Nebadonia—November 1, 2010

Marin TM Group—Mill Valley, California—U. S.A.

Nebadonia—T/R-JL

(The colored races of Urantia)

(Mistakes in the Urantia book) 

(Collectives and individuals) 

(Jesus’ emphasis on the individual)

(The origin of the error)

Dear Mother Spirit and Michael,    Once again we bid you a hearty welcome.  Come be with us.  Come fill our hearts and our minds and our souls with your wonderful words.  We do enjoy seeing things from your point of view.  It helps us see ourselves and our situation in the light of your undying, beautiful life support.

Tonight I would ask you to address a question that’s come up about the Urantia book.  It seems to rather baldly state that certain of the colored races of our planet are superior or inferior with respect to one another.  Would you comment on these statements?  They seem, at least on their face, to be rather unmistakable and yet at the same time incomprehensible if, from no other point of view, other statements that God is no respecter of persons.  It also states in the Urantia book that things like racism, or sexism, or cultural-ism--any kind of hubris, arrogance, and looking down on ones’ fellows--only serve to produce social smugness in those supposedly favored or luckily born, and a sense of social resignation in those who are made to, or even feel themselves to be inferior.   So we ask you to please address this question.  Amen.  

NEBADONIA:  Good evening, this is Nebadonia, your Mother Spirit.  Michael and I are pleased once again to acknowledge and embrace your welcome with all the mind and heart and soul that we have.  We most joyfully welcome your request, and let it be known from the outset that I am speaking for Michael and myself, for on this issue there is absolutely no disagreement between the two of us.  However unique, discrete personal beings we are, we are also of a spiritual unity with each other far, far beyond your comprehension.  We’ve teased you to imagine an old married couple who have been together now for some four hundred billion years, and proud parents to nigh onto four million inhabited worlds somewhat similar to your own.

(The colored races of Urantia)

So let us look at the colored races on an evolutionary planet.  As you have been informed, the Life Carriers hailing from the Constellation level of Local Universe organization and hierarchy of creative authority, by the phenomena of universe reflectivity-spiritual communication across dozens of dimensions of reality, are fully in touch with each other in different Constellations.  And so when life is started on an evolutionary world they have the history of the whole Local Universe’s life-evolution riding along with them.  What was initiated here on Urantia was the culmination of all these billions of years of life experimentation and result.  You can use your imaginations and get some feeling for what happens on an evolutionary world and just how precious we consider this implantation of life to be.  While not the only purpose of the universes of time and space, the creation and evolution of your order of living being is one of the major ones.  Indeed, you’ve been informed that a great deal of the activity out here in time and space is devoted to your creation and your development on toward Paradise.

So think of this gigantic ancient context, my children, when you think of the Life Carriers coming to a planet and starting that original DNA which, after evolving through the plant and then the animal kingdoms will, after a billion years or so, eventuate in a creature of will dignity very similarly on millions of worlds.  This is a controlled evolution by way of the Life Carriers and my own Mind/Spirit Adjutants—the dimensions of my own consciousness, so that when your first human beings, Andon and Fonta, made contact with my adjutants of worship and wisdom and received their Thought Adjusters, the fact registered instantaneously many light-years away.  Yet within this gigantic context of consciousness and control involving so many dimensions of reality, there is also the working of the Unqualified Absolute rendering each individual planet unique and a bit unexpected in its life development for all our proposed plans.

Potential within Urantia’s original life implantation was the eventual segregation of the aboriginal human beings into different races of color.  I.e.—this was fully intended and provided for and is nearly universal on the evolutionary planets at a certain stage of their human development.  Different races of color will begin to emerge quite naturally, usually taking place over thousands of years and under the guidance of a loyal Planetary Prince and his corporal staff.  As each new color comes along with its unique essence and different qualities to add to the planetary stock, these are foreseen, planned for, and welcomed, for the essential purpose for these divisions into different racial characteristics is for the variety and wealth of the whole humanity.  Each different color adds something unique to the mix. 

But Urantia is—if you will—extra-unique in that this diversion into different colored races did not occur over thousands of years but within a single generation!  This was somewhat, but not totally, due to the fact that your world, Urantia, is a decimal planet, the one evolutionary world in ten whereon the Life Carriers are permitted a larger degree of experimentation in advancing the qualities of personal life in our Local Universe.  And so in one generation you had all six colors emerging at once.  As you’ve also been informed, once these different colored groups multiplied to the large-tribal stage, an incessant warfare broke out that eventually obliterated several colors as distinct types and lead to the dispersal of the others across the world.  You recall our many lessons on the ferocity of these primitive peoples and their innate distrust and territorial possessiveness with regards to their neighbors, some of which still persists to the present day.  On Urantia, as contrasted to other worlds where each new color was welcomed and incorporated into the others, the different races spread out away from the areas of conflict and more or less self-segregated up until recent times in the so-called Age of Exploration.

Yet also keep in mind, my children, the original diversification was five hundred thousand years ago and, except for rare bands who were early on totally isolated, there has been a wide degree of inter-racial mixing due to not only warfare and its attendant capture of slaves who were subject to indiscriminate sex and interbreeding, but also through the peaceful intermixing of peoples due to travel and trade, and the enormous migrations back and forth across the face of the earth.

(Mistakes in the Urantia book) 

Within this context of original life-implantation intent and subsequent world history, the statements in the Urantia book about inferior and superior races are more than unfortunate; they are grievous errors, absolute mistakes with respect to the connotations given them.  Each colored race has something special to offer, and this is the main purpose for racial diversification in the first place.  There are no inferior races just as there are no inferior personal beings.  You as a human being are not inferior to a midwayer, or a seraphim, or a Melchizedek.  You are not some random mistake of nature but a part of not only God’s plans, but of Michael’s and my own.  There is a hierarchy of abilities and perceptions of reality across the different orders of personal beings, but referring to differences within the human order as inferior or superior implies a qualitative differential of personality itself that is indeed not only—as I said—unfortunate, but open to endless misinterpretations of historical/cultural differences in the human family as well. 

We would also like to discourage any notion whatsoever that this mistake was deliberately put in the book to test you.  While we applaud those of you who more or less disregarded these statements, or saw them for the mistakes they were—so much in conflict with what you noted in your introduction, you can trust that these were not in any way intentional falsehoods if only because of the entire rest of the book; i.e. a hallmark of wisdom being a sense of proportion.  Beyond that, any deliberate inclusion of a falsehood in an epochal revelation would be a terrible mistake on a whole higher level of intent and one that, frankly, would never have occurred to the spiritual authors.  In addition, the Urantia book itself states it is not to be considered some kind of absolute truth, some lifeless dogma, but on the contrary; every written expression is limited to its unique moment in time and place and the development of language and concept in which it appears—in this case, late 1930’s America.  Its purpose was and is to expand as best it can those very limitations by introducing new words and concepts in a trustworthy, cosmos-broad context that will resonate with the mind/spirit sensibilities within you as valid information.

The greatest damage of this unintended mistake is that it has discouraged folks from continuing who might otherwise have gained a deep soulful resonance with the rest of the book.  Think of the dozens of human disciplines of thought and spirit that were included in order for the book to be self-validating.  We were fully aware when we included so many things from theology to geology, to cosmology, to physics and chemistry, to philosophy and planetary history; on and on through the evolution of life and humankind, the family and government, culture and religion; the day-to-day, year-by-year unique account of Jesus’ life among you and the world in which he lived: you would have to trust not only us but your own deepest instincts, understanding, and values to realize why we would never, ever, deliberately include a falsehood in what was and still is meant to be an epochal revelation to all of mankind’s races—literally inaugurating a new epoch of understanding somewhat comparable and allied to the four previous: the coming of your Planetary Prince, Adam and Eve, Machiventa Melchizedek, and Jesus of Nazareth.

As Michael said in his last lesson, there has been a long historical evolution in terms of the specialization and concentration of authority and power along social-cultural, political, religious, and territorial lines; yet these authorities are slowly giving way to a wide-spread blossoming of individual liberty and responsibility.  We gave a lesson one time on how this progress is contra-distinct from your familiar saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”—i.e. you can’t see the whole—the forest, for all the individual trees in the way.  Whereas each of you—individually, personally—evolved your understanding of people the other way, from a limited number of close individuals but from your immediate culture’s notions of human differences.  For while you were born into a specific cultural encompassing, only one at a time did you meet and include more and more individuals into your life.  Your progress was from the cultural attitude you were given, to each individual; from seeing in terms of inexperienced adolescent generalities to being able to see individuals through screens of prejudice and outworn cultural traditions and relationships; i.e. you couldn’t at first see the trees for the forest.  Yet your soul-reward was and remains those very people you came to know as individuals. 

You’ve only to think of the obscene horrors and spiritual slavery that have been committed in the justification of these generalities of race, sex, and culture to appreciate what it takes to see and accept, to wholly relate and respond to whomever it is standing right in front of someone.  Ironically, with respect to race, it’s only recently that people in general have been able to perceive the spiritual unity of humanity within each person across these prejudiced differences.  In the initial contacts between peoples of such different cultures based on vastly different technologies, locations and climate, there occurred a near maximization of the illusion of racial superiority and inferiority.  Almost all of what were considered differences in race were only—but profoundly—differences in separate cultures evolved over tens of thousands of years.  Add to this the universal assumption that might made right, that whoever was more successful in warfare was unquestionably the superior race with the superior deities at their back.  Even this too still prevails among those who resort to violence to demonstrate—they feel--the superiority of their faith. 

So, my children, Michael and I invite you to see in both ways of looking at the present human situation.  See the differences between cultures and beliefs for their intrinsic uniqueness, for this is the wealth of your entire planet’s history.  Your modern technology permits you to capture these intrinsic qualities for all future times even as they are profoundly changing due to increasing contact with each other.  Glory in the enormous diversity of the human race.  Yet while you see these various collective associations of people—the forest in our analogy—strive also to open your heart and your mind to register the soul and character of the individual or individuals you contact, either personally or through your media.  Be able to relate as individuals of spiritual equality for all the soul-wealth that this promises.

(Collectives and individuals) 

Whenever you contemplate people in any collective sense—politically, socially, religiously, culturally, racially—whatever—be humbly aware this perception is largely your creation from your own point of view, however it may be shared with others of a like mind and position.  Obviously such perceptions change with the point of view: from within or without, in contention or agreement, inherited or personally acquired.  Take responsibility within yourself for own position and how it may be affecting your vision.  Strive to be truly independent, what you call being your own person.  In spite of what consensus your group may be inadvertently or deliberately trying to enforce, your own self-conscious and humble opinion, derived from your own unique history, is what is needed the most.  It’s what your world needs now, this blossoming of individual liberty and responsibility, especially with the destructive power such collectives as nation-states, or even smaller groups, possess.

This is what is happening now with the coming of international, instantaneous communication and response across the oceans and continents, across the hundreds of little mini-cultures, across the races and the sexes, across societies, political parties, economies, and religions.  As Michael teased you with the idea of the Renaissance which is upon you, it is indeed a topsy-turvy time of all this new interaction.  But my children!—if you could only see the spiritual glow of the earth beginning to blossom like never before.  This is where your perceptions of each other as individuals, each a unique creation of God’s, each with a unique background and experience, and soul, and character: this is the promise and the fulfillment of the ages.  This is the world’s soul-wealth being presented to you, yours for the response-ability you bring to it. 

So joyfully respond, my children.  Fill your souls with each other.  Glory that the potential for these different races of different cultures was part of the Original Plan—the variety of humanity that has eventuated for you to embrace.  Feel my presence deep within you.  Heal yourselves of all the fear, as well as the arrogance and hubris you might have entertained once upon a time.  Grow out of it into an appreciation and respect for all that is.  And be in my love. 

If you have any comments or questions this evening, this is my delight.

Student:  Thank you, Mother, for clearing up that one point in the Urantia book.  That’s all I have to say.

(Jesus’ emphasis on the individual)

NEBADONIA:  Thank you, my son.  It needed to be put in context and stated.  Michael and I, as Mother and Father Spirit who oversaw the book, do apologize most sincerely for all the harm those few, terribly mistaken sentences gave.  One purpose of Michael’s teachings as Jesus was just this, this emphasis upon the individual at a historical time in which what you were—what tribe, whether slave or free, rich or poor—was so much more important than who you were. This is largely why his teachings were so immediately taken to heart and welcomed by those who had so little social power or material wealth; to know that though they might be a slave or menial worker being treated as an animal, they too had a soul and eternal prospects just as the emperor.  And be in my love.

Student:  Thank you, Mother.

Student:  I don’t know what the error was.  Was it human, or what?

(The origin of the error)

NEBADONIA:  It was a combination of both human and spiritual author, not human as it was originally given but as it was later wrongly taken, yet also that the authors did not catch it in the reactions of the first people to read it in time to correct it. They were just too easily glossed over—the statements of inferior or superior races. 

The degree to which individuals are more or less blessed in innate abilities with respect to racial heredity has been misinterpreted all throughout your history across the enormous divide of different cultures and customs.  Within a few generations, if not immediately, the native intelligence of any race can adapt itself to a completely different set of social/technological circumstances.  Beyond this, the differences in abilities between individuals within any one race--whether physical, mental, or spiritual/creative—overwhelm by far any differences between the races.  Yet historically this has been a very recent, and not altogether accepted, discovery just in the last century or so when there were more and more individuals of different races born and raised in cultures not originally their own. 

In your own country’s history, look at pictures of the first European settlers as contrasted to the Native Americans they met and consider the differences not only in appearances but also in language and customs that derived from vastly different notions as to what was real—no less.  Now contrast those pictures with ones of individuals from both European and Native American backgrounds when both are wearing identical, modern suit-and-tie with the same hair style and accessories, speaking the same language equally well and sharing the same assumptions about reality.  You might wonder: where did all the racial difference go?

The associations and connotations given those unfortunate words in the text are pure mistakes, and recognized as such by most readers.  Our mistake was in not anticipating the wrongful conclusions these words could engender, especially in those who would consider the book to be an immaculate pronouncement wherein one mistake would invalidate the whole. Perfection is something we all aspire to—even Michael and I.  It is part of the general evolution of the cosmos.  But it is the better part of humility to see it as a goal rather than a possession.  Again: every manifestation in time and space is conditioned by those very uniquely occurring dimensions which give each living event its equally unique signature and glory.  You are learning to evaluate events from the point of view of their own time and place.  This is the further evolution of wisdom we see coming into fuller bloom. 

In this critical time as previously isolated great cultures of the world come into ever more intimate contact, we see the hearts and the minds and the souls of people all over the world opening to embrace their planetary neighbors and perceive what has always been there: their transcendent common humanity right in each and every one.