The language of The Urantia Book is relatively simple. You won’t find the complicated metaphors or spiritual poetry so common in religious texts; there is no grotesque pathos, no intangibly thunderous warnings, no sophisticated threats. The authors of the Messages use modern vocabulary, avoiding phrases that have fallen into disuse. The greater part of the Book is easily digestible; Especially since it is an independent position, so poor (or none) knowledge of other religious publications or dogmas does not affect its reception. This kind of guide-like, dry form makes the Messages more accessible, and most importantly – it limits the room for frivolous (over) interpretations. However, it can discourage those amateurs of spirituality who expect liturgical language.

Compromises

Of course, it is not always so colorful. I repeat it in my posts like a mantra – regardless of our views and attitude towards faith in God, we must be aware that our point of view is limited. Every higher being must know more than we do. Whether because of its status (if it was created that way right away), or because of our intellectual limits (despite many attempts to teach, for example chimpanzees, we will not jump over some of their barriers), but also because of evolutionary reasons (if “wisdom comes with age”, then beings or organisms better developed than us probably had more time to do it). Regardless of the reasons, it seems naive to expect that angels or other aliens (whatever you want to call it) who come, have come or are yet to come, will be intellectually equal to us.

The authors of The Urantia Book make no secret of these differences. At the same time, I did not sense any signs of self-aggrandizement. Rather concern and something like sympathy for younger siblings, although the content of the Messages must be and at times is compromise symbolization, made from the point of view of a mortal.”

The above message, in the context of this post, is extremely important. The Commission of Celestial Beings, before proceeding with the revelations of the Book, was instructed to use the language known to us, even at the risk of their distortion. What is more, in characterizing God and the universe, about which we have a vague idea, they are ordered to use the closest human definitions of what we do not understand. It was decided that the ideas that arose in the human mind would be easier for us to assimilate; so at the same time more useful. Such an approach seems justified even on the basis of our experience. Globetrotters do not expect primitive Australian tribes to speak the language of the country from which they came; especially since they will be familiar with advanced technology. On the other hand, isolated from civilization, the aborigines do not seem to realize that someone else can communicate and live differently than they do. This also looks familiar: those who know more try to gently go down; those at the bottom often do not even allow themselves to be aware that things may be different from what they thought. Regardless of our geographical location, we always think we already know everything.

I’ll put it a bit more bluntly: Beings who have known and observed us since the first manifestation of life on the planet, for whom time and space do not have to be a limitation, personalities who know the limits of the cosmos and this does not have many secrets for them, have been given the task of telling people the truth about God and the universe. To people who guess where they came from, who sometimes say that the Earth is flat and here and there still live in houses built from their own excrement; to us who have barely visited our nearest satellite. And yet we do not yet know many secrets hidden on Earth…

It seems that the revelators have been entrusted with a very difficult task. The funnier are the wars between believers and atheists, in which some claim that God has already passed on all the important information to backward ancestors thousands of years ago, while others demand from Him a whole package of information about everything and at once. Let’s go back in time just a few hundred years and tell the former that the priest has no power over lightning, and the latter that we can instantly communicate with another human being in a remote corner of the planet (which is not the center of everything that exists!).

Definitions

The Foreword of The Urantia Book is an attempt to systematize and define concepts that can facilitate the understanding of the Papers. I assume that this task was entrusted to someone too competent. Despite this, even after reading it many times, significant parts of it are inscrutable to me. In the future, I will probably be tempted to subjectively analyze some of the definitions contained therein, but for me this part of the Book is the most difficult. Further chapters also define (although to a lesser extent) the nomenclature used, so even there it sometimes seems to be just a bunch of words that don’t fit together. The meaning of each of them is quite clear, but arranged in an array, they create an intricate combination. Some sentences are repeatedly complex and therefore very long; Reading to the end, you can forget their beginning. Every now and then I catch myself that after one of the commas, I just switch off and read the rest completely mindlessly. In this respect, the language of the Messages can be very difficult. A concrete malcontent may call it gibberish; Perhaps it still is. Certainly, to some extent, this is also influenced by the not always successful Polish translation of the Book.

Defining applies not only to such intangible abstractions as “eternity” or “energy”, but also, for example, to the characteristics of all beings inhabiting the great universe. How to approximate the names of classes of immaterial beings that relate to the tasks they perform and when these tasks are unimaginable to us, because they are unlike anything we know? Let us remember that the Commission should not introduce new, arbitrary words that would not have any meaning for us. Therefore, names were chosen that were clear to the man, and at the same time in some sense reflected the original. Imagine that you have to explain to a bonobo chimpanzee (or a toddler) who a “sales area manager” or other “junior logistics assistant” is in a corporation, so that these names are understandable to him. Still, I can’t help but think that the intellectual distance we’re ahead of chimpanzees is a millimeter compared to the light-years that separate us from high, spiritual personalities.

Helplessness

I’m trying to imagine what my attempts to explain something to the mind might look like, which, due to strictly natural limitations, is simply unable to grasp some issues. And he should.

It’s a bit like with children. Such a comparison is probably the most accurate, because just as we do to children, spiritual beings try to convey to us in an understandable language what is beyond imagination at the moment; We, like children, are also just (and still) learning. I’m convinced that the authors of The Urantia Book did a much better job than we did when we try to explain to a preschooler that puppy hurts when you push a finger into his eye. Many of us know all too well how discussions with children can go; especially when we try to clearly explain something really important. It requires a lot of self-denial and patience, and even so, sometimes we will helplessly realize that it is a fight against windmills. The beings working on the Urantia Papers must have felt much alike. They repeatedly verbalize the difficulties they have in communicating such advanced truths to us.

These problems may be due to our limitations:

But also (in a sense) from the limitations of the manifestations:

They can be a consequence of our nature:

Their origins can also be found in the language itself:

They can be caused by a lack of comparative material:

Despite this, just like sometimes we sometimes do in discussions with children, the revelators bravely fight in their task:

Quotes

The fourth segment (The Life and Teaching of Jesus) of The Urantia Book is devoted to the seventh bestowal on earth by the sovereign of our local universe, Michael of Nebadon, while living in the flesh of mortal man as Jesus of Nazareth.

We must be aware that apart from social and political conditions, the way people communicated at that time was also completely different from what we know today. Verbatim records of conversations that took place 2,000 years ago would certainly have significantly influenced the form of the Book. For some reason (I assume it was about the accessibility and coherence of the Book), the quoted words of Jesus and his companions have been translated into current phraseology. So we are dealing with paraphrasing what they were talking about, rather than verbatim quotes (religious purists have another reason to turn their noses up). This has been emphasized many times. As an explanation in general:

Also as additions, e.g.:

Variable truth

At this point, it is appropriate to mention the language and form of other, especially old religious books. Why are they the way they are? The answer is trivial — because they are old. It can be argued whether their authors were really inspired by God (just as anyone is free to reject The Urantia Book as divine revelation) or whether they were merely their inventions. It is obvious, however, that their style and level was, so still, adequate to the intellectual development of a man of those times. The image of God has been changing over the years (centuries) because we are changing. For atheists, this is proof of the hypocrisy of religious people. They prefer not to notice that even desperate contortions of religious organizations are not able to inhibit the intellectual development of believers. For it is not God who is changeable; we are the ones who evolve. With time, we understand more and more, so we get (also with The Urantia Book) as much as we are ready for at a given moment. And not only me or you, but humanity as a whole. Because at this given “moment” is a relative concept depending on the point of sitting. This applies to the type and amount of information, but also to the form in which it is transmitted. “[…] below the point of attaining the Universal Father, no revelation can ever be complete. All other celestial ministries are also only partial, transitory, and practically adapted to the local conditions of time and space.” The Urantia Book as a whole, like other religious writings, will probably become obsolete at some point, and its form may be considered old-fashioned. This will not change the fact that they have the same goal – to bring God closer to man (no matter how much we distort His image).

Outspoken

Our languages evolve with us. It is also a fact that the human way of communicating is more complex and precise than any other known to us. Therefore, it can be assumed that along with the broadly understood progress, the way of communication is developing in parallel. That is why I am so surprised by those who say that everything has already been said; the same applies to those who think that everything is within our reach today. If we follow the path of logic, if there are more advanced forms of life, it is very likely that their mode of communication will be more advanced, and consequently incomprehensible to us.

And so the records of The Urantia Book hold — the languages of the universe are more complex than the language of worlds like Earth. In pronunciation: “In the language of Nebadon we are able, in a one-hour address, to encapsulate the whole life of a Urantia mortal,” in the records: “Our rate of reduction of thought to the form of a permanent record can be so quickened by able recorders that the equivalent of more than one-half million words or thought symbols can be recorded in one minute of Urantia time,” in the readings: “[…] With this method, I can gain more knowledge in an hour of your time than you can acquire by studying ordinary written language for a hundred years.”

Many of us (especially atheists lead the way here) would like God to finally come and say and then show us everything. We expect God to suddenly change His mind and instead of letting us develop at His own pace, as we have done so far, He will simply put it all on a platter. Like us, the details and equations of string theory are a baby. Because when he crouches down to chat with us a bit, we don’t believe him anyway.

Do what you want

From a religious point of view, the language of The Urantia Book is also specific. Popular holy books are full of commands, prohibitions and unambiguous instructions on activities with which one can (must) please God. Anyone who has even a slight brush with any of the most famous religions knows perfectly well what I am talking about. The intricate interpretations of the words contained in it fit perfectly into this type of message. You are to do what you are told, or you will regret it; so God said.

The Urantia papers are immune to this kind of treatment. You won’t find specific answers or instructions there. The language of The Urantia Book is very subdued in this area. On the one hand, it probably says everything that is important, but on the other hand, you will not learn anything practical. Some truths cannot be conveyed to us, some we will not understand; however, this most important message never appears directly. The interpretation of these messages must be individual. This is a feature of true religion.

PS Perspective

In studying The Urantia Book, one should also keep in mind the various scales and perspectives from which the universe is viewed by higher beings. This applies primarily to any unspecified quantities.

On several occasions I have come across Messages in which the duration of human life is called “short”; and these statements did not apply to prematurely deceased children.

Would we call the life of a butterfly a few days long? When we try to put ourselves in the place of long-lived beings, this question makes a little more sense.

We will not say that butterflies live long, because compared to the average human life; these few days are almost nothing. For supermaterial beings, our life in the body is short for the same reasons. Not only can they exist for hundreds of thousands of years, but in most cases they are also immortal, and thus do not await their end like we do. It is difficult to call several dozen years differently when you yourself have several hundred thousand years of the past and an infinite future in perspective.

There are more of these vague quantities in The Urantia Book. This can be quoted “long” or “brief”; it can also be “a lot” and “little” or “far” and “close”. These abstract concepts do not have to and most often do not mean what we, the readers, instinctively imagine.

Another issue, that is worth being aware of while reading is the timeliness of some of the greatness appearing in the Book of Greatness. The following message gives a good indication of what I mean:

Here we mention large, for us, orders of magnitude, but the Messages also mention events that took place, for example, 100 years ago. The “years ago” always refer to the “early decades of the Christian age,” the moment of the apparitions. When we read the Book today, the stories that are described as having happened 100 years ago, for example, actually happened almost 200 years ago. Time is of the essence here, because it can affect other data. For example: Our local system, Satania, is written to consist of 619 inhabited planets. I do not know how likely it is, but since the revelation of The Urantia Book, some changes may have occurred in the system and there are now 620 such planets, for example. Such discrepancies may concern the personal or quantitative compositions of the described groups of beings, the positions moving in the space of objects, and many other things. I do not assume that in these less than 100 years there have been any dramatic changes that make the information provided to us obsolete; I am only suggesting that it is worth keeping such details in mind when reading The Urantia Book.