Urantia the Earth-The Origin of It All: Exploratory Journeys in the Urantia Book

By Nicholas P. Snoek

In 1955 the Urantia Book appeared, all in 2,100 pages. It is a heavy read that tells us how we came to be, what we may become, and enough about astronomy to help us understand what makes that possible. It has sold 3/4 million copies in many languages, and would have sold many more if it were simpler to read. The purpose of this book, Urantia the Earth: The Origin of It All, is to help bring that about to make it more negotiable, more user-friendly. This is not a dumbing-down exercise; this book is a reading aid, challenging enough in itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781426979286

Nicholas P. Snoek

Nicholas P. Snoek is a Dutch-Canadian with a philosophic bent, who immigrated into B.C. Canada in 1951, the oldest son in a family of eleven; took a year of theology at Univ. of Notre Dame in 1959; a BA with honors in English and French at UBC in 1963; was offered a philosophy of psychology professorship in 1967 but declined it, settling for a teaching certificate in 1968; taught first year philosophy and literature for some years, then worked five years in CA firm in B.C. then twenty years in management accounting in Ontario Canada. Discovered 'The Urantia Book’ in 1973, which has been his main preoccupation ever since. This is his fourth book, "teaching" it.

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URANTIA THE EARTH – THE ORIGIN OF IT ALL

Exploratory Journeys in the Urantia Book

Nicholas P. Snoek

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© Copyright 2011 Nicholas P. Snoek.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913734

Trafford rev. 08/08/2011

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Introduction

Down through the ages mankind has been favored with various revelations, and generally it has been a matter of where and when an individual lived, that determined what set of beliefs, based on what scripture; guided his conduct, decided his relationship with what kind of superior being(s), and settled for him his understanding of the cosmos and his position in time and space.

But now we live in a much smaller world, new technologies are helping us locate ourselves more securely on our tiny planet, and pinpoint with more and more verifiability where we fit in the relatively short time-span of our interlaced histories. The generation and communication of ever more and ever more objectively exact data is overwhelming in speed, scope, and accessibility.

We are no longer bound by accident of history; we are able to explore alternative narratives in free society. We do not need, we do not want, to depend on parents, on tribal leaders, on shamans of some power group, to tell us who we are, where we came from, or how we ought to be. We are free, free to decide for ourselves what is and what is not, what ought to be and what ought not to be.

That responsibility can be intimidating. Tuum est; it’s up to you. And how do you decide these things? What, if any, afterlife? What validation of better conduct? Here in the western world we resort to Judeo Christian rubrics, and they entail grave uncertainties, a lot of questions. Resorting to other cultures in other climes has generally failed to fulfill our hopes and expectations.

Beginning ca 1935, in the Chicago area of the United States, a portentous and fascinating new revelation took place, resulting in the publication in 1955 of a 2,100 page volume called The Urantia Book. And now, at the start of the year 2011, sales have reached about ¾ million world wide, in a growing number of translations. We first bought a copy in 1973. Took me about a month to read it.

The book is in four parts: 1. The Central and Superuniverses; 2. The Local Universe; 3. The History of Urantia (name used for planet Earth); and 4. The Life and Teachings of Jesus. It is a formidable read, and that, I believe, is the main reason it has not achieved a wider following. The style is expository, not exhortative; more scientific than pietistic; very matter of fact, as a matter of fact.

The question of moment: How do we assess, evaluate, authenticate this imposing tome? The science in it is stimulating, intriguing, suggestive, but presented in a sort of by-the-way style, just to facilitate the narrative. The burden is essentially the acceptance or not of a spiritual testament, and the UBook plainly grants that the existence of that realm is not a scientific question.

I offer the reader my assistance in this project. And who the hell, the reader says, are you – that I should be mindful of that offer? I owe some explanation. High school grad in Salmon Arm BC; Notre Dame College in Nelson BC one year; 4 years at UBC Vancouver, BA honors in English and teaching certificate. Taught 1st year English and Philosophy. Published author.

More specifically relevant were: philosophy, sciences, theology, linguistics, maths, languages, up to third year – fairly good background for textual criticism. However, this serves more to satisfy me, regarding questions of coherence, consistency, unity of approach and viewpoint, logical bases to asseveration, absence of any shrillness, emotionalism, or unseemly clamor.

Overall impact? It blew my socks off! Now, detailed discussion about these matters would annoy a reader to no end, so what I hope to accomplish in this journal is to make a presentation of The Urantia Book and its message from a philosophical and knowledge based standpoint such that the reader may be comfortable in recognizing that the revelation is immanently credible.

Caveat 1: There is an explicit warning in the UBook that its revelations not be used as an excuse to institute yet another religion – we already have too many! Caveat 2: It is stated plainly therein as well that the UBook, having suffered the hand and mind of man in its provenance, is NOT infallible! The metal in a leaden pipe will affect the water.

Those of you who need to look closely at the sourcing of a work of scripture in the hope of anchoring any assessment of its probity to dates, locations, and authenticated identification of persons, will be disappointed, as they will find none of these things. Positivists, be on holiday. Materialists, try humility. The messenger remains anonymous; It is the message that matters!

And now I can almost hear the voices raised in protest: The message is meaningless without the messenger! Therefore I must, I will, attempt to provide a sort of answer. What follows, then, is in two parts: the first a tiny slice of hard history; the second a parallel parable, a thought experiment. In both these stories it is the message that matters, pure and simple.

A) In the sixties, about twenty miles west of the city of Salmon Arm, B.C., Canada, lived a doughty dutch dairy farmer, Henk Schaafsma. His land sloped upwards to the east, and not far from the south property line was a major railway, where the trains contended with a steeper slope. Railway engineers were tasked with improving this situation and they decided to cut across Henk’s land.

Henk was not happy. He would be losing land. He would be moving cattle and machinery over a dangerous crossing. He went to see the legal eagles, and things became more complicated. Days came and went, weeks and then months loomed ominously. Soon the railway get-things-done man came and sat down with Henk, and explained this was not on, and something must be done.

Look Mr. Schaafsma, you know you’ll be getting over a million for this, and you know it’s going to happen, right? Henk nodded. Okay, we want to get down to business. We need to start, and we need to start NOW. Piss on legal contracts and writs and memos – that shit only puts on little white pieces of paper what is just a plain agreement. We put the line where it should be, and pay you.

Henk nods, but says We can’t go doing this without documentation! That’s not right and cannot be enforced in either direction. Mr do-it-now smiles, I’ve written up our agreement, and I’ll sign it if you will. Here’s two copies. Henk, being a plain speaking go getter himself, likes this man. Okay, I’m signing it, but if there’s any hanky panky, my sons and I will be looking for you!

The messenger did not matter.

B) A self made billionaire is developing his wide flung prize property. In a far corner he proposes a modestly sized self contained entertainment facility. The man is an eccentric, and the bidding contractor is well aware of the almost Howard Hughes style of personality he must deal with. I want all the wood in this building to come from one tree and only one, a giant redwood.

But Sir, that’s just not possible; they are protected, even guarded! A cough, and then I want to know the tree. I want to know the exact gps origin; I want careful and fully detailed photos of the setting, especially surrounding trees; I need to know its exact age at cutting time, and I need a filmed documentary of the whole operation, from chainsaw to finishing nails.

Sir, I am totally flabbergasted! I have to ask: Why? What is this for? Don’t make a fuss, man. It is for me and my family. Sweating uncomfortably, the contractor murmurs: It cannot be done, it just cannot be done. Mr billion chuckles. Three things: first, you will cost this out and I will pay you double; second, your name will be an integral part of the documentary; third…

Interrupting, the contractor exclaims: Sir, it will be done according to your word. The tree will make the building. Mr billion replies Good. By the fruits, not by the roots, we will know it.

The messenger did not matter.

Last thing before we start. What might be the best, most succinct statement of our objective?

Our prime objective, reminiscent of a burning bush, will be met if some of you may live a moment that could be described this way…

Today am I standing in the presence of a deep and holy mystery, which though I cannot fully understand, I must embrace!

UBook 1955, paper 1, p.27  As a reality in human spiritual experience God is not a mystery. But when an attempt is made to make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds of time and space.

Foreword

The work that follows was inspired by a suggestion from a managing director of The Urantia University*, to the effect that a course such as this, loosely styled Philosophy of Religion ¹, might be of great benefit to many students undertaking a program of studies in the teachings of The Urantia Book.

Logistics and Transfer Issues

First a memo as to delivery: This project started as notes to build a course of study from which a book would come, but in the doing this was reversed so now it has become a book from which a course should come. I may live so long.

On first looking into Nick’s Origin* (please note that an asterisk marks an item which will bear comment in the Glossary at the end of the book) and quickly flipping through the pages, prospective readers will quickly note that the bulk of the book consists primarily of quotations, except for two chapters which are almost entirely by his hand. As regards the two that stand apart, the reason is that there he is the author of the material, so therefore and therein should speak in his own voice.

A similar reason applies to the preponderance of direct quotations: he is not there the author, and, having great respect for the phraseology, the diction, and the writing style throughout the UBook*, it became more and more cogent as the work progressed, that it be allowed to come directly from the source. The obvious question then: why all that transcription? Why not just point to the book?

The reason is, the UBook is too big, too complex, too superabundant for many readers to handle with any comfort. There are 2,100 pages of daunting text from multiple authors who, being from various orders of spiritual ‘denomination,’ bring to their work viewpoints much larger in time and space than any heretofore familiar to us: they do not see events in time as we do – they see the before, the during, and the thereafter in a holistic manner that we can only dream of.

This capacity to regard in an almost wraparound view the implications and connections to related issues which would escape our human scope, often results in a style that many of us ordinary folk find confusing. We are used to a nice neat time line which parades past our placid gaze a series of events that are nicely beaded in a cause/effect concatenation so that we understand with little effort what happens why and how and when, and often as not, what will happen next. Some mystery writers, not doing this, give me a headache.

In the UBook the time and the timing as presented is all too often mixed together in what looks from our perspective like a muddled mess. Our apologies to the very many people who regard this revelation as in every jot and tittle sacrosanct – we cannot help it – we must call ‘em as we see ‘em.

Since our objective is to make the UBook more companionable to those who feel that discomfort, we have worked out a mode of presentation that should, first of all, follow a time line which starts from before time itself and ends after the life of Jesus, and secondly, proceed from simple to complex in the exploration of events and the meanings thereof by way of a philosophically didactic technique that will hopefully be helpful and more or less self-explanatory.

One consequence of this approach is that the quotations do not follow a tightly incremental pagination – the train of thought, the narration, (yes, the message), is the primary concern.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Bibliography

Glossary of Names And Terms to Ponder

Unit A

Section One

Chapter 1

God the Father of the All ²

The Eternal Son and the Isle of Paradise*

The Conjoint Actor* and Havona*, and 21 sacred spheres

Initiant Creation

Think Back and Back, and Back and Back unto Before

The before of what we practice to call Time, beneath-

above-within the helix of eternal nowhere,

As nowhen Father–Infinite–I AM, in one stupendous

Mission fathers forth the bifurcating Isle

Of Paradise forever still, with Son of love Eternal.

Again think back and back, unto the no-time in

Eternity, as SonFather Universal of

Us all, in parturearing nova fell enbirths

A billion burning orbs, eventuating thus

The Pattern and perfected Universe Havona

In twinsome co-ord with the Spirit Infinite.

© Nicholas Peter Snoek

20 Nov 2010

How’s that for a cold shower?

Let me introduce myself. My name is Nicholas P. Snoek. I am an old longhaired 6’ 2 with eyes of blue Dutch-Canadian who lived a few miles from Amsterdam in Holland for 10 years; in Canada for 30 years in British Columbia, and another 30 in Ontario, so far.

The long hair? A belated nod to the 60s, which I could not take very seriously, being a stranger to peer pressure. Attaching great value to a clear mind, I still have not suffered any sort of hangover, so my brain is something of a virgin, the rest of me, not so much.

My formal education was heavy in the sciences at first, then literature. Strange to say literature led into philosophy, religious and secular.

The Urantia Book, or UBook, has been part of my life since 1973. I was a Christian before that but with reservations. Now I’m even more of a Christian, without reservations. There, that should do, for my background.

A couple of ground rules.

1. I tend to speak the way I think. That may entail my using the odd word not familiar to some of you. When this happens please do not let it pass – if you want clarification ask me for it and I will rephrase as best I can.

2. The course outline is for the purpose of guiding our progress, not for clamping in the content of our sessions – a section is not necessarily a session, and as we go we may find it helpful to change direction now and again.

3. Philosophy courses tend to fall into two types, of which the more common treats philosophical questions in a reporting fashion. The other comes closer to actually doing philosophy, of struggling with issues and trying to make sense of them. We will attempt to chart this course within the latter style.

4. Those of you who have read the UBook may have noticed that the sequence of presentation is not easily grasped, other than the general direction being from the remotest past to the time of writing (1930 to 1950.) We propose to start at the center of things, or Paradise, and work our way out from there in a conventional time line till we cover the life of Jesus on earth, with explication as seems meet. This will result in the page numbering of quotations being only roughly incremental as we proceed, with our apologies.

Quick hint to those of you with a smartphone: on mine I was able to install an app* called Big Blue Book.³ It is the complete text of the Urantia Book, and it offers you a range of languages including English, French, German, and Italian. That would give you something to do when you have to wait a while for the rest of the world to catch up with you.

What do we hope to accomplish, in this course?

Our objective should be, I think, for each of us to become to the greatest extent possible, comfortable in our understanding of the essentials of The Urantia Book.

To put it another way; for us all to have a neat and clear eye-map of the UBook world: to make of it a familiar and a friendly country, capped with a clear blue sky.

We do not recommend it, but for those to whom the UBook itself is just too much to read in its entirety, reading what we here present, plus the advised reading indicated at the end of each chapter, will convey the essentials of the Fifth Revelation. And of course, that much is hugely better than none at all.

Clarity is of the essence in philosophy. In the branch of it called metaphysics that goal can be elusive – some of you will have noticed that the little poem I started with is in a metaphysical vein.

Why the poetry? The muddled mind of man gets mystified when it comes to the ineffability of eternity-infinity.⁴ ⁵ Poetry’s plaintive woodwinds wild may help.

Let’s have a closer look.

Those of you who have pondered this sort of thing will know that before the before of time, when no thing moved, there was no time (or, in the only phraseology that seems to work, there IS no time.⁶) Revelation leads us in this difficulty, by presenting God the Father as the I AM, and in the dictum of Jesus when he said: ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’

Time obtains when at least one thing changes. If there is no moving or changing thing, there is no time, since time is a measure of motion or change.

The Psychology of Consciousness, by Robert E. Ornstein; Penguin Books; W.H. Freeman & Co., © 1972 p. 103 If we can understand that ‘duration’ is only one possible way to construct a dimension of ordinary consciousness, not a sensory process reflecting a ‘Real’ time existing independently of ourselves, then we can make some sense of the vast confusion in psychological research on time…

And those who have grappled with the absolutes of situation in a place, will know that if there are no two things, in the before the before of time, there was no space (or as above, there IS no space.)

Space obtains when two things have a situational relation to each other, since space is a measurable determinant of location. More on this later.

Some of you will now be thinking: when the Isle of Paradise successfully eventuated, was that not a thing, and did it not have a place in space? And even more to the point, as Havona eventuating, wraps itself around the Isle would not the two creations in their relative positioning give rise to space and time? UB55,8,1,1 p90 ⁷

We’re fooling here with matters that may be a bit beyond us.

In the UBook we are told that the Isle of Paradise is the only instance in the all of all, the only part, that does not move. More to the point: On Paradise, time and space are nonexistent. ⁸

UB55,11,2,10 p120 ⁹ Paradise exists without time and has no location in space ¹⁰ And in regard to Havona, the UBook tells us, time and space increasingly dissolve as one approaches the center of All.

A handy Dutch word comes to mind, which is heelal*, ‘h-e-e-l-a-l’ and it means the whole of everything – why don’t we have that in English? It is succinct and clear, and after reading the UBook, with its multiple reference variants for ‘universe’ I hereby offer ‘heelal’ to you, no charge. Other than your forbearance in allowing me to resort to it now and again.

Of course at this point we’re just setting up a stage of operations. We will explore the notions of time and space more formally in a later section.

We have something else here to contend with, which is: how do the three Persons of the Trinity fare in this matter of time-space, and movement or no?

The UBook tells us that all three abide atop the Isle of Paradise, and do not ever leave it. They are, all three, beyond or outside of, time and space. And so it seems that the creation of all that followed the central universe was also creation ex nihilo, out of nothing.

The Hebrew chroniclers had no trouble with Jehovah making things from scratch, but the Greek philosophers, like our Johnny-come-lately empirical positivists ¹¹ (Positivism. The name given to the philosophical position… that all genuine human knowledge is contained within the boundaries of science… Whatever questions cannot be answered by scientific methods we must be content to leave permanently unanswered.) could not countenance the making of something from nothing. It had not yet occurred to those Greeks that the possibility or no would have a lot to do with the nature of the one doing the making. The positivist scientists have a different set of blinders, to wit, a program which, taken to the extreme, confines reality to the measurable – if you cannot weigh it or measure it, it does not exist. A ‘sophisticated’ ignorance! A pound of tolerance, please.

To conceptualize the ex nihilo, we resort to something other than poetry. For as long as I can remember, I have metaphored the creation of something out of nothing, as the taking of the whole of nothing and tearing it into a plus and a minus (a bit like matter and antimatter,) which, should you add them back together, would total to the nothing that you started with. It is basic arithmetic: 1 plus minus1=0, or nothing. (Being basically humble, I do not hold that my inability to do so would in any way curtail the proclivities of those much greater than I.)

Does that not adumbrate somewhat the praxis of the two pairings: Paradise with God the Eternal Son; and Havona with God the Infinite Spirit? Although on the face of it, how the pluses and minuses allocate, I cannot begin to fathom.

However, a clue is available: see …

UB55,11,9,3 p127. In the eternity of the past, when the Universal Father* gave infinite personality expression of his spirit self in the being of the Eternal Son*, simultaneously he revealed the infinity potential of his nonpersonal self as Paradise. Nonpersonal and nonspiritual Paradise appears to have been the inevitable repercussion to the Father’s will and act which eternalized the Original Son. Thus did the Father project reality in two actual phases — the personal and the nonpersonal, the spiritual and the nonspiritual. The tension between them, in the face of will to action by the Father and the Son, gave existence to the Conjoint Actor* and the central universe of material worlds and spiritual beings. ¹²

This one might take to suggest that in the initial act the Eternal Son is the positive and Paradise the negative, and in the other one it would be the Infinite Spirit that is the positive, and Havona the negative.

Some of the more literal-minded among you will be having a bit of indigestion about this idea of doing things with nothing. Especially, perhaps, those who have not had any success in writing poetry, or creating from scratch some other type of art.

There is a quotation in a little book called Theories of Everything by John D. Barrow, and it goes like this: Nothing. Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of a mystical or existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic. ¹³

But even in what a lot of you would regard as a much less enlightened age, a writer of the 1600s, one Lord John Wilmot, wrote a poem called Upon Nothing, from which I offer you this small extract:

"Nothing…

That hadst a being ere the world was made…

Ere time and place were, time and place were not,

When primitive Nothing Something straight begot…

Something, the general attribute of all,

Severed from thee, its sole original…" ¹⁴

So he had some insight, don’t you think? And it may be the case that it was this John who lived in a more enlightened age.

With your indulgence, one more something about nothing…

The Mind of the Maker, ©1941 by Dorothy L. Sayers; pub. Harper Collins NY 1979 p. 98 ‘Being we can make a shift to understand, but what is not-being? If we propose to ourselves to think about nothing, we find we have engaged in a very difficult exercise… Nothing seems to remain nothing only as long as we refrain from thinking about it; any active thought is apt to turn it into a sort of something – it acquires, in fact, precisely that vague and disquieting sort of reality that we are accustomed to associate with the minus signs in algebra.’ ¹⁵

I have two friends each of whom would say, on being confronted with all this stuff I’ve thrown at you: How do you know? Can you prove that?

And to them, and any of you who take the same stance, I must say NO, I cannot prove that. But I do know it, beyond what I consider any reasonable doubt. And I know it the same way I know that grass is green, baseball bats are hard, and books are heavy. These things I know, as do we all, from experience.

Knowledge of this kind comes from a convergence of probabilities, and yes, I’m well aware that the reasoning in these matters is inductive. However, it works well enough, it serves; it gives us a knowledge of the kind that allows us the use of working propositions. Why be a stickler, and ask for more than that?

Asking for dead certainty seems arrogant and unreasonable. If precocious paragons of learning like David Hume can find no satisfaction in anything less than 100% certainty, that’s just too bad, too bad for them. The rest of us can get along quite well with 90 or 95% certitude, especially since it opens up for us a much, much larger heelal (the whole of everything.)

And we’ve always got Karl Popper’s falsifiability or negative testing to fall back on. Perhaps that doesn’t ring a bell with some of you. The negative test I’m thinking of here is whether or not a claim, scientific or otherwise, can withstand an attempt to prove it is NOT so. That’s often simpler than the other way around, and hence more efficient. We can leave the positive testing to the empiricists. I for one could never see the need for dead certainty. Not for us merely mortals.

Man and the Universe: The Philosophers of Science; ed. Saxe Commins & R.N. Linscott; Washington Square Press, NY; ©1947 by Random House, Inc.: Some Problems of Philosophy by Sir James Jeans p. 370-1 In real science also a hypothesis can never be proved true. If it is negatived by future observations we shall know it is wrong, but if future observations confirm it we shall never be able to say it is right, since it will always be at the mercy of still further observations.

Certain knowledge is… equally beyond our reach in most departments of life. Oftener than not, we cannot wait for certain knowledge, but order our affairs in the light of probabilities. There is no reason why we should not do the same in our efforts to understand the universe, provided we always bear in mind that we are discussing probabilities and not certainties. ¹⁶

Another key concern, in this first leg of our traveling together, is the validity of the inspiration of scripture. It has been typically alleged, by the adherents of many faiths, that their Scripture is the inspired and infallible, the literal and self-revelatory, word of God.

Many Christians present a paradigmatic instance of this claim. From biblical scholarship, however, we hear a counterclaim, and it is almost a consensus, namely, that no scripture is infallible: that the very proposition is not rational. Between any utterance divine and our wondering mind receiving, is always the fallible human channel. The metal in lead piping will affect the water.

What evidence would be helpful in this? The Christian fundamentalist points to the Bible, saying: It is our very touchstone of truth, and in its pages are many evidentiary passages about its inspiration, and about its being the Word of God.

Well, that pretty much puts it in the domain of faith; you believe it or you do not.

The discussion in the UBook between Jesus and Nathaniel in Paper 159, Section 4, ¹⁷ is helpful. The point is made that any chronicler of The Collected Books is writing from a unique and culture bound perspective, portraying God as apprehended in that context and by that person.

Come to that, the UBook is a refreshing instance of a work of scripture or revelation which makes no claim to be infallible. It is an expository narrative in its essentials, as best those who are knowledgeable may know it, and as best they can convey it to the material minded mortals of this realm.

Nonetheless, I must confess to you that when I first read the UBook in 1973 I was strongly tempted to ascribe to it the very infallibility I could no longer accept for other scriptures – I was that delighted with it. I had to content myself with the acknowledgement that as far as I could determine, it is in faith the very best revelation we have had access to so far.

The Sacred Spheres of Paradise

Okay, back to our developing picture of the cosmos.

Between Paradise and Havona are three concentric circling rings of seven colossal spheres each. Innermost are the seven secret spheres of the Universal Father; outside of those are the seven luminous worlds of the Eternal Son; and outermost are the seven immense globes of the Infinite Spirit.

An important fact about this centrum is that before the beginning of spacetime there was no sequencing of ‘events’: the Trinity; the Isle of Paradise; the twenty-one sacred spheres; the perfect billion sphere universe of Havona – always were, always ARE, in eternity. The sequential presentation in the UBook revelation is a concession to the timefettered spacecloistered matterlocked mind of mortal man. Midnight oilers risk the composure of their senses, trying to understand these things. Cantor and Goedel suffered impairment, trying to comprehend infinity. So don’t bang your heads against these walls too hard; injury to the brain will normally impair the workings of the mind.

Before we delve a bit deeper, let’s consider for a moment why the three rings of sacred spheres consist of seven in each case – why not five or ten, and why not more for the Father, or fewer for the Spirit. Much of human civilization has accepted the simplicity, the mathematical ease, of a decimal system. Could the heelal possibly be organized according to some imperial measure?

No, we have to look further, or higher. We find the number seven in the most surprising places, not necessarily spirit related: like the seven crystalline configurations; or most intriguing, a sevenfold repetition of pattern in the periodic table of elements¹⁸. There are certainly others, just now beyond our ken.

There are seven ways the three persons of the Trinity can express their joint and several powers in creative action: to wit – 1. the Father Person alone; 2. the Son Person alone; 3. the Spirit Person alone; 4. the Father-Son pair jointly; 5. the Father-Spirit pair jointly; 6. the Son-Spirit pair jointly; and 7. the Father-Son-Spirit trinity in unison.¹⁹

UB55,10,2,8 p110 They not only act personally and collectively, but… they also co-ordinate their performances in various groupings, so that in the end they function in seven different singular and plural capacities. And since these seven associations exhaust the possibilities for such divinity combination, it is inevitable that the realities of the universe shall appear in seven variations of values, meanings, and personality.

UB55,13,0,3 p143 The seven secret spheres of the Universal Father, circulating about Paradise in close proximity to the eternal Isle, are highly reflective of the spiritual luminosity of the central shining of the eternal Deities, shedding this light of divine glory throughout Paradise and even upon the seven circuits of Havona.

As you may have suspected, the seven spheres embody the seven modes of action of the persons of the Trinity, so the first portrays the Father-God, the second the Son-God, and so on to the seventh reflecting the Trinity-God.

UB55,13,0,4 p143 On the seven sacred worlds of the Eternal Son there appear to take origin the impersonal energies of spirit luminosity. No personal being may sojourn on any of these seven shining realms. With spiritual glory they illuminate all Paradise and Havona, and they directionize pure spirit luminosity to the seven superuniverses. These brilliant spheres of the second circuit likewise emit their light (light without heat) to Paradise and to the billion worlds of the seven-circuited central universe.

The Seven Worlds of the Spirit, and

the Master Spirits …

UB55,13,0,5 p143 The seven worlds of the Infinite Spirit are occupied by the Seven Master Spirits, who preside over the destinies of the seven superuniverses, sending forth the spiritual illumination of the Third Person of Deity to these creations of time and space. And all Havona, but not the Isle of Paradise, is bathed in these spiritualizing influences.

UB55,13,4,2 p150 The Seven Master Spirits are the supreme and ultimate representatives of the Infinite Spirit. They maintain their personal stations, their power focuses, on the periphery of Paradise, but all operations concerned with their management and direction of the grand universe are conducted on and from these seven special executive spheres of the Infinite Spirit. The Seven Master Spirits are, in reality, the mind-spirit balance wheel of the universe of universes, an all-embracing, all-encompassing, and all-co-ordinating power of central location. From these seven special spheres the Master Spirits operate to equalize and stabilize the cosmic-mind circuits of the grand universe. They also have to do with the differential spiritual attitude and presence of the Deities throughout the grand universe. Physical reactions are uniform, unvarying, and always instantaneous and automatic. But experiential spiritual presence is in accordance with the underlying conditions or states of spiritual receptivity inherent in the individual minds of the realms.

UB55,13,4,6 p150 The executive abodes of the Seven Master Spirits are, in reality, the Paradise headquarters of the seven superuniverses and their correlated segments in outer space. Each Master Spirit presides over one superuniverse, and each of these seven worlds is exclusively assigned to one of the Master Spirits. There is literally no phase of the sub-Paradise administration of the seven superuniverses which is not provided for on these executive worlds.

UB55,16,0,1 p184 The Seven Master Spirits of Paradise are the primary personalities of the Infinite Spirit. In this sevenfold creative act of self-duplication the Infinite Spirit exhausted the associative possibilities mathematically inherent in the factual existence of the three persons of Deity. Had it been possible to produce a larger number of Master Spirits, they would have been created, but there are just seven associative possibilities, and only seven, inherent in three Deities. And this explains why the universe is operated in seven grand divisions, and why the number seven is basically fundamental in its organization and administration.

UB55,16,0,5 p184 The Master Spirits have many functions, but at the present time their particular domain is the central supervision of the seven superuniverses. Each Master Spirit maintains an enormous force-focal headquarters, which slowly circulates around the periphery of Paradise, always maintaining a position opposite the superuniverse of immediate supervision and at the Paradise focal point of its specialized power control and segmental energy distribution. The radial boundary lines of any one of the superuniverses do actually converge at the Paradise headquarters of the supervising Master Spirit.

UB55,16,3,1 p186 The Seven Master Spirits* are indescribable beings, but they are distinctly and definitely personal. They have names, but we elect to introduce them by number. As primary personalizations of the Infinite Spirit, they are akin, but as primary expressions of the seven possible associations of triune Deity, they are essentially diverse in nature, and this diversity of nature determines their differential of superuniverse conduct.

UB55,16,4,3 p189 The Seven Master Spirits are the creators of the Universe Power Directors and their associates, entities who are indispensable to the organization, control, and regulation of the physical energies of the grand universe. And these same Master Spirits very materially assist the Creator Sons in the work of shaping and organizing the local universes.

Unquestionably, when we encounter the functional activities of the various Morontia Power Supervisors, we are face to face with certain of the unrevealed activities of the Master Spirits. Who, aside from these ancestors of both physical controllers and spirit ministers, could have contrived so to combine and associate material and spiritual energies as to produce a hitherto nonexistent phase of universe reality — morontia substance and morontia mind?

Much of the reality of the spiritual worlds is of the morontia order, a phase of universe reality wholly unknown on Urantia. The goal of personality existence is spiritual, but the morontia creations always intervene, bridging the gulf between the material realms of mortal origin and the superuniverse spheres of advancing spiritual status. It is in this realm that the Master Spirits make their great contribution to the plan of man’s Paradise ascension.

Master Spirit Number Seven

UB,55,16,3,14 p188   The presiding Spirit of the seventh superuniverse is a uniquely equal portrayal of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit.

The Seventh Master Spirit discloses a personal and organic relationship to the spirit person of the evolving Supreme. Therefore in the Master Spirit councils on high, when it becomes necessary to cast the ballot for the combined personal attitude of the Father, Son, and Spirit or to depict the spiritual attitude of the Supreme Being, it is Master Spirit Number Seven who functions. He thus inherently becomes the presiding head of the Paradise council of the Seven Master Spirits.

UB55,16,4,8 p190 "It is highly probable, though we cannot offer definite proof, that the Master Spirit of Orvonton exerts a decided influence in the following spheres of activity:

1. The life-initiation procedures of the local universe Life Carriers.

2. The life activations of the adjutant mind-spirits bestowed upon the worlds by a local universe Creative Spirit.

3. The fluctuations in energy manifestations exhibited by the linear-gravity-responding units of organized matter.

4. The behavior of emergent energy when fully liberated from the grasp of the Unqualified Absolute, thus becoming responsive to the direct influence of linear gravity and to the manipulations of the Universe Power Directors and their associates.

5. The bestowal of the ministry spirit of a local universe Creative Spirit, known on Urantia as the Holy Spirit.

6. The subsequent bestowal of the spirit of the bestowal Sons, on Urantia called the Comforter or the Spirit of Truth.

7. The reflectivity mechanism of the local universes and the superuniverse…"

A-1 Synopsis

We started this first chapter by introducing mentor-me, and quickly ran through some guidelines. We sincerely hope our stated objective, that we all might become more familiar and more comfortable with the UBook as a whole, may already seem like an achievable goal.

We confessed to some struggles with the difficulties we lowly mortals have in trying to get some understanding of eternity, infinity, and spirituality. We live in a culture that is, still, depressingly materialistic, and for some of you imbued with that inclination, it may constitute a serious challenge. As we mentioned in the introduction, we would be most gratified if our working together may do even a little to counteract the influence.

In reviewing the creation of Paradise and the perfect universe of Havona, we just touched on the nature of time and space, and how the sequence of events type of presentation is really a concession to our limited ability to conceptualize ‘events’ that in some mysterious way ‘happened’ (but not really, not as we understand that term) outside of time. Similar situation, of course, with God the Father’s trinitization. We can only stumble around such mysteries; and can do little more than accept them on faith.

We briefly touched on the idea of creation ex nihilo, ripping nothing into plus and minus (like matter and antimatter), and Bob’s your uncle. Sorry.

We also took cognizance of the pronouncement that scripture, insofar as it

Reviews for Urantia the Earth-The Origin of It All

[uncklebuck1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

for those seeking,,,,,a piece of the puzzel. oh yes not for the asleep .