Synopsis of the Urantia Book

The Urantia Book is divided into four major parts:

PARTS I AND II

The Personality of God.
7 trillion Planets.
The Administration of the Universes.
The Source of Gravitation.
The Interplanetary Communications.

PART III

The Implantation of Life of Earth.
The Processes of Mutation.
Apparition of the Colored Races.
Extra-Planetary Personalities.

PART IV

The Life and teachings of Jesus.
Childhood — Adolescence — Maturity.
His Family Responsibilities.
His Travel to Rome.
Simplicity of His Doctrine.
The Conditions of His Return.

Urantia

Urantia is the name given by the universe directors to our planet, the Earth. Urantians are the normal mortals of the various earthly races of the past, present, and of the future.

Urantia was a commonplace planet of the local universe of Nebadon, designed to eventually contain about ten million similar ones, of which 3,840,101 were inhabited with life in the year 1934 A.D. For the reasons outlined in this book, Urantia was nevertheless chosen by Christ Michael, Creator and Sovereign of the universe of Nebadon, for His bestowal in the likeness of mortal flesh under the personality of Jesus of Nazareth. Mankind on Urantia was torn by the consequences of the Lucifer Rebellion. By showing the way to salvation, Christ Michael gave to the Earth and to the other planets of His creation an example of conformity to the will of God. Thereafter, Urantia was no longer a commonplace planet.

The Astronomical Universe

Master Universe

The Master Universe, or Universe of Universes includes the total astronomical space. It is composed on the one hand by the Grand Universe (inhabited or habitable), and on the other hand by the Outer Space, with its annular zones of unpervaded space alterning with other annular zones of pervaded space, in which huge but yet inhabitable universes are materializing.

Grand Universe

The Grand Universe (inhabited or habitable) is divided into administrative departments according to the decimal system, with a septenary exception at the summit. It consists of a Central Universe called Havona, encircling the Eternal Isle of Paradise, and of seven Superuniverses whirling around Havona on an immensely long and relatively flattened elliptical orbit.

Paradise

The Eternal Isle of Paradise is the only fixed point of the universe of universes. Its huge size challenges imagination. It has the form of an oval flattened disk with its two faces, the Upper Paradise and the Nether Paradise. The directions determined by its major and minor axis are the absolute North, South, East, and West, enabling all the universes to be geographically oriented. The Isle and the billion great architectural spheres gravitating around it constitute the perfect, central and eternal universe of Havona. Among these spheres are the huge Dark Gravity Bodies controlling universal gravitation, and the seven divine spheres centralizing certain activities of the Three Persons of the Trinity, the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit. The names of these seven spheres symbolically recall their functions:

Divinington, – the bosom of the Father
Sonarington, – the bosom of the Son
Spiritington, – the bosom of the Spirit
Vicegerington, the bosom of the Father and the Son
Solitarington, – the bosom of the Father and the Spirit
Seraphington, the bosom of the Son and the Spirit
Ascendington, – the bosom of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit

These seven combinations are the only ones possible between three persons, and this is why number seven and the septenary are so often found in the manifestations of the spirit world. The physical worlds are somewhat organized according to the decimal system.

Each one of the seven superuniverses gravitating around the central universe of Havona is administratively divided into:

10 Major Sectors, each comprising...
100 Minor Sectors, each comprising...
100 Local Universes, created or to be created, each comprising...
100 Constellations, created or to be created, each comprising...
100 Systems, created or to be created, each comprising...
1000 Planets or Worlds, Inhabited or habitable.

Thus each superuniverse contains:

10 Major Sectors, each comprising...
100 Minor Sectors, totalling...
100,000 Local Universes
10 million Constellations
1 billion Systems, and about...
1 trillion inhabited or habitable planets.

To find our planet Urantia in this immensity, you just need to know the administrative divisions to which it belongs. Each of these divisions has a Capital, housing the Headquarters of its administration. These capitals are Architectural Worlds, created and built according to specific standards pre-established by the Master Architects of the Universe. They are provided with all the devices allowing to live nicely there in beauty and to secure their functional part as capitals, with irrigation, heating, light, vegetation, animal world, natural resources, appropriate buildings, arrival and departure stations for intersidereal transportation, and universal broadcasting systems of all kinds. On the contrary, planets like ours have been detached from melting solar masses and have slowly solidified with meteoric accretions according to the laws of nature.

Urantia, our Earth, is located in the seventh superuniverse, Orvonton, whose central nucleus is the Milky Way, and whose capital is Uversa. Our major sector bears the name of Splandon, capital Umajor and Fifth. And our minor sector is Ensa, capital Uminor the Third. Among the hundred local universes on Ensa, we belong to the one of Nebadon, whose capital is Salvington, the permanent abode of the Supreme Sovereign of Nebadon, a Creator Son of the Michael order, Christ Michael, the one who incarnated on Urantia nineteen hundred years ago as the person of Jesus of Nazareth. You can already see that the local universes are administrative divisions having a paramount importance in the superuniverses. Nebadon naturally has its 100 constellations, among which is ours, that of Norlatiadek, with Edentia as capital. This constellation of Norlatiadek comprises one hundred systems of which ours, number 24, is Satania, with Jerusem as headquarters. Satania is not a solar system, but a system of suns comprising 1,000 habitable planets of which 610 are inhabited, among which our, Urantia, bears the systemic number 606.

In the universe records, our planet Urantia is thus simply designated as follows: the 606 of Satania in the Norlatiadek constellation, local universe of Nebadon, minor sector Ensa, major sector Splandon, superuniverse of Orvonton. This is enough for a heavenly messenger to find anybody on earth.

Urantia is a Decimal planet. On one out of ten planets, the Creator of the local universe lets life and human society develop with a minimum interference on His part in their evolution. On the nine other planets, humanity is more solidly officered by celestial personalities, and more tightly guided towards its destiny. On decimal planets like ours, where a large number of liberties are allowed, life produces variegated and original combinations which the Creators observe and which they let other worlds profit by, but the risks of anarchy and rebellion are much greater on such planets than on others.

The Physical and Psycho-material Standards

The Days and the Years

As it is well known, the Urantia years comprise 365 1⁄4 days, and every day represents the needed time for a planet to revolve once around itself and present anew its meridian to the sun. In the larger sectors of the universe, the years comprise most generally 100 days, but such local days are very different from the Urantia days. For example:

Systemic Time

One day of Satania = 3 days of Urantia less 1 hour 4 minutes 16 seconds.
Five years of 100 days of Satania = four years of Urantia.

Local Universe Time

One day of Nebadon = 18 days 6 hours 2 1⁄2 minutes of Urantia.
One year of 100 days = about five years of Urantia.

Superuniverse Time

One day of Orvonton = nearly one month of Urantia.
One year of 100 days or Orvonton = 3,000 days of Urantia minus 22 minutes, or about 8 1/5 years of Urantia.

Central Universe Time

One day of Havona = 1,000 leap years of Urantia minus 7 minutes 3 1/8 seconds.
This is why Apostle Peter said: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,” (Peter III-8). Thus if such a difficult and complex case as the Lucifer rebellion is submitted to the courts of the central universe of Havona, and if the judges accept to sit urgently in judgement within three days, mortals must not be impatient to wait for the sentence during 3,000 years, for that is very quick indeed.

Time of a Dispensation

A dispensation is the time interval between the arrival of a Teacher on a planet, and the arrival of the next one. Thus the arrival of Jesus on Urantia ended the dispensation of Adam.

Time — Space

Space and Time are essential features of the material universe. Space is conceived by synthesis and time by analysis. Space is measured by time, and not time by space. Material creatures are dependent on space and time, and Jesus as Son of Man incarnated among us shared this subjection. But as Son of God, He was independent of time before incarnating on Urantia, and he regained this independence after His Ascension, but He is dependent upon space. Stated otherwise, He can only be at one place at a given moment, but He can go instantly from one place to another. The reverse is true for the Mother Spirit of the local universe: She is independent from space, but dependent on time; stated otherwise She is constantly present everywhere in Her universe, but She cannot live simultaneously at two epochs. God is independent from both Time and Space. Between Him and man who depend wholly on both, there is a whole gamut of beings able to move at speeds higher than light, and who are thus more or less independent from time according to their speed. For example the Seraphim who can travel through space at three times the speed of light, and the Solitary Messengers who can travel at nearly five million times the speed of light (and who nevertheless need thousands of years to reach the ends of the universe), and the Thought Adjusters who can go anywhere almost instantly, as it happened for the Adjuster of Jesus, who went to and returned from Divinington on the day of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River; even a Solitary Messenger would have taken years for such a round trip.

The journeys of planets and energies follow circuits, which are pre-established by the Master Architects of the Universe. There are spiritual circuits, gravitation circuits, mental circuits, physical energy circuits, etc...All these circuits start from and return to Paradise. The matter of Paradise is specific and eternal. Paradise is everlasting and independent from time. There, action attends decision, and results are instantaneous.

The Various Levels of Energy and Intelligence

Universe activities take place on many levels falling into five main categories:

The material or physical level.
The mental or intellectual level.
The soul or morontia level.
The spirit or spiritual level.
The absolute level.

Physical Energy is divided into three sorts:

Cosmic Force, the energies coming forth from the Unqualified Absolute and not responding yet to Paradise gravity.
Emergent Energy, responding to Paradise gravity but not to linear or local gravity. This corresponds to the pre-electronic level of matter-energy.
Universal Power, or Universe Force, responding directly to Paradise gravity and to linear or local gravity; it corresponds to the electronic level of matter-energy. It is manipulated in the universes by the Universe Power Directors and the Power Centers, etc.

The transition between on-material energy and material energy appears in the Ultimatons which are very small energy grains rotating at almost unconceivable speeds. This speed is so stupendous that it endows the ultimatons with antigravity powers. An electron, an already very small unit but known by science, is formed by a group of one hundred ultimatons.

Mind

It connotes the presence of a living ministry added to various energy systems. Upon all levels, we have used the word Mind, but it is obvious that the nature of thought is different at various levels; so much different that the cosmic entities often use special words to qualify certain aspects of Material Mind, of Soul Mind, or of Spiritual Mind. For example:

Mana — It is the primitive belief in the spirits of nature.
Mota — It is the psychic or Morontia intelligence, a kind of intelligence transcending mortal mind.
Monota — It is spiritual intelligence, Paradise or cosmic mind, transcending our imagination.

The term Will Creature is used to designate beings endowed with personality and Free Will. Free will is essentially the ability to do or not to do the will of God insofar as we are conscious of it. When a human or seraphic creature has finally and deliberately decided to oppose the will of God, such creature is a Rebel and risks the second Death, the destruction of soul and personality. Only the Ancients of Days have the power to inflict such a penalty and thus to rid the universe of rebellious elements. They resort to this sanction only after having exhausted all the resources of mercy.

The Morontia Level

This term has no equivalent in current language. The word “etheric” (etherical plane, etheric body) is sometimes used in an analogous sense. The word Morontia is used so many times in the Book that it is essential to comprehend it as well as possible in order to understand the evolution of men and their relations to the worlds that they cannot see. Morontia, still practically unknown on earth, is the psychic matter the substance of the soul. The warp of the morontia fabric is spiritual, its weft is material.

The substance of the soul is neither spiritual nor material in the same way that a child is neither its father nor its mother, or that water is neither hydrogen nor oxygen. The Morontia substance of the soul results from a partial fusion between the Thought Adjuster (the divine spark indwelling man) and the material mind of the thus indwelt mortal. If the soul is judged worthy to survive physical death, the human personality deceased and sleeping, is resuscitated by a suitable technique on the morontia or Mansion Worlds. The raised human becomes an Ascender, a creature endowed with eternal life who undertakes the long ascent of Paradise.

In certain circumstances, with or without the help of entities of the spiritual hierarchy, the morontia forms can become perfectly visible to men. The Holy Scriptures contain many examples among which we quote the following:

The episode of Balaam riding his donkey and stopped by the Angel of the Lord in a narrow path (Numbers XXII – 22 and following verses). The donkey saw the morontia form of the Angel and Balaam did not. Then the Angel took a little denser morontia form, and Balaam in his turn was able to see him.
The appearance of Gabriel to the mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus, to announce that both would bear a son.
The nineteen appearances of Jesus under a morontia form after His resurrection and before His ascension.

Definition of certain words of the Spirit Level:

Ethics and Morals — These two words are nearly synonymous. Morals are rather related to the individual behavior of man, and Ethics to his collective behavior. The word Ethics has also been used in the sense of Philosophy of Morals.

Existential and Experiential — These words will be encountered very often. The adjective Existential qualifies all things or beings that exist in the absolute, independently from time-space, since past eternity until future eternity. For example, the Isle of Paradise, the Three Persons of the Trinity, the Thought Adjusters, truth, beauty, goodness, love, and harmony, are existential. The adjective Experiential qualifies things and beings that exist in the relative, in time-space, in relation to existential values. For example, the Sun, the planets, morals, politics, religions, evolving human mores, men, their soul, animals, nature, and personal feelings are experiential. Between the Existential and experiential ones are intermediary ones such as the morontia level, already discussed and rather experiential, and the Absonite levels (more than finite but less than absolute) without beginning nor end, transcending time and space, and closely bordering the existential levels. For example: The nature of the Master Architects of the Universes is absonite. The notion of Light extends also from the physical to the hyperphysical, from the light visible to incarnated eyes, through intellectual insight, to spiritual luminosity, the presence manifestation of a spiritual being.

Truth — Concerns the spiritual results and the eternal values. Truth cannot always be established by a combination of apparent facts.

Quarantine — In its normal condition, a planet is in constant communication with the remainder of the universe thorough the broadcasting systems, hierarchically organized. But in case of rebellion, the first move of the heavenly hierarchy is to put it in quarantine, which means cutting the communications immediately up-stream of the planet, in order to prevent the rebellion from expanding. This is what happened to our planet Urantia at the time of the Lucifer rebellion. We must wait for the final judgment
of Lucifer to see the end of the situation. In the meantime, Urantia remains in quarantine, but the present revelations foresee that this quarantine may end in a relatively short time.

The absolute level

This level is inaccessible to the human intellect. During the discussion of certain absolute aspects in the First Part, the reader will often meet the word Unqualified. The authors have used it as adjective associated with substantives such as Deity, will, personality, etc. In the French translation, the equivalent of Unconditioned seems to convey at best its signification. It must be interpreted in the sense of unlimited, unconditional, without reserve, total, absolute, general, not eventuated, without form, etc...

Administration of the Universe

The universe of universes is meticulously directed by a hierarchy of beings. The myriads of stars of a nebular system, such as the Milky Way, whirl according to coordinated laws and wills. The races that live on inhabited planets are, of course, subject to this administration that demands a certain conformism to the will and general plan of God, while respecting as much as possible the free will of man. It is by love that order and unity are secured in the universe. All creatures that love God (and all those who know Him eventually love Him) work in the same Spirit towards doing His will.

At the summit of the hierarchy, you find God, the cause without cause, the Absolute, which the creatures have worshipped under thousands of names. As soon as God wishes to manifest Himself, He does it under the aspect of the Absolute Trinity made up of three Persons always acting unanimously, but with their specialized parts maintaining the essential Unity of the whole.

The Universal Father — First Source and Center, who has willingly stripped Himself, in favor of the two other Persons of the Trinity, of all His attributes except Absolute Will and Absolute Fatherhood. Thus the Father alone wields the final will and endows with Personality the beings to whom He desires to give it. By reading the Book and by meditation, the reader will succeed in realizing this mysterious notion of personality. There are many classes of non-personalized intelligent beings, of expecting personality beings, and of pre-personal beings. For a man, the loss of personality is equivalent to cosmic death or second death.
The Second Person of the Trinity is the Eternal Son, or Second Source and Center. He is the expression of the Personality of the Universal Father, and His part consists in revealing the Father to the universes. He makes this revelation through the Creator Sons also called the Michaels, the Sovereign Creators of local universes such as Nebadon, the Christs like the one who came to bestow Himself upon Urantia under the aspect of Jesus of Nazareth. The multiple Creator Sons are thus the sons of the unique Eternal Son and must not be confused with Him.
The Third Person of the Trinity is the Infinite Spirit, or Conjoint Actor, or Third Source and Center. The Infinite Spirit represents the passage into action, the intelligent manifestation of the joint wills of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. He acts by stupendous variety of means and works with infinite obligingness.

Each of the Three Persons of the Trinity manifests Itself through a Spirit. The Universal Father has the ability to split Himself into divine pre-personal sparks called Thought Adjusters or Mystery Monitors. As soon as a man has taken his first moral decision, the Father sends an Adjuster to indwell his thoughts; this enables the mortal to know the will of God by communicating through his conscience with this inner Adjuster. The mortal remains free to do or not to do the will of God expressed by the Adjuster. If he does not hear the Adjuster, the mortal is in Ignorance or Error. If he hears the Adjuster and does not listen to Him, he commits Sin. If he deliberately practices sin, he is a Rebel indulging in Iniquity; he is doomed to final annihilation if he does not repent before the hour when the vast provision of heavenly mercy is exhausted concerning him.

The spirit of the Eternal Son, or Second Source and Center is the Spirit of Truth, which Jesus sent to mankind at the Pentecost after His ascension. This spirit consists essentially in recognizing the Fatherhood of God, and consequently the immediate brotherhood of men. The basic message of the Gospel is the unconditional salvation of men, their sure survival, when they recognize their faith-sonship with God.

The spirit of the Infinite Spirit, or Conjoint Actor, or Third Source and Center, is the Holy Spirit. The spirit of infinite mercy and infinite obligingness. Mercy is an individual spirit and emotion, while justice is a group business.

The organization of the living universe follows quite naturally with the next degree of the Hierarchy, the eventuation of the Seven Master Spirits representing the seven possible aspects of the activities of the three Persons of the Trinity acting together or separately: Father, Son, Spirit, Father-Son, Father-Spirit, Son-Spirit, and Father-Son-Spirit.

Each of the Seven Master Spirits has his residence on one of the seven Spirit Spheres gravitating around the Central Isle of Paradise, each of these spheres bearing the name of the dependent superuniverse. (Our planet belongs to the seventh superuniverse (Father-Son-Spirit) and the name of the superuniverse is Orvonton. As already known, its capital is Uversa. The central universe sphere where the seventh Master Spirit has his headquarters is also called Orvonton.

The Heirarchy of the “Days” has its summit with the Eternals of Days of the central universe. The next stage comes with the Ancients of Days. Three Ancients of Days dwell on the headquarters sphere of each superuniverse. They rule it and are attended by a host of celestial beings such as Divine Counselors, Universe Censors, Wisdom Perfectors, Mighty Messengers, etc., whose functions and qualities are described in the Book. A group of personalities of these orders has sponsored the study of the central universe and of the superuniverses, which form the First Part of the book. If there are rebels hopelessly addicted to iniquity and perhaps deserving second death, or cosmic annihilation, only the Ancients of Days may decree and realize this operation. Thus Christ Michael cannot decide the cosmic death of Lucifer, the arch rebel created in his own local universe of Nebadon. Therefore Christ submitted the case of Lucifer and his followers to the rung of jurisdiction above the courts of His local universe, and He awaits the decision of the Ancients of Days. Judgments of that kind are passed according to cosmic and superuniversal motives beyond the authority of the Sovereign Creator of a local universe, and with all the more reason above human understanding. The punishment may have to be
awaited for thousands of Urantia years.

The descending Hierarchy of the order of “Days” follows in the major sectors, which are directed by three Perfections of Days, and next in the minor sectors, which are directed by three Recents of Days. Then we reach the local universes, each attended by a Creative Daughter of the order of the Mother Spirits. Each Creator Son is blessed in His mission by a Union of Days who dwells in His headquarters and secures certain superuniverse relationships. On Salvington, capital of Nebadon, the Union of Days bears the name of Immanuel (in Hebrew ImmanuEl, God is with us). It is Him whom Jesus called His Elder Brother and who gave the extraordinary counsels immediately preceding the incarnation of Jesus on earth and related in Paper 120, chapters 1, 2 and 3.

The Michael who rules a local universe is naturally helped in turn by the countless hosts of celestial beings among whom we can quote Gabriel, the Bright and Morning Star, the chief executive of the local universe, the one who uttered the Annunciation to the mothers of John the Baptist and of Jesus. Let us also mention the Melchizedeks, the Life Carriers, the Adjutant Mind-Spirits, the Brilliant Evening Stars, the Archangel, the Solitary Messengers, the Seraphim, and scores of orders and personalities too numerous to be mentioned. The Melchizedeks are marvellous teachers and directors. The Life Carriers bring life on the planets and modulate it by creating new forms and new surroundings for development. The Adjutant Mind Spirits bestow their mental and emotional qualities on the mortal beings. The Solitary Messengers carry their messages with velocities nearing five million times the speed of light. Certain seraphim are Guardian Angels; others take care of the dematerialization and the interstellar transportation of persons, etc.

Pursuing the descent of the hierarchical scale, we reach the Constellations; they are ruled by three Sons of the Vorondadek order, assisted by an observer of the order of “Days”, a Faithful of Days. The Vorondadeks are also known as Most Highs or Constellation Fathers. The writers of the holy scriptures of the Bible have often confused the Most Highs with God. Let us recall that Urantia belongs to the Constellation of Norlatiadek.

We arrive now to the smallest administrative unit before the individual planets, the Systems of about 1,000 inhabited or habitable planets, ruled by a System Sovereign, a Son of the Lanonandek order. We belong to the System of Satania whose Sovereign, called Lanaforge, has been appointed a few scores of millennia ago, to replace the rebel Lucifer.

The last administrative unit of astronomic nature is the individual planet itself, ruled by a Planetary Prince who can acquire the title of Planetary Sovereign. On Urantia, this ruler was Caligastia, who joined the Lucifer rebellion and was deposed. Adam would have become Planetary Sovereign if he had not failed in his mission.

Let us finally point out that on earth there are some immortal and permanent citizens who have witnessed everything that happened on the planet since 300,000 years, who remember it perfectly, and who are able to communicate with men under certain conditions. These are the Midwayers (primary and secondary). The Midwayers possess non material forms, which are normally
invisible to men. One midwayer out of four is nearly visible to men and can make himself visible if he wants to. Even under their invisible form the midwayers can act on physical matter, as did the Angel who opened for the Apostles the doors of their prison (Acts V-19). Paul and Silas were liberated in the same way (Acts XVI-26).

Source: https://www.fogbom.ca/documents/glossary.pdf