URANTIA UNITED (edited UB)

Hello Kurt,

You've asked for opinions and this topic about interpreting The Urantia Book is a good one to bring up.

If you've ever read a Reader's Digest Condensed novel you could conclude that you had just read the real thing until you checked the number of pages and found out that what you'd read was about two thirds the size of the original. If the original author was a good one some of the richness may have been lost but for the most part the story would be as satisfying as the original. So, if this were a book like all the others that have been printed then any form of condensation could prove meaningful.

The Urantia Book wasn't produced to be a satisfying read. And in the first 3 paragraphs of the Foreword the authors explain in effect that English was the chosen language because of its richness of vocabulary and expression of thought and in fact the Foreword, the most difficult to understand Paper in the book, is more than likely the most valuable and necessary one; it sets out to define precisely how particular words and concepts will be used and what they will mean when they are used, giving them interpretation and scope beyond their usual usage. Still, the revelators use phrases like "It is indeed difficult to find suitable words in the English language whereby to designate and wherewith to describe ..."

The more one reads and studies this book the more one comes to recognize that the language construction conveys concepts that the words themselves don't hold. There are some students of the book who will say that in their opinion there is hardly one superfluous word in all the 1.1 million used. This is not a book of words relating facts as much as it is a book of words relating truths which are beyond the meanings of the words themselves; facts are essentially cold and dead while truths are living and warm. The Urantia Book is not simply a fact book, it is a truth book because it is an epochal revelation of truth, much as if you were able to physically sit at the side of Jesus and talk with him you would be having the experience of receiving epochal revelation.

A number of condensations of Urantia Book concepts and teachings have been written in the past in an attempt to help those unfamiliar with the book understand it. I can say with some assurance that not one person who has read anything "about" The Urantia Book has ever understood its revelatory mission. They have garnered new facts, maybe sufficient new facts to make them interested in reading the book, but they've not received the revelation because that lies between and outside the words; one has to sit with the book on one's lap and read the book itself in order to participate in the fifth epochal revelation to the world. The recently printed book, "The Story of Everything" by Michelle Klimesh is an excellent condensation, paragraph by paragraph and Paper by Paper of the book — it provides the facts but has lost the revelation. There is no substitute for reading the book for oneself — it's too important to do half-heartedly.

Hopefully you personally have received benefit by doing the work of condensing the book — there is value in the mental processes required for such an undertaking. Just as the book says that the easiest path to understanding would be for us to read from simple and finite to complex and infinite, from human origins to divine destinies it also says that procedure does not lead to wisdom or divine destiny and therefore the book is written in a more complex fashion. As close as The Urantia Book can come to being infallible it doesn't claim that distinction and goes on to say that "nothing which human nature has touched can be regarded as infallible. Through the mind of man divine truth may indeed shine forth, but always of relative purity and partial divinity." So if one is looking for truth I would wonder at the purpose of reading 600 pages of human construction versus a book by celestial beings who knew of what they spoke.

This is also one of the reasons translations of The Urantia Book may be of marginal spiritual value. One of Adam and Eve's many aborted tasks was to establish a world-wide language. Languages express concepts in different ways — accurately converting words from English into Spanish will not necessarily convey the desired concept. Perhaps English is becoming the one-world language to take the place of whatever Adam and Eve would have provided, but in any case English was the language chosen by the revelators. Translations can bring forth the facts, which in The Urantia Book are highly impressive, but the truth content will be diminished and much of the value of the revelation will be lost through any translation because of the great care taken by the revelators in the use of English to convey new meanings and values. Your perusal of The Urantia Book led you to the incorrect assumption that it mainly promoted Christianity and I assume that English is your native language. Consider how difficult it is to convert even more obscure concepts into a non-English language without interjecting additional incorrect assumptions.

Best wishes.

Urantia Book Forum

Who is online