Religious Texts

"Thus in fear and trembling The superior man sets his life in order And examines himself."

"When one's own day comes, one may create revolution."

"Fire in the lake: the image of revolution."

"Change proves true on the day it is finished."

"Thus the superior man Understands the transitory In the light of the eternity of the end."

"To go one's way with sincerity brings clarity."

"Perseverance brings good fortune."

"When tempers flare up in the family, Too great severity brings remorse."

"Thus the superior man controls his anger And restrains his instincts."

"The great man, by perpetuating this brightness, Illumines the four quarters of the world."

"The superior man acquaints himself with many sayings of antiquity And many deeds of the past, In order to strengthen his character thereby."

"Thus the superior man: If he sees good, he imitates it; If he has faults, he rids himself of them."

"If you are sincere, you have success in your heart, And whatever you do succeeds."

"Those above can ensure their position Only by giving generously to those below."

"The "Book of Changes" is regarded with almost universal reverence, both on account of its antiquity and also the unfathomable wisdom which is supposed to lie concealed under its mysterious symbols."

"Whatever you do, be sure to let your readers know that every sentence can be read in an almost infinite number of ways! That is the secret of the book. No one will ever know what it really means!"

"I threw the I-Ching yesterday, it said there might be some thunder at the well."

"The I Ching does not offer itself with proofs and results; it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part of nature, it waits until it is discovered. It offers neither facts nor power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom—if there be such—it seems to be the right book. To one person its spirit appears as clear as day; to another, shadowy as twilight; to a third, dark as night. He who is not pleased by it does not have to use it, and he who is against it is not obliged to find it true. Let it go forth into the world for the benefit of those who can discern its meaning."

"The purpose of the I Ching or the tarot … is to help you get access to yourself, by providing ambiguity for you to interpret. And this quality of ambiguity is shared with nearly all forms of divination — cast artifacts, or entrails, or weather formations, or events such as the flight of birds, that one could choose either to see as "omens" or to ignore. The very thing that makes these divination techniques seem so unscientific is what makes it possible for them to work."

"The I Ching is the world's oldest guide to 'the virtuous life'."

"There is a book called the I-Ching, I'm not trying to push it, I don't want to talk about it, but it's the only thing that is amazingly true, period, not just for me. Anybody would know it. Anybody that ever walks would know it. It's a whole system of finding out things, based on all sorts of things. You don't have to believe in anything to read it, because beside being a great book to believe in it's also very fantastic poetry."

"Its name, "The Book of Changes," is suggestive; and we find throughout its contents the vague idea of change replaced by the more definite one of "transformation," the key-word of alchemy... "The diagrams," [Confucius] says again, "comprehend the profoundest secrets of the universe; and the power of exciting the various motions of the universe depends on their explanation;—the power to effect transmutation depends on the understanding of the diagrams of changes." Here, in a word, is the...general object of Chinese students of alchemy."

"Thomas Cleary, reported in Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005) p. 428, Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (2005) p. 428, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) p. 382"

"Cary F. Baynes (from the German translation by Richard Wilhelm), The 'I Ching' or 'Book of Changes, Bollingen Series, vol. 19 (Princeton UP, 1950)"

"First take up the words, Ponder their meaning, Then the fixed rules reveal themselves. But if you are not the right man, The meaning will not manifest itself to you."

"The Book of Changes, in a word, is a kind of geometry of mythology... It tells of the readiness of time and the art of moving with its tides, rocking with the waves, and is the most important statement remaining to us of that aspect of ancient Chinese thought which relates the individual to the order of the outer world."

"The superior man encourages the people at their work, And exhorts them to help one another."

"The origins of astronomy can be found in the I Ching. Using the principle of astronomy, calendrical studies, and the I Ching to understand thoroughly the meaning of the unity of heaven and man is difficult. Nevertheless, we should study the I Ching little by little and fuse it with the principles of astronomy and calendrical studies. Then we can investigate the similarities in all things."

"According to Urantias text, half a million years ago, six colored races existed on our planet: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo. Again, according to the text, there was a racial superiority order with the indigo race at the bottom, in which, as it notes, "the blue man subdues the indigo" [UB 51:4.6]. It oddly states that strains of giantism can appear in green and orange peoples. The upshot of all of this is that on every planet in every universe, fair-skinned, blue-eyed aliens named Adam and Eve come and up-step the natives, meaning that they eliminate the inferior stocks and purify the planet."

"Research has revealed that virtually all of the scientific material found in The Urantia Book was the accepted scientific knowledge of the period in which the book was written, was held by some scientists of that time, or was about to be discovered or recognized. … Scholarly evaluation shows that Urantia Book fundamentalism is just as untenable as Biblical fundamentalism."

"The grand universe registry number of Urantia is 5,342,482,337,666 (UB 182). … Could it be that the thirteen digits in Urantia's registry number conceal some sort of message? I asked my old friend Dr. Irving Joshua Matrix, the world's most famous numerologist, for his opinion of this mysterious number. … Satan, Dr. Matrix reminded me, likes to take things backward. So let's reverse the number and partition it like so:666-73-328-42435The first three digits are, of course, the number assigned to the Beast, an incarnation of Satan, described in the Bible's last book. The next two digits, 7 and 3, add to 10, the number of letters in "Revelation". The three digits in the next set, 3, 2, and 8, add to 13, a chapter in Revelation. The last set of five digits, 4, 2, 4, 3, 5, add to 18, the number of a verse. Now Revelation 13:18 is the very verse in which 666 is assigned to the Beast!"

"There are many sections in the book that can bring consternation when considered outside the context of the full revelation, race being one of them. … Regarding race, regarding humanity in general and regarding the composition of the book—most of the first 119 out of the 196 Papers are written by highly intelligent beings who have never been human, beings of higher origin than humans, "angels". As the lowest order of free will creature in existence we humans now find ourselves reading about our origin, nature, and destiny as perceived from a higher and non-human perspective, sources not so sentimental about our shortcomings as we obviously are."

"The book was probably written by a Chicago physician and student of Freud named William Sadler who had already been involved in other cults. … Sadler was interested in race eugenics, a field of study that seeks to remove "inferior" kinds of people from the gene pool. One of Sadler's favorite books before The Urantia Book was Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race, which says that nordic people are the "ideal" human race and "getting rid of" other races would "enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums.""

"The UB's Jesus section is indeed a well-written, impressive work. Either it is accurate in its history, coming directly from higher beings in position to know, or it is a work of fertile imagination by someone who knew the New Testament by heart and who was also steeped in knowledge of the times when Jesus lived."

"Art results from man's attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of the material universe. Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his determination to find God and to be like him."

"To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it."

"In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail."

"The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the "will of the Father in heaven." Jesus' God was at one and the same time "The Holy One of Israel" and "The living and loving Father in heaven." The concept of God as a Father was not original with Jesus, but he exalted and elevated the idea into a sublime experience by achieving a new revelation of God and by proclaiming that every mortal creature is a child of this Father of love, a son of God."

"Jesus did not cling to faith in God as would a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world; he did not resort to faith merely as a consolation in the midst of difficulties or as a comfort in threatened despair; faith was not just an illusory compensation for the unpleasant realities and the sorrows of living. In the very face of all the natural difficulties and the temporal contradictions of mortal existence, he experienced the tranquillity of supreme and unquestioned trust in God and felt the tremendous thrill of living, by faith, in the very presence of the heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living experience of actual spirit attainment. Jesus' great contribution to the values of human experience was not that he revealed so many new ideas about the Father in heaven, but rather that he so magnificently and humanly demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God. Never on all the worlds of this universe, in the life of any one mortal, did God ever become such a living reality as in the human experience of Jesus of Nazareth."

"The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness—contact with the divine presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons—mortal men. When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God."

"The Adjusters are the eternal ancestors, the divine originals, of your evolving immortal souls; they are the unceasing urge that leads man to attempt the mastery of the material and present existence in the light of the spiritual and future career. The Monitors are the prisoners of undying hope, the founts of everlasting progression. And how they do enjoy communicating with their subjects in more or less direct channels! How they rejoice when they can dispense with symbols and other methods of indirection and flash their messages straight to the intellects of their human partners!"

"The Adjuster is the mark of divinity, the presence of God. The "image of God" does not refer to physical likeness nor to the circumscribed limitations of material creature endowment but rather to the gift of the spirit presence of the Universal Father in the supernal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters upon the humble creatures of the universes."

"You humans have begun an endless unfolding of an almost infinite panorama, a limitless expanding of never-ending, ever-widening spheres of opportunity for exhilarating service, matchless adventure, sublime uncertainty, and boundless attainment. When the clouds gather overhead, your faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster, and thus you should be able to look beyond the mists of mortal uncertainty into the clear shining of the sun of eternal righteousness on the beckoning heights of the mansion worlds of Satania."

"Sadler said he did not actually believe the revelatory power of the Urantia papers until 1936, when he read the descriptions of the apostles' personalities and character in paper 139. As a psychiatrist, he felt that no human could have written the essays."

"Jesus enjoyed a sublime and wholehearted faith in God. He experienced the ordinary ups and downs of mortal existence, but he never religiously doubted the certainty of God's watchcare and guidance. His faith was the outgrowth of the insight born of the activity of the divine presence, his indwelling Adjuster. His faith was neither traditional nor merely intellectual; it was wholly personal and purely spiritual."

"Religion inspires man to live courageously and joyfully on the face of the earth; it joins patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power, and ideals with energy.Man can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of God and reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values.Economic interdependence and social fraternity will ultimately conduce to brotherhood. Man is naturally a dreamer, but science is sobering him so that religion can presently activate him with far less danger of precipitating fanatical reactions. Economic necessities tie man up with reality, and personal religious experience brings this same man face to face with the eternal realities of an ever-expanding and progressing cosmic citizenship."

"Life must continue to grow in meaningfulness; man must go on with his reformation of philosophy and his clarification of religion.Political science must effect the reconstruction of economics and industry by the techniques it learns from the social sciences and by the insights and motives supplied by religious living. In all social reconstruction religion provides a stabilizing loyalty to a transcendent object, a steadying goal beyond and above the immediate and temporal objective. In the midst of the confusions of a rapidly changing environment mortal man needs the sustenance of a far-flung cosmic perspective."

"Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. 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."

"There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are yours for the striving!The goal of eternity is ahead! The adventure of divinity attainment lies before you! The race for perfection is on! Whosoever will may enter, and certain victory will crown the efforts of every human being who will run the race of faith and trust, depending every step of the way on the leading of the indwelling Adjuster and on the guidance of that good spirit of the Universe Son, which so freely has been poured out upon all flesh."

"Religion achieves its highest social ministry when it has least connection with the secular institutions of society. In past ages, since social reforms were largely confined to the moral realms, religion did not have to adjust its attitude to extensive changes in economic and political systems. The chief problem of religion was the endeavor to replace evil with good within the existing social order of political and economic culture. Religion has thus indirectly tended to perpetuate the established order of society, to foster the maintenance of the existent type of civilization.But religion should not be directly concerned either with the creation of new social orders or with the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose violence as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural requirements.Religion did approve the occasional social reforms of past centuries, but in the twentieth century it is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to extensive and continuing social reconstruction. Conditions of living alter so rapidly that institutional modifications must be greatly accelerated, and religion must accordingly quicken its adaptation to this new and ever-changing social order."