© 1960 William S. Sadler_Jr.
© 2006 Antonio Moya, traducción
© 2006 Urantia Association of Spain
Translator’s Note: On July 23, 1960 (46 years ago), Bill Sadler met with a Urantia Book study group in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The lecture was quite long and was recorded on tape. Years later, Kristen Maaherra compiled 11 chapters, which are now posted on the Fellowship’s website. Below I translate Bill’s comments and opinions that I find most interesting.
There’s one thing worse than an atheist. And that’s a secularist. An atheist at least fights against God. He pays God some attention. He’s against Him.
A layman is too busy to worry about God. His whole mind, his whole life, his whole thought is occupied with temporal and material problems. He’s full of ideas. But he doesn’t possess much in the way of ideals.
I was chatting about this book with a girl in Chicago, and she threw me this: “The religion that works for my parents is valid for me.” And I said, “Imagine if the 12 apostles had taken that position!”
When Jesus asked them to listen to a new truth, they could have said, “Look, we’re really conservative; we favor the law, the prophets, the Pentateuch, the books of Moses, and so on. And, dear Carpenter, recruit your people elsewhere.”
We have philosophical confusion. We look at this world. We don’t see the perfection we think we should see if there were a God. We see imperfection. We see tons of problems. And we tend to put religion aside because the world isn’t a nice, easy, sweet, and perfect place to live.
I would like to read something to you:
\1. Is courage—strength of character—desirable? So…
(And Sadler read them the 9 points of “inevitabilities.” Then he said:)
Think of the greatest word you know. I would suggest that word is “reality.” I can’t think of a word that’s greater than “reality.” “That which is real.” Let’s subdivide “reality.” I want to put three columns under that word. And I want to put subheadings under each of those columns. And the three subheadings are: Things, Meanings, and Values.
Reality comes in three different packages. There are things. There are meanings. There are values. Where religion goes wrong is when it tries to make statements about things. Religion doesn’t deal with things. It doesn’t deal with the origin of species or the origin of this world. The first is a subject proper to genetics and anthropology; the second is a study proper to astrophysics, astronomy, and geology.
Scientists are equally foolish when they are so unscientific as to make pompous and unprovable claims about religion. As scientists, they should just be concerned with things.
We approach each of these realities with a different technique. If you’re dealing with things, use reason, mathematics. A scientific approach.
But if you’re in the realm of values, there’s no mathematics of values. Tell me, when it comes to altruistic love, what is its mass, its speed, its amplitude, its hue, its wavelength, its dimensions? The whole concept of mathematics becomes ridiculous when we apply it to the realm of values.
In the area of values, you can use faith. I would point out that things and values don’t touch at any point. But they both touch on the area of meanings. And in the area of meanings, we don’t use reason or faith; instead, we try to use logic. And this is where we try to construct an original, interesting, and committed philosophy that addresses, on the one hand, the concept of things, and on the other, the ideal of values—an attempt to present us with a unified image of the cosmos.
I make my living observing people. Evaluating them. Studying them. And I’d like to make a categorical statement. There are two characteristics that human beings possess that animals lack, even in a rudimentary way. One is a sense of humor, and the other is a sense of religion.
Berk said to define religion. I’ll try. I once compiled about 30 different definitions of religion. All from different authorities. And there were no two
that they matched. I’ll define religion—better yet, I’ll describe my religion. Can I do that?
Somewhere, at the center of everything, is the chief. And down here on Earth are the chief’s children. And they should be treated accordingly. That’s my religion.
This is the first life. And you truly have free will. And you have it for the simple reason that God wants children, not robots. God wants children, not machinery.
No individual creature can be coerced into the eternal adventure; the gates of eternity open only in response to the free choice of the free children of the God of free will.
Well, fools have just as good a chance before God as intelligent people, but they do not make the same contribution to human civilization.
The soul originates when this God fragment invades the human mind sometime in the fifth year of life. This produces a conception; the human mind is the womb of the soul, the mother of the soul. The God fragment is the father of the soul, and the soul is an embryonic reality that slowly grows within the womb of the mind, just as a child grows in its mother’s womb. And if we live long enough, and if we are sufficiently civilized, we can die with a mature soul instead of having to go to those incubator worlds to complete the deanimalization process.
When you are insincere, you put your ego at the center of things. When you put your ego at the center of the personality system, you disrupt the whole cosmic plan. Because the Adjuster is supposed to be at the center of that system. You simply disintegrate that particular human atom, because you have disorganized the nucleus.
Lucifer committed evil, not sin. To begin with, Lucifer was sincere. Somewhere along the line, he became insincere. And this happened when he realized that his entire project was not good. Before that moment, he had reasoned, without considering the consequences elsewhere: "I’m doing the right thing for my system.
This is a good move for the system. We need something new. This is revolutionary." But somewhere along the line, he became completely disillusioned. This wasn’t good for the system, or for Lucifer, or for anyone else. He stood his ground. At that point, evil became sin.
You see, my problem wasn’t Lucifer. My problem was the problem of faith and wisdom. It always seemed to me that when you accepted a religion, you put a blindfold on. You stopped thinking, you know?
Even after having these Documents, I accepted them with reservations.
Until I read this story (page 755). And suddenly, it wasn’t a problem anymore. I think they could have written lecture after lecture on the relationship between faith and wisdom, but Van’s story was worth 100 pages of preaching.
Consider the 100 members of the Prince’s staff. They were the link between human beings and the invisible Prince. They could see both ways. They had all died, survived, passed through the mansion worlds, were citizens of Jerusem, and had not yet fused with their Adjusters. They knew nothing beyond the system. The highest authority with whom they had ever dealt personally was the System Sovereign. Now they are back here—they do not have their Adjusters with them, for Adjusters do not work on descending missions, only in connection with ascending ones.
They are superhuman beings because their souls possess a postmortal evolution. We have embryonic souls.
Well, if (Van) had been blindfolded, he would have simply said, “Yes, yes, of course.” It was his superior who was giving him those orders.
I think every human being, at some point along the way—whether gradually or during a crisis—faces a decision that’s as challenging for them as those decisions were for Van and Amadon. I think every novice has to test themselves.
Van was more than a human being. Let’s say it takes 700 years to traverse the mansion worlds. One hundred years in each world. This isn’t unreasonable. And then he had been on Jerusem for an indeterminate amount of time. Let’s say Van was 1,000 years old. Think of any of us with 1,000 years of experience, compared to what we are today.
He was exposed to a superhuman challenge, but he was a superhuman being. And I would say the challenge was proportional to his abilities and his capacity. Amadon could not have met that challenge without his Adjuster.
You see, we don’t have them here. We have no signs. We have no proof of immortality. We have no ancient Eden…or Dalamatia…or the Prince’s staff… We have none of those signs, and that’s why they call us “Agondontarians,” which means we can believe without any proof.
You see, we’ve lost a lot. Think about what it would mean to have Eden here. And don’t think of Eden as a garden. Think of it as a garden city. A university city. And there would also be the Prince’s City. Think how easy it is to believe when you have so many things to look at.
Someday we will have a single government, but probably not a single people, probably not a single race. Someday we will have a single language—but that’s a long way off.
I believe the Blue Book is his effort to attack this with spiritual means and to provide the foundations of a religion for all humanity, a religion that will go against national boundaries.
You know, Christianity is terribly troubled when it leaves the white man’s countries, because it has been associated with trade, colonialism, malpractice, the suppression of natives, and the average non-European regards Christianity as a strange religion for strange people. If this blue book can avoid this contamination and can be spread through the printing press throughout the world, there is hope for a religion for humanity.
Difficulties build character.
Jesus said, “Boys, I don’t worry about you when you are persecuted, but when everyone speaks well of you, for you might become fat, stupid, and happy.” And this can happen. And this did happen, in fact, when the church completely triumphed, it became completely corrupted.
The greatest word, as I understand it, is the word “Reality.” With capital letters. It encompasses everything. And the word “Reality” would be more or less synonymous with the word “infinity.” Or “the infinite.” Or “infinity.” Or “the one infinite.”
Reality is subdivided into two categories: reality that is deity and reality that is not deity. The simplest examples I can give are Paradise Island and the Eternal Son.
Paradise is a revelation from the First Source and Center just as valid as the Second Source and Center. They are equal, but opposite, revelations from the First Source and Center. For God is the Lord of the universes as well as the Father of people. He directs physical creation as well as attracts personal creation.
The word “God” is smaller than the word “deity.” Now we’re thinking about the personality of deity. Man’s personality is not all that a functioning human being is. He’s a body—he’s got toenails, glasses—you see? He’s the essence of man, but not all of man. God is the essence of the First Source and Center, but not all that the First Source and Center is.
The personality of the Supreme is the personality that the Universal Father would have had if he had been a finite God.
I believe that potentials descend through the Ultimate to the Supreme, to become finite actuals. And then, with the Supreme, they return to the Ultimate as actuals in an effort to penetrate the Absolute. Here is your cycle.
Lazarus was in the tomb for three days. And during that time, his body decomposed as any human body can decompose unless it’s embalmed for three days. When “they” reconstructed Lazarus’s body, it was a technological feat. Technically, it’s a much more difficult task than resurrecting Lazarus. And to demonstrate what a perfect job they did, he later died a second time from the same damn thing. They reconstructed him, including his weak spot.
Well, look. In their pure state, values and things don’t touch. They simply don’t touch. But they both touch on an intermediate zone: meanings. And here, you don’t use reason, you don’t use faith. You try to use logic. And this is where you have the exciting opportunity to try to develop a philosophy that touches things on the one hand, and values on the other, and tries to reconcile them.
Thinking about things, meanings, and values helps me enormously to think correctly about life. This way, I avoid a lot of confusion. Where am I? In which department am I working? These three departments have different rules and regulations. And if I want to produce a result, I have to work differently.
If I want to love people more, it’s no use working with arithmetic. You pray for it. The only place I know to get more love is to ask the source of love.
If I want to go to Oklahoma City, I think I should call the travel agency. I don’t think the wings of prayer are going to move my ass an inch from Chicago.
Well, first, let’s see what an in-between looks like. Let’s use a little imagination. Take a human being, and now remove all the fatty and muscular tissue. I want to keep the brain and nervous system. That’s where a human being really lives. In the brain and nervous system.
And an intermediate is a human being minus all the mammalian stuff. So when I try to imagine what a secondary intermediate looks like, I think of the equivalent of a brain and nervous system expressed in a living electrical structure.
It’s a physical reality – as physical as I am. But it’s not cellular. Electricity is physically real.
(Bill is talking about the non-breathers) They are still non-breathers there. You know there’s an atmosphere there. Because if you suddenly made them breathers, it would be traumatic for them. They’re non-breathers, and you wake them up as non-breathers. But I think over time these distinctions tend to disappear.
(Talking about the morontial Jesus) But Jesus was still in the form of a man in his last appearance.
I believe we still have completely human forms on Jerusem. And no wonder. The Material Sons live there.
Sometimes you fail to find the Father. Sometimes the Son. Sometimes the Spirit. It’s not a failure in the true sense of the word. It’s a delay indicating a need. And what do they do? They satisfy that need. They assign you to the superuniverse with the ultimate corrective education. And then you come back, and, we’re told, the pips fails a second time. It’s infallible.
The first time isn’t completely foolproof. But the second time is always foolproof. So some failures are to be expected. And you know what? If no one ever failed, it wouldn’t be a real adventure, would it?
(Translated from English by Antonio Moya)