The Best Book Ever Written Has No Human Author: The Urantia Book
The greatest mystery or most powerful event of the 20th century
“Your spirit rests every so gently on the upper reaches of your mind, but it takes practice to perceive it.” — My mom
For 34 years, ever since my mom introduced me to it, the Urantia Book has helped shaped my ideas about humanity, the world, and God. Since my worldview is based on it, and since that view slowly leaks out of me story by story, it’s only fair to let you know so we can have an honest and authentic exchange.
You don’t need to be familiar with this book to understand any of my stories, that’s just pretentious. It’s a fairly obscure work at this point, and besides, I’ll explain everything as I go along.
Still, I wanted to offer this primer so at least you have a handle on where to go in case you have questions.
So what is the Urantia Book about?
It’s quite a long work (2097 pages) so it covers a lot of ground. Hard to capture that in a few words, but here’s an excellent summary from a fellow reader and a friend.
“The Urantia Book is a 2,097 page post-Biblical revelation to this world. No one really knows where it came from. In the Urantia Book we learn the universe is a giant unfinished project being built on the individual decisions of ascending mortals like us. Each choice in our lives contributes to experiential deity as opposed to current existential deity.
God indwells our young minds and participates with us in our struggles in order to overcome the only problem with perfection, i.e. a perfect being cannot experience imperfection.
Lucifer led an atheist rebellion about 200,000 years ago. Earth or Urantia was one of many worlds that participated and was quarantined. This tragedy resulted in our opportunity for the exercise of faith which is the key to our long afterlife ascension career and eventual destiny with God in the geographical center of infinity.
The Urantia Book is the best available explanation of man’s place, role, and destiny. It covers the origin, history and presumptive future of this world.”
Wikipedia has an even-handed summary and exploration of it as well. The Urantia Book — Wikipedia
If you like to investigate it beyond the summary level, the Urantia Foundation has an online and audio version you can peruse for free. They also have a lot of other information about it. Learn About The Urantia Book.
So who wrote it?
That’s the rub. Like the headline says, there is no human author. It was supposedly composed by a variety of celestial and divine personalities. They did it without the direct involvement of people, though there was a fair amount of indirect involvement.
Well, that sounds like a red flag, now doesn’t it? Yes, it does.
Do I believe that? Yeah, but . . . after reading it, I stopped caring who wrote it. There’s too much truth in it, and that’s what mattered the most to me; the strength of its ideas and concepts. It stands on its own.
Frankly, I don’t really care anymore who wrote it. Maybe people, maybe angels. It’s too good for me to get wrapped up in authorship.
However, if you’d like to take a really deep dive into how the book came to be, who wrote it, who helped, how long it took, etc., Larry Mullins (a lifetime reader) wrote an excellent history of it. You can find it here: A History of the Urantia Papers.
What I love about it
No tricks
Many ideologies, philosophies, and religions have a way of building their worldview in such a way that leaves you no option but to accept their view of things. Through a combination of logical tricks, rhetorical art and force of persuasion, you’re left with little intellectual choice but submit, adopt, and be baptized. The Police have a song dedicated to just such intellectual farce: “De Do Do”. Here’s my favorite lyric:
Poets, priests and politicians Have words to thank for their positions Words that scream for your submission And no one’s jamming their transmission ’Cause when their eloquence escapes you Their logic ties you up and rapes you — Police, De Do Do
This is, precisely, what the Urantia Book doesn’t do.
There is no call to action, there is no compelling the reader to assent or believe.
No tricks, no intent or effect to ensnare, confuse, or capture. The entire superstructure of its ideas, from the grandest concept down to the smallest detail, is presented wholly and freely for you to evaluate on your own, intellectually and emotionally unmolested.
God respects free will and absolutely refuses to interfere with free will choice, which is why the Urantia Book purposely avoids rational compulsion.
“The Spirit never drives, only leads. If you are a willing learner, if you want to attain spirit levels and reach divine heights, if you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then the divine Spirit will gently and lovingly lead you along the pathway of sonship and spiritual progress.”
— The Urantia Book, 34:6.11 (381.5)
It stands on its own merit
Credentials are a short-cut to authority. Before we decide if someone is worth listening to, we see if they have experience, if they’re an expert. It’s a helpful time-saver but no guarantee of quality.
The Urantia Book doesn’t pretend to have authoritative credentials. That’s why there’s no human author listed. Instead, it appeals to truth found on many levels: scientific, philosophic, religious. Its content is built on conceptual quality which you can evaluate for yourself, no supposed “authority” required to lend it the air of consequence.
Truthful ideas stand on their own, regardless if children or PhD’s present them.
Friendly warning for Christians
You probably won’t like this book.
I mention this specifically for Christians because the Urantia Book is a God-centered view of eternity and the cosmos. At first read, you might be tempted to think it’s talking about a Christian view of God. After all, the book even dedicates the last 25% of its text (700+ pages) to “The Life and Teachings of Jesus”.
However, you’re bound for disappointment. Here’s the reality you’ll find as you go:
- It doesn’t agree with Christian theology
- It doesn’t agree with the Christian interpretation of Jesus’s life
- It doesn’t agree with common explanations of Jesus’s death
- It doesn’t agree with the foundations of the Christian religion
Don’t expect it to comport with the Bible, or any branch of Christian theology. It introduces entirely new paradigms and goes far, far outside the bounds of what Christianity dares to imagine.
If however, you’re interested in the two highest spiritual teachings Jesus had to offer — that God is our spiritual creator and therefore we should love and help each other as spiritual family — you’ll find that in spades.
“The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian.”
— The Urantia Book, 196:2.1 (2091.10)
A final view
My mom introduced me to the book when I was thirteen, and I’ve been reading it, thinking about it, living out its ideas ever since. Not out of compulsion, or fear, or shame, guilt, or indoctrination (there is no Church of Urantia), but because I genuinely think it offers the best guide to life and everything in it.
All my writing somehow connects to what the Urantia Book presents. In the spirit of authentic connection, full-disclosure, and clear-eyed exchange, you deserve to know this, so you can examine the source on your own terms, if you’re so inclined.
This writing path I walk is an honest adventure, for me and with you, and I want to honor that spirit, right from the start.
“The solution of life problems requires courage and sincerity. Only honest and brave individuals are able to follow valiantly through the perplexing and confusing maze of living to where the logic of a fearless mind may lead.”
— The Urantia Book, 160:1.8 (1773.5)
If you’d like to explore the book further, here’s a short guide on how to approach the Urantia Book: