IN 1955 a mysterious 2100-page book was published—The Urantia Book—purporting to be a revelation of truth from higher beings in the universe. The publisher was Urantia Foundation at 533 Diversey Parkway in Chicago, the home of Dr. William S. Sadler, a psychiatrist who had been the “custodian” in charge of bringing the book into being. Upon reading the text, the first thing everybody wanted to know was, who wrote it? Nobody would answer. The second question was, how did it come about? Was it channeled? Was it produced by automatic writing? The hints in the text of the book satisfied nobody, and when readers contacted the Foundation about the source and origin they came up against a wall of silence.

To insiders it was known that, prior to publication, Dr. Sadler had been the head of a group of six individuals called the Contact Commission. This was a family affair: Dr. Sadler and his wife Lena; Lena’s sister Anna and Anna’s husband Wilfred Kellogg; the Sadlers’ son Bill Sadler; and the Sadlers’ “adopted daughter,” Emma (Christy) Christensen.⁸ They had answers but were sworn to secrecy. A group of several hundred believers, called the Forum, had studied the teachings at 533, but all had signed a pledge not to reveal what they knew.

It was decided at “headquarters” to let the history begin in 1950 with the founding of the Urantia Foundation and let what happened before remain “a vague uncertain dream shrouded in mist.”⁹ Frustrated readers were told to “just read the book.”

Details did not begin to emerge until 1976 when a disgruntled former Forum member, author Harold Sherman, published a book called How To Know What to Believe. In a chapter titled, “Pipeline to God,” Sherman told of his and his wife Martha’s turbulent five-year Forum experience during the years 1942-1947. He included the origin story Dr. Sadler related to them in the evening of August 20, 1942, when they were still in a honeymoon phase with the Doctor. The Shermans were living in an apartment across the street, and they quickly went back and made a detailed written record of the information Dr. Sadler had imparted. (Sherman used fictitious names in his book but here we have substituted the real ones.)

“About thirty-five years ago¹⁰ when [Sadler’s wife] Dr. Lena and I were young physicians together, we decided to move, but the place we had in mind was not yet available. We were directed to a furnished apartment in the neighborhood, which we took for several months until our place was ready.

“We had been there about two weeks, and some of the tenants had apparently learned we were physicians, because one of them, a woman living directly below us, rapped on our door about 11:00 p.m. as we were in the act of retiring. She said, ‘Will you please come downstairs with me? Something has happened to my husband. He’s gone to sleep; he’s breathing very strangely, and I can’t wake him up.’

“We slipped on our bathrobes and went down to her apartment, where I saw a medium sized man, approaching middle age, asleep in bed, breathing very fitfully. He would take a couple of short, quick breaths and then would hold his breath for a time, long enough for any normal human to have gotten black in the face, but nothing happened. I took his pulse and was surprised to find it was normal. I then tried to arouse him with every known method, even to sticking pins in him—but failed. His wife seemed to be a somewhat nervous and superstitious type. She was frankly frightened, even though I assured her that he seemed to be in good physical shape, despite his peculiar actions.

“We sat about and waited for him to return to consciousness, during which time his body gave several violent jumps and starts. Finally, after about an hour, he awoke and looked around and saw us. We had propped him up on pillows, and he now turned to his wife and asked, pointing at us, ‘Who are these people?’ She explained that we were doctors she had called in when she found she couldn’t awaken him, and he said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

“I asked him ‘How do you feel?’ He said, ‘I feel fine.’ I said, ‘What have you been dreaming about?’ He said, ‘I haven’t been dreaming at all.’ I said, ‘You’ve been jumping about on the bed.’ He said, ‘I don’t know anything about that. I can’t understand it.’

“I made him promise that he would come to my office the following morning for a complete physical exam. This he did, and I gave him every test but found him to be in excellent physical shape. I got his family history, and there were no cases of insanity or epilepsy among any of his antecedents or present relatives. In my investigation of psychic phenomena I had witnessed many so-called trance states, but this phenomenon he experienced seemed to be something different. Most of the trance cases I had contacted were those of emotionally unstable or hysterical women. But here was a hard-boiled business man, member of the board of trade and stock exchange, who didn’t believe in any of this nonsense and who had no recollection of what happened during these strange unwakeable sleep states.

“I told him I would like to keep him under observation, to which he readily agreed.

“Nothing happened for several weeks, and then, one night, about the same time, his wife called us and said he was having one of those spells again. We went down, and I gave him some more tests and tried new ways to rouse him all—without effect. His labored breathing, his sudden breaking off and then no breathing at all would have been alarming had not his pulse remained strong and even throughout. The whole thing was baffling. When he awakened, he was, as before, unconscious of anything having transpired.

“This sort of experience was repeated at different times of night until the fall of the year, when we were able to move to the residence of our choice. This man’s lease expired that same fall, and he moved into an apartment house in the same block so he could be near us.

“One night, when we were called to his new address, as we sat by the bedside, Dr. Lena noticed that he was moistening his lips as though he were preparing to speak. She said, ‘Perhaps he wants to talk to us. Maybe if we ask him a question, we’ll get an answer.’

“She did so, and to our great astonishment he did reply; but it was not his voice. It was that of what we afterward learned to be a student visitor on an observation trip here from a far distant planet! This being apparently conversed with us through this sleeping subject and expressed ideas and philosophies which struck us as entirely new.

“I had been led to believe, through previous study and research, that all such manifestations, however phenomenal, were the work of the subconscious. I therefore got this man in my office several days later, since other entities were apparently coming through him, and secured his permission to submit to hypnotism that I might explore his subconscious.

“It was difficult to get him under, but when I finally did so, I was amazed to find no consciousness whatsoever of the subjects discussed by these purported beings, which we had all, by this time, started to record in longhand and later combined.

“I now felt that I needed help in solving the causes behind this mysterious phenomenon, and I called in other Doctors and scientists, friends of mine, as well as Houdini¹¹ and Thurston.¹² They were equally unable to furnish any explanation. Finding by now that we could communicate by direct voice with different student visitors and other beings, we began to look forward to each ‘contact,’ as we came to call them, and enjoy the opportunity of asking questions, which always brought the most stimulating and unexpected answers.

“We took to writing out questions in advance about the universe and asking them verbally whenever given the chance. Finally, as a test, I worked out fifty-two questions privately and memorized them in my own mind [the Doctor was noted for a photographic memory], deciding to wait and see whether these so-called student visitors might be able to divine what was in my own consciousness.

“One night, a particularly electrifying personality seemed to be present from a distant planet and had greatly excited us by his comments. As he was about to go, I addressed him, saying, ‘How can you prove that you are who you say you are?’ He replied, ‘I cannot prove, but you cannot prove that I am not.’ He then stunned me by continuing, ‘However, I have just received permission to answer forty-six of the fifty-two questions you have been holding in your mind.

“Dr. Lena spoke up and said, ‘Why, Will, you haven’t any such questions, have you?’ And I had to admit, ‘Yes, Lena, the exact number!’

“This personality then proceeded to give me the answer to the forty-six as promised. When he had finished, he said, ‘If you people really knew what you had here, you wouldn’t take up our time asking silly, trivial questions like this. You would ask us something really significant and important.’

“We got home around one thirty that night, but there was no sleep in the Sadler household. We stayed up the rest of the night discussing and formulating questions so that we might be prepared for the next contact.

“At this point I must go back and tell you that a few months previously I had made a lecture trip to the University of Kansas; and while there, I wrote a letter to my son, Bill, suggesting that since we seldom went to church, though I often talked in churches, I thought it would be a good idea if he and his mother would consider inviting in regularly for Sunday afternoon tea, about twenty or thirty friends with whom we might discuss religion or any other subject of mutual interest, and perhaps I would give them a little talk to stimulate these discussions. When I returned home the following Sunday noon, I found Dr. Lena and Bill had already acted upon my suggestion and were having about thirty people in that afternoon. This was about the first of October, 1923, as I recall.

“It was in November that I was asked by some members of this little social group, which we had come to call the Forum, if I wouldn’t tell of some of my experiences in abnormal psychology. And since we had not been prohibited from talking about the phenomena we had been witnessing, I related to them my encounter with this sleeping subject and the strange communications we were receiving through him, and told of our being challenged to ask real questions. It suddenly occurred to me as I got to this point—why not enlist the services of this group in the asking of such questions, and I called upon them to help me. I said, ‘Come back next Sunday with all the profound questions you can think of, having to do with God and the universe, and we’ll see if these intelligences can answer them.'

“The following Sunday the group arrived with over four thousand questions! Dr. Lena and I spent several days sorting and classifying them. Then we held them in readiness, hoping for the opportunity of ‘calling the bluff’ of the higher intelligences. We were, as we thought, ‘loaded for bear.’

“Some weeks went by and nothing happened. We thought we had them stumped, and then one morning at 6:00 a.m., the phone rang. It was the man’s wife calling, ‘Come over, quick!’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Is he still asleep?’ ‘Yes, but that’s not it,’ she replied. Please get over here—hurry!’

“We dressed like volunteer firemen and arrived out of breath. She led us to the desk in his study and picked up a voluminous manuscript of 472 pages, written in his own hand. I said, ‘Where did this come from?’ She said, ‘I don’t know. He made some strange noises in his sleep and woke me up, and I saw it here on the desk.’ I asked, ‘Has he been out of bed?’ She said, ‘Not to my knowledge. I don’t see how he could have gotten out without waking me, and he’s not awake yet.’ I said, ‘Is this his handwriting?’ She said, ‘It’s his handwriting all right but I don’t see how he could have done it.’

“I took a look at the manuscript and saw to my great astonishment that it was the answer to all of the questions that had been formulated by ourselves in our Forum group!

“I couldn’t wait any longer. I took this bulky manuscript into the bedroom and wakened the subject. I said, ‘Do you know what you have been doing in your sleep?’ He said, ‘I haven’t been doing anything.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, you have—look at this! Isn’t this your handwriting?’ He stared at the manuscript. ‘Yes, it’s my handwriting,’ he identified, ‘but I didn’t do it.’

“I estimated that it would take a normal individual seven to eight hours, writing at top speed, and the subject matter was so profound and yet so intelligently set down that I knew it was beyond human capacity to achieve. I phoned Christy¹³ and told her to bring over at once a ‘grip device’ for testing muscular fatigue. I reasoned, if he had physically written all this, my right arm would give evidence of it, but the device registered no fatigue whatsoever.

“We took the papers home and had them typed. They concerned the Universal Father, the Supreme Being, the Central and Superuniverses, and the Isle of Paradise. It was an unforgettable occasion when I appeared before the Forum group and announced, ‘Well, we got the answers to our questions all right,’ and they sat awestruck and speechless as we read the papers to them. This was all we needed. Reading of these papers led to hundreds and thousands more questions, and more papers commenced coming through.

“We found there seemed to be an organized group of high intelligences on ‘the other side,’ prepared to present to us the whole astounding story of the universe, leading from God, the Universal Father, down to the origin of the human creature, man, and his ultimate glorious destiny beyond the reaches of time and space.

“This continued for perhaps seven or eight years when what we considered the first edition of the papers was finished. At that time, the Forum received its first direct message, and its members were advised that now, since their knowledge had been expanded, they should be able to ask more intelligent questions and that if they would do so, as they commenced a rereading of each paper, these intelligences would completely revise the entire, tremendous manuscript.

“This job was finished about two to two and a half years ago, and again we all thought the manuscript was finally complete; but we were told, at this time, that the world events for which this revelation was designed were rapidly culminating [this was in 1939 before Hitler started his assault on the countries of Europe], and we would begin to see that those who had this revelation in charge did not intend to make it public until after the Second World War.

“It was finally decided by those controlling transmission of the Urantia Book to permit seventy-five papers giving a detailed and comprehensive account of Jesus’ life on earth, from His birth to His death, to be added. The book is eventually to be published without any human personalities to be identified with it in any way and no authorship ascribed to it. These higher beings have refused to use their own names and have only specified their type of being in the universe.

“There are only a few of us still living who were in touch with this phenomenon in the beginning, and when we die, the knowledge of it will die with us. Then the book will exist as a great spiritual mystery, and no human will know the manner in which it came about.”