How I Found the Urantia Book - Square Circles Publishing

40 How I Found the Urantia Book
About two weeks later I approached the checkout desk with my weekly selection.
There on the cart of volumes to go on the shelves, was a wide, blue book.
The librarian informed me that they had gotten a second copy so that one could
go on the circulation shelves. I had seen it twice and decided I ought to check it
out. And this time I got beyond the Foreword.
Because the book was on loan from a library, I paced myself at a paper a day
to get through it. The librarian allowed me to renew it as long as no one was on
the waiting list for it. By November I had ordered my own copy from Chicago,
and finished the fourth section reading from my own book. As I read it I knew it
was what it said it was. It was as though I had been deliberately primed on the
other reading so I would have some similar material for comparison.
We lived in Virginia Beach for another seven and a half years, and I never
found another reader except my family members to whom I had introduced the
book. In 1976 I finally got to Chicago, visited 533, and met other readers for
the first time. I have been reading and discussing the book ever since, and I am
happy to report I have many readers to talk to and share with now.
HENRY BEGEMANN: My wife and I found the Urantia Book in a bookstore
in Amsterdam. We never go to Amsterdam, if we can avoid it, as we don’t
like that city—it is the New York of the Netherlands. We went to that shop
because we had read about it half a year before when it opened, and it looked attractive.
There was one copy of the Urantia Book in the store. Though we knew
nothing about the book and even less about the Foundation or the Brotherhood,
we were attracted by its size and some things we’d read in it. We decided to buy
it, though the price was about US$40. I think it was the only copy for sale then
in Holland, and I always felt that we were guided to it.
[Henry devoted the rest of his life on Urantia to working on the Dutch translation.
Sadly he passed on to the mansion worlds before the task was completed,
but happily his daughter Nienke took over and finished the job. The Dutch
translation was officially unveiled in November, 1997.]
GARY HALL: In 1969, at the age of 20, I had come to a point where I
needed to make some major decisions about the direction my life was taking.
I left Pocatello, Idaho, and went on the road hitchhiking. I traveled up north
and then south to San Francisco, where I attended concerts at the Fillmore and
explored the ferment that was Berkeley at the time.
After a week or so I headed back north. One evening at around nine o’clock
I stood on a corner trying to get a ride out of Woodlawn, California. I went into
a service station to get some chewing gum and when I came back out there was
a big, tall, long-haired hippie like myself standing on the same corner also hitching
north. We introduced ourselves. His name was Michael Bishop and he was
from Seattle. We continued on north together through the rainy night and became
friends. In Portland we parted company, Michael heading home to Seattle
and I to Moscow, Idaho.
A few weeks later I traveled to Seattle to visit him. He was living in a large
communal house with about six other people, mostly musicians—a great scene
at the time. One night, as I was going to bed on the floor in the basement of this
house, Michael handed me a big blue book without saying a word. I started
reading the table of contents and knew immediately it was true and right.