Through Harry's former connection as detective at Hull House, we had made arrangements with the attorneys in charge of the estate to permit me to dramatize the life of Jane Addams, world renowned Social Settlement woman, which gave us the excuse to come to Chicago in May of 1942 after having written the screenplay on the life of Mark Twain for Warner Brothers.

At a time in my writing career when practicality dictated that I should have taken advantage of the recognition and opportunity that had come to me on the coast, we might have stayed on in Hollywood and continued to write for pictures. Certainly it would have been much more lucrative than the gamble of this new creative assignment, but we were willing to put everything else aside.

Not only that, but to free our minds as much as possible for concentration on this massive New Revelation manuscript, we sent our younger daughter, Marcia, to stay with relatives in Traverse City, Michigan, for the summer, and our older daughter, Mary, to a position as a receptionist at Hull House. We had been told it would require a number of months to thoughtfully go through the manuscript once, and as a consequence, we mapped out a schedule of four to five hours of reading a day.

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 Great 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. Henry Norton, 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 New Revelation papers on the premises, but we were not allowed to mention or discuss them with anyone outside the Forum members until the New Revelation Book itself were published.

Later, when we arrived on the coast and told Harry we had joined up in Chicago with those in charge of the Great 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 experiments in long distance telepathy with the Arctic Explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, that the presence of Martha and myself in Chicago to study the New Revelation papers caused quite a stir among the Forum members.

This gave us an immediate personal contact with the doctor and his secretary, Miss Cynthia Frederick (Cindy) and the members of the doctor's family: his son, Henry Junior, and his son's wife, Loretta; a brother-in-law and wife, Alfred and Lucy Buxton. There was also the financier Raymond Stafford, with his wife, his son, Ray Junior, and wife, Marjory. 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.

Ninety two papers could not be a correct number. The ninety-second paper falls in the middle of Part III on The History of Urantia. Either the Shermans were not given all Papers, or Sherman's memory was faulty. The Papers were identified by number; Sherman would certainly have noted missing Papers.

The preliminary materials, containing the hand writing of SS, were burned. The actual revelation disappeared miraculously. Refer to preceding chapters.

Sadler recognized that he had a phenomenon on his hands which went beyond his experience as a medical doctor and psychiatrist. He could not isolate the behavior of SS to the subconscious or marginal consciousness of the man. This inability continued for more than twenty years, long after his study under Freud, and after his greatly varied experience with other patients. To convince himself that it went beyond any natural explanation he consulted magicians and other individuals expert in various forms of psychic performances or in public deception.

It can be seen that Sadler was becoming attracted by the quality and cosmic content of the material.

"We took to writing 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 had them in my own mind. (The doctor was noted for his photographic memory), deciding to wait and see whether those 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 it -- but you can not 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.'

If this record is accurate it would demonstrate the remarkable ability of Sadler to hold a large number of questions, in catalog order, in his mind. It would also demonstrate the ability of spirit beings to read our minds, and to know our thoughts. We traditionally place such powers in the hands of God, but this suggests that such powers exist at all levels of spirit operations.

Sadler truly must have been stunned. He would have immediately recognized that no human mortal could have read his mind in such detail. SS, asleep, certainly could not have done it. Only invisible spirit personalities would have possessed such power. Quite likely, this was the first of Sadler's introductions to the "miraculous" nature of the phenomena unfolding before him. Our visitors were taking initial steps to convince him of their authenticity.

"Dr. Ruth spoke up and said, 'Why Henry, you haven't any such questions, have you?' And I had to admit, 'Yes, Ruth, 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 something really significant and important.'

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

Sherman's account of the sequence of events, either through Sadler's confusion, or Sherman's, contradicts other anecdotal evidence. The circumstance of the remark about asking important questions to elicit elevated information, the episode of more than 400 pages of written material appearing in the apartment of SS, and associated details -- all vary from one anecdote to another. If this episode actually took place, as described, then another, similar, episode took place after the Forum members began asking questions. This seems hardly possible, but the circumstances may have been repeated.

The heavy impact of the episode upon the Sadler's is plainly evident

If the Sherman record is accurate, the members of the Sunday afternoon meeting did not get around to serious psychic discussions until a month later.

This was an example Sadler's usual habit of making use of circumstances to further his work, getting other people involved, and broadening his base of research.

The sudden occurrence in Sadler's mind may not have been accidental, but may have been influenced by the spiritual forces which surround us, and which, if we are listening, may lead us on to deeper insights into God and his operations.

"The following Sunday the group arrived with over four thousand questions! Dr. Ruth 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 happened?' I asked. 'Is he still asleep?' 'Yes, but that's not it,' she replied. 'Please get over here -- hurry!'

"We dressed like volunteer fireman 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 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 Cindy and told her to bring over at once a 'grip device' for testing muscular fatigue. I reasoned, if he had physically written all this, his right arm would give evidence of it -- but the device registered no fatigue what-so-ever.

"We took the papers home and had them typed. They concerned the Universal Father, the Supreme Being, The Central and Super Universes, 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.

One of the difficulties Sadler and the group faced was lack of adequate vocabulary to express their experiences, or to describe their relationship with celestial beings. "On the other side" is a phrase commonly associated with physic phenomena and channeling. This phrase was used for lack of anything better.

Seven or eight years would take the activity into 1930 or 1931. At this point Sadler felt they had the "complete" revelation, but it was limited to the first three parts, without the Jesus Papers. Also, we see that the celestial agents proceed through reiteration of activity to bring the Forum members into closer intellectual, emotional, and spiritual attachment to the Revelation. They apparently now received a "revised" edition of the preliminary Papers to further develop this bond.

By "this job" Sadler does not mean the process of revelation. He means the total task, including typing, making copies, and proof reading, in preparation for publication. "Two years ago" would take the completion of that task to 1939 or 1940.  The schedules given by Sherman do not fit within the context of other information we now have available from Carolyn Kendall.

The phrase "world events for which this revelation was designed were rapidly culminating" carries heavy portent. Sadler, living in the context of events of the first part of this century, would naturally believe that World War II was just those events.  After all, that episode in world history left a strong impression on all who lived through it. Little did he, or anyone else at 533, recognize the true meaning of "world events."Nuclear power had yet to appear,  with its danger to total world destruction.

There could be no greater error. This world has been, for more than a century, experiencing events leading to the culmination of age, and the actual purpose for which the revelation was intended.

Furthermore, the phrase "those who had this revelation in charge," is strongly suggestive of forces beginning to appear in Sadler's life which would have destroyed the revelation.   This phrase comes from messages channeled by Christy.

I shall discuss these several elements in later chapters.

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 latter, 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.

This 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 Super Universes in which were countless inhabited planets; various classification of beings, including guardian angles 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.

As I showed in a pervious chapter, the date of 1911 is wrong. Sherman was probably borrowing this date from The Mind At Mischief. A little thought on his part should have alerted him to the contradiction of dates within his account.

We also see how folk stories twist events and facts to the pleasure of human imagination. Here Sherman is repeating a version recounted by Forum members.

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 New Revelation made it difficult for Martha and me to properly evaluate the New Revelation material. As we became acquainted with more and more Forum members, they confided that after the death of the doctor's wife, Dr. Ruth, 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 New Revelation affairs. We were to have ample evidence of this developing side of his nature as time when on.

Sherman is not giving credit to the fact that when he appeared on the scene nearly two decades had passed from the beginning of the Forum. By that time there would be few permanent members who would be in serious doubt.

This is one of Sherman's overt attempts to influence the thinking of his audience against Sadler. He portrays Forum members as mindless individuals, but then later describes Clyde Bedell as an individual with a strong independent mind, who would not accept any story without question. See following chapters.

The "notion" that "higher intelligences" had to study human reaction to help them design the papers is far short of recognition of their superior abilities. Interplay with the Forum was to condition the human members, not to teach those superior intelligences.

We wondered what service to humanity a book could be -- however profound and expansive with its precise mathematical statements of numbers of planets and universes and various classifications of intelligent beings -- if it did not deal with the mind qualities of human creatures and how they could be employed to advance their soul development on earth.

True, an entire section was devoted to a description of a neutral entity called a "Thought Controller," which the Creator supposedly assigned to dwell in each human consciousness, and whose duty it was to sort out the thoughts and deeds of the individual and help him develop "survival values." If this happened, the "TC," as it was abbreviated, took on personality and survived along with it's "host." If the entity had not lived a sufficiently "good" life, the "TC" was then free to dwell in some other human consciousness at birth, carrying over the now nonexistent entity's experiences for use by the new "host" -- to give him a running start on possible survival. On this basis, the individual could not accomplish survival on his own and was dependent on this in-dwelling influence.

Martha and I could not accept this. We could accept the concept, which we had long believed, that a part of God, the Great Intelligence, does dwell in each human soul, and that man can become aware of this Higher Power within him through right thinking and meditation -- and secure guidance and protection by adherence to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual laws of his being.

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

Some of the questions raised were:

(1) Why, with the detailed descriptions of super beings and lines of communications existing between planets, was there no chapter in the book which explained the psychic phenomena taking place on earth?

The reason for the presentation of The Urantia Papers in the United States, and in the continuum of Christianity, is conditioned by God's plans for this planet. His program has unfolded through the "Western" white nations because of genetic endowments, and because of a spiritual heritage not found in the other mortal races.

Psychic productions are universally derogatory of Jesus, in one subtle form or another. Sherman is here reflecting that influence in his own thinking.

The "declaration" of the finish to the Papers was strictly in the mind of Sadler. The Jesus Papers were a complete surprise to him also.

Or Sherman may have been confusing 1934 and 1935.

Once again Sherman attempts to cast aspersions on Sadler's character. No medical doctor and psychiatrist, with Sadler's extensive experience and background, would be subject to "flares of temper." On the other hand Sadler may have become impatient with impertinent or thoughtless questions.

The loss of Lena may have set him on edge.  He no longer had her wise council.

But far more probable to the cause of his irritation was the sudden appearance of another "celestial regime" when Christy started channeling.  At that point Sadler began to have misgivings, but he never formulated them into a concrete or discerning analysis.

"Why, I wouldn't pretend to have the authoritative knowledge 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?"

Cindy indicated that they would think about it, and the subject was dropped. But for Cindy to have made this suggestion clearly revealed humanly written insertions had been put in the manuscript, and later evidence came to light when member Floyd Winters one of Chicago's prominent businessmen, confronted the doctor with extensive almost word-for-word quotes from author Emery Reeves' well-known book, A Democratic Manifesto, which were contained in a New Revelation chapter. The explanation: Occasionally, when the intelligences dictating the New Revelation papers came across something expressed on a subject by a human, as well as they could express it, they authorized its inclusion."

Dear Dr. Norton,

Some several months after we came here and had carefully read the New Revelation papers, I questioned you concerning the glaring absences of any paper on "psychic phenomena" -- such as humans have veritably experienced on earth in times past and are experiencing now. And yet the book deals authoritatively with many phrases 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 New Revelation 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 New Revelation 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 untruth -- and cannot have been made by higher intelligence, for they KNOW better. With The New Revelation 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 of "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 pigeon-holed 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 truth which should be in this New Revelation 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 New Revelation 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 New Revelation 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

(signed)Harold Sherman