What is the Urantia Book?
The Urantia Book (sometimes called The Urantia Papers or The Fifth Epochal Revelation) is a spiritual and philosophical book that originated in Chicago sometime between 1924 and 1955. The authorship remains a matter of speculation. The authors introduce the word “Urantia” as the name of the planet Earth and state that their intent is to “present enlarged concepts and advanced truth.” The book aims to unite religion, science and philosophy, and its enormous amount of material about science is unique among literature claimed to be presented by celestial beings. (from wikipedia)
The Urantia Book is on the public domain and can be read in its entirety here.
To follow, are quotes I’ve excerpted from the book for interest’s sake. (All emphasis is mine.)
42:11.1 (481.5) In the evaluation and recognition of mind it should be remembered that the universe is neither mechanical nor magical; it is a creation of mind and a mechanism of law. But while in practical application the laws of nature operate in what seems to be the dual realms of the physical and the spiritual, in reality they are one. The First Source and Center is the primal cause of all materialization and at the same time the first and final Father of all spirits. The Paradise Father appears personally in the extra-Havona universes only as pure energy and pure spirit — as the Thought Adjusters and other similar fragmentations.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-42-energy-mind-and-matter)
49:1.1 (559.6) The universes of time and space are gradual in development; the progression of life — terrestrial or celestial — is neither arbitrary nor magical. Cosmic evolution may not always be understandable (predictable), but it is strictly non accidental.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-49-inhabited-worlds)
49:6.1 (568.4) All of the differing physical types and planetary series of mortals alike enjoy the ministry of Thought Adjusters, guardian angels, and the various orders of the messenger hosts of the Infinite Spirit. All alike are liberated from the bonds of flesh by the emancipation of natural death, and all alike go thence to the morontia worlds of spiritual evolution and mind progress.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-49-inhabited-worlds)
Comment: The following paragraph seems to describe what is known about death today. That is, the dying person is visited by formerly deceased relatives and friends visible only to that dying person, and a “flash” of energy transfers the vital force at the very end, releasing it from the physical body.
55:2.4 (623.4) When the family, friends, and working group of such a fusion candidate have forgathered in the morontia temple, they are distributed around the central stage whereon the fusion candidates are resting, meantime freely conversing with their assembled friends. A circle of intervening celestial personalities is arranged to protect the material mortals from the action of the energies manifest at the instant of the “life flash” which delivers the ascension candidate from the bonds of material flesh, thereby doing for such an evolutionary mortal everything that natural death does for those who are thereby delivered from the flesh.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-55-spheres-light-and-life)
55:3.2 (625.1) Human government in the conduct of material affairs continues to function throughout this age of relative progress and perfection. The public activities of a world in the first stage of light and life which I recently visited were financed by the tithing technique. Every adult worker — and all able-bodied citizens worked at something — paid ten per cent of his income or increase to the public treasury, and it was disbursed as follows:
55:3.3 (625.2) 1. Three per cent was expended in the promotion of truth — science, education, and philosophy.
55:3.4 (625.3) 2. Three per cent was devoted to beauty — play, social leisure, and art.
55:3.5 (625.4) 3. Three per cent was dedicated to goodness — social service, altruism, and religion.
55:3.6 (625.5) 4. One per cent was assigned to the insurance reserves against the risk of incapacity for labor resultant from accident, disease, old age, or unpreventable disasters.
55:3.7 (625.6) The natural resources of this planet were administered as social possessions, community property.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-55-spheres-light-and-life)
55:3.21 (626.10) The great handicap confronting Urantia in the matter of attaining the high planetary destiny of light and life is embraced in the problems of disease, degeneracy, war, multicolored races, and multilingualism.
55:3.22 (626.11) No evolutionary world can hope to progress beyond the first stage of settledness in light until it has achieved one language, one religion, and one philosophy. Being of one race greatly facilitates such achievement, but the many peoples of Urantia do not preclude the attainment of higher stages.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-55-spheres-light-and-life)
55:5.1 (629.10) Mortal creatures living on a sin-stricken, evil-dominated, self-seeking, isolated world, such as Urantia, can hardly conceive of the physical perfection, the intellectual attainment, and the spiritual development which characterize these advanced epochs of evolution on a sinless sphere.
55:5.2 (629.11) The advanced stages of a world settled in light and life represent the acme of evolutionary material development. On these cultured worlds, gone are the idleness and friction of the earlier primitive ages. Poverty and social inequality have all but vanished, degeneracy has disappeared, and delinquency is rarely observed. Insanity has practically ceased to exist, and feeble-mindedness is a rarity.
55:5.3 (629.12) The economic, social, and administrative status of these worlds is of a high and perfected order. Science, art, and industry flourish, and society is a smoothly working mechanism of high material, intellectual, and cultural achievement. Industry has been largely diverted to serving the higher aims of such a superb civilization. The economic life of such a world has become ethical.
55:5.4 (630.1) War has become a matter of history, and there are no more armies or police forces. Government is gradually disappearing. Self-control is slowly rendering laws of human enactment obsolete. The extent of civil government and statutory regulation, in an intermediate state of advancing civilization, is in inverse proportion to the morality and spirituality of the citizenship.
55:5.5 (630.2) Schools are vastly improved and are devoted to the training of mind and the expansion of soul. The art centers are exquisite and the musical organizations superb. The temples of worship with their associated schools of philosophy and experiential religion are creations of beauty and grandeur. The open-air arenas of worship assembly are equally sublime in the simplicity of their artistic appointment.
55:5.6 (630.3) The provisions for competitive play, humor, and other phases of personal and group achievement are ample and appropriate. A special feature of the competitive activities on such a highly cultured world concerns the efforts of individuals and groups to excel in the sciences and philosophies of cosmology. Literature and oratory flourish, and language is so improved as to be symbolic of concepts as well as to be expressive of ideas. Life is refreshingly simple; man has at last co-ordinated a high state of mechanical development with an inspiring intellectual attainment and has overshadowed both with an exquisite spiritual achievement. The pursuit of happiness is an experience of joy and satisfaction.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-55-spheres-light-and-life)
55:6.1 (630.4) As worlds advance in the settled status of light and life, society becomes increasingly peaceful. The individual, while no less independent and devoted to his family, has become more altruistic and fraternal.
55:6.2 (630.5) On Urantia, and as you are, you can have little appreciation of the advanced status and progressive nature of the enlightened races of these perfected worlds. These people are the flowering of the evolutionary races. But such beings are still mortal; they continue to breathe, eat, sleep, and drink. This great evolution is not heaven, but it is a sublime foreshadowing of the divine worlds of the Paradise ascent.
55:6.3 (630.6) On a normal world the biologic fitness of the mortal race was long since brought up to a high level during the post-Adamic epochs; and now, from age to age throughout the settled eras the physical evolution of man continues. Both vision and hearing are extended. By now the population has become stationary in numbers. Reproduction is regulated in accordance with planetary requirements and innate hereditary endowments: The mortals on a planet during this age are divided into from five to ten groups, and the lower groups are permitted to produce only one half as many children as the higher. The continued improvement of such a magnificent race throughout the era of light and life is largely a matter of the selective reproduction of those racial strains which exhibit superior qualities of a social, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-55-spheres-light-and-life)
55:6.9 (631.5) If the mortals of distraught Urantia could only view one of these more advanced worlds long settled in light and life, they would nevermore question the wisdom of the evolutionary scheme of creation. Were there no future of eternal creature progression, still the superb evolutionary attainments of the mortal races on such settled worlds of perfected achievement would amply justify man’s creation on the worlds of time and space.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-55-spheres-light-and-life)
58:2.3 (665.6) And yet some of the less imaginative of your mortal mechanists insist on viewing material creation and human evolution as an accident. The Urantia midwayers have assembled over fifty thousand facts of physics and chemistry which they deem to be incompatible with the laws of accidental chance, and which they contend unmistakably demonstrate the presence of intelligent purpose in the material creation. And all of this takes no account of their catalogue of more than one hundred thousand findings outside the domain of physics and chemistry which they maintain prove the presence of mind in the planning, creation, and maintenance of the material cosmos.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-58-life-establishment-urantia)
58:4.1 (667.5) That we are called Life Carriers should not confuse you. We can and do carry life to the planets, but we brought no life to Urantia. Urantia life is unique, original with the planet. This sphere is a life-modification world; all life appearing hereon was formulated by us right here on the planet; and there is no other world in all Satania, even in all Nebadon, that has a life existence just like that of Urantia.
58:4.2 (667.6) 550,000,000 years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia. In co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces we organized and initiated the original life patterns of this world and planted them in the hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life (aside from extraplanetary personalities) down to the days of Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, had its origin in our three original, identical, and simultaneous marine-life implantations. These three life implantations have been designated as: the central or Eurasian-African, the eastern or Australasian, and the western, embracing Greenland and the Americas.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-58-life-establishment-urantia)
58:6.8 (670.2) Through almost endless cycles of gains and losses, adjustments and readjustments, all living organisms swing back and forth from age to age. Those that attain cosmic unity persist, while those that fall short of this goal cease to exist.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-58-life-establishment-urantia)
59:6.12 (684.2) The vast oceanic nursery of life on Urantia has served its purpose. During the long ages when the land was unsuited to support life, before the atmosphere contained sufficient oxygen to sustain the higher land animals, the sea mothered and nurtured the early life of the realm. Now the biologic importance of the sea progressively diminishes as the second stage of evolution begins to unfold on the land.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-58-life-establishment-urantia)
92:5.12 (1009.6) 4. The sixth century before Christ. Many men arose to proclaim truth in this, one of the greatest centuries of religious awakening ever witnessed on Urantia. Among these should be recorded Gautama, Confucius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jainist teachers. The teachings of Gautama have become widespread in Asia, and he is revered as the Buddha by millions. Confucius was to Chinese morality what Plato was to Greek philosophy, and while there were religious repercussions to the teachings of both, strictly speaking, neither was a religious teacher; Lao-tse envisioned more of God in Tao than did Confucius in humanity or Plato in idealism. Zoroaster, while much affected by the prevalent concept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time definitely exalted the idea of one eternal Deity and of the ultimate victory of light over darkness.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-92-later-evolution-religion)
92:7.4 (1012.5) All these religions have arisen as a result of man’s variable intellectual response to his identical spiritual leading. They can never hope to attain a uniformity of creeds, dogmas, and rituals — these are intellectual; but they can, and some day will, realize a unity in true worship of the Father of all, for this is spiritual, and it is forever true, in the spirit all men are equal.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-92-later-evolution-religion)
111:0.1 (1215.1) THE presence of the divine Adjuster in the human mind makes it forever impossible for either science or philosophy to attain a satisfactory comprehension of the evolving soul of the human personality. The morontia soul is the child of the universe and may be really known only through cosmic insight and spiritual discovery.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
111:1.5 (1216.6) Mortal mind is a temporary intellect system loaned to human beings for use during a material lifetime, and as they use this mind, they are either accepting or rejecting the potential of eternal existence. Mind is about all you have of universe reality that is subject to your will, and the soul — the morontia self — will faithfully portray the harvest of the temporal decisions which the mortal self is making. Human consciousness rests gently upon the electrochemical mechanism below and delicately touches the spirit-morontia energy system above. Of neither of these two systems is the human being ever completely conscious in his mortal life; therefore must he work in mind, of which he is conscious. And it is not so much what mind comprehends as what mind desires to comprehend that insures survival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striving to be like that constitutes spirit identification. It is not so much that man is conscious of God as that man yearns for God that results in universe ascension. What you are today is not so important as what you are becoming day by day and in eternity.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
111:2.10 (1218.8) The inevitable result of such a contactual spiritualization of the human mind is the gradual birth of a soul, the joint offspring of an adjutant mind dominated by a human will that craves to know God, working in liaison with the spiritual forces of the universe which are under the overcontrol of an actual fragment of the very God of all creation — the Mystery Monitor. And thus does the material and mortal reality of the self transcend the temporal limitations of the physical-life machine and attain a new expression and a new identification in the evolving vehicle for selfhood continuity, the morontia and immortal soul.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
111:3.2 (1219.1) During the life in the flesh the evolving soul is enabled to reinforce the supermaterial decisions of the mortal mind. The soul, being supermaterial, does not of itself function on the material level of human experience. Neither can this subspiritual soul, without the collaboration of some spirit of Deity, such as the Adjuster, function above the morontia level. Neither does the soul make final decisions until death or translation divorces it from material association with the mortal mind except when and as this material mind delegates such authority freely and willingly to such a morontia soul of associated function. During life the mortal will, the personality power of decision-choice, is resident in the material mind circuits; as terrestrial mortal growth proceeds, this self, with its priceless powers of choice, becomes increasingly identified with the emerging morontia-soul entity; after death and following the mansion world resurrection, the human personality is completely identified with the morontia self. The soul is thus the embryo of the future morontia vehicle of personality identity.
111:3.3 (1219.2) This immortal soul is at first wholly morontia in nature, but it possesses such a capacity for development that it invariably ascends to the true spirit levels of fusion value with the spirits of Deity, usually with the same spirit of the Universal Father that initiated such a creative phenomenon in the creature mind.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
111:3.7 (1219.6) In so far as man’s evolving morontia soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible. If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. But it is forever true: What you begin in time you will assuredly finish in eternity — if it is worth finishing.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
111:4.4 (1220.3) The inner and the outer worlds have a different set of values. Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
111:6.4 (1222.3) The spirit can dominate mind; so mind can control energy. But mind can control energy only through its own intelligent manipulation of the metamorphic potentials inherent in the mathematical level of the causes and effects of the physical domains. Creature mind does not inherently control energy; that is a Deity prerogative. But creature mind can and does manipulate energy just in so far as it has become master of the energy secrets of the physical universe.
111:6.5 (1222.4) When man wishes to modify physical reality, be it himself or his environment, he succeeds to the extent that he has discovered the ways and means of controlling matter and directing energy. Unaided mind is impotent to influence anything material save its own physical mechanism, with which it is inescapably linked. But through the intelligent use of the body mechanism, mind can create other mechanisms, even energy relationships and living relationships, by the utilization of which this mind can increasingly control and even dominate its physical level in the universe.
(source: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-111-adjuster-and-soul)
Comment: This seeker went through a phase where I studied the Urantia book. It is a mind opener. This led me to read most all of the New Age channeled works, as my mind became opened to the wisdom contained in them. It all contributes to helping one awaken, although there are many paths. One advanced soul said to me once, “Just don’t get stuck on any one thing.” I do believe that was wise advice. Keep moving on. Be that empty vessel.
One Seeker's Story 