What follows is a partial account of Harold and Martha Sherman’s experiences with Dr. Sadler and the Urantia Forum, taken from the 1976 book How to Know What to Believe, written in hindsight when Sherman was 78 years old. Some statements conflict with their diaries written in real time (published in their entirety in five volumes as The Urantia Diaries of Harold and Martha Sherman), and these discrepancies are footnoted here. While Sherman gave false names to those involved to prevent possible lawsuits, here we have substituted their real names, as they have all passed away.

* * *

. . . Somehow Martha and I felt that this project in Chicago was different—that it was, at last, what had been claimed for it: a true revelation, presented by a Corps of Higher Intelligences, designed to “serve humanity’s needs for the next thousand years.”

Undoubtedly, it was Harry’s feeling for it that had conditioned us. Our close association with him and our confidence in his own demonstrated higher powers of consciousness had caused us to accept the Urantia manuscript, sight unseen, as something really super. . . .

How much Harry knew about what we were to encounter, we perhaps will never know. He had been careful not to “color” in advance any impressions we might have of the Urantia Book and the people behind it by any comments he might make while in our presence. . . .

It should be stated here that Martha and I had stopped off in Chicago in July of 1941, en route to Hollywood, to meet Dr. William S. Sadler, noted psychiatrist, at which time we were accepted as Forum members upon signing a pledge of secrecy. This permitted us to return to Chicago, when possible, to read the Urantia papers on the premises, but we were not allowed to mention or discuss them with anyone outside the Forum members until the Urantia Book itself was published.

The contact with Dr. Sadler and the Urantia papers had been arranged by phone by his cousin, Mrs. Josephine Davis of Marion, Indiana, who, with her Doctor husband, Merrill, had engaged in psychic research with us during the time we had lived in Marion in the early 1920s.

Later, when we arrived on the coast and told Harry we had joined up in Chicago with those in charge of the Urantia Book manuscript, which he had written us about, Harry was delighted.

It was perhaps because of my profession as a writer, the recent Mark Twain work, and the reputation that had come to me through the experiment in long-distance telepathy with the Arctic explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, that the presence of Martha and myself in Chicago to study the Urantia papers caused quite a stir among Forum members.

This gave us an immediate personal contact with the Doctor and his secretary, Miss Emma (Christy) Christensen, and members of the Doctor’s family: his son, Bill Jr., and his son’s wife, Leone; a brother-in-law and wife, Wilfred and Anna Kellogg. There was also the financier G. Willard Hales, with his wife, his son, Bill Jr., and [Bill’s] wife, Mary Lou.

It was somewhat embarrassing for us to be placed in such a favored position at the outset against so many old-time members, especially at social occasions when we were invited to sit at the great man’s table. However, all members seemed to accept any mandate of the Doctor without question or complaint.

As new members, Martha and I had to do a vast amount of “catch up” reading, which necessitated our spending some hours in the library of the three-story brick building each day. The papers were brought to us from the vault in typewritten form by Christy, in chronological order—ninety two in all—and it required almost three months for the entire Urantia manuscript to be completed, with Martha and I reading it together. We were told that the original script had been burned after typed copies had been made to preserve the anonymity as well as the identity of the human instrument through whom the “revelations” had come.

On August 20, our friends H.C. and Mary Mattern came through Chicago on their annual tour of big city firms for which they did the cleaning and preserving of leather-upholstered office furniture. We had planned to introduce them to Dr. Sadler on their arrival and to arrange for their membership in the Urantia Forum.

It was an evening appointment, and we found the Doctor to be in an unusually amiable, talkative mood, disposed to give us a more complete version of the origin of the papers than we had ever heard before or since. As soon as the long session was over, Martha and I crossed the street to our apartment in the Cambridge Hotel and worked into the early morning to make a detailed written record of the information that the Doctor had imparted. [See Chapter One: The Beginning for this account.]

* * *

Different Forum members had heard different versions concerning the origin of the papers. One of them was to the effect that a young stockbroker, name withheld, was found by his wife sitting at his writing table in his bedroom one night in a trance state, simultaneously writing two different papers of deep philosophic content, one with each hand. The wife, unable to rouse him, phoned their friend, a psychiatrist, who arrived in time to witness the psychic phenomenon, and who read the stack of typewriter-sized pages that had been pushed off onto the floor, sheet by sheet.

Impressed as well as mystified, the Doctor expressed the opinion that some passing psychic influence had taken possession of the sleeping subject, and it would probably never happen again but if it did, he was to be called. A few nights later, this phenomenon reoccurred, and the amazed Doctor was told that he was to be the custodian of this incoming material, which was beyond the knowledge of the human instrument; and that a book, which would startle the world, was to be dictated by higher intelligences.

Thus began a strange and dramatic human saga which started in 1911 and continued for almost half a century, with paper after paper of this voluminous manuscript appearing, each containing a chapter describing the nature of creation and the unthinkably great God behind it; the seven superuniverses in which were countless inhabited planets; various classifications of beings, including guardian angels and ending up with a new life of Jesus, one of numberless Creator Sons who had the power to create worlds and all life thereon.

Some one to two hundred fascinated Forum members, exposed to these papers, one by one each week, were purportedly observed in the invisible by the higher intelligences who had dictated the material, their reactions studied, and papers edited accordingly if some sections were not apparently understood. In any event, papers were corrected from time to time, and sometimes magically appeared, they were told, even typed, on the desk in the Doctor’s office.

We observed that the Forum members accepted these stories without question. This blind acceptance of everything associated with the Urantia Book made it difficult for Martha and me to properly evaluate the Urantia material. As we became acquainted with more and more Forum members, they confided that after the death of the Doctor’s wife, Dr. Lena [in 1939], they had noticed a growing tendency for the Doctor to be irascible and adamant whenever anyone associated with him showed indications of not conforming to his thoughts and ideas. They said he could be agreeable and even charming at times, until he felt himself to be crossed in any way or questioned about his conduct of the Urantia affairs. We were to have ample evidence of this developing side of his nature as time went on. . . .

The more we thought about the Urantia Book, the more we came up with more questions than answers. Since we had social access to the Sadlers, father and son, we took our questions to them, sometimes in written form. Bill Jr., like his father, had a photographic memory and could discourse on different chapters of the book, quoting them at length.

Some of the questions we raised were:

1. Why, with the detailed description of super beings and lines of communication existing between planets, was there no chapter in the book which explained the psychic phenomena taking place on earth?
2. How did it happen that the Jesus Papers “came through” after the book itself was announced as completed—a book which had made no mention of Jesus as such?
3. Why, since the knowledge was supposed to be universal, applicable to all humanity, did it limit its scope and appeal and interpretation by adding a “new life of Jesus,” tying it in with the Christian religion, after the Urantia Book was declared “finished” as of 1934?

Martha and I received no satisfactory answer to these questions. Instead, Dr. Sadler characteristically showed a flare of temper, to which we now had become accustomed, when any member asked him a question he considered impertinent or uncalled for

Had it not been for our great and almost overwhelming interest in the Urantia papers at the time, we would not have persisted. The interest of all Forum members had been heightened by the Doctor’s telling us in recent Forum sessions that we should be thinking and preparing for a time in the fall when he had been instructed to surrender his custodianship of the Urantia project to the Forum. When this happened, we must assume the responsibility for the financing, publication, and distribution of the Urantia Book.

One night we invited Christy to our apartment as a dinner guest. During the evening we quite naturally discussed the Urantia Book. I pointed out to her that when it would be published, people would wonder why no mention was made of telepathy or other psychic phenomena as a preparation for the existence of such powers in higher realms. Then came the “shocker.” Christy said she agreed with my contention, and since Sir Hubert Wilkins
and I, as a result of our thought transference tests, had perhaps as much knowledge as anyone, why didn’t we write a chapter explaining them. The Doctor could submit our paper for consideration of the “higher ups,” and if they okayed it, it could be inserted in the Urantia Book.

“Why, I wouldn’t pretend to have the authoritative knowledge that the intelligences behind this book have,” I replied, trying to conceal my astonishment. “Why don’t you call this significant absence of needed connective material to their attention and let them supply the information?”
⁹

Christy indicated that they would think about it, and the subject was dropped. But for Christy to have made this suggestion clearly revealed that humanly written insertions had been put in the manuscript, and later evidence came to light when member Clyde Bedell, one of Chicago’s prominent businessmen, confronted the Doctor with extensive almost word-for-word quotes from author Emery Reves’ well known book, A Democratic Manifesto, which were contained in a Urantia chapter. The explanation: “Occasionally, when the intelligences dictating the Urantia papers come across something expressed on a subject by a human, as well as they could express it, they authorize its inclusion.”

As a result of this disillusioning experience with Christy, I felt I should make one last attempt to impress Dr. Sadler with the seriousness of the matter, so I sent him a registered letter, hoping to command his personal attention. It read as follows:

Dear Dr. Sadler:

Some several months after we came here and had carefully read the Urantia papers, I questioned you concerning the glaring absence of any paper on “psychic phenomena”—such as humans have verifiably experienced on earth in times past and are experiencing now. And yet the book deals authoritatively with many phases of spiritual phenomena beyond the grasp, sensing, and actual understanding of average man.

Eventual readers of this great document in public form are going to be expected to accept the existence of all these higher phenomena on faith. But, since man is an experiential being, and we must consider him on the basis of his present development and enlightenment, he is going to be sorely perplexed at finding no mention or explanation of “psychic experiences” which he knows he has had which give him evidence that telepathy, under certain conditions, is a fact; that there are such things as astral visitations on occasion; and that the so called dead are permitted to return on certain missions and under certain circumstances. I am not talking spiritualism when I make this latter statement.

You decided, personally, long years ago on your own admission to me, that there were no genuine phenomena except that of the nature you had encountered with the “instrument” and the other “sleeping contacts” reported to you.

Millions of humans now living and still to be born will challenge this attitude as reflected in the pages of the Urantia Book, for too many “psychic experiences” are occurring right along to which they can testify. And no scientist can laugh these experiences off or explain them away.

It is a great error and will arouse great controversy, confusion, and dissension for the Urantia Book to indicate positively that no one can communicate with the dead and that the dead, under no circumstances, can or do return to this earth. This is a deliberate wrong statement and un-truth and cannot have been made by higher intelligences, for they know better. With the Urantia Book containing such false inferences, many humans who have had genuine experiences are not going to know what sections of the book to believe or disbelieve, and they are apt to end up by doubting it all.

I submitted a series of questions covering the entire subject to “psychic phenomena” months ago. Were they carefully gone over by you and the other “contact commissioners” and presented for consideration and possible answering in the former regular manner, or were they pigeonholed arbitrarily by you because you have a set human conviction that none of the “psychic phenomena” are actually existent?

Have you, by your attitude, altered or excluded any material or truths which should be in this Urantia Book?

You know, in your own mind and heart, the steps you have taken which have not been authorized by higher intelligences. You will have to answer for each one of these steps . . . but there is still time for you to clear up much.

It should hardly be necessary for me to remind you that, if any material intended for the Urantia Book has been withheld or wrongly interpreted or purposely misunderstood or altered for personal or biased reasons, or because of a “closed mind” attitude, you will be held responsible as trusted custodian for centuries yet to come.

My only interest, as always, is in the purity, unadulterated genuineness, and complete authenticity of the Urantia Book. I shall know, and others will know, if when it is published, any of the papers have been tampered with for any human reason whatsoever.

Sincerely,
Harold Sherman

This communication, addressed to the Doctor, brought no reply.¹⁰ But Martha and I were in for another disturbing factor when, upon reading the legal papers concerning the incorporation of the Urantia Society, we found provisions for a self-perpetuating board of directors who never intended to give up custodianship, who could vote themselves any salaries they wished, or invest any monies received as desired, rather than putting the resources behind further exploitation and publication of the book itself. These stipulations ran counter to the directions purportedly received from the higher intelligences, as well as the assurances the Doctor had given the members who had already contributed monies to books of his own that he had published, as well as toward the financing of the forthcoming Urantia Book.

For a man with the distinguished background of Dr. Sadler, who was one of the great pioneer psychiatrists of his day, an outstanding authority on comparative religions, who presented theological seminars for assemblies of The United Protestant ministers, it is readily understandable why he had been “chosen” as “custodian” by “higher intelligences” in charge of the reception of these spiritual messages. Old-time Forum members said that Dr. Lena had been the “balance wheel” in this unusual medical team, but with her passing, the Doctor seemed to become less tolerant and more impatient with Forum members who disagreed with him.

With the closing down of the Sunday afternoon Forum meetings for the summer recess, the Doctor again announced that he was surrendering his custodianship at the first fall session, which announcement was greeted with a fever of excitement and anticipation. The membership at large could hardly wait for a gathering shortly thereafter at the home of Dent and Elsie Karle for the purpose of exchanging thoughts and ideas.

At this meeting I inquired if they knew, of course, that the charter for the Urantia Society did not permit any turnover of the custodianship, that it was held in trust for the Doctor, his family, and the Haleses, and that the rank and file members actually had no voting control or participating rights. This was news to all present, although some recalled the Doctor having read the charter straight through, when first drawn up, allowing no questions and calling for a vote of approval, which was unhesitatingly given.

Clyde Bedell, one of the most active members, volunteered to go to the Doctor’s office, read a copy of the charter, and report back.
Within a week, the Karles phoned Forum members and invited them to come to their home again, stating that Bedell had read the charter and had a report to make. “Harold was right,” he said, “and I think something should be done about it.”

He then produced a petition to be presented to Dr. Sadler, which he had personally drawn up, based on some of the points I had raised in my letter to the Doctor. The petition was ready for signing. It called in a friendly way for a discussion of the charter as a first order of business when the Forum reconvened in the fall.

After some discussion, the petition was passed around and all except Al and Charlotte Dyon affixed their signatures.

“Come on,” urged Bedell. “Let’s make it a hundred percent!” And the reluctant Dyons signed.

Then a volunteer committee of Luther Evans, Dent Karle, and Elsie Baumgartner was formed to call upon the Doctor and present the petition.
The Dyons suffered pangs of conscience intermingled with fear as they contemplated what they had done in putting their signatures on the petition. They didn’t sleep that night, and when morning came, they were of one mind they must go to the Doctor and privately inform him of what was getting ready to happen.

The Doctor listened to the Dyons’ account and told them they had “been moved to protect the Urantia project by the higher intelligences,” that they would be rewarded for their actions, and that he was “now receiving instructions” as to just how to handle this “uprising.”

When the committee of three arrived later that day, the Doctor surprised them by stating that he knew what they were coming to see him about, that he had been “taken out of his physical body the night before and transported to the Karle house in his spirit form,” where he “saw and listened to everything that was said in the invisible.”

He told the astounded committee that it had been revealed to him that Harold Sherman was “under the influence of Lucifer for the purpose of destroying this Urantia by planting the seeds of distrust and revolt in Forum minds.” The Doctor went on to say that Martha Sherman was “an innocent dupe of this evil influence manifesting through her husband,” but that Sherman would be dealt with; and that every Forum member who had signed this petition must come in, ask forgiveness, and personally scratch out his or her signature. Otherwise, they would run the risk of excommunication, even loss of eternal life.

The committee members retreated in utter confusion and bewilderment, leaving the signed petition in the Doctor’s keeping. He told them that every member who had affixed his or her signature would be given a chance to undo what he had done before a sentence would be pronounced upon them.

Martha and I, situated in the Cambridge Hotel across the street, had previously been kept informed of all Forum interests by various members. Knowing the time the committee was to meet with the Doctor, we awaited word as to the outcome. It did not come. A day passed, then another, no phone calls, complete silence from every front. We finally phoned several members at whose homes we had been dinner guests and had enjoyed the friendliest of relationships. All we could learn was that “something terrible happened,” and that we would hear about it later, probably from the Doctor himself. No one was talking.

Finally a telephone call from the hotel lobby. A woman Forum member whom we had not yet met introduced herself. “My name is Rachel Gusler. Could I come up and speak with you a moment?” She appeared to be in her fifties, soft-spoken, apparently deeply concerned.

“I’ve been told some awful things about you, especially Mr. Sherman,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe them, so I decided to come and see for myself.”

Then she informed us for the first time of what had occurred and the wrathful action the Doctor was now taking. Christy had been phoning and setting up appointments with each Forum member, at fifteen-minute intervals all day and into the night, and the Doctor had been telling Forum members individually of the attempted “Lucifer rebellion.” Each had been required to ask forgiveness, then take his or her name off the petition, following which the women members had received a kiss from the Doctor as a “symbol” of their “forgiveness.”

The great majority of the signers were bowing to this decree. Mrs. Gusler said that she, herself, had taken her name off the petition, but she didn’t know why. But she refused to let the Doctor kiss her and told him she would have to know more about both sides of this issue before she could make up her mind. She went on to say that she had never met the Shermans; but that they had seemed like nice, honorable people, and she found it hard to believe that Mr. Sherman had been animated by the Lucifer spirit.

When she told us that she knew of only four others of the entire group of signators who had resisted the purported command from the spiritual authors of the Urantia Book to have nothing to do with the Shermans, we commended her for her courage and forthrightness. Mrs. Gusler said Forum members were being instructed to ostracize us completely, not to speak to us by phone or in person or have anything to do with us directly or indirectly. We were to be treated as though we didn’t exist; and members were led to believe that they were being spied upon in the invisible and that the Doctor would be made aware of any infraction of this mandate, which would result in their punishment.

By dealing with the members singly, rather than facing them as a group, the Doctor was able to exercise his authority without challenge, and each was given to understand that when all names had been expunged from the petition, the Doctor would call in Harold and Martha Sherman and dispose of them in line with special instructions from higher sources.

Mrs. Gusler went on to say that Forum members, talking among themselves, privately referred to Dr. Sadler as “the little Pope,” and his specially selected “board of control” as the “Vatican,” but all admitted their helplessness in speaking out against his rule, however such a protest might be justified.

“We’ve got to go along with him, like it or not,” Clyde Bedell conceded. “I don’t know what to make of his charges of Sherman being animated by the spirit of Lucifer, but maybe the Doctor has access to knowledge not possible to us. He’s certainly taking radical action, and he told me that he had been instructed not to turn over the custodianship at the fall meeting, that until the Lucifer rebellion had been put down, the destiny of the Urantia project was in peril and needed every protection.

* * *

It required a little over a week for every Forum member who had signed the petition to be contacted and put through the ritual of removing their signatures. Then, Dr. Sadler had announced, it would be the Shermans’ turn to “face judgment.”

When Christy phoned us, Martha answered. She was crying as she told her that we were to see the Doctor at four o’clock that afternoon without fail. Martha assured her that we would be there.

At the fateful hour of four, we were ushered into the presence of the “great man” by Christy, who gave evidence of being under high nervous tension. The Doctor sat in the meeting room, his short, pudgy frame giving the impression of a “little Napoleon,” as he gazed at us severely through thick-lensed glasses. He held some note papers in his hand, containing penciled scribbling.

“Sit down!” he ordered, waving the papers. “What I have to say applies mostly to Harold. I was told before Jo Davis sent you to us, to ‘beware of a writer who will make application to join the Urantia Society because he might be under the influence of Lucifer, without his knowledge, and might try to disrupt the Forum.’”

The Doctor then referred to the notes, which he said he had made at the time and put in his file and never thought of again until this incident occurred. He said he had never even told Christy of this happening until now. He then implied that Harold needed psychiatric treatment to free him from this Lucifer influence and expressed sympathy for Martha who should be relieved to have Harold’s mental condition corrected.

Martha and I looked at one another, and we both stood up at the same time. “We don’t believe a word of this!” I challenged. “Do you mean to say you would have had a warning from higher intelligences in whom you profess to have such faith, and would have forgotten it, and not immediately associated it with us when we appeared on the scene? Those notes you made were all phony!”

With this we walked out.

* * *

It was midsummer by this time, and in the weeks that followed few members got in touch with us; and if any chanced to see us on the street, they hastened to the other side or turned in the opposite direction to avoid any possible confrontation. At one time, I boarded a bus and saw Russell Bucklin seated at the other end. I moved toward him, and when Russell saw me coming, he leaped up and jumped off the bus with abject terror in his face. It was clearly evident that most Forum members had been completely dominated by fear.

What should or could we do about it? Should we fold up our tent and quietly steal away, or should we remain, attend the Forum meeting in the fall, and challenge the Doctor to make his charges against us in public so we could answer them? Would this prove to the Forum members that they, themselves, should not fear the Doctor or anything he or his higher powers could do to them, and perhaps bring the members to their senses, cause them to realize how ridiculous and false this whole procedure was?

After thoughtful deliberation, we decided to remain and face the issue, even though almost everyone had been turned against us and we knew the Doctor was confident we would not dare show up again on his premises. This ostracism was his conceived method of driving us away and ridding the Forum and the Urantia Book of the Lucifer menace. We could tell from the frightened and apprehensive attitudes of the Forum members that they were expecting some awful fate to befall us at any moment, even to the point of our being annihilated.

However, something happened to me about this time which gave Dr. Sadler and Forum members a severe jolt. I was contracted by the Goldblatt Brothers Department Stores to present a radio series six nights a week over Chicago Tribune station WGN, based on my book Your Key to Happiness, which I had presented over the CBS radio network in New York City some years before. This made me a well-known personality in the Chicago area and the personal-philosophy, question-and-answer program proved highly popular, breaking all mail return records.¹¹

* * *

The eventful day for the reopening of the Forum meetings finally arrived. Meeting time was always three o’clock sharp when Dr. Sadler would enter and take his position, a Urantia paper in hand, ready for reading. While the Forum members were coming in, the Doctor often followed a routine of standing at the top of the stairs, on the landing, with his secretary, Christy, welcoming and shaking hands with the arrivals.

Just inside the door, on the lower level, it was usually the custom of the Doctor’s brother-in-law, Wilfred Kellogg, to take his stand. Anyone who didn’t belong, who might have thought, with people going in, that this was a public meeting, could thus be screened out.

Five minutes before the starting time of three o-clock, most of the Forum members already present, we made our appearance. As we entered the door, Mr. Kellogg gave us a startled, unbelieving look and fled up the stairs to carry the news of our arrival to the Doctor.

As we mounted the stairs, we caught a glimpse of the Doctor hastily retreating from the stair landing, followed by Christy and Mr. Kellogg, seeking to avoid direct contact.

As we stepped inside the small auditorium itself, we saw astonished Forum members wondering where we would elect to sit. We glimpsed a row with only two people in it, halfway back, two seats on the aisle, to which we headed. The Forum members in this row quickly vacated, so we had the whole row for ourselves. No one spoke; they looked toward the Doctor, who was up front, as though expecting him to take some sort of barring action, but this was a situation that the Doctor didn’t know how to handle at the moment.

The reading of the Urantia paper began. Dr. Sadler’s hands shook as he read; he glanced uneasily from time to time at his audience and particularly at us. Things weren’t working out as he had planned. He knew now that he hadn’t been able to intimidate us. We were still alive and well and unafraid of him. This was a challenge to his entire authority.

When intermission time arrived and the Doctor prepared to leave the room, I stood up and addressed him as startled Forum members seemed to freeze in their seats.

“Dr. Sadler, you have made charges against me behind my back, which I am prepared to answer. Will you now repeat these charges to my face?”

The Doctor looked as though he might be on the verge of a stroke.

“You cannot speak!” he shouted. “You are a guest in my house!”

For answer, I left my row and walked to the front to take a position beside the frustrated Doctor.

“I am innocent of your charges and I demand the right to answer them!” I insisted.

“Sit down—you can’t speak—you are a guest in my house. Sit down!” the Doctor kept repeating.

At this point, the two husky Kulieke brothers, just back from military service together, left their seats and rushed forward, seizing me by the arms and shoulders. “Shall we throw him out?” they said to the Doctor.

Forum members were now in an uproar. Some were begging Martha to urge her husband to stop, to go back to his seat before something awful happened. One man leaned over Martha’s shoulder and whispered, “Sit tight!”

Bill Jr., the Doctor’s son, also of husky build, entered the scene threatening violence. The Doctor stood by, not knowing what to do or say, as I held my ground.

At this critical moment, a new figure entered the picture. He came from the annex-type room off at the side and was a new face to most Forum members. He was our friend, H.C. Mattern, attending a Forum meeting for the first time, and we had not known he was present.

“Take your hands off that man!” he ordered, pushing the surprised Kulieke brothers back and stepping between Bill Jr. and me. Then he grabbed me and pressed me against the side wall so no one could get behind us.

“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded Bill Jr. “You keep out of this!”
“Not until I know what this is all about!” said H.C. “But I know Harold Sherman, and if he is trying to defend himself against whatever has been said about him, he has a right to speak. I’d like to ask you all—is God in this house?”

“I consider that an insult!” shouted Bill Jr.

“He can’t speak—he’s a guest in my house!” the Doctor once more repeated.

I was watching the reaction of the Forum members. I wanted to see if this demonstration was revealing to them—was showing them how tyrannical the Doctor was, that he must have something to fear, something he wanted to cover up, which he thought might come out in open discussion.

Amazingly enough, no one came to my defense. They sat petrified, as H.C. maintained his protective position, holding off the intended attackers.

Realizing that I had gone as far as I could in establishing that Martha and I had no fear of the Doctor and no respect for the type of authority he was exercising over the Forum members, I went back to Martha, and the two of us left the auditorium.

* * *

Thereafter, for five continuous years, we attended every Sunday Forum meeting, without exception, remaining only for a complete reading of the Urantia papers to show our continuing interest in the material itself, and then leaving at intermission. We did not stay for the Doctor’s question-and-answer period, indicating a total lack of respect for or fear of him personally, and also demonstrating that he had no power to hurt or destroy us or anyone else . . . and that the Doctor and his “ruling body” did not know how to cope with this situation. Help was obviously not coming from any higher source. All threats had been the Doctor’s own conniving and pretense.

All this time, we sat pretty much by ourselves, most members avoiding personal contact. . . .

As for us, we felt that the extraordinary nature of some of the writings gave proof of a high spiritual source, even though we now knew we could never endorse the book when it was finally published, because of editorial liberties that we were sure had been taken with it.¹²