During the 70’s, a small sect of young people, given the name the counterculture, proclaimed our society to be in a crisis. I think of them as an example of what historian Arnold Toynbee called the “creative minorities,” on which “the fate of a society always depends.” (fr. A Study of History) Pope Benedict in speaking about a cure for Europe’s crisis in 2008 saw that the work of such a group, as described by Toynbee, was needed in Europe to “reintroduce the religious dimension.” Many features of the impending doom evident in the 70’s, the environmental crash, aggravated racial conflicts, the loss of confidence were prescient of our current times. But the societal meltdown of my youth looks quaint in comparison to the present mood of crisis, intensified as it is now.

   “Only the real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the present crisis of civilization.” (The Urantia Book, The UB, 99:2.1)

   We retreated from our corrupt social organizations to plant ourselves as seeds for a better way of life, the one that would emerge when establishment structures finally collapsed. As a spiritually hungry truth seeker in a period before I found The Urantia Book, I was trying out a lot of recipes, getting my wisdom from rock and roll lyrics, astrology charts, psychic readings, New Age books, along with stimulative soupçons about “The Supreme” from the Upanishads. Many, then and now, have regarded the counterculture as fanatical. I knew wise spiritual teachings were needed, and that I needed an experience of personal transformation before I could even begin to help society progress and transform.

   Necessary information that we need to survive and grow is brought by messengers who come into our lives at crucial points I believe. Is it providence, or guardian seraphim orchestrating such messenger events to enhance our potentials and progress?

   “Seraphim are mind stimulators; they continually seek to promote circle-making decisions in human mind. They do this, not as does the Adjuster, operating from within and through the soul, but rather from the outside inward, working through the social, ethical, and moral environment of human beings.” (113:4.1)

   I was once surprised at a certain unlikely figure who appeared in my life bearing an important message. I was tempted to call it providential, “But what man calls providence is all too often the product of his own imagination, the fortuitous juxtaposition of the circumstances of chance. There is, however, a real and emerging providence in the finite realm of universe existence, a true and actualizing correlation of the energies of space, the motions of time, the thoughts of intellect, the ideals of character, the desires of spiritual natures, and the purposive volitional acts of evolving personalities.” (118:10.7) Nevertheless I succumbed to the human temptation of believing providence had intervened on my behalf, as it had been doing throughout that whole year. “Every phase of personality experience on every successive level of universe progression swarms with clues to the discovery of alluring personal realities.” (12:9.1)

   So it was on a day in the latter part of the burned-out 70’s that I went to a lecture by the famous astrologer and philosopher, Dane Rudhyar, who was then about 81 or 82 years old. I found him puzzlingly bored with astrology at this late point in his career, a thought that leapt to mind perhaps because my own disinterest with astrology had begun. He apparently preferred to be consulted as a spiritual, Jungian, or transpersonal, psychologist, and these were the topics that inspired eloquence from him. Mr. Rudhyar’s words encouraged us to aspire to “the central Solar will and purpose of the individual.” When I did read The Urantia Book later, I found echoes of such a higher way, teachings like “The purpose of all education should be to foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the development of a majestic and well-balanced personality.” (195:10.17)

   Rudhyar spoke about the “gateway to higher consciousness,” how we must find a way to enter into it. My quest for enlightenment had been solitary and contemplative, but he connected this search for wisdom to a spiritual mission, work in the world, service to a great cause. He was selling a small booklet he’d written called “Seed Man.” I was so smitten with it that I bought several copies to give away to friends and relatives. Rudhyar’s ideas played well to this audience who remained, like myself, possessed by a mission to save civilization from imminent disaster. Here is how his booklet begins http://www.khaldea.com/rudhyar/seed.shtml:

   “I feel we are at the threshold of a new age and that we need now, more than anything else, a new approach to human relationships and to social organization. We need a planetary approach, we need a synthetic approach … if you are to have a global world, the individual has to be so well established in his own identity that he can afford to cooperate with other people all over the world, independent of their culture, their race, their traditions, and so on.

   “It is very important therefore, that one should learn how to establish oneself in one's own identity. We need a new type of human being… based no longer so much on conflict, but on a full acceptance of the total human being, body, mind, soul, feelings, everything. An esthetic approach versus an ethical approach, so that you can see the relationship in which everything stands inside of the whole, so you can look at the whole and become identified with the "wholeness" of that whole, rather than with any particular part.”

   What a marvelous calling!

   “Man can even now foretaste this providence in its eternity meanings.” (118:10.18)

   Jesus famously used the metaphor of the seed in his teachings. “This gospel of the kingdom is a living truth. I have told you it is … like the grain of mustard seed; and now I declare that it is like the seed of the living being, which, from generation to generation, while it remains the same living seed, unfailingly unfolds itself in new manifestations and grows acceptably in channels of new adaptation to the peculiar needs and conditions of each successive generation.” (178:1.15)

   Soon after receiving inspired words from Dane Rudhyar, I had a synchronous encounter with another messenger who shared some wisdom that helped her, “The real universe is friendly to every child of the eternal God.” (133:5.8) “Where did you find that?” I wondered, and she invited me to have a look at The Urantia Book. One thing led to another, a dream, a vow, a faith, a love, and within a couple of years we were happily married.

   The torch, the urgent cause of the preservation of civilization, passed to a small band of Urantia Book readers, another “creative minority.” Over the years afterwards I studied The UB, itself a seed of wisdom, a brilliant synthesis of ideas derived from many, even “more than two thousand … sources,” (121:8.13) perhaps also a Melchizedek move to conserve our history and wisdom, conveniently put into one handy anthology, calling us to plant ourselves as seeds for the future.