SECTION 1
Many believers in The Urantia Book maintain that that the text is not the product of human authorship of any sort. As evidence, they point to its coherence, originality, and literary richness, as well as its evident mastery of an astonishing range of topics spread out across 2,097 pages comprising 196 Papers (chapters). Adherents claim that writing at this level of depth and brilliance is simply impossible of accomplishment by any one human author or by any conceivable group of writers—especially given that there is no evidence of monetary compensation and virtually no possibility of social recognition (since no human names are attached).
But it would only be natural for those outside this circle of followers to see this work as a channeled text like so many others, perhaps containing dictations from spirits but very likely contaminated by the perspective and prejudices of its human channel. No serious critic, however, has argued that the UB is simply a literary hoax pulled off by a few playful geniuses interested in the pleasure of fooling others.
New facts added to the public record in the past decade or so add complexity to the question of authorship. In the first section of this apologia I briefly cover recent copyright litigation and historical research, and in Section 3 I summarize new discoveries based on the fact that the revelators used human sources.
All of these factors, when considered together, render the issue of authorship a controversy that may never be settled. Nevertheless, I do believe that The Urantia Book, whatever the technique of its reception, stands in a class of its own among allegedly inspired works. The evidence I have come across in decades of my own research shows that, as a literary artifact, The Urantia Book is unique in the annals of scripture, channeling, and purported revelation—for at least the four reasons provided below.
The first consideration is the known facts about ownership and copyright. An oracular work that comes through an identifiable human person is considered to be that person’s intellectual property, even if they claim that it was dictated to them or through them by discarnate beings. Channeled works are routinely assigned valid copyrights because of their observable association with a human conduit—a typical case being the Conversations with God series by Neale Donald Walsch. But The Urantia Book differs from the established norm because there is no legally admissible evidence of a human medium. In several lawsuits, no material evidence of human authorship (either as a work for hire or a composite work) was produced by the original publisher, the Urantia Foundation. Due to this and other factors, the copyright was declared invalid in 2003 and The Urantia Book entered the public domain.
Although the courts were unable to ascertain a human author for the UB, the work does have many peripheral human associations. The most important of these was the man now known as the “contact personality,” who remains anonymous to this day—which is also highly atypical. Almost every other comparable case has involved a person whose identity was almost always publicly known, and these individuals were usually deeply involved in the revelatory process, along with witnesses and assistants who were present for the reception or presentation of the revelatory materials. An archetypal modern example is case of the psychic channel Edgar Cayce; a classic premodern example is that of Muhammad, the paragon of the prophetic revealer of a text who goes on to found a religion. But by all accounts, the contact person for the Urantia Revelation was not a psychic or a teacher or a prophet, and witnesses state that he was an ordinary businessman who was “unconcerned” with the transmission process that occurred over a period of over thirty years.135
A Course in Miracles (1976), a channeled tome in ways comparable to the Urantia Revelation, poses an interesting contrast. The “scribe” for A Course in Miracles, Helen Schucman, was originally granted a copyright with the designation of “Anonymous (Helen Schucman).” The Course lost its copyright in 2004 not because her authorship was disputed but because the text had been widely disseminated before its copyright registration. Schucman was not indifferent to the revelation that poured through her from the “Voice” (which she later identified as Jesus) over a period of seven years, and posthumous accounts make clear that she had a complicated personal relationship with the effort.
Most channeled works also have an informal set of associates who enable the reception, publication, and dissemination of the material. For example, Schucman, a professor of psychology at Columbia University at the time of her contact, was assisted by her colleague Bill Thetford, who typed and compiled the handwritten materials, after which a few other volunteers helped to get the book printed and distributed. Walsch had almost no support system other than his original publisher, Bob Friedman of Hampton Roads Publishing. But the human support for the Urantia Revelation was of a different and unparalleled scale. The reception of the Papers was fostered by a formalized group of six humans known as the Contact Commission, along with an invited group of several hundred participants known as the Forum. The interaction of these two groups with the celestial authors was kept secret until the Urantia text was completed almost twenty years later. This interactive process shaped the content of the Papers, but there is no compelling evidence that the Contact Commissioners or the Forumites had any hand in the actual writing. For further details on the story of the physical reception and editing of the Urantia material, please see Section 3, “The Origin Story of the Urantia Papers.”
This process was also unique because there is no other case in which hundreds of people from all walks of life helped shape the drafting of a revelatory text. The Forum consisted of many professional men and women but also included farmers, housewives, secretaries, office workers, and common laborers. Today we know all of their names, and I have spoken with many of their descendants.
By contrast, channels of comparable texts in modern times were solo acts who had no resort to coauthors, editors, or readers to help shape early drafts. And in most cases, they were charismatic individuals who personally founded religious movements. Aside from the well-known case of Edgar Cayce, other examples include Helena Blavatsky (founder of Theosophy), Alice Bailey (founder of the Ageless Wisdom extension of Theosophy), Rudolph Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy), Ellen White (cofounder of Seventh-day Adventist Church), and Mary Baker Eddy (founder of the Christian Science movement and Church).
In almost each case, these high-profile personalities had their names attached to their revelatory works and their careers profited in some way by their work with purported higher beings. But none of those involved with the Urantia Papers gained celebrity or made money from the process, nor does anyone today. In fact, its early leaders did not found a movement. Even Joseph Smith gained great fame by promulgating the Book of Mormon, but he paid the price of persecution. The key person in the Urantia Book’s Contact Commission, Dr. William Sadler, died in 1969 without fame or fanfare and had spent a fortune in time and money on the process of publication and dissemination. Sadler and his associates saw themselves as educators and disseminators of a text, and almost all of them eschewed the idea of founding a religion, sect, or movement.
The second reason the Urantia text is unique is that almost all other channeled works are dictated by a single incorporeal being, such as Djwhal Khul in the case of Bailey, El Morya in the instance of Blavatsky, and Jesus in the case of Schucman. At most we may hear about the involvement of a small group of unseen beings, such as Mormon and Moroni in the case of Joseph Smith. The Urantia text, in contrast, is a composite work of a corps of numerous celestial beings, some of whom authorized or sponsored the project and others who served in the role as authors of individual Papers or groups of Papers. Twenty-three separate beings are attributed as authors, some by name, while others are designated by the order of being they belong to, such as Divine Counselor, Chief of Archangels, or Perfector of Wisdom. (Almost all are unique to the UB, and in each case they are briefly described within the text itself.) In addition, the work must have also been compiled and edited by a highly adept celestial editorial team with superb grasp of English, given that the Papers are widely considered to be well written and highly consistent in style and content. (For more on the authors of the text, see Section 2, “Key Celestial Authors of the UB.”)
Thirdly, typical channeling involves mind-to-mind communications or inner dictation, but the preponderance of the public record reveals that the Urantia materials were not at any point transmitted through the mind of the contact person. Rather, they physically came into existence by a largely unknown means and with minimal human involvement, as explained in Section 4. Why such a methodology of transmission? Usually, channeled works are the result of what can be called autorevelation or personal revelation, which can be edifying for thousands of readers in a particular place and time. But a purported epochal revelation such as The Urantia Book should have no connection with the limited viewpoint of a human personality or founder, even one as great as an Apostle John or an Emanuel Swedenborg. According to the Contact Commissioners of the UB, their main reason for not revealing the identity of the contact person was that the revelators did not want any human being ever to be associated with the origin of The Urantia Book. The revelators wanted it to stand on its own as a singular work that would be suitable for all places and cultures in coming generations and also be widely translated.
The last of our four reasons for the uniqueness of The Urantia Book compared to other inspired works is the difficulty that one has in conceiving even the possibility of human authorship. The UB contains an internally consistent and integrative presentation of theology, science, cosmology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and history. No one has yet been able to explain how or why a 2,000-plus-page book with no known author is able to accomplish so many intellectual feats.
For example, as noted, the UB contains a massive biography of Jesus in Part IV. Even the man who is arguably the UB’s chief critic—the famed debunker and science writer Martin Gardner—considers this narrative to be an especially “well-written, impressive work.” He says, “Either it is accurate in its history, coming directly from higher beings in position to know, or it is a work of fertile imagination by someone who knew the New Testament by heart and who was also steeped in knowledge of the times when Jesus lived.”136 This backhanded compliment begs the question as to why an anonymous hoaxer would engage in a writing task of such audacious proportions. Parts I through III of the text are, in my view, even more herculean examples of high-quality writing and research.
Dr. Phil Calabrese, a mathematician and statistical expert who is a veteran student of the UB, asks us to imagine a group of scholars secretly cooperating in the endeavor of quietly putting together the highly detailed cosmology and science sections of the Urantia Papers. “Without the benefit of computers, their research team would need to find the best human thinkers in astronomy, geology, paleontology, chemistry, physics, biology, botany, and all other fields. They would also need to selectively use their ideas and sometimes even their phrasing, but avoid all of their blunders.” The effort as a whole would have to be the most audacious literary charade of all time. According to Calabrese, The Urantia Book predicted many scientific facts that were implausible at the date of its publication in 1955 but that have been subsequently verified as correct. Among these are: continental drift and plate tectonics,137 the existence of hundreds of millions of galaxies, large-scale cosmic structures (walls of galaxies), huge red shifts, and the existence of neutrinos with mass. “Its track record of predictions is far better than that of any human scientists, while also successfully avoiding systematic errors, unlike our scientists. . . . On statistical grounds,” he writes, “only superhumans could have written the science and cosmology of The Urantia Book.138 But Calabrese’s bold claims don’t settle this complex issue. Many daunting questions about the UB’s science remain to be answered—especially its claims about genetics, subatomic particles, and its rejection of Big Bang cosmology. These fall beyond the scope of Your Evolving Soul but will be addressed in my future writings.
At the same time, it must be understood as well that the science of the Urantia Revelation is not to be considered inspired. It would be better to call its science and cosmology heuristic, even if some of it is prophetic. Rather, as earlier noted, it claims only that its historic facts and religious truths will remain valid—as stated in a section entitled “The Limitations of Revelation,” excerpted here:
Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. [101:4.2]
In accord with this disclaimer, I have discussed in Your Evolving Soul many of the UB’s teachings about religion and spirituality. I compare this material to current thought on these subjects because I believe it remains highly relevant. But what about its purportedly prophetic historical facts? I will cover that subject in my next book, but we can briefly say here that, in particular, several discoveries in the last few decades have been supportive of the UB’s extensive account of our planet’s prehistory. Among these are Gobekli Tepe, the archeological site in Turkey that is revolutionizing our understanding of pre-Sumerian history. But most important is the research funded in part by the History Channel a decade ago. This effort has established the credibility of a prediction exclusively made in the UB that a primeval civilization, heretofore unknown, once existed in the Eastern Mediterranean in the proximity of the island of Cyprus. Advanced ocean-bottom research nearly one mile down off the east coast of Cyprus reveals that now-sunken land once bridged Cyprus to present-day Syria, just as is stated in the Urantia text. On two different expeditions, evidence of a manmade structure was identified on this surface, a discovery hailed worldwide in major media. This sunken land, according to The Urantia Book, was the actual site of the Garden of Eden of biblical fame. (Please see further discussion of Eden in chapter 6.)
It happens that I was the editor and publisher of an illustrated book about this discovery entitled Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus (Origin Press, 2003) by Robert Sarmast. The author’s pioneering efforts also produced the first underwater expedition, led by Commodore Robert Bates, USMM. The findings were favorably covered by the BBC, CNN, and mainstream newspapers around the world. Sarmast’s book was updated following a second expedition funded by the History Channel and was broadcast as the lead program in its Digging for the Truth series in 2007. Sarmast’s writings provide exclusive underwater maps and outline his original findings in ancient history, mythology, and natural history to make a case that a lost civilization lies underwater off the south coast of Cyprus, which Sarmast identified as Atlantis. (See: http://discoveryofatlantis.com/.)
The Eastern Mediterranean location is an original thesis in the tradition of Atlantis research, one that Sarmast argued matches more closely than current theories (such as Boliva, Antartica, and Thera) to the physical clues provided in Plato’s Critias and Timaeus—the original sources for the story of Atlantis. (Distinguished British author Colin Wilson wrote the preface to the second edition of Discovery of Atlantis, in which he renounces his own thesis about the location of Atlantis that appeared in his bestselling 2001 book, The Atlantis Blueprint.) It happens that Sarmast, Bates, and all of their associates who have pursued this thesis are Urantia Book students who believe that the story of Atlantis actually refers to the Garden of Eden account in the UB. Finally, I should add that Commodore Bates has plans to mount a third expedition to the site using much-improved research technology.
Extensive reports on the Gobekli Tepe and Cyprus discoveries, plus articles on many other claims in the UB about science and history that have been corroborated, can especially be found at UBtheNEWS.com, edited by Halbert Katzen.
In closing, I cite this important statement by the UB’s authors, which offers five reasons why an epochal revelation can be of great value in clarifying human knowledge by:
1. The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
2. The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations.
3. The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past.
4. The supplying of information which will fill in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge.
5. Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying revelation. [101:4.5]
After decades of study, I believe that the UB does meet these five criteria powerfully enough to be what it claims to be: an epochal revelation to all of humankind. In Your Evolving Soul, I have attempted to show how fruitful the Urantia text can be in clarifying our knowledge of self and soul, but these teachings on cosmic spirituality are just one part of the UB’s overall contribution. I believe that my work and that of many other colleagues working in this field is just the beginning of the harvest.
135 The original contact person for the Urantia Papers is long ago deceased. The text states the following about him: “The Adjuster [i.e., Indwelling Spirit of God] of the human being through whom this communication is being made enjoys such a wide scope of activity chiefly because of this human’s almost complete indifference to any outward manifestations of the Adjuster’s inner presence; it is indeed fortunate that he remains consciously quite unconcerned about the entire procedure.” [110:5.7]
136 Martin Gardner is the author of Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery (Prometheus Books, 1995). Gardner had written previous bestsellers, but Library Journal advised librarians not to purchase this book for their collections. According to a critique by Dr. Meredith Sprunger, “Gardner’s book abounds with misinformation, erroneous assumptions, and fantastic speculations” and “classic logical fallacies,” which Sprunger details in an article entitled “The Purpose of Revelation: A Response to Martin Gardner’s Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery.” A prominent early leader of the Urantia movement, Sprunger had a PhD in psychology from Purdue, was a professor at major colleges, and was a lifelong Protestant pastor.
137 The geology section of the UB describes a billion-year-old supercontinent that subsequently split apart, forming the continents that exist today. A professor of geology named Mark McMenamin writes, “This amazing passage, written in the 1930s, anticipates scientific results that did not actually appear in the scientific literature until many decades later.” See The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the Earliest Complex Life (Columbia University Press, 2000).
138 See “The Coming Scientific Validation of the Urantia Book,” by Philip Calabrese, PhD. http://urantia-book.org/archive/readers/coming_sci_val_abstr2.htm