The Urantia Book teaches that building a progressive civilization requires interfaith understanding and cross-fertilization of cultures. And yet, just as most Muslims know little about Sufism, and many Christians are unaware Christian esotericism, many people in the Fellowship are uninformed (or possibly misinformed) about a body of believers internal to the Urantia movement—known as the Teaching Mission (or “TM”)—that follows spiritual and esoteric teachings supplemental to the Urantia Revelation. Nonetheless, a significant minority of Urantia Book readers and many members of the Urantia Fellowship, including members of the General Council, are participants in this movement or are sympathetic to it, sometimes in secret. For the last 20 years, TM adherents have carried on a parallel organization with its own governance, conferences, websites, and publications—including four books that I have published in the last 15 years. At one point, TM “transmissions” purportedly from celestial beings were coming through, usually in humble living room sessions, at over 30 locations. The result today is around 40,000 transcribed pages of such “celestial teacher” lessons stored at two searchable online archive sites, almost certainly the largest database of its kind in the history of religion.
Because many outside the TM seem to have little basic information about the nature and significance of its claims derived from its experiences over two decades, I am presenting a workshop at the Urantia Fellowship’s 2012 Summer Study Session whose objective is to fill that gap through a forum for “intra-faith” dialogue. Several veteran members of the TM movement will present an overview of their experiences at the outset of the workshop. Then, interfaith expert Peter Lawrence, who is cochair of the conference, will facilitate an open exchange between audience participants and the panelists according to the protocols for dialogue that have been established by the interfaith movement. This is your chance to ask questions or make comments in an atmosphere of trust and safety about an admittedly controversial and difficult subject.
I was invited to write a piece preparatory to that workshop. In response, I offer the following excerpt from a new book entitled The Adventure of Being Human: Soulful Lessons from the Heart of the Urantia Revelation (Origin Press/Celestia, June 2012). I am the publisher and also the coeditor of this book along with the transmitter of its lessons, Jerry Lane. My friend Jerry is unusual in the TM because he has for many years transmitted lessons almost exclusively from Christ Michael and Mother Spirit. This book contains edited excerpts from early lessons offered to Jerry’s TM group in Mill Valley, California. The following is an introductory essay about the TM (adapted for Fellowship members) that appears in The Adventure of Being Human:
Beginning in the late 1980s, and especially since 1992, something unprecedented erupted onto our planet—an outpouring of celestial teachings and energies that has persisted and grown ever since, culminating in a vast archive (see: TMarchives.com and Daynal.org), and in compilations like that found in this book.
Back in those days, new religious movements were mushrooming all over America. And transpiring on the fringe of one of these movements was what appears to be an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of religion: coordinated and consistent celestial contact across multiple locations. In the many years that have passed since then, the authors of The Adventure of Being Human and hundreds of other colleagues have been gifted with well over 7,000 sessions of interaction with the unseen realms. These dialogues were usually open to the public and often transcribed and posted on the internet. They represent a scenario of divine-human dialogue rare in the annals of world religion.
The immediate locus of this strange marvel of contact was the Urantia movement. Dozens of individuals in cities all over the country—almost all of them participants in groups studying the new “epochal” revelation to our planet—were reportedly experiencing verbal input from unseen beings, and receiving their messages by apparent telepathic means. These invisible teachers announced that their work was linked to the core mission of the Urantia Revelation. They were available for live sessions of instruction about the practical and spiritual meanings of the Revelation, and they were purportedly sent by the same unseen beings who had originally authored The Urantia Papers. In many cases, these living interlocutors were among the actual authors of some of the Papers, notably Machiventa Melchizedek.
By all accounts, the lessons being offered were loving, benign, and compelling. Usually the “contactees”—later called T/Rs or transmitter/receivers—would be able to speak the transmitted words audibly so that they could be easily recorded and later transcribed; other T/Rs would sit at their keyboards and “hot pen” the messages, as if taking gentle dictation. Usually these sessions began with lessons and were followed by question and answer sessions.
Not all of the newly initiated T/Rs accepted a public role. But those who did were soon invited by their invisible mentors to begin holding transmission meetings with interested friends and fellow Urantia Book students. In addition, most of the active individuals were soon given a “spiritual name” (mine, for example, was “Jacob”) and were assigned a personal celestial teacher from whom they could receive private transmissions either directly or with the aid of a T/R. I was unable to make verbal contact, so such personal sessions with a transmitter would prove especially helpful for me, and still do, as a supplement to my own ongoing attempts at Adjuster contact. Yet I also found the group setting to be highly beneficial and sometimes thrilling, as we not only received transmitted lessons, but engaged in group very uplifting prayer and worship, engaged in lengthy dialogues with our invisible teachers, and even received healings. More recently, adherents have received assignments of tasks if they have demonstrated a willingness to “cocreate” with the celestial realms in service to a planet in crisis.
And so, before long—in a score of locations—it became clear that practical spiritual teachings were being downloaded from the etheric realms, in a synchronized program of instruction based on the Urantia Book’s teachings. Ad hoc groups were assembling in living rooms across America to receive the celestial grace.
In the sessions, opening statements were made by highly communicative beings with names like Abraham, Ham, JarEL, Bertrand, Daniel, Will, Josephine, Jared, Tarkas, Welmek, and Tomas, which now number in the hundreds. Each explained to their newly assembled groups that an experimental initiative was under way that was authorized at the highest levels in order to supplement and amplify the published teachings of the Urantia text, teachings and updates required by a civilization in deep crisis.
This planetwide project actually would, they said, have a twofold designation: It was to be called the Teaching Mission when linked to existing readers of The Urantia Book;but it was to be dubbed the Correcting Time when referring to conscious or unconscious celestial contacts with social, religious, and spiritual groups and individuals across the rest of the planet who were not necessarily connected with the Urantia Revelation. In other words, the Correcting Time was far broader. Its contacts were with folks high and low who had no personal knowledge of or belief in the Urantia Revelation; however, the same celestial teaching faculty was involved, and a similar curriculum was being pursued.
Further, The Urantia Book was to be the reference text or class textbook for the Teaching Mission, and the TM was in turn a subset of the much larger Correcting Time project that would continue for centuries. Plus, indications were given that the TM was to go through a variety of stages itself and would interact with the Correcting Time in a myriad of ways over many decades, and then culminate in a Magisterial Mission and the reappearance of Christ Michael on our planet, leading ultimately to the first stages of the Era of Light and Life.
The TM groups were to receive systematic instruction by what we now know is a organized corps of “ascended masters” working in collaboration with various orders of angelic beings. Overseeing the entire initiative, and its actual creator, was Christ Michael himself.
Meanwhile, down on this planet, the celestial authority immediate in charge of the TM was Machiventa Melchizedek. At the formal inauguration of the Teaching Mission as announced in a live session on February 1, 1992 to skeptical members of the General Council, we were told that Machieventa had been elevated to the status of “Planetary Prince,” or head of the planetary celestial administration.
As contact groups began to transcribe the lessons and send them out to other groups, often using the new email technology, it soon become clear by around 1994 that the teachings contained in these varied streams of transmitted wisdom was relatively uniform across all the transcripts—that is, in regard to terminology, content, and even style of presentation. A common core of lessons was being presented according to a shared curriculum, although there were many departures from the core teaching that resulted from varying local needs or the predilections of a given group or individual.
But how could such an uncanny feat be carried out? Well, the Mission had been planned for centuries, we were told. Our celestial teachers had been carefully recruited to come to our planet explicitly as spiritual teachers when the age was ripe, and would work with Midwayer and angelic collaborators in coordination with “planetary celestial management.” They would teach from a lesson curriculum provided by the Melchizedeks—and specifically adapted for the TM by Machiventa Melchizedek himself.
But who exactly were our unseen mission-driven instructors who would teach us? They had originated from scores of advanced planets, but they were not material ETs. They hailed from the spirit worlds; they had survived death on their home planets. In other words, they had ascended by natural means into the afterlife, but had volunteered to condescend (in the best sense) to come to Earth for a most unusual mission.
They were enlightened beings (most had fused with their thought adjusters) who were now speaking to us from domiciles in higher realms, charged with the task of offering us lessons that they themselves had long ago mastered. These teachings were in fact based on the standard curriculum as taught on the mansion worlds in first stages of the afterlife.
It should be noted here that the vast majority of our instructors were not true “Ascended Masters” in the sense used in the Theosophical tradition to designate teachers like St. Germain and Djwal Khul. In that system, Ascended Masters always originate on Earth; our TM “masters” had as a rule ascended to higher planes from other planets—specifically planets that were not dark and warlike as was ours. But there were exceptions: hundreds of TM transmissions over the years have been received from Abraham—whose story is told in Genesis in the Bible and amplified in the Urantia Revelation—and a few from Yogananda, the great Indian guru and saint of the twentieth century, and even some from Martin Luther King. These would technically be Ascended Masters as Theosophists understand that phrase, but they are the exception in the TM.
The Teaching Mission groups also have received transmissions from a wide variety of midwayers and angelic beings and as well as many indigenous citizens of the upper worlds—including numerous Melchizedeks, our System Sovereign Lanaforge, Gabriel and other Salvingon residents, our own beloved Christ Michael and Mother Spirit (who calls herself Nebadonia), the Most Highs of Norlatiadek, Trinity Teacher Sons such as one named Margul, from a Mighty Messenger named Charles, and more recently from Urantia’s newly announced Magisterial Son, Monjoronson.
And why was this daring celestial mission under way now?
We all knew from our studies of The Urantia Book that life on Earth deviates greatly from that on a normal planet and that we had been under universe quarantine ever since the distant times of the Lucifer Rebellion, cut off from celestial communication circuits that naturally link material planets to one another and to the higher realms.
The stunning premise of the Teaching Mission, first revealed on February 1, 1992, was the news of the final adjudication of Lucifer Rebellion in heavenly courts. It is well known to Urantia Book students that the tribunal for the so-called case of Gabriel vs. Lucifer was long under way, and had already begun before The Urantia Book was completed in the mid-twentieth century. And now, in living rooms around America and elsewhere, the celestials were transmitting the grand news that the adjudication had been finalized in the fall of 1985. This meant, significantly, that Urantia’s planetary quarantine would gradually be lifted, allowing the reinstatement of the celestial circuits that had long been severed. This in turn would permit such celestial transmissions as were now occurring to take place, among many other benefits. The new book entitled The Adventure of Being Human is just one example of this phenomenon. (I have published three previous books derived from TM transcripts: The Center Within, The Secret Revelation, and Teach Us to Love).
I will end with these short quotes from teachings that appear in The Adventure of Being Human, followed by TM links to go for further information and a listing of the titles of lessons in the new book:
“Let us grow together. Let us spread the wings of our minds. Let us stretch wider and wider, more and more open. Let us be aware that we are always surrounded by, encompassed by, dimensions upon dimensions without end. Let us be humble in this awareness that we are in the midst of God’s creation, for it is enormous and profound and subtle and powerful, and yet gentle and loving and supporting beyond any measure. This is what surrounds us, always—more than you can realize.”
—Mother Spirit
“I wish you to appreciate to the fullest extent the importance of experience—an absolute cosmic reality that is being created moment by moment. When we say there is no substitute for experience, it means that no being whatsoever—not even God—has yet experienced this reality being formed, moment by moment, throughout the entire realm of time and space. This is what you are involved in. This is experiential reality and you share it with all your fellow personal beings, from the highest to the lowest.”
—Christ Michael
“Can you feel our delight in being able to inaugurate the Teaching Mission? We can actually feel, Michael and I, this enormously expanding contact between our sons and daughters on a human level, contacting their brother and sister celestial beings. What a joy Urantia is beginning to experience, so far beyond even what your delightful science fiction cares to imagine. For this is not just rocket ships cruising about the galaxy. This is the actual contact between beings who have just barely begun their journey into eternity with older brothers and sisters—celestial beings—who have lived tens of thousands, in some cases, billions of years. Did you ever imagine this kind of contact across these eons of time, my children?” —Mother Spirit
TEACHING MISSION LINKS
TEACHING MISSION ARCHIVES
www.tmarchives.com/
DAYNAL INSTITUTE ARCHIVES
www.daynal.org/
THE TEACHING MISSION NETWORK (a TM outreach site)
www.teachingmissionnetwork.com
EVOLVING SOULS (site associated with The Adventure of Being Human)
www.evolving-souls.org
[To order the book itself, go to Amazon.com]
11:11 PROGRESS GROUP MESSAGES (archive of Midwayer messages)
www.1111angels.net/
CENTER FOR CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS (a TM-related ministry)
www.ctrforchristcon.org/
MAGISTERIAL MISSION
www.monjoronson.com/
The Adventure of Being Human
(Lesson titles for sessions with Michael and Mother Spirit)
Embracing Wonder
Let Us Grow Together
Seeing Other Persons as Infinite
Personality and Creativity
I Am in the Realm of Spontaneity
Dealing with Impulsive Habits
The Power of Pure Intention
Contemplating the Freedom of Living
Relaxing in the Realm of Spirit
Your Existence Is Not Ephemeral
Opening to the Spirit of Truth
Embracing Reality
The Meaning and Purpose of Pain
Seeing Yourself through Your Creator’s Eyes
The Inner Compass of Joy
Seasons of Your Soul
Spirit is Ever New, Ever Progressive
Striving for Inner Unity
Asking for God’s Will
The Dimensions of Spirit
We Are Sharing Our Lives
Allow Heart and Mind to Work Together
Mercy Is Full Acceptance of Others
The Lifting of the Planetary Quarantine
The Adventure of Being Human
The Way of Progress to a Mature World Culture