What is Urantia and the Urantia Book?

Urantia (yr-an’-chah) = Earth

Just like the word “Constantinople” eventually mutated into “Istanbul”,

Urantia (the celestial name for this planet) has become the word “Earth”

Pato Banton interview about his connection to the Urantia Book

I love the way this man talks (and his accent is pretty cool too).

Feb 12, 2013

Dear Reader,

Are you looking for something a little (or a lot)  different for spiritual answers?

I was introduced to the Urantia Book in the mid 1970’s;
we have a forty year history together.
This is the story of how it came into my life…

I was 22 and at work in a self-service gas station (something only the cheap stations did back then) on the corner of Chapman and Main in Orange, California.  I collected the money from customers after they finished getting their gas.  One sizzling summer day a slightly built man about thirty years old, drove this pale, old, dinged up convertible right up next to the building’s side door, an odd thing to do I thought, and asked to use the restroom.  Then he stood at the doorway and meekly asked if he could tell me about a book he was holding.  I became guarded… “Is it the Bible?  Because I’m not interested in being converted.”  “No, it is not the Bible” he answered.  This was unexpected; out of curiosity, I agreed.

three concentric circles are
the Urantia Book’s trademark

He tranquilly, almost demurely, sat next to my desk for most of my shift finding passages for me to read (between customers) in response to questions I had wondered about all my life.  The only passage I remember now, and it convinced me that possibly this book could be genuine, was its answer to the question “What does the book say happens after you die?” – like many young people, curiosity and wonder about death often crossed my mind.  When I came back from the pumps he had a paragraph ready – his intimacy with its 2000 pages was notable.  It said death is only a doorway opening onto a stream of  many lives in many bodies.  Our next bodies are composed of morontia matter (not physical, but not yet spiritual).  There is no miracle that occurs – no perfect life with God.  All of a person’s acquired knowledge – related to spiritual understanding – endures, but no new knowledge is gained except for the fact that death is simply a “portal”.  Being a Star Trek fan, I always remembered that word, portal.

I was surprised that he did not leave a book when he left.  But I will always be grateful that he chose me to spend an afternoon with.  On that day I turned a very important corner in my life.

One of my objections to Christianity, as preached in the churches, is that after death  a person goes to heaven to be with God if they have believed correctly on earth.  I could not gaze upon even the most insignificant living thing and believe that God was so simple.  I felt some pleasure in knowing that an outside source confirmed something I suspected for years was true.  In the Urantia Book, achieving God requires effort, mirroring the efforts of our earthly lives.  That does not change on the other side of death.  I have heard it said that we take nothing with us when we die, but that is hardly true.  We take everything we have learned that is of spiritual value.

Four years went by.  My husband had left and I was working receivables in an office, but I didn’t forget.  I heard a celebrity on TV share about the Urantia Book.  Finally I called a book store.  I was surprised to discover they had one.  It was hidden way up high on an inaccessible shelf.  It was dusty and it cost $40 !!!  That was a lot! until I did the math – $40 divided by 1460 days was less than 3 cents a day.  Cheap!  I bought it.  The Forward defined divinity.  It was too difficult.  I could not follow its concepts conveyed in long complicated sentences.  I skipped the 1st and 2nd parts about the extended universe.  That did not interest me.   The 3^rd part, The History of Urantia, was easier and interesting.  The 4^th part, The Life and Teachings of Jesus, held me spellbound.  Here was Jesus’s life from before birth to after death in such detail that I could not put it down.  I quit my job; it was Christmas time and I wanted to know about Jesus.  I read all day every day for weeks until the last word of the last paragraph and then let out a sign of relief.  My search for a God that made sense to me was over.  This began my ever deepening appreciation for our Creator.

My discoveries continue through other sources, even the Bible, especially since my sister has been a devout Christian for thirty years.  I found a study group and talked with other readers.  I met my second husband at this group and we were married for seventeen years until he passed through that portal.  I stopped thinking about death and I progressively began to intentionally accumulate spiritual experiences. That will continue for eternity.  It is my reason d’être, my reason for existence.

The Urantia Fellowship’s
two column edition

Well, in 900 words, that is how the Urantia Book found me.  BTW, I had asked the man (I don’t remember his name) just before he left why he chose me.  He told me his story.  He had a wife and children in Oregon  but was on an open-ended journey around the country introducing people to the book, a present day St Francis of Assisi.  He chose people based on the color of their auras (the electrical field around our bodies that few people are able to see).  He told me it was pink.  I asked “What does pink mean?”  He said “I have found that it means a person feels lost and is searching for something.”   He saw through me and it made me feel both special and uncomfortable.  And try as I might to shield myself, the truth of it resonated in my soul.

jackie

Here are a few websites for the Urantia Book and the Urantia Fellowship

Urantia Foundation

Urantia Fellowship

Urantia Now