One of my favorite topics is, "the hidden messages in The Urantia Book." Occasionally when the inspiration hits me, I try to write about these hidden messages, even though they are not really so hidden.  This article deals with the true nature of art from the cosmic perspective, and why art defined in this fashion is so vitally important to us. It also offers up a new way to differentiate the offerings of The Urantia Book from other "religions" and "revelations" in the broad marketplace of ideas.

When asked to explain The Urantia Book, most of us come up short, or, worse yet, draw a complete blank. Many of the rest of us give some convoluted explanation that would only make sense to someone who has nearly finished his/her first reading of the book.  I submit that this is because the book is simply too broad to be summarized, an assessment that I suspect few would disagree with.

The Urantia Book says that Jesus' many-sided teachings were not adequately grasped by any one individual, and that is why the bulk of his teachings were lost so soon after his death (within a generation or two). Or, to explain it differently, each of his followers taught that portion of Jesus' teachings which he or she understood, and the only teachings that have withstood the test of time are those that were universal, those few teachings that were commonly understood by all.

But, if we as individuals focus on that portion of The Urantia Book that we best understand, the risk of the message being largely lost is minimal, since this revelation is in book form.  In any event, it is certainly not appropriate to tell an inquirer (sincere or otherwise) that the book is simply too vast to be summarized, so here, take my loaner copy, and go read it for yourself.  People want TRUTH, not a BOOK, even if that truth is distorted, as long as it comes from your heart.

That, I believe, is the key. How much of that big blue book has made its way into your heart?  For many, the fascination with the revelation as a revelation has eclipsed the more subtle messages.

We readers all know that God is love, hell is not real, everyone who seeks forgiveness is forgiven, and so on.  But these ideas come off as just a bunch of platitudes to an outsider, just another "religion," probably made up by someone hoping to appeal to yet another segment of the unwary population.

What we need is something MEATY to give our inquirers. Something really different, something unique and highly appealing.  So, turning to the book, what can be found that might fit this bill?

Consider Paper 56, Universal Unity, co-authored by a Mighty Messenger (we will probably become Mighty Messengers some day), and Machiventa Melchizedek, the only other Descending Son of God to incarnate into the likeness of a human being on this planet to date.  Until recently, I have found this one paper to be curiously out of step with most of the rest of the book, comparable in some ways to the papers on the Supreme--interesting, but perhaps a bit irrelevant.

But this paper was written by the one personality MOST INTERESTED in the welfare of this planet--our soon-to-be Vicegerent Planetary Prince. This convinced me that, in fact, this paper was probably one of the most important papers in the whole book. So, I read it very carefully, and very slowly.

In some ways Paper 56 is a bit like the Foreword--it tends to summarize the whole book. But there are some very interesting and unique perspectives presented in this Paper, entitled Universal Unity.  I will focus on just one of them--ART.

In Section 10, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, we find the discussion on art. Our future replacement Planetary Prince, who once (and not too long ago) lived among us, says:

"Philosophy you somewhat grasp, and divinity you comprehend in worship, social service, and personal spiritual experience, but the pursuit of beauty--cosmology--you all too often limit to the study of man's crude artistic endeavors."

He then goes on to elaborate. I could take up many pages of text expanding upon this elaboration, but instead, let's just focus on one element. Here's his next sentence:

"Beauty, art, is largely a matter of the unification of contrasts."

Let's assume that Jesus, who exhausted all the potentials for finite expression of spiritual beauty in the local universe of Nebadon, epitomized this concept. How did Jesus express beauty (as art) by unifying contrasts?
I say that Jesus was every bit a man of his day. He could keep up with anyone who displayed the least bit of spiritual receptivity. Now, there are some pretty weird characters in the world today, and I'm sure that in Jesus' day the typical man on the street was much rougher, much weirder, and much more dangerous than today. Two examples (out of many) come to mind, of Jesus' melding of contrasts. One is the time he stopped a man from beating his wife in public, the other is the occasion of Jesus talking to Anaxand in the shipyard.

I'd like to confess here that I attended high school with a boy who was raised by his grandmother, in a very small town. We were very good friends, but as adults, he took a somewhat different path than I did, though we kept in touch for many years. After getting caught in some silly interstate theft thing and doing a few months in the Texas prison system, he returned to his wife and two young children, and made a life for himself.

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Now, my friend Arley (not the one who reads The Urantia Book) was a good guy at heart, but his experiences in the Navy and in prison caused him to associate with a very rough crowd--bikers. He'd go to biker bars, and biker weddings. In case anyone doesn't know it, the "code" of the American Old West still lives on in the biker sub-culture. Might very often makes right in these circles. There are plenty of drugs, and plenty of scoundrels. I remember one time when Arley told me that he'd taken his motorcycle to a guy for a major overhaul, and it was over two months later and he hadn't gotten it back.  He told me that he (Arley) was afraid that this guy, this backyard mechanic, might be trying to get into the "Banditos," a motorcycle gang that requires, as the price of admission to their club, that the bike the candidate is riding be stolen from another biker. Arley summed up his dilemma by saying, "I might have to kill him." I thought he was speaking figuratively, but when I started making a joke of his comment, he let me know that he didn't appreciate me making light of his very real moral dilemma.

I rather suspect that many of the persons Jesus dealt with in his day were like Arley. I read a lot of Arley in the character of Anaxand, the young man in the shipyard working on the steering paddle alongside Jesus. Here we see Jesus making some kind of series of comments that causes Anaxand to ridicule Jesus, but to do so with a hint of sincerity.

Jesus knew that Anaxand's comment of, "if the gods are so good then how come..." could not be answered directly. A discussion of free will, the real answer to the man's verbalized question, would have been wholly inappropriate. Jesus correctly saw the man's comment as a challenge to the assertions that Jesus had been making over the course of the morning--Jesus' assertions that God is good and that God cares for us. Jesus also correctly ascertained that such a challenge could only be addressed by a counterchallenge, one that would "one-up" the original challenge issued by the young man, Anaxand.

I'm picturing a bunch of bikers sitting around, one of whom is bragging about his friend. Another biker gets tired of listening to him, and calls his bluff. Now the bragger has to defend himself, or be made a fool.  Imagine if biker #1 manages not only to defend his friend's honor, but at the same time to call his challenger a coward, and to do so in such a way that biker #2 actually agrees! This, I believe is what happened that afternoon in the shipyard as Jesus challenged Anaxand to accept his (Anaxand's) superior vision of justice, and act upon it to save the poor foreman who was drowning in spiritual darkness. Jesus even implied that if Anaxand didn't, he would be a spiritual coward!

If you read the passage on page 1430 you will notice that Jesus "puts down" Anaxand at least three times--twice at the beginning of his brief discourse, and then again at the end, where he challenges him with the following statement:

"Surely you are not the coward who could stand by on the seashore and watch a fellow man who could not swim perish?"

These are mighty strong words to use when dealing with an aggressive young man, one who hangs out in shipyards. But under the circumstances, they were exactly what needed to be said.

But, what does this have to do with art? Simple--it is a unification of contrasts. Jesus accepted this man exactly as he was, and still managed to unify spiritual growth and beauty with the rough and aggressive world of a common shipyard laborer. Truly, a unification of contrasts, creative beauty in the most amazing way.

However, this short passage illustrates a larger issue. Jesus lived a unique, spontaneous, and highly creative (artistic) life. The canvas of Jesus' life was the environs in which he happened to find himself at the moment. Jesus epitomized life in the era of light and life, a time when fashion will cease to dominate the lives of every mortal, when our clothes, our music, our ideas, our vocabularies, our reactions, and our thoughts will be unique expressions of the beauty of God, rather than being dictated by the acceptable norms of society.

In short, I believe that one of the hidden messages in The Urantia Book is the importance of ART.  Not art as in paintings, sculpture, and music, but rather art as in "the art of living," as Rodan so aptly phrased it.  We are each to become a unique and artistic expression of the infinite personality of the Universal Father. That infinity will not be fully expressed, a portion of it will be lost forever, if we do not fulfill our potential. God depends upon us, in partnership with him, to CREATIVELY work out a new addition to reality as we know it. That, I believe, is the type of ART that our newly appointed Vicegerent Planetary Prince would like us to latch on to as a guiding concept in life.

And that, I submit, could be portrayed as the message that makes The Urantia Book unique among religions. For while all other religions rely on some type of code of ethics and morals (some are good, some are not so good, some are exceptionally good), The Urantia Book challenges us to devise a new and original path, one that will transcend the ethics and morals of this day, and will stand as a living testament to the glory of God the Almighty.

"Only a brave person is able honestly to accept, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers."--Rodan of Alexandria.

John C. Hyde, USA.