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Urantia Book Paper 65 The Overcontrol Of Evolution
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 65 The Overcontrol Of Evolution
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Introduction
BASIC evolutionary material life--premind life--is the formulation of the
Master Physical Controllers and the life-impartation ministry of the Seven
Master Spirits in conjunction with the active ministration of the ordained Life
Carriers. As a result of the co-ordinate function of this threefold creativity
there develops organismal physical capacity for mind--material mechanisms for
intelligent reaction to external environmental stimuli and, later on, to
internal stimuli, influences taking origin in the organismal mind itself.
There are, then, three distinct levels of life production and evolution:
1. The physical-energy domain--mind-capacity production.
2. The mind ministry of the adjutant spirits--impinging upon spirit capacity.
3. The spirit endowment of mortal mind--culminating in Thought Adjuster
bestowal.
The mechanical-nonteachable levels of organismal environmental response are the
domains of the physical controllers. The adjutant mind-spirits activate and
regulate the adaptative or nonmechanical-teachable types of mind--those
response mechanisms of organisms capable of learning from experience. And as
the spirit adjutants thus manipulate mind potentials, so do the Life Carriers
exercise considerable discretionary control over the environmental aspects of
evolutionary processes right up to the time of the appearance of human
will--the ability to know God and the power of choosing to worship him.
It is the integrated functioning of the Life Carriers, the physical
controllers, and the spirit adjutants that conditions the course of organic
evolution on the inhabited worlds. And this is why evolution--on Urantia or
elsewhere--is always purposeful and never accidental.
1. LIFE CARRIER FUNCTIONS
The Life Carriers are endowed with potentials of personality metamorphosis
which but few orders of creatures possess. These Sons of the local universe are
capable of functioning in three diverse phases of being. They ordinarily
perform their duties as mid-phase Sons, that being the state of their origin.
But a Life Carrier in such a stage of existence could not possibly function in
the electrochemical domains as a fabricator of physical energies and material
particles into units of living existence.
Life Carriers are able to function and do function on the following three
levels:
1. The physical level of electrochemistry.
2. The usual mid-phase of quasi-morontial existence.
3. The advanced semispiritual level.
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When the Life Carriers make ready to engage in life implantation, and after
they have selected the sites for such an undertaking, they summon the archangel
commission of Life Carrier transmutation. This group consists of ten orders of
diverse personalities, including the physical controllers and their associates,
and is presided over by the chief of archangels, who acts in this capacity by
the mandate of Gabriel and with the permission of the Ancients of Days. When
these beings are properly encircuited, they can effect such modifications in
the Life Carriers as will enable them immediately to function on the physical
levels of electrochemistry.
After the life patterns have been formulated and the material organizations
have been duly completed, the supermaterial forces concerned in life
propagation become forthwith active, and life is existent. Whereupon the Life
Carriers are immediately returned to their normal mid-phase of personality
existence, in which estate they can manipulate the living units and maneuver
the evolving organisms, even though they are shorn of all ability to
organize--create--new patterns of living matter.
After organic evolution has run a certain course and free will of the human
type has appeared in the highest evolving organisms, the Life Carriers must
either leave the planet or take renunciation vows; that is, they must pledge
themselves to refrain from all attempts further to influence the course of
organic evolution. And when such vows are voluntarily taken by those Life
Carriers who choose to remain on the planet as future advisers to those who
shall be intrusted with the fostering of the newly evolved will creatures,
there is summoned a commission of twelve, presided over by the chief of the
Evening Stars, acting by authority of the System Sovereign and with permission
of Gabriel; and forthwith these Life Carriers are transmuted to the third phase
of personality existence--the semispiritual level of being. And I have
functioned on Urantia in this third phase of existence ever since the times of
Andon and Fonta.
We look forward to a time when the universe may be settled in light and life,
to a possible fourth stage of being wherein we shall be wholly spiritual, but
it has never been revealed to us by what technique we may attain this desirable
and advanced estate.
2. THE EVOLUTIONARY PANORAMA
The story of man's ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is
indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind survival. Man's primordial
ancestors were literally the slime and ooze of the ocean bed in the sluggish
and warm-water bays and lagoons of the vast shore lines of the ancient inland
seas, those very waters in which the Life Carriers established the three
independent life implantations on Urantia.
Very few species of the early types of marine vegetation that participated in
those epochal changes which resulted in the animallike borderland organisms are
in existence today. The sponges are the survivors of one of these early midway
types, those organisms through which the gradual transition from the vegetable
to the animal took place. These early transition forms, while not identical
with modern sponges, were much like them; they were true borderline
organisms--neither vegetable nor animal--but they eventually led to the
development of the true animal forms of life.
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The bacteria, simple vegetable organisms of a very primitive nature, are very
little changed from the early dawn of life; they even exhibit a degree of
retrogression in their parasitic behavior. Many of the fungi also represent a
retrograde movement in evolution, being plants which have lost their
chlorophyll-making ability and have become more or less parasitic. The majority
of disease-causing bacteria and their auxiliary virus bodies really belong to
this group of renegade parasitic fungi. During the intervening ages all of the
vast kingdom of plant life has evolved from ancestors from which the bacteria
have also descended.
The higher protozoan type of animal life soon appeared, and appeared suddenly.
And from these far-distant times the ameba, the typical single-celled animal
organism, has come on down but little modified. He disports himself today much
as he did when he was the last and greatest achievement in life evolution. This
minute creature and his protozoan cousins are to the animal creation what
bacteria are to the plant kingdom; they represent the survival of the first
early evolutionary steps in life differentiation together with failure of
subsequent development.
Before long the early single-celled animal types associated themselves in
communities, first on the plan of the Volvox and presently along the lines of
the Hydra and jellyfish. Still later there evolved the starfish, stone lilies,
sea urchins, sea cucumbers, centipedes, insects, spiders, crustaceans, and the
closely related groups of earthworms and leeches, soon followed by the
mollusks--the oyster, octopus, and snail. Hundreds upon hundreds of species
intervened and perished; mention is made only of those which survived the long,
long struggle. Such nonprogressive specimens, together with the later appearing
fish family, today represent the stationary types of early and lower animals,
branches of the tree of life which failed to progress.
The stage was thus set for the appearance of the first backboned animals, the
fishes. From this fish family there sprang two unique modifications, the frog
and the salamander. And it was the frog which began that series of progressive
differentiations in animal life that finally culminated in man himself.
The frog is one of the earliest of surviving human-race ancestors, but it also
failed to progress, persisting today much as in those remote times. The frog is
the only species ancestor of the early dawn races now living on the face of the
earth. The human race has no surviving ancestry between the frog and the
Eskimo.
The frogs gave rise to the Reptilia, a great animal family which is virtually
extinct, but which, before passing out of existence, gave origin to the whole
bird family and the numerous orders of mammals.
Probably the greatest single leap of all prehuman evolution was executed when
the reptile became a bird. The bird types of today--eagles, ducks, pigeons, and
ostriches--all descended from the enormous reptiles of long, long ago.
The kingdom of reptiles, descended from the frog family, is today represented
by four surviving divisions: two nonprogressive, snakes and lizards, together
with their cousins, alligators and turtles; one partially progressive, the bird
family, and the fourth the ancestors of mammals and the direct line of descent
of the human species. But though long departed, the massiveness of the passing
Reptilia found echo in the elephant and mastodon, while their peculiar forms
were perpetuated in the leaping kangaroos.
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Only fourteen phyla have appeared on Urantia, the fishes being the last, and no
new classes have developed since birds and mammals.
It was from an agile little reptilian dinosaur of carnivorous habits but having
a comparatively large brain that the placental mammals suddenly sprang. These
mammals developed rapidly and in many different ways, not only giving rise to
the common modern varieties but also evolving into marine types, such as whales
and seals, and into air navigators like the bat family.
Man thus evolved from the higher mammals derived principally from the western
implantation of life in the ancient east-west sheltered seas. The eastern and
central groups of living organisms were early progressing favorably toward the
attainment of prehuman levels of animal existence. But as the ages passed, the
eastern focus of life emplacement failed to attain a satisfactory level of
intelligent prehuman status, having suffered such repeated and irretrievable
losses of its highest types of germ plasm that it was forever shorn of the
power to rehabilitate human potentialities.
Since the quality of the mind capacity for development in this eastern group
was so definitely inferior to that of the other two groups, the Life Carriers,
with the consent of their superiors, so manipulated the environment as further
to circumscribe these inferior prehuman strains of evolving life. To all
outward appearances the elimination of these inferior groups of creatures was
accidental, but in reality it was altogether purposeful.
Later in the evolutionary unfolding of intelligence, the lemur ancestors of the
human species were far more advanced in North America than in other regions;
and they were therefore led to migrate from the arena of western life
implantation over the Bering land bridge and down the coast to southwestern
Asia, where they continued to evolve and to benefit by the addition of certain
strains of the central life group. Man thus evolved out of certain western and
central life strains but in the central to near-eastern regions.
In this way the life that was planted on Urantia evolved until the ice age,
when man himself first appeared and began his eventful planetary career. And
this appearance of primitive man on earth during the ice age was not just an
accident; it was by design. The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era
were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy
type of human being with tremendous survival endowment.
3. THE FOSTERING OF EVOLUTION
It will hardly be possible to explain to the present-day human mind many of the
queer and apparently grotesque occurrences of early evolutionary progress. A
purposeful plan was functioning throughout all of these seemingly strange
evolutions of living things, but we are not allowed arbitrarily to interfere
with the development of the life patterns after they have once been set in
operation.
Life Carriers may employ every possible natural resource and may utilize any
and all fortuitous circumstances which will enhance the developmental progress
of the life experiment, but we are not permitted mechanically to intervene in,
or arbitrarily to manipulate the conduct and course of, either plant or animal
evolution.
You have been informed that Urantia mortals evolved by way of primitive frog
development, and that this ascending strain, carried in potential in a single
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frog, narrowly escaped extinction on a certain occasion. But it should not be
inferred that the evolution of mankind would have been terminated by an
accident at this juncture. At that very moment we were observing and fostering
no less than one thousand different and remotely situated mutating strains of
life which could have been directed into various different patterns of prehuman
development. This particular ancestral frog represented our third selection,
the two prior life strains having perished in spite of all our efforts toward
their conservation.
Even the loss of Andon and Fonta before they had offspring, though delaying
human evolution, would not have prevented it. Subsequent to the appearance of
Andon and Fonta and before the mutating human potentials of animal life were
exhausted, there evolved no less than seven thousand favorable strains which
could have achieved some sort of human type of development. And many of these
better stocks were subsequently assimilated by the various branches of the
expanding human species.
Long before the Material Son and Daughter, the biologic uplifters, arrive on a
planet, the human potentials of the evolving animal species have been
exhausted. This biologic status of animal life is disclosed to the Life
Carriers by the phenomenon of the third phase of adjutant spirit mobilization,
which automatically occurs concomitantly with the exhaustion of the capacity of
all animal life to give origin to the mutant potentials of prehuman
individuals.
Mankind on Urantia must solve its problems of mortal development with the human
stocks it has--no more races will evolve from prehuman sources throughout all
future time. But this fact does not preclude the possibility of the attainment
of vastly higher levels of human development through the intelligent fostering
of the evolutionary potentials still resident in the mortal races. That which
we, the Life Carriers, do toward fostering and conserving the life strains
before the appearance of human will, man must do for himself after such an
event and subsequent to our retirement from active participation in evolution.
In a general way, man's evolutionary destiny is in his own hands, and
scientific intelligence must sooner or later supersede the random functioning
of uncontrolled natural selection and chance survival.
And in discussing the fostering of evolution, it would not be amiss to point
out that, in the long future ahead, when you may sometime be attached to a
corps of Life Carriers, you will have abundant and ample opportunity to offer
suggestions and make any possible improvements in the plans and technique of
life management and transplantation. Be patient! If you have good ideas, if
your minds are fertile with better methods of administration for any part of
the universal domains, you are certainly going to have an opportunity to
present them to your associates and fellow administrators in the ages to come.
4. THE URANTIA ADVENTURE
Do not overlook the fact that Urantia was assigned to us as a life-experiment
world. On this planet we made our sixtieth attempt to modify and, if possible,
improve the Satania adaptation of the Nebadon life designs, and it is of record
that we achieved numerous beneficial modifications of the standard life
patterns. To be specific, on Urantia we worked out and have satisfactorily
demonstrated
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not less than twenty-eight features of life modification which will be of
service to all Nebadon throughout all future time.
But the establishment of life on no world is ever experimental in the sense
that something untried and unknown is attempted. The evolution of life is a
technique ever progressive, differential, and variable, but never haphazard,
uncontrolled, nor wholly experimental, in the accidental sense.
Many features of human life afford abundant evidence that the phenomenon of
mortal existence was intelligently planned, that organic evolution is not a
mere cosmic accident. When a living cell is injured, it possesses the ability
to elaborate certain chemical substances which are empowered so to stimulate
and activate the neighboring normal cells that they immediately begin the
secretion of certain substances which facilitate healing processes in the
wound; and at the same time these normal and uninjured cells begin to
proliferate--they actually start to work creating new cells to replace any
fellow cells which may have been destroyed by the accident.
This chemical action and reaction concerned in wound healing and cell
reproduction represents the choice of the Life Carriers of a formula embracing
over one hundred thousand phases and features of possible chemical reactions
and biologic repercussions. More than half a million specific experiments were
made by the Life Carriers in their laboratories before they finally settled
upon this formula for the Urantia life experiment.
When Urantia scientists know more of these healing chemicals, they will become
more efficient in the treatment of injuries, and indirectly they will know more
about controlling certain serious diseases.
Since life was established on Urantia, the Life Carriers have improved this
healing technique as it has been introduced on another Satania world, in that
it affords more pain relief and exercises better control over the proliferation
capacity of the associated normal cells.
There were many unique features of the Urantia life experiment, but the two
outstanding episodes were the appearance of the Andonic race prior to the
evolution of the six colored peoples and the later simultaneous appearance of
the Sangik mutants in a single family. Urantia is the first world in Satania
where the six colored races sprang from the same human family. They ordinarily
arise in diversified strains from independent mutations within the prehuman
animal stock and usually appear on earth one at a time and successively over
long periods of time, beginning with the red man and passing on down through
the colors to indigo.
Another outstanding variation of procedure was the late arrival of the
Planetary Prince. As a rule, the prince appears on a planet about the time of
will development; and if such a plan had been followed, Caligastia might have
come to Urantia even during the lifetimes of Andon and Fonta instead of almost
five hundred thousand years later, simultaneously with the appearance of the
six Sangik races.
On an ordinary inhabited world a Planetary Prince would have been granted on
the request of the Life Carriers at, or sometime after, the appearance of Andon
and Fonta. But Urantia having been designated a life-modification planet, it
was by preagreement that the Melchizedek observers, twelve in number, were sent
as advisers to the Life Carriers and as overseers of the planet until
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the subsequent arrival of the Planetary Prince. These Melchizedeks came at the
time Andon and Fonta made the decisions which enabled Thought Adjusters to
indwell their mortal minds.
On Urantia the endeavors of the Life Carriers to improve the Satania life
patterns necessarily resulted in the production of many apparently useless
forms of transition life. But the gains already accrued are sufficient to
justify the Urantia modifications of the standard life designs.
It was our intention to produce an early manifestation of will in the
evolutionary life of Urantia, and we succeeded. Ordinarily, will does not
emerge until the colored races have long been in existence, usually first
appearing among the superior types of the red man. Your world is the only
planet in Satania where the human type of will has appeared in a precolored
race.
But in our effort to provide for that combination and association of
inheritance factors which finally gave rise to the mammalian ancestors of the
human race, we were confronted with the necessity of permitting hundreds and
thousands of other and comparatively useless combinations and associations of
inheritance factors to take place. Many of these seemingly strange by-products
of our efforts are certain to meet your gaze as you dig back into the planetary
past, and I can well understand how puzzling some of these things must be to
the limited human viewpoint.
5. LIFE-EVOLUTION VICISSITUDES
It was a source of regret to the Life Carriers that our special efforts to
modify intelligent life on Urantia should have been so handicapped by tragic
perversions beyond our control: the Caligastia betrayal and the Adamic default.
But throughout all of this biologic adventure our greatest disappointment grew
out of the reversion of certain primitive plant life to the prechlorophyll
levels of parasitic bacteria on such an extensive and unexpected scale. This
eventuality in plant-life evolution caused many distressful diseases in the
higher mammals, particularly in the more vulnerable human species. When we were
confronted with this perplexing situation, we somewhat discounted the
difficulties involved because we knew that the subsequent admixture of the
Adamic life plasm would so reinforce the resisting powers of the resulting
blended race as to make it practically immune to all diseases produced by the
vegetable type of organism. But our hopes were doomed to disappointment owing
to the misfortune of the Adamic default.
The universe of universes, including this small world called Urantia, is not
being managed merely to meet our approval nor just to suit our convenience,
much less to gratify our whims and satisfy our curiosity. The wise and
all-powerful beings who are responsible for universe management undoubtedly
know exactly what they are about; and so it becomes Life Carriers and behooves
mortal minds to enlist in patient waiting and hearty co-operation with the rule
of wisdom, the reign of power, and the march of progress.
There are, of course, certain compensations for tribulation, such as Michael's
bestowal on Urantia. But irrespective of all such considerations, the later
celestial supervisors of this planet express complete confidence in the
ultimate evolutionary triumph of the human race and in the eventual vindication
of our original plans and life patterns.
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6. EVOLUTIONARY TECHNIQUES OF LIFE
It is impossible accurately to determine, simultaneously, the exact location
and the velocity of a moving object; any attempt at measurement of either
inevitably involves change in the other. The same sort of a paradox confronts
mortal man when he undertakes the chemical analysis of protoplasm. The chemist
can elucidate the chemistry of dead protoplasm, but he cannot discern either
the physical organization or the dynamic performance of living protoplasm. Ever
will the scientist come nearer and nearer the secrets of life, but never will
he find them and for no other reason than that he must kill protoplasm in order
to analyze it. Dead protoplasm weighs the same as living protoplasm, but it is
not the same.
There is original endowment of adaptation in living things and beings. In every
living plant or animal cell, in every living organism--material or
spiritual--there is an insatiable craving for the attainment of ever-increasing
perfection of environmental adjustment, organismal adaptation, and augmented
life realization. These interminable efforts of all living things evidence the
existence within them of an innate striving for perfection.
The most important step in plant evolution was the development of
chlorophyll-making ability, and the second greatest advance was the evolution
of the spore into the complex seed. The spore is most efficient as a
reproductive agent, but it lacks the potentials of variety and versatility
inherent in the seed.
One of the most serviceable and complex episodes in the evolution of the higher
types of animals consisted in the development of the ability of the iron in the
circulating blood cells to perform in the double role of oxygen carrier and
carbon dioxide remover. And this performance of the red blood cells illustrates
how evolving organisms are able to adapt their functions to varying or changing
environment. The higher animals, including man, oxygenate their tissues by the
action of the iron of the red blood cells, which carries oxygen to the living
cells and just as efficiently removes the carbon dioxide. But other metals can
be made to serve the same purpose. The cuttlefish employs copper for this
function, and the sea squirt utilizes vanadium.
The continuation of such biologic adjustments is illustrated by the evolution
of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these attained to thirty-six in man's
remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative readjustment toward thirty-two
in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the human species is slowly
gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of evolution is still actively and
adaptatively in progress on this planet.
But many seemingly mysterious adjustments of living organisms are purely
chemical, wholly physical. At any moment of time, in the blood stream of any
human being there exists the possibility of upward of 15,000,000 chemical
reactions between the hormone output of a dozen ductless glands.
The lower forms of plant life are wholly responsive to physical, chemical, and
electrical environment. But as the scale of life ascends, one by one the mind
ministries of the seven adjutant spirits become operative, and the mind becomes
increasingly adjustive, creative, co-ordinative, and dominative. The ability of
animals to adapt themselves to air, water, and land is not a supernatural
endowment, but it is a superphysical adjustment.
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Physics and chemistry alone cannot explain how a human being evolved out of the
primeval protoplasm of the early seas. The ability to learn, memory and
differential response to environment, is the endowment of mind. The laws of
physics are not responsive to training; they are immutable and unchanging. The
reactions of chemistry are not modified by education; they are uniform and
dependable. Aside from the presence of the Unqualified Absolute, electrical and
chemical reactions are predictable. But mind can profit from experience, can
learn from reactive habits of behavior in response to repetition of stimuli.
Preintelligent organisms react to environmental stimuli, but those organisms
which are reactive to mind ministry can adjust and manipulate the environment
itself.
The physical brain with its associated nervous system possesses innate capacity
for response to mind ministry just as the developing mind of a personality
possesses a certain innate capacity for spirit receptivity and therefore
contains the potentials of spiritual progress and attainment. Intellectual,
social, moral, and spiritual evolution are dependent on the mind ministry of
the seven adjutant spirits and their superphysical associates.
7. EVOLUTIONARY MIND LEVELS
The seven adjutant mind-spirits are the versatile mind ministers to the lower
intelligent existences of a local universe. This order of mind is ministered
from the local universe headquarters or from some world connected therewith,
but there is influential direction of lower-mind function from the system
capitals.
On an evolutionary world much, very much, depends on the work of these seven
adjutants. But they are mind ministers; they are not concerned in physical
evolution, the domain of the Life Carriers. Nevertheless, the perfect
integration of these spirit endowments with the ordained and natural procedure
of the unfolding and inherent regime of the Life Carriers is responsible for
the mortal inability to discern, in the phenomenon of mind, aught but the hand
of nature and the outworking of natural processes, albeit you are occasionally
somewhat perplexed in explaining all of everything connected with the natural
reactions of mind as it is associated with matter. And if Urantia were
operating more in accordance with the original plans, you would observe even
less to arrest your attention in the phenomenon of mind.
The seven adjutant spirits are more circuitlike than entitylike, and on
ordinary worlds they are encircuited with other adjutant functionings
throughout the local universe. On life-experiment planets, however, they are
relatively isolated. And on Urantia, owing to the unique nature of the life
patterns, the lower adjutants experienced far more difficulty in contacting
with the evolutionary organisms than would have been the case in a more
standardized type of life endowment.
Again, on an average evolutionary world the seven adjutant spirits are far
better synchronized with the advancing stages of animal development than they
were on Urantia. With but a single exception, the adjutants experienced the
greatest difficulty in contacting with the evolving minds of Urantia organisms
that they had ever had in all their functioning throughout the universe of
Nebadon. On this world there developed many forms of border
phenomena--confusional combinations of the mechanical-nonteachable and the
nonmechanical-teachable types of organismal response.
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The seven adjutant spirits do not make contact with the purely mechanical
orders of organismal environmental response. Such preintelligent responses of
living organisms pertain purely to the energy domains of the power centers, the
physical controllers, and their associates.
The acquisition of the potential of the ability to learn from experience marks
the beginning of the functioning of the adjutant spirits, and they function
from the lowliest minds of primitive and invisible existences up to the highest
types in the evolutionary scale of human beings. They are the source and
pattern for the otherwise more or less mysterious behavior and incompletely
understood quick reactions of mind to the material environment. Long must these
faithful and always dependable influences carry forward their preliminary
ministry before the animal mind attains the human levels of spirit receptivity.
The adjutants function exclusively in the evolution of experiencing mind up to
the level of the sixth phase, the spirit of worship. At this level there occurs
that inevitable overlapping of ministry--the phenomenon of the higher reaching
down to co-ordinate with the lower in anticipation of subsequent attainment of
advanced levels of development. And still additional spirit ministry
accompanies the action of the seventh and last adjutant, the spirit of wisdom.
Throughout the ministry of the spirit world the individual never experiences
abrupt transitions of spirit co-operation; always are these changes gradual and
reciprocal.
Always should the domains of the physical (electrochemical) and the mental
response to environmental stimuli be differentiated, and in turn must they all
be recognized as phenomena apart from spiritual activities. The domains of
physical, mental, and spiritual gravity are distinct realms of cosmic reality,
notwithstanding their intimate interrelations.
8. EVOLUTION IN TIME AND SPACE
Time and space are indissolubly linked; there is an innate association. The
delays of time are inevitable in the presence of certain space conditions.
If spending so much time in effecting the evolutionary changes of life
development occasions perplexity, I would say that we cannot time the life
processes to unfold any faster than the physical metamorphoses of a planet will
permit. We must wait upon the natural, physical development of a planet; we
have absolutely no control over geologic evolution. If the physical conditions
would allow, we could arrange for the completed evolution of life in
considerably less than one million years. But we are all under the jurisdiction
of the Supreme Rulers of Paradise, and time is nonexistent on Paradise.
The individual's yardstick for time measurement is the length of his life. All
creatures are thus time conditioned, and therefore do they regard evolution as
being a long-drawn-out process. To those of us whose life span is not limited
by a temporal existence, evolution does not seem to be such a protracted
transaction. On Paradise, where time is nonexistent, these things are all
present in the mind of Infinity and the acts of Eternity.
As mind evolution is dependent on, and delayed by, the slow development of
physical conditions, so is spiritual progress dependent on mental expansion and
unfailingly delayed by intellectual retardation. But this does not mean that
spiritual evolution is dependent on education, culture, or wisdom. The soul may
evolve regardless of mental culture but not in the absence of mental capacity
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and desire--the choice of survival and the decision to achieve ever-increasing
perfection--to do the will of the Father in heaven. Although survival may not
depend on the possession of knowledge and wisdom, progression most certainly
does.
In the cosmic evolutionary laboratories mind is always dominant over matter,
and spirit is ever correlated with mind. Failure of these diverse endowments to
synchronize and co-ordinate may cause time delays, but if the individual really
knows God and desires to find him and become like him, then survival is assured
regardless of the handicaps of time. Physical status may handicap mind, and
mental perversity may delay spiritual attainment, but none of these obstacles
can defeat the whole-souled choice of will.
When physical conditions are ripe, sudden mental evolutions may take place;
when mind status is propitious, sudden spiritual transformations may occur;
when spiritual values receive proper recognition, then cosmic meanings become
discernible, and increasingly the personality is released from the handicaps of
time and delivered from the limitations of space.
[Sponsored by a Life Carrier of Nebadon resident on Urantia.]
top of page - 741
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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