The Urantia Thing--Maybe There's Something To It?

I've always kind of assumed that Les Jamieson's involvement with the Urantia Group was just another symptom; those who believe in one kooky thing will probably believe in another. But I gotta admit, Nico's making some headway with me on this issue.

First of all, let's discuss Urantia.

The exact circumstances of the origin of The Urantia Book are not known. There is no known human author of the book. It is written as if directly presented by numerous celestial beings appointed to the task of providing a new spiritual revelation to humankind.

The documented history is that a person whose identity has remained unknown received the material from celestial intelligences while asleep. The individual, known as the "sleeping subject" or "contact personality", is said to have been kept anonymous in order to prevent undesirable future veneration or reverence for him.

As early as 1911, Dr. William S. Sadler and his wife Dr. Lena Sadler (born Lena Kellogg), both practicing physicians in Chicago, Illinois, became the attending physicians of the sleeping subject after the individual's wife reported that she could not wake him. Over time, the unconscious subject produced communications that seemed to be from entities who claimed to be spiritual beings. Drs. Lena and William Sadler were respected physicians in Chicago and well known in the community. Dr. William Sadler had a reputation as a debunker of paranormal claims and generally is portrayed as not believing in supernatural claims.

A group of Sadler's friends, former patients, and colleagues originally began meeting for intellectual discussions in 1924, but became interested in the strange communications of the sleeping subject when Sadler mentioned the case and read samples at their request. Shortly afterwards, a communication was received that this group would be allowed to devise questions and that answers would be given by the celestial beings through the contact personality.

You can probably guess the rest of it--the sleeping subject proceeded to dictate the answers to life, the universe and everything, and apparently the answer was not anything quite as simple as 42. Of course, the exact manner in which the sleeping subject conveyed these answers raises a few eyebrows:

The Sadlers and others involved, now all deceased, claimed that the papers of the book were physically materialized from 1925 until 1935 in a way that was not understood even by them, with the first three parts being completed in 1934 and the fourth in 1935.

Anyway, Nico has claimed in the past that the original Urantia group was infiltrated by the OSS (the forerunner to today's CIA). I have tended to dismiss these allegations in the past, but check what Les Jamieson himself has to say on the subject:

My point should be clear that even if the early Urantia Movement was infiltrated, it still is irrelevant to the body of knowledge the book contains and has absolutely no reflection on the community of readers.

And check out this email from Les to Tom Foti (best known as Gravy's shadow at Ground Zero every Saturday):

You will not be allowed to undermine the hard work of this organizing that began long before you came along. You will not be allowed to undermine our sacred cause. You will not be allowed to divert our energy any longer, leading us down a futile, even dangerous path. You're out of here, plain and simple. No more presentations.

Weird stuff. I don't agree with Nico's no-planes nonsense, obviously. But he seems to have a good read on the strange goings-on at the NY Denier group.