How I Found the Urantia Book - Square Circles Publishing

50 How I Found the Urantia Book
If you have read accounts of near-death experiences, or have had one yourself,
you know that mere words are insufficient. Here I meet the hellfire-and-damnation
God of my religious upbringing. Jealous Jehovah of the volcano. Thor of
the thunderbolts. An archetype made painfully real. But wait!—there is something
more behind the Wizard’s curtain, a vastness of Light and Love.
There are certain images I remember. For a brief moment, I am hanging
on the cross with the Master, feeling the inexpressible sorrow (not pain) of benighted
rejection. A voice inside me says: “Your life can mean as much. You
must go back. There is work to do.” You can’t mean me. I’m just a nobody.
Who was Jesus, anyway? What about Buddha? The voice says: “Buddha
was the most egoless man who ever lived; Jesus was the most perfect ego.”
How long all this takes, I do not know. But, still trapped in the roaring rain,
trying to keep my mind from completely disassociating, I call out for help. A
new calm comes over me. Now, I wonder about my friends: Have they made it
to the car? Are they all right? As suddenly as it began, the storm abates. Then,
I know it is safe to run back to the VW. How sweet the wild roses smell in the
electrified air!
Leaving every stitch of my rain-soaked clothing in a pile outside, I wrap myself
in a most welcome blanket and begin to calm down. There is little we can
say to each other and my friends eventually go to sleep. I spend the night listening
to the thousands of rivulets flowing into the canyon and (I now know in
retrospect) my angels whispering in my ear. Alone, at dawn, I behold the sunrise
from the very spot of my trauma.
Three days later, while staying with a friend in Southern California before
hitchhiking to San Francisco, I meet another guy who is interested in spiritual
realities. We discuss some books we have read: The Doors of Perception, The
Varieties of Religious Experience, the novels of Hermann Hesse. “I just passed
through Big Sur on my way back here to L.A.,” he says. “I stayed with the cook
at Nepenthe. His name is Peter Rabbit—really! He showed me this very intriguing,
big blue book. I think you might be interested in it.”
The next day, my host takes us over to meet someone he knows in the San
Fernando Valley who is “into that kind of stuff.” His friend isn’t home, but his
roommate lets us in. Sitting on the coffee table is the Urantia Book. Peter Rabbit’s
friend says, “Oh, there’s that book I was telling you about.”
By October of 1970, I was settled in San Francisco’s North Beach, rooming
with a Tarot card reader, devouring that big blue book as fast as I could. Presumably
by chance, I met some more new readers of this revelation. We formed
a study group that has met weekly at some place or other to this day.
DAVID BRADLEY: In 1970, I purchased the Urantia Book after my wife
had heard that it was a “high” (that’s ’60s jargon for “mind-expanding”) book.
At the time my library included books by Carl Jung, John Lilly, Aldous Huxley,
Black Elk, Carlos Castaneda, Lynn Andrews, C. S. Lewis, and others. I put the
UB on the shelf with my other spiritual adventure books. At this time I did not
believe in God, and had had no religious training; but I had experienced good,
inexplicable magic in my personal life and I loved synchronicity. I liked to go
to rock music bars and power/spirit dance. While dancing, I would sometimes
steer myself by imagining that I was moving harmoniously with the presence of
Jesus.