The Urantia Book proclaims: Life on earth is only the tip of the iceberg! The drama of eternity has only just begun! A cosmic adventure beckons!

While living this short, intense life on Urantia, we human beings begin the eternal development of our unique, never-to-be repeated, personalities. Our experience with the indwelling spirit of God, trusting and following its gentle leading, is the passport to that eternity.

Our personalities--essentially our wills--slowly become like God's as we increasingly trust ourselves to him during our ascent through the many worlds that the book tells us exist beyond this first earthly life. That is the purpose of all universe life--to grow perfect, even as God is perfect.

Attaining that perfection takes a long time, far longer than our finite minds can conceive. Today, as mere material mortals, our understanding is limited; but, as morontia progressors, our capacities will expand and as spirit pilgrims, unimagined faculties for experiential growth await us. We must choose freely to cooperate with the learning process. There is absolutely no coercion in God's plan of experiential progress.

We are God's precious offspring, born to grow perfect, to love and to serve throughout eternity.

In its 2097 pages, The Urantia Book encourages us to make God our personal priority. The more we know about God--the amazing, creative, nurturing Cosmic Parent--the more we are empowered to serve others. To love and serve as God loves and serves is the business of living and the source of all lasting joy and fulfillment. To know God as Universal Father, and the whole of humankind as family, is the supreme experience of living. This is the great destiny to which we humans are called. It is a never-ending, thrilling enterprise which fulfills our deepest and most profound personal longings. It is to realize, with absolute assurance, our immutable identity as sons and daughters of God.

Critical thinking and making decisions are more important than we ever imagined.

The Urantia Book is an information tool to know God more deeply and to grow spiritually. It is a book which demands time plus an open and questing mind. The reward for the student is an endlessly fascinating orientation to life, one filled with challenge and meaning. This mind tool leads the reader through new facts and concepts not otherwise available. It generates the confidence in us to risk trusting a loving God and making that trust the obvious and logical course to follow.

It is by our faith decisions that we are advanced. The mortal mind is the connection between the material and the spiritual. How and what we think--our attitudes and our priorities--are crucial. Strenuous thinking and making choices are the keys to progress. Matter, when subject to mind and the over control of spirit can progress to perfection, even an eternal perfection.

People need to belong.

The progress of the whole is dependent on the progress of the part. Urantia depends on the progress of the individual to one day achieve perfection status. We belong to a universe in which we are accountable. Our contribution to the evolution of this planet is vital. Progress has to do with the development of our personality potential in our relationships with others  through faith attitudes of love, trust, and mercy. The book tells us:

Personality cannot very well perform in isolation. Man is innately a social creature; he is dominated by the craving of belongingness. It is literally true, "No man lives unto himself." (1227)

next column>

Of all human needs, none is more compelling than this need to belong. For it is in belonging that we grasp our own reality and validate our sense of worth. All personality development is dependent on a sense of belonging, a sense of identity of the self in relation to others, the part in relation to the whole. The Urantia Papers are very specific about our identity as cosmic citizens in a loving and friendly universe.

The profuse details about the vast, inhabited universes, its multitudinous life forms, the facts regarding the history and destiny of our planet, and the description of the administration of the entire cosmic creation, boggle the mind. These details leave little room for the reader to doubt who they are, where they are going, and to whom they belong.

The Urantia Book ventures into the past further than the finite human mind can conceive, and ahead into the eternal future with equal demands on the imagination. Perhaps such detail will seem crude to future generations, but to our twentieth century minds, this precise information is nothing short of a revelation. Such detail is necessary if we are to grasp the size and grandeur of God's creation, and the importance of our co-operation and participation in our own universe evolution.

Essential concepts of life after death.

The Urantia Book is different from other scientific/philosophical and spiritual writings because of its unprecedented context. Over one third of the book tells us, in detail, about life after we leave this planet. The remainder continually refers to our post-Urantia experiences.

It may be essential that, at this point in history, we humans have a dire need to know, beyond all shadow of doubt, how and why our personalities survive after death. If we do not fully grasp and internalize why each and every person is of supreme value to God, the peoples of Urantia will surely lose hope. That this is so may be seen in the widely disseminated philosophy of European existentialists who perceive life as absurd, even an obscene and  meaningless joke.

Without new information about our history, our destiny, and the unseen assistance available to us, how can we feel safe enough to abandon ourselves to divine guidance, much less to trust ourselves and each other? Without grasping these new concepts and insights contained in The Urantia Book, without widespread and enlightened dedication to the service motive, how can we possibly think of progress in our world? Yet without a paradigm shift in the basis of human motivation from that of self-interest to the service of God and our neighbor, the people of Urantia are surely on a path to self-destruction.

The integrity of personal religious experience.

There is no human authority, religious or otherwise, by which the truth of The Urantia Book's teachings can be validated. No authoritative voice exists that can assure the new reader of the reliability of its information. Therefore, it is the individual reader who must resolve this issue and eventually reach a decision--either to embrace its teachings, or to ignore or reject them. For many, the truths contained within the book strike a deep, personal chord of truth that is self-authenticating. For others an inner voice beckons saying, "this is the way." Ultimately, placing our full trust in that inner voice is the most important lesson of our spiritual life. And it is the very essence of personal religious experience.

Sue Tennant, Toronto, Canada.