© 2012 Urantia Foundation
| Impressions of the Information Technology Roundtable | Volume 6, Issue 4, Nov. 2012 — Index | Urantia Book Holiday Sale |
Front row: Ellen Kalda, Horret Kalda
What The Urantia Book Means to Me
By Karmo Kalda, Estonia
In circa 1980, when I was seven or eight years old, I remember having my first experience with God. My family and I were driving from Tallinn to Vastseliina [Tallinn is in the north and Vastseliina is in the south] to visit my grandparents, who lived on a farm. These were the times of the Soviet domination of Estonia. We were lucky to have a car, but this car, a Zaporozhets, was not much more than a metal box with an engine and wheels. It had more broken parts than working parts, and before we selfish prayer perhaps, but it did get the snowball rolling.
My relatives were not religious, but a few of them claimed to believe in “something”, but what that “something” was, they could not say, as they did not know. One of my grandmothers was a member of a church. She did not eat rabbit, eel, or pork, which was something her church believed in and had learned from the Old Testament. I thought this practice and many other practices and beliefs of her church to be strange and childish. So, I decided to also believe in “something”, and that is when my “search” for “something” began.
I read many mystic books to broaden my knowledge. I started taking karate. Now it seems amusing, but at the time, the philosophy of karate was like honey for my soul. The movie Star Wars, believe it or not, gave me a sense of what “something” was. And I’m not the only one because there is a Jedi sect in the USA.
My second experience with God occurred after the Iron Curtain was lifted, and churches from around the world came to Estonia to advertise their religion to a nation which had been without God for 50 years. Churches became quite popular. Many young people joined them, including my good friend and his brothers. He encouraged me to join, but I still had a picture in my mind of a God who forbid us to eat eel, pork, and rabbit, and who allowed crusaders 700 years ago to occupy Estonia with fire and sword. I did not join the church, and my friend stopped communicating with me, and my search for “something” continued.
In 1996, while a student at a university, I saw The Urantia Book on a friend’s bookshelf. Unfortunately, at that time the book was in English only, and neither of us could read English well enough to understand the contents of the book. But I knew that the book was something very important. I had to wait several years until I heard Peep Sõber, the head of the Estonian translation team, on the radio. It was a spiritual broadcast, and he mentioned The Urantia Book. After that, I saw Urantia Raamat in spiritual bookstores in Tallinn. It was not one book yet; it was 16 fascicles of 10 papers each. I read them, devouring the teachings like a hungry animal.
Now I know what “something” is. I know that it is God but not a primitive one that regulates what we eat but rather a loving God that is our Father. The Urantia Book gave me the feeling that I had arrived home. The search had ended, and the journey could begin. My possibilities are limitless, my life is endless, and life on Paradise is timeless.
Thank you, celestial beings and midwayers, for giving us this revelation!
The Urantia Book gave me the feeling that I had arrived home.
Sharing the Good Word
By Conrad Wood, Bowen Island, , Canada
Over many years, without much success, I have encouraged family, friends, and people I have met to read The Urantia Book. This has raised many questions in my mind, such as: Are they not interested? Are they unwilling to search for more? Do they think I am a casualty of fraud? Am I using the wrong methods? Is my motivation insincere?
In honest reflection, the answer to all these questions is yes. Discouraging? A little, but I have learned to share in other ways what I believe and what I hope for. Now I no longer mention The Urantia Book unless someone specifically asks about it.
Sometimes at work and in social circumstances there are opportunities to foster discussions about God and religious beliefs with small groups of people who display spiritual interest and people who have sincere questions, comments, and doubts. The result always seems to be positive. We all come to a better understanding of one another and come to experience that “cohesiveness [that exists] among spiritual and spiritized personalities of any world race, nation, or believing group of individuals.” UB 7:1.6
At home and at work I find that encouraging others to value the tasks at hand and to do them well appears to lift the spirits of my fellows. Wise praise and a sincere smile have much the same effect. We all have an inner understanding of the pleasure in striving for higher values and the striving for them is contagious and motivating to our work-place associates.
The more I study The Urantia Book, the more sure I am of the importance of showing unselfish love to anyone with whom we share our lives or to anyone we encounter “as we pass by.”
¶ References
| Impressions of the Information Technology Roundtable | Volume 6, Issue 4, Nov. 2012 — Index | Urantia Book Holiday Sale |