ubphoria

Urantia Book Audio Podcast (Merritt Horn) - Paper 5

2011-11-03T12:34:00.000-04:00

THE URANTIA BOOK

Audio with Merritt Horn

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PART I - THE CENTRAL AND SUPERUNIVERSES

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PAPER 5 - GOD'S RELATION TO THE INDIVIDUAL

God's Relation to the Individual

1. The Approach to God

2. The Presence of God

3. True Worship

4. God in Religion

5. The Consciousness of God

6. The God of Personality

Download the Entire Paper 5 as a Zip Folder

Urantia Book Audio Podcast (Merritt Horn) - Paper 4

2011-11-01T17:38:00.000-04:00

THE URANTIA BOOK

Audio with Merritt Horn

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PART I - THE CENTRAL AND SUPERUNIVERSES

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PAPER 4 - GOD'S RELATION TO THE UNIVERSE

God's Relation to the Universe

1. The Universe Attitude of the Father

2. God and Nature

3. God's Unchanging Character

4. The Realization of God

5. Erroneous Ideas of God

Download the Entire Paper 4 as a Zip Folder

Urantia Book Audio Podcast (Merritt Horn) - Paper 3

2011-10-30T14:37:00.000-04:00

THE URANTIA BOOK

Audio with Merritt Horn

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PART I - THE CENTRAL AND SUPERUNIVERSES

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PAPER 3 - THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

The Attributes of God

1. God's Everywhereness

2. God's Infinite Power

3. God's Universal Knowledge

4. God's Limitlessness

5. The Father's Supreme Rule

6. The Father's Primacy

Download the Entire Paper 3 as a Zip Folder

Urantia Book Audio Podcast (Merritt Horn) - Paper 2

2011-10-27T14:45:00.000-04:00

THE URANTIA BOOK

Audio with Merritt Horn

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PART I - THE CENTRAL AND SUPERUNIVERSES

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PAPER 2 - THE NATURE OF GOD

The Nature of God

1. The Infinity of God

2. The Father's Eternal Perfection

3. Justice and Righteousness

4. The Divine Mercy

5. The Love of God

6. The Goodness of God

7. Divine Truth and Beauty

Download the Entire Paper 2 as a Zip Folder

Why "Churchification" is Not the Answer

2011-10-25T13:41:00.001-04:00

Just as certainly as men share their religious beliefs, they create a religious group of some sort which eventually creates common goals. Someday religionists will get together and actually effect co-operation on the basis of unity of ideals and purposes rather than attempting to do so on the basis of psychological opinions and theological beliefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify religionists. Since true religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own and personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual experience. Let the term "faith" stand for the individual’s relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of what some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common religious attitude. “Have you faith? Then have it to yourself.”

The Urantia Book 99:5.7

It is the turning away from these UB ideals in recent years by "certain" UB organizations (i.e. pushing for scheduled and LED group prayer and religious ritual at UB events, overemphasis on Christian-style dogma--moralizing and patronizing about the behavior of others, inflexibility and "gentle blindness" ((my term)) of leaders who believe they are self-appointed pipelines for the FER--along with their unwillingness to listen to and implement the issues brought up by the greater, general and ((Thankfully, so-far)) religiously UNorganized UB readership, and - though this sounds strange perhaps to traditional religionists out there - over-emphasis ABOUT Jesus), that may jeopardize all that we have worked for since 1955.

Some UB groups are LOSING membership, turning off non-Christians, repelling the youth and giving the impression that the UB is a "sacred text," "Word of God (which it ISN'T!)," or "God's Bible" that can replace the Judeo-Christian Bible; one that a church should be based around. In my opinion (and it is ONLY my opinion) "churchification" of the UB movement is the single most destructive thing that we could possibly attempt to institute.

I know how ironic this may sound to some, but, the Effectiveness of the FER and its textbook (the UB) on our world is proportional to how SECULAR our UB groups remain and appear to potential readers. If they are destined to read the UB, then they will naturally work with us to "effect co-operation on the basis of unity of ideals and purposes rather than" set group requirements. And a new kind of *world-wide* religion (being a literal "institution," with full Authority and experiential theo-social maturity) will eventually become realistically possible. Rushing such a plan will delay this goal, and may discredit the UB for many years to come.

In my mind there are only three kinds of valid religion: (1) Personal Religion - The soul growth obtained through daily experience; by getting to know the Father from within one's own soul (the INDIVIDUAL choosing the Will of the Father), and therefore becoming like Him. (2) Social Religion - The UNorganized and spontaneous religious experience of groups of SIMILAR thinking faith-brothers and sisters--devoid of group religious policies (rules, creeds and dogma and desires for unrealistic spiritual uniformity); a social experience that codifies the importance of number 1 (personal religion), over all group goals. (3) Planetary Religion - The only valid form of "institutional" religion, and one that will encompasses the ENTIRE planet--and, by the time that is possible, we will Truly know how to get it right. Anything short of these three, WILL ALWAYS FAIL.

Adherence to a human system of "psychological OPINIONS," "theological beliefs," and group "creeds," stultifies and makes static, the Truths that would be most useful to our world and ourselves as individual souls (if they would only be kept dynamic and pliable). Resigning one's self (and soul) to a system of group parameters, limiting what one can believe in one's own heart and mind, precludes the ability to keep that mind open to the growth of concepts BEYOND the group. Groups - ALL groups - are not in the least bit interested in the growth of the individual and her/his personal adaptations to the outer and inner worlds she/he functions in--despite their platitudes and propaganda that may say otherwise. They have ONE mission: Maintenance of the GROUP. This may not be a bad thing for bowling leagues, but it's a disaster for organized religions.

Only I can save MY soul. No minister or priest (or self-appointed UB religious leader--even if they truly believe they are promoting the "spirit of religion") will stand beside me at the time of my death and subsequent Judgement. I must face that moment ALONE, and I would be wiser to have spent my time here on Urantia doing the *inner* work of personal spiritual enlightenment in the sanctuary of my own soul, through direct experience with my Father (Our Father), than to attempt such a thing in the midst of a group of people (though well-meaning and even highly loving) who may have innocently (or not) stumbled upon the error of disallowing the integration of some of my own spiritual discoveries into THEIR conception of what MY "faith" should be...just for the upkeep and harmony of the concreted belief system of the GROUP.

And so I say: LOVE to all here. Though somewhat impersonal, an online forum of this kind has a much greater potential to attract new readers, satisfy the desire to socialize our personal religions and reach large numbers of other interested folks. If we were to have THIS kind of group, in person, without the trappings of a church-like agenda, our UB events and conferences would fill to over-flowing with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and all other people of God...as well as Christians.

And YOUNG people (16-35 y.o.) - having been turned off by the meaningless (though comfortably accepted) rituals of the conventional and traditional churches which they were often *forced* to attend (but - through Inner Leading - might have chosen to walk away from these so-called "houses of God," all the while, filled with guilt, shame and hatred for themselves for not being able to live "up" to the unrealistic and inflexible creeds therein) would then swell the ranks of our readership. They would joyfully take the reigns of the movement, as the (hopefully) loosened and freeing, current UB leadership is passed from our older generations to them; lighting a Divine fire, fueled and led by the oxygen of the Power of the God Sparks in their minds, that would then sweep across the world. If you think WE (as generally older folks) are doing well with social media channels and digital communication, wait til you see a group of "Millenials" take over. In ONE generation THEY could make the UB a world-wide, household Word. But they ave to love it and not fear it. Or, they will reject it.

Let's not loot their future. Let's not turn them off when we (and the whole world) needs them most. Let's give them the guilt-free Tools to save the planet, end the cultures of greed, materialism, intolerance, racism, sexism, militarism, political polarity and general selfishness. We can fix what we are doing in this UB movement, but it must be conscious, deliberate, intelligent and wise.

In my opinion (again) we MUST step back and outside of our re-inforced bubble, and TRULY observe what we are doing here. Throw away expectations and fantasies about having UB churches on every street corner. As great and dearly loved as the UB is to me, I KNOW now that IT is not the Epochal Revelation that will achieve the kind of acceptance necessary for religious organization. I KNOW in my heart that it IS, however, the textbook which is training a Religious and Cosmological Caste of heaven-educated individuals, who will prepare the world for the coming of the Sixth Epochal Revelation (or possibly the completion of this FER)--a Paradise Son. And HE will initiate the forces needed to bring about the eventual organization of the world under Michael and our Father. No one has to subscribe to this belief, but it would not hurt to consider it, if even hypothetically.

Epochal Revelation is about putting the peoples of Urantia in direct personal contact - while in the flesh -with incarnated Sons (and Daughters). The "Book" of Urantia is a stepping stone to the fulfillment of exactly this. We are out of sequence. The point being, that the incarnation of a new Paradise Son coming before an organized religion can form around the concepts of the UB, is mathematically much more probable, than not.

I implore my wonderful sisters and brothers HERE, NOW, to abandon "churchification," for the sake of a future in which it will eventually happen anyway, but organically; with out pushing and shoving the UB or the agenda of organized religious groups who read it, down people's throats. Why are we currently so impatient for organizing a religion that we ourselves are just now barely beginning to understand? We must *Master* it first (in every meaning of that word). We need further Instruction and more self-enlightenment. What we should be is THRILLED at the prospect of receiving a New Advent that will fill in that Instruction. My heart of hearts tells me this Event will very shortly come to pass. And I thank my Daddy that I was born among the most fortunate of Urantian generations.

Urantia Book Audio Podcast (Merritt Horn) - Paper 1

2011-10-22T14:10:00.000-04:00

THE URANTIA BOOK

Audio with Merritt Horn

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PART I - THE CENTRAL AND SUPERUNIVERSES

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PAPER 1 - THE UNIVERSAL FATHER

The Universal Father

1. The Father's Name

2. The Reality of God

3. God is a Universal Spirit

4. The Mystery of God

5. Personality of the Universal Father

6. Personality in the Universe

7. Spiritual Value of the Personality Concept

Download the Entire Paper 1 as a Zip Folder

Urantia Book Audio Podcast (Merritt Horn) - Foreword

2011-10-20T13:25:00.014-04:00

For the next 50 weeks or so, I will be posting four Urantia Book papers per week (read by Merritt Horn), as a podcast. Please feel free to download each paper as they are posted so you might keep a folder of audio for yourself (links at the bottom of each post). Thank you to the Urantia Book Fellowship for the use of these audio mp3 files. Enjoy!

THE URANTIA BOOK

Audio with Merritt Horn

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FOREWORD

Introduction

1. Deity and Divinity

2. God

3. The First Source and Center

4. Universe Reality

5. Personality Realities

6. Energy and Pattern

7. The Supreme Being

8. God the Sevenfold

9. God the Ultimate

10. God the Absolute

11. The Three Absolutes

12. The Trinities

Download the Entire Foreword as a Zip Folder

Love to All,

Alex

Freedom from Religious Addiction

2011-04-16T19:15:00.005-04:00

Brom The Herald

All these things we call "religions" are just ideologies of one sort or another. Human beings want other people to make up their world views for them. It is a kind of laziness. It is a bit understandable though.

We are moved in this direction the moment we begin to understand our parents, then teachers, preachers, politicians, scientists, employers... on and on... and we paddle from island to island, through out life this way. It is something that none of us escape. Because, to escape this thing that EVERYONE else does, you have to separate yourself from all other people. And who wants to do that? Then you live in a cave up on the mountain and have to run away every time some hiker runs across you in the woods gathering firewood.

But, it seems to me, at the very least, what we can do is gather the ideas around us that make sense and don't seem to contradict too badly with each other, no matter what their sources are, and build our own individual island, connected by relationship-bridges to all the other folks around us doing the same thing. If enough of us did this, an archipelago of freethinking would arise in the world. I'm NOT talking about a bunch of "freethinkers." I'm talking about a world of free thinking. We could then be a TRUE "religious group," as in the following (my bold)...

103:5.12 When a member of a social religious group has complied with the requirements of such a group, he should be encouraged to enjoy religious liberty in the full expression of his own personal interpretation of the truths of religious belief and the facts of religious experience. The security of a religious group depends on spiritual unity, not on theological uniformity. A religious group should be able to enjoy the liberty of freethinking without having to become freethinkers. There is great hope for any church that worships the living God, validates the brotherhood of man, and dares to remove all creedal pressure from its members.

At this point, there is no church on earth that dares such a thing. Why? Because it could not sustain itself as a "group" as we understand such a term. There is only ONE valid "group" that will EVER be a church with such high ideals: The Church of Humanity as a Whole. But this will require a lot of other unifications and federations first--mostly in the geopolitical realm.

People throwing themselves at curtains, whether iron or silk, need to have those barriers removed before they can know that other folks are even out there and want to be their brothers and sisters. Trying to say that a church will bring political peace is a noble fantasy, but it is just that, a fantasy, because of these political and social - all ideological - barriers. There will be a Planetary Government long BEFORE there is a planetary religious group. However by adhering to the principle of thinking for yourself, you become an example of lucidity to the folks around you. Your righteousness is no longer born of slogans and catch-phrases, cults and party lines, relics and crying statues... You are cognitively liberated and thence able to become spiritually fragrant.

It took me so long to realize how silly it is that people sit around scratching their heads wondering which prescribed set of ideas they are going to follow all their lives. Which guru, reshi, imam, minister, saint, monk has THE answer? And social systems (at least in the West) are set up to scorn the people who leave their ideological group and over-flatter those who join it--not for the sake of the individual member, but for the sake of the GROUP.

We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to feel like part of a community. In my opinion this is the deep-rooted soul-need to be part of all humanity together. Unfortunately we live at a time in history where, to fulfill this need incompletely but the best we can, we join ideological interest groups, including institutionalized religions. People can addict to the Urantia Book too.

When I first joined UBRON, there were folks here (now a little more silent) who didn't read ANYTHING but the UB. I would talk about a scientific discovery and the response would be UB quotes. I'd ask if they would read the science article and they would refuse, saying "Why? The UB gives me all I need to know." Well, this is just the signature of an immature and complacent mind. Go to a Bible forum, same thing. Although - and let's be very clear about this: the UB is NOT a religious text or sacred text and its concepts are not given for building a church around. Part IV, could come dangerously close, but for cryin out loud, if you're dogmatizing the fact that at first Andon thought only bird's nests could tinder fires - that that should be preached and codified for all ages as a religious lesson of some sort - you better check your medicine labels.

And humans are especially bad at poking their heads outside the "box" (or "boxes") once they been shoe-horned into it, because we addict to so many other things too. Other animals addict to some substances, but besides substances, humans addict to relationships, to schedules and routines even thrill, itself. There is little difference between the broken heart of unrequited love and heroin withdrawal (both lead to stomach aches, sleeplessness, vomiting, obsessive ideas, inability to do everyday activities, thoughts of suicide, etc). For some people, the abandonment of their childhood "faith group" can be just as terrible--sometimes worse.

Each bumper sticker-ideology that we paste on ourselves, precludes the discoveries found in any, so-called, "opposing" ideology. That is, unless you are willing to rip that sticker off, which always leaves a bit of itself behind, and find other ones to cover up those unresolved residues, you only get 50% of the info out there. I don't know about you all, but that is not good enough for me. I want to know it ALL (or as much as possible). My greatest handicap as a human on this planet - I mean ALL of us - is completely set in place, screwed into the concrete floor, by ideological decisions. Each one is a link in the chains that enslave and limit me, DISTRACT ME toward the mind and ideas (addiction, habituation and habits) of MAN.

All the while, I actually want and need to be looking for the mind of GOD: Lordee, I'm so confused!, am I a Buddhist, Islamist, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Humanist, Atheist, Agnostic, Liberal, Conservative, Republican, Democrat, Jungian, Freudian, Emersonian, Jeffersonian, Jesusonian, Green Peace Activist, Red Army Communist, Orange Shirt Rebel, Leftist, Fascist, Socialist, Capitalist, Anarchist, Meat Lover, Vegetarian, Vegan, Thrill-seeker, Intellectual, Pacifist, Hawk, Realist, Cubist, Technologist, Naturalist... no, No, NO! I've taken something from each of these. But I consciously try not to put: ic, ist, ian, ive, at, al on myself. And only now halfway through a typical earth lifetime, do I realize that *I* AM my own ideology and my own church. I'd spent so long searching for what everyone else was, that I didn't get to know myself.

I still get railroaded into circumstances where I have to pull out the tattered
portfolio, the socially acceptable resume, the piece of paper, set of terms, that tells the conventional world of strangers what I am (WAS)...as if these labels still stand for me as a person. I simply don't have the energy to put new acquaintances to sleep with all the things I've said to you above - to my family, so I'm just "Alex, the writer," or "Alex, the musician" etc... If the world were a little more evolved, and if I were more transparent about who I am as a person in my everyday life, I could simply say: "I AM Alex." And the person would nod in complete understanding, then introduce themself in that same way.

But there will come a day when we will be seen by our souls; when we will wear them on the "outside" and be unashamed. A clothing made out of morontia-soul can resist the adhering to bumper-sticker conventionality. It can deflect the lesser lights of ideology and absorb from the "inside" the intense Light of the Will of God, and then focus and project out that Luminosity into the world around it. That is the purpose of the soul. We are told by the UB that the soul is embryonic. Well, that may be true now in our primitive state. But, the people of the future will not learn FROM each other, they will learn WITH each other, by each other. They will be walking-souls, long before their bodies pass away. We simply CAN NOT imagine such a world, even though the earth, Urantia, will someday BE such a world.

These baby steps; these tiny shards of light now breaking through the egg-shell
perceptions of our current world-views and assumptions; the words you are reading right this second; the feeling of understanding for what I'm saying, within your own hearts, IS the proof that we are about to take the next step. I am optimistic. I think even the most buried sticks in the mud, the most chained-to-convention, the most backward-looking, "everything is just fine the way it is," "don't rock the boat," "grow slow," "be safe," "you can't change it any way right now," "transformation is a nice ideal, but things are too complicated," and worst of ALL OTHERS: "Don't try"...folks WILL see this light. We are never really good at getting asses off our couches, turning of the TV, walking outside, peering INSIDE and saying: "It IS time to change" until our backs are up against the wall. It is a primate trait.

It has been said (I paraphrase) that "Man is not a machine, but given every opportunity, he will ACT like a machine." Admitting it to one's self is the first step. And once that goal has been achieved, no preacher, teacher, apostle, disciple, barker or bard will ever feel the need to tell others about the potential of this kind of freedom for the soul, like YOU a person who has liberated their ghost from the machine. Smashing the static, ruinous addiction to worldly habits, barrier-building religions that make people hate themselves and stultifying conventions, represents the very meaning of HUMAN RIGHTS.

So, remember to try to wear your soul on the outside. And I will do the same.

Pain Management and Cognitive Liberty on Urantia

2010-09-15T18:17:00.006-04:00

This essay has little to do with the Urantia Book. But it does have to do with our world and our Western culture. It was inspired by my concern about my sister, Deb's pain management; that her doctors skimped on how much medication they gave her after surgery. I think that the following will show that something so common (inadaquate pain management) actually has much deeper roots. And these roots are watered by the lack of our human government to provide its citizens with Cognitive Liberty.

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Regarding what I consider to be the extreme negligence of certain individuals in the medical community in the area of pain management and how that is tied into some basic things that are going wrong with our culture...

The proof is in the pudding:

Another DEA mistake

DEA as overseer of Doctors...

Pain and the Law

News of the Day

Many other instances of DEA interference in pain management

The DEA acknowledges yet denies the conflict between drug control and pain control

The DEA’s bad-faith war on pain doctors

Continuing Concerns About DEA’s 'Prescription Series' Proposal [PDF]

The War on Pain Medicine

Why do physicians fear prescribing adequate levels of opiates?

Thirty Attorneys General Speak Out On Pain Management

Undertreatment of chronic pain

Keep a close eye on your baby

My point here is that the reason there even IS a DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency, established in 1973) is because there is an official "War on Drugs" (actually, a civil war prosecuted by a government against its own people) initiated by a criminal, Richard Nixon, in the year Deb was born, 1969.

If you have a chance, download and/or listen to Jonathan Ott's extremely concise lecture on this topic [thanks to Lorenzo Hagerty for this audio file].

Using logic, one can then state that it is the War on Drugs that frightens and ties the hands of physicians. If this "WAR" were ended, not only would physicians have the liberty to actually practice compassionate medicine by playing with a full deck, but, in most cases, "alternative" medicines (like very safe Cannabis) would finally be able to be used instead of, or in combination with, LESS opiates.

Unfortunately, even where Medical Marijuana is legal, finding a doctor who will write a note for you can be a dignity-destroying experience. Also, it can not be done for *temporary* pain.

More audio presentations [thanks again to Lorenzo Hagerty for the following audio files]:

Ethan Nadelmann - Time to End the War on Drugs

Andrew Weil - Psychoactive Drugs Through Human History

Claudia Little - The Truth About Cannabis

The reason why I am so tempted to lash out at the medical community is because of the lack of courage I find there. But they don't deserve as much blame as I occassionally feel like placing on them. It is actually the scientific community - upon which both the DEA and the medical community depend for validation of their policies - that keeps dropping the research ball.

Scientists can perform the most abominable experiments on animals, they can probe the outer reaches of the universe, they can build multi-billion dollar supercolliders... Their knowledge is tested and verified by scholarly review with an unquestionable scrutiny that is unparalleled in the history of humanity. Science is touted as the greatest arbiter of secular and objective truth in this world. But when it comes to research on the value of Cannabis and the other psychedelic substances to medical science and the profoundly positive social policy changes that research could engender, many scientists are cowards of the first order. Forget grants and funding, the subject isn't even mentionable.

Every researcher in psychopharmacology should be standing up to the government in this respect, and so should every concerned citizen. As things are today, the government is not controlled by a democratic system. As we have seen above (and most of us have seen in our personal lives), pure military-industrial, power-based politics and fundamentalist religion RULE everyone on earth; most, with the barrel of a gun. If you think that you have REAL freedom, you are self-deluded in the extreme - no kinder way to say it.

As Terence McKenna might have explained the situation: The fact is that no one is handing out rights. They must be TAKEN. Cannabis and other psychedelic substances expand consciousness and cause people to question the hyper-conventionalism and unthinking habit of the broken-down and anitquated social and economic systems of every-day life that we seem to be enshrining and approving of (through our NON-action). Governments become very afraid when their citizens begin asking such inconvenient questions.

These substances bring about a realization in the people who know how to use them properly. It is a realization that it is the barriers we build between each other, and the groups that do the same thing, that are the biggest stumbling blocks to human PROGRESS. And here, in the 21st Century, these barriers are leading to a world-wide cultural REGRESS. If people began to make it a priority to tear down these barriers--starting with the liberty to think what we want and explore our own minds--control over our personal lives and inner thoughts would then fall back to WE, THE PEOPLE, where it belongs.

Thankfully, for the first time in history, due to the Internet and free speech forums like Facebook, people now have access to immense amounts of exponentially growing information (both objective study and subjective personal opinions, like mine) and they can make their OWN decisions about what is right and wrong. No longer can these concepts (right and wrong) be dictated to us from on high...

And no longer can uncomfortable truths be kept in the closet. We have to USE this new and unprecedented tool to free ourselves from unnecessary physical pain and suffering, unfair searches and seizures, moralistic oppression of sexual preference, institutionalized sexism (starting with pay equality) and the subsidized, debt-based, rampant consumerism of Western-style capitalism. The last and the greatest of all human rights issues is now upon us as a global civilization: The struggle for Cognitive Liberty.

When this struggle is (hopefully) won, a truly ethical age will dawn on this planet. Of course, I say that optimistically. The alternative is what we are heading toward now: hurting each other, dangerous religious fundamentalism, thing-fetishism and mall-worship, international mistrust, environmental destruction, biased scientific research, poverty, and perpetual war. If we continue on the path we have chosen so far, we WILL destroy ourselves, possibly along with all other higher-life, and the human race will have proved itself to be nature's biggest mistake.

Where are all other people who believe these things? Are these issues SO radical and embarrassing that it is thought best to leave them undiscussed? People are afraid to rock the boat. But, if they only would, they would tip that sucker over and find that the water was only 12 inches deep all along! It seems to me that the more "radical" thing would be to just leave these issues undiscussed; whistle past the graveyard until we are all buried there, in dark and everlastingly-cold silence.

We need to CHOOSE what we are here on earth for, as individuals and collectively, and we need to do it NOW. Is it to foul our own nest to the point of our own obliteration? Or, is it to become closer to each other than we ever imagined we could be and to march together - as a species - toward a future life of light-filled happiness and peace?

Time to decide.

A Facebook Discussion With Paula Thompson on the New Urantia Fellowship Church

2010-07-16T14:54:00.007-04:00

Paula practicing what she preaches.

When I became concerned with the religious state of our community. The first person I thought of to gain some clarification from is Paula Thompson. She is major player in the UB organizations and a friend of mine for the last 15 years or so.

To one of her excellent ads at Facebook for her web radio show, "Cosmic Citizen," I asked...

* * * * * * *

ALEX WALL - How about a show that discusses the fact that the movement is being turned into a religion by the major UB organizations? After all, isn't it TRUTH that we are seeking...

* * * * * * *

That led to the following discussion among a few UB readers...

* * * * * * *

MIKE BAIN - Alex - You have an excellent and valid point. We are to exhibit the Spirit, a Living and Breathing aspect of Truth that cannot be contained by words, powers, etc. only experience, and most of it personal spiritual experience.

ALEX WALL - Thanks, Mike.

[Since it is unlikely that I will be interviewed on this matter (ha, ha)I'm going to take a mile from that inch now... :) This is very long so people might want to just not read it, if they aren't interested or prefer to remain blissfully blind, rather than complain about its length.]

Also, doesn't that Living and Breathing Spirit often move us to pray, in private (like I do many times a day)? Why must I have to be "LED" by another person's prayer, if I don't want to be? Festivals like the one just passed (TUUFF) are wonderful opportunities to meet and have face to face discussions (and even debates). But I'm not interested in the moralistic religious tone and scheduled group prayer and worship each day. That is against my personal religion. I find it offensive and spiritually intrusive.

Here's a link to the schedule so people can see for themselves:

http://ubron.org/groupdocs/TUUFF10-Schedule.pdf.

My question to everyone is...

What Foundation or Fellowship festival can people like myself meet at, with UB folks from all over the world, but who have agreed not to be subjected to preplanned religious ceremonies of any kind?

Perhaps in a festival like THAT there would be only *spontaneous* praying, and when the Living and Breathing Spirit moved any group of people there, they could express their joy through worshipful group-praise for this *special* group event that they PERSONALLY experienced, right THEN (not on some "schedule")? Perhaps group prayer and led-worship RETARD the efforts of that spirit at UB functions--including Study Groups? How would anyone who uses group prayer know?

Or maybe people won't be interested in any socio-religious expression...Shouldn't that be okay too. Wasn't the whole idea od TUUFF to be inclusive? At least people like myself wouldn't be forced to endure being "directed" by someone else's religious expression. None of that would preclude a (potentially more) profound and joyous, spiritual experience for all! :D

REAL things would actually get done, not just resolutions like for the orgs to "not speak despairingly of each other." I mean!...what does that have to do with the individual readers? Who really cares?? Unity will never be achieved by this kind of top-down, organizational approach. It seems all we really need is a unification of (organizationally unaffiliated) READERSHIP--as such(!), not an impossible, impractical and possibly-immoral, organizational religious "unity."

People (especially younger people) want dynamic group SPIRIT, not worn-out religious ritual.

All of this is what I mean by the UB *organizations* (the prominent members of which populated and led TUUFF) trying to turn the "Urantia" Book readers (after all, the orgs hold the licenses to use that word--not you and me) into a literal "Church of Urantia."

But, they will NEVER speak for this Urantian...And I would be happy and proud to be kicked out of their church. The organizations have lost the secular battle for the movement, so in desperation they have chosen to religify it. They are NOT the leaders of the Urantia Book movement! Do not be deceived by the money and power they throw into their efforts. And if you are a thinking person, stop donating to them. Yes, I said that. And I mean it. I urge people to boycott the UB organizations until they drop religiosity from the menu entirely--no quarter. This is TOO important ignore.

All just my obviously very strong opinion of course... :) ...and it is meant in the spirit of progressivism, with loving intent, and is not purely as a criticism, and not meant as being directed toward any one person...especially Paula, probably the most UB-service-oriented human being alive today. This NEEDS to be discussed, not ignored blown-off... And I plan to discuss it all over the place.

MIKE BAIN - I would hope that your post was not removed from this type of open and free-flowing forum, Chuck. I have greatly enjoyed FB because of it's open and inclusive nature. Not that it hasn't been a little too fluffy at times for me, but hey, fluffy is good too. If I am feeling I need to feel good, I come here. But, I like to see a balance, and I think ... See Moreyou represent that, Chuck.

You are voicing concerns that have been (or should be) in the back of every Urantia Book Student ever since the papers started transmitting.

Prayer schedules, etc are just part of the issue, the "churchification" issue, although I admit I have been ignorant of any aspirations from any UB orgs, is definitely going to continue to be a point of contention and disagreement because of the nature of Spirit.

In this regard, I am glad Richard Omura put me in my place as far as trying to identify ourselves as anything else but ascenders, because pigeon-holing people is the delight of the science-minded (and something that exists in the human brain anyway).

How will outstanding/understanding/fruitful/spiritual ascenders be known/inspirational/loving to others? "By their fruits you shall know them."

If I stop my routine to help someone in need; if I go out of my way to do something, I would hope that people would recognize the Spirit flowing from me, instead of what I attempt to represent to them. If they discern the Spirit, nothing especially identifying is needed. The Spirit speaks for us.

How do we do this? Well, some folks are joining ALL organizations, UB and otherwise (attend a mosque, a Buddhist monestary, and other spiritual places, all at once). And from there, they will see, we are not stuck in a human loop; because Spirit speaks in a greater loop that involves all ascenders. That's how I feel (in the Spirit).

Father Bless You All,
Michael Bain

ALEX WALL - Very well put, Mike!

I like the idea of joining ALL (relevant) organizations. That's a good one too. It beats the hell out of joining only a few. Being exclusive to only a few severely limits one's perspective. Organizations have one goal: loyalty to the organization. That's it. Especially religious ones.

The biggest problem is the inability to see what they are doing from the outside. It is scary to me that the concerns we have about this "churchification" is SO summarily discounted. I cannot see a way that the Foundation or Fellowship would ever experiment with non-religious festivals, meetings, study groups, conclaves, or international conferences. They won't even comment on it.

So it is time to leave them. Frankly, at this point I would want to be associated with ANY organization, more than a "Urantian" one, except maybe UBRON.org. The others embarrass me. It pains me to no end that a huge amount of money was left by one of my relatives to these folks. That will not happen again. Its donor would be livid if she were to see what is taking place now.

So, I say again to anyone who's eyes fall upon these words: Don't attend the religiously based functions of these orgs. Leave them! Don't support them financially. Or if you do, INSIST that they listen to your concerns. Urantians are smart people but they are making bad investments in these groups.

The leaders of THESE orgs TRULY believe that they have a mandate from heaven to lead us all. THEY DON'T. That is a self-deception, if not an all-out lie!

Someone just emailed me and asked, "But Alex, who will organize and fund meetings and future Urantia festivals?"

Are we SUCH slaves to the ideas and goals of others, who we assume have our best interests in mind? Do we have no ability to come up with answers on our own? People need to think for themselves.

If we want a festival, one of us starts a blog about it.
We attach a donate button from PayPal to the site. Then we advertise the festival as "...an event free of religious ritual and open to ALL UB READERS, and all PEOPLE." People passionate about the freedom of expressing religious beliefs without official manipulation, heck, people who value any kind of Cognitive Liberty, will readily volunteer for positions in the making of a grand Urantia event, I know they would.

Perhaps someone who is reading this very sentence will really show us how it's done. I'd do it myself but I've lost track of all the irons in my fire. Plus, I can't do EVERYTHING. :P :) I will set up the blog and attach PayPal though, if others would join in and take over? This is a limited time offer.

I absolutely GUARANTEE that more relationships will be made, more books will be distributed, more guilt-free enjoyment will be had by all. And a new demographic willl become apparent: YOUNG PEOPLE (many more of them anyway).

In this fantasy Urantia Festival, free-spoken lectures will be set up not filtered by by the high priests of the Urantia Foundation or Fellowship by subject (as is done now) but simlply in the order they are received. Under every tree could be a person with an idea, even if they are controversial in the eyes of organized UB readers. People would be free to visit with each-other, unburdened by "praying schedules."

It would be a music and art festival. UB readers would sell their goods, UB entrepreneurs would advertise their business. Urantians who know about concessions would handle food services. All profits would go towards the NEXT festival...etc...

Every major aspect will be run by the blog followers. Online polls could be taken (at UBRON, for example, since truthbook.org is out of the question because of its high degree of censorship) to determine what folks REALLY want.

The "bottom" of our movement will determine everything. The READERS must become the LEADERS.

This sounds idealistic and radical to the "1,000-year" conservatives, text-fundamentalists, UB science fundamentalists, and to people who like the ignorant, static, comfort of where they are now...

But we can expect no help at all in this endeavor for a festival or the purging of churchification form the orgs from our Urantia establishment. As far as they're concerned, God's pipeline does not diverge from the minds of the Trustees and Boards of the UB orgs. They believe that because they have the money to do things (for now), that they MUST be favored by the Revelators or Celestial beings of some kind. THEY'RE NOT. In fact, I would bet that the unseen overseers of our world are seriously frustrated by our animal tendency to seek fluffy, self-aggrandizing, systems that can be set up and not have to be tinkered with by their lazy leaders.

As for these leaders...

Who among them will do the hard thing?

Who among them will have the courage?

Who among them will do the RIGHT thing?

What yet-unknown human angel of PROGRESS will step out into the Light, and wrest this UB beast (The Urantia Foundation and Urantia Book Fellowship Church) to the ground, before it can even get started, and then chain it there where it belongs?

Social religious success will come when people leave each other's belief systems ALONE! We have never seen what it is like to offer ABSOLUTE religious freedom, as a UB community. It is well-past time to start.

If these changes could be prosecuted fully, the word "Urantia" would cease to be the name of a "book" and a recidivist community of disparate and confused, readers and deluded leaders, and instead would take its rightful place AS THE NAME OF OUR WORLD, supported by a STRONG, but diversified (unaffiliated) UB readership and FER commUNITY.

People who wish to read more about the specifics of this situation are welcome to follow my blog:

http://ubphoria.blogspot.com/

I will be posting a series of essays there on this subject.

Peace, Light and Love,
Alex/Chuck

PATRICK MCNELLY - I too am uninterested in organized prayer and worship in these types of gatherings including study groups. I did not join the Urantia brotherhood 40 years ago to become a member of a religious group that has organized prayer and worship events at their conferences. I'm in the minority Paula? Why can't we just print, publish , translate and ... See Moredistribute books and leave the rest of the church stuff alone? The whole movement smells of a new age religion. There's work to be done and I think you are a tireless servant. But let's stop the churchy stuff.

PAULA THOMPSON - Alex, I never see you at conference so I don't know where you get your "facts." To say that because UB readers want to worship and pray together we are becoming a "religion" is no more accurate than saying, because we want to study together we are a book club. We should know that one size doesn't fit all. If you ever do come to a Urantia ... See Moreconference and we happen to offer group worship and you find that to be a turn off, go smoke a cigarette, or whatever.

Patrick, I could easily say that because I don't care for the kinds endless debates that take place on UBRON, YOU should stop doing it. How silly is that? If the Most Highs stand back in merciful respect of the prerogatives of will, who are any of us to try to dissuade each other from worshipping or debating or whatever we do that stimulates them and helps them get through the night down here?

ALEX WALL - Hi Paula,

Reading more carefully and being more diplomatic, would be a good idea in this case since it's not going away...But what can I expect? I'm well-trained in the mosh pits and dirty debating trenches of UBRON. I would not be raising this issue if I thought I didn't have solid facts and a damn good way of presenting them. You, on the ... See Moreother hand, have been bounced in the fluffy bed of self-righteous truthbook censorship, of IGNORING the uncomfortable questions and concerns of readers.

And the biggest mistake you're making is that you think I'm an isolated case, with no backing. That is because you have not soiled yourself with the issues discussed and read by the 2,000+ members of UBRON. Soon you will see that I'm nothing special, but rather the vanguard-voice of a HUMUNGOUS creature, I call THE READERSHIP. What you would have learned at UBRON (the ONLY online UB FREE-speech forum), had you been paying attention, is that the waves of unaddressed issues, uncomfortable questions, desire for clear DEMOCRATIC leadership in the movement are piling up, rising to utterly overwhelm this organizational arrogance that you defend without question. You are underestimating the situation.

The FACTS I used were taken from your very schedule for the TUUFF (which I have provided a link to)! I don't list facts without citation. People who know me know that.

Here it is again:

http://ubron.org/groupdocs/TUUFF10-Schedule.pdf

I sure hope every person who reads this will download this document and read it, as it is the first in a large series of indesputable evidence that the UB orgs are perforimng religious ceremonies, that makes them the perveyors of a their own church.

I have no problem with UB readers wanting to pray together at events--and very clearly and extensively said so, simply read the prior posts on this thread. Also, I accept being led in prayer when I visit my home-town church. But NEVER, NEVER by a fellow Urantia Book reader, as a scheduled session, at a public event.

*********What I have a problem with is THE DIRECTION OF RELIGIOUS CEREMONY BY THE UB ORGANIZATIONS. Why don't you address THAT, Paula?*********Why can't you simply address my point without trying to make this some personal problem I have? I have lots of personal problems, but this isn't one of them--unfortunately for you.

It is always interesting to me that the key words "religious ceremony" and "UB organizations" are ignored in your responses to me on this issue. You foolishly frame me as being "anti-UB-prayer."

The leaders of religions prepare religious ceremonies. How can that be argued? What makes Foundation and Fellowship leaders different, when they prosecute such a venture?

I already said I would go to a conference if there were no scheduled and led praying and worship activities. I also said I would be likely to find myself praying frequently and praying with small groups of others, but SPONTANEOUSLY (go back and re-read what I said). So to misrepresent me as a person against "UB readers praying" at events is extremely prejudicial and clearly shows your bias and your agenda in this regard, and very frankly shows that you're not even willing to READ what I'm saying.

And you compare debate at UBRON with organized prayer at your newly establishing church???

Honestly I too get sick of the text-fundamentalists at UBRON. You would enjoy it there lately with Mr. Warren ruling the show. But I know what to expect when I go there. And no matter what happens at UBRON it does not effect my personal religious experience EVER. I don't see your name as a reader of UBRON discussions. Why? Well, I theorize that hearing what UB readers REALLY think and how people REALLY are would seriously threaten your world view.

Surely you must know that praying is the most personal and important part of soul growth? Attempting to compare the sometimes-rotten, sometimes-delicious apples of UBRON with the forced and unearned authority of the oranges of a Urantia Fellowship Church revival is illogical, and seems desperate.

Further, have you any idea how insulting it is to be callously and unthinkingly told to "go smoke a cigarette or something" (to a survivor of heart disease from smoking cigarettes--having quit ten years ago). You propose that I should isolate myself with all of my friends who share my convictions about religious ceremony), just because YOU are demanding that the rest of the people bow their heads and accept YOUR leading in their personal religious experience? Are you serious? We know that cigarettes KILL people. You are suggesting that I temporarily "disfellowship" myself during your church service and go outside to hurt myself. What a metaphor for your detached sense of what MOST UB readers are, and think...I'd rather you'd said, you outside and play Russian Roulette while we exclude you from our movement--it would have been more direct.

So let's sum up:

1) You refuse to provide an environment free of religious ceremony, where ALL UB readers can feel comfortable.

2) You refuse to even discuss taking religious ceremony out of your events.

3) The decisions of the organizations that UB readers donate their hard-earned money to are made completely without considering such an important concern from those readers. I know this because that is happening to me at this very second.

4) People who do not agree with being prayer-led in ceremonial UB Foundation and Fellowship-organized events, should SEPARATE themselves from the others because of their religious convictions.

I'll be adding more to this list of FACTS, as we delve deeper into the intentions of the org leaders, so we can all see just how far this fervant religious mission runs in our community.

I was going to move discussion of this off of your Facebook wall, because I really don't consider YOU to be the root of this problem. But the Kool-Aid stains on your last reply to me and your willful diversions of the POINT as well as your unfair misrepresentation of that point, has fully erased my sympathy for your involvement in this.

You try to speak as if your finger rests on the pulse of the greater readership, when in fact it only monitors the apparently barely perceivable heartbeat of blinder-wearing, UB religionists, organizational insiders and the relatively tiny group of yes-men and women you surround yourself with; people who are unable to make peace with the FACT that the UB is not meant to base a religion around, AND that is EXACTLY what you are doing. And now no one within the orgs is allowed to "speak despairingly" of them? How do you think all this looks to new readers who are sick of other people's religious beliefs being jammed down their throats, having just come out of a century of organizational deception and self-perpetuating agendas, in a world of darkness?

I'm not going away. I have been very clear about everything that I've said. I know it is lengthy in the form I've taken here. But it really just boils down to the four FACTS that I've listed above.

As at UBRON, I will not continue saying the same thing over and over with people who have blinded themselves to the point of not even reading carefully. People unused to heavy debate are simply incapable of addressing the issues. You watch, folks, others will attack me personally, attack my life, my behavior, try to discredit my extensive work in the UB reader's community, twist the obvious, naively call me an outsider, an egotist, a self-promoter, in league with Caligastia, long-winded, without substance, arrogant (that's usually the favorite one), sentimental, emotional... I really have heard them all. :) And after I get done yawning, I will do what I've always done: redirect them tirelessly and for ever-more BACK to my POINT.

PAULA THOMPSON - Alex, I'm sorry to offend you in saying "smoke a cigarette or something" it's figure of speech.

Here's another thought, why don't you get a group of like-minded believers together and create the conference of your dreams. That's what Halbert has done and he's getting some traction. Obviously, no event will ever entirely please everyone, that's the point.
If you put forth the effort to create an event, you'll see what I mean.

I didn't create TUUFF, I had nothing to do with creating it, I just attended it and enjoyed it. If you don't like the program that is created by a group or individual for a Urantia event, it's really quite simple, just don't go. I'm glad you like UBRON but I don't, so I don't go there. It's a choice, and I like being able to choose what I do. Don't you?

* * * * * * *

At this point Paula UNFRIENDED ME at Facebook.

Actually her final message mentioned that I must be proud of myself for being so "tuff" and such "a good debater." But she quickly withdrew that emotionally driven response and replaced it with what we see above. This was probably because she realized that she was fulfilling my prophecy that I would be attacked PERSONALLY, because my POINT couldn't be argued against.

Paula Thompson of all people!! The kindest, gentlest, most service-oriented UB reader in years, has thrown me our of the official UB family. But it isn't to be...

I can't blame her, really. When you are being PROVEN WRONG, the best strategy is to kill the prover. We had been friends for over ten years. This is how Paula "LOVES" the friends who disagree with her. I thought this was only a debate and didn't realize that she based our friendship upon it. Oh well!

It's all gone, folks. Whatever civility seemed to be left in the UB Fellowship's leadership is completely gone. Pray for them. They're gonna need it.

The Urantia Book Oganizations are Trying to Start a Religion

2010-07-15T13:49:00.008-04:00

After reading the recent information about the Montreal gathering, here’s another view from the inside/outside. I don’t expect agreement or argument about this view, but it is a view that several people have who won’t speak up or are outside of the SocAdmin circle. This is the only one of the goals to come out of this event I agree with.

(1)To form an inter-organizational database of all readers, SGs, and readers with special abilities or talents.

Many people do not support top-down organizational models. They usually don’t work and thus far they have not been very successful in the so-called Urantia Movement with its many tentacles. We don't need any more organizations or recognition of them. In fact we need less organization; some people say we need none! And we don't need "inter-organizational" organizations either. If anything we need non-aligned persons/readers who are not interested in creating and perpetuating a religious/social group of Urantia Book religionists.

Many people want to either feel like part of a religion or think of themselves in "official" spots to deliver the revelation, with all their angelic helpers and inter-religious fervor. Special priests and priestesses. Prayer leaders. Worship ministers. Church officials. Special interpreters. But what does all of this have to do with the FER? These are things that church members do.

The real majority of readers could care less about any of those things and have never identifies with US! The majority of readers are not involved in these so-called official organizations. They don’t want "officially" self-appointed leaders...some of whom are truly of the least intellectual or discerning among us.

And now we are offered these low-quality, highly self-serving ideological lists of group "beliefs," group goals written during festivals and conferences that are getting praise and publicity on this discussion list. It could be argued that none of us should follow one word expounded by a "group." So-called Urantians are running at a severe reality-deficit disorder called: Not thinking for themselves and following the leaders without any say in their decisions. The Fellowship is not now and never has been democratic. Activists run the show for the most part, especially those with a lot of money and time on their hands.

Yes, it is the time to break down barriers between organizations, not better define them, and this... "Let’s pretend to show ourselves publicly getting along even though we don't agree"...what the hell is that?? Since the schism of 1989 and all of the other organizational isolation that resulted, we have a wounded limping group run by a few.

I’ve never encouraged people to get involved with UB organizations, even the one I’m a member of, which goes against our membership charter I know. As of now, all of the organizations are sucking the wind out of the sails of the FER, confusing people, retarding the work that should be refocused upon teaching and living, and distracting people by making them think that belonging to some organization with special goals somehow relieves them from the hard work and responsibility of going out among the non-UB people and living and doing and working and taking care of the real work of this world. It is all backwards. It is all inside out.

Here in the outside world I've noticed that people are very interested in the UB until they see the so-called "movement" of overly serious, self-righteous religionists (closet Christians with a new Bible to believe in?), new age crystal worshippers, Jesusonian moralizers and blind UB science TEXT fundamentalist freaks, trying desperately to "verify" things about the book to give it more respectability (which it doesn't need)...That all just cheapens it and hurts the FER's reputation. So many Urantians are just freaks or it attracts so many freaks. We are all just as whacked out as any other cult. Yes cult. Being on the inside, one can't tell. But it is woefully pathetic to see from the eyes of the people looking in at it all. I’ve spoken to many of them on UBRON over the years. As a non-aligned group, we see all types some and go, but mostly the troll stay, so even UBRON is not the answer for the non-aligned readers.

The UB community is, frankly, embarrassing to me now. Sorry to say. They have made their decision to dance around the golden calf (in this case a physical, blue, book), while Mt. Horeb rumbles in the distance. They have been given the NEW message of the FER and turned it into the OLD bait and switch religion that we're all so sick and tired of. More Jesus worship. And when the Master (or another Son) comes looking for growth on the FER investment, (if it is soon) no one will be more embarrassed than the UB community. We had it all and squandered it. I know, this is a young epochal revelation. But I’m just sayin’

The UB "movement" has failed so far and will continue to fail unless more prominent people adopt a profoundly less-organizational tone. But, ultimately the FER will triumph, because the UB is only the beginning of the FER. Personally, I believe that ALL UB related organizations should call it quits, with every member turning strictly toward individual teaching/living of the concepts in their personal, professional and public lives. With closed books in public. Organizationally, I think we are stagnant, puritanical, very evangelically Protestant, and are filled with religious pretenders and pseudo religionists.

When asked for specifics on the UB, we should give only enough info to get a prospective new reader to open a UB and read it--by, for instance, giving them a book. And then let it go. Leave them alone. None of this, "Oh you really need to visit the Urantia Foundation website, or join the Urantia Book Fellowship, blah, blah, blah...or this or that discussion list or prayer circle."

No, the new reader should NOT invest one second of time in participation with these organizations. Even Facebook is infested with it. As far as I'm concerned, the organizations are simply repositories of information--good for the text or cutting and pasting historical info. Just resources for information.

They have no OFFICIAL role, and FOR SURE, no "heavenly mandate."

And if a Study Group arises evolutionarily, it should be wholly absent of prayer (group or otherwise). And for god sakes, the UB should not be passed around or read from anymore. Reading should be personal, like prayer. Cite a passage and then discuss it with your knowledge of the UB or life or people. I really dislike the phrases “The Book says” or.. “It says in the Urantia Book.” Yikes!

Only use the UB in Study Groups to CITE and for reference, not to read aloud, like the Bible. So many study groups are just bible meetings with a different book. In college you do your reading as HOMEWORK. In class or seminar (Study Groups), you hear lectures, have back and forth discussions, hold debates...Reading whole sections aloud is stupid and accomplishes zero. Especially when members are poor readers, stumble over words, or have no idea what they are reading. People have GOT to stop churchifying everything. It is a total turn-off to so many new readers. And it is antithetical to the mission of the UB. Heck, it is a turn-off to ME as a 30+ year reader! I will not waste my time in an environment of group prayer and UB reading sessions ever again. Gawd! What hell could ever be more torturous?

The only way the readership will ever be unified (and I don't mean the Study Groups or any other organization--they need not apply) will be when the ideological and religious dogmas are abolished. THEN, individuals will come together over the simple fact that they read the UB and for no other organized reason.

The whole organizations is filled with Foundation supporters, Urantia Church founders , Fellowship/Brotherhood old timers, scientific types, UFO believers, sheeple types, people who believe UB should be taken from house to house, the channeler hunters, the channleres, the people who say we need to be nice and tolerant to the channelers, New-Age crystal types, and folks trying to keep things informationally straight. We’ve had self servers, egomaniacs, Jesus imposters, lost and loosely losers, and a lot of people who just want to meet other readers.

The whole movement is a train-wreck on a dark and stormy night, a fire in a madhouse sometimes. Yet we muddle through somehow. We all know self-appointed UB evangelists who mean well, and our god people with sincere motives. It could be argued that the UB "community" is going to be caught with its veritable pants down and thoroughly embarrassed about the way it has handled the FER when real non-aligned readers take over the movement.

[Partially edited by a close UB friend from an email response I sent him. It is therefore, our COMMON view.]

A Urantia Book Perspective on Personality and the Self

2010-06-24T21:54:00.001-04:00

This is a tricky subject. It has largely to do with semantics. Different people from different backgrounds and experience will give different takes on this. All I can relate is how I look at such things. And keeping in mind that each person needs to define these things for her/himSELF, let me presume to work out the details of my own belief system and then you – the reader – can incorporate whatever you find useful into yours.

God is a great God because he is the highest of the Creators, possessing so much power—infinite power. Yet, he desires nothing more than giving as much of it away to his creatures. The more he gives, the happier he is (as such a thing might be interpreted by us). The first and most critical of all gifts from God is free will. For humans, free will completes their relative liberty as independent beings and dignifies the HUMAN will in the process. Humans are Mortals—they have survival (after death) potential. And it is God's will that the Mortal will should trump all other direction for that being, even if it is temporarily destructive to that Mortal's associates. To God it is more important to let one human be free than to limit the choices of all humans by limiting the choices of even ONE of them. There is an old Negro spiritual that says, “If one of us is in chains, none of us are free.” Humans keep themselves in chains, where God wants nothing more that to see them ALL free.

It is because of all of this that the 'self' comes into consideration. The mind of the animal-human Mortal is an arena of sorts. It is the place where spirit can connect with the material brain, where both function, and both are mutually contactable to each other.

Here is where things need teasing out. I will offer one interpretation out of many for the meaning of certain words as I understand them. Again it will be up to you to integrate them in a way that fits what you believe. These are mostly based upon my study of the Urantia Book.

God, as Father (or Original Parent) is a personality and shares all of his personal power with the Eternal Son (the Second Parent/Son) and the Infinite Spirit. In fact the Father is the bestower of all personality to all beings from the Eternal Son to the lowly Mortal. All personality is linked through the Father's personality “circuit”.

Now we divide “personality”into animal (material) and human (trans-material). Animal personality is only functional between the two ends of that animal's existence; birth and death. Human personality, when integrated with the developing soul, elevates that creature's IDENTITY to a potentially eternal status. It is this personality status that materially and spiritually separates animal from animal-human. It is my belief that the choice of one animal species (our form of a hominid – the first human) to turn its attention inward, away from large, on-rushing predators, etc., and was somehow able to believe in something more than it could see or hear in the “outside” world. Animals, even advanced animals are locked into individual self-preservation. But humans have chosen to preserve their species; though they sure have a funny way of showing it sometimes... And, fortunately or unfortunately, that decision has now put all the other species on our planet in human hands as well.

The mothers of the mammalian orders come the closest to being selfless animals, but their instinct to pass on their genes still can either lead to protecting their young ones even to the death OR let their young die in order that they (the mothers) be able produce future young again. To look beyond genetic desires (through primitive worship) makes an animal more than just an animal. Worship is the high water mark that humans reached as animals, even as their animal cousins were not able to achieve such a thing. According to the Urantia Book this desire to worship qualifies an animal to receive a Thought Adjuster (an entity WITHOUT a personality) and from then on that animal (and each of its descendants) is considered human.

So it is with the assistance of the Thought Adjuster and its embryonic soul-counterpart that the human “personality” survives death. The Thought Adjuster as a spirit strongly desires to become personal. The personality of the human strongly desires to become spiritual, and to thence live forever. Yet...then...what is the “self,” what is the “soul” and what is the “identity”? How do these three different terms find a way to fit coherently into one theory?

Well, here's one idea...

All material creatures have separate identities. No two material creatures are ever the same. This is an extraordinary statement, especially when one considers just how many material creatures there are—every paramecium, every bacterium included. There are more bacterial cells in the human body than there are human cells. Of course a bacterium does not experience self-awareness. But it is STILL unique. Every mammal has some sense of self though, even if it is in a most rudimentary, unconscious and/or nearly-unidentifiable form, as we humans might understand such a thing. Yet, honestly, even the great majority of mammals probably don't actually view themselves as “selfs,” because the capability of their material brains is so limited by the constant and unrelenting processing of dealing with exterior stimuli.

A mouse (for example) is so concerned with material survival that its very sense of identity is never self-realized. However, as one moves up the evolutionary phylogeny (through the higher taxonomic grouping of mammals), one finds animals that have periods of leisure. The great apes, in particular, show an enormous amount of self-identity, due to hundreds of thousands of years of “ape culture,” by being so familiar with their forest life routine, and coupled with their incredible ability (through a relatively high intelligence) to adapt to many varied situations. The lack of adaptability was the death-blow to the much less intelligent dinosaurs. And mammals in between these species (the mouse and the ape) are capable of self-identity but only marginally develop or appreciate any such sense. Cats, for instance, will sometimes realize that their image in a mirror IS them (their self), while others just don't get it and persist in treating the image as another cat.

Naturally, humans have developed a very great tool for understand themselves and each other: spoken language. Nothing has expanded the advancement of human culture so profoundly. Human culture is now SO foreign to mouse, cat or ape culture as to be almost entirely synthetic. Not only does it allow us to examine each other, but also to ask questions about ourselves as individuals, independent of all “lower” creatures. We have gone from being reflective animals to becoming reflecting animals. With our languages, ingenuity (very large brain) and ability to cooperate, we have significantly left our species' childhood as “animal,” becoming truly human. So it may be said that “identity” is common to the mammalian brain. Humans are able to hold on to that identity enough for each to develop a rich sense of self during their material lives.

Even when humans die (presuming that they choose to live on after material death) they retain the mammalian identity, as the human self. But the “soul” becomes the new vehicle for the identity, as self. Most importantly, the personality and the self become one. Thus the existential goal of material life, if not achieved during life in the flesh, is achieved at material death; true self-hood. Similarly once the self and personality have been combined with the liberated soul, the next personal development is for this personality-soul to combine with the Thought Adjuster spirit—as one being. Interestingly, according to the Urantia Book, this soul-spirit “translation” can even occur before material death!

The continuation of the personality to animate a soul (where it had once animated a human body) IS the evolutionary process of that person's identity becoming eternal (where once it was only temporal).

Largely, I have discussed what things look like on the outside of the person. The other side of this coin is the perception that the self (itself) has for inner realities. What does the self see about its own aspects?

When the self looks (hears, tastes, smells, touches...and intuits) the “outside” world as separate from it, it usually remains aloof from that outside world. It has been an evolutionary benefit for humans to demand this separation. Western people have perhaps taken this a bit too far by associating all so-called “developed” society with man-made things—not natural ones. As we develop into a species capable of designing tools that will take care of nearly all of our material needs, we MUST concomitantly become integrated again with the natural world (e.g. our planet) or it is likely that we will utterly destroy it, washing that destruction down with our own extinction as the self-appointed “care-taker” species of our world.

All of our “selfs” are at a historic pivot point that we have to make the correct decisions about, in order to get past. In my view, this transition from material origin to super-material destiny demands that each human self (identity) accept the notion of her/his increasing power over the material world, WHILE also insisting that all human personality be linked more closely, through the Father's circuit, in a sort of over-mind. In other words, self may be independent from other selfs, but through willful intention may submit to the ideals of self-denial in order to be more like the Father (remember that he has so much but gives as much as he possibly can to others).

The Father is SO giving that he let's his very personal aspects be shared equally with two other members. This is something that humans simply cannot do, and can understand even less. He allows the Eternal Son to represent ALL spirit. He gives the Infinite Spirit the power to represent ALL mind. In this way one “God” can function as a Trinity. It allows the Father's thought to be spoken by word of the Eternal Son and acted upon by the Infinite Spirit; thought, word and act.

In this same way, creatures may strive to give as much of themselves to others, whenever they are able. Another term for this giving is: LOVE. In the strictest and simplest sense, to give without the desire to receive IS to love. Because God gives the most, he is the example for all beings of how to give; how to love. God – though being the personality-center of gravity for all personalities – is the eternal and infinite example of selflessness for them too. The human self can find the “peace that passes all understanding” by following God's example, even in the material life.

Each of us - as human beings - should enjoy the fact that we are privileged enough to have be given a personality. We can recognize it and overlay it upon our animal selfs! Then we can give back to God by following his example of self-denial, giving and loving. This is the recipe for eternal soul development and personality survival. There is no greater reward for the self than to achieve a state of voluntary selflessness, and there is no way for human culture to survive if the majority of the species is unable to understand the need for self-denial. THIS is our biggest barrier to individual happiness and world-wide peace in the 21st Century. The situation is completely in our own hands.

Urantia and the Transition of the Fifth Epochal Revelation

2010-06-01T10:21:00.036-04:00

This year is turning out to be the pivot point among well-informed Urantia Book (UB) readers. Most of the discussion forums are unable to deal with the change that must come to pass, in order for the UB to remain a useful source for conceptual cosmic information.

Yet, the Fifth Epochal Revelation (FER), in my opinion, is MORE than the just the static text of the UB. Even UB Text Fundamentalists (UBTF) admit that the human component (discussions and study groups, conferences and conclaves) are necessary to determine the dynamic nature of the textual concepts, even if the text itself is steadily becoming less relevant to our world situation. The unstoppable transition from the "sacred book" mentality to the "living truth" mentality has been well underway for perhaps ten years now, and is increasing exponentially.

I have likened this transition to a coming Civil War in our UB community... But I would be much happier to call it what it is: The Great Transition. It occurred to me that all of this was planned ahead of time by the Revelators. Why do I think this?

It is simple: Mathematics is the most logical of the predictive methods that humans (for no more than about the last 8,000 years) can use. How much more-so, would the Revelators - who hail from a civilization, theoretically TRILLIONS of earth years old - know all the potential outcomes of a revelation given to our world at this primitive stage? It is very reasonable to assume that much of he recent history of our world was estimated to occur just as it did by the celestial overseers. It is also worth mentioning that there was probably a large amount of celestial intervention in our 20th. Century history. Anecdotal accounts that the "celestials declared war on Communism," points to the possibility that such things were and are possible.

Upon visiting UBRON.org lately - the biggest and most influential of the UB online discussion forums - it has become almost painfully apparent that even with the introduction of the new human parallels to the UB text that Matthew Block has presented and entered into the Library there, along with the obvious math, science and history errors being discovered in the UB, the most frequent "posters" cannot seem to leave their EXACT TEXT interpretations aside. One gets the feeling that they believe they would be "sinning" or being "unfaithful" to the BOOK itself, by questioning the UB's origins and scrutinizing (objectively) the content that has come under dispute.

Meanwhile the UB has always plainly stated that its own information on science and history will "stand in need of revision" [my bold]...

The Urantia Book

101.4.2 We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve.

...and it is also filled with comments about how truth needs room to grow in the human mind, NOT through "formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct" [my bold]...

The Urantia Book

180.5.2 Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind.

It is not unreasonable to state here and now that any BOOK that purports to offer "new truths" (like the UB) is wrestling with the fact that it has to "imprison" those truths. This puts an expiration date on books...even the UB. The work of Matthew Block only reinforces this in his presentation that large sections said to be of "celestial authorship" have instead been shown to be of human origin.

As I have said in past posts, I myself dealt with the doubt and insecurity I felt when first reading Martin Gardner's book, Urantia The Great Cult Mystery, in which he blithely attempted to tear the revelation apart, because of the errors, uncited human source material, UB community reliance upon its shaky apocryphal base and history. While I didn't appreciate Gardner's tone or enthusiasm for trying to destroy the belief systems of thousands of people, I DID appreciate how much work he did regarding the origin and history of the UB. His book still stands as the most detailed source for learning about how the UB came to be.

Another very well-researched and well-written history of the UB is Larry Mullins' more friendly, and surprisingly objective, book A History of the Urantia Papers. Despite it being a bit less professionally produced as compared to Gardner's book, Mullins' history is just as well-researched. Unlike the UBTF people, Mullins' bias is kept largely in check as he is willing to report (without comment) even the unfavorable aspects of the characters and situations that led to the UB's writing and editing from ca. 1909-1950's and eventual publication in 1955. It is nice to see this book in print again. And it is worth the $20 or so to pick up or order a copy.

These two books by Gardner and Mullins, respectively, give the biased but most objectively critical view AND biased but accurate view of the over-all creation of the Urantia Book and the activities of its 20th. Century organizations and relevant personalities (including the Revelators).

The other aspect that makes these two books so well-suited to be read one after the other is that both authors appreciate detail, clear citation of sources, large comprehensive appendices and relative even-handedness for accuracy; not letting their biases jeopardize the value of their research. For instance, Gardner - who let's it be known early on that he thinks the UB is a fraud - simply cannot help commenting in a positive way about the shear magnitude and quality of the writing of the UB. It is possible when reading Gardner's book to get the real feeling that he isn't all that sure of his own stance. I say this because he often re-assured for me (I read his book before Mullins') many of the more "supernatural" events in the weaving together of the circumstances, human-sourced material and major management of the Contact Commission (who received information directly somehow from the Revelators) and early Forum (who edited the material and sent it back to the Revelators) seemed to have no rational scientific explanation. Even Gardner would not seriously propose one of his own. In response to such mysterious events, he would only say that he believed that Sadler's family must have "somehow" plagiarized and completely fabricated the entire scheme. Incidentally, this is also Matthew Block's current theory. The differences between Martin Gardner and Matthew Block (who, in full disclosure, is a friend of mine) are many though, not the least of which is Matthew's admission that he could be wrong.

In contradistinction to Gardner, is Mullins' more "officially" (and organizationally) sanctioned, A History of the Urantia Papers, and his own biases. As I said above, Mullins treats even the most unflattering legends and facts of the UB project with a strong even-handedness. The reason for this might be more complicated than the simple assumption that Mullins is a supporter of the UB in other contexts and in his Secondary Source writing. In fact, Mullins book seemed to be the best the UB community could muster as a response to Gardner's sweeping attacks upon the their very reason for being. And it was an excellent, though not wholly-complete, response.

When I say "not complete" I mean, more specifically, "not unified." Notice how the title of Mullins' book uses "The Urantia Papers" and NOT "The Urantia Book." It is likely that this is a relic of the 1980's dispute between the Urantia Foundation (original publisher of the UB) and Urantia Book Fellowship (once, the "Urantia Brotherhood," when still associated with the Urantia Foundation). Mullins was associated with the Fellowship side (as opposed to the Foundation side) of this dispute. The sting of the separation between this two organizations was still evident, with the mopping up of the messy lawsuits including those regarding the Urantia Foundation's loss of the exclusive copyright for actually printing and publishing the UB. Ten years ago - when Mullins first published his history - the name, "Urantia Book" was still a Foundation-related title. Though the UB had been published under that title by Uversa Press (a Fellowship-related effort), there were still the potential of not using the title in the future. Many people still refuse to call the book "Urantia Book" and instead prefer the title, "The Urantia Papers." And so Mullins' title seems to swim against the tide that he himself is now swept up in. In other words, he is part of the re-unification of the Foundation with the Fellowship; both organizations now agreeing to use "Urantia BOOK." I'm glad his history has not changed its title.

In discussing Mullins and what I call, the "Great Urantia Book Rebellion" of the 1980's, we come full circle to the current problem that is facing the Urantia Book reading community. We are in the post-organizational phase of the FER. This became the case upon the divorce of the two organizations mentioned above. As soon as confidence was lost in the Urantia Foundation (specifically) the FER was cut away from any authority UB readers might have given any organization. This was a necessary step once the failure of the Foundation to hold on to the copyright of the UB text became a reality.

Some UBTF (Urantia Book Text Fundamentalist) people still argue for the leadership role of the Foundation; that it has some kind of "Revelatory Authority" still to lead the movement. In my view this is ridiculous, futile and retards the entire FER. What is needed now is only ONE group: The Urantia Book Readership. This is the name I propose for all people who read the UB, irrespective of (1) organizational loyalties, (2) hidden agendas and (3) attempts to make the UB the centerpiece for a cult or religion. Any or all of these three things are destined to miserable failure. It wouldn't have to be "miserable" if readers of the UB were to honestly reassess this situation: How can science errors, history errors, math errors, factionalized organizations, cults and religions be used to justify the reading of a book that both prepares us for all of these shortcomings AND discourages their defense? It simply will not work.

The much more unsettling perspectives of the fundamentalist-ideologues who believe that every word of the UB is still a dynamic and revelatory truth, beyond questioning, tell the scarier story of the unbalancing of intelligent human minds.

I had a girlfriend once who was an archaeologist AND a Christian fundamentalist, Bible-text believer. She studied the bones of animals that were alive on this world thousands and sometimes millions of years before she herself believed the earth was created. I asked if she saw any contradiction in this. How do things that are not (specifically and literally) mentioned in the Bible come into being? At first she resorted to the potential inaccuracies of radio carbon dating, then proposed the idea that perhaps these animals never did live, and their bones were left for us by God to test our faith!

It is this mushy-headed and absurdly erroneous stance that UBTF people use for the same kind of issues. In fact, at UBRON there was recently discussed the discrepancy between the UB's date for life implantation...

The Urantia Book

58.4.2 550,000,000 years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia. In co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces we organized and initiated the original life patterns of this world and planted them in the hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life (aside from extraplanetary personalities) down to the days of Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, had its origin in our three original, identical, and simultaneous marine-life implantations. These three life implantations have been designated as: the central or Eurasian-African, the eastern or Australasian, and the western, embracing Greenland and the Americas.

...and the current non-UB scientifically determined and tested dating of ~ 3.9 billion years ago. But, sure enough, the UBTF people are also willing to attempt to twist and bend the theories of current science to suit their agenda which aggressively asserts that "science is still catching up to the UB."

And so Chris Halvorson (official UB "science verifier" at UBtheNews.com) provided the paper that could explain why current science was unable to "correctly" date the emergence of life on earth. At the core of Halvorson's argument is the following...

From Chris Halvorson's five page paper, The Origin of Life

Page 3

The usefulness of natural radioactive decay as an accurate dating method hinges on the common assumption that the rate of decay is constant over time. That assumption is incorrect. Radioactivity is a reflection of the existence of the subelectronic domain of physical reality (42:4.12); it is affected by the environment, which is a function of both space and time. An atom is not an isolated physical system; there is no vacuum (42:4.6). Radioactivity is proportional to subelectronic activity (42:4.5,7). Hence, both mutation and radiometric dating are indirectly affected by the spatial environment.

The Master Physical Controllers, specifically, the energy transformers (29:4.15–18), have regulated radioactivity (42:4.10) over the span of geologic time, according to the evolution plan of the Life Carriers. In the past, the rates of radioactive decay were greater than the present rates. Therefore, radiometric dates, which are determined by assessing the degree of decay, overestimate the crystallization age of a mineral in a rock, especially if the mineral was formed in the remote past. For the oldest rocks on the surface of the earth, the radiometric dates are about four times greater than the actual dates. The oldest rocks that have been discovered so far are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near Great Slave Lake, with a radiometric age of 4.03 billion years. Mineral grains of zircon in sedimentary rocks in west-central Australia have a radiometric age of 4.4 billion years. The oldest dated moon rocks have an age of 4.5 billion years. (The moon reached its present size just prior to the earth.) The oldest lead deposits are dated at 4.54 billion years,and the oldest meteorites at 4.58 billion years. These oldest radiometric dates correspond to actual dates from 1.01 to 1.15 billion years ago, which agrees with the statement in The Urantia Book: “Urantia is more than one billion years old on its surface” (57:7.3).

One doesn't need a PhD in anything to see that Halvorson only uses UB science to argue against non-UB science. That is what in Banking we used to call a "washout." You can't use your only source to justify ITSELF! No one would EVER take that seriously. Halvorson and his partner Halbert Katzen - who manages the UBtheNews website and lectures extensively about how current science is "catching up to the UB" constitute examples of the ultimate need to "prove" the science and history of the UB. Unfortunately, Halvorson doesn't seem to be helping much as radioactive decay dating is concerned, since the only "catching up" that is done involves him defending the UB WITH the UB, NOT by using non-UB science's "correction" of itself, and supposedly new "agreement" with the UB. The evidence is still OVERWHELMINGLY on the side of non-UB science, wherever and whenever the UB science comes into conflict with it.

These very well-educated and credentialed people who have committed themselves to bending the truth to fit the UB, have completely forgotten one of research's most important rules...

Occam's Razor - The meta-theoretical principle that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem) and the conclusion thereof, that the simplest solution is usually the correct one.

Naturally, this is just one of many such twistings, turnings and spinnings in the UBTF sphere; one of desperate clinging to the dissolution of their sand castle as the waves continue to roll in over it. But I want to move beyond all of this. I have come to peace with the aging of the UB and the transition of the FER into its new, social, post-organizational, post-textual role. It is obvious to me now that the UB cannot be relied upon to convince science or history of anything, nor was it ever the book's role to do so. The UBTF people insist it must do this, but it is not a function of the FER in any way, and nowhere in the UB is its own "verification" required. The UB stands on its own!

Epochal Revelation is only complete when celestial PERSONALITY is involved and contactable to the inhabitants of a world. Though the UB is a literary work of amazing scale, in Epochal Revelatory terms it is only a stop-gap measure to bridge the Fourth Epochal Revelation (the life of Jesus/Michael) to the completion of the Fifth Epochal Revelation: the visitation of a New Son.

If those of us who are more progressive and open-minded about the role of the UB can fulfill our destiny, we will bring a large number of our UB-reading friends over to the notion that preparation for this New Son is more important than promoting the UB. Obviously anyone who has passed through the text fundamentalist stage, then the skeptical phase, and has come to rest in the progressive nook already understands the basics of the cosmic philosophy that is revealed by the UB...even if we don't elevate the TEXT as a sacred one. I ask other people who are well-read in the UB, yet also open-minded to consider the possibility that the UB's text is giving way to a new aspect of the FER, and to join us in preparation of the final phase of the revelation.

I welcome comments for and against what I have written here. But I warn readers that I will not be pulled into a debate, as some readers have recently insisted upon. Instead I'm "looking for the others" who believe what I do, namely, that the UB is our textbook as teachers, teaching the philosophy of our Local Universe and Superuniverse to the world-stage actors (students) who shall greet the next phase whether it be a New Son or some unknown (but shortly arriving) aspect of the FER.

My goal will also be to unify The Urantia Book Readership as one group in the next couple years; with its only membership stipulation being the reading of the UB. That's it. Ideology must be left completely out. The UB is a work made for interpretation. And as long as the text fundamentalists insist on an exclusively literal interpretation for the UB (as the Bible text fundamentalists have done - because the two are often quite related), the freedom of other readers to express themselves stands in dispute. As we have seen at UBRON (and is always the case at the more heavily moderated (essentially, censored) Truthbook.org and UAI Forums.

One only need view the example (in my last post) of how one UBTF person abused his one and only opportunity to oppose me and all I say - by ignorantly threatening me - to clearly see that the fanatical point has been passed now with these folks. Even another guy who initially supported my last post here, ended up being just another text fundamentalist-nightmare of ignorance posing as learned scholar...for he too, ended up being unable to accept the idea that the UB has intentional "errors."

I am moving into a new domain with all of this. The time to debate is long over for me at least. For the fanatic ideologue, so called "debate" has become a series of circular and embellished arguments, where blindness is key, made by people who are incapable of thinking for themselves any more. They are utterly and permanently lost in self-deception. You chose the cliche: They painted themselves into a corner? They put all their eggs in one basket? No matter how we look at it, it is only PRIDE now that prevents the baptism of the DYNAMIC truth, as it replaces the static text of an aging but once-and-still-very useful manual (the UB). And NOTHING is harder to overcome than human ego-pride.

What each of us needs to do is ask ourselves: What is more important?

Awareness and the Perception of Reality

2010-03-14T14:11:00.007-04:00

The following is an adaption from posts
at UBRON.org in late February and early March of 2010.

1

As we think about the new information flowing out of physics, psychology and philosophy about the evidence for non-physical aspects of reality, we are tempted to reject them as “strange.” Why would the Urantia Book (UB) mention such literal concepts as “ultimatons” if – as new science is suggesting more and more frequently – matter is just an illusion. I have some thoughts about this situation that I hope might find a sort of compromise between conventional non-UB discoveries and what the 1934 text of the UB has to say.

The ultimaton is a physical metaphor. There are no little solid spheres, called, "ultimatons." It is simply the smallest measurable energy level in space and time. And do recall that ALL physical phenomena are filtered through (at least in our case) human consciousness.

The light you see when you look at a candle is not light. You're seeing what your brain's interpretation of light is. And also bear in mind that because none of the photons that enter your eye are also entering my eye, what you are seeing ("seeing" is based on the reflection, refraction or emission of photonic - electromagnetic - particle/waves) is 100% different from what I'm seeing. We may agree that what we see is extraordinarily similar, but literally the light showing an object to you is 100% different particle-wise than the light showing the "same" object to me. You might want to sit back and think about that for a second. Because, if this is true, then no human being can ever observe any physical phenomenon objectively. How can someone see something as it is? She/he would have to see from all human perspectives at once. And this is impossible.

To put it in more detail, light is made of photons. When these photons reach your retina they are transformed into electro-chemical signals that are then relayed via neurons and chemicals to the visual cortex. But these signals are not light. Same thing with sound, touch, taste... None of these things are the same inside your brain as when they entered your nervous system. The point here is that nothing can be said to exist independently of human (and on higher levels, "superhuman") consciousness, because it takes consciousness to claim the existence of things in the first place.

It is for these reasons that the world is not at all as we observe and feel it. We are still learning what is actually taking place outside our bodies as we evolve. Unfortunately we can only base anything new that we encounter upon already-known perception. Without revelation of some sort, new concepts have to be clothed in the dirty worn-out rags of past concepts until they themselves reveal more or some higher-than-human intelligence reveals them to us.

Thus, hard little billiard balls are the way we imagine ultimatons, and until we can expand that concept into the fractal and metaphoric energy that is really driving the universe, we are stuck with hard little spheres. There may be objective things in the universe, but no human has ever been able to see them. Why? Again, because we have to observe and describe things that are completely changed from what we think they are (photons, atoms, ultimatons) by being filtered in our electro-chemical brains. Therefore all human perception is subjective.

Physics, which led the whole scientific community up through (arguably) the decades of 1970's through1990's, as the sterling example of material truth-seeking, is now somewhere left or the soft sciences, like psychology when it comes to conceptual understanding. Most "New Physicists" now admit that there are probably non-physical aspects to reality. And because of not being able to measure or quantify the observations of non-physical processes, the physicists are nearing the end of conceptual science (that is, science done using the "scientific method"). The science of the future will be a kind of metaphysics dealing with the power of consciousness to alter physical mechanisms.

Because the cosmos is infinitely revealable, and we are so very far from ultimate, absonite and absolute levels of reality - combined with our primitive evolutionarily-acquired knowledge, that we observe a world and reality that is surely almost 100% different than what it truly is.

The UB uses the concept of a little "sphere" called the ultimaton in the same way a parent gives a child a cartoon or picture-book representation of objects in the "real" world. When a kid finally sees that the moon doesn't have a man's face smiling from it, he/she realizes that the moon presented to him/her was not the moon, but it was good enough to lead that kid to a clearer concept of what the moon really is. If that kid grows up and actually goes to the moon, she/he will get an even better idea of what the moon is. Think about beings who may have existed for trillions of years. There is a good chance that they have a pretty good grasp of what reality is. Yet, still, they can never exhaust the potential for finding greater and greater truths about that reality.

Just some thoughts. Reality is not what you see and feel. That is only your personal awareness of one little bit of the overall picture. As we all seek to learn more about reality, we automatically excavate new conceptual space in our minds in which to store greater and clearer concepts of reality. This is why mind-expansion (of any kind) is helpful and important.

Because our human world is primarily subjective, all things must remain as metaphors. Some metaphors come exceedingly close to being what an object is. But some (like the ultimaton) have to be clothed in half-truths, until their presentation can be upgraded by personal experience or revelation. We are not programmed to integrate the truth very efficiently. Winston Churchill said, "Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on..."

As humans we need to separate this one realm because we do not have the capacity to view it as a whole. More accurately, we do have the capacity to view our realm as it is, but we do not generally have the will. That's why people won't study the subject of "what is matter?" all the way through the latest physical theories. People don't want to know that much about the truth... I mean what happened to up is up and down is down? Or more appropriately to our discussion, what happened to in is in and out is out? Surely there is a barrier between out and in?

Again, the quotes from the UB can not be more than a cartoon characterization of what they really want to say. They have to meet us on our very primitive conceptual level.

I have conceived (rightly or wrongly) of the ultimaton as a holographic "thing" that has the potential to function as a building block in spacetime (matter), super-spacetime (morontia) and hyper-spacetime (spirit).

Think about it this way...

No one knows why I can will my arm to rise and scratch my nose and it will actually obey. This is the simplest of actions, but neither physicists nor philosophers can tell us why this is possible. The non-material mind is somehow able to control the body through a liaison with the brain. It has been proven that the brain has demonstrated activity that is non-local (seemingly has "effect" without "cause"). Well, controlling the body is a good enough way to control any other material mechanism. Once you control a material body you are simply restricted by the limitations of technology in that material realm, as to what you can control or not.

In other words, the same hand my mind used to scratch my nose with can also steer the wheels of a car, paint something that approximates for you what I can only see inside my own mind, or (theoretically) detonate the entire strategic nuclear arsenal of the United States, by pushing a button. Yes, one human can destroy the world. That's a lot of power. But the scheme in harnessing and using it is the same as scratching one's nose.

Technology is simply an extension of the human body and mind. There will no doubt be very advanced technologies someday here on Urantia. Instead of raising my arm to push a button, the button (and everything else that is important to me in my being able to control it) will be part of me; technology will have turned my thoughts into the equivalent of a keyboard and mouse. In this way a very advanced culture could live completely in tune with the natural world, while on the "inside" the people would have immense power over the physical objects of their world. And they would not see their power as being inner or outer but simply as is. But this should not surprise anyone. After all, it is simply the same old original mystery of a non-material mind effecting the material world. It is just that in this very advanced culture all material means of connectivity (wires, circuits, levers, pulleys, cranes, etc...) have been eliminated by former physicists.

Here's the rub, though...

Keep in mind that that kind of technological achievement comes only to those who have concurrently grown more moral alongside their technical advances. No dangerous culture will ever have that kind of technology, because the price for attaining it was coupled to the moral enlightenment stemming from a plan to continuously become more Godlike.

Coming back to the "inside" vs "outside" thing, I would recommend reading The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, The Dreaming Universe (and any other of the many books) by Fred Alan Wolf, Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm, and any books about Chaos Theory.

Currently humankind wears itself inside-out. People are distracted by the surfaces of things. An advanced culture would see an unbroken vein of reality from the infinite potentiality of personal thought (imagination is limitless), to the infinities of literal, physical, and Ultimate Reality. In a world of highly advanced humans, each member of the society literally sees what other members mean, when they are communicating. Turning the human into a truly moral creature requires that that human stop putting up a barrier between himself and things that are not himself.

In this way, all are one. Yet individuality is safely guarded through the inherent uniqueness of each personality, straight from the Universal Father himself. People who have learned to turn their inside out, have also learned to abolish the barrier separating inside from outside.

So, no hall of mirrors; a mirror is simply another barrier. Two mirrors facing each other trap light infinitely. But, remove them and light can flow everywhere. Continue removing barriers and you will become one with the light, even if it takes an eternity.

It is highly doubtful that people can "get" what I'm really saying here. This is not because it is difficult to learn but because our typical, conventional matrix of how we think of the world will completely fall apart when we consider how backwards things in the man-made world actually are (literally and figuratively). People will continue to hold a primitive concept if it has worked out well for them so far. I think that is very normal for a dark, rebellion-isolated world like Urantia to have a population who is wholly oblivious to the perspective and intuition needed to see things as they truly are.

I guess, our challenge is to not trash the truth, just because wishful thinking has somehow kept our heads above water.

Rationally and wisely expanding one's mind to catch glimpses of that which has never been seen before, with a subsequent and purposeful intention to integrate these glimpses (whether physical or spiritual) into one's overall perspective of reality, IS the way to attain more power over the material world whilst learning the moral and spirit lessons necessary to use that power responsibly.

Wolf goes on and on about the clues existing in dreams. He and I once corresponded for a while and he surely believes in the reality of the lucid dream. The effects that seem to be only within the mind are still real, in every sense of the word.

When I looked up at the sun in a lucid dream once, it hurt my eyes, just like the regular sun would. There was no difference (I could feel the heat too).

My questions are...

What is the light that I saw? Is it photonic or is it electro-chemical? The obvious answer has to be an electro-chemical signal, just like I would receive from my eyes, were I looking at the sun. Except there is no input from the "outside." So the electro-chemical, sunlight-image has to be produced in the brain itself. That seems impossible, but it just has to be true. The strange thing is that it effected the pain receptors at the site of my iris and the heat receptive nerves on my forehead and cheeks. It is a kind of reverse engineering of sensory input. The lucid dream inputs signals from the "inside" creating sensations so strong that they are registrable on the "outside."

And if that is so, and the consciousness can be awake in this dream environment where things can be created simply by the mind at will, then all the consciousness ever needs is that some similar environment be provided where it can function, and it will take care of the rest. This can be (as we say) on the "inside" or as a result of stimulus from the "outside" world. Either way, we are fully conscious and able to experience things of Adjuster quality. I KNOW. I have been there. That is why I know that the outside is just an extension of the inside. But this knowledge cannot be relayed. It needs to be experienced to be believed. This is a prospect that is much easier than most people think.

Our prejudice against anything that isn't happening in the physical world as not being "real" is so strong because of the role of science during the last 200 years or so in Western society. It has made itself arbiter of all other intellectual or even moral pursuits. But what will it do, now that it, itself, has discovered the truth that there are non-physical realities?

More on the inside/outside thing...

One might wonder: "Is there any input to our senses that we work with?"

Then the answer is: Yes. Absolutely, there is. I'm also saying that the actual source of the input is (though very vaguely) what we think it is. But, I'm saying that our way of describing this input to ourselves as individuals and collectively is still very far from what is actually occurring in the mythical "outside". I'm also saying though, that how events are perceived in the felt moment (or "datum," as Huxley calls it) of the immediate experience of an event, there is only subjectivity (at least among humans). Their observations can make the event seem more objective as they discuss it afterwards. But the experience itself must always be subjective among humans who have not yet learned how to permanently remove the barriers necessary for greater conceptual clarity for all things.

But getting back to the strangeness of input...

Like the lucid dream, input can originate from within. And if that's the case, how can we tell the difference? Or, more importantly, IS THERE NO DIFFERENCE? For people who like to have a solid foundation for why they do all the things that they do every day, this is not good news. It tells them also that everything they see is not as they see it. In a world of danger and seeming misfortunes, people like stability and they think that living in the synthetic lives we've carved out for ourselves is stable enough. Why rock the boat?

What we UB readers seem destined to not realize is that TRUE stability (lasting peace both local and planetary, a universal religion, the yet-undiscovered cures for all kinds of health problems, etc.) will come when the flimsy boat is finally rolled over and sunk. Only then will we realize that the water was only two feet deep anyway!

But this is the same old story. We wear the birthmark of the Beast, the Dragon, the Devil: backwardness. If the Lucifer Rebellion had not occurred we would much more clearly perceive what is being inputed and where that input comes from. We have been crippled and retarded by our post-rebellion, sorry state of intellectual and (more importantly) moral, growth. Because of this we constantly (as individuals and as a species) teeter on the impossibly fine line between wanting to kill every thing we see and wanting to save it. This species bipolarism has gotten very dangerous in recent years, because our technological development is far ahead of where it should be, when contrasted with our moral development.

I think that science and math are very necessary and serviceable to humanity. But, they measure and analyze things in the abstract; using rules that are either correct or incorrect. The world though isn't either correct or incorrect. They have been a serviceable means of drawing near an understanding of some material constants. But the material universe is controlled by mind. The Infinite Spirit's mind reaches the outer edges of the universe. Where there is matter there is always mind. But where there is mind there is not always matter.

Science and math will never find a "final answer." They need revelation. They've even now reached an end of sorts. Supersymmetry is a perfect example. It is based on elegant and complex mathematics that is the cream of hundreds of years of work. But that math presents a theory that can probably never be fully tested in spacetime. Great math. Great theory. But, no longer science. We need a push from above (or within) to move further than we have gotten thus far.

This is a tricky time for we laymen. If science can't even test its own published theories anymore why trust anything it says? I don't need someone to understand quantum mechanics for my universe to continue on. I don't need someone to understand how a painting was painted to enjoy it. I don't need to understand how a piece of music was composed to feel its emotions. I can do these things for myself. It just takes WILL POWER.

Some folks don't understand what I refer to when speaking of “lucid” dreaming. Lucid dreaming is not "vivid" dreaming. It is not about dreams coming true in any way shape or form either. A simple Googling of the words "lucid dream" will give you more than enough information to move beyond any misunderstanding of it.

Lucid dreaming is not “dreaming” either. It is only when you are fully conscious, just as you are when you are awake, that you can be said to be "lucid." There is no way to make this as strongly emphasized as it needs to be for someone who has never lucid dreamed to understand. You simply need to do it. Then you will know. There are strong dreams. There are prophetic dreams. But they are still only dreams.

In a lucid dream you know you are not physiologically awake. Yet, you are awake in the dream. Now it is not a dream anymore. It turns into a laboratory where you can experiment with a different set of physical laws. It is not the type of thing that "comes true" in the physiologically waking state. You remember a lucid dream just as you would a visit to the grocery store from the day before.

In fact, to actually realize you are still in REM as you become conscious in your dream, shocks you to your soul. And you have to make every effort not to awaken (physiologically), so that you can remain in the lucid awareness. I often feel my pillow against my cheek while at the same time I am standing up in the middle of the room in my dreaming-awake state. One time I was doing all kinds of things in the lucid state, but something kept pressing on my upper lip. I knew it was my hand as it rested beside my mouth on the pillow. But I also knew that if I even moved my hand slightly I would lose the lucid state and have to wake up. It got so bad that I did eventually attempt to move my hand, but the lucid state dissolved immediately.

I agree that (except for what Karl Jung called "big dreams") normal dreaming is as garbled as the UB says it is. Lucid dreaming is a thing I used to combat having nightmares after a serious health crisis a few years ago. It worked like a charm. Being the controller of your dream puts a quick end to letting your fears control your dreams.

Here's a lucid dreaming recipe that works pretty well for me...

First I can only sleep 5-6 hours, so I have tried to translate my recipe for an 8 hour night. On a night when you have just a relaxing time planned for the next day go to bed around 11pm. Set your alarm for about 3am or 4am.

Get up then and keep yourself awake for about 15 to 30 minutes doing something, then go back to bed. You don't want to stay up so long that you can't get back to sleep. Try different schedules, experiment with timing. The important thing is to try every night until you get it. And you will get there if you want to.

You will have already experienced your longest periods in Stage 4 (delta) sleep and the brain is beginning to get closer and closer to stabilizing in the REM stage, by this 4th or 5th hour in your regular sleep cycle you will begin to do more dreaming than non-dreaming. You need to go back to bed with the constant thought that you want to wake up inside your dream. And because of the time that you are re-entering your sleep cycle, you set yourself up for getting a dream right off the bat. But you will have more and more chances to become lucid before you finally wake up physiologically.

People work out all kinds of inner signals and signs that tell them they are sleeping physiologically but awake mentally. Mine is usually the repetition of something. I once watched the same shaped cloud go by a few times realized where I was, and suddenly became lucid. Look for things that don't happen in the every-day world.

Another good way to tell you're still asleep as you become conscious in your dream is to look for writing. Nearly always, writing will be indecipherable. But when you realize that you've finally achieved this rare state of consciousness, your excitement alone can wake you up. Shivers race up and down your spine as you realize the enormity of what you've achieved. When you realize that now YOU are the boss of the dream no fear can penetrate the mind, it becomes your land and only invited guests can visit. And as I said, it abolishes nightmares quite effectively. It even worked to lessen PTSD symptoms.

It is well worth learning this tool. One time I became lucid in a dream and I did a bunch of tests before just having a good time. I was standing in a sunlit room and was very excited to be realizing that I was also lying with my head on a pillow somewhere else. I ran my hand along the mid molding on a badly painted wall. It was chipped and got stuck under my fingernails. But I just willed that paint out of my fingernails. Because the room was very small (6' x 8'ish), I decided I would walk outside through the wall. I lined up about two feet away and simply walked through the wall to the out doors. Things seemed even sharper than the regular waking world. And I did my favorite thing... I flew. I flew around a town. I flew around a factory. I headed for the moon but got tangled up in doubts about whether I could go that far, then I woke up in the regular world.

It is perfectly obvious and not confusing at all to distinguish between the other-worldly nature of the lucid dream vs the nature of the regular waking world. That is why the experiences are compatible with a reality that has nooks and crannies (and indeed whole realms) that are not of space and time.

It never lasts long enough for me though. I'm just recently training myself to stay asleep longer so I can experience more. I have found an ally in the quest.

Sometimes you have to wake up in several other dreams before you wake up in your room. After one dream I kept trying to wake up, but would end up somewhere else or in the right place but at some other time. I even sat up and was sure I was awake and it was still pitch dark out. I sighed and laid back on the bed, blinked and the sun was pouring through my window and the clock said 9:30 in the morning.

At UBRON we talked about how the mind is like a TV. Why spend time trying to learn how the TV works, if you just want to enjoy the program?

People are too afraid (or lazy?) to attempt to find the answers to how our corner of reality works. Someday we will all need to bite the bullet and learn how the TV works. As a person who has never seen an object that I didn't want to understand, I sometimes have a hard time feeling sympathy for people who are fully satisfied with not trying to learn how things really work. You have numerous celestial helpers and instructors to assist you.

The TV is not hard to understand. It is like anything else, you'll miss 100% of the things you never look for.

As an aside...

We are perfectly demonstrating the role of metaphor in truth-seeking, by using the TV as a metaphor for the mortal mind. And I am able to discuss the mind without needing to remind you that we have reduced it to a TV. That is the usefulness of metaphor.

What is unreasonable about asking you to exceed yourself? Jesus demanded it! He told the rich man to give up all his money and devote his life to God...but the man couldn't do it. I'm sure he was probably still quite savable, for he really did have a guilty conscience about his refusal. But it certainly lessened the quality of the rest of his life in the flesh. He couldn't stand the idea of having to learn how the TV works (how eliminating worldly treasure would strengthen his spiritual treasure), it seemed like too much somehow... too unreasonable.

Being frustrated by trying to learn how the TV works does require experience with the parts (the "electronics" in our metaphor) to alleviate confusion and clarify one's reality "frame." So learn about electronics! Why not? For myself, I don't accept, "Oh, its SO hard to do!" Tough!! If it's not impossible, then what the hell am I waiting for? The result is well worth the effort.

And, surely you're aware of how many times this excuse has been used to justify sitting on one's hands...

Some might ask, "For if I knew how the television was designed wouldn't I be at the status of a Creator Son"?

Understanding the material world that Creator Sons have made for YOU, is your challenge from them. The idea that you would some how be able to figure out a way of being equal in status to a Creator Son simply by attempting to fully explore the limited mind that has been generously given to you, is almost laughable. Seeking to understand as much as possible about how the mind really works and what is the truest perception of the reality we exist in is the Creator Son's (and Supreme Being's) greatest pleasure!!

That is the whole idea behind the struggle and challenge of the Mortal Ascension Scheme. It is not meant to be easy. In fact, ascension is meant to be as hard as it can be - while still being appealing enough to trudge through the hardest aspects. This is the perfect plan, because it is the Father's plan. So rather than lamenting the small thing that is "frustrating" you - that is, the thing that is going "wrong" with your plan, it seems more proportionate somehow (and even-minded) to give thanks for all the things that go right most of the time. In this confused world, every second where the mind can find peace is like a precious oasis and people who experience peace of mind, more frequently have the responsibility of helping those who don't, find it.

This argument about fearing to come too close to the Creator is the oldest trick in the book. It is what the church said to Galileo. Each new advancement is met by the friction of those who claim that knowing "new things" is some kind of 'arrogance' against divine creators. Then once the new phenomenon is finally adopted and well understood, everyone realizes how far they still remain from Godliness. Fear not, I think that nothing we can strive to achieve will ever equal the earned power of the Creators.

These ideas bring many profound concepts from the UB to mind. Expanding consciousness always makes big things more understandable.

For example, the length of human life when compared with the length of the entire ascension career. This comparison is not often quantified-out. We know it is enormous, but do-able. However, people don't really grasp this very prominent truth in all its wonder. We get the idea sometimes that the life in the flesh is the most important level of existence we will ever have. And that is true in only one way: We make a decision to move on to the next level, or not. We exercise our free will. We choose to survive death. We make the free will choice to be part of the Ultimate and even interact with Absolute levels some day.

And when we fuse we can never ever be eliminated from the universe. The Thought Adjuster part of us guarantees (in exchange for permanently sharing our personality) to never fail us for the rest of eternity.

We aren't citizens of eternity until we fuse with the Adjuster. Mortal life takes origin in a biologically evolutionary-animal, almost-wholly material way. There is no lower origin for will creatures in all the Grand Universe. And this one and first level qualifies us for the Corps of Finality. That's the big time. We will even journey out into the Outer Space Levels to administer them, once the Age of the Supreme has reached its finality.

But think about this. Just getting to Paradise takes a long time. If we live for 100 years in the flesh we are considered fortunate. But try to grasp the fact that far in the future when we enter Havona we will have to gain experience on each of its billion worlds. It is likely that we will spend at least one earth-length year on each world. If that is the average then we are looking at at least 1 billion years spent in the Central Universe, before becoming a Paradise Citizen.

It is an amazing fact that probably no Urantian has ever made it all the way through Havona, since humans have only been on earth for 1 million years (1/1000th the amount of time presumed necessary just to get through Havona). There are no Urantian Finaliters.

Now we add in the amount of time it takes to do all the required work we will have from local system to superuniverse levels. Maybe another billion years? If that is the case then, no Urantian has ever even made it to Havona. In fact, the most progressive Urantian would only be 1/1000th of the way out of the Superuniverse. It might be possible that no Urantian has ever made it out of the Local Universe.

Just traveling straight from Urantia to Paradise at light speed could take a million or more years; never mind having a career. It is astounding, the time scales and distances that we accept are so vast that even as a species we Urantians don't make a dent in the demographics of even Satania. We are on the map because of Michael, but our people are not overly special (in fact, as we know, they are a little retarded) or numerous. There are planets in Satania that likely have billions of years of cultural evolution behind them and are in the deep, late stages of Light and Life. It is probable that the finaliters that once lived as primitive humans on those older worlds are allowed to return. That is one old planet.

This is very interesting to me. One hundred years in the flesh is 10 million times shorter than a billion years. If our ascension career were 1 billion years and that time were displayed as one year equaling 1 millimeter, the ruler would be 1,000 kilometers long but the amount of distance representing our life in the flesh would be the diameter of a small apple. And, again, it is likely that our ascension will take a lot longer than 1 billion years. So in the final Paradise Mortal sense, the life on earth was less than 0.000001% of the total career. It makes me take what is happening in our world a little less seriously sometimes.

Of course expanding one's mind means being willing to release control over one's current model of reality in order to allow a new paradigm to be established. Even on Paradise sometimes things get out of control (my bold)...

Sometimes all Paradise becomes engulfed in a dominating tide of spiritual and worshipful expression. Often the conductors of worship cannot control such phenomena until the appearance of the threefold fluctuation of the light of the Deity abode, signifying that the divine heart of the Gods has been fully and completely satisfied by the sincere worship of the residents of Paradise, the perfect citizens of glory and the ascendant creatures of time. What a triumph of technique! What a fruition of the eternal plan and purpose of the Gods that the intelligent love of the creature child should give full satisfaction to the infinite love of the Creator Father!

The Urantia Book, 27:7.7

Control is very useful in many applications, most of the time. Everyone understands this. It can't be argued against. But there are certain times when an intentional "letting-go" of control over some deliberate aspects of what I call the three c's of stagnating habit: comfort, conformity and convention, can allow a person to obtain what would not have been obtainable by any other means. The defense mechanisms keeping control over your comfort level are the strongest ones you have. Yet, some folks can bring themselves to actually overtake these body guards of comfortable acceptance.

These people (in daring to destroy and reconstruct parts of their own egos, to be more like what they are continuously learning God must be like) are making an effort as important to their souls - and also related to the same kind of ultimate choice the soul makes - as the acceptance of eternal life itself.

Death (or rather, deconstruction) of the inferior, humanly-constructed ego, as it fights in vein with everything it has to remain untouched - even sending back hallucinations at you in its own defense is rough, rough ride. In every sense this feels like a real death - some people even believe they are temporarily dead if the experience is potent enough. It is scary to lose yourself, but VERY worth finding yourself again, renewed. The biggest, strongest man in the world will cower in the corner when the prospect of ego-realignment is placed on the menu. It takes soul-courage, brother.

But, then the ego's reconstruction with new more efficient and useful parts is a technique (noticed I also bolded that word in the UB quote above) for making a kinder, gentler, but vastly more powerful self (both over the material world and psycho-socially in everyday life). The ego realizes then that it was actually benefited by the chance you took to deconstruct and then reconstruct it. Then it is easier to do it again and again. In fact, the ego (so I've heard) actually starts to like what it is turning into. And it becomes more and more SOUL-like and less and less EGO-like. I believe this is an integral part of the degree of "eternalness" in the soul. Perhaps a soul that is able to fuse with its Thought Adjuster while still in the flesh has reached a point where the eternal assurance of survival can no longer be denied, even physiologically.

What this means is that making the effort to break down the psychic barriers you've built (and been born with) can be a way of liberating yourself from temporal despair. It can be a way of conquering your ego and aligning that sucker with the will of the Father. It can be a way of passing through some of those circles you (and I) have been working on. It might even be a way of achieving translation directly from this existence into the next. I realize that is highly unlikely. But do bear in mind that the unlikeliness of it is not something that is being forced upon us. It is unlikely (fusing in the flesh) because of our decision to not make an effort. That's all that keeps us from finding the path to avoiding death all together: our lack of effort.

Personally, I intuitively "feel" that heaven is cheering me on in my personal quest to break down these barriers. It works for me. I know I am becoming more integrated, clear-sighted and far-sighted. It is technique (looking for barrier dissolution) in my life that has improved my ability to understand even more the next time. It has strongly increased my ability to remember and recall things. A have to admit that one of the biggest advantages it has given me is the precious and thankfully-received ability to effectively write and describe novel things from my expanding perspective. This is not a brag. I suck at so many other things that I could never be led to a sense of self-pride just over being able to communicate well. It sure has gotten me to LOVE communication though, and appreciate its value.

When I have the chance to open up the gate more and more - especially lately, the writing just comes out with no effort (besides the constant effort of trying to align it with what I think God's will is). Interesting how the giant effort I had to make so many times just to overcome the protestations of my own ego, the fear of the unknown (the uncertainty of what I would find by releasing control), the heartbreak and disappointment (that ever-linger) of letting go of my most treasured human beliefs and assumptions, the extremely difficult job of climbing back into a new and improved ego (many times now), has allowed me to not have to try as hard to write effectively about what I've found for myself.

As more and more aspects are improved, you find that even greater ones become available to be conquered. It is a very positive kind of feedback loop. And you get to keep all the tools you discover, which makes conquering new ground easier and easier. It is a win, win, win, win situation.

I use lucid dreaming as an example of a bridge between the outside and inside. This is one safe way to see how losing a little control of your comfort level can yield both satisfaction and pathway to greater experiences. There is nothing to buy, nothing to ingest, nothing to be afraid of, and only enlightening mind expansion for all your efforts. But again, it does take effort. There are so many other ways to utilize the technique of mind expansion (without drugs) that not trying something seems kind of lazy (with no offense to anyone sitting on their hands).

But all of these things: learning how we are backwards, learning how to perceive things more like they really are, psychedelic exploration, lucid dreaming, even "big dreaming" like we all experience from time to time, remote viewing, telepathy, etc, they are all part of my point. We see them as mysteries, when in fact they are just processes that we have not truly taken our natural ownership over yet. They are all related in that they are held in the prison of ignorance for most folks. But the doors of that prison are all fully unlocked for us and wide open! You can take these mysteries out of their cells and into the light of discovery.

The fact that I sit here at the beginning of the 21st Century trying to convince skeptical people that there is more to reality than what they have mis-learned about it, and that everyone is capable of clarifying that reality to be more like what it was meant to be, shows just how far we have to go. Younger minds will pick right up on this and agree with it (they are doing that right now). People will look back and read these conversations someday, and say, "Why couldn't they just SEE."

Trying to clarify your inaccurate view of reality, and actually succeeding would mean you have to tear down the cultural assumptions that the conventional world (and even the UB, to some extent) has given you a chance to adopt over your lifetime. But these assumptions (barriers to evolving conceptualization) are limiting your experience on earth, they are not the will of the Father, they were once the will of Lucifer. They are stick-built, rusty, duct-taped, hap-hazard, flimsy versions of the exquisitely beautiful world that our Creators have already provided.

Why paint over the greatest natural work ever presented to the mind of will creatures (that being, nature and divinely constructed reality), with your own animal, half-measured (material-wise), half-hearted (effort-wise), and half-real (perception-wise), crappy, cheap, and drably scribbled colors?

Why cling to Lucifer's method of second-guessing reality?

Why think that what WE can construct to see the world through is better than what the Gods have already constructed for you?

The Father has provided a great castle of glory for us to live in. And instead we prefer the rotten tree house we've constructed out of the mangled post-rebellion history of our race, along with some bent, rusty nails.

But people will continue to dismiss whatever is necessary, putting the blinders on whenever their more inferior perceptions are challenged. I do it too of course in the areas I have not yet faced. It is much easier to talk about changing one's perception than it is to succeed at doing it.

However, as I said above, because I've had success in many varied aspects of changing my perception and have reaped the reward that these diverse discoveries have given me, I have no choice but to try to get others to do the same. And that's what I'm doing.

I can't NOW be convinced that the notion of turning around, walking backwards and crawling back under that wet-blanket of formally-held, erroneous assumptions is somehow a good idea. Once the mind has experienced even the smallest datum of progressive and peaceful freedom, it will never again be satisfied with conforming to locked doors, chains, darkness, barriers, bad painting and self-deception.

Non-rebellion worlds would never even consider repainting their personal perceptions of reality with their own designs. Reality is too perfectly and artistically designed by the Gods to be re-decorated with the shoddy, gaudy, even trashy upholstery of the rebel-world's version.

Finally, (and this doesn't apply to anyone in particular) age does not have to harden the mind and really shouldn't be used as an excuse for not expanding one's mind. Not acting is a WILLFUL act, not an inevitable one. Whatever you glean from all your earth years and end up with is because of your choice. The devil can NOT be blamed. As I said above, he put the veil in front of our eyes, but we can still lift the damn thing whenever we want! We don't have to ask for his permission. And he can't hold that veil in place either if we sincerely wish to look beyond it.

As I've said, I have found that I am far more open-minded and ready to explore my world more completely with each passing year. I attribute this to deliberately exploring the many techniques of mind expansion.

To those who cannot bring themselves to challenge what they think they know, physical death will bring these revelations to you whether you want them or not, and whether you are prepared for them or not. And after recovering from the shock of filling in so many holes left open from your earth career, you will understand what I've been saying.

Some people wonder where the personality is during the lucid dream.

The personality functions exactly the same way that it does when you are awake. Because... you are awake. There is no difference to the personality. You in a lucid dream is just like you sitting in your living room. It is still just you. There is no identity loss at all.

If you lay down and close your eyes, but don't experience unconsciousness, that is what lucid dreaming is like. The difference is that you get dual sensory info when in lucid awareness. When lucid dreaming you can feel things in every way exactly like you can when you are not lucid dreaming. But, you can also feel the state of your body in the non-lucid, everyday waking world. You can feel it lying in bed. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) you can not use your body in both places at once (as I tried to explain in a previous post).

Maybe a better example is sitting down to watch a movie at a theater. You put yourself in the movie, but you can still sit there eating popcorn in the theater. During lucid awareness (I don't like calling it a 'dream') state you not only hear and see the movie you've put yourself into, but you smell, taste and feel its objects too. That doesn't mean you forget that your body is sitting in the theater (or lying in bed in the case of lucid awareness).

Re-question: What is the function of the personality while your watching a movie in a theater? Answer: No different from walking back to your car afterwards. There are a lot of differences in the experience, but the personality and its function is not changed.

More differentiation should be explained between dreams and lucid dreams. I found out these differences while first learning how to lucid dream. It was the process of conquering negative dreams that brought me into the lucid realm. Like most people I didn't know I had been dreaming until I'd wake up. But when I finally was able to fully wake up while still IN one of those negative dreams, I realized (through training myself to reach this level) I could take control of the dream. After the very first time of doing that I never had another negative dream like that again.

After becoming more proficient at lucid dreaming I faced new and interesting issues. In the lucid state there are several minor temptations that I face... They are kind of funny to relate.

I always think I should be looking into bigger deeper issues while lucid. But the temptation to just have fun is overwhelming. Flying is the first one. Frankly, having sex is another. When you are there in that state you can summon people to appear. And they can be very friendly members of the opposite sex. I'm not saying you happen to run across the opportunity in a regular dream, I'm saying that you deliberately construct reality where you can have what you want.

But, as I said earlier, I'm learning to fight these temptations. In a light-hearted way they are like sentries sent to distract me from my mission of exploration. No matter what is going on - temptation or exploration – it always seems that the time is always too short.

Lucid dreaming is just a technique of hitching a conscious ride on the naturally unconscious (or maybe, subconscious) dreaming process. Something we haven't gotten into is what the brain is doing during our nightly sleep. The brain (specifically, in the pineal gland) contains a naturally-occurring neurotransmitter that has a very similar molecular shape to seratonin, called DMT [n,n-dimethyltryptamine]. This chemical has been observed to function in relatively larger amounts in the brain during REM, stressful situations and especially at the time of death. It is this chemical which naturally facilitates dreaming.

What lucid dreamers are probably doing is simply tricking the body/brain into not "re-uptaking" the DMT (which is normally immediately cleared away during normal consciousness), and allowing consciousness within the DMT facilitated state.

By the way, DMT (read DMT - The Spirit Molecule by Richard Stassman) is a Schedule 1 drug (supposedly meaning it has no medical value) under the federal laws of United States. It can be extracted from plants and purified for use as a psychedelic, but doing that is illegal. So not only is DMT naturally present in all human and mammalian brains but in hundreds of plants as well. They are all illegal. Legal scientific experimentation (though it has been extremely limited, due to the mountains of legal red tape needed to be overcome by researchers to even use this material) has shown that DMT effects us the same way when we use it intentionally (through injection, in Strassman's study, but it can be vaporized and inhaled, smoked or taken orally with a mono-amine oxidase inhibitor - maoi) as dreaming, stress and dying are effected by it, naturally. It's the same stuff. This is an amazing discovery, but no one can study it because of draconian laws. That will eventually change.

The technique of finding lucid awareness is a way of using the body's natural release of this DMT to explore its effects in the same way a psychedelic explorer could use it as an extracted substance. And lucid dreaming isn't illegal.

Toward a Planetary Government

2009-12-29T12:03:00.003-05:00

A Planetary Government could be made up of Continental Federations

SEVEN CONTINENTAL FEDERATIONS

I. The North American Federation

Population: 700,000,000 (11% of World Population)

II. The South American Federation

Population: 600,000,000 (9%) of World Population)

III. The European Federation

Population: 1,000,000,000 (15% of World Population)

IV. The African Federation

Population: 1,100,000,000 (16% of World Population)

V. The Middle Eastern Federation

Population: 1,300,000,000 (19% of World Population)

VI. The Far Eastern Federation

Population: 1,400,000,000 (21% of World Population)

VII. The Pacific Islands Federation

Population: 600,000,000 (9% of World Population)

WORLD LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

Lower House

1,000 World Representatives...

NAF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (110)

SAF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII (90)

EUF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (150)

AFF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
(160)

MEF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (190)

FEF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (210)

PIF
IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIII (90)

Upper House

210 World Senators

NAF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

SAF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

EUF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

AFF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

MEF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

FEF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

PIF IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIII (30)

Total Number of Legislators = 1,210

WORLD EXECUTIVE BRANCH

World Chief Executive

WCE I (1)

World Vice Chiefs

VCE III (3 = 1 First, 1 Second, and 1 Third)

Federal Governors

GOV IIIIIII (7)

Board of State Elders

BSE II II II II II II II (14 = 7 Men + 7 Women)

Total Number of Executives: 25

WORLD JUDICIAL BRANCH

World Supreme Court Justices

SCJ III III III III III III III (21)

Total Number of Judges: 21

_______________________________

Total Number of World Government Officers: 1,256

_______________________________

Peace and the Planetary Government

2009-12-27T01:20:00.009-05:00

[The following Essay was published at UBRON on December 27, 2009.]

PEACE

You might agree there are different kinds of contextual uses for the word "peace"? The following list is not some "theory" it is only one possible perspective among many perspectives that are probably much better than mine. But for now, in a UB-ish style, :) I'll try this "levels" approach...

First, I'm using the following definition from thefreedictionary.com for peace...

peace

n.

1. The absence of war or other hostilities.
2. An agreement or a treaty to end hostilities.
3. Freedom from quarrels and disagreement; harmonious relations: roommates living in peace with each other.
4. Public security and order: was arrested for disturbing the peace.
5. Inner contentment; serenity: peace of mind.

LEVELS OF PEACE ON URANTIA
I've modified the dictionary meanings a bit to fit these "levels."

1. Peace of Mind - "Inner contentment; serenity..."
2. Family Peace - "Freedom from quarrels and disagreement..."
3. Community Peace - "Public security...order, [and friendship]..."
4. National Peace - "An agreement...[among states to avoid] hostilities..."
5. International Peace - "The absence of war..."

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MEN AND THE MANKIND GOVERNMENT

I think people are right about the importance of peace if we qualify it on a local and interpersonal scale. And THAT will do more than anything to foster the development of the People's (Mankind's) will for political change; the relinquishment of national military and economic power; relinquishing their control to the world-wide cause. So, the end of war around the globe can't occur until we have that kind of "mankind government." And you can't have "lasting [international and personal] peace" without the end of war itself. It is apparently not directly dependent on the arrival of a "brotherhood of men"...

UB: "Religion makes it spiritually possible to realize the brotherhood of men, but it will require mankind government to regulate the social, economic, and political problems associated with such a goal of human happiness and efficiency."

Both religious and governmental growths are complimental and parallel but separate in their major functions, at least according to the UB. It seems rational to me that when mankind approaches true, religious brotherhood, the most fertile soil to grow it will be nutrient-rich, world-wide peace. After all, "mankind government" and mankind religion ("the brotherhood of man") are both planetary in scale. It would take some complicated logic to explain how they would not be global phenomena I think. I have tended to lean toward the idea that there are only two least-problematic forms of religion: (1) personal and (2) planetary. All organization, institutions, cults and groups in between these two, seem to retard the development of both. That is just my opinion. And it seems comfortably supportable with UB concepts (which I guess we can mine, as we go along).

Churches have their social function. But they are not as sufficient to spiritual growth as developing one's communication with the TA (personal) and working toward the common social goal (planetary) of believing in and adopting Michael's methods (with help from his life as Jesus); as he always adopts the Universal Father's Plan. So, can we agree that, to refrain from tying religion (both personal and planetary, and typically thought of as a means to promoting "peace") too tightly together with a planetary government's role in eliminating war on a planetary scale?

As long as we have the establishment of separate groups of believers (as religious organizations, institutions and cults), the "brotherhood of men" (actually, religion of all humanity) will just have to wait. I believe the UB is strongly implying here that world government will precede and then set the stage for a common world-wide religion. Urantia (as a planetary human species) deserves to think of ourselves as still a very primitive people as long as our nations fight against each other in wars; no matter how peaceful those individual nations are becoming within their own borders, and among their federated neighborhoods (the EU comes to mind as drawing near this kind of trans-national, peaceful state). The United States (also a federation of peaceful states - once-upon-a- time, separate colonial states - made up of English, French and Spanish territories).

Recall that we are now in the midst of a current world war caused by the aggressions of disagreeing religious ideologies. It is a fact that the weakness of certain national governments (that is, the inability to defend their people against the tyranny of religious extremist factions) would not existence under a planetary, con-federated but centralized democracy.

BRIEF STRUCTURE

The Planetary Government should be as Thomas Jefferson first perceived centralized representative government of the US, yet then vastly expanded into a loose and voluntary, planetary, con-federation of strong nation-states, bound together by a common international constitution. Other ideas... These branches would only be involved in the serious problems and policies arising from world-wide issues of inter-nation (now, called inter-state) affairs.

PLANETARY LEGISLATURE

I think the planetary government should have an efficient and technologically advanced (but HIGLY REGULATED) federal police force. Any regional rebellion or criminal activities under that system would be at the mercy of this well-funded and popularly-controlled, through a world legislature. The legislative branch would deal with inter-state policy-making.

PLANETARY CHIEF EXECUTIVE

The executive branch would be very weak politically, and led by a popularly elected person, respected for their highly ethical leadership in national government. The Staff would consist of a group international elders, evenly divided between men and women (in this case quotas don't count, since they are chosen from a human population that is divided evenly (pretty much) between male and female.

PLANETARY JUSTICE

This is already forming in the United Nations. It would only reform, then stabilize, fortify and greatly empower the current world court system, by adding it as a final circuit above the Supreme Courts of the nation-states. Cases heard at this level would be reserved for only the highest and most internationally influential appeals.

PLANETARY ECONOMY

There could be (again, only my opinion) a lightly-taxed, highly entrepreneurial (receiving tax breaks for ingenuity in producing world-wide improvements to the standard of living), non-consumer-debt based, capitalist economy.

A "world tax" would be collected from national federal reserves annually. It would be comparable and proportional to the average gross income of its individual citizens, and adjusted for regional and geographical aspects, along with each nation-state's developmental status. I'm sure a formula could be derived that could lower federal income taxes in all nations significantly, while funding all of the planetary government's goals, as dictated by the billions of people (literally, "world citizens") who would now have a stronger voice, as a whole.

Ideally, such an economy might benefit from specific subsidies for scientific, socio-political and cultural (arts, music, literature) advancements. Without war, HUGE changes will be set in motion. If you think about it, nearly everything today is dependent of the status of national militaries and their budgets, whether they be defending, attacking, or maintaining their readiness to go to war. That would all be reduced and then translated into a new form of stripped-down, and highly trained World Defense Department. Rebellion would be a possibility. However, usually, rebellion is due to the dis-satisfaction of groups and coallitions. I think a more satisfied populace would lessen the risk of terrorism, insurgency, rebellion, or (God forbid) a global civil war.

Without the heavy burden of military budgets, tons of cash could pour into the world markets. Consumer debt could be eliminated for all non-mortgage loans. Capital would be more avaiable, and re-investment would strengthen successful businesses enough to have them become capital investors in other star-ups. The standards of living in all but the most privileged nations would PROFOUNDLY improve. This is part of the deal that the PEOPLE of the First World must make, philosophically - to sacrifice a little. For their parts, Third Wolrd counries would have to lower their expectations A LOT, using a philosophy that assumes financial stability is superior to asset aquirement. Both First and Third Worlds would be encouraged (hopefully! - remember this is all just a wild speculation) by what the other is giving up, so that ALL can be safer and more secure...and let's face it, happier. :)

The world already DOES have the full potential to produce plenty of food. With the financial encouragement for couples to only have an average of 1.5 (?) children, combined with better health conditions, population growth could actually level off, cease, and eventually reverse, with in maybe three or four generations. All the genocide, famine, destitution, ignorance, plight of refugees, spread of disease, etc. currently caused by war, would just dissolve away in a few short years. There would still be issues, but the difference in life here on Urantia would literally be like that between darkness and light.

PLANETARY HEALTHCARE

I don't want to get into this right now, for fear of igniting a US-based feud bewteen UBRON's more politically-minded folks. I suspect that it is more realistic to assume that, at first all nations in a new planetary government would continue whatever current policies are in place when the inauguration and legal transfer of the power of nations begins. I have a sense that Universal Coverage will most probably be the end product of the coming (and long) struggle toward finding the best system. Most of the world has a more public system than the US. So, unless the US can convince everyone else to get on the private care bandwagon, I think the tide will sweep over these last vestages and one system will be settled on for the whole planet. Whatever it turns out to be, expenses will be less in the world-wide health industries if there is no more war chest to keep filled.

The Elimination of Violence in the World of Non-Fiction

2009-12-23T14:42:00.003-05:00

I will admit that a less mature or enlightened person could be swept away by the action found in entertainment images of violence. Let's face it, they would probably be swept away by the real world violence too.

Violence, and the conquering of it, certainly IS worth discussing and attempting. I find it very interesting that more people don't focus on the establishment (if even in theory) of a Planetary Government and the UB's prediction that it will permanently end war. No one would like to see that more than I. :)

When these few next years have passed by and we settle back onto a plateau of some kind again, I will focus my efforts on exploring the establishment of a model for Planetary Government. (I tend to not call it "World Government" in order to avoid the stereotypes of the conspiracy theorists here, who carry over the mistaken impressions of their fundamentalist - Antichrist-predicting - tendencies and Bible thumping birth marks.)

People who want peace need to be thinking about pulling the nations together; as was the pattern and - though imperfect - process set in motion by the huge periods of destruction during the 20th Century. While the idea of some form of isolationism (recently suggested in the spirit of our "Neighboring Planet" info, transferred to our earth) may seem appealing, it is now impossible and unrealistic in the age of instant global communication. Our experience here at UBRON shows us that, as plain as day. If people want to understand how futile and frustrating the maintenance of isolationism is, just ask Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and any other leader trying to suppress the spread if information.

The small wire connecting to the back of your computer allowing you to communicate with me (no matter where you are) on this very day has permanently ended any hope for an isolated FERish kingdom on a hill. We now NEED to operate within a global context. That is something I don't mind at all. And others who would say a Planetary Representative Government is ALSO 1,000 years away are sorely mistaken, imo. Those folks are lost in the ideological and antiquated system of not understanding the POWER found in these initial years of the www. It is information, not location that is now irreversibly taking over. We have to stop trying to drive by only using the rear-view mirror. This method of navigation is not possible any more...and will only grow less-so.

TRULY, the establishment of peace WILL BE MUCH MORE EXCITING than the adventures and temptations (for some people) of violence, war and global conflict. And, THANK GOD FOR THAT!

Frankly, (sorry to the nationalist-leaning folks out there) the first step in the process of "evening" between nations (which MUST take place before "going global"), has already occurred with the lessening of America's political influence in the world. It will be the economy (currently based entirely on the maintenance and growth of debt and consumerism) that eventually and completely falters, fails and falls away, as a reasoning for every public policy.

Presently, it is money over people; material gain, causing spiritual loss. In the future, money will be the minimal concern and the happiness of a life lived for the strengthening of human fellowship, cosmological comprehension and physical health, will seem much more gratifying than it is now. For many folks out there none of those three things is useful unless they can make a buck on it. As Democracy is the ideal of Representative Government, Free Enterprise is the ideal of Capitalism. Each of those former things will be adopted in real form as their latter stages fall away.

The end of the rule of nations will be upon us THIS century; whether forced or planned. The US will have to give up the vision of itself as leader of the free world, now that it is so obvious that the two car, two house, boat on the trailer, 16 credit card lifestyle cannot be enjoyed by the world as a whole. We as westerners (even while every current and bothersome - petty? - financial estate we may be bitching about now, is an incredible heaven compared to how MOST of the world lives) MUST be willing to have less, give more and adopt a global attitude where our nationalist arrogance now functions. America using over 25% of the world's resources, but only having 8.5% of the world's population is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. American material sacrifice MUST happen. Again, we can plan it or it will be forced upon us.

And, for their part, the developing world MUST cease in adopting the unattainable "American dream" as its material ideal and realize how much its cultures already offer to the world. When these two things begin to come about in accord with the exponential technological advancements that are already taking place--in a more obvious way than we observe now, the political establishment of a Global or Planetary Government will not be far behind, and neither will a general establishment of peace.

The superior aspects of ALL culuters must outweigh their inferior practices. Until that happens, war, bloodshed, greed and the inevitable violence inherent in their maintanace, will continue to rule on earth.

Time to End the Dominator Society

2009-12-12T13:40:00.004-05:00

[This essay was originally published at UBRON on Sunday August 23, 2009.]

I believe the future will still consist of male and female things. BUT, we will learn that it is the destructive aspects of both things that brings down the dignity of both genders. History has been patriarchical for most of its duration. Most of us assume this. This is not necessarily a strict rule. Here are some infrequent examples of true female leadership...

1. Lady Six Sky was de facto ruler of Naranjo; also known as Lady Wac Chanil Ahau, Lady of Dos Pilas and Lady of Tikal, and reigned over the Mayan Empire (682-741 CE). Her raid against Tikal is credited with being the turning point in Mayan history, for the worse (unfortunately). However, in her time she was basically seen as a God (dess). She did things that the MEN of the empire appreciated as powerful; she made war. She ruled armies. But once the men starting
fighting, it brought down the empire.

Glyph for Lady Six Sky

2. Suiko, Empress Suiko, Empress Suiko-Tenno, was Empress of Japan (592-628 CE). As the first empress of Japan, she ushered in a time of peace, introducing the priestly Buddhism to the common people. She built temples all over Japan. She solidified the land distribution scheme of ancient Japan and reinforced the buraeucracy, ensuring a tighter political unity. But it is her Buddhism for which she is best known. She even gave one of the chief priests nearly co-power. Unfortunately, he betrayed her trust and went on to become Emperor, himself. She did things that the MEN of Japan appreciated as powerful, she organized government and fostered religion. Japan had a more successful run, as we know today, than did the Mayans. It is interesting to note that in Japan, literature was considered a woman's pursuit. So women became EXTREMELY good writers. I've read some pieces that are said to lose their perfection of subtly-layered meanings in the translation to English. But still they are exquisite.

Empress Suiko

3. Cleopatra VII (69–30 BCE) Pharoh of Egypt was a powerful queen. She did things that the Egyptian MEN as well as one very famous man, Mark Antony, saw as powerful. She was a master diplomat and sudductress (kind of mixing them together). And although she is known for her charm, looks-wise she was not what we would consider a "beautiful" woman. She did not look much like Elizabeth Taylor...

Cleopatra VII

She may have had a little peach fuzz on the upper lip. Nevertheless, she led a navy, and technically an army against the most powerful military force on earth at the time; the Roman Empire. So she also had--what is traditionally envyed by MEN--ambition.

4. Joan of Arc (ca. 1412–1431 CE), one of my personal heroines,...

Joan of Arc

...was one of the most amazing women in all of history. She did everything that a great leader does. Born a peasant girl, she went on to lead the armies of France to several key victories in the Hundred Years War. She was guided "by God," and stood her ground even against the most evil that the inquisition could hand out. For this loyalty to God, the poor girl (for she was only about 19) was burned at the stake by those bastards... MEN. Always keep that image in your mind when speaking of Christainity as a religion of peace and tolerance. Today France honors her as the great PERSON she was. Oh, and the Catholics finally let her go to heaven, after murdering her.

These were great women leaders, and there were HOSTS of other great women leaders in history too.

Today in a more enlightened world, where women vote (none of the women above would have been able to vote), where their ordeal in childbirth is finally appreciated to the point where they have been given power over their own bodies...Go figure!...women and MEN are deciding that the approach to a progressive society include not only a woman's touch, but also powerful things that are not typically considered male-oriented. ;)

Frankly, a matriarchal society would lead to inbred female corruption eventually, just as men have set the human boat sailing off in the wrong direction many times.

Perhaps it is not the maleness or femaleness that we need to over come but the negative aspects that gender-specific idealism has formed into so-called "tradition."

It is our human (ANIMAL) need to dominate others that has been most appreciated in history. Men do it one way, and (as we've seen) women can do it the same way or in their own way. The future is filled with cooperative and respectful understanding. Slowly the men of the boys of the new generation are being reformed away from the need to dominate others.

Women, who now are exploring the relatively new possibilities of running their own lives, need to stand back occassionally and make sure that that aren't just doing things "that men do" (historically) in order to gain repect from their sisters as well as their brothers. We need women to remember that the true power we have (even politically) is that of being fair to the ones we govern.

Even if it is just in the family or at a job, humans (male, female and other), must learn to be merciful and thus be eligible to receive mercy, to be modest and therefore appreciate the humility of others when we see it, to be well-informed about all sides of an argument, besides our own side ;) and thus be free from the blindness of intolerant prejudice, to find friends who need help and to devote our lives to helping them--not avoiding them because it makes us uncomfortable, to pray for others every day and thus recieve the answers to the prayers others.

Let's end the dominator society. Let's work together to dominate over evil (male or female), to conquer and kill it wherever it might creep into our world. To hold hands together as partners, gay, straight and bi. We exist on a tiny drop of mist in the heart of the black vaccuum of space. We ARE dependent on each other. Even today we are called by the spirit inside us to cooperate.

We need to stop seperating people into groups. Stop building walls, fences, borders. Stop pigeonholing. Stop defining others, before we even understand ourselves. Stop acting without intention. Start enjoying every moment. It has been called the "felt presence of immediate experience" [Terence McKenna]. Build, love, hold, kiss, meet peoples eyes when we speak to them, make love, have sex, expand the mind, show kindness to God's other creatures, be a responsible parent, hold down a job, pursue art and music, appreciate the natural world and learn about it, serve and be loyal to friends, forgive, ask for forgiveness, use power by refusing to abuse it, and worship the Father who gave us ALL the opportunity to someday join Him in Paradise--where we will always have each other.

It is the everlasting NOW that reigns supreme over the past and the future. It is all about experiencing the moment, we are judged not so much by what we did in the past, nor what we seek to do in the future, but how we deal with the ever-passing of the NOW.

Numbers and Belief

2009-12-12T13:28:00.005-05:00

[This essay was originally published at UBRON on Wednesday, Novemebr 4, 2009.]

Regarding the 11:11 phenomenon... This similar thing happens to me with 6:06 (our planet's Satania number), 6:66 (when my clock died - must have been "the beast"), 5:55 (the height of the Washington Monument), 3:14 (well, I guess it's not really pi since clocks are not decimalized - and this point will have a definite bearing on the rest of this essay), and, of course 4:20 (wink, wink)...

One problem is: WHICH SIDE OF THE DAY SHOULD BE COUNTED??

Do midwayers go by the 12 hour (am/pm) system, or the 24 hour, military system? After all, the earth day IS 24 hours, not two sets of 12. And since the earth day is also just slightly MORE than 24 hours (+/- 30 seconds), AND the day is increasing in length, how should that be figured in?

And what kind of time-keeping system should be applied to supernatural numerology? There are several to choose from [Wikipedia]...

A Day

A day is defined as 86,400 seconds, or 1,440 minutes, or 24 hours.

International System (SI) Day

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) currently defines a second as "...the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."
This makes the SI-based day last exactly 794,243,384,928,000 of those periods.

Sidereal Day

A sidereal day is approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds, corresponding to the time it takes for the Earth to complete one rotation relative to the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox itself processes very slowly in a westwards direction relative to the fixed stars, completing one revolution every 26,000 years approximately. As a consequence, the sidereal day is some 0.008 seconds shorter than the earth's period of rotation relative to the fixed stars (sidereal period of rotation).

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Day

As a time scale, UTC divides up time into days, hours, minutes and seconds. Days are conventionally identified using the Gregorian calendar, but Julian day numbers can also be used. Each day contains 24 hours and each hour contains 60 minutes, but the number of seconds in a minute can be 60, or sometimes 61 or 59.

Thus, in the UTC time scale, the second and all smaller time units (millisecond, microsecond...) are of constant duration, but the minute and all larger time units (hour, day, week...) are of variable duration.

If you see 11:11 on your clock at anytime AFTER 12 pm (noon), on the same calendar day, isn't it really 23:11 (which has no numerical significance that I am aware of)? If so, shouldn't that "11:11" not count? Therefore, could it be that 50% of time-based numerological belief in 11:11, is in fact, not true? And any phenomenon that is only 50% true is pure CHANCE - pure and simple. Just flip a coin and you'll get the idea.

Can we admit to ourselves that any 4 digit number could become some one's rationale for attaching times of the day and years of the calendar to mysterious situations they don't understand? And of what use is that?

Thinking clearly, with strict, unbiased, logical reasoning, DOES indicate that NO mysterious event can be tied to any human-based time system (especially when considering that there are DIFFERENT systems of measurement for these time periods).

Just for fun here's what can be done with numerology. Consider in the following just how "real" and convincing it can be...

FROM THE AIR FORCE BRAIN BOOSTER BOOK

Twin Towers Numerology

The following number curios were sent to me shortly after the World Trade Center bombing. We humans are always seeking meaning and significance in those tragic or happy events that affect our lives. The establishing of numerical patterns is one way (and a very ancient one) that people use to explore meaning.

• The date of the attack: 9/11 = 9+1+1 = 11

• September 11, 254th day of the year: 2+5+4 = 11

• After September 11, 111 days are left in the year

• 119 is the area code for Iran/Iraq: 1+1+9 = 11

• The Twin Towers looked like the number 11

• The first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11

• The 11th state added to the Union was New York

• New York City has 11 letters

• Afghanistan has 11 letters

• “The Pentagon” has 11 letters

• Ramzi Yousef has 11 letters (convicted in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993)

• Flight 11 had 92 people on board: 9+2 = 11

• Flight 77 had 65 on board: 6+5 = 11

[snip]...we will continue as rational beings to seek and establish patterns of all sorts.

WANTING TO BELIEVE is an interesting impulse in human beings it seems. I'm not usually a poo-pooer. And there are only certain situations where I will try to cut "the amazing" down to size. Allen G. poo-poos the realistic time table I gave for future space travel (based on NASA's information and the curves of several technological advancements as they laid out across modern history). Yet, Allen chooses to believe in crop circles as a means of alien communication - with very little scientific evidence. Yet, I think BOTH Allen and I believe that there are UFO's that are not of this world, also with little scientific evidence.

However, let us draw a distinction between beliefs based on facts and beliefs not based on facts. My prediction for manned space flight in the future is based on facts. Belief in crop circle-communication is not (yet) based on facts. But I don't deny SOMETHING is going on with crop circles and that there may be non-human involvement. YET, I don't believe they are a means of communication to us. I agree, rather, with the person who asked why they won't just sit down and have a conversation if they are so desperate to communicate?

We see mystery in different ways. And our personal belief in theories that explain those mysteries can most certainly be all over the map, including non- belief (which is still a kind of "belief").

So, my suggestion for dealing with things like "11:11" is to go through the following process (similar to the scientific process, but not exactly the same)...

Step 1. Have you personally experienced this mysterious thing?
Ok, so you think you HAVE actually looked up to see clocks that display 11:11 (AM!), more frequently than other set times of the day.

Step 2. Have you then THOROUGHLY and OBJECTIVELY (to the best of your ability) TESTED the tangible and physical environment around such unusual experiences, and kept your observations in a log?

Ok, so you kept a log of each day that you saw 11:11 more frequently than other set times of the day, and it shows that there is a correlation.

Step 3. Have you factored your own bias into your study? IOW, have you considered and mathematically compensated for the FACT that you are more likely to create results (whether consciously or unconsciously) that affirm your observation of the mystery in question?

This is a tough one to get by in this particular situation.

Here's why...

After the TIME 11:11 ceases to hold water as a theory, what usually happens now is a desperate re-directioning into... "Well, yeah, not only do I see 11:11 each day, even when I'm not thinking about it, but I also noticed that I bought a bottle of white wine and it cost $11.11 on the same day!"

NOTE: Bear in mind that this would then call into question whether the 11:11 of a NON-DECIMALIZED system (time of day) can REALLY equate to the decimalized MONETARY system that gave you a purchase price of $11.11. And if that clouds up the issue, you might also go back and examine the UB description of the number of Midwayers on earth, being 1,111. The midwayers are described in WHOLE NUMBERS, where as 11:11 (11 and 11/60ths) is a fraction, as is $11.11 (11 and 11/100ths). If we examine these two seeming similar situations we get a 100% difference...

When decimalized 11:11 turns into 11.18333... And, 11.183... does NOT equal 11.11, and those two numbers certainly don't equal the number of midwayers on the planet (by showing a comparison of the significant digits in each)...
Number of midwayers = 1111.000

Number of specified hours glimpsed = 0011.183 (plus 1/3)

Number of dollars spent = 0011.110

Step 5. At this point, do you think your belief is based on fact or not on fact?

According to simple logic, there are only two possibilities...

A. If you have examined things as clearly and mathematically as I have in the above "NOTE", and you are a person who needs rationality (even the smallest amount), you then MAY NOT believe in the 11:11 mystery.

B. If you have examined things as clearly as I have above, and you are not a person who needs even a small amount of rationality, you then MAY go on believing in the 11:11 mystery.

Neither way is wrong or right.

Are people willing to follow the above, or similar steps, when they propose a belief system? Honestly, I don't think so, as we will likely see in the replies to this post. But it IS what I do.

However, if you make the still-valid choice to not examine your beliefs rationally - you fall into category "B" - and you want others to understand or even subscribe to your theory on the matter, you will have to find other-than rational ways of showing them WHY you believe. And this would be very difficult since - unlike UFO's or crop circles - the problem with 11:11 is inherently based on NUMBERS, which can ONLY reside in a mathematical context, and math is not merciful toward irrationality.

Then again, for folks who can't stand precision and what it implies, a cigar will always just be a cigar.

Hard Apple Cider - One Path to Knowledge

2009-12-12T13:21:00.004-05:00

[This essay was originally publish at UBRON on Sunday, September 27, 2009.]

My Mother has a couple apple trees in her back yard. And there are literally hundreds of apples all over the ground and on the tree. She brought over two bags yesterday. Most weren't very pretty, but they were basically in good condition (no insects).

I have always wanted to make hard cider, and since the funds are low I thought this might be a way to have some yummy lite-duty alcohol in a few weeks. I researched the process quite thoroughly and then set about putting my plan into motion.

As you may have guessed I look at everything (I mean EVERYTHING) with an analytical eye and as an opportunity for experimentation. Thankfully I am also given to creative urges so this little afternoon project was a simply joyous one for me!

Knowing some organic chemistry, I already realized that apples had everything needed for the fairly efficient production of alcohol. All that is needed to make alcohol is...

Water, sugar and yeast. Apples have plenty of yeast, a good amount of sugar and also of course water. There is no need to "activate the yeast" since it is already naturally active (not in a dormant state as with store-bought baker's or brewer's yeast). To supplement the ingredients additional refined sugar is added and of course more water, along with spices; cinnamon and cloves. Orange peels and honey can be added too.

The chemistry behind the process is easy: Yeast eats sugar and produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. The more sugar that is dissolved in the water, the more alcohol that can be made. The production of these two things (CO2 and alcohol) can become very apparent during the process.

Mostly one has to worry about the building up of pressure from the CO2 in whatever container one uses. To deal with this, professionals use what is call a water lock. This is basically a S-shaped tube with a reservoir of water in the middle of it. The CO2 is able to push its way through the water and escape into the outside air. The reason one can't leave the container open is because when alcohol contacts air it turns into vinegar. That's not a bad thing, if you want vinegar ;), but a pain in the ass if your trying to produce alcohol. A balloon can be used too, with a small hole pricked in it. Honestly (found as an idea in a YouTube video about how prisoners brew their own stuff), I used condoms, since they are not being utilized for any other activities right now. ;) The rubber-- ehemm--"balloon" is then able to release the CO2 without letting in outside air.

Anyway, upon every worthwhile project a little hard work must fall. And in this case, it meant cutting up apples and discarding the yucky bits. And it was a JOB! But a satisfying one.

Maybe you've experienced this too... Whenever I'm doing monotonous work like this my mind always wanders and all kinds of thought pass by. I suddenly realized where many of our metaphors must have had their origins...

"Rotten to the core."

"One bad apple spoils the bunch."

"Apple of my eye."

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away." (and constipation, I might add)

"American as apple pie."

"Bad apple."

I strongly suspect that an apple was being examined, cut-up, bitten into or viewed in a tree, when all of these were first thought of, rather than suddenly popping into the minds of the originators.

Another thing that surprised me was the little lesson on appearances that came to mind...

I noticed that some of the most deformed and ugly apples, had the cleanest juiciest flesh. I have to admit to eating some of those while I worked. And I came across an ideal "picture- book" example of an apple, with one little hole in it. But when I cut it open it was the most rotted-out one in the bag. Certainly these are apt metaphors for people as well.

Whenever I'm processing or preparing fruit and vegetables for dinner, pickling or in this case hard cider, I am just blown away by nature's abundance. Nature doesn't screw around. It makes sure that a plant over-compensates for every contingency. Average, healthy apple trees don't have two or three apples, they have hundreds and hundreds. Frequently the branches bend down to the ground offering a few other metaphors, the "low hanging fruit." The tree let's its fruit "go out on a limb" in order to reproduce itself. And "when the bow breaks," that apple will fall... In fact, all the apples on the branch can end up on the ground this way. Apple trees are very prolific in new branch growth the next year though. Often two more branches will grow, where one has broken off. And the tree may live to 80 or even 100 years!

AND apples aren't small amounts of sweet flesh around mostly seeds, the are fat with juicy firmness. If one were to work out the volume of usable flesh to non flesh on an apple, my sense is that it would be something like 1,000 to 1. Try that with a pomegranate!

What also, crossed my mind as I was throwing the last chunks of apple into my huge bowl that was now spilling over, is how humans have largely directed the growth of the most common plants we eat. It is likely that the apples we have now are very different from the ones in ancient times.

It may be interesting to note that even as common a fruit as apples are not easy to produce. No one sells apple seeds. And if you do buy them, you're getting shafted. This is because nearly all apples are hybridized. This is done by germinating any-old apple seed and then planting it to form what is called a "root stock". When the roots have firmly embedded themselves in the soil, the top of the little sapling is cut off and a young sprout from an already-producing tree is grafted on to the root stock. Now, that doesn't mean you can't grow an apple from a seed, without grafting. But industry avoids this route in order to have consistency in quality and yield. You never know what kind of apple you will end up with when growing from seed. Not to mention it takes a good 6-10 years before fruit is produced.

[As an aside, grafting is a HUGELY efficient way to continue a successful line of plants-- actually it is all the same 'plant'. This is like cloning (where a piece of plant is allowed to root in hormone solution or water and then planted). I clone Salvia divinorum plants. Strange that my Salvia IS the same plant that originally came from Mexico, many years ago. It is called the "Blosser strain" for the original plant brought back from Mexico by anthropologist, Bret Blosser and then cloned, in the 1990's. Genetically, that plant in Mexico and now in my kitchen has never experienced death nor the dormancy of seed. Even in Mexico, its growth along river banks, allows the mature plants to fall over and then root and grow new stalks. Salvia has done this for thousands of years. And - until recent times - ONLY existed in Oaxaca among human settlements (plants grown only by humans and not in the wild are called, "cultigens"). It is listed as growing there as far back as the Mayans recorded and then later, the great Aztecs. I will be writing more about Salvia later. One final word about grafting, though. It is not widely known (and perhaps the men in black will show up at my door tomorrow morning for tell you all this), but the Hop plant (like what is used in beer) is a partial psychoactive sedative. But even more interesting is that Hops can be grafted on to Cannabis root stock, allowing the THC from the Cannabis to be transferred from the roots into the the actual Hop plant itself, giving the psychoactive properties of BOTH the the new plant. Hop sales are rigorously regulated because of this reason, by our lovingly fascist DEA.]

Finally, all the apples went through my juicer, which is getting old and complains enormously about being put to work. It goes from running smoothly to sounding like monster truck in my kitchen. Somehow I coaxed all the apples through and ended up with a modest 2.5 liters (about 2/3 gallons) of delicious apple cider. The rest of the recipe was easy...

The juice was split evenly into two 1-gallon plastic jugs. Then 2 pounds of white sugar were dissolved in warm Poland Spring water, with the spices added. I did not allow the water to boil because yeast will be killed by hot water. Then I divided the spicy sugar water into each of the jugs, capped each, and shook them vigorously for about 30 seconds each. The caps were removed and the now-unsafe for sex condoms, pulled out slightly (no jokes about that please), and stretched over the mouths of each jug. If you must know, they WERE lubricated, but that stuff is non-toxic and won't have any effect at all on the final result.

I labeled each and dated them, gently slipping them into a doubly- walled, large paper bag and placed it in a dark, cool, dry place in my kitchen.

A break-down of ingredients is here, in case anyone wants to duplicate this knowledge- inducing venture:

1/3 gallon (1.25 liters) of apple cider

2/3 gallon (2.5 liters) spring, or distilled water

1 pound of refined white sugar, or honey

1/2 TBSP cinnamon

1/2 TBSP cloves

Shake, and cap with a condom. Makes 1 gallon of apple hooch. Should be fully fermented in 2-4 weeks, when bubbling has stopped. Filter through cheese cloth, or an old (clean) T-shirt works well, into clean seal-able bottles.

Because all the sugar will have been used up by the yeast (that lack of food then kills the yeast, which drops to the bottom), you can sweeten the final stuff with sugar syrup. I've also heard that people use honey or maple syrup. However, keep in mind that when it comes to sweetening, be sure, as best you can, that all the yeast is dead and filtered out, or it will begin fermenting again when you add sugar. One person had the excellent idea of using stevia (a natural sweetener, many times more potent than sugar, with out all the diabetic, tooth-decaying properties of real sugar). Then, ENJOY!

One last thing. Any fruit juice can be used to ferment into an alcoholic "wine". Juice from fruit in it's raw state, like apples, grapes, peaches, etc... CAN be fermented without buying supplemental yeast. Aviod shiny clean fruit since much of the yeast is on and in the skin.

You can also use regular store-bought juice, like Ocean Spray. They are usually LOADED with sugar (part of America's biggest health problem, frankly), but in the case of fermentation, the more sugar the better. Most juices have 40 grams of sugar in only 8 oz of juice! But you'll need to buy yeast for bottled juice.

I have heard of people fermenting flat Coke and Pepsi for what must be a very disturbingly strange tasting wine.

My advice is to get as much knowledge from the process as you can. And this can come in the form of doing, but as I said above, as well, thinking.

If you made it all the way through this essay, you DESERVE a drink!

The State of the Urantia Book Community

2009-12-12T12:46:00.005-05:00

In my opinion, on a different time line, the Foundation could have kept the Brotherhood closer to them by loosening their own control over some legal aspects of the cooperative effort. They would have seen the need to let others publish the book and would have leased the rights to do so until their copyright expired. As a team with a moderately aggressive global marketing campaign, they could have overseen the publication of 20 million copies of the UB by this same time (about 55 years after publication). In that fantasy time line there never would have been a chance for the stagnation and corruption that split those organizations apart, kept this world-transforming message (almost literally) "in the closet," and could have made the end of the 20th Century the most progressive historical human age ever seen. In that time line an enlightened UB-educated, teacher-caste would have been mobilizing and honing their lesson plans, in preparation for the coming of the next Son.

There would be little debate about whether the book was meant for the 21st Century or 1,000 years from now. It would be quite obvious to our doubles in that other time line that just as the book itself was showing its age (as it is NOW), just at that right time these teachers educated by it would then take over the FER, updating it in a VALID and heavenly-sanctioned way. But this IS only a fantasy. And the fact that the fantsy never became a reality has nothing to do with the outside world. It is only our fault - the readership.

In our 'real' world this enthusiastic global marketing promotion never took place.

So here we stand in a new century, morally, not much more advanced then we were at the beginning of LAST century. FER-wise, we have a divided Foundation and Fellowship, a confused readership devoid of true LEADERSHIP, with fringe movements gaining more presence, non-UB- science surpassing the rudimentary (but once, valid) scientific UB concepts - which MIGHT have more fully advanced 20th Century science, had the UB been in the possession of the greatest scientific minds of those years. But that didn't happen.

Frankly, instead of bringing the Fifth Epochal Revelation in for a safe landing, updated, well-distributed, organized and ready to forge forward with the coming instructions of the new Son, on time, under budget and highly improved, we are barely off the ground in a duct- tapped version of human flight, tardy, over-budget, divided and unknown.

And who can say with any confidence how soon this new Son might arrive? Who is to REALLY say that it won't be this coming year? Or maybe on the cliche date: December 21, 2012. IF (for example) that cliche date is the case we have 55 years to make up for in exactly 3 years and two weeks from this very night. And it is just as valid (or in-valid) as any other date. In fact, the essence of the expectation alone gives 2012 an actual, and more quantifiable probability of actually occuring (though slight).

On an aside, privately, I have been thinking about this a lot recently. I am coming more and more to believe that SOMETHING is going to happen in 2012 to completely and undeniably overturn our current view of reality. A Magesterial visitation (for example) would certainly accomplish that. It won't be the end of the world by any stretch, but it could be a strong redefinition of it.

It will be a thing that there will be no question about after the initial shock of its introduction has passed by. So, I guess I'm (perhaps stupidly) 'coming out' with my opinion on the subject of 2012 briefly here, because I want to share the notion that I would rather prepare my own soul for December 2012 and suffer the social (human) embarrassment if it doesn't occur (whatever "it" is), than to live like I (or "we") have another thousand years of blissful technologically advancement and cheerful consumerism to look forward to before any REAL event takes place. No. I've been saying this since I first came to UBRON. This is the time...

UB 176.2.6.2 [my bold] "But you should be wise regarding the ripening of an age; you should be alert to discern the signs of the times. You know when the fig tree shows its tender branches and puts forth its leaves that summer is near. Likewise, when the world has passed through the long winter of material-mindedness and you discern the coming of the spiritual springtime of a new dispensation, should you know that the summertime of a new visitation draws near."

There are only a few quotes in the UB that give me shivers reliably... one is 44.1.8 and another is the above quote. I simply KNOW that they refer to events in my lifetime. And when I'm in certain moods or feeling down, I think of passages like these and find much comfort in their prophetic messages.

But I digress...

No story of the slothful steward would be more appropriate than our actual situation.

Are we ready to face a Paradise Son of God as he looks us in the eyes and says, "Well, let's see how you've invested my talent?"

And we'll look up at him and say what??

"Hi Mister Divine Being... We were expecting you a little later... We've been very thrifty though... Ah... We made sure no one abused your emblem, sparing no one, even suing some of your most faithful believers... You can count on us for protection! Um... We worked really hard to make sure that public interest in the FER didn't grow too quickly or be distributed to the wrong people, in the wrong way. We knew you wouldn't want that. Let's see, we did have some minor inner- organizational disagreements, where we actually had to SPLIT the entire movement up for a while to get properly adjusted. But finally after 30 years of dealing with that, we're very optimistic about our re-newed relationship. Of course I guess that isn't all that helpful now that you're actually here, your... Mage... Magesterialness, Sir. We sold lots of books though! 500,000! If you think about it, that is about 8,000 books per year... world-wide! That's enough to supply one twelve- thousandth of the world population with books! But there's a reason we didn't publish more... the readers just don't donate enough. And we've put so much of our efforts into translations and protecting the copyright for you, that we couldn't really sell more books than we've sold. But that works out fine, because we thought you wanted us to go slowly... So... Aren't we great??"

And the Avonal Son, or maybe Michael himself, or maybe BOTH, with Machiventa standing there beside them all, will respond in unison with, "That's it?????"

"Yeah............... Aren't... we... great?"

NO, NO, NO!!!! We're not. We're not great. We're not even approaching fairly-good! :) GREATNESS is a term that should be applied either to other worlds or to the hopes for our distant future. As UB readers we are not overly special. What we are doing with the movement is just barely acceptable, it is very far from extraordinary. And even as a species on this planet we are close to failure. We're the sluff-off planet. We're the Aesop's grasshopper of the worlds, sitting around playing lazy music in the sun, while some other rebellion-stricken inhabited world somewhere out there would give every eye tooth on the planet for an opportunity to publish - without restriction - a book that would prepare it for its next great Visitation.

But we are worse than the friendly grasshopper. We sit around killing ourselves with laziness, cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, man-made hydrogenated fat products, impossible work schedules, hypertensive social-status envy, ignorance of the natural world around us and war. We rape the earth and fight each other over who gets to deplete her fossil fuels the fastest. If there is a Gaian spirit of some sort she must just wish we would extinguish ourselves somehow and completely disappear.

I wonder if somewhere in the Local Universe some being hearing about all this "Urantia Revelation Project" rediculousness is rolling their eyes and saying, "...typical mediocre Urantians...can't get anything right..." We make ouselves look like a charity case for Michael. Our only saving GRACE is that He truly does love us, and actually walked upon the world as ONE OF US. ALMOST, no matter what we do to screw up our world's history, Michael will be there to catch us - but just as some Urantians make the choices that do not allow them to survive. Some theorize that some planets probably do too. But the criticism we deserve from other worlds and realms could be justified.

They could be right. We've squandered our time, wasted our resources, divided our community, fought amongst ourselves, watched the years go by, knowing that at anytime we could CHOOSE to flood the world with this book, and never have.

HOWEVER...

I would venture to bet that heaven is not a place without contingency plans that are exquisitely precise. This was all taken account of before that first contact night session in 1911. Surely, even our bumbling efforts with the FER was projected as a possibility. Give the lemurs anything, and they will frig it up. It is for this reason more than any other that I believe the UB is not equal to the FER. Epochal Revelations are meant to give human races PHYSICALLY PRESENT, materially visible PERSONALITIES with which to interact and learn from dynamically, not to have static words in a book, open to any-old interpretation. It is SO obvious that the UB is a stop gap measure to repair our backwardness just enough to present the finale of the FER; THAT, being the arrival of the new Son. It is obvious to me anyway.

The UB was meant as a short-term maintenance scheme for the rudimentary preparation of SOME portion of the planet's population for the next large PERSONAL contact. What we think of as NOW, could have been like it was in my fantasy time line descritption above. But it is the way it is. It happened the way it happened. We can (and for a while I think should) regret it. Either success or even failure were prepared for by the revelators. Personally, I believe the probability calculations for success of the revelators' "Urantia Book Project" for this age, just before the Son arrives, fell somewhere in between our botching its distribution as we've now done and the potential for complete failure on our parts. I don't think there was ever much hope in the revelator's minds for extraordinary cultural transformation from the UB alone.

At LEAST we haven't completely failed. At least we didn't lose our Master's talent altogether. So, we aren't COMPLETE FAILURES. Wow! what a consolation! :) And if we continue to look on the "bright side," we might be able to patch up enough of our 'charge' to effectively fix the blunders of our UB history. Too bad that this is happenning now, in the final few years before we may be asked to account for our stewardship of the FER. But, there IS still time to greatly improve what we have to work with.

It would be nice if the next Son arrived and said, "Well, it looked pretty shaky for a while there, Pete, but you really pulled it off! We're proud of you!" Can you imagine how much better that would feel than a divine reprimand? Just sayin's all...

And my approach to salvaging the thing as best we can, is to promote the following three things among the well-read members of our community [I include a lot of capitalization in the following to emphasize, not to yell]...

ONE - Continue NOT to promote the UB itself inter-personally, unless asked, specifically about the book, itself. Basically I'm saying that not proselytizing with friends and family is a good idea. The UB is NOT A RELIGIOUS TEXT. BUT, in every sense, the proselytizing of it TURNS IT INTO ONE in the eyes of a non-UB reader. When you are teaching other non-UB readers about the reality which the UB reveals, do it without using exclusive UB terms, especially the word, “URANTIA”. There are plenty of ways to quote the book, and describe any of its concepts without special terminology. The terms are for UB readers NOT non-UB readers. But the CONCEPTS are for EVERYONE right now.

TWO – Pour yourself into printing and high volume book and Internet distribution efforts. So even though you are not recommending the book to friends and family and being a pest to them, you are PHYSICALLY (and electronically) filling the world with UB's. People say that their needs to be sales. NOT TRUE! MOST people are given the book. And why should the Foundation and Uversa Press be counting ONLY on well-read Urantians to buy the books and then give them away. What kind of sales strategy is that? We can't rely on sale to dictate production. This is NOT a capitalist venture, even in the slightest way. Instead, I challenge EVERY ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO READ THIS POST to give a UB book away by New Year's day. If you don't own a paper book, send out the UB as an attachment to emails. Burn data discs with the book on it and leave them around town for people to find (your cost: $1.00 ea). If you have actual extra books, it is every one of our obligations to make sure that book is in our local library— EVERY ONE OF US. But just leaving them in strategic places can be very effective. Leave them at a local laundromats, bus stations, Dr's offices, taxi depots, anywhere where magazines or waiting rooms are provided. Try to be anonymous. People will not throw out a book like the UB. But they certainly will steal it from a public place (which is EXACTLY what we want). And if my suspicions about the celestials guiding people to the UB are correct NONE will be thrown away? :) Also, people will forevermore believe that they were MEANT to find the UB that way.

THREE – UB readers like myself, who spend any amount of time in a public way (writers, artists, musicians, actors, politicians, prominent scientists, ministers) have a EXTRA responsibility to work the UB's concepts into their productions and creativity. Give people the concepts plain and simple. This makes for a fertile mind- soil, for the UB, when they finally find it. And (conveniently) you are also following number TWO above (leaving the UB where it can be found). I've heard prominent people (some VERY prominent) say that they won't talk about the book or refer to it or won't even admit to reading it when asked directly. I think that is wrong, pure and simple. You should NOT be afraid to associate yourself publically with the revelation. It stands on its own. But never let yourself be a salesman for it. ALWAYS only give SPECIFIC UB info when it is asked for.

If you sit and actually think about the three things above. All are wholly counter-intuitive. YET, the idea that you being associated with the UB but not PUSHING it into people's faces will be seen as PROFOUNDLY noble restraint on your part (almost Christlike), when your friends and family finally catch the popular wave that will eventually sweep over the world. While, at the same time, you can make sure that anyone is able to get a UB by giving them away anonymously in public places, plus you are supporting the publishers of the UB.

Frankly it would be really nice if more people published the UB. The Foundation is more suited to a role of officially “certifying” any public domain publishing as “authentic” than scraping together enough money to supply a comparatively tiny amount books while also doing translations, etc. If more people were buying books and the Foundation was paid for its certification of authentic texts published by non-Foundation publishers, it would have much more in the way of resources to do its other (I think) more important duties (other than publishing). As I understand it, the only REAL commandment left to them was to “preserve the text inviolate.” It wasn't to preserve EVERY text as inviolate (as they once thought their mission was), but certifying another's UB text as inviolate IS a profitable fulfilling of their mandate. Just an idea. They should no longer consider themselves the leaders of the movement. And after nearly 60 years of non-leadership, I think it is safe to assume that no one considers them to be the leaders.

The leadership of the UB community needs to come (in a completely non- religious way) from the Fellowship. Unfortunately, as long as group prayer is encouraged along with such intense focus about Jesus papers over the other others, this leadership will be moot.

Perhaps there needs to be a third party? Some extremely simple organization, elected by readers in a grand online poll of some sort – maybe through UBRON. Still – and I'm serious about this – leadership of the movement CAN NOT BE RELIGIOUS AT ALL. The “mankind religion” mentioned in the UB is a phenomenon that really MAY be 1,000 years away.

So, to sum up...

We don't HAVE to pull our act together. We can just go along in our half-assed way doing whatever until the next Son arrives. Or we could utilize every possible way getting the FER, along with its concepts and teachings spread across the entire planet – just in a primitive way – to do as much as we can to prepare the way for this Son. This will mean doing counter-intuitive things like the three I mentioned above, but what we are doing NOW, doesn't work effectively. Period.

We also need to find either one or several REAL leaders for the movement, perhaps through some third party process (other than through the Fellowship or Foundation).

As READERS (strictly), we can be united without having to be the “Unity” that Maria and I tried so hard to initiate a couple years ago. We need a “UNITED URANTIA BOOK READERS” of some kind who come from ALL the various sub-movements and belief systems; having only ONE thing in common: reading the UB. It could have a staff of 12 or so people who work ONLY for all of the readership (through representative voting). People would have no choice in membership... If you are a reader you're in. It is like that already. Readers are readers. :) It can't be any simpler than that. Like being a US citizen simply by being born here, you are allowed to vote in US elections. Readers wouldn't have to do anything at all in the community. But if you wanted to, you WOULD have a voice in the direction in the cultural leadership of the movement through simple majority vote.

The Justin Case

2009-12-12T12:40:00.004-05:00

[This essay was originally published at UBRON on Saturday, Novemeber 14, 2009. It is a last ditch effort to address what I believe is the great philosophical loss of Justin Reed, one of UBRON's brightest minds (because of his belief that Christ Michael has incarnated as a human who legally changed his name to "Christ Michael" (called, "CM", below).]

It was the around the time that I began receiving adware from Justin's email account that my concerns about him really began in earnest. I realize now that it was not Justin's fault. I thought - in my paranoid frame of mind over the affair - that it might be a new tactic by CM. I no longer think that (frankly, he's just not smart or creative enough to start a campaign like that). HOWEVER, Justin's refusal to respond to my many emails to him did heighten my suspicions, and was a poor choice on his part. It took my posting the situation HERE to get him to respond (and still the response was not to me, personally).

It might not be well-known that I frequently fought behind the scenes to defend the right of t/r people to post their beliefs here (though I didn't share those beliefs). All I asked of the t/r people, publically was that they CITE their sources and differentiate their (post-UB publication) terminology from that of the published UB. Justin also fought me (hard) on that. He tried to turn my argument for a more scholarly approach into a debate about "freedom of speech." Now we know why. It is the same, self-serving, argument he makes when other members are warned by Patrick about their continued use of off-topic themes.

Never one single time has Justin thanked the Admins for allowing HIM to publically denounce their decisions about UBRON Guidelines; an act, within itself, that is against the Guidelines. Never one single time has he (or any of the t/r followers) publically thanked the Admins for their patience with the t/r discussion here (an act which is ALSO against the Guidelines), though the Admins refusal to stop it, in favor of giving people the freedom to continue no matter how blatant and pridefully these t/r followers shove their dogma into our faces. The followers of the t/r belief system (now a pseudo- religion) often treat the reluctance of Admin interference with certain subjects as proof that the Admins is so biased as to be STREERING the entire enterprise for the gratification their own (the Admin's) personal schema.

So the struggle for clarity, citation, voluntary scholarly practices and truth goes on...

Even Steff was reprimanded by Behz for not citing a t/r quote that she closely paraphrased. I don't believe she would do that again. Her excuse at the time was something like "...Well, if people had know where it really came from they would have dismissed its eloquence [and even *I* admit it WAS eloquent]." Folks, we must all realize that that is the oldest excuse in the (non-UB) book, and the reason why SCHOLARS insist that high quality writing be well cited and referenced- -or it is, simply and delicately put, SHIT. The situation turned right around and fulfilled Steff's fear that it wouldn't be taken seriously, BECAUSE it was revealed to be a deception (albeit a small and very forgivable one). I predict that it might have been accepted as another VALID point of view, had she only been up-front with its source.

Despite her coldness toward me, personally, and her association with the t/r phenomenon, I DO HIGHLY value Steff's work here. She is a beloved sister and well- balanced contributor who DOES follow the rules of the site and (largely) keeps her post-published- FER musings (t/r views) OUT of UBRON. She should be recognized and commended for this. We all know her as "the Queen of Quotes." And despite my seething hatred for posts made of nothing but UB quotes (with no commentary - just MY own little pet peeve), I mind much less when she does it, because her UB quotes are VERY well thought out in the choosing and artfully placed in the context of threads.

And she is not overly stubborn when it is requested that she be clear. To her great credit, she (grudgingly) chose to better differentiate her commentary from the UB quotes she chooses after that was requested of her, some months back.

Someone asked a few days ago why Justin's quotes from the UB had Jesus' name uncapitalized. Well, as any of we search engine-freaks know, Truthbook (which I am presuming is the place we he does HIS searches for his all-quote posts) and other search engines return the quote that you are searching for, by altering the quote WITH THE SPELLING YOU ORIGINALLY SEARCH WITH, which in Justin's (and many of our) cases, is done in quick lower-case letters. This is not because we don't care enough about the word we're searching for, but rather because it is more efficient sometimes. HOWEVER, most of us DO take the time to THEN capitalize the word - especially if it is Jesus' name - when we actually POST those quotes. I'm sure I'm wrong in this assessment, but it made it SEEM more important for Justin to just get the post supporting his argument up than it was to be careful, thoughtful and respectful to both Jesus AND his fellow UBRONers. Yet, maybe he can be forgiven if this was the case, since he believed in his own mind that CHRIST MICHAEL would be emailing him later that day anyway, and probably wouldn't mind. The REAL Jesus wouldn't mind either. But it says something about sloppiness and lack of scholarly care on his part (again, in my opinion).

But my attitude to this kind of deception from others hardened this Fall with Justin's introduction of the "Planetary Supreme" (a purely t/r-"revealed" concept - which I can prove is t/r to anyone who emails me privately, with a forwarded transcript). And his bold and unyielding refusal to link this concept to his t/r-CM- influenced belief system was simply too much to see from him (YET AGAIN). All of the people here who were taken in, and said, "Yeah, it really could be valid in some way!" were suckers in the FIRST degree. Even when several of us CLEARLY pointed out that this was "extra-UB- related" we were summarily IGNORED. And I offer these folks a share of my ownership in the Casco Bay Bridge... ;)

Coupled with this uncited sneakiness on Justin's part, I was genuinely surprised at his distortion and error of ACTUAL UB info; saying that our souls on this world are not morontia (which they ARE), that the soul we wake up with on Mansonia One is NOT the same soul we have here (which he termed the "planetary soul" - DEAD WRONG), and that our SOUL is re-assembled in the resurrection halls (which it ISN'T - it is our FORM that is assembled, with an INTACT soul). Many of our truly greatest minds entertained ALL of these as possibilities without having a clue about the intentions and origins behind them. That's what I mean when I say "twisted agenda."

I receive TONS of email from all sides of all of these issues. And for years I've received both t/r transcripts from believers in the phenomenon, as well as rebuttals from highly conservative fundamentalist UB readers and TeaM watch dog groups. Frankly, I had always sided with the TeaM-related (or t/r-believing) folks because they were open-minded to more liberal philosophies. And as you might know, I am a great believer in Cognitive Liberty. But, in these last couple months, I have been forced to see just how deluded some t/r programs are becoming (in my opinion, of course). That doesn't mean I'm camping out with the Fundies now. It simply means that I have not been balanced enough in my personal assumptions.

Honestly, I would still be a supporter of the t/r expression here at UBRON if their believership didn't INSIST on shooting themselves in the feet every chance they got. Justin is perhaps that latest and the greatest of these folks. In answering my question about his belief in CM, at least NOW his cards are on the table. Why should it have taken, literally YEARS for this disclosure? Who knows? But I do appreciate his recent, though painfully reluctant, admission. And I thank him for finally being partly honest with us. Now we will have a better chance of discerning where his "introduced" concepts come from. Perhaps this is a start? Or, perhaps this is a non-start? Regardless, it is a CHANGE that was vitally needed here.

Now with the ridiculousness of Soren's statement on the heels of Justin's admission, and integrated with the UN-CHRISTLIKE behavior displayed by CM in emails to our members (like me and Rick), perhaps a new leaf is very slowly being turned over. Despite how some of you view me, I really am an optimist and that is why I seem so naive in my belief that - as the Beatles once sang - "It's getting better all the time."

I've said it many times before... The truth need not be tip-toed around. There should never be a commandment to not "get too close" or "you can look but don't touch" or "just trust us, it's true." the truth is a tough son-of-a-God! When you go to check out the truth, you should be able to kick the tires, honk the horn, drive it around the block, test the brakes, see it's maintenance history. It doesn't need sneaky, pussy-footing. It doesn't need to have itself be broken up and "validated" for better digestion by special "experts" with pipelines to transmit and receive its vital nature, to the "less contacted." It doesn't have to be sheltered underground by cults, special rites, secrecy and subterfuge. It's the TRUTH for petesake! :) Jesus didn't use special codes and secrets. He didn't limply and surreptitiously use deception to tell the Word. He went straight to the center of the religious world, stood up in the greatest temple that ever graced our world and broadcast his new Gospel across the olive-covered mountaintops! Jesus wasn't a PUSSY. He new his ideas were plainly spoken of and generously given to anyone who asked.

Therefore, more and more often lately, I am sickened by this little network of self- styled extenders of the FER. They will use the tired old cliches about "witch hunts" to bitch about the lack of acceptance here at UBRON for the t/r phenomenon but don't be fooled.

Having said all this - and allowing the Fundies to wring their hands a bit in a very minor, unearned triumph from their side of the isle (so to speak), I must in all fairness make the following caveat...

As a final word upon what was once called, TeaM, t/r, etc, (feel free to let me know what the more acceptable term should be now) - at least in this rant - I will say that I DO believe there is something to what was originally being identified back in the 1970's to 1990's regarding a certain amount of inter-realm communication.

Gerdean, my adopted Auntie, perhaps the wisest member in our UBRON community, and a person I consider beyond reproach or human judgement, has some VERY believable memories to recount about these early days, if people would just listen. TRULY - I believe - she had ACTUAL encounters with the kinds of beings that today's younger generation may be deceiving themselves about receiving. That's why I will never fully discount the possibility of infrequent and occasional communication of this sort. It is out of respect for her (and her very pointed and justified request to me one night a couple years ago ;]) that I DO NOT use the terms, "channeling", "channeler", "TeaMer", etc. And I would STRONGLY request that others also be more respectful when speaking about what she and many of these people did, (and possibly) still do, encounter.

The fair-minded person will show respect to the request by t/r believers and MYSELF, as we KNOW that these stated terms are offensive, derisive, derogatory and are now mostly only used by non-t/r believers to elicit, presumptuous, socially- stigmatizing negative and unfair stereo-types and prejudice onto others, and onto a phenomenon they don't understand and blindly want to abolish.

I submit this lengthy comment, in a spirit of diplomacy. I fully understand that the less-insightful among you (one person immediately comes to mind, but this time I will not mention his name) will fight like the dickens to smear me, cherry- pick the weakest parts of my writing and attempt to cause you all to reject it. In truth, I sincerely hope that my critics DO come out of the woodwork to do just that! It has become obvious to me, as of late, that that very act of desperate defiance has made these people look stupid. And finally (though not completely yet), I'm learning to not immediately fire back my own character assassinations upon them.

Further, my discussion of Justin in the above should not be seen (though it will be by some) as a character assassination of the sort I just spoke of either. This will be hard for some of you to believe, but it IS true.

If I still didn't see tiny shards of light streaming from the brilliant mind of this falling human angel, I would stand-down in my attempts to point out the problems as I alone see them. That is the biggest thing I want to express here at the end of my diatribe. Justin is not beyond redemption, I believe (again ONLY my opinion). When I think that he ultimately has reached the point of no return, I will genuinely promise to refrain from ever uttering his name again (critically) in public. In this same vein, I offer to hear what he thinks about me and my views, and I welcome his always honest assessment of my intentions.

As a Coda and personal message to Justin I will say, in the kind of language he alone might fully appreciate:

I want to love you, Justin. But you are slipping into unreality, and setting like the evening sun, beyond the horizon of my sight. I pray that, perhaps like the inevitable warmth and brilliance of the new morning light, you will rise again; this time as a human star and teacher like no other has ever been, as if re-lit by a profound luminosity that the whole world will discover, rejoice about and thank God for.
Love,

A.

Readership is Leadership

2009-12-09T23:54:00.009-05:00

HOW CAN THE READERSHIP LEAD

THE FIFTH EPOCHAL REVELATION

1. We Should be Led by the Will of the Readership - The expectation of leadership for our UB-reading community should be centered on the READERSHIP, not on any particular existing UB-related organization. Ideally (no snickering please), the Foundation and Fellowship should CONSENT to such leadership of the UB-reading community. If they DO, then a kind of three-tiered (NOT branched), confederation can come into play. But it is not necessary to gain their consent in order to rest the reigns of leadership for the movement. Lack of support from the orgs would only negatively impact those orgs anyway.

2. To Empower the Readership - To empower themselves, the readership needs to have a central, online place where voting can occur (I would suggest UBRON). Votes would be anonymous, simple majority. A relatively pure democratic polling or voting system would be established.

3. A Urantia Book Readers Representative (UBR) Should be Voted for - One possible method for deriving candidates would be: (1) The Readership nominates 7 people (being the seven most-commonly submitted names - if there are less than 7 that have multiple submission than only the people with multiple submissions would become nominees - and people CAN submit their own name too). These 7 nominees will have one month to "campaign". (2) The Readership then chooses 2 candidates from that 7 (or less) nominee pool. Those 2 candidates then have one month to campaign. (3) A grand election is held the next month. The new UBR Representative is announced by noon PST the following day, and serves for one year. There should be no term limits (the UBR can be re-elected as many times - years - as the Readership wants). This allows for very talented leaders to have more influence.

THE THREE TIERED LEADERSHIP

A new power structure would come into play. It would not be a 3 branch leadership like the US. It would be a 3 TIERED leadership.

TIER I. The UBR would play the part of both Chief Executive and Primary Legislator. She or he would be both a representative of the Readership's voice AND then would INITIATE the most popular direction as it is dictated by Readership (through polls every 3 months) in a quarterly newsletter sent to all orgs and the Readership itself.

TIER II. The next tier down would be the functioning of the Urantia Book Fellowship. Nothing would change for that org, except that they would have to have an ear open to the new UBR. The Fellowship would never be obligated to follow the desires of the UBR (though they will reflect the dictations of the Readership). Yet the Fellowship IS important and has the outreach system and established resources to make the nuts and bolts of plans come into play. They would be like a Senate.

TIER III. The Urantia Foundation would preserve the text inviolate, certify newly published public domain Urantia Books, continue to publish their own UB and complete the translation activities. Because the Foundation holds the Michael Emblem copyright, and was partially established by the Revelators themselves, they will serve in a Judiciary capacity. They WILL NO LONGER have control over MAKING the plans for the movement (if that even ever happened anyway?).

By implementing some cleaned-up version of the specifics above, combined with the three ideas I proposed in my essay, a GREAT push forward COULD be achieved realistically, and with relatively little extra effort on every-one's part.

I volunteer to advise people on whatever they may need in any of these regards.

ONE UNORTHODOX IDEA FOR URANTIA BOOK DISTRIBUTION

To digress for a moment.

Let's look at one possibility out of many.

The CD dropping thing.

Now, here's an example of an easy, cheap, but EFFECTIVE method of distribution...

* Buy these: Business Card CD- R's - you get 100 for $35, or a price break for quantity (there are better deals out there too).

* Download the UB text to your computer. Here's a good site (and there are others) Urantia.info Download Center I would suggest the pdf version (other languages are available).

* When the discs arrive, pop a Business Card CD into your computer. Drag the UB text folder to the CD Folder. Rinse and repeat. :) Couldn't be much simpler. I was wrong I said your cost would be $1.00/CD, it would actually be more like $0.40 (w/S&H and your time and effort).

* Finalize the CD's, write "The Urantia Book" on them or make a fancy label (or print directly to the disc, like I do). The CD's come with free little plastic protectors and are 50 MB each (more than you will ever need to fit the UB text on it). By the way, that's enough extra space to add files of your own with the UB (Urantia art, music, informational pages, web link pages to the Fellowship and Foundation, etc...you name it).

* Then take a dozen or so and just clandestinely drop them into people's coat pockets at parties, in waiting rooms, in the entrances of libraries, stuff them into free local newspapers at the supermarket, go into work early and put one on each of your co-worker's desks, leave them behind at restaurants with the tip, put them in phone booths (if there still are any around), put them in information stations and rest stops along turnpikes, put them in the collection dishes at church (for the minister ;]), or if you're Jess, just walk up to people and say, "Would you like a CD with the Urantia Book on it?" :)

I mean look at the potential for spreading the UB this way...

If 20 of we UBRONer's did buy 100 of those CD's each, and downloaded the UB to all of them and dropped them around town next weekend, about 2,000 new UB's would suddenly be circulating, by Christmas! Expand to 2,000 readers doing that, and 200,000 more UB's would go into circulation. If 20,000 people made half as many CD's (50) each and distributed them in one month, 1 million new UB's would be out there.
If the same amount of UB readers did that repeatedly for 1 year. 12 million new UB's would be out there in only one year (cost to each person: about $240 or $20 per month). And if 10% of the people who received those UB's became readers, there would be 1,200,000 new readers. And if 10% of THEM bought UB's from the Urantia Foundation and Uversa Press (the Fellowship), 120,000 new book would be bought (if these orgs can print enough of them).

I guess I'm wondering how this wouldn't be a win-win situation? And that little B-Card CD-scenario was just one of about a dozen strategies I've come up with in only the last two days. You're all going to laugh now, and I don't blame you, but if we could get our asses in gear, we could set a goal of getting 100 million UB's (in one form or another) out there by this time of year 2012. Hey (and I'm kidding about this): Maybe *WE* are responsible for 2012?? Maybe that's the year the UB becomes a household word.

STAYING REALISTIC

I understand how skeptically "big" plans like this are treated in our community. Please understand that this stuff is just coming to me after years of contemplation about it.

I will say (again) that I certainly wouldn't want the next three years or so to be treated like an emergency. And why should it be? We choose to increase our efforts because it is our PLEASURE to do so, for the planet, for Michael and for our Father. There's nothing bad about any of that. It's like a kid in school. Do you tell him or her to go slow, and that a mediocre level of effort is ok? Or do you try to inspire them him/her to do their very best? Until now, we have been in a mode where, we don't feel the personal obligation to spread lots of the UB's around because there were organizations whose job it is to do that. But if we rely only on the orgs (who ARE doing their best), we are still being mediocre.

Isn't it worth trying something that is definable (I've just partially defined it) and timely? with all the positive private emails I've received in the last two days, I KNOW that something like what I've described above can work. I'm just brainstorming here. People should not be afraid to think big. Even more important they should not hesitate to DO BIG THINGS with their big thoughts.

Their are only three aspects that might make plans like the above fail: (1) The orgs put up a DAMN big fight about it. (2) The Readership doesn't want to do it. (3) We adopt the changes but can't stick with the program. Even if only number 3 happens, we will still kick out a small wave across our community.

All I am asking people to do is THINK about it. Smarter people than me will come up with much better ideas. But the above is a start.

2009-03-19T20:01:00.000-04:00

Reality and the Ultimaton Reality and the Ultimaton xelalaw URANTIA STUDIES - The essays in this series are part of a work in progress called, URT: A Unified Reality Theory. They will be edited and updated as new information becomes available.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Research world reality

Mapping Havona

2009-03-15T17:55:00.000-04:00

Mapping Havona

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Engineering Research world reality

Revisiting Paradise Part 1

2009-02-18T01:57:00.000-05:00

Revisiting Paradise Part 1

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Research world Geometry

Revisiting Paradise Part 2

2009-02-18T01:52:00.003-05:00

Revisiting Paradise Part 2

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Research world Geometry

2008-10-24T11:21:00.017-04:00

A L E X * W A L L

1. SEXY LOVE

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

width="290">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

We’re not just ordinary

You and I have sexy love

And on this side of morning

We kiss the light, sexy love

Patient girl feels the rush of the world

In the life and the pain

Held down by the chains that bind her heart

She’s the one and she shines like the sun

In her eyes, in her thighs, milky sweet on the tides

She’s watching time go by

She makes me high

We’re not just ordinary

You and I have sexy love

And on this side of morning

We kiss the light, sexy love, etc.

2. THE COST

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

width="290">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

Pull down the stars around me

If the story comes out right

When summer rises

Where hate despises light

Soft waves that shift below me

Even when I close my eyes

That wonder feeling

Where hearts are healing twice

If you just sit down next to me

And put your frown upon my knee

I see…

You found me dark and empty

So you filled me up with light

And I see heaven

You are my seventh sight

Violet is bleeding out

On and on, across the blue

You haven’t lost me

But it will cost me you

But it will cost me you

3. SECRET PLACE

From the album: LEXICON © 2008
data="http://alexwallmusic.com/files/player.swf" id="audioplayer1" height="24"
width="290">

&soundFile=http://alexwallmusic.com/audio/ALEX_WALL-Sexy_Love.mp3">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

With the sweetest voice you come and talk to me

Your words are paper, so innocent and free

And you can share your fantasy

To have one day of only you and me

With your angel eyes you see so much more

You’re in my moments, so beautiful and pure

And I can share your fantasy

To have one day of only you and me

And I would kiss you all over

And I would hold you when you’re cold

And we could find that secret place where

No one judges who we are

With your pretty smile you’re holding back the rain

I know that I could take away your pain

And we can share our fantasy

To have one day of only you and me

In a secret place we curl up safe and warm

And in my moments nothing can go wrong

And we will share our fantasy

To have one day of only you and me

And I will kiss you all over

And I will hold you when you’re cold

And we will find that secret place where

No one judges who we are© 2008 ALEX WALL

4. MAKE LOVE

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

data="http://alexwallmusic.com/files/player.swf" id="audioplayer1" height="24"
width="290">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

Inside of your rose I comes and I goes

You heat the world around me and

The video skies; I get lost in your eyes

I think your wrapped around me and

Make love all day long

(And the moments will come)

Make love singing songs

(As bright as the sun)

Make love all day long

Make love!

From the start you stole my heart away

Sexy baby, gave me night, gave me night and day

Inside the inside; astonishing fire

It heats the world around me and

Since you’ve been my friend, I can be young again

If you stay wrapped around me and

I’ll make love to you

(And the moments will come)

If you want me to

(As bright as the sun)

I’ll make love to you

Make love!

From the start you stole my heart away

Sexy baby, gave me night, gave me night and day

5. UNREQUITED MAY

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

data="http://alexwallmusic.com/files/player.swf" id="audioplayer1" height="24"
width="290">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

You're beautiful

You turn me on

And it's natural

But you think it's wrong

There's not enough time in the year

For you to hear

I want to tell you I love you

But you won't know, I fear

Unrequited May

I saw your boyfriend pick you up today

Unrequited May

I'm sure he came to take your breathe away

Unrequited May

Yu both walked up the stairs and locked the door

And Unrequited May

Now you won't be lonely anymore

Oh, oh, oh, how I want to be alone with you again

My friend

How I want to be alone with you again

My friend

You won't listen to me

Now the time is gone

And I'm dying

But you make me strong

There aren't enough notes in the scale

And so I failed

To be what you needed

But you were more than enough for me

Unrequited May

I hung your picture on my wall today

Unrequited May

A pretty face that never walks away

Unrequited May

I'll talk to it tonight and lock the door

And Unrequited May

Now I won't be lonely anymore

Oh, oh, oh, how I want to be alone with you

Again, my friend

How I want to be alone with you

Again, my friend, etc...

6. VERY WELL

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

data="http://alexwallmusic.com/files/player.swf" id="audioplayer1" height="24"
width="290">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

You pretend to kiss me now

And I pretend to hold you down

You sewed your heart on my sleeve

And made me drive you around

And I drove you around

When the sun turns red through the curls on your head

And the orange clouds roll out to sea

I’ll be giving you the best part of me

I’ll be giving you the best part of me

Lights go on around the bay

You should be lying next to me

Because I know you very well

Yes, I know you very well

If I must strengthen my soul

I’ve got to loose some control

I’m in the palm of your hand

I’m your most magical fan

When the sun turns red through the curls on your head

And the orange clouds roll out to sea

I’ll be giving you the best part of me

I’ll be giving you the best part of me

Violet moon is in my eyes

And it falls across your face and thighs

Now, I know you very well

Yes, I know you very well© 2008 ALEX WALL

7. NEVER STOP

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

data="http://alexwallmusic.com/files/player.swf" id="audioplayer1" height="24"
width="290">

Words and Music by Alex Wall

I sang to "make love"

I watch you give and take love

And now the time ends

Washed down with tears and diamonds

Still feel the Blues

Can't find no happy news

Bitter taste, indeed

I need to really lose control

I just go home tonight

I'm feeling like a kite

That dives into the ground

A song without a sound

Whenever you're in town

Call me up

You know I'll be around

You know I'll never stop

Take a look at the moon tonight

What a funky little satellite

Purple hips, and she says she feels good

"Hold me over for another night"

Well, you can drink

You can drink from my well

You can drink, but you cannot drink well

Sailing ships get lost in the rain, girl

But you're walking in a hurricane

When someone tries to take your soul

Buy it time, buy it time

When someone tries to take your soul

Buy it time...

Looks like I'll live more

I'll learn to trust and give more

I'll make the world see

The joys of peace and mercy

I Violet Light

We will learn to get it right

We will turn around

We will see the song behind the sound

Stayed up until the dawn

When I thought that You were gone

From every point of view

There's only me and You

No other fills my mind

No other holds my heart

Your Love is at the top

You know I'll never stop

8. ANOTHER WAY

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

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Words and Music by Alex Wall

Close those curtains tight

The light is much too bright

It hurts me

It hurts my eyes

I’ve always loved the sun

But now it’s laughing down

It’s laughing

Down on me

And I’ve done what you have asked

The torch of song is passed

I’ve seen the future film be cast

Make them go away

This is not my game

You think we

Think the same

Pound those stake in hard

Hard, until they break

Until their splinters

Hold my frame

And I’ve done what you have asked

The torch of song is passed

I’ve seen the future film be cast

I've seen another way© 2008 ALEX WALL

9. TWO BROTHERS

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

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Words and Music by Alex Wall

Said the night unto the day

“Don’t you know I’ve seen it another way?

When you’re on one side

And I’m on the other

That the night is just the day time’s brother”

And they’ve held hands

Around this world

From the times of rock and stone

To the days of bloody swords

And as we spin around this star

Forgetting who we are

In the womb that we adore

I am reborn…

10. TEARSN RAIN

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

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Words and Music by Alex Wall

I’m ready to start again

I have a new place to be

I’m leaving all those friends

Who said that they left me

I’m luffing in the wind

Confessing every sin

‘Cos I’m ready to start again

I will leave where I have been

And though the spirit leaves my pain

In the flesh there will remain

Tears and rain, tears and rain

Tears and rain…

‘Cos I’m still the same

My roots are taking hold

The sap is sinking in

You’re young and I am old

But we’re happy in our skins

And with the passing of the flame

The wax will freeze again, in

Tears and rain, tears and rain

Tears and rain…

‘Cos I’m still the same

Blue moon embosses on the snow

A ghost, a host

So many ghosts I know

Now I know how clear the air can be

Only when I’m peaceful am I free

And I am free…

Somewhere in our minds

It is morning all the time

Where we can start again

Helps us leave where we have been

And in the future morning calls

And the past will wash away in

Tears and rain, tears and rain

Tears and rain…

‘Cos I’m still the same

11. UNFINISHED THOUGHT

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

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Words and Music by Alex Wall

Time brings her closer

I'm kissing her shoulder

And she is warm

And she is soft

And she can roll

And she can rock

Some day we will...

If we believe in...

Some day we will...

If we believe in...

Some day we will...

If we still...

If we still...

Stand by this old man

Make him feel young again

Cause you are warm

And you are soft

And you can roll

And you can rock

Some day we will...

If we believe in...

Some day we will...

If we believe in...

Some day we will...

If we still...

If we still...© 2008 ALEX WALL

12. RISE RISE

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

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Words and Music by Alex Wall

Rise, rise and cheer from all sides

The time has come

Rise, rise look up to the skies

The world is young

Lies, lies; they're dropping like flies

Pull these scales, scales from my eyes

Rise, rise look up to the skies

The world is young

And if you wanted me to love you

All you had to do was ask me to

And if you wanted just to hold me

All you had to do was see right through me&

Rise, rise and cheer from all sides

The time has come

13. ASK ME

From the album: LEXICON © 2008

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Words and Music by Alex Wall

And if you wanted me to love you

All you had to do was ask me to...

Cos' the time has come!

Rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise...

(Mixed)

Revisiting Paradise

2008-06-21T21:47:00.023-04:00

A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON WELL KNOWN HINTS

PART I

A day is as a thousand years with God...

The Standard Paradise Day

Paradise-Havona standard day is based on the length of time required for the planetary abodes of the first or inner Havona circuit to complete one revolution around the Isle of Paradise; and though their velocity is enormous, owing to their situation between the dark gravity bodies and gigantic Paradise, it requires almost one thousand years for these spheres to complete their circuit.

37,000,000 worlds [based on the number of worlds in the first Havona Circuit] take 1,000 earth years to make a revolution around Paradise.

In 1,000 of our years, 37,000,000 worlds will pass by one point on Peripheral Paradise as they revolve around the outer edge of the outer circuit of Paradise satellites (seen as the outer ring of 7 worlds in the image above).

Let's look at this concept for a moment, mathematically...

37,000,000 worlds divided by (/) 1,000 earth years, means that 37,000 of those worlds have passed by any point on the extreme periphery (circumference) of Paradise, in one earth year. That's cruizin' right along!

In one earth day - using the exact length of one earth year: 365.242199 days (being 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds) - about 100 worlds (actually, it is 101.3) :) pass by that same point.

Remembering that there are about 86,400 seconds in a day, 4.2 worlds pass in an hour, and 1 world passes by every 14.2 minutes (or every 852.9 seconds).

That is about how many worlds would be passing by an observer on Paradise, of course that is with 21 Sacred Spheres moving in and out of the field of view. Looking in at Paradise from one of the worlds of the inner-most circuit would look something like this (though this is seen from about a 20 degree angle above Paradise), one still gets the idea of where those 21 Sacred Spheres might be at any one time...

Paradise System Side View

Many months ago I proposed some hypothetical measurements for Paradise at UBRON.

For lack of even a clue, I used the light year (LY) as a unit, and then applied that to the Paradise Ratio.

The Paradise Ratio: R_P = x:y:z (1.67:1.0:0.1), but in this case I made the Isle 7:6:0.6 LY. I've chosen the 7:6:0.6 because it is closer to the numeric translation of the UB text.

In form Paradise differs from the inhabited space bodies: it is not spherical. It is definitely ellipsoid, being one-sixth longer in the north-south diameter than in the east-west diameter. The central Isle is essentially flat, and the distance from the upper surface to the nether surface is one tenth that of the east-west diameter.

My original guess for a Paradise measurement...

If 1 Paradise Unit = 1LY

x = 7.0 LY (North – South)

y = 6.0 LY (East – West)

z = 0.6 LY (Upper - Nether)

So, using a deductive approach, going by the first whole numbers as Paradise Units, and assigning a one light year measurement to each Paradise Unit, I theorized the above.

Of course, the guess was completely arbitrary since the earth's orbit around the sun doesn't seemingly have anything to do with the rate at which light propagates.

But you have to start somewhere. And that's where I started...

For a more graphic idea, axes x and y are laid down in a flat plane, superimposed through a greatly flattened, ellipsoid (The Paradise Isle - First Physical Source [FPS]), and should look something like this...

Well, to finally start getting to the new point...

I believe that there may actually be a relation of light speed to distances on Paradise after all. I will be getting to that relation in Part II. For now though let's examine the problems and possible pitfalls to this argument, along with some other cosmologically considered numbers.

Life in the Paradise-measuring world would be much easier if we knew what the Paradise unit of measurement really was.

And, it would be really really nice if the actual size of the Isle would be related to the speed of light. How much time does it take a ray of light to travel from one side of Paradise to another? The speed of light is = 299,792.458 km/s.

If we were actually fortunate enough to find a correlation between the Isle of Paradise and the speed of light (or any universal constant), then we will have the key to unlocking the (probable) sizes of Paradise, Sacred Spheres, and Billion Perfect Worlds.

If we know that, then we can surmise the amount of local space that the Central Universe takes up.

Then we can more closely figure how large our Superuniverse of Orvonton must be.

Once that is accomplished, we are told that the giant Andromeda Galaxy is
outside of the Superuniverse, so estimates for the size of the Grand Universe could be better tendered when comparing the sizes of these immense star systems.

That Andromeda is so relatively close (anywhere from 1 to 2.6 million LY's from us), we might as well begin to estimate a chart the Primary Outer Space Level (OS1), where we are also given the hint that there are no less than "375 million" galaxies.

For the shape of OS1, think of a torus (a donut) filled with 375 million galaxies. At it's center is the Grand Universe with 7 some-what distinct "aggregations of matter" around it's center, each being a Superuniverse. They would maintain an orbit around their center of gravity, which brings us back to the Central Universe, and at IT'S center, the Isle that holds the whole bloomin' thing together!

It is interesting here to note that Bill Sadler, Jr. in his A Study of the Master Universe estimated that every Outer Space Level was 100 times larger in volume than the last. So, naturally, estimating the size of the Primary Outer Space Level (OS1), we would have a volume of 375 million "cubic galaxies" - with all the intervening space around them. We could then estimate enough room in the OS levels to (theoretically) allow...

Potential Number of Outer Space Galaxies

OS1 = 375,000,000 galaxies

OS2 = 37,500,000,000 galaxies

OS3 = 3,750,000,000,000 galaxies

OS4 = 375,000,000,000,000 galaxies

This brings the possible number of all outer space galaxies to roughly: 378,787,875,000,000 or about 378 Trillion. That's a lot. And it is really hard for me to believe it sometimes.

All of this assumes that these galaxies would be packed in tightly to the same 3D unit (a "cubic galaxy" - whatever that is - may be a cube with each side = 250,000 LY?), which might not-at-all be the case.

But anyway... In actuality, each torus-shaped
space level, even the whole master universe, would also be stretched into the ellipse showing the general shape of Paradise and the Central Universe orbits of the Havona Circuits, as they also follow "...the curve of the great ellipse" - the outline of Paradise.

Here is the quote that really gets me thinking...

One Paradise-Havona day is just seven minutes, three and one-eighth seconds less than one thousand years of the present Urantia leap-year calendar.

1,000 years - 7 minutes 3 seconds 125 milliseconds...

423.125 seconds total

THAT SHOULD ASTOUND YOU.

Now if that doesn't look like some kind of code I don't know what does!

And notice how incredibly accurate that earth-Paradise/Havona time is when comparing the two in earth seconds...

* 1,000 earth years = 31,556,925,993.6 earth seconds

* A Paradise/Havona (PH) day = 31,556,925,570.6 earth seconds

* The difference
between 1,000 earth years and a Paradise/Havona day = 423.125 seconds

To find the percent of accuracy for this comparison, we simply take the PH day (in earth seconds) and divide it by 1,000 earth years (in earth seconds) and then multiply that number by 100 to make it a
percent.

So...

31,556,925,570.6 earth seconds / 31,556,925,993.6 earth seconds

= 0.99999998659565256496187798569975 * 100

= 99.9999986595652564961877985699%

The earth's orbit could literally be used as a clock for the central universe to within an accuracy of:

99.9999986595652564961877985699%

For all intents and purposes 1,000 years of earth time IS equal to 1 PH day.

Now, there are many strange coincidences in our world. For instance, what are the chances that in our sky the apparent sizes of our sun (93,000,000 miles away) and our moon (a mere 238,857 miles away) are exactly the same? Not very good you say?

But in fact they are so close in apparent size that they are able to create a total solar eclipse (where the moon apparently covers the sun completely), while solar prominences are still able to be seen leaping off that same sun.

The great coincidence of a solar eclipse is not presumably planned. Neither is the 1 day to 1,000 year coincidence planned, but it is so specifically given (down to the 1/8^th of a second!), that surely the information we are given was planned by the Revelators, in order that we might investigate this clue and its meaning to the relationships between Paradise, the Central Universe the Superuniverses.

Lets look at this another way now...

Understanding the formula for the circumference of a circle is 2rp , we can then say that the earth travels in a mostly circular orbit, as follows ...

r = 93,000,000 miles; the distance from the earth to the sun

p = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795...

So, 2rp = 584,336,233.6 miles

The earth's orbit takes takes the planet on a
584,336,233.6 mile path through space each year. Therefore, in 1,000 years the earth travels 584,336,233,567.7 miles through space.

If the inner circuit worlds of Havona were traveling at the same speed as the earth, then they would also go 584,336,233,568 miles in that same 1,000 years.

And, if 584,336,233,567.7 miles is the circumference of the inner Havona Circuit, then it would be about 92,999,999,999.9 (or 93 billion miles) from one of those inner circuit worlds to the center of Paradise.

That means that the distance from the inner Havona circuit to the center of Paradise would be almost exactly 1,000 times the radius from earth to sun, or 1,000 AU's (Astronomical Units). It is important to remember that that would only be the case if these worlds moved at “earth speed.” The earth travels along its orbital path at 67,062 miles per hour.

Interestingly, if this was also the speed of a Havona Circuit I world it would take a photon traveling at c (if this were even possible), an average time of 133 hours to travel from the center of the Isle of Light to one of these inner Havona worlds, that's 5.5 light days, or about 0.015 LY (light years).

Before I go on to talk about how all this relates to the speed of light and the size of Paradise (in Part II), I have to ask you to ask yourself: does that size 0.015 LY seem tiny, especially when considering that you still need to squeeze three circuits of Sacred Spheres in, and then the whole Isle of Paradise itself?

This relatively minuscule amount of space - perhaps comparable to a large solar system - is going to accommodate the activities and beings from all future creation?

Just sounds small is all.

On the other hand, we at UBRON have talked before about the Havona spheres really whipping along (at near c!). For now, I would consider the circumference of that inner Havona Circuit at “earth speed” to be the absolute minimum size of that Circuit. That's where I'll pick up in Part II.

Alex Wall

Growing Computer and Media Technology

2008-05-25T17:13:00.017-04:00

I just bought a new stereo mp3 recorder (also records wav files - even surround sound 4 channel wav's). For years I've been waiting for a good stereo, hand-held, audio recorder. Now that mp3's are so prevalent, easy to send by email and even be posted on forums like UBRON, this is a real blessing. Here it is...

And, no, those are NOT my very well-manicured nails! :)

Anyway this thing - which costs about $199.00 - has been great to keep nearby as I'm coming up with new songs or guitar parts. It uses a SD (Secure Digital) card - same kind as I use in my little digital camera - so they are interchangeable). And for another $10 I bought a 1GB card. One GB seems small now for an amount of storage. that thought leads me to a very brief sentimental journey back through computing and the digital history of the last twenty years...

__________________________________

It is amazing how technology has become so powerful and inexpensive. In 1987 my family bought an Apple IIc with 4KB (!) of memory.

I bought my next computer in 1992 - a Mac Plus - as a sophomore in college. It had 1MB of memory - I was VERY proud! Remember these?...

I do think it's interesting how the older Apple looks much more up-to-date (even when compared with today's machines) than the Mac does. Hummm...

Here's an interesting site with a very comprehensive list of Apple Computer History.

As you probably all remember, computers were so novel and exotic back in those halcyon days of yore, that we felt like surely galactic travel could not be far off!

Well, galactic travel is still just as far off, and now I am drowning in gadgets: 1 - IBM 486 PC, 2 - Windows95 PC's, 3 - Windows98 PC's, 1 - WindowsXP PC and 1 WindowsXP Laptop, 1 Windows Vista PC... I still have my old Apple IIc and a Mac Quadra (1994). So, I have computers popping out of my ears! I also have countless old printers, fax machines, scanners, telephones, calculators, stereos, TV's and a whole laundry basket of remotes. And I'm just one guy. Sit back and ponder just how much stuff is out there.

The Apple IIc cost like $1300 back in the late 1980's. My Vista (factory refurb) cost $286! Granted, I didn't have to buy a monitor with it (since I had four or five floating around)!!

Now technology moves TOO fast. As witless consumers we just can't seem to keep up with how quickly things become obsolete.

There was an excellent article in National Geographic about computer recycling around the world: High Tech Trash. Unfortunately that link doesn't show all the incredible photos, graphs and charts that were in the magazine (well, it might but I didn't surf through the whole online article).

I keep all my old electronic gear because I can't stand to see such intricately manufactured things simply tossed on the garbage heap.

In the next few years there will be quantum computers (and possibly nine other weird computing technologies coming).

Here is a simplistic History of Computers from 3000 B.C. up to today.

The trend for data storage (and retrieval) seems to be running toward the solid state (no-moving-parts) direction for consumer products. SD cards (like the ones I spoke about above) can hold up to 32GB (that's 4000 CD's worth of data storage), and more storage will be on its way as working scales shrink. In my opinion, in ten years there will be no use for CD's, DVD's, tapes, and possibly even hard drives, unless hard drives are still considerably cheaper than solid state cards, which I very much doubt.

The typical computer hard drives that we all know and love are strange little creatures! They are constructed in "clean rooms", and their surfaces remain clean for there whole existence. But they are very "shy". Here's is what the private parts of a hard drive look like... Oh, MY! :)

Pretty sexy, huh? But the only useful hard drive is a VIRGIN hard drive. They are not meant to be violated by contamination caused by unscrewing their covers. If you were actually looking at the "bits and pieces" of your own hard drive, to the point where you saw it as it is displayed in the photo above, you should next understand that you have inevitably ruined the device. Because of my cat-like curiosity, I can speak from personal experience on this. ;)

Still, the hard drive is a VERY efficient way to store data, because it can be much less expensive than solid state devices and hold IMMENSE amounts of information - up to 1TB (1 terabyte = 1000 GB's). Unfortunately for hard drives it seems there is a point where retrieval becomes unreliable. This is not because of space, but because of heat.

The fastest hard discs today are zipping around at about 15,000 RPM (Revolutions Per Second). There have been experiments with 20,000 RPM (and even faster) discs. But all kinds of problems start to creep in... heat builds up. Here is something I never knew about how hard drives work:

Amazingly it is all about air! The so-called "discs" are actually called platters. These platters can be stacked up like old LP's in a juke box. For each platter there is a delicate arm that is capable of moving all the way across the width of the write surface.

The platters are made of non-magnetic materials (aluminum or glass) and coated with a thin magnetized layer.

As the platters spin so does all the air in the semi-sealed chamber. It is the movement of this air that lifts the arm, causing it to "float". At the same time the read/write head is aerodynamically designed to travel at a very precise distance above the surface of the platter, a distance much much smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

There is even an air intake and exhaust system. This is two tiny holes one that lets air in and one that lets it out. This air is thoroughly cleaned by the very fine filtration system it must pass through. So you see... Opening the cover allows dust in, and if the head ever runs against a piece of dust it will fail to work correctly and will ruin itself. There are professional means of sanitizing platters but they are not generally used by average consumers.

Luckily, one of the hard drive's greatest early advantages over temporary (RAM types of) memory, is that it is a non-volatile storage system. It retains the data even after power is shut off.

To be fair, I have to now show the innards of the SD card...

Not quite as sexy. You can't see anything doing anything... It is quite boring. I think its scale says it all though. An SD card is roughly the size of a quarter. The hard drive we saw is considerably bigger. Even my laptop's very small (in size) 60GB drive is still the size of a deck of cards.

__________________________________

Anyway... Getting back to the new recorder...

This new Zoom H2 has also been a nice higher-quality way for me to keep a dream log. I have just begun a new one, with the first entry listed below.

The only thing I have to point out before you listen, is that I am occasionally very frank and personal about what happens in these dream logs. This is because I'm trying to record as much as I can about the WHOLE experience, rather than editing it or sanitizing it. I understand this leaves me open to ridicule, or at the very least might be too much information for some folks, but I think you'll figure what I'm talking about here, and will be accepting of it. I'm not crude, but I am truthful...

NEW DREAM LOG - ENTRY 1

From the alexwallmusic.com file: Dream Log 2 © 2008

The History of Lucid Awareness

2008-04-06T14:03:00.015-04:00

I have coined the term, "Lucid Awareness", to mean the state of mind (whether sleeping or awake) where a person understands what they are experiencing and is fully conscious of that experience. It can mean waking experience or the so-called "lucid dream" experience (where one wakes up inside a dream and realizes they are dreaming). I am including the three major aspects that have led me to a Lucid Awareness. I think a basic understanding of the Kabalahistic view says a lot. I don't believe it represents everything that we need to know, but many truths can be extracted from it. So I include the Kabbalah information first...

THE KABBALAH - ESSENCE OF BEING

Please check out the Kabbalah Centre website.

Kabbalah — the world’s oldest body of spiritual wisdom — contains the long-hidden keys to the secrets of the universe as well as the keys to the mysteries of the human heart and soul. Kabbalistic teachings explain the complexities of the material and the nonmaterial universe, as well as the physical and metaphysical nature of all humanity. Kabbalah shows in detail, how to navigate that vast terrain in order to remove every form of chaos, pain, and suffering.

For thousands of years, the great kabbalistic sages have taught that every human being is born with the potential for greatness. Kabbalah is the means for activating that potential.

Kabbalah has always been meant to be used, not just learned. Its purpose is to bring clarity, understanding, and freedom to our lives — and ultimately to erase even death itself.

Click here for a Wikipedia Kabbalah article.

Here is an interview with William Simon...

Five Basic Principles of Kabbalah

Kabbalah and the Perception of Reality

States of Consciousness

Control Your Thoughts

Perceiving Reality

[For many other videos addressing Kabbalistic thought check out ARI Films.]

PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE - PSYCHONAUTIC EXPLORATION

The most incredible journeys thus far recorded, in my humble opinion, are by D.M. Turner. He experimented with combinations of psychedelic substances, and brought the exploration of these substances to the outer limits of unorganized psychic mapping.

Unfortunately D.M. Turner went too far and died while on a Ketamine adventure. He took too much and drown in bath. Ketamine is one of the only psychedelics that has a potential for habitual use. It is what they use to put animals to sleep. It is a high powered anesthetic that in lower doses gives a full blown psychedelic experience.

The strongest substance that D.M. Turner found (indeed the strongest psychoactive substance there is) is salvinorin A (the principle component of Salvia divinorum).

Here are his descriptions...

Many who use salvinorin A spend the peak of their journey lying down or reclining, apparently engrossed in an internal world. At the onset of the experience there is often a complete separation of consciousness from the body and personality. similar to what occurs with Ketamine. What is experienced after this is quite variable, possibly more so than with other psychedelics. The visions seen with salvinorin A seem particularly real and convincing. Quite often people accept these visions as reality and forget they are under the influence of a psychedelic substance. Siebert has reported on a number of themes which are frequently experienced with salvinorin A.

1. Becoming objects (yellow plaid French fries, fresh paint on a drawer, a pant leg,
a Ferris wheel, etc.)
2. Visions of various two-dimensional surfaces, films and membranes.
3. Revisiting places from the past, especially childhood
4. Loss of the body and/or identity.
5. Various sensations of motion, or being pulled or twisted by forces of some kind.
6. Uncontrollable hysterical laughter.
7. Overlapping realities. The perception that one is in several locations at once.

There has been little written regarding first-hand experiences with Salvia divinorum or salvinorin A. Although recently reports from individuals have appeared in publications such as The Entheogen Review and on internet BBS such as alt.drugs.

Dale Pendell is one or the few to have taken a liking to Salvia divinorum. His book, Pharmako/Poeia, devotes an entire chapter to it and offers many poetic insights into the nature of this mysterious ally.

"Some say it is a sensual and tactile thing. Some say it's about temporality and dimensionality, that it's about time travel Somesay it's about the Root Energy Network, or that it's about becoming a plant...it's like a mirror with no frame: some don't see it at all; some do, but don't like what they see... Consciousness has to do with energy and light. It is really very simple, neither animals nor people have consciousness. It is plants that have consciousness. Animals get consciousness by eating plants."

These poems may seem arcane to those not familiar with the Salvia divinorum experience, but are likely to be easily grasped by those who are. An experimenter who chewed Salvia divinorum leaf reports in The Entheogen Review; five minutes of uncontrollable laughter, followed by visions "similar to those in fantasy paintings or ancient oriental palaces: the Alhambra of Grenada. A large, almost endless empty hall with beautiful arches and hundreds of columns: all in a strange, gloomy, blue-gray light with colors of deep magic and majesty." This person later went on to feel as if he'd become a tree, similar to an Oak. He experienced his bark as a sense organ, and remarked "while it was happening I had no doubt that a tree feels that way." Subsequent to this his experience changed from entheogen to aphrodisiac.

An excellent description of encounters with Salvia divinorum can be found in a tape by Bret Blosser. While on a cave hunting expedition in the Sierra Mazateca in the late 70's, Blosser quite accidentally came upon Mazatecs who use this plant, and was able to participate in several sessions with native shamans. He had the opportunity to receive instruction and learn about the plant's use over a span of several years, during which he periodically revisited the area. In his tape, Blosser discusses the uses for Salvia divinorum within the Mazatec culture, which includes; medicinally - to treat both physical and "psychic" illnesses, and in divining - the future, the cause or cure for an illness, and information about friends, family, and enemies. He provides insightful descriptions of his journeys, and of the preparation and guidance of his sessions. The curandero who administered Blosser's journeys works with psilocybe mushrooms more frequently than Salvia divinorum, and indicated that Salvia divinorum is "too fast" for most people.

Prior to his extraction research with Salvia divinorum, Leander Valdes. together with Jose Diaz, had taken part in ceremonies conducted by a Mazatecan shaman during which they ingested leaves from the plant. Valdes reported the following visions in an article appearing in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology :

"I see something between a cross and a sword which is covered with gold and has many jewels... It has everything inside, lights, animals, people, plants. Everything, of many colors. like a picture. Very very vivid colors." Valdes characterized his experiences with Salvia divinorum as involving sensations of "flying, floating, traveling rapidly through space, twisting and spinning. as well as a heaviness or lightness of the body." Later that evening Valdes' visions continued. He saw a purplish light that changed into a bee or moth like shape which became a pulsating sea anemone. The imagery expanded into a desert landscape full of moving prickly pear cactus shapes. Suddenly he found himself standing in a bizarre landscape with brightly colored flowers, talking to a man wearing a shining white robe who was either shaking or holding his hand. Next to them was something that resembled the skeleton of a giant stick-model airplane made from rainbow colored inner-tubing. The "reality" of what he was seeing amazed him.

The following experience was reported on the internet from a person who had smoked two deep bong hits of dried Salvia divinorum leaf.

"There was an edge, made of something between plastic and flesh, set about a foot in front of my face, running diagonally, upward to the right. I could touch this edge. and it had resistance when I did so. It's visual qualities were a bit less intense initially, pastel colors, some glistening. I started to pull at it, peeling it back, and it seemed then that the 'stuff' was simply "reality". I collapsed into a couch, closed my eyes, and unfolded the folds of this "stuff' (or rather it unfolded me; you know how it goes, very reflexive,) a very sensual, sexual experience, moist, son and hard all at once. Or, a distinct sense of losing my "mental faculties one by one, in very specific levels, until I could not form a thought. Space had become very peculiar, rich with crevices, stretching far down past what I could see. At this point I felt uneasy. A voice called up from one of the crevices "Do you want to stay like this forever?" I called out "No!", and the voice replied, "Then stop doing that!" "That" I took to mean the Salvia. Then I fused with a piece of furniture. A very odd experience, like I was simply the hidden other leg of the furniture, completing the gestalt, but in a very immediate bodily way."

A recent issue of The EntheogenReviewreports on one person's journey following the smoking of two dried Salvia divinorum leaves, consumed in two large hits from a water pipe:

"I felt like and saw myself as a tree. Branches began growing out of my body, filling up the room, and I felt, and saw, my roots growing all over the floor and out beneath the door. At thispoint I could no longer remember if I had smoked anything, or if my mind had just flipped on me. My room had turned into artwork from Where the Wild Things Are, a kid's book. The room was a garden of geometric twines and leaves from my own body." This trip was much more intense than any previous Salvia divinorum journeys of this person, who also reported seeing entities, including, "one who was pushing a wheelbarrow along one of my vines while smiling at me."

I will publish more from Salvinorin - The Psychedelic Essence of Salvia Divinorum as I am able.

LUCID DREAMING - REALM OF THE THOUGHT ADJUSTER

Here is a great list of sources: Lucid Dreaming.

And here is a brief Lucid Dreaming tutorial...

Lucid Dreaming Quick Start Tutorial

This tutorial should not be thought of as a comprehensive document explaining every little detail related to becoming a Lucid Dreamer. It is intended as a type of Quick Start manual to get you on your way. Only basic concepts will be covered in this tutorial, more advanced subjects are covered elsewhere. After reading and applying the concepts contained here, please continue to browse the forum and definitely purchase the book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Dr. Stephen LaBerge.

The first few paragraphs here are our own thoughts, the rest of the tutorial contains facts and summarizations of the things we have learned from the many knowledgeable forum members as well as concepts learned from various websites and books.

Before beginning, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

Focus on success

It is not enough just to simply say “I will try”. I think Yoda said it best: “No, try not, do or do not, there is no try”. Set in your mind the intention that you will succeed. Some people come to this forum and experience their first lucid dream in a few days. Many others have had to work at it for weeks or months. Remember, there is no try, you will succeed!

Keep a positive attitude

Perhaps your biggest obstacle to learning how to become a lucid dreamer is frustration. Unfortunately, frustration occurs very often, especially when you have been working at it for weeks and have seen no progress. It is counterproductive to go to bed at night frustrated and tense. It is best to think of it as an adventure or a journey. Try to go to bed at night with the attitude that you cannot wait for the adventure to begin. One thing is guaranteed, even if you do not experience a lucid dream, chances are as you improve your dream recall, you will have some very interesting dreams to write in your journal.

Be diligent in your efforts

This goes hand in hand on focusing on success. You will not get there by just playing at it. Follow the exercises or make up a few of your own. Whatever you do, make the effort everyday. Anything worth having is worth working for. You would be reading this right now unless you believe lucid dreaming is something worth having.

Well, now that all the cheerleading is done with, let’s move on. Read each section carefully and follow the suggestions provided in each. You should work on the activities in all three sections at the same time. Please extract what wisdom you can from each section and modify it to works best for you.

Good luck and Happy Dreaming!

Gestalt Alteration and Seeker

Step 1 - Dream Recall

Before you can experience lucid dreams, you must first be able to remember your dreams.

The first and most important thing you can do to improve your dream recall is to keep a dream journal. You should write down everything you remember from your dreams each night. This can sometimes be a time-consuming process, but don't put it off until later in the day. Keep your journal right next to your bed so you can access it as soon as you awaken from a dream. If you are in a hurry in the mornings, you should take notes concerning your dreams, paying special attention to details such as feelings and colors, and then go back and write out the entire dream at a later time (do this at night when you come home, or take your journal to school or work). It is crucial, however, to get something concerning your dream down on paper as soon as you wake up. You may think that you will remember your dream, but by midday it could become just a foggy recollection. It is a time commitment to write down your dreams, but if you don't do it, you will have nothing to work with for the later exercises. Make dream recording a part of your daily routine, and dreaming will come into your hands a thousand times more easily. You never need to show your journal to anyone else if you don't want to. It is a private thing, like a diary.

Your journal can take any form you wish; it need not be fancy. You could buy a special dream journal at a bookstore, but a 99 cent composition notebook will serve the purpose just as well. You should write down the date and, if possible, the time of each dream you record for later reference. Some people like to title their dreams and include them in a table of contents. You may want to leave a sizable margin on the side of your description to add notes that occur to you later. If you are artistically inclined, or learn visually, it may be beneficial to you to include sketches of dream places, characters, or objects. Tape recorders are an effective alternative method of dream recording. You can record your voice describing your dream when you wake up in the morning, and transcribe it to paper, or you may choose to keep a library of all your dreams on tape. Whatever it is, your journal should be something you like and feel comfortable using. The setup of your journal is a completely personal choice. There is no right or wrong way to do it; the important thing is to record as many dreams as possible.

Recording our dreams helps us to pay attention to the dreams we are able to recall, and establishes a daily routine that molds the idea of dreaming into our lives. When we perform actions that cause us to think of dreams during the day, it helps us to "remember to remember" our dreams at night.

We all know that good dream recall is necessary since you will want to know the meanings of your dreams as well as to be able to share them with others. However, there is another more important reason for having good recall, identifying your Dreamsigns.

Step 2 – Identify your Dreamsigns

Since the goal of lucid dreaming is to become aware while dreaming, developing your skill of awareness about yourself and your dreams while waking is key to your development of awareness in your dreams.

Developing awareness of your dreamsigns is a simple activity that centers around the main ways that you will become lucid in your dreams.

A dreamsign is "a peculiar event or object in a dream that can be used as an indicator that you are dreaming" (Lynne Levitan, A Thousand and One Nights of Lucid Dreaming). Or, in essence, a signal to you in a dream. For example, if a pink elephant walked in the door right now, you might conclude that you are dreaming. This pink elephant would be considered a dreamsign.

While we are dreaming, however, we don't often recognize our dreamsigns as being unusual. For example, if you were in a dream right now and you saw a pink elephant, you might not think anything of it and keep on reading this.

If we read our dreams and find the dreamsigns that we have had previously, however, we will become aware of our typical signs and therefore more easily recognize them in our next dreams. There are four main categories of dreamsigns as developed by Dr. Stephen LaBerge:

Action - You, another dream character, or thing does something
unusual or impossible in waking life.

Context - The place or situation in the dream is strange.

Form - You, another character, or thing changes shape, or is oddly
formed /transforms. This may include the presence of
unusual clothing or hair.

Awareness - A peculiar thought, a strong emotion, an unusual
sensation, or altered perceptions.

After you have recorded a dream, go back and reread it. Locate unusual things or occurrences within it that could have given you a clue that you were dreaming. Then try to place these signs in one of the four dreamsign categories. A helpful way to distinguish these is to highlight, underline, or circle each type of dreamsign in a different color. For example, you might decide to highlight all action dreamsigns in pink, all context signs in yellow, form signs in green, and awareness signs in blue. This will help you to easily see these signs, and their categories, when you look at the dream later.

Once you have marked all the signs in several dreams, you should begin to record your dreamsigns in a table.

Recording these in a table not only helps develop your awareness of dreamsigns in and of itself, but will also allow you to determine what type of dreamsign most often causes you to gain lucidity. Learning about your dreamsigns will help you with visualization of your dreams in later techniques.

To determine your most effective dreamsigns:

Add up the total number of dreamsigns in each category. Add up the number of times this category was recognized.

Recognized / Total = % effectiveness

Step 3 - Critical state testing

If you never stop of ask yourself if you are dreaming when you are awake, how can you expect to ask this in a dream? Recognizing that you are dreaming is the key to becoming lucid in your dreams.

Critical state testing is the method by which you condition yourself to ask this question while dreaming. Ancient Tibetan monks stated that if you are to learn to question whether you are dreaming, you must ask no fewer than twenty-one times each day while awake.

Critical state testing must be performed regularly every day. You can set your watch to alarm every hour and perform a state test at that point, but remember, that will result in approximately 15 state tests per day. Remember though, the goal is to perform at least twenty-one state checks. The more often you ask yourself if you are dreaming, the more likely you will do so when you are asleep.

When to perform state tests varies by individual, however, you should consider performing a state test anytime one of the following occurs:

1. You observe one of your dreamsigns

2. You experience an unusual or strong emotion

3. If at any time the world seem ‘unreal’ to you

It can take as long as thirty days to establish a habit, therefore you should not give up if you do not see immediate results. Some night when you are dreaming, you will suddenly realize "Hey, I am dreaming!!"

In conclusion, the Lucid dream life is a dream life full of wonder and discovery. It is well worth the effort required to become proficient.

This tutorial shared with you the basic steps required to begin having lucid dreams.

You may wish to investigate more advanced induction topics such as Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams(MILD) and Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams(WILD)

There are also ways of combatting nightmares with Lucid Dreaming techniques...

Using Lucidity To Combat Nightmares

Lucidity is a fantastic tool against nightmares- however, it can sometimes be had to get lucid/keep lucidity when scary things are happening all around you. The answer to this is simple- during waking life keep telling yourself that there's no chance whatsoever that anything can hurt you. Don't just tell yourself this - you need to believe it. You know it's true, anyway: if that nightmare you're having is so scary, how come you aren't dead or something? How come you aren't hurt?

With a bit of practice, you'll be able to carry this knowledge into the nightmare. Once you're lucid, you can simply tell the monsters/nightmare to sod off and mind their own business - and if they/it doesn't, you can use your lucidity to kill the scary stuff with a giant mountain or something. Don't be scared of them in that dream - you know it's not real.

Sometimes you can get lucid and still be scared of the monsters or nightmare, or still believe that you can be hurt. This is because dreams are so real sometimes, and it is naturally hard to collect your thoughts in a dream. Just remember that fact and repeat it every night and learn it like it's the bible - you'll soon have the nightmare sorted out in no time.

Once you've "defeated" a nightmare, it will never appear again. If it does, you can just do the same again - if you've defeated it once it will be even easier next time.

[Click Nightmare Tutorial for more information.]

Also, check out this very active forum: Dreamviews

I give you all of the above because I want you to examine things that are not at odds with the UB.

Try to divorce yourself from the idea that there are things that compete with the UB. The UB trumps all other forms of communication (ultimately) about Reality. Still, though, your should be cognizant about how many other philosophies and cosmologies come into line with much that the UB asserts.

There will be plenty of sources to find that agree with the cosmic philosophy of the UB in the future. I want to state more and more frequently that STRANGENESS is the word for the day! If your are looking for conventionality, slow growth, neo conservativism, fundamentalism, you are in for a big surprise!

Things are not as they seem. Recognizing this fact, inspires me to show you why. I will continue to do that throughout this year.

Stay tuned!

(: Alex Wall :)

The Cosmic Numbers

2008-03-31T21:55:00.004-04:00

The following kind-of self-morphed into an essay, though I was not planning to write it, it just happened. Same thing happens when a song comes out of me. It was posted on UBRON.org a couple months ago. It will consist of two parts...

A STUDY OF NUMBERS

A COSMIC EPILOGUE

I know these two sound different, but they are connected, as you will see.

So here goes...

A STUDY OF NUMBERS

I always did like the torus as a shape, especially frosted, dipped in coffee, and with a handfull of chocolate chips! :)

Ideally a torus only has one side, like a sphere, though neither can be mathematically (easily) transformed into the other. Hmmm...40-20-40. I keep thinking about the Havona numbers... In fact the numbers all through the UB truly fascinate me. They seem to be screaming out a pattern, but we just can't seem to hear (or see) it yet.

Here's a little study of numbers:

Spacing of Circuits

Using the first Havona Circuit, we can describe each other circuit with the following formulae...

________________

n = 37,000,000

________________

I = n

II = I + n

III = II + n/(37/33)

IV = III + n

V = IV + n/(37/33)

VI = V + n

VII = VI + n/(37/33)

[If these proportions are graphed as circle's, one see's the Banner of Michael--three thinner circles, each surrounded by a larger circle. In fact, whenever I make the three-circle symbol now I use the Havona proportions. Of course the Havona Circuits are ellipses, not circles.]

I wonder what is special about 37/33? Mind you, I'm not talking about a calculator number (a repeating decimal), but the actual and complete fraction.

So here are three rudimentary rules.

_______________________

The Primary Digits Rule

[A little name I made up.]

Let's look at another pattern. The only digits showing, regarding Master Universe Circuits, are made of 1,2,3,4 and 7 (zero is a place holder, not really a number). I call these the primary digits.

_______________________

This is shown along with their associated geometric shapes below (anything called a world is assumed to be spherical), in the Master Universe Levels or Circuits...

Numbers of Master Universe Circuits

Paradise Circuit = 1

1 Ellipsoidal Isle

Sacred Spheres Circuits = 3

7 Father Worlds

7 Son Worlds

7 Spirit Worlds

Havona Circuits = 7

37,000,000 Circuit I Worlds

74,000,000 Circuit II Worlds

107,000,000 Circuit III Worlds

144,000,000 Circuit IV Worlds

177,000,000 Circuit V Worlds

214,000,000 Circuit VI Worlds

247,000,000 Circuit VII Worlds

Central Universe Dark Gravity Circuits = 2

1 Torus Inner Band - This is a structure consisting of three concentric tubes. Cut through it and you get a cross-section that looks like, you guessed it, the three-circle symbol!

1 Wall-like Outer Band

Superuniverse Circuit = 1 This is a large torus of space.

7 Disc-like (for now, ideally) Superuniverses

Outer Space Circuits = 4

1 Primary Torus

1 Secondary Torus

1 Tertiary Torus

1 Quartan Torus

If we look at the numbers of Havona circuits without the zeros, and adjust them to be decimals, adding up to 100 (as in 100 ultimatons in an electron) we get 7 levels...

10.7

14.4

17.7

21.4

24.7

Decimals include 4-7's and 3-4's (holding to the pattern of no 5's, 6's, 8's, or 9's being involved). If one just adds up the decimals, one gets 4 (still fitting the rule).

It is then tempting to add an 8th level, taking out the decimals, and calling it "4", so...

In this way, the number still follows the digit rule, EXCEPT that there are now 8 numbers, which would be a no-no.

_______________________

The Secondary Digits Rule

However, we can use a little sophistry and say that of 4 digits NOT in the Primary
Digits Group, all but the number 5, can be made of various Primary digits (I don't count 1, because all whole numbers can be made up from 1). So, let's call the numbers: 6, 8, and 9, Secondary Digits. Now, don't feel bad for number 5, he still has a great place of honor, just keep reading...

_______________________

This limb is pretty thin, as I climb out on it, and it's beginning to bend, but I don't believe it is breaking yet ;).

In this way, we can have groups of 4 levels. Recall that the Paradise system is made of 4 levels--(1.) Paradise, (2.) Father Worlds, (3.) Son Worlds and (4.) Spirit Worlds. and of course there only 4 levels of outer space--(1.) Primary, (2.) Secondary, (3.) Tertiary, and (4.) Quartan. The intervening levels are two sets of seven, separated by the Dark Gravity circuits of the Central Universe. And although the Superuniverses are not ranked concentrically, they MAY be someday, who knows?

Consider the following:

We are told that Grandfanda was the from the first Superuniverse, which weakly supports an idea of evolution moving its way from SU1 to SU7 (our Superuniverse of Orvonton).

We are also told that the Supreme Being (The Universal Mother), herself may be located on Uversa--the capital sphere of Orvonton. Why would this be? It could be because the Superuniverses could become concentric some day; again, following the pattern of the Havona Circuits.

I realize this is a stretch, but I don't believe there's any information to disallow this possibility in the UB. I, myself, tend to not believe it, but it has entered my mind on many occassions, so I thought I'd mention it.

_______________________

The Five Master Levels Rule

If this wacko theory is right than the Master universe will have a very real and symmetrical pattern of 5 Master Levels to it:

4-7-2-7-4

4--Paradise, 7--Havona, 2--Gravity,
7--Superuniverse, 4--Outer Space

_______________________

Could these also be levels of certain particles? I have already speculated that they represent the levels of the Ultimaton itself (please review my URT in the UBRON Library, if you'd like).

But, could they also have something to do with the electron?

So my question to Mark, and all who are following along, is:

Can marbles, magnets and axles be used to construct an object that follows the three rules above, or any combination of them?

A COSMIC EPILOGUE

We have been discussing patterns shared by the macro and micro worlds. First we got a better hold on Havona by discovering the number of worlds in its circuits. That openned the door for discussing universe of the very small Ultimaton and electron. at the end here I want to briefly point out that there is even MORE than just these two things--micro and macro. I call this something-else "Novelty" (perpetually unique newness), a term borrowed from Terence McKenna, but only minimally analogous to his meaning of it.

The following is pretty esoteric so, those who get overwhelmed by hard to swallow concepts might want to skip this next part.

But, it is not MY inspiration that drives me to write about this, but rather Bill Sadler's take on some of the more enigmatic, cosmological and metaphysical concepts that are only lightly touched upon in the UB.

And for fun I will urge anyone who is interested to read the chapter in Bill Salder's A Study of the Master Universe, called "The Cosmos Infinite", for a great deduction of what might occur when these Five Master Levels have become perfected.

It is always good to keep in mind that the Central Universe is existentially perfect. It's a QUALITATIVE REPRESENTATION OF
INFINITY.

The Universe outside of the Central Universe will be experientially perfected. It (including the Outer Space Levels someday) will be a QUANTITATIVE REPRESENTATION OF INFINITY. It WILL BE as big, as big CAN BE.

These inner and outer realms are reflective in their perfection. Just like with a mirror the "image" is not exactly the same. A right-handed person's reflection is left-handed. Yet, they ARE (or - in the case of the Master Universe - will become) EQUAL Such is the case with: the perfect and the perfected; the inner and the outer; eternity and time; potentiality and actuality; existentials and experientials; etc... So, yes, there are kinds of dualities.

But, and I'm probably wearing out my welcome with all this by now, Ultimately (and I mean that in the UB sense), all of these dualities will become triune. In the Cosmos Infinite (in the Ages after POST-experientials have been completed), there will likely be a brand new form of reality a third reflection. There will be The Central Universe The Grand Universe and the Novaverse (meaning, "New Universe"--sorry, only name I could think of)...THIS is what Sadler is talking about. The Cosmos Finite is what we live in now. The Cosmos Infinite is what comes...NEXT.

(: ALEX WALL :)