On a summer evening in 1911, a neighbor visited the Sadlers’ apartment. She was concerned about her husband’s health. He breathed erratically and she couldn’t wake him up. The woman knew that the Sadlers were doctors, so she instinctively sought their help.
The sleeping man will change the lives of not only the then 35-year-old William S. Sadler, who was most involved in his case, but also thousands of other people; in the long run, millions. Including mine.
Table of contents
William S. Sadler, Ph.D.
Born in 1875 in Spencer, Indiana, United States, William S. Sadler was a man of many talents. As a child, he was homeschooled; He read a lot and was a proficient speaker at a young age. After Sadler’s father joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church, William himself was baptized in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1888. As a teenager, he worked in a spa as a messenger and kitchen help. In 1897, he graduated from college (both his first job, Battle Creek Sanitarium, and his school, Battle Creek College, were affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church) and began a new job as a health food vendor. William Sadler was a dedicated and active Adventist. Probably in 1895 he began his education at a private Bible school, and in 1901 he was ordained as a pastor of the Seventh-day Adventists. In 1897, he married a nurse he had met 4 years earlier, Lena Kellogg.
The Sadlers were already interested in health, but it was the death of their first child that inspired the couple to pursue a career in medicine. In 1901, they moved to San Francisco, where they attended medical school at Cooper Medical College. William worked as a “youth labor supervisor” at a California Adventist convention center and as president of the local Medical Missionary Association. He and his wife ran a home for Christian medical students. In 1904, they returned to the Middle West, where two years later they obtained the degrees of medical doctors. During his stay in Vienna in 1910, Sadler attended lectures by Sigmund Freud. And although he did not accept many of his theories (e.g. on sexuality or religion), after returning to his native United States, he used psychoanalysis himself. Since 1912. The Sadlers ran a joint medical practice in Chicago. William initially focused on surgery, and in 1930 he expanded his activities to include psychiatric counseling and became a consultant at Columbus Hospital. Sadler had always been religious, but the controversy surrounding the alleged plagiarism of Ellen White, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, prompted him to leave (and possibly be expelled) from the community in 1910.
Dr. Sadler taught for years at the graduate school of the University of Chicago medical school. He was a member of many associations (e.g. the American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Pathologists). He has written articles for magazines and is the author of forty-two books.
Perhaps it was the conflict with Ellen White (who was portrayed as a prophet) that gave him determination, but after leaving the Adventist Church, Sadler became strongly involved in the fight against the growing popularity of paranormal phenomena. In this area, he regularly collaborated with the illusionist Howard Thurston. In his 1929 work, The Mind at Mischief, he found that any medium he had the opportunity to study was either a fraud or a person deluded by subconscious mental activity.
Sleepy
The Sadlers visited their concerned neighbor (In the introduction I mentioned 1911, but the sources do not agree on this date. Sometimes it is 1906, other times it is between 1906 and 1911). The woman’s husband was in a deep sleep. His breathing was erratic and went into apnea. However, the ad hoc examination did not indicate any life-threatening symptoms of the man. Finally, he woke up alone. During a later medical visit and more detailed examinations, it turned out that nothing was wrong with him. However, over the following months, the story of hard sleep repeated itself many times.
In the meantime, the Sadlers moved to a new house. The sleeping patient, who was under William’s observation, followed them with his wife in order to stay near the doctors. Soon the disturbing dream was repeated. The Sadlers were again with their patient. Lena Sadler noticed that the sleeping man moistened his lips as if he wanted to say something. To his surprise, hearing the question “How are you feeling?”, he began to speak. However, it was not his voice.
Mischief of the Mind
At first, the case of a man talking in his sleep did not stand out with anything exceptional. The patient exhibited disorders called mediumistic — he claimed to be a visitor from another planet; later that he was only an intermediary, and that he was passing on information from entities calling themselves spirit beings. Dr. Sadler assumed that the source of these revelations was the man’s subconscious mind and patiently searched for scientific explanations for the phenomenon.
Sadler examined the patient psychiatrically. He consulted doctors in other fields and scientists; also with specialists in revealing spiritualistic tricks. Interestingly, the sleeper himself did not show much interest in what was happening to him during sleep. In fact, most of the information he left behind was contrary to his own views. Despite many years of observation — he spent about 250 night sessions with the patient — Sadler was unable to make a clear diagnosis. Or expose the fraudster. Over time, he ruled out the psychic nature of the case, but could not explain it otherwise. That is why he became more and more involved in its analysis. And when subsequent studies did not bring meaningful results, they turned into studies of the materials obtained in the process.
Forum
On my return to Chicago, one Sunday morning, I learned that my wife had invited a group of old patients to meet at our home at three o’clock in the afternoon. We planned to conduct these Sunday afternoon meetings something like this: we would start with a health topic—for example, the treatment of common colds, the causes and treatment of anxiety—and then, after a cup of tea, we would start informal discussions—questions and answers.
In the course of time, this group has become a cosmopolitan congregation, made up of professionals, men and women — doctors, lawyers, dentists, pastors, teachers — together with people from all walks of life — farmers, housewives, secretaries, office workers, and ordinary laborers.
Soon I was asked to give a series of lectures on “Mental Hygiene” or “Psychic Phenomena”. At the beginning of my first lecture, I said, “With two exceptions, all the psychic phenomena I have studied have been found to be frauds, conscious or subconscious. Some were deliberate deceptions, others were those special cases in which the one to whom they happened was the victim of the deception of his own subconscious”.
I said nothing more than that when someone in the group said, “Doctor, if you encountered something you couldn’t explain—that would be interesting—tell me more about it”.
I asked Dr. Lena to bring some notes taken during the last “contact” and I read them to the group. It should be understood that at that time this case was not yet subject to secrecy. The Urantia Papers have not yet begun to appear
About this time, a group of people who met in our house on Sunday afternoons began to be called the Forum.
This group showed such great interest in this case that I was never again able to give lectures on health as planned.
It was when these informal discussions were held every week that the challenge came to us, suggesting that if we asked more serious questions, we could receive valuable information for humanity”.
Dr. Sadler intended to study the phenomenon of the sleeper, and he was persistent in doing so. With five other people, he visited the man regularly, talking to him while he slept; or rather, with supposed spirit beings. The conversations must have gone quite smoothly, because he had prepared a series of questions that he planned to ask at the right time. They were supposed to be a kind of test. During one of the night sessions, he asked a sleeping being, “How can you prove that you are who you claim to be?” He was told: “I can’t prove it, but you can’t prove that I’m not. But I have been given permission to answer forty-six of the fifty-two questions you have in mind.” Sadler’s wife, who was present, asked, surprised, “Will, you don’t have a list of questions, do you?” Sadler replied, “I have, Lena, and there are exactly fifty-two of them”.
As promised, the extraterrestrial entity answered 46 questions. She added: “If you men realized what a high spiritual source of information you are dealing with, you would cease to investigate the deception and begin to ask the important questions about the nature of reality and the universe”. Keep in mind that almost 20 years have passed since the first contact with the case.
Sadler accepted the challenge. And the Forum was perfect for such an undertaking. So he asked the members to write down the most difficult questions that came to their minds. They decided that the best ones would be those that went beyond current knowledge. Imagine, reader, that you can ask about anything that intrigues you… No wonder that the members of the Forum brought hundreds of such questions to the next meeting. Of course, not all of them were serious. After verification and removal of duplicates, 181 questions remained. The first was: “Is there a God? If so, what does it look like?”.
Dr. Sadler, armed with a series of the most difficult questions the Forum could face, waited for the next session with the sleeping patient. It was 1924, so he still hoped that he would be prepared to discover the deception behind him. Finally, one morning, the phone rang. “Please, come to us quickly!” the visibly nervous wife of the sleeping patient called. “Is your husband asleep?” asked Sadler. “Yes, but that’s not the point,” the woman replied. The Sadlers, curious, hurried to the sleeping man’s house.
The Urantia Papers
On the spot, the wife of the sleeping patient handed them a 500-page manuscript. She was shaken. She woke up and the manuscript was already on her desk. She didn’t know where he came from in their home. She did not notice that her husband got up at night; she doubted he would be able to write it without waking her. He was still asleep. On a cursory review of the small print of the text, it seemed to contain answers to questions prepared by the Forum. Sadler was convinced that the sleeper was the author. However, the awakened (this time without a problem) patient firmly denied it.
The change in contact baffled Sadler. The earlier, tame procedure in which the sleeper spoke and Lena Sadler took notes was disrupted. However, the doctor was still convinced that there was a rational explanation for what had happened. He suspected that the manuscript had its source in the subconscious of the sleeper and came from his hand as a result of automatic writing. However, graphologists (in the plural) excluded the man (and his wife) from the group of potential authors of the text.
Sadler brought the manuscript to a meeting of the Forum. It was the beginning of 1925. He told the members that they had received detailed answers to their questions and read the first chapter. No one then realized that on this winter Sunday, January 18, the first public reading of the Urantia Papers was held.
There were 57 first papers. The Sadlers then received a message suggesting that since they were now able to ask more intelligent questions, the personalities providing the papers could expand this revelation.
At subsequent meetings, the Forum developed a specific scheme of work. A chapter of the manuscript was read, then the members prepared questions for it. Questions were ranked and duplicates were rejected; Just like the first time. The revelators did not show informational initiative. The messages were a reaction to the group’s questions—there were no questions, there was no information. The method remained unchanged for many years, and thus we received all (with a few exceptions) of the 196 papers of The Urantia Book. During the process, however, the Forum changed.
Secrets
After some time, the revelators instructed the Sadlers to change the rules for accepting members of the Forum. Until now, basically everyone could participate in the weekly meetings of the group. Around September 1925 the forum became a closed group. Each member had to sign a pledge of secrecy, and from then on they could discuss matters related to the revelation and the content of the papers only among themselves. Permanent persons were also appointed to contact the revelators. The Contact Commission, as they were called, verified the questions of the Forum members and compared the transcribed content of the manuscripts with the original. Only the Commission knew the identity of the contact person and only they saw the original manuscripts.
The ways of conveying questions to spiritual beings and obtaining answers are shrouded in mystery. Sadler, many years after the dissolution of the Forum, revealed that the Contact Commission wrote down questions on a piece of paper and then hid them in a locked desk drawer. The answers appeared in the form of a manuscript. The manuscripts were stored in a safe, but they always disappeared after they were typed. The inquisitive Dr. Sadler tried to understand how this was possible; He still hoped to discover the deception. Once, before he put it in the safe, he hid banknotes between the pages of the manuscript. The manuscript disappeared, the banknotes remained. Another time, instead of hiding it in a safe, he put it in a bank safe. The manuscript disappeared, and Sadler was reprimanded to stop such tricks.
The Contact Commission also conducted conversations with the revealers not directly related to the Transfers. However, it is not known how they took place. During such informal meetings, the Commission sometimes also received instructions in writing. What did it look like? I do not know. Almost all of them had the note at the bottom of the last page: “Destroy by fire at the latest at the time of the appearance of the Urantia Papers in print”.
The Urantia Book
Thus, by 1934, the first three parts of The Urantia Book had been revealed and authenticated. Part IV — The narratives of the life and death of Christ Michael appeared in their entirety one year later and were to be elaborated by a commission of midway creatures. After receiving all 196 Papers, the revelators instructed the Forum members to review them again and ask any follow-up questions. This lasted for the next few years. Not much new information has been added at that time; slight corrections have been made to the papers already written.
Publication
In 1942, the Contact Commission communicated to the Forum that the revelators would not consider any further questions and that they had received permission to prepare for the publication of the Urantia Papers. The last meeting of the Forum took place on May 31, 1942. During the 17 years of its official existence, 486 people have been granted membership in the group. The text of The Urantia Book has been blocked; preparations for printing have begun. The Forum transformed into a study group (however, it remained under the leadership of the still active Contact Commission).
Although the printing materials were ready for publication a short time later, in accordance with the orders of the Associate Planetary Prince of Urantia, the Commission awaited final permission for publication. As it turned out, another 10 years. In 1950, Urantia Foundation was established to preserve the content of the papers unchanged and to spread the revealed teachings. On February 11, 1955, the Foundation’s trustees read “The Resolution to Publish The Urantia Book” before a study group.
The members of the Contact Commission had no right to edit or interfere with the text of the papers. Their work was limited to checking spelling and punctuation. The Urantia Book was printed in Crawfordsville, Indiana, by the printing house of R.R. Donnelly and Sons and published by Urantia Foundation on October 12, 1955; almost 50 years after Sadler’s first contact with a sleeping man. Soon after, the Contact Commission was dissolved. The Polish edition of The Urantia Book was published in 2010.
P.S. Doubts
The history of The Urantia Book may be questionable. It aroused in me. The mysterious, almost magical environment around Sadler and the Contact Commission almost threw me away from the papers themselves.
But something touched me; so I read. And I still read. On the one hand, with reading, the story of the revelation of the papers becomes less ridiculous, but on the other hand, it loses its importance. At some point, I asked myself: What source of religious legends would I consider reliable?
This postscript was longer. However, it occurred to me that the response to the criticism of The Urantia Book does not make much sense. Just as no one would have convinced me that this story makes sense, I won’t convince anyone either. In fact, I am a strong advocate of papers — I have been running this website for years — and yet I still have doubts about it. No matter how hard I try, I won’t find rational or scientific explanations for what happened then. The story of the origin of The Urantia Book will always be enchanted. The content of the papers, however, will defend itself.