Urantia Papers - Thoughts

I got this piece from a much longer piece over at www.Viewpoint.com  It provides a decent report on what are known as the Urantia Papers that were transcribed during the thirties.  There are two such documental transcriptions that I am aware of and they were produced during the same era.  Likely the one informed the application of the other. 

In both cases we have an individual who in a state of unconsciousness communicates a great deal of alternative information.  In both cases, we have thousands of pages of material.  In both cases the seriousness of the witnesses and reporters cannot be minimized.

Of course, the two sources are Edgar Cayce and the source of the Urantia Papers.

In both cases, the material is generally free of useful evidentiary keys but still provide a fairly self consistent narrative without glaring internal conflicts in the reports. 

So what can we make of all this?

First, we can respect the scientific rigor in which the material was collected.  That is why it is possible to take the material seriously in its own right.  They may still prove to be an act of auto imagination and largely informed by the subject’s prior knowledge, though this appears unlikely.

Recall the historic transcription of the Book of Mormon and we see something very much akin to this work.  It also makes one wonder if similar work has not been passed down to us without the label.  After all, is that not what the Koran is claiming?

It is also reasonable to assume other such subjects have arisen before and since without attracting the necessary support.  People have to believe in prophets before they begin to transcribe material.

What I find particularly confounding is the sheer extent of material proffered.  It overwhelms the mind with detail.  However low your confidence may be, it is hard not to respect the sheer volume and to note that there is not too much discernable as outright hooey.

In Cayce’s case he seemed to access knowledge that was intact on Earth in the here and now.  If the knowledge did not exist, he did not create it.  Yet if the knowledge existed, he made apparently remarkable hits.  That included finding a body or two and specific product in strange places.

His reconstruction of past eras, described as Atlantis and Mu for want of a better word is no more implausible than other extant ideas, and I am finding them not in conflict with some of my findings that are possibly even more radical.  Our difficulty is our lack of useful reference points that could secure the histories easily.  We have determined a real historical Atlantis and now understand Bimini in our postings.  This is about as close as we may get to Cayce.

The Urantia papers are quite another matter.  Now we have no reference points at all and do not actually know what the word universe means in these communications just to begin with.  It does not get much better.

What is real is the claim that life exists external to our Earth and that they take an interest in our progress.  We knew that already, particularly if you are reading this.  The evidence of these reports suggests that plenty is been lost in translation.

I think the best advice is to read this all as an exercise in Science Fiction, not that it may or may not be such, but because it is worthwhile taking what you can from it.  Does it promote a testable conjecture?  Good luck!

The Origins of Alien & Human Races

The Urantia Papers – Gary Vey

http://www.viewzone.com/event11.html

I once travelled with a blond haired woman (no, she wasn't tall) to China. In some of the smaller villages the children -- and some adults -- surrounded us and wanted to touch her hair. For most, it was the first time they had seen hair that was not black. Humans are curious people and part of our fascination with aliens is that, despite being human-like, they look so different from us.

While there are many discussions and revelations about the appearance of aliens, I have found no better explanation and analysis of this subject that those in a curious text called the Urantia Papers.

The Urantia Papers are a collection of transcribed sessions with extraterrestrial entities, mostly non-material, which describe the structure and organization of the Universe, it's various races and political structure as well as a detailed history of the creation and evolution of humans.

Although they were written sometime before 1932, I first became aware of the Urantia Papers in 1971. Over the years I have read and re-read the material and always find it both comprehensive and thorough in its concept. In 1975 I was fortunate to have met and interviewed Emma Christensen, who was present during the transfer of knowledge and actually transcribed most of the material from its sources. I will try to recall my conversation with her to explain what I learned about the origins of this remarkable collection of information. Some of the minor details may be incorrect, but the actual story was unforgettable.

Prohibition, Kellogg Cornflakes & Eugenics

From 1920 through 1933 there was a ban on alcoholic beverages in the United States. Called "Prohibition", the laws were difficult to enforce and stimulated an underground market for clandestine "booze" and was a boon to organized crime. While the ordinary worker could hardly afford to get drunk, the upper classes partied with imported alcohol and soon began to suffer the consequences of overindulgence.

Alcoholism usually culminates in a deficiency of thiamine, or vitamin B1. Symptoms of this deficiency appear as tremors, delirium and other nervous system problems. These medical problems were common among the rich and famous of the late 20s and early 30s and were treated in mental hygiene clinics where the patients were fed thiamine-rich grains, such as corn. The most popular clinics of this type were run by the Post and Kellogg families in the Midwest.

The founder of the Kellogg business was a philanthropist named John Kellogg. He and his wife took care of many orphan children, sometimes legally adopting them and often not. But most of the children were well cared for and inherited the family name. One of these children was Wilfred Kellogg.

We know very little about Wilfred other than the fact that he was not well schooled and suffered from some mental peculiarities. John Kellogg sought help for Wilfred from a well known Mental Hygiene specialist in Chicago, Dr. William Sadler, who was married to his sister, Lena Kellogg Sadler, a prominent surgeon. As the story is told, Wilfred suffered from "spells" during which he would speak in a different voice and use language that apparently made no sense. Dr. Sadler was asked to intervene as a favor to the family.

According to Emma Christensen, Wilfred appeared normal when he was not having these spells, albeit he was lacking in education and schooling. But once in the office of Dr. Sadler and frequently in Wilfred's bedroom as he slept, he had his piculiar spells and began to talk in a different voice, using excellent grammar and vocabulary -- much to the surprise of his observers.

Wilfred and Dr. Sadler had many conversations covering a myriad of topics which included science, philosophy and religion. Dr. Sadler attempted to explore the depth and scope of this "sleeping subject" and soon enlisted the assistance of other intellectuals, fluent is various disciplines and sciences, to query Wilfred during these spells. It should be mentioned that when Wilfred came out of these states he was totally ignorant of what had transpired and resumed his normal consciousness.

Eventually there were many dozens of observers who were studying Wilfred. They would question him about such matters as physics, history, biology and astronomy and verified that his knowledge of these topics was complete and even futuristic. It was about this time that "Christy" (Emma Christensen), Dr. Sadler's adopted daughter and stenographer, was asked to transcribe the various inquisitions. Then it happened.

Suddenly Wilfred, during a spell, announced that he had something urgent to say and that it was to be transcribed for humanity. Subsequently Christy transcribed each session in which a different entity would speak through Wilfred on a variety of organized topics. These transcripts became the individual Urantia Papers -- Urantia being the name of planet Earth in the Universal language.

Once Wilfred had completed his mission he was cured of his spells and went on to get married and maintained a job in the Kellogg company. His involvement with the delivery of the papers was kept secret both to protect him from harassment and with the sincere belief that it was not he, Wilfred, who originated the papers.

Recently there has been some controversy about whether Wilfred was the actual "sleeping subject". All I can say is the above story was told to me by Emma Christensen in 1975. I figured she ought to have known and had no reason to deceive me. Anyway, it's a good story.

Much of the material in the Urantia Papers contains an underlying theme of genetics, on the part of the originators of human life on the planet and also in the deterioration of the human gene pool. Often there are subtle warnings about allowing the inferior humans to multiply. This theme was obviously carried by Dr. Lena Kellogg Sadler, the wife of Dr. William Sadler, who became a spokesperson for the popular eugenics movement in America.

As a fellow member of the American College of Sugeons and director of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs, Dr. Lena Kellogg Sadler made a famous speech in which she suggested that the mentally inferior humans should be sterilized and confined to work camps where they would be successfully removed from the gene pool. The wealthy and prosperous people with successful genes were encouraged to have many children and "uplift" the human gene pool. Some articles of the era even suggested that corn flakes were developed as a kind of economical "feed" for the individuals confined to these camps. Although this sounds shocking now, and reminiscent of Nazi Germany, it was once an idea that was gaining ground in the early American society.

Universe Organization

According to the Urantia Papers the material universe is finite and has a central abode of enormous proportions which serves as the gravitational stabilizer and headquarters of deity. The geography of suns and planets are divided into seven huge wheels called SuperUniverses [see below], which contain galaxies, local universes and individual solar systems with inhabited planets.

There is also a government of sorts, albeit spiritual, and each local universe is ruled by a System Sovereign who designs life, coordinates its implementation and evolution and then tests it by becoming incarnate as various creatures of his local universe realm. In the discourse of the Urantia Papers this Sovereign was Jesus and his incarnation as a human -- the lowest sentient form of life in his Local Universe repertoire -- was the final test, after which he could claim authority to rule over his creation.

In the papers we are told that there are as many as 100,000 System Sovereigns in our SuperUniverse. Each represents a portion of the universe where suns and planets have been materialized, and a specific pattern of life forms has been established -- both material and spiritual.

Urantia, the name of our planet, is classified as an experimental world where dramatic adjustments to the standard genetic code is implemented. Every tenth planet is so designated. Our experiment was designed to speed up the appearance of various human races which usually evolve in succession over many millennia. The result was quite unexpected in that several different racial types appeared suddenly and had to learn to coexist, resulting in competition and aggression. The situation was further complicated when some unauthorized blending took place between non-terrestrial beings and the human population, causing a race of superior beings midway between human and spirit. It was because of these mishaps that the System Sovereign chose Urantia as the planet to incarnate as a homo sapiens sapiens.

The Raison d'etre of life

One of the strong points of the Urantia revelations is there very understandable explanation for the critical questions: Why is there life? and What's it all about? From the perspective of a human being it is to exist beyond material death to serve in future assignments for the benefit of deity.

Humans have minds which constantly struggle, learn and adjust to their environment in an effort to survive and thrive. The patterns of survival become part of the mind itself and are known to the sentient human and his associates as personality. This is the ego, the self with which we identify. But because this phenomenon is organically based, it ceases to exist when the material body dies.

The Urantia Papers propose that there also exists a fragment of the Creator -- a pure spirit -- which, because it has no environmental challenges, has no personality. They call this entity the Thought Adjuster and it is similar to our concept of "soul". The goal of human existence is then to transfer our personality to the Adjuster so that we can survive physical death and continue eternity in the Universe as personalized spirits. This is achieved by living according to patterns of behavior and thought which make our personality compatible with the evolving personality of the Creator.

If we achieve fusion with our Adjuster we will be assigned to other duties in the realm -- perhaps serving as guardians for other material beings who are attempting to fuse. The whole scheme of life is devoted to serving the Creator and helping to evolve the grand personality of the Creator spirit -- in essence, making the word become flesh.

Urantia, we have a problem!

We are told that not all of the higher spirits were comfortable with this scheme. A group dared to question the benefit of expending so much effort to help mortals to evolve into personalized spirits. They claimed that it seemed to be futile as no one had ever been able to visualize the final goal of this continuous evolution. They suggested that mortals should not even attempt fusion but should enjoy their temporal lives.

There was more to their rejection of the Adjuster fusion scheme, but the result was the same -- a rebellion against the authority of the System Sovereign which attracted many personalized spiritual entities on many inhabited worlds, including Urantia.

One of the impressive spirits that joined the rebellion was stationed on our planet and, as a result of this treason, our world and the neighboring inhabited planets was quarantined from the rest of the local universe. This is why we know little or nothing of the local universe, inhabited worlds or spiritual authorities and have been left to wade through our ignorance.

This also explains the phenomenon of evil. Since the rebels' aim is to thwart mortal fusion with the Adjuster spirit, various forms of distracting behavior -- appealing to our mortal and animal instincts -- is their forté. This would explain the promotion of war, violence, pornography, lust, racial hatred and materialism that we see endemic in our culture. These can all be traced back to the rebels and their human associates who have exchanged eternal service in favor of mortal rewards. These human associates do not believe in an afterlife and have positioned themselves in control of human finance, information and politics. They are the personification of evil.

It appears that within the quarantined section of the local universe certain neighboring planets have been able to establish communication and travel. This may account for the alien visitors and vehicles we observe. Because they are also inhabited by rebels, their intentions may not always be good. The Urantia Papers give some detailed descriptions of what some of these other life forms are like.

Other people, other worlds

"ALL mortal-inhabited worlds are evolutionary in origin and nature. These spheres are the spawning ground, the evolutionary cradle, of the mortal races of time and space. Each unit of the ascendant life is a veritable training school for the stage of existence just ahead..."

"All inhabited worlds are basically grouped for celestial administration into the local systems, and each of these local systems is limited to about one thousand evolutionary worlds..."

"Not all planets are suited to harbor mortal life. Small ones having a high rate of axial revolution are wholly unsuited for life habitats. In several of the physical systems of Satania the planets revolving around the central sun are too large for habitation, their great mass occasioning oppressive gravity. Many of these enormous spheres have satellites, sometimes a half dozen or more, and these moons are often in size very near that of Urantia, so that they are almost ideal for habitation."

"The biologic unit of material life is the protoplasmic cell, the communal association of chemical, electrical, and other basic energies. The chemical formulas differ in each system, and the technique of living cell reproduction is slightly different in each local universe, but the Life Carriers are always the living catalyzers who initiate the primordial reactions of material life; they are the instigators of the energy circuits of living matter." --from Paper #49

Our Local Universe contains seven types of sentient, mortal beings (with many variants) organized as follows:

1. The atmospheric types. The physical differences of the aliens are determined mainly by the nature of the atmosphere. The atmospheric currently on Earth is ideal for the support of the breathing type of human type of being. Other planets can also support the breathing types with physical adjustments to support superbreathers and sub-breathers, depending on their atmosphere.

In our local universe about two and one-half per cent are sub-breathers, about five per cent superbreathers, and over ninety-one per cent are mid-breathers like us. (If intelligent creatures existed on Venus, they would belong to the superbreather group, while those inhabiting Mars, would be subbreathers.)

If mortals inhabited a planet with no air, like the Moon, they would belong to the separate order of nonbreathers, and they are very rare.

2. The elemental types. These differentiations have to do with the relation of mortals to water, air, and land. There are four distinct species of intelligent life as they are related to these different habitats. Our human race is of the land order.

On some worlds the evolving mortals begin life and remain in the water instead of venturing on to the land. In other worlds it is possible, because of the density of their atmosphere, to navigate in the air. In the local universe, seven per cent are water, ten per cent air, seventy per cent land, and thirteen per cent combined land-and-air types.

3. The gravity types. Mortal beings can evolve and adapt to function on spheres both smaller and larger than Earth. Beings therefore vary in size and height. Some are only 30 inches in height while others are over 10 feet. The average in our local universe is about 7 feet tall.

4. The temperature types. Mortal beings can evolve to withstand temperatures much hotter and much colder than the what we experience on Earth. In our local universe, twelve percent belong to the higher temperature ranges, eighteen per cent to the lower ranges. The rest are in the mid-temperature group like us.

5. The electric types. The electro-magnetic, and electronic behavior on the inhabited worlds varies greatly. "There are ten designs of mortal life variously fashioned to withstand the differential energy of the spheres. These ten varieties also react in slightly different ways to the chemical rays of ordinary sunlight. But these slight physical variations in no way affect the intellectual or the spiritual life."

6. The energizing types. Not all worlds are alike in the manner of taking in and using energy. Some worlds do not have an atmosphere capable of respiration and the exchange of gases, such as we do on Earth. Therefore, metabolism, food and anatomy can be very different.

"There are six differing types of animal and mortal nutrition: The subbreathers employ the first type of nutrition, the marine dwellers the second, the mid-breathers the third, as on Urantia (Earth). The superbreathers employ the fourth type of energy intake, while the nonbreathers utilize the fifth order of nutrition and energy. The sixth technique of energizing is limited to the midway creatures.

7. The unnamed types. There are mortal beings who sometimes cannot easily be fit into the above classifications because of their physical combinations and adjustments. These are nonetheless beings with awareness, spiritual and social capabilities and similar to all other mortals of the local universe.

*****

With the above guidelines we can tell much about the planetary origins of aliens, based on their physical features.

Physical size:

The height of an alien mortal is inversely proportional to the home planet's gravity, and thus the mass of the alien's world. Larger planets with more mass have more gravitation pull and would naturally favor short mortals with lower centers of gravity. Conversely, smaller planets with less mass would allow taller beings to evolve.

Lower weight allows for a higher center of gravity and a taller body. For example, if you weighed 100 pounds on planet Earth, you would weigh only 16.6 pounds on the Moon, 37.7 pounds on Mars, 90.7 pounds on Venus, 236 pounds on Jupiter and 196 pounds on Saturn.

Eyes

Eyes are generally adapted to the ambient light of an evolutionary world. Larger eyes facilitate low light conditions or nocturnal life. Round iris configurations are generally good at controlling light in bright conditions, like we have on Earth. Irises with slits, like those found in cats and some reptiles, are designed to reduce incoming light more efficiently, protecting extremely sensitive receptors that work optimally in the dark.

Head size

It is generally assumed that the larger head size is indicative of a larger brain. Recent studies of humans has validated this.

The Urantia Papers also speak of the different brain types found in our local universe:

...The one physical uniformity of mortals is the brain and nervous system; nevertheless, there are three basic organizations of the brain mechanism: the one-, the two-, and the three-brained types. Urantians are of the two-brained type, somewhat more imaginative, adventurous, and philosophical than the one-brained mortals but somewhat less spiritual, ethical, and worshipful than the three-brained orders. These brain differences characterize even the prehuman animal existences...

From the two-hemisphere type of the Urantian cerebral cortex you can, by analogy, grasp something of the one-brained type. The third brain of the three-brained orders is best conceived as an evolvement of your lower or rudimentary form of brain, which is developed to the point where it functions chiefly in control of physical activities, leaving the two superior brains free for higher engagements...

While the terrestrial attainments of the one-brained races are slightly limited in comparison with the two-brained orders, the older planets of the three-brained group exhibit civilizations that would astound Urantians, and which would somewhat shame yours by comparison. In mechanical development and material civilization, even in intellectual progress, the two-brained mortal worlds are able to equal the three-brained spheres. But in the higher control of mind and development of intellectual and spiritual reciprocation, you are somewhat inferior...

These three types of mortals are distributed throughout the worlds of the local systems.
-- Paper 49, Urantia Papers

Aliens on the Moon?

One of the most chilling revelations in the Urantia Papers is at the end of their doscourse on a class of mortals called non-breathers. According to the papers, there are orders of mortals who are able to live on worlds with little or no air. In our local universe there are only nine such worlds.

There are few nonbreather types of inhabited worlds in our system because this more recently organized section of the local universe is full of debris and meteors. Worlds without a protective atmosphere are constantly bombarded by these objects and the nonbreathing worlds must protect themselves by making electrical installations which shunt the meteors -- much like our electronic bug traps.

The non breathing mortals must hide in protective insulated environments because their worlds are subjected to electrical storms and charged surface phenomenon, unknown to atmospheric beings.

The nonbreathers do not eat food or drink water. Their nervous systems, heat-regulating mechanisms, and metabolism are dramatically different from such Earth humans. Almost every act of living, aside from reproduction, is different. But here is the big deal with non-breathers:

You would be more than interested in the planetary conduct of this type of mortal because such a race of beings inhabits a sphere in close proximity to Urantia.

--paper 49