universe, and urged me to get a copy.
Then one day my mother showed up at my door holding The Urantia Book. She placed it in my hands and told me to sit down and open it.
I read for an hour without saying a word. Finally, I calmly asked if I could borrow the book. My mother said yes and left. After three days and three nights of reading, I called my mother and said, “Yes, yes. This book is written by angels!”
And this is the story of how The Urantia Book found me. From that moment on, my life changed.
In the late 1960s, I was in my mid-twenties, living an alternative lifestyle (to say the least). My life was a chaotic mix of The Urantia Book, LSD, Beatles music, and suicidal depression.
I continued to carry the book with me throughout my drug use (only marijuana and LSD!) and through several suicide attempts.
I was studying astrology, magic, Tarot, palm reading, the I Ching, Egyptian mythology, and everything else at the same time, and I was becoming more and more confused.
I doubt I would be here today if it were not for the amazing grace of love that flowed, and still flows, from the truths expressed in this living revelation.
My friend then took me aside and asked if I’d like to examine a book written by Venusians. This person had known me for years and was well aware of my interest in science fiction. He also knew that no other proposal would have caught my attention at that moment.
That day (and to this day to varying degrees), my primary understanding was that we all stand together on this “third rock from the Sun.” That day, the brotherhood of men became very real to me, and it has remained so ever since.
Clyde Bedell, a man I consider “great in the invisible realm,” gave me a copy of The Urantia Book in California in 1968. He was 72 years old at the time and had first encountered the Urantia Papers in 1924.
I knew Clyde to be pragmatic, strong, a brilliant advertising expert, author, and businessman, so I was shocked when he said he believed the text had been written and materialized by celestial beings. This puzzled me. However, he added a mitigating comment, which I later remembered: “But forget all that. Judge the Urantia Papers by their content. If I told you I knew for sure they were written by angels, that would be the worst possible reason for you to believe them. There’s a part of God in you that will tell you whether they’re true or not.”
If I had to give up all the books I own except one, I would choose to keep that 1955 copy of The Urantia Book that Clyde Bedell gave me so many years ago.
For a short time, my father had suffered in an orphanage at the hands of Roman Catholic nuns. My father always maintained his agnostic stance regarding the existence of God, and he ardently felt that one’s religion is too important to be left to someone else’s choice.
After some bad decisions and traumatic experiences, I found myself at 23, anxious and depressed, searching for answers and meaning in astrology, the occult, and drugs.
A friend of mine, Roger Minor, enthusiastically welcomed me with The Urantia Book, saying things like, “This is it! This is the book! Everything is here!”
I began to examine it with curiosity. I bought my first copy a few days later.
I struggled with this book, so full of blessing and light, yet with such an absurd purported origin. I concluded that it was too vast and profound, too long and perfect, to be the work of a single human being, and I doubted that a group of human beings could keep such an elaborate deception secret. It was too benevolent and full of truth to have been written by someone who would stoop to claiming to be divine—unless that someone were superhuman and malevolent! Could it be the work of the devil?
The Urantia Book is exactly what it claims to be: a revelation of epochal significance. All questions were answered, knowledge integrated, vision expanded, and hope confirmed.
I began to wonder why all the “inspired” authors couldn’t write in simple, understandable English. Apparently, their inspiration didn’t extend that far.
As I read it (The Urantia Book), I knew it was what it claimed to be. It’s as if I’d been deliberately primed, with my other readings, to have similar material to compare with.
For the next seven years, my journey led me to thoroughly study astrology, numerology, the Tarot, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Few of them made any sense, but mostly reading these things was like padding myself with mud. Almost none of them made sense. They were simply not suitable, but it’s all I could find to study.
I watched as this big blue book was handed to Eddie Chavez, my best friend… A couple of minutes later, Eddie walked over and said, “Will, you have to read this!”
The first sentence grabbed me, captured my attention and focus like nothing I’d ever read before: “In the minds of the mortals of Urantia—this is the name of your world—…” I thought, “My God, these people aren’t from here. They know what they’re talking about!”
I left home at 16, married and had two children, divorced a few years later, underwent Freudian analysis, explored the inner sanctum of Scientology, and wandered throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa, the United States, and Mexico. Along the way, I examined everything I could find that might illuminate the path to a greater awareness of how the universe really works: Eastern and Western mysticism, metaphysics, and occult studies.
My first encounter with the Urantia Papers occurred in 1969 in a small bookstore in Sausalito, California. The brother of a friend of mine had told us about The Urantia Book, telling us that it shed new light on mystical truth. So when we saw it on the shelf, we couldn’t resist its attraction, and we pooled the money together to buy one we could share.
I finally began reading the entire book from cover to cover. The creation story it presented opened my senses to a new and exciting perception of reality, a reality in which I knew I was a beloved citizen of an ordered universe, with a true destiny and purpose, where my contribution could be meaningful and valuable.
My spiritual upbringing was Methodist; I was glad to know there was a God, but I was baffled by my inability to see him despite years of church and Sunday school. My burning question was: If God is omnipresent, where the hell is he? Why is he hiding from me? By the time I graduated from high school, I was depressed and disillusioned with life.
I studied with the gurus of the time: Stephen Gaskin, Yogi Bhajan, Swami Satchidananda, and others. I danced with the Hari Krishnas and Sufi Sam, and sat in meditation at the Zen Center. I participated in Holy Man Jams, shared jugs of wine and barbecues on Hippie Hill, went to rock concerts with The Dead and the Airplane, and traveled to the mountains to run naked through the forests.
Then, one day in 1969, I met a man with wire-rimmed glasses named Arthur. It seemed that whenever a discussion arose about matters of spiritual importance, Arthur would open his blue book and read from it. I was curious to know why he had so much faith in that book. One day I asked to see it.
As I turned the pages and read several paragraphs, I felt the words speak directly to me (to my soul), as if they were alive. In less than ten minutes, I knew I had found the answer to the question of my youth.
It is now clear to me that I was searching with determination (and sometimes with wild abandon) for a rational and inspiring foundation of faith for my life.
I vividly remember scanning a bookshelf and finding The Urantia Book next to the OAHSPE and The Keys of Enoch. I read one sentence from The Urantia Book and immediately knew I had to read it all. It was a relatively inconsequential sentence. The meaning or spiritual significance of the sentence wasn’t what won me over, but the syntax and the high level of intelligence in the language.
That entire summer, I spent three or four hours a day reading the book. I did so very slowly and carefully, trying to find contradictions and errors.
To be honest, I don’t feel like I’ve found The Urantia Book. Rather, it seems as if the book found me through a conspiracy of circumstances that I believe was the work of angels and midwayers.
That afternoon (in 1970) David took the opportunity to suggest that I might like to see an interesting book he had found while in the Navy, The Urantia Book. He invited me to stop by his room sometime.
Why was I so drawn to the teachings of The Urantia Book? I had so many unanswered questions throughout my childhood and youth that I had almost given up on ever getting answers. Then, out of nowhere, a new revelation comes along that provides plausible answers. For me, it all comes down to the fact that The Urantia Book just makes sense.
I can’t begin to describe the many ways The Urantia Book has changed my thinking, my decisions, and my life.
The couple said they were from the Chicago area, where a friend of theirs had discovered a mysterious book that had changed his life. I asked them the name of the book, and they said something like “Yurancha,” but pronounced it “Iuranchia.”
One day after arriving home, I was riding in the car with my younger brother and suddenly asked him if he’d heard of the book “Iuranchia.” I was surprised when he replied that he had heard of it and that we had a mutual friend from high school who owned a copy. I wasted no time heading over to his house to see the mysterious book for myself. He agreed to let me borrow it.
I took the book home and started reading it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was her, the missing piece of the puzzle, fitting perfectly into the pieces I had in my head.
The people I’ve met through this book are the smartest, most active, and funniest people I’ve ever met, and I will forever cherish their friendship.
My wife and I found The Urantia Book in a bookstore in Amsterdam. I think it was the only copy sold in Holland at the time, and I always felt we were guided to it.
It was July 4, 1970, when I hit rock bottom. My drug-fueled life had led me to this confusing state of despair, but it would be a few more years before I realized it. I threw myself to the ground and pounded the dirt. I briefly considered suicide, and the shock of even thinking about such an act made me realize I had to find a new path.
I began reading The Urantia Book along with other texts about God, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to the Bhagavad Gita. For many years, I remained impartial but skeptical of The Urantia Book. I imagined that one day I would discover it to be a work of fiction or fantasy.
After years of intense soul-searching, I began to relax my defenses and allow it into my life.
I was filled with questions: Who am I? Where am I going? What is my purpose? My intellect was always working, asking questions, but it didn’t “come up” with a single answer.
We chatted for a long time about life and what we thought we were looking for. As I was about to leave, he handed me this big blue book, saying, “Here. Read this and come back and tell me what you think.”
The Urantia Book is always nearby to offer new insights, even on the same page or sentence I may have read fifty times before.
When I discovered the stars, I knew I wanted to be an astronomer. I didn’t realize I was searching for God.
The more I read the book, the more truth it seems to contain, and the more fascinating it becomes.
At university and afterward, I had asked myself and others: “What is my connection to God? The Church, the Pope, the Bible, tradition?” I asked this question again as a mathematician.
After several reading sessions, I came to the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus answers that “the kingdom of God is within you.” I realized that the certainty I was seeking about God could never come from outside my own mind; it had to be like a discernment, like a mathematical theorem. It couldn’t come from external confirmation; it would always have to be the skill of a magician.
Since then, I have been an avid reader and student of revelation. But I have never allowed the written word to replace the living Spirit that we all carry as a personal connection to God.
All my life I had been searching, but now it became a consuming obsession to fill in my God-silhouette. For two years I read everything I could find on religion, the occult, the New Age, and Eastern philosophies. I read Edgar Cayce at lunch and Teilhard de Chardin after dinner. By the end, I had assembled a meaningful, somewhat coherent worldview, but something was missing.
Discovering The Urantia Book and its teachings has been, without a doubt, the single most important event of my life.
My spiritual quest had already continued for years. It began in childhood with a fascinating book called “The Mind of India” and continued with the study of the works of luminaries such as Alan Watts, Krishnamurti, and Gurdjieff. I had experienced little affinity with the cultural religion of my childhood, Judaism.
I was enormously impressed by the clarity of the text and the astonishing variety of topics it seemingly covered. Even a brief examination indicated that the text was a masterful example of organizational genius and coherence. More than its content, the aspect of The Urantia Book that initially attracted and engaged me was its expressive style.
At one point in The Urantia Book, Rodan is quoted as saying of Jesus, “Either he is what he claims to be, or else he is the greatest hypocrite and imposter the world has ever known.” I believe that literate readers must conclude that The Urantia Book is indeed what it claims to be, or else it is the greatest and most astonishing example of literary-artistic deception and hypocrisy the world has ever known.
For as long as I can remember, I’d prayed to know what was really on the other side. That night, in a state of sadness and frustration, I told myself that it seemed truly unfair that God had put us here and abandoned us without a clue. Why couldn’t there be a user guide to help us?
The answer to my prayer came less than six months later when a high school classmate gave me The Urantia Book. I had always wanted to know the story behind the story, and I saw that The Urantia Book left no stone unturned, from creation to Jesus.
The Urantia Book has answered every fundamental question I’ve ever had, and raised twice as many.
I spent my high school years captivated by astrology, witchcraft, mediums, psychic phenomena, prophecies, and paganism. In college, I believed everything was relative and that there was no God.
The more I read (The Urantia Book) the more fascinated I became, and I became somewhat reluctantly convinced that it was all true… that this book was really the revelation it claimed to be.
I tried to interest my husband and my in-laws in the book, but I was unsuccessful. Finally, I wrote a dramatic letter to the Foundation.
Urantia of Chicago: “My family despises me, my friends ridicule me. Is there anyone else in the world who would read this book besides me?”
The Urantia Book is a profound gift, but I have learned that a gift can only be given where it can be well received; not everyone is willing or prepared to receive a revelation of God’s love in this form.
When I got home and examined the titles and authors of the documents, I was furious. All this time I’d been looking for what turned out to be an occult book, and I wasn’t into the occult! I threw the book, open and face down, into the trash.
A week or so later… I received a very strong impression on my head. I didn’t hear any voice, nor did I see any writing, but the intensity of the impression startled me. It went like this: “If that book you found had been written by John Doe or Joseph Martinez, you would have read it. Never judge a book by its authors.” Counting on the possibility that the trash hadn’t yet been thrown out, I got out of bed, walked down the hall to my office, and looked in the wastebasket. At the bottom (face down and folded) I found The Urantia Book.
As I continued reading, I noticed personal differences in writing style from document to document, but not inconsistencies; minor differences of speculative opinion, but not contradictions. I was also impressed by the lack of typographical errors in such a large volume. The book seemed almost too perfect. I was sure I would find some parts disappointing before reaching the last page.
Bill Hazzard, from San Diego, invited me to the gatherings at his home. When I told him how I found the book, none of us felt that my experience had been a mere coincidence.
From the moment I started reading, there were internal clues that told me I had found something very different from the books on metaphysics, occultism, and spirituality that had held my interest for several years.
In my life, the greatest step forward came indirectly from The Urantia Book in the form of a personal awakening to the need to live in truth. This, in turn, led to the ethical imperative to serve. The book can teach us many wonderful things, but it cannot choose for us.
After my honeymoon with the book, during which my husband and I read about Andón and Fonta, I began to criticize tiny details. But after another twelve years of discovering time and again that I was wrong and the book was right, I grew tired of wasting time and embraced the book again. As a friend of mine once said, “After a while, it becomes illogical to desire anything other than the Father’s will.”
It was June 1972. I was trying to hold on to life, but I didn’t know why. I was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually ruined. I thought about murder, but ruled it out because I’d probably get caught. Then I considered suicide, and after thinking about it, I ruled it out because I might miss out on something truly beautiful that life had to offer me.
You know, I had become an alcoholic. I was the perfect mother, wife, and hostess. At least I tried to be all those things, but I couldn’t, so I drank.
I began searching for answers to my problems by reading every book I could get my hands on, from self-help to the occult, and from the Bible to some well-known philosophers.
The Urantia Book became my text, and the Twelve Steps (of Alcoholics Anonymous) became my tools. I took my last drink on October 5, 1972.
I tried to tell everyone the good news, but I quickly discovered that the wisest course of action was not to. Friends, colleagues, and family members (except my brother and father) all distanced themselves from me. Some even thought I was completely lost. I realized that not everyone is ready for the truth at that level.
I thank God for this gift, the answer to a prayer. I continue to actively spread the teachings of The Urantia Book, but now I find that the people drawn to me are ready for the good news.
The first night I started reading the book I knew I had received a gift from a friendly universe, a gift I had been asking for for several years.
I graduated from Florida Presbyterian University in St. Petersburg in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in world literature—a preparation, I think, for appreciating the sublime prose of revelation. I liked school and was sad to leave. Of course, now I know the whole universe is a school, and I’m already enrolled! In college and after, I had read a lot of existentialist philosophy and, consequently, was depressed and had no faith that anyone survived death, including myself.
But for some reason, there seemed to be something profound about simply being alive. Who had built this universe? I began reading books on history and science, and later on religion and spirituality, in an attempt to answer this question, but the answer eluded me.
I heard Stephen Zendt say, “Well, the best book I’ve found so far is The Urantia Book.” I mentally made a note of the title…
When there was a pause in our conversation, he mentioned that he had been reading the most incredible science fiction book he had ever encountered. The book he described was prodigious: over two thousand pages long, not written by human beings, and describing as many universes as there are grains of sand on a beach.
Come to think of it, it was pretty amazing that I asked for it (The Urantia Book): I hadn’t seen the book, I hadn’t read a review of it, I had never heard of the publisher, and I would never have paid $27 for a science fiction book.
The Urantia Book has given me a more interesting description of the universe and its inhabitants than I could have ever imagined.
I soon found myself among the atheists. In 1961, atheists far outnumbered Protestants in my neighborhood.
It was a surprise to my mother, as it was to me, to see my brother Russell so intent on reading (The Urantia Book). She imagined I had nothing more important to do than try to understand it, and so she took a more serious look at his book. A few months later, she suggested that I also take a look at it, for I had never seen anything like the philosophical writings it contained. Of course, I felt challenged to prove it false. For several months I tried to find a lie or some lack of continuity in this remarkable book. Suddenly, one day, a stunning realization literally shook me: The book was true!
The Urantia Book answered all the questions I’d ever had, whether about God, Jesus, the universe, archaeology, anthropology, or philosophy. It was a four-year college course packed into a 2,097-page blue treasure.
In the Air Force, I became a chaplain’s assistant. I worked with chaplains of all faiths and learned that, although they didn’t seem to realize it, all their beliefs were basically similar. It was a great lesson to learn.
After military service, I spent the next ten years searching (for what, I wasn’t sure). There was a void in my soul, caused by the questions the Church had left unanswered.
Although I immediately accepted the authority of The Urantia Book, I didn’t accept everything. Some things he said irritated me. At times he seemed cold and almost too objective, almost ruthless in his descriptions and judgments of the human condition. But each of those “angry” sessions (after which I would close the book with a feeling that “there’s no way this can be the way it is”) led me to further understanding. Those contentious points worked within me, and eventually I came to realize the truth they contained.
I’m so grateful for The Urantia Book. It replaced the unbelievable with the incredibly logical.
So one afternoon in junior high school, as I thought about all this, I prayed, “Father, I really don’t know what the truth is. I don’t care how far I have to go or what I have to do, but I want to find out what the truth is. Please help me.”
I knew from experience that this book tells the truth and that it is what it claims to be.
I had found the truth. I had asked for it. And I had gotten it.
As the years have passed, my focus has shifted from finding and trying to understand the teachings to trying to live them.
Around that time, a nice young man who was interested in UFOs was staying with a neighbor. That boy told me that his sister had told him about a book written by aliens, that it was very thick and had a very small print run.
While reading The Urantia Book, I also had the opportunity to peruse the rest of my neighbor’s collection of spiritual books. All were interesting, some perhaps inspired, but none were a revelation, and all paled in comparison to the big blue wonder—in scope, in language, and in direct spiritual usefulness.
I was concerned that so few people I thought would want to read the book actually did. The first boy who had told me about the book didn’t want to read such a heavy work. The neighbor whose book I first read was convinced that Guru Maharishi was the last incarnation of Michael of Nebadon. The esoteric bookseller stopped carrying The Urantia Book in his store when he learned that it denounced astrology as superstition.
In 1962, at the age of 21, I entered the Masonic Order, in part because I believed there I could finally learn all the secrets of the universe. Although I followed the full path of the Masons, eventually becoming a Guardian of the Shrine, I kept waiting for the light bulb to go off above my head. But it didn’t. Then I joined the Rosicrucians in 1969 while I was in Vietnam; I found their beliefs satisfying and felt comfortable with their doctrine of reincarnation.
When I opened the Contents of the Book (of Urantia), its complexity instantly intimidated me, and I put it back. But something told me to give it another chance. So, using a technique I had learned earlier (put your finger somewhere in the book and start reading), I opened it at random to the first page of Part III, “The History of Urantia.” Halfway down the page, I read: “Urantia has its origin in your Sun…” Wait a minute, I thought, the author of this book is not from planet Earth, because it says your Sun.
I slammed the book shut and put it back on the pillow, puzzled by what it said. Then I thought: Either this book is the truth, or it’s a great science fiction novel.
Throughout my anxiety-ridden teenage years, I sought answers from many sources. I read avidly, sampling world religions, psychology, philosophy, and parapsychology. I was inflamed with questions. I learned about Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and the Esalen Institute.
The Urantia Book came to me after an extensive search, and I devoured it. Page after page provided answers, insights, and affirmations I had been seeking for years. It gave me the perspective of cosmic citizenship.
I spent my first twenty years searching for answers, not necessarily about God, but about the world and beyond. I studied various philosophies and religions, only to hit a wall fairly quickly.
In 1973 I moved from Colorado to California, after spending two years studying yoga and tai chi, which I now believe prepared me in many ways to discover the truth.
I feel that discovering The Urantia Book has greatly enriched my life. But it took me a long time to integrate what I read with what I was doing in my life. I’m still trying.
From that day until several years later, I considered myself agnostic, with a strong inclination toward atheism. I was part of the great hippie generation.
A good friend of mine who played electric guitar showed me The Urantia Book in his Westchester apartment. It blew me away. I couldn’t believe it existed, and the more I looked at it and read the authors’ names and the titles of the documents, I knew I had to get my hands on that book.
I was a trained, professional journalist, excited by the idea that this (The Urantia Book) had to be one of two things: either the most elaborate literary fraud in history (which would be worth a good article!) or the truth. It took me about 30 pages to give up my doubts.
I wanted to know the truth about God. If there is a God, I wanted to know; but if there isn’t, I wanted to know that too.
Suddenly, it was as if I stood at a major crossroads. I looked toward the “high road” and the “low road.” One of the roads was to choose God, which included an eternal life where beauty always outshines ugliness, where truth never fails to overcome error, where goodness always triumphs over evil, and where there is endless love and joy in the eternal adventure of serving with my brothers and sisters in God’s divine family. The other road was one of selfishness, darkness, loneliness, and ultimate death; there is no God; all one can do is try to find happiness in material possessions, taking everything for oneself, because we are all pitted against one another in the struggle for a life that is altogether too short.
A moment before, I couldn’t have chosen. But now, as I stood at this fork in the road of my life, the choice was easy. I realized that God’s existence could never be proven or disproven, that faith is a choice, and that the time had come for me to decide.
I said to myself and to God, “I choose faith in God.”
From that day forward, when my faith sometimes wavers, I look back and remember that fork in the road. I have made my choice. This is the path I choose to walk, the path of faith and love as a daughter in God’s universal family.
So, I looked up at the stars and spoke clearly to whoever was up there. I said, “I’m really fed up with this lack of information. If there is a God, why can’t you just tell me everything I need to know in a clear, logical way, without all the myths, dogmas, and contradictions I find in every religion? Just tell me clearly, and I’ll believe it.”
It wasn’t long after that I went to Fred’s house and found a large blue book on his desk.
We just need to have faith that everything comes in its own time, because it does!
By the end of the semester, the number of friends still searching with me had dwindled to three. We read every esoteric book we could get our hands on (on UFOs, out-of-body experiences, flying gurus, kundalini yoga, Vishnu and Krishna, shamans, altered states of consciousness); you named them, we read them.
At 2:45 a.m., a man with a very pleasant, confident voice called into the radio station, saying, “Everyone out there should know about this amazing book I’m studying, called The Urantia Book. It was given to a group of people in Chicago directly by a flying saucer.”
Finding The Urantia Book was the culmination of forty years of searching for truth, reality, and God. During those years, while reading hundreds of books on various philosophies and religions, I kept an open mind and remained true to my center of interest.
The Urantia Book came to me directly as a result of prayer. In my mid-twenties, I was going through many trials and tribulations (of my own making), and in the midst of them, I was searching tirelessly for the true meaning of life. One day in the shower, it dawned on me that I could simply choose not to believe in God at all. I don’t know why, but that thought had never occurred to me. As I was thinking this, I said out loud, “Why believe in God anyway?” And a voice as clear as a bell inside my head spoke a single word in reply: survival.
I started searching again, only now in books about physics, philosophy of mathematics, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein… lots of books, searching and searching.
Finally, still frustrated, I prayed. I hadn’t prayed since I was a child. Sitting up in bed, I directed that prayer to “Uh… dear God or whoever else is out there,” and expressed how frustrating it was that I couldn’t find any intelligent facts about God or the meaning of life.
A few weeks later, while walking past a neighbor’s house on the way to the woods, I was invited in for tea. On the small table was a large blue book.
This silent investigation continued in high school and often intensified as I watched religious leaders say one thing and then do the opposite. This led me to search for the truth in many different ways: Eastern writings, ascetic mysteries, and astrology, to name a few. All seemed to contain fragments of the truth here and there.
For the next seventeen years, I was an agnostic; who was I to say there was no God? I knew that if there was a God, he would know I was sincere and would somehow provide me with proof of his existence.
After calling everywhere, I found a copy in a downtown Honolulu bookstore. I started at the beginning and enjoyed and was fascinated by the Prologue, but I had to get to page 24 to realize that no human being could have revealed such knowledge.
My favorite quote from The Urantia Book is: “Love is the desire to do good to others.”
I believe the book itself is the revelation. You have to read the book yourself to feel the true power of revelation. Similarly, in Jesus’ time, hearing rumors and stories about him couldn’t replace sitting with him and learning firsthand. Revelation is personal; it is conveyed through the interaction between the words on the printed page and the inquisitive mind of the reader.
From the time I became aware of the world, I wondered about life’s issues. I wondered why people seemed to be divided into two groups: one group comprised of believers of all kinds, and the other comprised of nonbelievers of just one kind. I simply couldn’t accept that there wasn’t a cosmic, universal truth that could somehow combine people’s points of view into a harmonious, comprehensive whole.
I decided to discover things, to begin searching for knowledge, wisdom, and truth. I began reading all kinds of books: natural sciences, science fiction, philosophy, theoretical mathematics—and religious works like the Kabbalah, The Book of the Dead, and Into the Light.
I finished my first reading (of The Urantia Book) on February 13, 1980. All my questions about the mysteries of life, love, and God were answered. I was transformed into a completely new human being.
I threw the Bible to the floor, sobbing to God, “I have to hear the good news now! If I don’t hear the good news soon, I’m going to lose my mind!”
The next day my husband called me from jail. He asked me to bring $12.50 when I visited him on Saturday. I didn’t have much money, so I asked him what he wanted it for. He said it was for a book.
I had asked, sought, knocked, and everything I wanted was given to me in a way I could not have imagined.
Robert, my husband, died in 1982 in a car accident. He never read The Urantia Book. He even refused to let me read it to him. I’ve come to believe that the Spirit uses some people as conduits to deliver what needs to be delivered. Often they are not involved and don’t necessarily believe in what they are obligated to deliver to you.
I felt the urge to find something, somewhere, that had an absolutely and undeniably objective basis. Reality becomes a little unstable if you don’t have anything to anchor your belief system on. That was the weak point and the starting point for me.
I was sitting at my workbench, concentrating on wrapping the wires of an electronic circuit board, when a notice like a movie billboard flashed inside my head: “Truth is not a fact, but a state of realization.” Then I realized that my truth would continually change and my understanding would grow.
Fourteen years passed, during which I occasionally took the book off the shelf and put it back there, before my Thought Adjuster was able to drain the poison out of me, enabling me to begin reading the story of Adam and Eve. I fell in love with it. Here, at last, was something that seemed true.
One afternoon in 1977… I was in the wonderful library of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (the Edgar Cayce Foundation). I took a large blue book from the shelf, carried it to a table, and opened it to a section that described in great detail the structure of the universe. The narrator’s tone, absolutely confident and not at all speculative, filled me with awe. I continued flipping through the pages. The tone was the same throughout, authoritative and absolutely fascinating.
My husband and I wondered if it wasn’t possible that a group of the best minds on the planet, versed in religious studies, sociology, economics, archaeology, paleontology, biology, human sexuality, mythology, history, etc., had somehow come together to create this book.
We had explored Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, and various sects of Christianity, especially the Society of Friends. Nothing fit together, or seemed orderly, or made sense, except for a few bits and pieces, until we digested The Urantia Book. It answered exactly the right questions and left the mysterious things (like Mu and Atlantis) where they belonged.
What I heard from my friends about God and religion sounded like fantasy to me. How could anyone worship a phantom God who kept himself hidden? Certainly not me!
If humans were capable of making themselves understood, then why did God (who created humans) insist on speaking in code?
I decided that religion was not for me.
Like everyone else, I was searching for happiness. I did everything in my power to be happy, but nothing worked.
I enjoyed reading and had managed to fill my head with worldly knowledge, which amounted to a gigantic pile of puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. The more I learned, the more confused I became. I had many questions but no answers.
My brother Michael had started looking a couple of years earlier, and along the way he’d found The Urantia Book. “You’d love this book!” he insisted.
When I got to “The Survival of Andon and Fonta,” the lightbulb went off in my head. This book tells me the truth! We will not die! There is a vast universe out there that is completely under my control, and after all, there is a God! All the knowledge I had accumulated over the years fell into place, the pieces of the gigantic puzzle forming a coherent picture of the universe, resembling a detailed tapestry.
I learned where I came from, where I was going, and why I was here. What I had believed to be important was meaningless, and that’s why happiness had eluded me. I discovered that there is no happiness outside of God.
Those who seek shall find. There are millions of people searching, some desperately, to find meaning in this life, to know why we are here and where we are going. I was one of those desperate seekers.
When my wife passed away at 48, I suddenly began searching. What had happened to her? Is there a soul or something still living? I had abandoned the normal churches when I was 25. My wife and I had gone on happily, without giving much thought to life and death. Then came the shocking experience: my beloved’s departure into the unknown.
The unknown! It was terribly hard to accept. I couldn’t accept that death was the end. My science studies had taught me that nothing is destroyed. A lifeless atom lasts forever. It may change form, but it never ceases to exist. Even a ray of light lasts forever. If a lifeless atom lasts forever, why should a beautiful personality, a fantastic intelligence, full of life, loving, incredible, perish? I couldn’t accept it. It didn’t seem fair. In the scheme of things, this personality was surely a million times more important than a lifeless atom or a stray ray of light.
My search for truth began. I reread the Gospels. I examined Gibran, Gurdjieff, and the ancient and modern philosophers. I took a brief trip to France to study with the famous yogi Maharishi Mahesh. The more I studied, the less certain I became. I was astonished at how little real information there is available about life after death and the survival of the soul.
I lived tormented for five years, hating life and even cursing God. Finally, I considered suicide as a means of knowing the truth about death. At this juncture (it was 1977), I received a note from Clyde Bedell. He had enclosed a sheet of paper describing The Urantia Book.
When I was young, I was taught a lot about the Bible and its version of creation. In college and graduate school, I learned the scientific version of human creation. It’s easy to find conflicts between these two versions of creation. But if the Bible tells us what happened, and if scientists understand what happened, there shouldn’t be a conflict. The two versions of creation should tell us the same story.
However, there is one important discrepancy: Science does not have an Adam and Eve.
I went back to Genesis to read about Adam and Eve, and I tried to understand who they were. Genesis tells us that their lifespan was 900 years and that they spoke directly to God; the Talmudic literature further says that when they died, their bodies didn’t decompose. They weren’t just like you and me; they were some kind of superpeople. I couldn’t find any place on Earth where such people could have originated, and eventually I began to wonder if they might have come from somewhere else in the universe.
Following the scientific method, I hypothesized that Adam and Eve were extraterrestrials who had come here to improve the quality of the human race; that when they arrived, they found an indigenous Stone Age civilization. Their offspring then interbred with Stone Age people to create hybrids whose descendants we are. This idea became the main concept of a book I wrote titled “First, Man. Then, Adam.” It was published in 1977.
For a few years, I was in a Trenton study group that met every two weeks, and we managed to spark interesting ideas in each other. I came to appreciate the multitude of levels on which The Urantia Book can be understood.
Today, The Urantia Book is the most important book of my life. It wasn’t until 1998 that I finally freed myself from the shackles of organized religion. I turned off my ego long enough to get to know myself and learn that the Kingdom isn’t a future reward, but something to be sought and experienced now.
I’ve realized that not everyone is ready for what the book has to offer.
Search, search, search. I had completed EST training, attended witchcraft classes, gone to a wide variety of churches, participated in religious rituals involving drugs, been reborn, listened to gurus, read books by the Illuminati, had tarot cards read, astrological charts drawn, runes cast, and yet nothing was working. I was living on Maui, amidst the mysterious crystalline New Age, trying to discover my purpose in life and my place in the universe. There was only one thing I was absolutely certain of, and that was that God existed. I had no concrete model or understanding of this concept, but a glance around told me that my physical body, this society, this planet, undoubtedly had an architect. It was no accident.
One evening, a friend came to invite me to a party a few blocks from my apartment… I was so engrossed (reading The Urantia Book she found at the library) that I didn’t notice the party host squatting beside me until he spoke: “That’s an unusual book.”
He went on to explain that he was a scientist (a geologist) and that a hitchhiker he had picked up had given him The Urantia Book. He was amazed by the scientific content of the book, particularly its geological content. He said the theory of continental drift was especially advanced, and that he could hardly believe that someone had so clearly proposed the phenomenon of plate tectonics in 1955.
He told me that during a trip to Chicago, he decided to visit “the scientist who had written the book.” At 533 Diversey Parkway, he was surprised to find only “two elderly ladies” who told him there was no scientist and no human author to meet. They said the names of the spiritual authors were in the book’s subject index. They added that the book “speaks for itself.”
As I grew older, I was something of a closed seeker. Not wanting to be led by other people’s personal charisma, I read tons of religious books on my own. I picked out the parts that resonated with me and left the rest behind. I had tons of questions and found some answers—enough to keep me searching for more.
When I was 21, a friend and I were talking about the meaning of life. He told me about a book (I’d never heard of it before) called The Urantia Book.
I like the idea of starting at the bottom, just as we do here on Urantia. We have more challenges, more opportunities to learn, more obstacles to overcome, and, consequently, a greater sense of success when we achieve them.
When The Urantia Book came into my life, I had searched in vain through many books, looking for a reason to be here on earth.
If you need the book, it will find you.
Jesus said, “Seek and you will find.” In 1973, I left the University of Colorado, where I had been pursuing my doctorate in philosophy. Although I had learned a lot, I found myself with many fragments of information that did not constitute a coherent and complete philosophical model. I believed in the existence of God, but I also believed in evolution, and in all my years of school, I had found nothing that united the two. Thirsty for answers, I dropped out.
In June 1978, while looking in the Yellow Pages, I called a non-sectarian church and was told they were reading books from different religions; at that time, it was The Urantia Book. When I arrived the following Sunday morning, the congregation had begun reading the section on page 192 titled “Morality, Virtue, and Personality.” The opening words struck me like a thunderbolt. I knew instantly that this was what I had been looking for, and I had finally found it (or better yet, it had found me).
I wanted to believe in God, but I couldn’t find any evidence to support that belief. After reading every book on religion and metaphysics I could get my hands on, there I was, 33 years old, not really believing in anything. My husband, Barrie, mentioned a book that a friend of his, Pat, had encouraged him to read.
It’s interesting to learn how the book came into Pat’s hands, in the remote rural interior of British Columbia, Canada. Pat was a carpenter and often worked with Larry, another carpenter. Larry had been working in another valley, about thirty miles from ours, clearing a burned-out mansion to begin building another home. In the ruins of that house, he found The Urantia Book, completely safe from the fire. After reading it and finding it to be an incredible revelation, he finally gave the book to Pat.
It’s amazing that that book wasn’t consumed by fire. To me, it’s as incredible as the fact that it ever ended up in my hands. I’d been searching for it for many years, and all I can think is that these things are absolute proof of the work of our invisible friends in carrying out the Father’s will.
One night, while looking through his scrapbook, I found a photo of a flying saucer with the US insignia. This raised many questions, the first of which was, who took the photo?
Debbie told me that her father-in-law worked for NASA at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California. He worked in the prototype machinery department, perfecting specialized parts. He was an avid photographer and always carried a camera with him. One day, he walked into a hangar, discovered the saucer, and took the picture. Up until that point, I hadn’t paid much attention to flying saucers, but now I had to find out what was going on.
I then spoke with his father-in-law. He told me the saucer was something the government had built as an experimental aircraft. I asked him if there were any other interesting things he’d come into contact with. He continued to fascinate me with a story about a piece of material he’d been given to analyze. He knew nothing about the material’s origin, and after analyzing it, he discovered he couldn’t cut it, drill it, or weld it. He challenged his analysis. Several years later, he learned it came from a crashed UFO. Now my curiosity was piqued. I went out and bought several books on UFOs, and I began asking people if they had had any experience with this phenomenon.
We started talking about UFOs. He smiled, his eyes sparkled, and he began telling me about an experience he had had in Alaska. He and a friend were at a party. They went outside and looked up at the sky. What they saw was a bright disk about the size of the moon, almost directly overhead. It started moving, so they jumped into a car and followed the UFO for several miles until it hovered over a large canyon. After a few minutes, the UFO disappeared. The next day, articles appeared in the local newspaper; thousands of people had seen the object, and the Air Force had picked it up on radar. I asked him if this had been his only experience with the UFO phenomenon.
He thought for a moment, and then said he was reading a really strange book that talked about life on other planets, alien contacts, and a lot of other weird stuff. He offered to lend it to me, but recommended I first read the preliminary chapters on The Urantia Book in the companion volume, the Concordex. I stopped by his house and picked up both books. So I started reading. Since then, The Urantia Book has transformed my life.
I was an avid reader, always searching. I studied Edgar Cayce, Swedenborg, metaphysics, science fiction, and Eastern and alternative religions.
One day I started thinking about the books I’d read recently. I was puzzled that none of them were truly satisfying. And I said in a frustrated voice, “I just wish someone would write a book that would give me some answers!”
When The Urantia Book finally arrived, I became completely absorbed in it. It spoke to my mind and heart. Something inside me told me it was true. It made sense and gave some real answers. It made me aware that my life had purpose and meaning.
I immediately realized the importance of The Urantia Book, if the claims in the Prologue (that the book was a revelation written by divine beings) were true. Who would have had the audacity to write a 2,097-page book about the origin of all things?
Then, in 1980, at the recommendation of a friend, I read The Urantia Book. I was astonished. No book up to that point had been able to answer so many of my questions. No book was as universally complete and logical, as instructive, as well-written, as precise, as exciting, as uplifting, as motivating, as stimulating, as galvanizing, as enthralling, and, above all, as full of love, hope, and fundamental truths as The Urantia Book. To my astonishment, I found that the book revealed the Father’s (my Father’s) sublime plan for all humanity and the entire universe. Now life had meaning, suffering had an explanation, and death itself was no longer meaningless.
The Urantia Book came to me in answer to a prayer I had prayed twenty years earlier. It hadn’t come to me sooner because I probably wasn’t ready for it.
I’ve tried telling my friends about it, but they’re either too busy or not ready for the good news. I’ve given one to each of my children, as it’s worth more than all the treasures on Earth. The Urantia Book tells us why we’re here and where we’re going. What more could we ask for?
In a moment of true meekness I might have thought, “If God is truly all-knowing and all-powerful, he should be able to find a way to put the real information in our hands.”
An all-knowing and all-powerful God found a way to put this information in my hands; I had prayed for it, and He had answered me.
When I first began reading The Urantia Book, I could only get through a page or two at a time before having to sit down and consider what I had just read. I thought, “Wow! This is either the greatest book ever written or the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on man.” All the answers I had been looking for were there.
I bought two copies and gave one to a close friend. For the next six months, we each searched (unsuccessfully) for errors and contradictions, sharing our epiphanies the entire time.
I even once told God that if He could show me a spiritual path that didn’t require me to deny my sense of logic, I’d probably become one of His biggest supporters. I think The Urantia Book was the answer to that prayer.
I often asked Bob, “What’s the origin of the book? Who wrote it?” And he’d just reply, “Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. That’ll come later.” And he was right. I was learning to judge things on the merits of their content, without bringing too many preconceived ideas based on questions of origin to the table.
To my continued delight, a book copyrighted in 1955 said exactly the same things that experts in the fields of astronomy, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and particle physics were demonstrating in the late 1980s.
I would describe myself as an atheist. My gods were rational thought, science, and the human mind. Certain experiences in my late thirties and early forties convinced me that there was more to reality than the physical world. I began searching, I didn’t know what.
One day my wife brought home a thick blue book from work. A colleague had lent it to her, saying, “I think Fred should read this.” I read the book over a couple of weeks. My initial reaction was skepticism and disbelief. I dismissed the book because of its unconventional science (an ultimaton?) and its unfamiliar nomenclature.
On my subsequent 47th birthday, I received a copy of the book as a gift from my partner and his wife; they are both interested in spiritual subjects. With the book now in hand, I began to read it again, primarily out of curiosity. As I read, I began to perceive the spiritual fragrance of truth. I began to understand that the book contained a conceptual framework of reality that united the material world and science with the spiritual world and religion.
To clarify my own beliefs about religion, philosophy, and God, I set out to examine the sacred books of the world’s major religions: the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, the Upanishads, and the I Ching. I devoted seven years of my life to studying these texts. I felt confused and discouraged. I saw gems of truth in each work, but I struggled to accept any one in particular. All my fundamental questions about life remained: Why did God create the universe? Is there life after death? Is there intelligent life anywhere in the universe? Is reincarnation true? Do angels really exist? Is there really a heaven and a hell? Does one need to empty one’s mind to unite with God?
Frustrated at not finding truly satisfactory answers to these questions, one day in 1989 I threw a Bible out my bedroom window into the pouring rain. That day I decided to personally ask God to lead me to the truth. On my knees, I told God I was sorry my search had failed, and that I would rely solely on His guidance for further enlightenment.
Two weeks later, at work, I walked past my colleague Bill’s desk to ask him a technical question. Somehow, I tripped, and while trying to balance his desk, my hand shifted a stack of technical reports, revealing a large blue book underneath. Curious, I asked Bill what this doorstop of a book was. He said it was an advanced book that integrated our highest concepts of science, philosophy, and religion, among other things. Intrigued, I began to skim the contents. I asked Bill if I could borrow it for a couple of days.
After reading the Prologue, I was blown away. This was the manuscript of a mad genius, or—could it be?—a revelation from celestial beings. I was burning to dismiss this book as a fraud, or to validate it as a revelation.
I was amazed by the scope and consistency of his religious and scientific teachings. Fundamental questions were satisfactorily answered. Yes, there is life after death! No, we are not alone in the universe!
I was immediately inspired by the depth of the writing. When I didn’t understand a sentence or a word (or both), I read it again and could sense the undeniable correctness of what was being said. I was amazed and captivated. I read the entire book in three weeks.
I can finally say with complete confidence that I am able to accept The Urantia Book for what it claims to be: an epochal revealed text.
Let me just say that the Prologue is the most complex piece of writing I’ve ever attempted to read. I understood so little of it that reading further was impossible.
She looked me straight in the eyes and told me that if I ever read the book from beginning to end, my life would change. It had to. I’d never met anyone who had read the book and whose life hadn’t changed dramatically.
Science and logic also had no need for a God. It had returned religion to its true basis (the Big Bang) and decided that God was only necessary to provide the initial energy.
Dr. Irwin Ginsburgh had a PhD in physics, 45 patents, a brilliant understanding of everything, and a thick blue book of answers, a book he claimed combined science and religion into a logical whole. A logical blend of science and religion? Impossible!
I began reading as a skeptic but ended as a believer. Finally, the New Testament miracles and death on the cross made sense; the afterlife was logical, and there was a reason for my existence.
I find The Urantia Book to be internally consistent and scientifically credible.
I started at the beginning, reading the Prologue, despite its warning against it. I assumed that with my degrees in philosophy, psychology, and theology, I would be able to handle it. I found it more or less incomprehensible, and I put the book aside for about six months.
What impressed me most about The Urantia Book was the explanation for the disappearance of Jesus’s mortal body: the instantaneous dissolution by the acceleration of time at the request of the “resurrection angels.” I had never heard this explanation before, and it made sense.
The book has transformed my life, my way of thinking, my perspective on God, the universe, humanity, the afterlife, and the purpose of life.
It was impossible to deny my transformation from skeptic of The Urantia Book to believer in The Urantia Book. Reading is believing, especially when the truth it contains is indisputable and unparalleled.
At that time, we were both searching for the meaning of life. A few years later, in 1980, I was still searching for the meaning of life, mostly in the wrong places, but searching nonetheless.
My life has changed in ways too numerous to mention.
Within eight months I had finished reading the fifth epochal revelation for our planet, and I had no doubt that it was exactly what it claimed to be.
Since I was eight years old, my favorite reading material had been science fiction. Now, suddenly, I didn’t want to read it anymore. Recently, a friend asked me why I stopped reading science fiction after discovering The Urantia Book. After much thought, I told him, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
After three years of studying the book with hints that it was a hoax, I finally had to shout “give up” and admit that I couldn’t imagine it being anything other than what it claimed to be: a revelation.
That night I lay down in bed and began reading The Urantia Book. My first thought was that it was very well written, structurally and grammatically speaking. Then I began to enjoy the story, and I couldn’t put it down. For the next few weeks, I was exhausted at work because I would stay up much of the night reading this book. As a logic major, I had always struggled with the irrationality of many of the dogmas I had encountered in institutional religions. The Urantia Book was the first document I had encountered that presented spiritual concepts in a logical context.
In the end, I came to the conclusion that this was truly a revelation, and I started buying boxes of books to give to friends and family. I was shocked that they weren’t interested.
The Urantia revelation has been a blessing to me.
I had all this truth to share with them, but I was very disappointed by their lack of interest. I still try to help them today, but not so directly. The Urantia Book has taught me that there are many paths that lead to our Father, and that each person has their own level of spiritual receptivity.
Although my first reading (of The Urantia Book) was on a purely intellectual level and completely satisfactory at that time, an increasingly deeper emotional element crept in on the second reading.
But living an average daily life wasn’t satisfying to my hungry soul. I had many unanswered questions about life, and I desperately searched for answers. I wanted to know: Who is God? Why am I here? What is my role in the bigger picture?
As a Muslim, I had read more than 100 books by progressive Muslim thinkers from Iran, but I found many of their answers unsatisfactory. So I decided to return to the sources and read the Quran in three languages: English, Farsi, and Arabic. I came to the conclusion that, although it was a beautiful work of inspiration, exquisitely narrated in a poetic style, the book obviously had a human origin. I also read the entire Bible. This book was equally inspiring, but its tribal concept of God and its message about Jesus’ atonement left me very uncomfortable. I believed that the true God must be much more loving, merciful, and universal. And most importantly, He must have a solid plan for human growth and evolution.
I found The Urantia Book to be by far the most fascinating and interesting book I had ever read. It confirmed my personal belief that we live in an ordered and loving universe, that there is a divine purpose for our lives, and that we were not put on earth in vain.
In 1999, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to translate the book into my native language, Farsi (Persian). I accepted the challenge, and since then, I have found other Iranian readers of The Urantia Book to help me with the translation.
However, my Lutheran and Mormon upbringing never provided me with satisfactory answers. So I continued searching. Over the years, I studied New Age religions, Native American folklore, and many other faiths and doctrines, but something was always missing.
After attending the study group for several months, I began to discover that The Urantia Book was more than I had ever expected. I began to find answers to questions I had never been able to find adequate answers to before.
Since I was 14, I’ve had an irresistible desire to understand how the universe works. I’ve been searching for answers for over 30 years, following a variety of different paths, studying Eastern religions, metaphysical and New Age material, philosophy, science (take your pick). By then, I’d accumulated so much knowledge that I was more interested in learning how to apply it than in learning more.
Over the years I had gleaned grains of truth from many sources, but they were always amidst a mass of mythology and distortion.
The Urantia Book is like a giant oak tree where all the truths I have gleaned over the years find a place to live: a leaf here, a twig there, a branch over here… My lifelong desire to understand how the universe works has finally been fulfilled, and it has been pleasing to see the magnificent order of the whole.
Thus began a long adventure in search of the meaning of life, why we are here, and what we are meant to do. This quest included altered states of consciousness, Eastern philosophy, the Science of Mind, the 12-Step Program, A Course in Miracles, and many dead ends.
I bought The Urantia Book from Duane Faw, and my life has never been the same.
I came to the conclusion that this was either the greatest science fiction story ever written, or it was truly a revelation of the truth. I preferred the first alternative and resolved to read a complete document every night without fail. Halfway through my second reading, I came to the conclusion that the book was truly a revelation.
I’m now on my fifth reading, and it’s truly amazing how new concepts keep popping up. Words that “weren’t there” during the first four readings suddenly appear.
My religious background was diverse, to say the least. I was raised Catholic, became a Jehovah’s Witness, and then continued with Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam, to name just a few. My names for God changed as quickly as people change their socks. I was determined to gain a complete understanding of God if it was the last thing I did.
The Urantia Book has enlightened me from beginning to end. It is a very delicate heavenly gift for the mind and the heart.
When I finished, I went back to the Prologue and said to myself, “Well, now let’s look at this revelation in light of revelation itself.” I read it all over again, which took me another eight months. I am totally convinced that The Urantia Book is a revelation, and although it may not contain all the truth in existence, I truly believe it is the most complete, harmonious, and coherent compilation of universal truth available to our generation and those yet to come.
What I’d read so far seemed to be what I’d always believed, as if I somehow knew it. I’d asked for answers and found them.
We were talking about religion and philosophy, and my father-in-law mentioned that he used to read science fiction until he found a book that simply swept him away. He said no human being could have written it, and that it was the only book he read now.
I look back on the years I spent reading Seth’s books and wonder if it was a wasted time. I don’t really think so. If anything, I feel like I was led toward that material as a kind of stepping stone to the next level.
Wow! The Urantia Book purported to answer all the questions that had plagued me for years. The more I read, the more fascinated I became.
Yes, this book has changed my life. I now have a sense of calm that comes from knowing that we have an exciting future ahead of us all (if we choose it).
The Urantia Book has given me a vast and wonderful vision, greater than any other religion teaches. This revelation has shown me a new dimension of God’s love. It has changed and continues to change my life from its foundations.
I borrowed The Urantia Book from the library and began reading different parts. I was amazed that someone could have so much knowledge about God, and I believed the information must have come from a higher source.
The information in The Urantia Book has transformed my life.
Oly gave me The Urantia Book in Spanish, one of the five thousand copies of the first edition from 1993. I immediately began exploring this wonderful revelation that has since transformed my life.
Revelation has broadened my horizons and changed my beliefs. It has quenched my thirst for answers. It has brought me closer to God and Jesus in a very special way. It has made me understand the reality of the brotherhood of men and the fatherhood of God. It has opened my eyes to the fact that we are not alone, that we are part of an immense plan of evolution and perfection.
Even after reading the same things several times, it seems as if I am reading a different text each time.
In 1994, after finishing my studies, I was hired by a banking software firm and given the responsibility of overseeing sales in Latin America. I began traveling extensively throughout South America, and while in Bogotá, Colombia, I came across the Trojan Horse books again (there were already four volumes at that time). I bought all four and began reading them on my flights to and from South America. The content of the books was too realistic to be fiction, and I was continually fascinated.
In 1985, I discovered the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), which published the Edgar Cayce readings and the books inspired by them. After seven years of study, I felt I had all the answers, except one: “What is my purpose in life?” ARE didn’t provide that answer.
I believe the Urantia Book is either of divine origin, or was written by a group of people with an incredible breadth of knowledge, writing skills, and imagination.
The purpose of my life is to learn to do God’s will in every situation I encounter, and that is what I am now striving to do.
My husband and I consider The Urantia Book to be the most sensible book we’ve ever read. It answers all the questions we had about Bible passages that didn’t make sense to us before.
This is the story of how The Urantia Book came into my life… The Spanish version may have errors (typos, spellings) and may even be a bad translation, but I know that the substance of the book is truly and wonderfully true.
I recently realized that we in the Spanish-speaking world owe JJ Benítez thanks for sparking interest in The Urantia Book. I, like others, learned about The Urantia Book through that author’s works.
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
The first thing I asked about The Urantia Book was, “Who is the author?” She smiled and said, “Read it and decide for yourself.”
Since I found The Urantia Book, my life has continually improved. I can only thank the heavenly beings for making this revelation possible. I hope that one day the entire world can unite in spirit.
As a child, my first conscious thoughts were questions like, “Where am I? Who am I? Where do I go from here? What is the purpose of life?”
I trusted that the answers would come to me someday. The Urantia Book has brought those answers to me.
I noticed that Faye had stopped watching television and instead had her nose buried in a big blue book. She also started attending weekly meetings to talk about the book. Finally, I asked her what was so fascinating, and she replied that all the answers I’d been looking for were in that book.
The book came to me in 1998. I consider it an answer to years of prayer for light and truth.
(Saskia) told me about a book of stories she was compiling about another book that had changed many lives, including her own.
I had never heard of The Urantia Book. The more he told me about the book and the impact it had had on his life (an impact that had lasted more than 20 years), the more interested I became. It was his enthusiasm that compelled me to learn more. What could there be in that book that could change someone’s life so dramatically and have such lasting effects?
I have been finding the answers to my questions in this book.
Translated and revised by Antonio Moya. Completed on 10/05/2017.