Dear ones, what is your opinion about the Urantia book? Is it worth reading, or is there just a lot of nonsense in it? Does it have the value of “spiritual food”? Does it say anything against what Yogananda teaches?
—Jas,
Dear Jas,
To be able to answer you I just read a little about the Urantia book (which I had never heard about). At first glance it seemed to include a few teachings which are similar to Yogananda’s, but the longer I studied, the more statements I saw which are quite distant from what he taught:
– The way God and the Trinity are described, as three persons. They are not really persons in Yogananda’s teachings. In the Autobiography of a Yogi he explains: “God the Father is the Absolute, Unmanifested, existing beyond vibratory creation. God the Son is the Christ Consciousness (Brahma or Kutastha Chaitanya) existing within vibratory creation; this Christ Consciousness is the “only begotten” or sole reflection of the Uncreated Infinite. Its outward manifestation or “witness” is Aum or Holy Ghost, the divine, creative, invisible power which structures all creation through vibration. Aum the blissful Comforter is heard in meditation and reveals to the devotee the ultimate Truth.”
God’s home is described as an island at the center of the universe. That too is different from what Yogananda teaches. God’s home is “center everywhere, circomference nowhere”. He is not at home more in ome place than another.
– The birth of humanity, which is described like this: “The first humans are said to have been male and female twins called Andon and Fonta, born “993,419 years prior to 1934.” That would only be 41 complete Yuga cycles ago (each of which is 24,000 years long). This seems hardly probable. Yogananda taught that many souls who appeared in material form at the dawn of the present Day of Brahma will be still wandering in delusion at the end of that vast time period. That day of Brahma is long. In his Autobiography of a Yogi he writes: “The universal cycle of the scriptures is 4,300,560,000 years in extent, and measures out a Day of Creation, or the length of life assigned to our planetary system in its present form.” That’s over 4 billion years, at the “dawn” of which souls “appeared in material form.” Yogananda goes on to explain: “The life span for a whole universe, according to the ancient seers, is 314,159,000,000,000 solar years, or ‘One Age of Brahma.’”
– Concerning the results of human error, or sin, the Urantia book teaches that constant selfishness and sinful choosing lead eventually to iniquity and full identification with unrighteousness, and since unrighteousness is unreal, it results in the eventual annihilation of the individual’s identity. Personalities like this become “as if they never were.” The book says that “…in the last analysis, such sin-identified individuals have destroyed themselves by becoming wholly unreal through their embrace of iniquity.” This is complete nonsense in Yogananda’s teachings. Never can a soul and its identity be annihilated. All will finally merge in blissful oneness with God.
Urantia is a book that was channeled: a certain man whose identity is unknown channeled spiritual beings for “student visitors” . They were, it seems to me, students themselves, not great and enlightened Masters, even though they are presented as “celestial beings appointed to the task of providing an epochal religious revelation.” It all sounds like human understanding, not divine revelation.
In short: I wouldn’t get into that book too much.
All the best,
Jayadev
