Spiritual quest led to eight years in Southern Arizona 'cult,' former member says

What he did find was a treatise that claimed to be a sequel to the Urantia Book, this one named "The Cosmic Family Volume One," by an author calling himself Gabriel of Sedona. The author said his Cosmic Family volumes were passed on to him by the same celestial beings who allegedly transmitted the Urantia Book in the early 20th century. 

Anderson, 27 at the time, was deeply intrigued. That curiosity eventually altered his life's path, sending him in 2014 to a compound near Tumacacori, where Gabriel of Sedona, at that time calling himself Gabriel of Urantia, had moved his spiritual community. The group was called the Global Community Communications Alliance, and its home was the Avalon Organic Gardens and EcoVillage. 

Anderson's eight-year experience contained periods of true devotion to the religious community and its mission, and led to him partnering with one of the founders' daughters and having two children with her.

But eventually, he said, he witnessed so many contradictions and so much abuse of power, that he began feeling overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance and the moral injury of seeing things he felt were wrong and doing nothing about them. 

He and his family fled the community in 2022, and Gabriel of Urantia, having changed his legal name to Van of Urantia, died in August 2025. Now Anderson wants to tell his story in the hopes that others will see the warning signs before joining controlling groups like the GCCA.

"I'm getting used to talking about my cult experience publicly," he said. "If I'm going to talk about it, then I think it needs to be the real thing and really, really trying to understand myself as to why I made the decision to join a cult."

First came Anderson's leap of faith, similar to that made by dozens if not hundreds of people over the years. His experience matches in many ways the stories of other former members told to the Star and reported in court documents and published accounts.

"I, through a very difficult spiritual process and intellectual process, decided that I needed to go see for myself if this place was what it claimed to be," Anderson said in interviews. "And what it claims to be is Divine Administration."

That is, it is the Earthly hub of the present and future world government, when the End Times come, Jesus returns to Earth, and judgment is delivered.

"They have their own version of that, and they claim they have a very special role in that they are the humans who are actually appointed by Celestial Overcontrol to be the leaders of the planet in human form," Anderson said. 

'When you join, you join whole'

Anderson, now 42, made the leap of his own free will, he acknowledges, despite the sacrifices spelled out in the Cosmic Family books and during the six-month period in which initiates decide whether to commit.

"Whether that happens right away to some people, or whether that happens over time, the group basically separates you from your family and separates you from any financial assets," Anderson said. "When you join, you join whole, all-in."

He made the leap into what he came to see as a demanding but rewarding new life. The day would begin at 5:30 a.m. for those who made breakfast, 6 a.m. if it was a day when group gardening was required, or 6:30 a.m. to eat breakfast. 

From then, it went on all day, with people carrying out their assigned jobs, eating meals together and often attending religious classes or house meetings late into the evening. The day's obligations might not end till 10 p.m., Anderson said. 

"There's no break from the hegemony of the group," he said. "Like, you go to lunch, and that maybe is a break from work, but you never leave the bubble."

"The closest thing would be people who work up in Tucson, which was a few. We'd go up to the Sea of Glass and throw a show and there'd be like little moments," Anderson said, referring to the arts venue owned by the group at 330 E. Seventh St. "You could maybe get to the grocery store for 30 minutes if you could walk over there quickly."

Anderson had more freedom than most members of the group because he worked with the founder's son, Amadon Dellerba, at Global Change Media, where they made videos and managed the websites, among other duties. He even got to keep his phone, unlike most people, and he got to go to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah three times, on the justification that the group's leadership had "a vision to start a movie studio that's based on these higher spiritual principles."

But he was also subject to the rigorous demands of the group, where even a few hours of precious free time could be yanked away. On Saturday mornings, for example, nothing would be scheduled for up to five hours, but then one of the leaders would often call a work party or demand that some community members be moved from one house to another. 

"So at 8 a.m., all the guys who think they can rest for like five hours ... they're called into a work party," Anderson said. "There's this feeling of being snapped around. And I tell you, all of this gains control over the mind, body and soul of a person."

Members ranked by degree of spirituality

Anderson noticed over the years how certain members were treated especially badly. 

"I could think of 15 to 20 that have been systematically put down for 30 years," Anderson said. 

While everybody suffered mistreatment under the system, this group was treated akin to untouchables in India, he said. 

This ranking was not done covertly. The leadership issued a hierarchy list on Sundays, showing who in the group ranked where by degree of spirituality, measured in stars. 

"I saw everybody get rewarded at some point, but a lot of time the reward is actually just part of the trap, because they go up two stars, then they lose a star, then they go up a star, then they lose three stars," he said.

For those who are able to move up, getting beyond five stars means attaining your "mandate," a high level of status and responsibility in the group that has additional ranks within it as well. For those who drop down, the lowest place you can arrive at is the Personality Integration Rehabilitation Program, Anderson said.

"It's presented as a public nonprofit service to help integrate personalities. I never saw anybody take it that was not part of the community. Inside the community, it's used as a punishment."

Sunday services were also times fraught with significance, Anderson said. Some, including Anderson himself on occasion, would use the time to heap praise on Van of Urantia, their leader. The leader, in turn, would single out members for public praise and shame. 

Fighting 'whitewashing' group's history

Anderson's partner already had a child when they got together, and then they had another one together in 2018. Having children laid bare some of his conflicting feelings about the community, where raising children was considered a communal responsibility, so much so that children were often moved to live away from their parents in new homes.

The community's expectation that an 18-month-old would behave inconspicuously at a breakfast table at 6:45 a.m., or that the parents would execute flawless management of the child, showed Anderson the tenuousness of the situation. 

"Imagine getting up and trying to quiet a one-and-a-half-year-old knowing that if you do too much or too little, you're going to get feedback" from leadership, he said.

"And then all of a sudden, you are a rebellious person who can't listen to authority, not only in this life, but in many, many past lives. This is because you've tried to kind of have sovereignty over the way you're raising your child."

The family also went on a trip to New Mexico with Van of Urantia, the group's leader, and saw displays of rage and manipulation, Anderson said, including demanding in a restaurant that they spank their child. He could no longer reconcile the flawed human he knew with the religious leader who claimed to have been, in past lives, human luminaries such as Socrates, St. Francis of Assisi and George Washington.

Anderson's partner, too, started reading psychology books and began to identify herself as coming from a family centered on a narcissistic leader, he said. In April 2022, they packed their things into a car, made an excuse about taking the children to doctors' appointments, and fled the community.

Now Anderson views speaking out as important so there is no "whitewashing of the history."

"The outside of the fruit looks beautiful, but if you tear the fruit open, the inside is rotten, and that's the problem," he said. "We need to tell our story and tell the story of the children who have been abused and who have been silenced and allow the public to make their decision."