“Have You Been Duped?”

From Kristen Maaherra

January, 1999

Dear Friends,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your Christmas cards, phone calls, notes, donations, e-mail letters, and prayers! You haven't heard from me because at the last moment, Judge Urbom put off the December 28th hearing until March 15, 1999.

Right now, the Foundation has (at least) 3 Motions on the table that Judge Urbom needs yet to rule on:

1. The Foundation's Motion for Permanent Injunction (asking that I be prevented from use of "all or part of the text of The Urantia Book or unauthorized derivative works based thereon.")

2. The Foundation's Motion in Limine (which objects to the amount of evidence I would like to present at the hearing).

3. The Foundation's Motion for Declaratory Judgment (which would end the case without a hearing - without Judge Urbom ruling on what part of the Foundation's Urantia Book is revelation and what part the Foundation claims is their human contribution to the book.)

Yesterday, I received copies of the 2 briefs herein enclosed. Joe moved into a different law firm over the holidays, and I also moved into town (please note my new address on envelope). As of next month (February), the Foundation has spent 8 years and over 4 million dollars suing me. The damage the Foundation has done to me and my family over these last 8 years is irreparable. They have cost us our time, energy, and money. They have taken away our religious community.

What baffles me (and also makes me wonder whether this whole lawsuit was ever about giving away an index) is how ineffective the Foundation has been. The Foundation has spent under 100 thousand dollars to stop whole translations from ever being disseminated. If their primary aim was to stop the index - why haven't they? They could easily have bought distribution rights from me 8 years ago, when I knew nothing about them. Instead, their whole objective seems to be to punish me somehow, to ruin my life, to drum me out of the Urantia community. This whole lawsuit seems to have little to do with copyright or trademark issues. Several home pages on the Internet have the complete text of the Urantia Papers on them, with the circles - and the Foundation does nothing. Yet they want me stopped from using even one word of the text. I truly can't figure it all out.

And the courts. On the one hand, perjury is an impeachable offense. But when the Foundation commits perjury, the courts don't blink an eye . . . What is the explanation?

Have you been duped?

An author - for example, Mark Twain - writes a book. He sends it to his publisher. He says, "Clean up the spelling and punctuation - but don't change one word of my text."

Fifty years later, the publisher claims he co-wrote Mark Twain's book.

The publisher might get away with it in court. But it's not the truth. It's a sophistry.

Have you fallen for the Foundation's sophistries?

Has your soul been nicked away? For that's what sophistries do. You wake up one day like Serapatatia, and realize you've accepted specious arguments, that you've been living at the level of mind, not spirit - and your disappointed soul wakes up in a river of sorrow.

Are you buying into this latest thing? That the Foundation has a valid copyright? Judge Schroeder said, "humans created" the Urantia Papers. That is what the Foundation's copyright is all about.

Have you been compromised? The definition of sophistry is, "Plausible but fallacious and misleading argumentation." Sophistries can only fool people who are living and thinking on the level of mind. There is a tendency to abandon the search for truth in favor of the clever argument.

The soul of a person who can discern values is not fooled by sophistries. Values are discerned, discovered. Newton didn't "invent" gravity - gravity was always there, a physical property just waiting to be "discovered." Andon didn't "invent" fire - he discovered how to make fire. Fire was there, and the means to make fire was there, long before Andon used a bird nest. On a spiritual level, values are there, and they are real. It is your soul that feels values. When your soul is functioning, you are living on the spirit level - not on the mind level.

I used to believe that, for example, when someone would say, "I don't know who wrote the Urantia Book," that they were lying. However, now I understand that in order to lie, one has to know the truth - that the Papers are a revelation authored exclusively by superhumans.

I used to believe that, for example, when the Foundation said in court, "It's not a religious book," (or) "Bill Sadler, Jr. wrote, authored, however you want to look at it, parts of the Urantia Book," that the Foundation knew it was lying. However, now I'm not so sure. Again, to lie, you must know the truth. And I'm not sure the Foundation knows truth.

Truth is on the values, or spirit, level.

If a person has consciously rejected the spirit level, rejected the leading of the Thought Adjuster, rejected the leading of the Spirit of Truth, that person is left living on the level of mind.

A person living on the level of mind does not have the touchstone of spirit values as a guide. A person living on the level of mind has only mind.

And what the mind has, is arguments. Everything's just an argument, a point of view, an opinion. Pontius Pilate appeared to be living on the mind level exclusively when he made his decisions. For example, when he said, "Truth, what is truth -- who knows?" I understand now that - because he had rejected the leading of his spirit guide over a long period of time - he really didn't know what the truth was.

"The mind is infallible" - that attitude (or belief) is what sin and iniquity is all about.

"That's just your opinion." (Translation: "There's no such thing as truth. Everything is an opinion.")

In fact, to live on the level of mind, you're left in a world where there is no truth. Everything is just an argument. Just about anything seems reasonable if argued cleverly. Anything and everything seems plausible if the person arguing on the level of mind is smart, subtle, and specious (deceptively attractive).

(The dictionary defines specious as "Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious: a specious argument. A specious argument is not simply a false one but one that has the ring of truth. Those aware of the specialized use of the word may therefore sense a certain contradiction in hearing an argument described as obviously specious or specious on the face of things; if the fallaciousness is apparent, the argument was probably not plausible-sounding to begin with.")

Lucifer argued "compromise, and short-cut adventures." Lucifer suggested "compromises and makeshifts," and "specious proposals."

I see the Foundation's position in court - that the Urantia Papers contain copyrightable human authorship - as a sophistry, a specious argument. They made many arguments about authorship (the forum wrote the Papers, the contact commission wrote the Papers, the sleeping subject wrote the Papers, etc.) before they hit upon an argument the court (again, operating exclusively on the mind level) "bought."

Have you been duped by the sophistries of human authorship?

Urantians generally seem to think they're smart, sophisticated, savvy. They have the revelation; they have more information than their fellows on this planet; they're on top of things.

But have you fallen for the Foundation's sophistries? This is the overview; this is what it's all about.

Mo says the Foundation has a "middle of the road copyright." I have come to believe, sadly, he really doesn't know what is truth and what is false, (an "argument"), anymore. His soul is not the same as when he defended the revelatory status of the Papers in the1980's.

Mo is making a makeshift proposal, a cowardly cure for the Foundation's lie of human authorship.

The Truth is that this is an epochal revelation. Doc and Christy said they did not change one word of it.

The Foundation says humans asked questions and humans were quoted all through it.

So what's the harm in that? We all just want Unity among Urantians. We all just want progress for the planet.

The harm of that is, epochal revelations do not compromise. As the Divine Minister put it, there is no "half cure." One should not "cowardly suppress" these sophistries.

I think we should have learned by now that you cannot compromise an epochal revelation, even if your motivation is to advance it.

As Meredith Sprunger wrote October 20, 1988: "Epochal revelation on our world has had a difficult course. Our Planetary Prince joined the Lucifer rebellion. Adam and Eve defaulted in their responsibility. Some Melchizedek missionaries failed because of their misunderstanding of Machiventa's instructions regarding over-organization. The followers of Jesus unintentionally substituted the religion of Jesus for the religion about Jesus. Tragically, the fifth epochal revelation is now facing the threat of sabotage by those most responsible for protecting it."

Caligastia compromised with evil. So did Eve. Jesus didn't compromise - but his followers did - and Jesus' teachings became compromised. We started out with the fifth epochal revelation of truth to this planet, Urantia. And now we've got human authorship. That's abysmal, that's default.

But the real question is: how are YOU going to participate in this? Are you going to compromise with evil? How do you stand on these sophistries?

If life is just a bridge and a school, the big thing here is your decisions. If you improve the world, great. But even if you don't improve the world, you're here about your soul growth. Making your circles. The world is a tricky place. I see this new sophistry coming out to undermine your soul as well as to undermine this new revelation just as sophistries tripped up Eve and Caligastia.

Sophistry undermines your soul because you're subtly tricked to begin operating on a mind level, instead of following the Spirit of Truth, wherever it may lead.

Jesus was a revelation. An epochal revelation is a holistic thing, co-ordinated with angels, midwayers, Thought Adjusters, and many other celestial personalities. There's an outworking to a revelation. An "end-user" is implied in revelation. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's part of a process - and all humans on this planet are part of this process. One purpose of a revelation is to help a human in his circle-making process. Another purpose of a revelation is to change the world, to bring us closer to light and life.

Jesus' revelation was undermined, but still changed the world. Jesus' teachings were altered, diluted, attenuated to make them more palatable to some people. (This stuck past generations with the blasphemy of the atonement doctrine, etc.)

What do we have now with the sophistry of human authorship? Instead of people having the leverage of superhuman authorship, the undiluted leverage of revelation, to lift the human spirit, to straighten out human thinking - the revelation has been compromised into, "I wonder why Sadler put that in?" "I wonder why Sadler didn't include reincarnation?"

In 60 years of answering questions on authorship and origin, the Foundation has always said, "All the information on authorship and origin is in the book itself." "Look up the references on the dust jacket." Not once - until they came to court - did they answer that question with: the Foundation wrote it (look in Books in Print), Sadler wrote it, the forum wrote it, the contact commission wrote it, the sleeping subject wrote it, it was a "work for hire," it was a joint work, etc. And all the above they have claimed in court.

We who know the truth - that the early leaders of the Urantia community printed the text exactly as it was received from the revelators - have an extra responsibility (besides "going into all the world" with the revelation). Now we need to stand up against the sophistries of the Foundation's denial of the revealed nature of the Urantia Papers.

Much love, and God bless you,

Kristen Maaherra