Aquarian Age of Urantia

What better way to combine Science Fiction, Gnosticism and Utopianism than an examination of the channeled text titled The Urantia Book. After looking into the subject of Urantia and Gnosticism intricately, I believe that the Urantia Papers form a guide book to the Aquarian Age. One hint being that the Urantia Book presents a scientific, evolutionary, and planetary context for human life thereby appealing to the modern minds of post-Enlightenment thinking well positioned for the technological accelerationism of the Age of Aquarius. Another hint being that Urantia means "(y)our place in the heavens'' derived from the Greek Uranos (meaning heavenly) which is also the origin name for the planet Uranus. Which happens to be the ruling planet of the astrological sign of Aquarius. It seems to signify that when Uranus rules fully over the Age of Aquarius the planet itself will lend its name to the Heavenly Ice Giant and Master of the Winds. 

The Aquarian Age that we are coming into is also a higher dimension, and those who are walking into higher consciousness and higher virtues are walking into an age of cooperation with each other. The Urantia Book calls this New Age to come as the first stage of light and life. The Urantia Book may be read in tandem with The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ (composed by Levi H. Dowling in 1907, an American doctor in the early 20th century just like Sadler who helped compose the Urantia Papers). Both the Urantia Book and the Aquarian Gospel contain information about Jesus’ missing years. While the Urantia Book does not tell of Jesus' travels to India as the Aquarian Gospel does, it does tell of Jesus travelling the Roman Empire with two companions from India. The Aquarian Gospel records Jesus' extensive pilgrimages, through western India and Persia, Greece and Egypt, during which he taught the universal truth of human divinity realized through spiritual evolution. Dowling's Aquarian Gospel, helped establish the New Age notion of Jesus as a displaced guru, who must have at least visited Tibet. This picture resembles the Gnostic vision of Jesus and ties together the geographic origins of Gnosticism. The end of the Piscean Age (hence the Jesus fish) culminates in the Aquarian Age (baptism in the heavenly waters of the Holy Spirit Sophia). 

The Urantia Book teaches that the goal of humanity is to reach evolutionary perfection i.e. salvation. One gets there by self-effort, training in philosophic thought, celestial guidance and devotion of one's life to divine service. The Nag Hammadi codices reveal that the Gnostics were concerned with creating an all-encompassing psycho-cosmic myth, with Jesus as its central figure. Their cosmological framework comports with the general structure of the Urantian ascension cosmology, inclusive of its teaching of the Indwelling Spirit. 

The benign forces of the world of spirit are engaged in a constant effort to awaken and liberate us from our fallen state. If we turn to the divine light within, the pneuma (Divine Spark) it will lead us on a step-by-step ascension through increasingly rarefied levels of the cosmos to our true home - which was conceived by some Gnostics as the original Mother Universe or as the Isle of Paradise in the Urantia Book. 

The Urantia Papers give a dramatic story of the rebellion against Divinity (Sophia for the Gnostics) which itself sounds like an ancient Gnostic myth. Of course the difference is that the Urantian account is woven into a scientifically sound evolutionary cosmological worldview and is embedded in a coherent philosophical and theological system that satisfies modern minds. Compared to the story of the Gnostic myth: our world had somehow been created by a deceptive and secondary being. The subsidiary creator of Earth was not the high God, but only a “lesser-maker” or Demiurge. Revealed to be the subordinate deity of the Old Testament. 

The story continues: There were intermediate worlds or heavens and at their highest point was an “upper world” - an utterly transcendent source- universe of light, sometimes known as pleroma or “fullness.” This was the abode of the high God of transcendent unity, the place from which Jesus himself had come. This benign force of the highest heaven is always engaged in a constant effort to awaken and liberate us from our unknowing state of being. Gnostics uniformly taught that we are gifted a Divine Spark of pure spirit. This world is rendered meaningful by turning to that gnosis or knowledge of the inner spark. The Urantia Papers use similar language calling the divine gift a “God fragment.” We are called to awaken our inner pure spirit. 

Lastly, as the Urantia Papers are tied into the coming technological accelerationism of the New Age, we see how they relate to Transhumanism. The Urantia Book helps tie in the ancient wisdom traditions and an evolutionary context for transhumanism. It is a recentering of the typical transhumanist paradigm that is consciousness-centered rather than materialistic. As such the Urantia book suggests that celestials have intervened as part of “intelligent design” projects on our planet. While it notes that life is actually unique to this planet unlike other inhabited worlds. Moreover, the rebellion against Divinity (Sophia for the Gnostics) has been a dispute between those celestials that favor evolutionary progression of home-world species with minimal intervention as opposed to those celestials that practiced dangerous experimentation (in the name of liberty without responsibility). Ultimately, the Urantia Papers teach that evolutionary perfection is the objective by way of universal consciousness expansion. The more love one generates on the planet the more progress there is - not material but metaphysical and psychological. At last, all beings become enlightened for an evolutionary purpose - the building of soulfulness. 

The Aquarian Age will commence with the baptism of the planet in the heavenly waters of the Holy Spirit. At this place in history, the temple will be the planet with its capital at New Jerusalem. New Jerusalem reaches out to full planetary coverage of rejuvenation and invigoration of mind and spirit. Every city will be a nerve center for the beating heart in New Jerusalem. All channels of ignorance are closed off and replaced with Divine Gnosis. 

When the mind is thus endowed with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, it possesses the capacity for choosing the spiritual presence of the Universal Mother-Father. But it is not until a bestowal Son has liberated the Spirit of Truth for planetary ministry to all mortals. The Spirit of Truth works as one with the presence of the spirit of the Divine Gnosis. This dual spirit liaison hovers over the worlds, seeking to teach truth and to spiritually enlighten the minds of humanity, to inspire the souls of the creatures of the ascending races, and to lead the peoples dwelling on the evolutionary planets ever towards their Paradise goal of divine destiny.

The Urantia Book references passages in the Bible about a New Heaven and a New Earth in a manner that validates them. It was of the conclusion of the terminal mission of the Teacher Sons ...that John wrote: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth and the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a princess adorned for the prince.”52:7.11 (599.7) 

Even after this explicit warning, many of Jesus’ followers interpreted his predictions as referring to the changes which would obviously occur in Jerusalem when the reappearing of the Messiah would result in the establishment of the New Jerusalem and in the enlargement of the city to become the world’s capital. In their minds these Jews were determined to connect the destruction of the temple with the “end of the world.” They believed this New Jerusalem would fill all Palestine (135:5.4) The disciples of Jesus taught that the coming kingdom was not of this world, that the world was approaching its certain end, and that “a new heaven and a new earth” were to usher in the establishment of the kingdom of God; that this kingdom was to be an everlasting dominion, that sin was to be ended, and that the citizens of the new kingdom were to become immortal in their enjoyment of this endless bliss. (135:5.4 (1500.4)) With the will power of our enlightened hearts and minds we are considered citizens of a New Heaven and New Earth.