LETTERS FROM THE FOUNDERS
TO THE WORLD

Van of Urantia

View Van of Urantia's Resume

To the General Public in America and All Planetary Citizens Worldwide,

It has been said of me that I am the most misunderstood spiritual leader on the planet today.  The Creator Son, Jesus Christ Michael, was crucified as the Son of Man because certain others did not understand His teachings, and throughout the history of this planet many other spiritual leaders have been misunderstood and wrongly accused.  I have been led by God in this life not to choose the established, institutional church to minister from and within.  As a result of my calling, I have struggled all of my ministry life for credibility in the eyes of the religious mainstream. 

For example, I chose to work with the homeless and street people in several large cities instead of starting a traditional church. In Tucson, Arizona it was only when I became a volunteer chaplain at the county jail within the sheriff’s department and worked with their pre-trial release program, through my own halfway house, that some local pastors recognized me as a Christian minister.  Other local pastors in large churches did not accept me as one of "them" until I started "saving" the working-class people who I sent to their churches and who began to tithe to them. 

As a visionary musician, I originated “New Age Vocal” in Hollywood, which created a new market for many vocal artists, a market in which I received little recognition as its founder or as an artist. Now I’m introducing CosmoPop™   to the music world, which will also open up many avenues for the fusion of spiritual lyrics and commercial melodic expressions in music. (CosmoPop has also evolved into a form of music known today as Conscious Pop.)

As I stated on the back of my CD Holy City, "I can’t change who I am, as far as my past lives on this planet." This belief in repersonalization alone will automatically alienate certain minds from not only me but those others at our planetary sacred home. The Native Americans for thousands of years have taught the belief in "Star People" and "star tribes," as well as the ancient Egyptian and Nubian teachings.  I believe the influence of Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation has rekindled the cosmic connection in the ancient teachings of the old ways of the Native Americans, part of which are eternal cosmic truths, common to all the religions on our planet.

If I were Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or Hindu or of another religious persuasion, I would speak in certain familiar religious terminology.  By studying Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation, I am a student of a new vocabulary for humankind. Many of the revelatory words and concepts of The Cosmic Family, Volume 1 and other Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation materials have been embraced by thousands of others in the New Age movement. 

I understand why other people do not comprehend our theology.  I also understand that to some, our teachings are strange, and to others we seem "far out," particularly when we say some of us are past apostles and those souls who have been called saints in history, and I claim to be some of them.  To some in the Urantia movement, my claim of being Van (see The URANTIA Book, Paper 67) is absurd; to the Christian world my claim of being in the first century with Jesus is anathema.  The list goes on, as I have been repersonalized in many reformations of the mass-consciousness in various evolutionary religious movements.

To my family and friends back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I will always be known as my birth name (just as Muhammad Ali will always be Cassius Clay to some).  For that is how they remember me.  But what I have experienced has changed me, like many people change over the years, particularly when they leave their hometowns and birth religions.  For starseed like myself, another unique experience happens to accelerate spiritual ascension—we come into our cosmic minds. This opens up emotional and genetic memories of other lives and other worlds of time and space on which we lived.  We begin to change dramatically.

We Destiny Reservists of Global Community Communications Alliance have started a Spiritualution™.  We implement Spiritualution through Starmotion™.  The memory circuits of we 170,000,000 starseed worldwide are beginning to open.  We know we have had past lives on this planet.  These memories are not the memories of an experienced Thought Adjuster (a fragment of God) that lived in the mind of another soul, for memory recollection is not the function of a Thought Adjuster.  A Thought Adjuster’s function is to lead the soul to God and into the soul’s individual God-personality growth.

Spiritual and political leaders who try to be diplomatic to the point of dishonorable or remunerative compromise may become famous, but they will never bring about true social change and justice.   The greatest enemies throughout the history of groups who promoted individual and global change—like the Bruderhof Community, the Mormons, the Quakers, and many others—were some former members, some family of the present members, and those who use the apostates and their families for their purposes of propaganda.  It is our purpose to unite families as we work toward unifying people.  It is our enemies who accuse us otherwise.  It is the state of the world and the fear and prejudice within the minds of individuals that actually separate families.

Any group of individuals who are activists against tyranny, injustice, and destruction of the environment, and stand for religious freedom and any other issues that go against the status quo, will have their detractors and bitter enemies. Yet this is how civilization advances on a fallen world, and this is how this once great country of America came into being—by dissenters from all over the world coming together to form a new order of the ages and a just constitution. 

We intend on helping to build a new world of light and life, with all the other groups out there trying to bring about a more just planet.  All one needs to do is to study our websites to come to that conclusion.

The most iniquitous like to demoralize and demonize their targets. Usually, their targets are change agents like us, who are really making a difference in this world—environmental, social, and spiritual activists.

Global Community Communications Alliance has many mandated leaders from Niánn and I to other Human-Rights Elders, First Assistants, Second Assistants, and Human-Rights Vicegerent Elders and Assistants.  All of them make significant decisions daily.  Many of them have no contact with Niánn or I throughout the work week and have independent authority in their various administrative or nonadministrative functions.

If and when a final decision is necessary in any area, Niánn and I are available to try to give one. Niánn’s and my leadership is primarily that of a spiritual nature, which is first and foremost to help others ascend in their souls. In other areas where we excel, like any organization, we share our expertise and have more input. Niánn, for instance, in educational curriculum and I in music and counseling.

This reality at Global Community Communications Alliance is a beginning level of a Melchizedek administration that functions on a higher level in another system.  Autonomy is the standard rule of Melchizedek administration in the higher morontia worlds.  We humans have a ways to go in our spiritual ascension to be able to function fully at a Melchizedek administrative level.
 
It is my sincere prayer that those who look at us with pure intention will be able to discern our motives.  Although some of our teachings may be incredibly hard to believe or too good to be true, depending on your perspective, rest assured that we are sincere in our goal to become the best human beings we individually can be and that we intend to be a guide for others with the same ideals. 

We may appear to be a threat to some who do not understand or misinterpret our teachings.  Those other iniquitous souls will naturally work against us for whatever selfish reasons they choose to, for we are a force for truth, unselfishness, and goodness.  To any of you with honest concern, this letter is my heartfelt attempt, full-well realizing the vulnerable position it puts me in, in order to try to help you to understand our religious beliefs and personal truths.  We seek solidarity with all God’s children to bring greater fulfillment in all of our lives and to help bring global change to the world, for the sake of all the families of this planet we call home. 

In the seriousness of the times,

Van of Urantia, Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star


Niánn Emerson Chase

I once had a conversation with a recently widowed woman while we were waiting in line. She enthusiastically shared with me, a stranger, about her husband's illness and death and then her process of grieving and moving on with her life. She had just moved to Arizona and was already very active in many groups, filling her life with a variety of activities. She told me about her husband of many decades and her grown children who lived across the country, living their own lives very separate from hers. She showed no interest and even became slightly discomfited when I attempted to share a couple of my own experiences that paralleled hers and the realizations that I had come to as a result of those experiences. She told me what her son, who works as an engineer for the government, said to her, "Mom, when people ask me what I do I tell them that I make bombs." Her words of advice to him were not to worry; after all, that is his job. It is what his government has hired him to do, and he is a good engineer and is providing a decent lifestyle for his family. When she told me that, I bit my tongue, for I knew from her previous behavior that she would not accept what I had to say about her son's job and her perspective on it. What she wanted from me was to be a compassionate listener and nothing else. She did not want to have any real bonding or conversation of any depth. She enjoyed hearing herself speak and knew at some level that I did care for her and honestly admired her courage and strength to create a new life, which I expressed to her.

That brief encounter with this woman was an epiphany for me, and I felt somewhat sad and discouraged after meeting her. She represents the majority of middle-age and older Americans who are quite content with their lives just as they are. They're basically good and honest people who have worked hard to get to that point of contentment, and they're not interested in reaching any higher in their understanding of life. This kind of American feels they must be loyal to the American status quo that provided the opportunities for them to experience to some extent the Great American Dream. The discomfiture that the woman felt with me was when I began to present an expanded way of viewing life; it went beyond her comfort zone and if she had allowed herself to listen to what I tried to share with her, her ideas of her place in the world would have been slightly shaken, and even challenged if I would have broached expressing my views on her son's job.

This is the kind of discomfiture that I sense in so many people I meet, including persons not in the group represented by the widow. As long as I compromise and go along with their comfort zone, I am appreciated and enjoyed. But if I step out of those boundaries that these people have set up around their minds and hearts, they become embarrassed, upset, and often angry.

Ever since I was a child I have known that it is my destiny within God's will to continually challenge my own ideas, as well as those beliefs and perceptions of others. I have always yearned for truth and more truth, willing to look anywhere for that truth, realizing that another aspect of my destiny is relaying that truth to others. I have also known that though this world is filled with confusion and much suffering, the Universal Father, God, is alive and well on this planet and that a part of Him is within every person. I have never doubted the existence of unseen but sensed angelic personalities who are also part of God's expression of love for His ascending sons and daughters. It is my destiny to share my personal experiences and realizations within my own ascension process and, as I expand in my own understanding of spiritual and cosmic truth of the reality of God, the Universal Father, the First Source and Center and His creation, to teach that revelation to others. I can be no other way, for when I have tried to compromise with those I've loved and cherished, I have done them and myself a great disservice.

I have lived a very rich and full life. Most personal suffering was caused by my own decisions and thoughts that were out of divine pattern, and I know that is true for most people, especially in America. There is another kind of suffering that is caused by the decisions and mindset of some who have the power to improve others' lives but instead create terrible situations for those others. And then there are those, like the woman I met while waiting in line, who remain oblivious to the suffering of others and continue to go with the status quo and remain complacent within the Great American Dream, becoming a passive contributor to that suffering.

Though I have a piece of that dream, I have struggled with the knowledge of those millions of suffering and burn with a fire that drives me to continue to question any belief, situation, or person that in some manner contributes to that suffering. Thus, from childhood on, I have made people very uncomfortable, including myself.

At times I have detoured from God's path for me, but I have always found myself back on it after getting whipped around and bruised. And in spite of those wounds and bruises, I feel welcomed back in the gracious grace of my Father's love, as the prodigal son was embraced by his father when he returned home.

That is what the world needs to know and what I must tell others, and what anyone else who has personally experienced the truth, beauty and goodness of The First, Second, and Third Sources and Centers must tell others. Those who have a sincere love of truth are willing to go wherever it leads. And where that should ideally eventually lead is to the epochal revelation of The URANTIA Book and Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation found in The Cosmic Family Volumes. This revelation does indeed challenge any beliefs, thoughts, and values we have that are false, and most of the mechanistic and materialistic values and beliefs of the American dominant culture are not truth of eternal value. If an individual adheres to the values and belief foundations of the dominant culture, suffering will happen for that individual and for others. The search for truth and growth will lead us to conflict, for our established perceptions of reality will be shaken and challenged. Are we truly willing to go wherever that truth leads?

What if that truth leads us to re-evaluate most of what we have believed to be moral and right and good? What if that truth leads us to conflict with our family, friends, and acquaintances who become discomfited with our expanding consciousness? What if that truth leads us to receiving false accusations and ridicule from others? What if that truth leads us to feeling as a stranger in a strange land, struggling to bond with and relate to others who are not so willing to go where truth would lead them? What if that truth leads us to feeling grieved over the terrible suffering that so many millions are experiencing and therefore no longer comfortable with our own lives and the way we live them? What if that truth leads us to continually question our own motives, our own purity before God? What if that truth leads us to ever desire to be more than we are, striving to become more like the divine? What if that truth leads us to never be satisfied with the way things are, but to constantly strive and struggle to make life better for others?

The URANTIA Book says that "New religious insights arise out of conflicts which initiate the choosing of new and better reaction habits in the place of older and inferior reaction patterns. New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings." And it goes on to state that "there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation." (p.1097)

I do experience that inner agitation and conflict as I continue to go where truth leads me. But I can honestly say that truth has always led me to that inner peace and poise that passes all understanding, an inexplicable joy and gratitude for being alive at this moment in time and space, an expanding love and compassion for others, and a daily sense of inspiration and purpose. Whatever my Universe Father has asked me to relinquish has been replaced with something much higher and nobler.

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance brings on great suffering and eventual death. Expanding awareness of all that is real brings healing, comfort, hope, joy, and purpose to living. Revelation brings that expansion of consciousness. I stand by my personal spiritual experiences, and I stand by the truth that I share with others. I do have perfect confidence in the truth of The URANTIA Book and Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation and am not disturbed by critical examination of my true convictions.

The most important truth is that in spite of the error and evil in the world and in ourselves, there is God's goodness and divine pattern in the world and in all of us if we would be willing to discover that truth and pay the price that truth asks of each of us. It really isn't that costly. We simply trade a small, fearful mind for a larger, courageous mind that views the world through the eyes of the divine mind. Then we can follow this advice from The URANTIA Book—"As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil." (Paper 195, Section 5, Paragraph 12)

Read more about Niánn Emerson Chase:

Niánn Emerson Chase—The Spiritual Teacher


Niánn Emerson Chase,
Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star

Global Community Communications Alliance