Urantia Book

The Dawn Races of Early Man

(703.1) 62:0.1 ABOUT one million years ago the immediate ancestors of mankind made their appearance by three successive and sudden mutations stemming from early stock of the lemur type of placental mammal. The dominant factors of these early lemurs were derived from the western or later American group of the evolving life plasm. But before establishing the direct line of human ancestry, this strain was reinforced by contributions from the central life implantation evolved in Africa. The eastern life group contributed little or nothing to the actual production of the human species.

1. The Early Lemur Types

(703.2) 62:1.1 The early lemurs concerned in the ancestry of the human species were not directly related to the pre-existent tribes of gibbons and apes then living in Eurasia and northern Africa, whose progeny have survived to the present time. Neither were they the offspring of the modern type of lemur, though springing from an ancestor common to both but long since extinct.

(703.3) 62:1.2 While these early lemurs evolved in the Western Hemisphere, the establishment of the direct mammalian ancestry of mankind took place in southwestern Asia, in the original area of the central life implantation but on the borders of the eastern regions. Several million years ago the North American type lemurs had migrated westward over the Bering land bridge and had slowly made their way southwestward along the Asiatic coast. These migrating tribes finally reached the salubrious region lying between the then expanded Mediterranean Sea and the elevating mountainous regions of the Indian peninsula. In these lands to the west of India they united with other and favorable strains, thus establishing the ancestry of the human race.

(703.4) 62:1.3 With the passing of time the seacoast of India southwest of the mountains gradually submerged, completely isolating the life of this region. There was no avenue of approach to, or escape from, this Mesopotamian or Persian peninsula except to the north, and that was repeatedly cut off by the southern invasions of the glaciers. And it was in this then almost paradisiacal area, and from the superior descendants of this lemur type of mammal, that there sprang two great groups, the simian tribes of modern times and the present-day human species.

2. The Dawn Mammals

(703.5) 62:2.1 A little more than one million years ago the Mesopotamian dawn mammals, the direct descendants of the North American lemur type of placental mammal, suddenly appeared. They were active little creatures, almost three feet tall; and while they did not habitually walk on their hind legs, they could easily stand erect. They were hairy and agile and chattered in monkeylike fashion, but unlike the simian tribes, they were flesh eaters. They had a primitive opposable thumb as well as a highly useful grasping big toe. From this point onward the prehuman species successively developed the opposable thumb while they progressively lost the grasping power of the great toe. The later ape tribes retained the grasping big toe but never developed the human type of thumb.

(704.1) 62:2.2 These dawn mammals attained full growth when three or four years of age, having a potential life span, on the average, of about twenty years. As a rule offspring were born singly, although twins were occasional.

(704.2) 62:2.3 The members of this new species had the largest brains for their size of any animal that had theretofore existed on earth. They experienced many of the emotions and shared numerous instincts which later characterized primitive man, being highly curious and exhibiting considerable elation when successful at any undertaking. Food hunger and sex craving were well developed, and a definite sex selection was manifested in a crude form of courtship and choice of mates. They would fight fiercely in defense of their kindred and were quite tender in family associations, possessing a sense of self-abasement bordering on shame and remorse. They were very affectionate and touchingly loyal to their mates, but if circumstances separated them, they would choose new partners.

(704.3) 62:2.4 Being small of stature and having keen minds to realize the dangers of their forest habitat, they developed an extraordinary fear which led to those wise precautionary measures that so enormously contributed to survival, such as their construction of crude shelters in the high treetops which eliminated many of the perils of ground life. The beginning of the fear tendencies of mankind more specifically dates from these days.

(704.4) 62:2.5 These dawn mammals developed more of a tribal spirit than had ever been previously exhibited. They were, indeed, highly gregarious but nevertheless exceedingly pugnacious when in any way disturbed in the ordinary pursuit of their routine life, and they displayed fiery tempers when their anger was fully aroused. Their bellicose natures, however, served a good purpose; superior groups did not hesitate to make war on their inferior neighbors, and thus, by selective survival, the species was progressively improved. They very soon dominated the life of the smaller creatures of this region, and very few of the older noncarnivorous monkeylike tribes survived.

(704.5) 62:2.6 These aggressive little animals multiplied and spread over the Mesopotamian peninsula for more than one thousand years, constantly improving in physical type and general intelligence. And it was just seventy generations after this new tribe had taken origin from the highest type of lemur ancestor that the next epoch-making development occurred — the sudden differentiation of the ancestors of the next vital step in the evolution of human beings on Urantia.

3. The Mid-Mammals

(704.6) 62:3.1 Early in the career of the dawn mammals, in the treetop abode of a superior pair of these agile creatures, twins were born, one male and one female. Compared with their ancestors, they were really handsome little creatures. They had little hair on their bodies, but this was no disability as they lived in a warm and equable climate.

(705.1) 62:3.2 These children grew to be a little over four feet in height. They were in every way larger than their parents, having longer legs and shorter arms. They had almost perfectly opposable thumbs, just about as well adapted for diversified work as the present human thumb. They walked upright, having feet almost as well suited for walking as those of the later human races.

(705.2) 62:3.3 Their brains were inferior to, and smaller than, those of human beings but very superior to, and comparatively much larger than, those of their ancestors. The twins early displayed superior intelligence and were soon recognized as the heads of the whole tribe of dawn mammals, really instituting a primitive form of social organization and a crude economic division of labor. This brother and sister mated and soon enjoyed the society of twenty-one children much like themselves, all more than four feet tall and in every way superior to the ancestral species. This new group formed the nucleus of the mid-mammals.

(705.3) 62:3.4 When the numbers of this new and superior group grew great, war, relentless war, broke out; and when the terrible struggle was over, not a single individual of the pre-existent and ancestral race of dawn mammals remained alive. The less numerous but more powerful and intelligent offshoot of the species had survived at the expense of their ancestors.

(705.4) 62:3.5 And now, for almost fifteen thousand years (six hundred generations), this creature became the terror of this part of the world. All of the great and vicious animals of former times had perished. The large beasts native to these regions were not carnivorous, and the larger species of the cat family, lions and tigers, had not yet invaded this peculiarly sheltered nook of the earth’s surface. Therefore did these mid-mammals wax valiant and subdue the whole of their corner of creation.

(705.5) 62:3.6 Compared with the ancestral species, the mid-mammals were an improvement in every way. Even their potential life span was longer, being about twenty-five years. A number of rudimentary human traits appeared in this new species. In addition to the innate propensities exhibited by their ancestors, these mid-mammals were capable of showing disgust in certain repulsive situations. They further possessed a well-defined hoarding instinct; they would hide food for subsequent use and were greatly given to the collection of smooth round pebbles and certain types of round stones suitable for defensive and offensive ammunition.

(705.6) 62:3.7 These mid-mammals were the first to exhibit a definite construction propensity, as shown in their rivalry in the building of both treetop homes and their many-tunneled subterranean retreats; they were the first species of mammals ever to provide for safety in both arboreal and underground shelters. They largely forsook the trees as places of abode, living on the ground during the day and sleeping in the treetops at night.

(705.7) 62:3.8 As time passed, the natural increase in numbers eventually resulted in serious food competition and sex rivalry, all of which culminated in a series of internecine battles that nearly destroyed the entire species. These struggles continued until only one group of less than one hundred individuals was left alive. But peace once more prevailed, and this lone surviving tribe built anew its treetop bedrooms and once again resumed a normal and semipeaceful existence.

(705.8) 62:3.9 You can hardly realize by what narrow margins your prehuman ancestors missed extinction from time to time. Had the ancestral frog of all humanity jumped two inches less on a certain occasion, the whole course of evolution would have been markedly changed. The immediate lemurlike mother of the dawn-mammal species escaped death no less than five times by mere hairbreadth margins before she gave birth to the father of the new and higher mammalian order. But the closest call of all was when lightning struck the tree in which the prospective mother of the Primates twins was sleeping. Both of these mid-mammal parents were severely shocked and badly burned; three of their seven children were killed by this bolt from the skies. These evolving animals were almost superstitious. This couple whose treetop home had been struck were really the leaders of the more progressive group of the mid-mammal species; and following their example, more than half the tribe, embracing the more intelligent families, moved about two miles away from this locality and began the construction of new treetop abodes and new ground shelters — their transient retreats in time of sudden danger.

(706.1) 62:3.10 Soon after the completion of their home, this couple, veterans of so many struggles, found themselves the proud parents of twins, the most interesting and important animals ever to have been born into the world up to that time, for they were the first of the new species of Primates constituting the next vital step in prehuman evolution.

(706.2) 62:3.11 Contemporaneously with the birth of these Primates twins, another couple — a peculiarly retarded male and female of the mid-mammal tribe, a couple that were both mentally and physically inferior — also gave birth to twins. These twins, one male and one female, were indifferent to conquest; they were concerned only with obtaining food and, since they would not eat flesh, soon lost all interest in seeking prey. These retarded twins became the founders of the modern simian tribes. Their descendants sought the warmer southern regions with their mild climates and an abundance of tropical fruits, where they have continued much as of that day except for those branches which mated with the earlier types of gibbons and apes and have greatly deteriorated in consequence.

(706.3) 62:3.12 And so it may be readily seen that man and the ape are related only in that they sprang from the mid-mammals, a tribe in which there occurred the contemporaneous birth and subsequent segregation of two pairs of twins: the inferior pair destined to produce the modern types of monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, and gorilla; the superior pair destined to continue the line of ascent which evolved into man himself.

(706.4) 62:3.13 Modern man and the simians did spring from the same tribe and species but not from the same parents. Man’s ancestors are descended from the superior strains of the selected remnant of this mid-mammal tribe, whereas the modern simians (excepting certain pre-existent types of lemurs, gibbons, apes, and other monkeylike creatures) are the descendants of the most inferior couple of this mid-mammal group, a couple who only survived by hiding themselves in a subterranean food-storage retreat for more than two weeks during the last fierce battle of their tribe, emerging only after the hostilities were well over.

4. The Primates

(706.5) 62:4.1 Going back to the birth of the superior twins, one male and one female, to the two leading members of the mid-mammal tribe: These animal babies were of an unusual order; they had still less hair on their bodies than their parents and, when very young, insisted on walking upright. Their ancestors had always learned to walk on their hind legs, but these Primates twins stood erect from the beginning. They attained a height of over five feet, and their heads grew larger in comparison with others among the tribe. While early learning to communicate with each other by means of signs and sounds, they were never able to make their people understand these new symbols.

(707.1) 62:4.2 When about fourteen years of age, they fled from the tribe, going west to raise their family and establish the new species of Primates. And these new creatures are very properly denominated Primates since they were the direct and immediate animal ancestors of the human family itself.

(707.2) 62:4.3 Thus it was that the Primates came to occupy a region on the west coast of the Mesopotamian peninsula as it then projected into the southern sea, while the less intelligent and closely related tribes lived around the peninsula point and up the eastern shore line.

(707.3) 62:4.4 The Primates were more human and less animal than their mid-mammal predecessors. The skeletal proportions of this new species were very similar to those of the primitive human races. The human type of hand and foot had fully developed, and these creatures could walk and even run as well as any of their later-day human descendants. They largely abandoned tree life, though continuing to resort to the treetops as a safety measure at night, for like their earlier ancestors, they were greatly subject to fear. The increased use of their hands did much to develop inherent brain power, but they did not yet possess minds that could really be called human.

(707.4) 62:4.5 Although in emotional nature the Primates differed little from their forebears, they exhibited more of a human trend in all of their propensities. They were, indeed, splendid and superior animals, reaching maturity at about ten years of age and having a natural life span of about forty years. That is, they might have lived that long had they died natural deaths, but in those early days very few animals ever died a natural death; the struggle for existence was altogether too intense.

(707.5) 62:4.6 And now, after almost nine hundred generations of development, covering about twenty-one thousand years from the origin of the dawn mammals, the Primates suddenly gave birth to two remarkable creatures, the first true human beings.

(707.6) 62:4.7 Thus it was that the dawn mammals, springing from the North American lemur type, gave origin to the mid-mammals, and these mid-mammals in turn produced the superior Primates, who became the immediate ancestors of the primitive human race. The Primates tribes were the last vital link in the evolution of man, but in less than five thousand years not a single individual of these extraordinary tribes was left.

5. The First Human Beings

(707.7) 62:5.1 From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two human beings is just 993,419 years.

(707.8) 62:5.2 These two remarkable creatures were true human beings. They possessed perfect human thumbs, as had many of their ancestors, while they had just as perfect feet as the present-day human races. They were walkers and runners, not climbers; the grasping function of the big toe was absent, completely absent. When danger drove them to the treetops, they climbed just like the humans of today would. They would climb up the trunk of a tree like a bear and not as would a chimpanzee or a gorilla, swinging up by the branches.

(708.1) 62:5.3 These first human beings (and their descendants) reached full maturity at twelve years of age and possessed a potential life span of about seventy-five years.

(708.2) 62:5.4 Many new emotions early appeared in these human twins. They experienced admiration for both objects and other beings and exhibited considerable vanity. But the most remarkable advance in emotional development was the sudden appearance of a new group of really human feelings, the worshipful group, embracing awe, reverence, humility, and even a primitive form of gratitude. Fear, joined with ignorance of natural phenomena, is about to give birth to primitive religion.

(708.3) 62:5.5 Not only were such human feelings manifested in these primitive humans, but many more highly evolved sentiments were also present in rudimentary form. They were mildly cognizant of pity, shame, and reproach and were acutely conscious of love, hate, and revenge, being also susceptible to marked feelings of jealousy.

(708.4) 62:5.6 These first two humans — the twins — were a great trial to their Primates parents. They were so curious and adventurous that they nearly lost their lives on numerous occasions before they were eight years old. As it was, they were rather well scarred up by the time they were twelve.

(708.5) 62:5.7 Very early they learned to engage in verbal communication; by the age of ten they had worked out an improved sign and word language of almost half a hundred ideas and had greatly improved and expanded the crude communicative technique of their ancestors. But try as hard as they might, they were able to teach only a few of their new signs and symbols to their parents.

(708.6) 62:5.8 When about nine years of age, they journeyed off down the river one bright day and held a momentous conference. Every celestial intelligence stationed on Urantia, including myself, was present as an observer of the transactions of this noontide tryst. On this eventful day they arrived at an understanding to live with and for each other, and this was the first of a series of such agreements which finally culminated in the decision to flee from their inferior animal associates and to journey northward, little knowing that they were thus to found the human race.

(708.7) 62:5.9 While we were all greatly concerned with what these two little savages were planning, we were powerless to control the working of their minds; we did not — could not — arbitrarily influence their decisions. But within the permissible limits of planetary function, we, the Life Carriers, together with our associates, all conspired to lead the human twins northward and far from their hairy and partially tree-dwelling people. And so, by reason of their own intelligent choice, the twins did migrate, and because of our supervision they migrated northward to a secluded region where they escaped the possibility of biologic degradation through admixture with their inferior relatives of the Primates tribes.

(708.8) 62:5.10 Shortly before their departure from the home forests they lost their mother in a gibbon raid. While she did not possess their intelligence, she did have a worthy mammalian affection of a high order for her offspring, and she fearlessly gave her life in the attempt to save the wonderful pair. Nor was her sacrifice in vain, for she held off the enemy until the father arrived with reinforcements and put the invaders to rout.

(709.1) 62:5.11 Soon after this young couple forsook their associates to found the human race, their Primates father became disconsolate — he was heartbroken. He refused to eat, even when food was brought to him by his other children. His brilliant offspring having been lost, life did not seem worth living among his ordinary fellows; so he wandered off into the forest, was set upon by hostile gibbons and beaten to death.

6. Evolution of the Human Mind

(709.2) 62:6.1 We, the Life Carriers on Urantia, had passed through the long vigil of watchful waiting since the day we first planted the life plasm in the planetary waters, and naturally the appearance of the first really intelligent and volitional beings brought to us great joy and supreme satisfaction.

(709.3) 62:6.2 We had been watching the twins develop mentally through our observation of the functioning of the seven adjutant mind-spirits assigned to Urantia at the time of our arrival on the planet. Throughout the long evolutionary development of planetary life, these tireless mind ministers had ever registered their increasing ability to contact with the successively expanding brain capacities of the progressively superior animal creatures.

(709.4) 62:6.3 At first only the spirit of intuition could function in the instinctive and reflex behavior of the primordial animal life. With the differentiation of higher types, the spirit of understanding was able to endow such creatures with the gift of spontaneous association of ideas. Later on we observed the spirit of courage in operation; evolving animals really developed a crude form of protective self-consciousness. Subsequent to the appearance of the mammalian groups, we beheld the spirit of knowledge manifesting itself in increased measure. And the evolution of the higher mammals brought the function of the spirit of counsel, with the resulting growth of the herd instinct and the beginnings of primitive social development.

(709.5) 62:6.4 Increasingly, on down through the dawn mammals, the mid-mammals, and the Primates, we had observed the augmented service of the first five adjutants. But never had the remaining two, the highest mind ministers, been able to function in the Urantia type of evolutionary mind.

(709.6) 62:6.5 Imagine our joy one day — the twins were about ten years old — when the spirit of worship made its first contact with the mind of the female twin and shortly thereafter with the male. We knew that something closely akin to human mind was approaching culmination; and when, about a year later, they finally resolved, as a result of meditative thought and purposeful decision, to flee from home and journey north, then did the spirit of wisdom begin to function on Urantia and in these two now recognized human minds.

(709.7) 62:6.6 There was an immediate and new order of mobilization of the seven adjutant mind-spirits. We were alive with expectation; we realized that the long-waited-for hour was approaching; we knew we were upon the threshold of the realization of our protracted effort to evolve will creatures on Urantia.

7. Recognition as an Inhabited World

(709.8) 62:7.1 We did not have to wait long. At noon, the day after the runaway of the twins, there occurred the initial test flash of the universe circuit signals at the planetary reception-focus of Urantia. We were, of course, all astir with the realization that a great event was impending; but since this world was a life-experiment station, we had not the slightest idea of just how we would be apprised of the recognition of intelligent life on the planet. But we were not long in suspense. On the third day after the elopement of the twins, and before the Life Carrier corps departed, there arrived the Nebadon archangel of initial planetary circuit establishment.

(710.1) 62:7.2 It was an eventful day on Urantia when our small group gathered about the planetary pole of space communication and received the first message from Salvington over the newly established mind circuit of the planet. And this first message, dictated by the chief of the archangel corps, said:

(710.2) 62:7.3 “To the Life Carriers on Urantia — Greetings! We transmit assurance of great pleasure on Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem in honor of the registration on the headquarters of Nebadon of the signal of the existence on Urantia of mind of will dignity. The purposeful decision of the twins to flee northward and segregate their offspring from their inferior ancestors has been noted. This is the first decision of mind — the human type of mind — on Urantia and automatically establishes the circuit of communication over which this initial message of acknowledgment is transmitting.”

(710.3) 62:7.4 Next over this new circuit came the greetings of the Most Highs of Edentia, containing instructions for the resident Life Carriers forbidding us to interfere with the pattern of life we had established. We were directed not to intervene in the affairs of human progress. It should not be inferred that Life Carriers ever arbitrarily and mechanically interfere with the natural outworking of the planetary evolutionary plans, for we do not. But up to this time we had been permitted to manipulate the environment and shield the life plasm in a special manner, and it was this extraordinary, but wholly natural, supervision that was to be discontinued.

(710.4) 62:7.5 And no sooner had the Most Highs left off speaking than the beautiful message of Lucifer, then sovereign of the Satania system, began to planetize. Now the Life Carriers heard the welcome words of their own chief and received his permission to return to Jerusem. This message from Lucifer contained the official acceptance of the Life Carriers’ work on Urantia and absolved us from all future criticism of any of our efforts to improve the life patterns of Nebadon as established in the Satania system.

(710.5) 62:7.6 These messages from Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem formally marked the termination of the Life Carriers’ agelong supervision of the planet. For ages we had been on duty, assisted only by the seven adjutant mind-spirits and the Master Physical Controllers. And now, will, the power of choosing to worship and to ascend, having appeared in the evolutionary creatures of the planet, we realized that our work was finished, and our group prepared to depart. Urantia being a life-modification world, permission was granted to leave behind two senior Life Carriers with twelve assistants, and I was chosen as one of this group and have ever since been on Urantia.

(710.6) 62:7.7 It is just 993,408 years ago (from the year A.D. 1934) that Urantia was formally recognized as a planet of human habitation in the universe of Nebadon. Biologic evolution had once again achieved the human levels of will dignity; man had arrived on planet 606 of Satania.

(710.7) 62:7.8 [Sponsored by a Life Carrier of Nebadon resident on Urantia.]

The Mammalian Era on Urantia

(693.1) 61:0.1 THE era of mammals extends from the times of the origin of placental mammals to the end of the ice age, covering a little less than fifty million years.

(693.2) 61:0.2 During this Cenozoic age the world’s landscape presented an attractive appearance — rolling hills, broad valleys, wide rivers, and great forests. Twice during this sector of time the Panama Isthmus went up and down; three times the Bering Strait land bridge did the same. The animal types were both many and varied. The trees swarmed with birds, and the whole world was an animal paradise, notwithstanding the incessant struggle of the evolving animal species for supremacy.*

(693.3) 61:0.3 The accumulated deposits of the five periods of this fifty-million-year era contain the fossil records of the successive mammalian dynasties and lead right up through the times of the actual appearance of man himself.

1. The New Continental Land Stage

The Age of Early Mammals

(693.4) 61:1.1 50,000,000 years ago the land areas of the world were very generally above water or only slightly submerged. The formations and deposits of this period are both land and marine, but chiefly land. For a considerable time the land gradually rose but was simultaneously washed down to the lower levels and toward the seas.

(693.5) 61:1.2 Early in this period and in North America the placental type of mammals suddenly appeared, and they constituted the most important evolutionary development up to this time. Previous orders of nonplacental mammals had existed, but this new type sprang directly and suddenly from the pre-existent reptilian ancestor whose descendants had persisted on down through the times of dinosaur decline. The father of the placental mammals was a small, highly active, carnivorous, springing type of dinosaur.

(693.6) 61:1.3 Basic mammalian instincts began to be manifested in these primitive mammalian types. Mammals possess an immense survival advantage over all other forms of animal life in that they can:

(693.7) 61:1.4 1. Bring forth relatively mature and well-developed offspring.

(693.8) 61:1.5 2. Nourish, nurture, and protect their offspring with affectionate regard.

(693.9) 61:1.6 3. Employ their superior brain power in self-perpetuation.

(693.10) 61:1.7 4. Utilize increased agility in escaping from enemies.

(693.11) 61:1.8 5. Apply superior intelligence to environmental adjustment and adaptation.

(694.1) 61:1.9 45,000,000 years ago the continental backbones were elevated in association with a very general sinking of the coast lines. Mammalian life was evolving rapidly. A small reptilian, egg-laying type of mammal flourished, and the ancestors of the later kangaroos roamed Australia. Soon there were small horses, fleet-footed rhinoceroses, tapirs with proboscises, primitive pigs, squirrels, lemurs, opossums, and several tribes of monkeylike animals. They were all small, primitive, and best suited to living among the forests of the mountain regions. A large ostrichlike land bird developed to a height of ten feet and laid an egg nine by thirteen inches. These were the ancestors of the later gigantic passenger birds that were so highly intelligent, and that onetime transported human beings through the air.

(694.2) 61:1.10 The mammals of the early Cenozoic lived on land, under the water, in the air, and among the treetops. They had from one to eleven pairs of mammary glands, and all were covered with considerable hair. In common with the later appearing orders, they developed two successive sets of teeth and possessed large brains in comparison to body size. But among them all no modern forms existed.

(694.3) 61:1.11 40,000,000 years ago the land areas of the Northern Hemisphere began to elevate, and this was followed by new extensive land deposits and other terrestrial activities, including lava flows, warping, lake formation, and erosion.

(694.4) 61:1.12 During the latter part of this epoch most of Europe was submerged. Following a slight land rise the continent was covered by lakes and bays. The Arctic Ocean, through the Ural depression, ran south to connect with the Mediterranean Sea as it was then expanded northward, the highlands of the Alps, Carpathians, Apennines, and Pyrenees being up above the water as islands of the sea. The Isthmus of Panama was up; the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated. North America was connected with Asia by the Bering Strait land bridge and with Europe by way of Greenland and Iceland. The earth circuit of land in northern latitudes was broken only by the Ural Straits, which connected the arctic seas with the enlarged Mediterranean.

(694.5) 61:1.13 Considerable foraminiferal limestone was deposited in European waters. Today this same stone is elevated to a height of 10,000 feet in the Alps, 16,000 feet in the Himalayas, and 20,000 feet in Tibet. The chalk deposits of this period are found along the coasts of Africa and Australia, on the west coast of South America, and about the West Indies.

(694.6) 61:1.14 Throughout this so-called Eocene period the evolution of mammalian and other related forms of life continued with little or no interruption. North America was then connected by land with every continent except Australia, and the world was gradually overrun by primitive mammalian fauna of various types.

2. The Recent Flood Stage

The Age of Advanced Mammals

(694.7) 61:2.1 This period was characterized by the further and rapid evolution of placental mammals, the more progressive forms of mammalian life developing during these times.

(694.8) 61:2.2 Although the early placental mammals sprang from carnivorous ancestors, very soon herbivorous branches developed, and, erelong, omnivorous mammalian families also sprang up. The angiosperms were the principal food of the rapidly increasing mammals, the modern land flora, including the majority of present-day plants and trees, having appeared during earlier periods.

(695.1) 61:2.3 35,000,000 years ago marks the beginning of the age of placental-mammalian world domination. The southern land bridge was extensive, reconnecting the then enormous Antarctic continent with South America, South Africa, and Australia. In spite of the massing of land in high latitudes, the world climate remained relatively mild because of the enormous increase in the size of the tropic seas, nor was the land elevated sufficiently to produce glaciers. Extensive lava flows occurred in Greenland and Iceland, some coal being deposited between these layers.

(695.2) 61:2.4 Marked changes were taking place in the fauna of the planet. The sea life was undergoing great modification; most of the present-day orders of marine life were in existence, and foraminifers continued to play an important role. The insect life was much like that of the previous era. The Florissant fossil beds of Colorado belong to the later years of these far-distant times. Most of the living insect families go back to this period, but many then in existence are now extinct, though their fossils remain.

(695.3) 61:2.5 On land this was pre-eminently the age of mammalian renovation and expansion. Of the earlier and more primitive mammals, over one hundred species were extinct before this period ended. Even the mammals of large size and small brain soon perished. Brains and agility had replaced armor and size in the progress of animal survival. And with the dinosaur family on the decline, the mammals slowly assumed domination of the earth, speedily and completely destroying the remainder of their reptilian ancestors.

(695.4) 61:2.6 Along with the disappearance of the dinosaurs, other and great changes occurred in the various branches of the saurian family. The surviving members of the early reptilian families are turtles, snakes, and crocodiles, together with the venerable frog, the only remaining group representative of man’s earlier ancestors.

(695.5) 61:2.7 Various groups of mammals had their origin in a unique animal now extinct. This carnivorous creature was something of a cross between a cat and a seal; it could live on land or in water and was highly intelligent and very active. In Europe the ancestor of the canine family evolved, soon giving rise to many species of small dogs. About the same time the gnawing rodents, including beavers, squirrels, gophers, mice, and rabbits, appeared and soon became a notable form of life, very little change having since occurred in this family. The later deposits of this period contain the fossil remains of dogs, cats, coons, and weasels in ancestral form.

(695.6) 61:2.8 30,000,000 years ago the modern types of mammals began to make their appearance. Formerly the mammals had lived for the greater part in the hills, being of the mountainous types; suddenly there began the evolution of the plains or hoofed type, the grazing species, as differentiated from the clawed flesh eaters. These grazers sprang from an undifferentiated ancestor having five toes and forty-four teeth, which perished before the end of the age. Toe evolution did not progress beyond the three-toed stage throughout this period.

(695.7) 61:2.9 The horse, an outstanding example of evolution, lived during these times in both North America and Europe, though his development was not fully completed until the later ice age. While the rhinoceros family appeared at the close of this period, it underwent its greatest expansion subsequently. A small hoglike creature also developed which became the ancestor of the many species of swine, peccaries, and hippopotamuses. Camels and llamas had their origin in North America about the middle of this period and overran the western plains. Later, the llamas migrated to South America, the camels to Europe, and soon both were extinct in North America, though a few camels survived up to the ice age.

(696.1) 61:2.10 About this time a notable thing occurred in western North America: The early ancestors of the ancient lemurs first made their appearance. While this family cannot be regarded as true lemurs, their coming marked the establishment of the line from which the true lemurs subsequently sprang.

(696.2) 61:2.11 Like the land serpents of a previous age which betook themselves to the seas, now a whole tribe of placental mammals deserted the land and took up their residence in the oceans. And they have ever since remained in the sea, yielding the modern whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions.

(696.3) 61:2.12 The bird life of the planet continued to develop, but with few important evolutionary changes. The majority of modern birds were existent, including gulls, herons, flamingoes, buzzards, falcons, eagles, owls, quails, and ostriches.

(696.4) 61:2.13 By the close of this Oligocene period, covering ten million years, the plant life, together with the marine life and the land animals, had very largely evolved and was present on earth much as today. Considerable specialization has subsequently appeared, but the ancestral forms of most living things were then alive.

3. The Modern Mountain Stage

Age of the Elephant and the Horse

(696.5) 61:3.1 Land elevation and sea segregation were slowly changing the world’s weather, gradually cooling it, but the climate was still mild. Sequoias and magnolias grew in Greenland, but the subtropical plants were beginning to migrate southward. By the end of this period these warm-climate plants and trees had largely disappeared from the northern latitudes, their places being taken by more hardy plants and the deciduous trees.

(696.6) 61:3.2 There was a great increase in the varieties of grasses, and the teeth of many mammalian species gradually altered to conform to the present-day grazing type.

(696.7) 61:3.3 25,000,000 years ago there was a slight land submergence following the long epoch of land elevation. The Rocky Mountain region remained highly elevated so that the deposition of erosion material continued throughout the lowlands to the east. The Sierras were well re-elevated; in fact, they have been rising ever since. The great four-mile vertical fault in the California region dates from this time.

(696.8) 61:3.4 20,000,000 years ago was indeed the golden age of mammals. The Bering Strait land bridge was up, and many groups of animals migrated to North America from Asia, including the four-tusked mastodons, short-legged rhinoceroses, and many varieties of the cat family.*

(696.9) 61:3.5 The first deer appeared, and North America was soon overrun by ruminants — deer, oxen, camels, bison, and several species of rhinoceroses — but the giant pigs, more than six feet tall, became extinct.

(697.1) 61:3.6 The huge elephants of this and subsequent periods possessed large brains as well as large bodies, and they soon overran the entire world except Australia. For once the world was dominated by a huge animal with a brain sufficiently large to enable it to carry on. Confronted by the highly intelligent life of these ages, no animal the size of an elephant could have survived unless it had possessed a brain of large size and superior quality. In intelligence and adaptation the elephant is approached only by the horse and is surpassed only by man himself. Even so, of the fifty species of elephants in existence at the opening of this period, only two have survived.

(697.2) 61:3.7 15,000,000 years ago the mountain regions of Eurasia were rising, and there was some volcanic activity throughout these regions, but nothing comparable to the lava flows of the Western Hemisphere. These unsettled conditions prevailed all over the world.

(697.3) 61:3.8 The Strait of Gibraltar closed, and Spain was connected with Africa by the old land bridge, but the Mediterranean flowed into the Atlantic through a narrow channel which extended across France, the mountain peaks and highlands appearing as islands above this ancient sea. Later on, these European seas began to withdraw. Still later, the Mediterranean was connected with the Indian Ocean, while at the close of this period the Suez region was elevated so that the Mediterranean became, for a time, an inland salt sea.

(697.4) 61:3.9 The Iceland land bridge submerged, and the arctic waters commingled with those of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic coast of North America rapidly cooled, but the Pacific coast remained warmer than at present. The great ocean currents were in function and affected climate much as they do today.

(697.5) 61:3.10 Mammalian life continued to evolve. Enormous herds of horses joined the camels on the western plains of North America; this was truly the age of horses as well as of elephants. The horse’s brain is next in animal quality to that of the elephant, but in one respect it is decidedly inferior, for the horse never fully overcame the deep-seated propensity to flee when frightened. The horse lacks the emotional control of the elephant, while the elephant is greatly handicapped by size and lack of agility. During this period an animal evolved which was somewhat like both the elephant and the horse, but it was soon destroyed by the rapidly increasing cat family.

(697.6) 61:3.11 As Urantia is entering the so-called “horseless age,” you should pause and ponder what this animal meant to your ancestors. Men first used horses for food, then for travel, and later in agriculture and war. The horse has long served mankind and has played an important part in the development of human civilization.

(697.7) 61:3.12 The biologic developments of this period contributed much toward the setting of the stage for the subsequent appearance of man. In central Asia the true types of both the primitive monkey and the gorilla evolved, having a common ancestor, now extinct. But neither of these species is concerned in the line of living beings which were, later on, to become the ancestors of the human race.

(697.8) 61:3.13 The dog family was represented by several groups, notably wolves and foxes; the cat tribe, by panthers and large saber-toothed tigers, the latter first evolving in North America. The modern cat and dog families increased in numbers all over the world. Weasels, martens, otters, and raccoons thrived and developed throughout the northern latitudes.*

(698.1) 61:3.14 Birds continued to evolve, though few marked changes occurred. Reptiles were similar to modern types — snakes, crocodiles, and turtles.

(698.2) 61:3.15 Thus drew to a close a very eventful and interesting period of the world’s history. This age of the elephant and the horse is known as the Miocene.

4. The Recent Continental-Elevation Stage

The Last Great Mammalian Migration

(698.3) 61:4.1 This is the period of preglacial land elevation in North America, Europe, and Asia. The land was greatly altered in topography. Mountain ranges were born, streams changed their courses, and isolated volcanoes broke out all over the world.

(698.4) 61:4.2 10,000,000 years ago began an age of widespread local land deposits on the lowlands of the continents, but most of these sedimentations were later removed. Much of Europe, at this time, was still under water, including parts of England, Belgium, and France, and the Mediterranean Sea covered much of northern Africa. In North America extensive depositions were made at the mountain bases, in lakes, and in the great land basins. These deposits average only about two hundred feet, are more or less colored, and fossils are rare. Two great fresh-water lakes existed in western North America. The Sierras were elevating; Shasta, Hood, and Rainier were beginning their mountain careers. But it was not until the subsequent ice age that North America began its creep toward the Atlantic depression.

(698.5) 61:4.3 For a short time all the land of the world was again joined excepting Australia, and the last great world-wide animal migration took place. North America was connected with both South America and Asia, and there was a free exchange of animal life. Asiatic sloths, armadillos, antelopes, and bears entered North America, while North American camels went to China. Rhinoceroses migrated over the whole world except Australia and South America, but they were extinct in the Western Hemisphere by the close of this period.

(698.6) 61:4.4 In general, the life of the preceding period continued to evolve and spread. The cat family dominated the animal life, and marine life was almost at a standstill. Many of the horses were still three-toed, but the modern types were arriving; llamas and giraffelike camels mingled with the horses on the grazing plains. The giraffe appeared in Africa, having just as long a neck then as now. In South America sloths, armadillos, anteaters, and the South American type of primitive monkeys evolved. Before the continents were finally isolated, those massive animals, the mastodons, migrated everywhere except to Australia.

(698.7) 61:4.5 5,000,000 years ago the horse evolved as it now is and from North America migrated to all the world. But the horse had become extinct on the continent of its origin long before the red man arrived.

(698.8) 61:4.6 The climate was gradually getting cooler; the land plants were slowly moving southward. At first it was the increasing cold in the north that stopped animal migrations over the northern isthmuses; subsequently these North American land bridges went down. Soon afterwards the land connection between Africa and South America finally submerged, and the Western Hemisphere was isolated much as it is today. From this time forward distinct types of life began to develop in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

(699.1) 61:4.7 And thus does this period of almost ten million years’ duration draw to a close, and not yet has the ancestor of man appeared. This is the time usually designated as the Pliocene.

5. The Early Ice Age

(699.2) 61:5.1 By the close of the preceding period the lands of the northeastern part of North America and of northern Europe were highly elevated on an extensive scale, in North America vast areas rising up to 30,000 feet and more. Mild climates had formerly prevailed over these northern regions, and the arctic waters were all open to evaporation, and they continued to be ice-free until almost the close of the glacial period.

(699.3) 61:5.2 Simultaneously with these land elevations the ocean currents shifted, and the seasonal winds changed their direction. These conditions eventually produced an almost constant precipitation of moisture from the movement of the heavily saturated atmosphere over the northern highlands. Snow began to fall on these elevated and therefore cool regions, and it continued to fall until it had attained a depth of 20,000 feet. The areas of the greatest depth of snow, together with altitude, determined the central points of subsequent glacial pressure flows. And the ice age persisted just as long as this excessive precipitation continued to cover these northern highlands with this enormous mantle of snow, which soon metamorphosed into solid but creeping ice.

(699.4) 61:5.3 The great ice sheets of this period were all located on elevated highlands, not in mountainous regions where they are found today. One half of the glacial ice was in North America, one fourth in Eurasia, and one fourth elsewhere, chiefly in Antarctica. Africa was little affected by the ice, but Australia was almost covered with the antarctic ice blanket.

(699.5) 61:5.4 The northern regions of this world have experienced six separate and distinct ice invasions, although there were scores of advances and recessions associated with the activity of each individual ice sheet. The ice in North America collected in two and, later, three centers. Greenland was covered, and Iceland was completely buried beneath the ice flow. In Europe the ice at various times covered the British Isles excepting the coast of southern England, and it overspread western Europe down to France.

(699.6) 61:5.5 2,000,000 years ago the first North American glacier started its southern advance. The ice age was now in the making, and this glacier consumed nearly one million years in its advance from, and retreat back toward, the northern pressure centers. The central ice sheet extended south as far as Kansas; the eastern and western ice centers were not then so extensive.

(699.7) 61:5.6 1,500,000 years ago the first great glacier was retreating northward. In the meantime, enormous quantities of snow had been falling on Greenland and on the northeastern part of North America, and erelong this eastern ice mass began to flow southward. This was the second invasion of the ice.

(699.8) 61:5.7 These first two ice invasions were not extensive in Eurasia. During these early epochs of the ice age North America was overrun with mastodons, woolly mammoths, horses, camels, deer, musk oxen, bison, ground sloths, giant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, sloths as large as elephants, and many groups of the cat and dog families. But from this time forward they were rapidly reduced in numbers by the increasing cold of the glacial period. Toward the close of the ice age the majority of these animal species were extinct in North America.

(700.1) 61:5.8 Away from the ice the land and water life of the world was little changed. Between the ice invasions the climate was about as mild as at present, perhaps a little warmer. The glaciers were, after all, local phenomena, though they spread out to cover enormous areas. The coastwise climate varied greatly between the times of glacial inaction and those times when enormous icebergs were sliding off the coast of Maine into the Atlantic, slipping out through Puget Sound into the Pacific, and thundering down Norwegian fiords into the North Sea.

6. Primitive Man in the Ice Age

(700.2) 61:6.1 The great event of this glacial period was the evolution of primitive man. Slightly to the west of India, on land now under water and among the offspring of Asiatic migrants of the older North American lemur types, the dawn mammals suddenly appeared. These small animals walked mostly on their hind legs, and they possessed large brains in proportion to their size and in comparison with the brains of other animals. In the seventieth generation of this order of life a new and higher group of animals suddenly differentiated. These new mid-mammals — almost twice the size and height of their ancestors and possessing proportionately increased brain power — had only well established themselves when the Primates, the third vital mutation, suddenly appeared. (At this same time, a retrograde development within the mid-mammal stock gave origin to the simian ancestry; and from that day to this the human branch has gone forward by progressive evolution, while the simian tribes have remained stationary or have actually retrogressed.)

(700.3) 61:6.2 1,000,000 years ago Urantia was registered as an inhabited world. A mutation within the stock of the progressing Primates suddenly produced two primitive human beings, the actual ancestors of mankind.

(700.4) 61:6.3 This event occurred at about the time of the beginning of the third glacial advance; thus it may be seen that your early ancestors were born and bred in a stimulating, invigorating, and difficult environment. And the sole survivors of these Urantia aborigines, the Eskimos, even now prefer to dwell in frigid northern climes.

(700.5) 61:6.4 Human beings were not present in the Western Hemisphere until near the close of the ice age. But during the interglacial epochs they passed westward around the Mediterranean and soon overran the continent of Europe. In the caves of western Europe may be found human bones mingled with the remains of both tropic and arctic animals, testifying that man lived in these regions throughout the later epochs of the advancing and retreating glaciers.

7. The Continuing Ice Age

(700.6) 61:7.1 Throughout the glacial period other activities were in progress, but the action of the ice overshadows all other phenomena in the northern latitudes. No other terrestrial activity leaves such characteristic evidence on the topography. The distinctive boulders and surface cleavages, such as potholes, lakes, displaced stone, and rock flour, are to be found in connection with no other phenomenon in nature. The ice is also responsible for those gentle swells, or surface undulations, known as drumlins. And a glacier, as it advances, displaces rivers and changes the whole face of the earth. Glaciers alone leave behind them those telltale drifts — the ground, lateral, and terminal moraines. These drifts, particularly the ground moraines, extend from the eastern seaboard north and westward in North America and are found in Europe and Siberia.

(701.1) 61:7.2 750,000 years ago the fourth ice sheet, a union of the North American central and eastern ice fields, was well on its way south; at its height it reached to southern Illinois, displacing the Mississippi River fifty miles to the west, and in the east it extended as far south as the Ohio River and central Pennsylvania.

(701.2) 61:7.3 In Asia the Siberian ice sheet made its southernmost invasion, while in Europe the advancing ice stopped just short of the mountain barrier of the Alps.

(701.3) 61:7.4 500,000 years ago, during the fifth advance of the ice, a new development accelerated the course of human evolution. Suddenly and in one generation the six colored races mutated from the aboriginal human stock. This is a doubly important date since it also marks the arrival of the Planetary Prince.

(701.4) 61:7.5 In North America the advancing fifth glacier consisted of a combined invasion by all three ice centers. The eastern lobe, however, extended only a short distance below the St. Lawrence valley, and the western ice sheet made little southern advance. But the central lobe reached south to cover most of the State of Iowa. In Europe this invasion of the ice was not so extensive as the preceding one.

(701.5) 61:7.6 250,000 years ago the sixth and last glaciation began. And despite the fact that the northern highlands had begun to sink slightly, this was the period of greatest snow deposition on the northern ice fields.

(701.6) 61:7.7 In this invasion the three great ice sheets coalesced into one vast ice mass, and all of the western mountains participated in this glacial activity. This was the largest of all ice invasions in North America; the ice moved south over fifteen hundred miles from its pressure centers, and North America experienced its lowest temperatures.

(701.7) 61:7.8 200,000 years ago, during the advance of the last glacier, there occurred an episode which had much to do with the march of events on Urantia — the Lucifer rebellion.

(701.8) 61:7.9 150,000 years ago the sixth and last glacier reached its farthest points of southern extension, the western ice sheet crossing just over the Canadian border; the central coming down into Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois; the eastern sheet advancing south and covering the greater portion of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

(701.9) 61:7.10 This is the glacier that sent forth the many tongues, or ice lobes, which carved out the present-day lakes, great and small. During its retreat the North American system of Great Lakes was produced. And Urantian geologists have very accurately deduced the various stages of this development and have correctly surmised that these bodies of water did, at different times, empty first into the Mississippi valley, then eastward into the Hudson valley, and finally by a northern route into the St. Lawrence. It is thirty-seven thousand years since the connected Great Lakes system began to empty out over the present Niagara route.

(702.1) 61:7.11 100,000 years ago, during the retreat of the last glacier, the vast polar ice sheets began to form, and the center of ice accumulation moved considerably northward. And as long as the polar regions continue to be covered with ice, it is hardly possible for another glacial age to occur, regardless of future land elevations or modification of ocean currents.

(702.2) 61:7.12 This last glacier was one hundred thousand years advancing, and it required a like span of time to complete its northern retreat. The temperate regions have been free from the ice for a little over fifty thousand years.

(702.3) 61:7.13 The rigorous glacial period destroyed many species and radically changed numerous others. Many were sorely sifted by the to-and-fro migration which was made necessary by the advancing and retreating ice. Those animals which followed the glaciers back and forth over the land were the bear, bison, reindeer, musk ox, mammoth, and mastodon.

(702.4) 61:7.14 The mammoth sought the open prairies, but the mastodon preferred the sheltered fringes of the forest regions. The mammoth, until a late date, ranged from Mexico to Canada; the Siberian variety became wool covered. The mastodon persisted in North America until exterminated by the red man much as the white man later killed off the bison.

(702.5) 61:7.15 In North America, during the last glaciation, the horse, tapir, llama, and saber-toothed tiger became extinct. In their places sloths, armadillos, and water hogs came up from South America.

(702.6) 61:7.16 The enforced migration of life before the advancing ice led to an extraordinary commingling of plants and of animals, and with the retreat of the final ice invasion, many arctic species of both plants and animals were left stranded high upon certain mountain peaks, whither they had journeyed to escape destruction by the glacier. And so, today, these dislocated plants and animals may be found high up on the Alps of Europe and even on the Appalachian Mountains of North America.

(702.7) 61:7.17 The ice age is the last completed geologic period, the so-called Pleistocene, over two million years in length.

(702.8) 61:7.18 35,000 years ago marks the termination of the great ice age excepting in the polar regions of the planet. This date is also significant in that it approximates the arrival of a Material Son and Daughter and the beginning of the Adamic dispensation, roughly corresponding to the beginning of the Holocene or postglacial period.*

(702.9) 61:7.19 This narrative, extending from the rise of mammalian life to the retreat of the ice and on down to historic times, covers a span of almost fifty million years. This is the last — the current — geologic period and is known to your researchers as the Cenozoic or recent-times era.

(702.10) 61:7.20 [Sponsored by a Resident Life Carrier.]

Urantia During the Early Land-Life Era

(685.1) 60:0.1 THE era of exclusive marine life has ended. Land elevation, cooling crust and cooling oceans, sea restriction and consequent deepening, together with a great increase of land in northern latitudes, all conspired greatly to change the world’s climate in all regions far removed from the equatorial zone.

(685.2) 60:0.2 The closing epochs of the preceding era were indeed the age of frogs, but these ancestors of the land vertebrates were no longer dominant, having survived in greatly reduced numbers. Very few types outlived the rigorous trials of the preceding period of biologic tribulation. Even the spore-bearing plants were nearly extinct.

1. The Early Reptilian Age

(685.3) 60:1.1 The erosion deposits of this period were mostly conglomerates, shale, and sandstone. The gypsum and red layers throughout these sedimentations over both America and Europe indicate that the climate of these continents was arid. These arid districts were subjected to great erosion from the violent and periodic cloudbursts on the surrounding highlands.

(685.4) 60:1.2 Few fossils are to be found in these layers, but numerous sandstone footprints of the land reptiles may be observed. In many regions the one thousand feet of red sandstone deposit of this period contains no fossils. The life of land animals was continuous only in certain parts of Africa.

(685.5) 60:1.3 These deposits vary in thickness from 3,000 to 10,000 feet, even being 18,000 on the Pacific coast. Lava was later forced in between many of these layers. The Palisades of the Hudson River were formed by the extrusion of basalt lava between these Triassic strata. Volcanic action was extensive in different parts of the world.

(685.6) 60:1.4 Over Europe, especially Germany and Russia, may be found deposits of this period. In England the New Red Sandstone belongs to this epoch. Limestone was laid down in the southern Alps as the result of a sea invasion and may now be seen as the peculiar dolomite limestone walls, peaks, and pillars of those regions. This layer is to be found all over Africa and Australia. The Carrara marble comes from such modified limestone. Nothing of this period will be found in the southern regions of South America as that part of the continent remained down and hence presents only a water or marine deposit continuous with the preceding and succeeding epochs.

(686.1) 60:1.5 150,000,000 years ago the early land-life periods of the world’s history began. Life, in general, did not fare well but did better than at the strenuous and hostile close of the marine-life era.

(686.2) 60:1.6 As this era opens, the eastern and central parts of North America, the northern half of South America, most of Europe, and all of Asia are well above water. North America for the first time is geographically isolated, but not for long as the Bering Strait land bridge soon again emerges, connecting the continent with Asia.

(686.3) 60:1.7 Great troughs developed in North America, paralleling the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The great eastern-Connecticut fault appeared, one side eventually sinking two miles. Many of these North American troughs were later filled with erosion deposits, as also were many of the basins of the fresh- and salt-water lakes of the mountain regions. Later on, these filled land depressions were greatly elevated by lava flows which occurred underground. The petrified forests of many regions belong to this epoch.

(686.4) 60:1.8 The Pacific coast, usually above water during the continental submergences, went down excepting the southern part of California and a large island which then existed in what is now the Pacific Ocean. This ancient California sea was rich in marine life and extended eastward to connect with the old sea basin of the midwestern region.

(686.5) 60:1.9 140,000,000 years ago, suddenly and with only the hint of the two prereptilian ancestors that developed in Africa during the preceding epoch, the reptiles appeared in full-fledged form. They developed rapidly, soon yielding crocodiles, scaled reptiles, and eventually both sea serpents and flying reptiles. Their transition ancestors speedily disappeared.

(686.6) 60:1.10 These rapidly evolving reptilian dinosaurs soon became the monarchs of this age. They were egg layers and are distinguished from all animals by their small brains, having brains weighing less than one pound to control bodies later weighing as much as forty tons. But earlier reptiles were smaller, carnivorous, and walked kangaroolike on their hind legs. They had hollow avian bones and subsequently developed only three toes on their hind feet, and many of their fossil footprints have been mistaken for those of giant birds. Later on, the herbivorous dinosaurs evolved. They walked on all fours, and one branch of this group developed a protective armor.

(686.7) 60:1.11 Several million years later the first mammals appeared. They were nonplacental and proved a speedy failure; none survived. This was an experimental effort to improve mammalian types, but it did not succeed on Urantia.

(686.8) 60:1.12 The marine life of this period was meager but improved rapidly with the new invasion of the sea, which again produced extensive coast lines of shallow waters. Since there was more shallow water around Europe and Asia, the richest fossil beds are to be found about these continents. Today, if you would study the life of this age, examine the Himalayan, Siberian, and Mediterranean regions, as well as India and the islands of the southern Pacific basin. A prominent feature of the marine life was the presence of hosts of the beautiful ammonites, whose fossil remains are found all over the world.

(686.9) 60:1.13 130,000,000 years ago the seas had changed very little. Siberia and North America were connected by the Bering Strait land bridge. A rich and unique marine life appeared on the Californian Pacific coast, where over one thousand species of ammonites developed from the higher types of cephalopods. The life changes of this period were indeed revolutionary notwithstanding that they were transitional and gradual.

(687.1) 60:1.14 This period extended over twenty-five million years and is known as the Triassic.

2. The Later Reptilian Age

(687.2) 60:2.1 120,000,000 years ago a new phase of the reptilian age began. The great event of this period was the evolution and decline of the dinosaurs. Land-animal life reached its greatest development, in point of size, and had virtually perished from the face of the earth by the end of this age. The dinosaurs evolved in all sizes from a species less than two feet long up to the huge noncarnivorous dinosaurs, seventy-five feet long, that have never since been equaled in bulk by any living creature.

(687.3) 60:2.2 The largest of the dinosaurs originated in western North America. These monstrous reptiles are buried throughout the Rocky Mountain regions, along the whole of the Atlantic coast of North America, over western Europe, South Africa, and India, but not in Australia.

(687.4) 60:2.3 These massive creatures became less active and strong as they grew larger and larger; but they required such an enormous amount of food and the land was so overrun by them that they literally starved to death and became extinct — they lacked the intelligence to cope with the situation.

(687.5) 60:2.4 By this time most of the eastern part of North America, which had long been elevated, had been leveled down and washed into the Atlantic Ocean so that the coast extended several hundred miles farther out than now. The western part of the continent was still up, but even these regions were later invaded by both the northern sea and the Pacific, which extended eastward to the Dakota Black Hills region.

(687.6) 60:2.5 This was a fresh-water age characterized by many inland lakes, as is shown by the abundant fresh-water fossils of the so-called Morrison beds of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming. The thickness of these combined salt- and fresh-water deposits varies from 2,000 to 5,000 feet; but very little limestone is present in these layers.

(687.7) 60:2.6 The same polar sea that extended so far down over North America likewise covered all of South America except the soon appearing Andes Mountains. Most of China and Russia was inundated, but the water invasion was greatest in Europe. It was during this submergence that the beautiful lithographic stone of southern Germany was laid down, those strata in which fossils, such as the most delicate wings of olden insects, are preserved as of but yesterday.

(687.8) 60:2.7 The flora of this age was much like that of the preceding. Ferns persisted, while conifers and pines became more and more like the present-day varieties. Some coal was still being formed along the northern Mediterranean shores.

(687.9) 60:2.8 The return of the seas improved the weather. Corals spread to European waters, testifying that the climate was still mild and even, but they never again appeared in the slowly cooling polar seas. The marine life of these times improved and developed greatly, especially in European waters. Both corals and crinoids temporarily appeared in larger numbers than heretofore, but the ammonites dominated the invertebrate life of the oceans, their average size ranging from three to four inches, though one species attained a diameter of eight feet. Sponges were everywhere, and both cuttlefish and oysters continued to evolve.

(688.1) 60:2.9 110,000,000 years ago the potentials of marine life were continuing to unfold. The sea urchin was one of the outstanding mutations of this epoch. Crabs, lobsters, and the modern types of crustaceans matured. Marked changes occurred in the fish family, a sturgeon type first appearing, but the ferocious sea serpents, descended from the land reptiles, still infested all the seas, and they threatened the destruction of the entire fish family.

(688.2) 60:2.10 This continued to be, pre-eminently, the age of the dinosaurs. They so overran the land that two species had taken to the water for sustenance during the preceding period of sea encroachment. These sea serpents represent a backward step in evolution. While some new species are progressing, certain strains remain stationary and others gravitate backward, reverting to a former state. And this is what happened when these two types of reptiles forsook the land.

(688.3) 60:2.11 As time passed, the sea serpents grew to such size that they became very sluggish and eventually perished because they did not have brains large enough to afford protection for their immense bodies. Their brains weighed less than two ounces notwithstanding the fact that these huge ichthyosaurs sometimes grew to be fifty feet long, the majority being over thirty-five feet in length. The marine crocodilians were also a reversion from the land type of reptile, but unlike the sea serpents, these animals always returned to the land to lay their eggs.

(688.4) 60:2.12 Soon after two species of dinosaurs migrated to the water in a futile attempt at self-preservation, two other types were driven to the air by the bitter competition of life on land. But these flying pterosaurs were not the ancestors of the true birds of subsequent ages. They evolved from the hollow-boned leaping dinosaurs, and their wings were of batlike formation with a spread of twenty to twenty-five feet. These ancient flying reptiles grew to be ten feet long, and they had separable jaws much like those of modern snakes. For a time these flying reptiles appeared to be a success, but they failed to evolve along lines which would enable them to survive as air navigators. They represent the nonsurviving strains of bird ancestry.

(688.5) 60:2.13 Turtles increased during this period, first appearing in North America. Their ancestors came over from Asia by way of the northern land bridge.

(688.6) 60:2.14 One hundred million years ago the reptilian age was drawing to a close. The dinosaurs, for all their enormous mass, were all but brainless animals, lacking the intelligence to provide sufficient food to nourish such enormous bodies. And so did these sluggish land reptiles perish in ever-increasing numbers. Henceforth, evolution will follow the growth of brains, not physical bulk, and the development of brains will characterize each succeeding epoch of animal evolution and planetary progress.

(688.7) 60:2.15 This period, embracing the height and the beginning decline of the reptiles, extended nearly twenty-five million years and is known as the Jurassic.

3. The Cretaceous Stage

The Flowering-Plant Period

The Age of Birds

(688.8) 60:3.1 The great Cretaceous period derives its name from the predominance of the prolific chalk-making foraminifers in the seas. This period brings Urantia to near the end of the long reptilian dominance and witnesses the appearance of flowering plants and bird life on land. These are also the times of the termination of the westward and southward drift of the continents, accompanied by tremendous crustal deformations and concomitant widespread lava flows and great volcanic activities.

(689.1) 60:3.2 Near the close of the preceding geologic period much of the continental land was up above water, although as yet there were no mountain peaks. But as the continental land drift continued, it met with the first great obstruction on the deep floor of the Pacific. This contention of geologic forces gave impetus to the formation of the whole vast north and south mountain range extending from Alaska down through Mexico to Cape Horn.

(689.2) 60:3.3 This period thus becomes the modern mountain-building stage of geologic history. Prior to this time there were few mountain peaks, merely elevated land ridges of great width. Now the Pacific coast range was beginning to elevate, but it was located seven hundred miles west of the present shore line. The Sierras were beginning to form, their gold-bearing quartz strata being the product of lava flows of this epoch. In the eastern part of North America, Atlantic sea pressure was also working to cause land elevation.

(689.3) 60:3.4 100,000,000 years ago the North American continent and a part of Europe were well above water. The warping of the American continents continued, resulting in the metamorphosing of the South American Andes and in the gradual elevation of the western plains of North America. Most of Mexico sank beneath the sea, and the southern Atlantic encroached on the eastern coast of South America, eventually reaching the present shore line. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans were then about as they are today.

(689.4) 60:3.5 95,000,000 years ago the American and European land masses again began to sink. The southern seas commenced the invasion of North America and gradually extended northward to connect with the Arctic Ocean, constituting the second greatest submergence of the continent. When this sea finally withdrew, it left the continent about as it now is. Before this great submergence began, the eastern Appalachian highlands had been almost completely worn down to the water’s level. The many colored layers of pure clay now used for the manufacture of earthenware were laid down over the Atlantic coast regions during this age, their average thickness being about 2,000 feet.

(689.5) 60:3.6 Great volcanic actions occurred south of the Alps and along the line of the present California coast-range mountains. The greatest crustal deformations in millions upon millions of years took place in Mexico. Great changes also occurred in Europe, Russia, Japan, and southern South America. The climate became increasingly diversified.

(689.6) 60:3.7 90,000,000 years ago the angiosperms emerged from these early Cretaceous seas and soon overran the continents. These land plants suddenly appeared along with fig trees, magnolias, and tulip trees. Soon after this time fig trees, breadfruit trees, and palms overspread Europe and the western plains of North America. No new land animals appeared.

(689.7) 60:3.8 85,000,000 years ago the Bering Strait closed, shutting off the cooling waters of the northern seas. Theretofore the marine life of the Atlantic-Gulf waters and that of the Pacific Ocean had differed greatly, owing to the temperature variations of these two bodies of water, which now became uniform.*

(689.8) 60:3.9 The deposits of chalk and greensand marl give name to this period. The sedimentations of these times are variegated, consisting of chalk, shale, sandstone, and small amounts of limestone, together with inferior coal or lignite, and in many regions they contain oil. These layers vary in thickness from 200 feet in some places to 10,000 feet in western North America and numerous European localities. Along the eastern borders of the Rocky Mountains these deposits may be observed in the uptilted foothills.

(690.1) 60:3.10 All over the world these strata are permeated with chalk, and these layers of porous semirock pick up water at upturned outcrops and convey it downward to furnish the water supply of much of the earth’s present arid regions.

(690.2) 60:3.11 80,000,000 years ago great disturbances occurred in the earth’s crust. The western advance of the continental drift was coming to a standstill, and the enormous energy of the sluggish momentum of the hinter continental mass upcrumpled the Pacific shore line of both North and South America and initiated profound repercussional changes along the Pacific shores of Asia. This circumpacific land elevation, which culminated in present-day mountain ranges, is more than twenty-five thousand miles long. And the upheavals attendant upon its birth were the greatest surface distortions to take place since life appeared on Urantia. The lava flows, both above and below ground, were extensive and widespread.

(690.3) 60:3.12 75,000,000 years ago marks the end of the continental drift. From Alaska to Cape Horn the long Pacific coast mountain ranges were completed, but there were as yet few peaks.

(690.4) 60:3.13 The backthrust of the halted continental drift continued the elevation of the western plains of North America, while in the east the worn-down Appalachian Mountains of the Atlantic coast region were projected straight up, with little or no tilting.

(690.5) 60:3.14 70,000,000 years ago the crustal distortions connected with the maximum elevation of the Rocky Mountain region took place. A large segment of rock was overthrust fifteen miles at the surface in British Columbia; here the Cambrian rocks are obliquely thrust out over the Cretaceous layers. On the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, near the Canadian border, there was another spectacular overthrust; here may be found the prelife stone layers shoved out over the then recent Cretaceous deposits.

(690.6) 60:3.15 This was an age of volcanic activity all over the world, giving rise to numerous small isolated volcanic cones. Submarine volcanoes broke out in the submerged Himalayan region. Much of the rest of Asia, including Siberia, was also still under water.

(690.7) 60:3.16 65,000,000 years ago there occurred one of the greatest lava flows of all time. The deposition layers of these and preceding lava flows are to be found all over the Americas, North and South Africa, Australia, and parts of Europe.

(690.8) 60:3.17 The land animals were little changed, but because of greater continental emergence, especially in North America, they rapidly multiplied. North America was the great field of the land-animal evolution of these times, most of Europe being under water.

(690.9) 60:3.18 The climate was still warm and uniform. The arctic regions were enjoying weather much like that of the present climate in central and southern North America.

(690.10) 60:3.19 Great plant-life evolution was taking place. Among the land plants the angiosperms predominated, and many present-day trees first appeared, including beech, birch, oak, walnut, sycamore, maple, and modern palms. Fruits, grasses, and cereals were abundant, and these seed-bearing grasses and trees were to the plant world what the ancestors of man were to the animal world — they were second in evolutionary importance only to the appearance of man himself. Suddenly and without previous gradation, the great family of flowering plants mutated. And this new flora soon overspread the entire world.

(691.1) 60:3.20 60,000,000 years ago, though the land reptiles were on the decline, the dinosaurs continued as monarchs of the land, the lead now being taken by the more agile and active types of the smaller leaping kangaroo varieties of the carnivorous dinosaurs. But sometime previously there had appeared new types of the herbivorous dinosaurs, whose rapid increase was due to the appearance of the grass family of land plants. One of these new grass-eating dinosaurs was a true quadruped having two horns and a capelike shoulder flange. The land type of turtle, twenty feet across, appeared as did also the modern crocodile and true snakes of the modern type. Great changes were also occurring among the fishes and other forms of marine life.*

(691.2) 60:3.21 The wading and swimming prebirds of earlier ages had not been a success in the air, nor had the flying dinosaurs. They were a short-lived species, soon becoming extinct. They, too, were subject to the dinosaur doom, destruction, because of having too little brain substance in comparison with body size. This second attempt to produce animals that could navigate the atmosphere failed, as did the abortive attempt to produce mammals during this and a preceding age.

(691.3) 60:3.22 55,000,000 years ago the evolutionary march was marked by the sudden appearance of the first of the true birds, a small pigeonlike creature which was the ancestor of all bird life. This was the third type of flying creature to appear on earth, and it sprang directly from the reptilian group, not from the contemporary flying dinosaurs nor from the earlier types of toothed land birds. And so this becomes known as the age of birds as well as the declining age of reptiles.

4. The End of the Chalk Period

(691.4) 60:4.1 The great Cretaceous period was drawing to a close, and its termination marks the end of the great sea invasions of the continents. Particularly is this true of North America, where there had been just twenty-four great inundations. And though there were subsequent minor submergences, none of these can be compared with the extensive and lengthy marine invasions of this and previous ages. These alternate periods of land and sea dominance have occurred in million-year cycles. There has been an agelong rhythm associated with this rise and fall of ocean floor and continental land levels. And these same rhythmical crustal movements will continue from this time on throughout the earth’s history but with diminishing frequency and extent.

(691.5) 60:4.2 This period also witnesses the end of the continental drift and the building of the modern mountains of Urantia. But the pressure of the continental masses and the thwarted momentum of their agelong drift are not the exclusive influences in mountain building. The chief and underlying factor in determining the location of a mountain range is the pre-existent lowland, or trough, which has become filled up with the comparatively lighter deposits of the land erosion and marine drifts of the preceding ages. These lighter areas of land are sometimes 15,000 to 20,000 feet thick; therefore, when the crust is subjected to pressure from any cause, these lighter areas are the first to crumple up, fold, and rise upward to afford compensatory adjustment for the contending and conflicting forces and pressures at work in the earth’s crust or underneath the crust. Sometimes these upthrusts of land occur without folding. But in connection with the rise of the Rocky Mountains, great folding and tilting occurred, coupled with enormous overthrusts of the various layers, both underground and at the surface.

(692.1) 60:4.3 The oldest mountains of the world are located in Asia, Greenland, and northern Europe among those of the older east-west systems. The mid-age mountains are in the circumpacific group and in the second European east-west system, which was born at about the same time. This gigantic uprising is almost ten thousand miles long, extending from Europe over into the West Indies land elevations. The youngest mountains are in the Rocky Mountain system, where, for ages, land elevations had occurred only to be successively covered by the sea, though some of the higher lands remained as islands. Subsequent to the formation of the mid-age mountains, a real mountain highland was elevated which was destined, subsequently, to be carved into the present Rocky Mountains by the combined artistry of nature’s elements.

(692.2) 60:4.4 The present North American Rocky Mountain region is not the original elevation of land; that elevation had been long since leveled by erosion and then re-elevated. The present front range of mountains is what is left of the remains of the original range which was re-elevated. Pikes Peak and Longs Peak are outstanding examples of this mountain activity, extending over two or more generations of mountain lives. These two peaks held their heads above water during several of the preceding inundations.

(692.3) 60:4.5 Biologically as well as geologically this was an eventful and active age on land and under water. Sea urchins increased while corals and crinoids decreased. The ammonites, of preponderant influence during a previous age, also rapidly declined. On land the fern forests were largely replaced by pine and other modern trees, including the gigantic redwoods. By the end of this period, while the placental mammal has not yet evolved, the biologic stage is fully set for the appearance, in a subsequent age, of the early ancestors of the future mammalian types.

(692.4) 60:4.6 And thus ends a long era of world evolution, extending from the early appearance of land life down to the more recent times of the immediate ancestors of the human species and its collateral branches. This, the Cretaceous age, covers fifty million years and brings to a close the premammalian era of land life, which extends over a period of one hundred million years and is known as the Mesozoic.

(692.5) 60:4.7 [Presented by a Life Carrier of Nebadon assigned to Satania and now functioning on Urantia.]

The Marine-Life Era on Urantia

(672.1) 59:0.1 WE RECKON the history of Urantia as beginning about one billion years ago and extending through five major eras:

(672.2) 59:0.2 1. The prelife era extends over the initial four hundred and fifty million years, from about the time the planet attained its present size to the time of life establishment. Your students have designated this period as the Archeozoic.

(672.3) 59:0.3 2. The life-dawn era extends over the next one hundred and fifty million years. This epoch intervenes between the preceding prelife or cataclysmic age and the following period of more highly developed marine life. This era is known to your researchers as the Proterozoic.

(672.4) 59:0.4 3. The marine-life era covers the next two hundred and fifty million years and is best known to you as the Paleozoic.

(672.5) 59:0.5 4. The early land-life era extends over the next one hundred million years and is known as the Mesozoic.

(672.6) 59:0.6 5. The mammalian era occupies the last fifty million years. This recent-times era is known as the Cenozoic.

(672.7) 59:0.7 The marine-life era thus covers about one quarter of your planetary history. It may be subdivided into six long periods, each characterized by certain well-defined developments in both the geologic realms and the biologic domains.

(672.8) 59:0.8 As this era begins, the sea bottoms, the extensive continental shelves, and the numerous shallow near-shore basins are covered with prolific vegetation. The more simple and primitive forms of animal life have already developed from preceding vegetable organisms, and the early animal organisms have gradually made their way along the extensive coast lines of the various land masses until the many inland seas are teeming with primitive marine life. Since so few of these early organisms had shells, not many have been preserved as fossils. Nevertheless the stage is set for the opening chapters of that great “stone book” of the life-record preservation which was so methodically laid down during the succeeding ages.

(672.9) 59:0.9 The continent of North America is wonderfully rich in the fossil-bearing deposits of the entire marine-life era. The very first and oldest layers are separated from the later strata of the preceding period by extensive erosion deposits which clearly segregate these two stages of planetary development.

1. Early Marine Life in the Shallow Seas

The Trilobite Age

(673.1) 59:1.1 By the dawn of this period of relative quiet on the earth’s surface, life is confined to the various inland seas and the oceanic shore line; as yet no form of land organism has evolved. Primitive marine animals are well established and are prepared for the next evolutionary development. Amebas are typical survivors of this initial stage of animal life, having made their appearance toward the close of the preceding transition period.*

(673.2) 59:1.2 400,000,000 years ago marine life, both vegetable and animal, is fairly well distributed over the whole world. The world climate grows slightly warmer and becomes more equable. There is a general inundation of the seashores of the various continents, particularly of North and South America. New oceans appear, and the older bodies of water are greatly enlarged.

(673.3) 59:1.3 Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a nonmarine habitat.

(673.4) 59:1.4 Suddenly and without gradation ancestry the first multicellular animals make their appearance. The trilobites have evolved, and for ages they dominate the seas. From the standpoint of marine life this is the trilobite age.

(673.5) 59:1.5 In the later portion of this time segment much of North America and Europe emerged from the sea. The crust of the earth was temporarily stabilized; mountains, or rather high elevations of land, rose along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, over the West Indies, and in southern Europe. The entire Caribbean region was highly elevated.

(673.6) 59:1.6 390,000,000 years ago the land was still elevated. Over parts of eastern and western America and western Europe may be found the stone strata laid down during these times, and these are the oldest rocks which contain trilobite fossils. There were many long fingerlike gulfs projecting into the land masses in which were deposited these fossil-bearing rocks.

(673.7) 59:1.7 Within a few million years the Pacific Ocean began to invade the American continents. The sinking of the land was principally due to crustal adjustment, although the lateral land spread, or continental creep, was also a factor.

(673.8) 59:1.8 380,000,000 years ago Asia was subsiding, and all other continents were experiencing a short-lived emergence. But as this epoch progressed, the newly appearing Atlantic Ocean made extensive inroads on all adjacent coast lines. The northern Atlantic or Arctic seas were then connected with the southern Gulf waters. When this southern sea entered the Appalachian trough, its waves broke upon the east against mountains as high as the Alps, but in general the continents were uninteresting lowlands, utterly devoid of scenic beauty.

(673.9) 59:1.9 The sedimentary deposits of these ages are of four sorts:

(673.10) 59:1.10 1. Conglomerates — matter deposited near the shore lines.

(673.11) 59:1.11 2. Sandstones — deposits made in shallow water but where the waves were sufficient to prevent mud settling.

(673.12) 59:1.12 3. Shales — deposits made in the deeper and more quiet water.

(673.13) 59:1.13 4. Limestone — including the deposits of trilobite shells in deep water.

(673.14) 59:1.14 The trilobite fossils of these times present certain basic uniformities coupled with certain well-marked variations. The early animals developing from the three original life implantations were characteristic; those appearing in the Western Hemisphere were slightly different from those of the Eurasian group and from the Australasian or Australian-Antarctic type.

(674.1) 59:1.15 370,000,000 years ago the great and almost total submergence of North and South America occurred, followed by the sinking of Africa and Australia. Only certain parts of North America remained above these shallow Cambrian seas. Five million years later the seas were retreating before the rising land. And all of these phenomena of land sinking and land rising were undramatic, taking place slowly over millions of years.

(674.2) 59:1.16 The trilobite fossil-bearing strata of this epoch outcrop here and there throughout all the continents except in central Asia. In many regions these rocks are horizontal, but in the mountains they are tilted and distorted because of pressure and folding. And such pressure has, in many places, changed the original character of these deposits. Sandstone has been turned into quartz, shale has been changed to slate, while limestone has been converted into marble.

(674.3) 59:1.17 360,000,000 years ago the land was still rising. North and South America were well up. Western Europe and the British Isles were emerging, except parts of Wales, which were deeply submerged. There were no great ice sheets during these ages. The supposed glacial deposits appearing in connection with these strata in Europe, Africa, China, and Australia are due to isolated mountain glaciers or to the displacement of glacial debris of later origin. The world climate was oceanic, not continental. The southern seas were warmer then than now, and they extended northward over North America up to the polar regions. The Gulf Stream coursed over the central portion of North America, being deflected eastward to bathe and warm the shores of Greenland, making that now ice-mantled continent a veritable tropic paradise.*

(674.4) 59:1.18 The marine life was much alike the world over and consisted of the seaweeds, one-celled organisms, simple sponges, trilobites, and other crustaceans — shrimps, crabs, and lobsters. Three thousand varieties of brachiopods appeared at the close of this period, only two hundred of which have survived. These animals represent a variety of early life which has come down to the present time practically unchanged.

(674.5) 59:1.19 But the trilobites were the dominant living creatures. They were sexed animals and existed in many forms; being poor swimmers, they sluggishly floated in the water or crawled along the sea bottoms, curling up in self-protection when attacked by their later appearing enemies. They grew in length from two inches to one foot and developed into four distinct groups: carnivorous, herbivorous, omnivorous, and “mud eaters.” The ability of the latter group largely to subsist on inorganic matter — being the last multicelled animal that could — explains their great increase and long survival.

(674.6) 59:1.20 This was the biogeologic picture of Urantia at the end of that long period of the world’s history, embracing fifty million years, designated by your geologists as the Cambrian.

2. The First Continental Flood Stage

The Invertebrate-Animal Age

(674.7) 59:2.1 The periodic phenomena of land elevation and land sinking characteristic of these times were all gradual and nonspectacular, being accompanied by little or no volcanic action. Throughout all of these successive land elevations and depressions the Asiatic mother continent did not fully share the history of the other land bodies. It experienced many inundations, dipping first in one direction and then another, more particularly in its earlier history, but it does not present the uniform rock deposits which may be discovered on the other continents. In recent ages Asia has been the most stable of all the land masses.

(675.1) 59:2.2 350,000,000 years ago saw the beginning of the great flood period of all the continents except central Asia. The land masses were repeatedly covered with water; only the coastal highlands remained above these shallow but widespread oscillatory inland seas. Three major inundations characterized this period, but before it ended, the continents again arose, the total land emergence being fifteen per cent greater than now exists. The Caribbean region was highly elevated. This period is not well marked off in Europe because the land fluctuations were less, while the volcanic action was more persistent.

(675.2) 59:2.3 340,000,000 years ago there occurred another extensive land sinking except in Asia and Australia. The waters of the world’s oceans were generally commingled. This was a great limestone age, much of its stone being laid down by lime-secreting algae.

(675.3) 59:2.4 A few million years later large portions of the American continents and Europe began to emerge from the water. In the Western Hemisphere only an arm of the Pacific Ocean remained over Mexico and the present Rocky Mountain regions, but near the close of this epoch the Atlantic and Pacific coasts again began to sink.

(675.4) 59:2.5 330,000,000 years ago marks the beginning of a time sector of comparative quiet all over the world, with much land again above water. The only exception to this reign of terrestrial quiet was the eruption of the great North American volcano of eastern Kentucky, one of the greatest single volcanic activities the world has ever known. The ashes of this volcano covered five hundred square miles to a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet.

(675.5) 59:2.6 320,000,000 years ago the third major flood of this period occurred. The waters of this inundation covered all the land submerged by the preceding deluge, while extending farther in many directions all over the Americas and Europe. Eastern North America and western Europe were from 10,000 to 15,000 feet under water.

(675.6) 59:2.7 310,000,000 years ago the land masses of the world were again well up excepting the southern parts of North America. Mexico emerged, thus creating the Gulf Sea, which has ever since maintained its identity.

(675.7) 59:2.8 The life of this period continues to evolve. The world is once again quiet and relatively peaceful; the climate remains mild and equable; the land plants are migrating farther and farther from the seashores. The life patterns are well developed, although few plant fossils of these times are to be found.

(675.8) 59:2.9 This was the great age of individual animal organismal evolution, though many of the basic changes, such as the transition from plant to animal, had previously occurred. The marine fauna developed to the point where every type of life below the vertebrate scale was represented in the fossils of those rocks which were laid down during these times. But all of these animals were marine organisms. No land animals had yet appeared except a few types of worms which burrowed along the seashores, nor had the land plants yet overspread the continents; there was still too much carbon dioxide in the air to permit of the existence of air breathers. Primarily, all animals except certain of the more primitive ones are directly or indirectly dependent on plant life for their existence.

(676.1) 59:2.10 The trilobites were still prominent. These little animals existed in tens of thousands of patterns and were the predecessors of modern crustaceans. Some of the trilobites had from twenty-five to four thousand tiny eyelets; others had aborted eyes. As this period closed, the trilobites shared domination of the seas with several other forms of invertebrate life. But they utterly perished during the beginning of the next period.

(676.2) 59:2.11 Lime-secreting algae were widespread. There existed thousands of species of the early ancestors of the corals. Sea worms were abundant, and there were many varieties of jellyfish which have since become extinct. Corals and the later types of sponges evolved. The cephalopods were well developed, and they have survived as the modern pearly nautilus, octopus, cuttlefish, and squid.

(676.3) 59:2.12 There were many varieties of shell animals, but their shells were not then so much needed for defensive purposes as in subsequent ages. The gastropods were present in the waters of the ancient seas, and they included single-shelled drills, periwinkles, and snails. The bivalve gastropods have come on down through the intervening millions of years much as they then existed and embrace the mussels, clams, oysters, and scallops. The valve-shelled organisms also evolved, and these brachiopods lived in those ancient waters much as they exist today; they even had hinged, notched, and other sorts of protective arrangements of their valves.*

(676.4) 59:2.13 So ends the evolutionary story of the second great period of marine life, which is known to your geologists as the Ordovician.

3. The Second Great Flood Stage

The Coral Period — The Brachiopod Age

(676.5) 59:3.1 300,000,000 years ago another great period of land submergence began. The southward and northward encroachment of the ancient Silurian seas made ready to engulf most of Europe and North America. The land was not elevated far above the sea so that not much deposition occurred about the shore lines. The seas teemed with lime-shelled life, and the falling of these shells to the sea bottom gradually built up very thick layers of limestone. This is the first widespread limestone deposit, and it covers practically all of Europe and North America but only appears at the earth’s surface in a few places. The thickness of this ancient rock layer averages about one thousand feet, but many of these deposits have since been greatly deformed by tilting, upheavals, and faulting, and many have been changed to quartz, shale, and marble.

(676.6) 59:3.2 No fire rocks or lava are found in the stone layers of this period except those of the great volcanoes of southern Europe and eastern Maine and the lava flows of Quebec. Volcanic action was largely past. This was the height of great water deposition; there was little or no mountain building.

(676.7) 59:3.3 290,000,000 years ago the sea had largely withdrawn from the continents, and the bottoms of the surrounding oceans were sinking. The land masses were little changed until they were again submerged. The early mountain movements of all the continents were beginning, and the greatest of these crustal upheavals were the Himalayas of Asia and the great Caledonian Mountains, extending from Ireland through Scotland and on to Spitzbergen.

(677.1) 59:3.4 It is in the deposits of this age that much of the gas, oil, zinc, and lead are found, the gas and oil being derived from the enormous collections of vegetable and animal matter carried down at the time of the previous land submergence, while the mineral deposits represent the sedimentation of sluggish bodies of water. Many of the rock salt deposits belong to this period.

(677.2) 59:3.5 The trilobites rapidly declined, and the center of the stage was occupied by the larger mollusks, or cephalopods. These animals grew to be fifteen feet long and one foot in diameter and became masters of the seas. This species of animal appeared suddenly and assumed dominance of sea life.

(677.3) 59:3.6 The great volcanic activity of this age was in the European sector. Not in millions upon millions of years had such violent and extensive volcanic eruptions occurred as now took place around the Mediterranean trough and especially in the neighborhood of the British Isles. This lava flow over the British Isles region today appears as alternate layers of lava and rock 25,000 feet thick. These rocks were laid down by the intermittent lava flows which spread out over a shallow sea bed, thus interspersing the rock deposits, and all of this was subsequently elevated high above the sea. Violent earthquakes took place in northern Europe, notably in Scotland.

(677.4) 59:3.7 The oceanic climate remained mild and uniform, and the warm seas bathed the shores of the polar lands. Brachiopod and other marine-life fossils may be found in these deposits right up to the North Pole. Gastropods, brachiopods, sponges, and reef-making corals continued to increase.

(677.5) 59:3.8 The close of this epoch witnesses the second advance of the Silurian seas with another commingling of the waters of the southern and northern oceans. The cephalopods dominate marine life, while associated forms of life progressively develop and differentiate.

(677.6) 59:3.9 280,000,000 years ago the continents had largely emerged from the second Silurian inundation. The rock deposits of this submergence are known in North America as Niagara limestone because this is the stratum of rock over which Niagara Falls now flows. This layer of rock extends from the eastern mountains to the Mississippi valley region but not farther west except to the south. Several layers extend over Canada, portions of South America, Australia, and most of Europe, the average thickness of this Niagara series being about six hundred feet. Immediately overlying the Niagara deposit, in many regions may be found a collection of conglomerate, shale, and rock salt. This is the accumulation of secondary subsidences. This salt settled in great lagoons which were alternately opened up to the sea and then cut off so that evaporation occurred with deposition of salt along with other matter held in solution. In some regions these rock salt beds are seventy feet thick.

(677.7) 59:3.10 The climate is even and mild, and marine fossils are laid down in the arctic regions. But by the end of this epoch the seas are so excessively salty that little life survives.

(677.8) 59:3.11 Toward the close of the final Silurian submergence there is a great increase in the echinoderms — the stone lilies — as is evidenced by the crinoid limestone deposits. The trilobites have nearly disappeared, and the mollusks continue monarchs of the seas; coral-reef formation increases greatly. During this age, in the more favorable locations the primitive water scorpions first evolve. Soon thereafter, and suddenly, the true scorpions — actual air breathers — make their appearance.

(678.1) 59:3.12 These developments terminate the third marine-life period, covering twenty-five million years and known to your researchers as the Silurian.

4. The Great Land-Emergence Stage

The Vegetative Land-Life Period

The Age of Fishes

(678.2) 59:4.1 In the agelong struggle between land and water, for long periods the sea has been comparatively victorious, but times of land victory are just ahead. And the continental drifts have not proceeded so far but that, at times, practically all of the land of the world is connected by slender isthmuses and narrow land bridges.

(678.3) 59:4.2 As the land emerges from the last Silurian inundation, an important period in world development and life evolution comes to an end. It is the dawn of a new age on earth. The naked and unattractive landscape of former times is becoming clothed with luxuriant verdure, and the first magnificent forests will soon appear.

(678.4) 59:4.3 The marine life of this age was very diverse due to the early species segregation, but later on there was free commingling and association of all these different types. The brachiopods early reached their climax, being succeeded by the arthropods, and barnacles made their first appearance. But the greatest event of all was the sudden appearance of the fish family. This became the age of fishes, that period of the world’s history characterized by the vertebrate type of animal.

(678.5) 59:4.4 270,000,000 years ago the continents were all above water. In millions upon millions of years not so much land had been above water at one time; it was one of the greatest land-emergence epochs in all world history.

(678.6) 59:4.5 Five million years later the land areas of North and South America, Europe, Africa, northern Asia, and Australia were briefly inundated, in North America the submergence at one time or another being almost complete; and the resulting limestone layers run from 500 to 5,000 feet in thickness. These various Devonian seas extended first in one direction and then in another so that the immense arctic North American inland sea found an outlet to the Pacific Ocean through northern California.

(678.7) 59:4.6 260,000,000 years ago, toward the end of this land-depression epoch, North America was partially overspread by seas having simultaneous connection with the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, and Gulf waters. The deposits of these later stages of the first Devonian flood average about one thousand feet in thickness. The coral reefs characterizing these times indicate that the inland seas were clear and shallow. Such coral deposits are exposed in the banks of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, and are about one hundred feet thick, embracing more than two hundred varieties. These coral formations extend through Canada and northern Europe to the arctic regions.

(678.8) 59:4.7 Following these submergences, many of the shore lines were considerably elevated so that the earlier deposits were covered by mud or shale. There is also a red sandstone stratum which characterizes one of the Devonian sedimentations, and this red layer extends over much of the earth’s surface, being found in North and South America, Europe, Russia, China, Africa, and Australia. Such red deposits are suggestive of arid or semiarid conditions, but the climate of this epoch was still mild and even.

(679.1) 59:4.8 Throughout all of this period the land southeast of the Cincinnati Island remained well above water. But very much of western Europe, including the British Isles, was submerged. In Wales, Germany, and other places in Europe the Devonian rocks are 20,000 feet thick.

(679.2) 59:4.9 250,000,000 years ago witnessed the appearance of the fish family, the vertebrates, one of the most important steps in all prehuman evolution.

(679.3) 59:4.10 The arthropods, or crustaceans, were the ancestors of the first vertebrates. The forerunners of the fish family were two modified arthropod ancestors; one had a long body connecting a head and tail, while the other was a backboneless, jawless prefish. But these preliminary types were quickly destroyed when the fishes, the first vertebrates of the animal world, made their sudden appearance from the north.

(679.4) 59:4.11 Many of the largest true fish belong to this age, some of the teeth-bearing varieties being twenty-five to thirty feet long; the present-day sharks are the survivors of these ancient fishes. The lung and armored fishes reached their evolutionary apex, and before this epoch had ended, fishes had adapted to both fresh and salt waters.

(679.5) 59:4.12 Veritable bone beds of fish teeth and skeletons may be found in the deposits laid down toward the close of this period, and rich fossil beds are situated along the coast of California since many sheltered bays of the Pacific Ocean extended into the land of that region.

(679.6) 59:4.13 The earth was being rapidly overrun by the new orders of land vegetation. Heretofore few plants grew on land except about the water’s edge. Now, and suddenly, the prolific fern family appeared and quickly spread over the face of the rapidly rising land in all parts of the world. Tree types, two feet thick and forty feet high, soon developed; later on, leaves evolved, but these early varieties had only rudimentary foliage. There were many smaller plants, but their fossils are not found since they were usually destroyed by the still earlier appearing bacteria.

(679.7) 59:4.14 As the land rose, North America became connected with Europe by land bridges extending to Greenland. And today Greenland holds the remains of these early land plants beneath its mantle of ice.

(679.8) 59:4.15 240,000,000 years ago the land over parts of both Europe and North and South America began to sink. This subsidence marked the appearance of the last and least extensive of the Devonian floods. The arctic seas again moved southward over much of North America, the Atlantic inundated a large part of Europe and western Asia, while the southern Pacific covered most of India. This inundation was slow in appearing and equally slow in retreating. The Catskill Mountains along the west bank of the Hudson River are one of the largest geologic monuments of this epoch to be found on the surface of North America.

(679.9) 59:4.16 230,000,000 years ago the seas were continuing their retreat. Much of North America was above water, and great volcanic activity occurred in the St. Lawrence region. Mount Royal, at Montreal, is the eroded neck of one of these volcanoes. The deposits of this entire epoch are well shown in the Appalachian Mountains of North America where the Susquehanna River has cut a valley exposing these successive layers, which attained a thickness of over 13,000 feet.

(680.1) 59:4.17 The elevation of the continents proceeded, and the atmosphere was becoming enriched with oxygen. The earth was overspread by vast forests of ferns one hundred feet high and by the peculiar trees of those days, silent forests; not a sound was heard, not even the rustle of a leaf, for such trees had no leaves.

(680.2) 59:4.18 And thus drew to a close one of the longest periods of marine-life evolution, the age of fishes. This period of the world’s history lasted almost fifty million years; it has become known to your researchers as the Devonian.

5. The Crustal-Shifting Stage

The Fern-Forest Carboniferous Period

The Age of Frogs

(680.3) 59:5.1 The appearance of fish during the preceding period marks the apex of marine-life evolution. From this point onward the evolution of land life becomes increasingly important. And this period opens with the stage almost ideally set for the appearance of the first land animals.

(680.4) 59:5.2 220,000,000 years ago many of the continental land areas, including most of North America, were above water. The land was overrun by luxurious vegetation; this was indeed the age of ferns. Carbon dioxide was still present in the atmosphere but in lessening degree.

(680.5) 59:5.3 Shortly thereafter the central portion of North America was inundated, creating two great inland seas. Both the Atlantic and Pacific coastal highlands were situated just beyond the present shore lines. These two seas presently united, commingling their different forms of life, and the union of these marine fauna marked the beginning of the rapid and world-wide decline in marine life and the opening of the subsequent land-life period.

(680.6) 59:5.4 210,000,000 years ago the warm-water arctic seas covered most of North America and Europe. The south polar waters inundated South America and Australia, while both Africa and Asia were highly elevated.

(680.7) 59:5.5 When the seas were at their height, a new evolutionary development suddenly occurred. Abruptly, the first of the land animals appeared. There were numerous species of these animals that were able to live on land or in water. These air-breathing amphibians developed from the arthropods, whose swim bladders had evolved into lungs.

(680.8) 59:5.6 From the briny waters of the seas there crawled out upon the land snails, scorpions, and frogs. Today frogs still lay their eggs in water, and their young first exist as little fishes, tadpoles. This period could well be known as the age of frogs.

(680.9) 59:5.7 Very soon thereafter the insects first appeared and, together with spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, crickets, and locusts, soon overspread the continents of the world. Dragon flies measured thirty inches across. One thousand species of cockroaches developed, and some grew to be four inches long.

(680.10) 59:5.8 Two groups of echinoderms became especially well developed, and they are in reality the guide fossils of this epoch. The large shell-feeding sharks were also highly evolved, and for more than five million years they dominated the oceans. The climate was still mild and equable; the marine life was little changed. Fresh-water fish were developing and the trilobites were nearing extinction. Corals were scarce, and much of the limestone was being made by the crinoids. The finer building limestones were laid down during this epoch.

(681.1) 59:5.9 The waters of many of the inland seas were so heavily charged with lime and other minerals as greatly to interfere with the progress and development of many marine species. Eventually the seas cleared up as the result of an extensive stone deposit, in some places containing zinc and lead.

(681.2) 59:5.10 The deposits of this early Carboniferous age are from 500 to 2,000 feet thick, consisting of sandstone, shale, and limestone. The oldest strata yield the fossils of both land and marine animals and plants, along with much gravel and basin sediments. Little workable coal is found in these older strata. These depositions throughout Europe are very similar to those laid down over North America.

(681.3) 59:5.11 Toward the close of this epoch the land of North America began to rise. There was a short interruption, and the sea returned to cover about half of its previous beds. This was a short inundation, and most of the land was soon well above water. South America was still connected with Europe by way of Africa.

(681.4) 59:5.12 This epoch witnessed the beginning of the Vosges, Black Forest, and Ural mountains. Stumps of other and older mountains are to be found all over Great Britain and Europe.

(681.5) 59:5.13 200,000,000 years ago the really active stages of the Carboniferous period began. For twenty million years prior to this time the earlier coal deposits were being laid down, but now the more extensive coal-formation activities were in process. The length of the actual coal-deposition epoch was a little over twenty-five million years.

(681.6) 59:5.14 The land was periodically going up and down due to the shifting sea level occasioned by activities on the ocean bottoms. This crustal uneasiness — the settling and rising of the land — in connection with the prolific vegetation of the coastal swamps, contributed to the production of extensive coal deposits, which have caused this period to be known as the Carboniferous. And the climate was still mild the world over.

(681.7) 59:5.15 The coal layers alternate with shale, stone, and conglomerate. These coal beds over central and eastern United States vary in thickness from forty to fifty feet. But many of these deposits were washed away during subsequent land elevations. In some parts of North America and Europe the coal-bearing strata are 18,000 feet in thickness.

(681.8) 59:5.16 The presence of roots of trees as they grew in the

Life Establishment on Urantia

(664.1) 58:0.1 IN ALL Satania there are only sixty-one worlds similar to Urantia, life-modification planets. The majority of inhabited worlds are peopled in accordance with established techniques; on such spheres the Life Carriers are afforded little leeway in their plans for life implantation. But about one world in ten is designated as a decimal planet and assigned to the special registry of the Life Carriers; and on such planets we are permitted to undertake certain life experiments in an effort to modify or possibly improve the standard universe types of living beings.

1. Physical-Life Prerequisites

(664.2) 58:1.1 600,000,000 years ago the commission of Life Carriers sent out from Jerusem arrived on Urantia and began the study of physical conditions preparatory to launching life on world number 606 of the Satania system. This was to be our six hundred and sixth experience with the initiation of the Nebadon life patterns in Satania and our sixtieth opportunity to make changes and institute modifications in the basic and standard life designs of the local universe.

(664.3) 58:1.2 It should be made clear that Life Carriers cannot initiate life until a sphere is ripe for the inauguration of the evolutionary cycle. Neither can we provide for a more rapid life development than can be supported and accommodated by the physical progress of the planet.

(664.4) 58:1.3 The Satania Life Carriers had projected a sodium chloride pattern of life; therefore no steps could be taken toward planting it until the ocean waters had become sufficiently briny. The Urantia type of protoplasm can function only in a suitable salt solution. All ancestral life — vegetable and animal — evolved in a salt-solution habitat. And even the more highly organized land animals could not continue to live did not this same essential salt solution circulate throughout their bodies in the blood stream which freely bathes, literally submerses, every tiny living cell in this “briny deep.”

(664.5) 58:1.4 Your primitive ancestors freely circulated about in the salty ocean; today, this same oceanlike salty solution freely circulates about in your bodies, bathing each individual cell with a chemical liquid in all essentials comparable to the salt water which stimulated the first protoplasmic reactions of the first living cells to function on the planet.

(664.6) 58:1.5 But as this era opens, Urantia is in every way evolving toward a state favorable for the support of the initial forms of marine life. Slowly but surely physical developments on earth and in adjacent space regions are preparing the stage for the later attempts to establish such life forms as we had decided would be best adapted to the unfolding physical environment — both terrestrial and spatial.

(665.1) 58:1.6 Subsequently the Satania commission of Life Carriers returned to Jerusem, preferring to await the further breakup of the continental land mass, which would afford still more inland seas and sheltered bays, before actually beginning life implantation.

(665.2) 58:1.7 On a planet where life has a marine origin the ideal conditions for life implantation are provided by a large number of inland seas, by an extensive shore line of shallow waters and sheltered bays; and just such a distribution of the earth’s waters was rapidly developing. These ancient inland seas were seldom over five or six hundred feet deep, and sunlight can penetrate ocean water for more than six hundred feet.

(665.3) 58:1.8 And it was from such seashores of the mild and equable climes of a later age that primitive plant life found its way onto the land. There the high degree of carbon in the atmosphere afforded the new land varieties of life opportunity for speedy and luxuriant growth. Though this atmosphere was then ideal for plant growth, it contained such a high degree of carbon dioxide that no animal, much less man, could have lived on the face of the earth.

2. The Urantia Atmosphere

(665.4) 58:2.1 The planetary atmosphere filters through to the earth about one two-billionth of the sun’s total light emanation. If the light falling upon North America were paid for at the rate of two cents per kilowatt-hour, the annual light bill would be upward of 800 quadrillion dollars. Chicago’s bill for sunshine would amount to considerably over 100 million dollars a day. And it should be remembered that you receive from the sun other forms of energy — light is not the only solar contribution reaching your atmosphere. Vast solar energies pour in upon Urantia embracing wave lengths ranging both above and below the recognition range of human vision.*

(665.5) 58:2.2 The earth’s atmosphere is all but opaque to much of the solar radiation at the extreme ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Most of these short wave lengths are absorbed by a layer of ozone which exists throughout a level about ten miles above the surface of the earth, and which extends spaceward for another ten miles. The ozone permeating this region, at conditions prevailing on the earth’s surface, would make a layer only one tenth of an inch thick; nevertheless, this relatively small and apparently insignificant amount of ozone protects Urantia inhabitants from the excess of these dangerous and destructive ultraviolet radiations present in sunlight. But were this ozone layer just a trifle thicker, you would be deprived of the highly important and health-giving ultraviolet rays which now reach the earth’s surface, and which are ancestral to one of the most essential of your vitamins.

(665.6) 58:2.3 And yet some of the less imaginative of your mortal mechanists insist on viewing material creation and human evolution as an accident. The Urantia midwayers have assembled over fifty thousand facts of physics and chemistry which they deem to be incompatible with the laws of accidental chance, and which they contend unmistakably demonstrate the presence of intelligent purpose in the material creation. And all of this takes no account of their catalogue of more than one hundred thousand findings outside the domain of physics and chemistry which they maintain prove the presence of mind in the planning, creation, and maintenance of the material cosmos.

(666.1) 58:2.4 Your sun pours forth a veritable flood of death-dealing rays, and your pleasant life on Urantia is due to the “fortuitous” influence of more than two-score apparently accidental protective operations similar to the action of this unique ozone layer.

(666.2) 58:2.5 Were it not for the “blanketing” effect of the atmosphere at night, heat would be lost by radiation so rapidly that life would be impossible of maintenance except by artificial provision.

(666.3) 58:2.6 The lower five or six miles of the earth’s atmosphere is the troposphere; this is the region of winds and air currents which provide weather phenomena. Above this region is the inner ionosphere and next above is the stratosphere. Ascending from the surface of the earth, the temperature steadily falls for six or eight miles, at which height it registers around 70 degrees below zero F. This temperature range of from 65 to 70 degrees below zero F. is unchanged in the further ascent for forty miles; this realm of constant temperature is the stratosphere. At a height of forty-five or fifty miles, the temperature begins to rise, and this increase continues until, at the level of the auroral displays, a temperature of 1200° F. is attained, and it is this intense heat that ionizes the oxygen. But temperature in such a rarefied atmosphere is hardly comparable with heat reckoning at the surface of the earth. Bear in mind that one half of all your atmosphere is to be found in the first three miles. The height of the earth’s atmosphere is indicated by the highest auroral streamers — about four hundred miles.

(666.4) 58:2.7 Auroral phenomena are directly related to sunspots, those solar cyclones which whirl in opposite directions above and below the solar equator, even as do the terrestrial tropical hurricanes. Such atmospheric disturbances whirl in opposite directions when occurring above or below the equator.

(666.5) 58:2.8 The power of sunspots to alter light frequencies shows that these solar storm centers function as enormous magnets. Such magnetic fields are able to hurl charged particles from the sunspot craters out through space to the earth’s outer atmosphere, where their ionizing influence produces such spectacular auroral displays. Therefore do you have the greatest auroral phenomena when sunspots are at their height — or soon thereafter — at which time the spots are more generally equatorially situated.

(666.6) 58:2.9 Even the compass needle is responsive to this solar influence since it turns slightly to the east as the sun rises and slightly to the west as the sun nears setting. This happens every day, but during the height of sunspot cycles this variation of the compass is twice as great. These diurnal wanderings of the compass are in response to the increased ionization of the upper atmosphere, which is produced by the sunlight.

(666.7) 58:2.10 It is the presence of two different levels of electrified conducting regions in the superstratosphere that accounts for the long-distance transmission of your long- and short-wave radiobroadcasts. Your broadcasting is sometimes disturbed by the terrific storms which occasionally rage in the realms of these outer ionospheres.

3. Spatial Environment

(666.8) 58:3.1 During the earlier times of universe materialization the space regions are interspersed with vast hydrogen clouds, just such astronomic dust clusters as now characterize many regions throughout remote space. Much of the organized matter which the blazing suns break down and disperse as radiant energy was originally built up in these early appearing hydrogen clouds of space. Under certain unusual conditions atom disruption also occurs at the nucleus of the larger hydrogen masses. And all of these phenomena of atom building and atom dissolution, as in the highly heated nebulae, are attended by the emergence of flood tides of short space rays of radiant energy. Accompanying these diverse radiations is a form of space-energy unknown on Urantia.

(667.1) 58:3.2 This short-ray energy charge of universe space is four hundred times greater than all other forms of radiant energy existing in the organized space domains. The output of short space rays, whether coming from the blazing nebulae, tense electric fields, outer space, or the vast hydrogen dust clouds, is modified qualitatively and quantitatively by fluctuations of, and sudden tension changes in, temperature, gravity, and electronic pressures.

(667.2) 58:3.3 These eventualities in the origin of the space rays are determined by many cosmic occurrences as well as by the orbits of circulating matter, which vary from modified circles to extreme ellipses. Physical conditions may also be greatly altered because the electron spin is sometimes in the opposite direction from that of the grosser matter behavior, even in the same physical zone.

(667.3) 58:3.4 The vast hydrogen clouds are veritable cosmic chemical laboratories, harboring all phases of evolving energy and metamorphosing matter. Great energy actions also occur in the marginal gases of the great binary stars which so frequently overlap and hence extensively commingle. But none of these tremendous and far-flung energy activities of space exerts the least influence upon the phenomena of organized life — the germ plasm of living things and beings. These energy conditions of space are germane to the essential environment of life establishment, but they are not effective in the subsequent modification of the inheritance factors of the germ plasm as are some of the longer rays of radiant energy. The implanted life of the Life Carriers is fully resistant to all of this amazing flood of the short space rays of universe energy.

(667.4) 58:3.5 All of these essential cosmic conditions had to evolve to a favorable status before the Life Carriers could actually begin the establishment of life on Urantia.

4. The Life-Dawn Era

(667.5) 58:4.1 That we are called Life Carriers should not confuse you. We can and do carry life to the planets, but we brought no life to Urantia. Urantia life is unique, original with the planet. This sphere is a life-modification world; all life appearing hereon was formulated by us right here on the planet; and there is no other world in all Satania, even in all Nebadon, that has a life existence just like that of Urantia.

(667.6) 58:4.2 550,000,000 years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia. In co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces we organized and initiated the original life patterns of this world and planted them in the hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life (aside from extraplanetary personalities) down to the days of Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, had its origin in our three original, identical, and simultaneous marine-life implantations. These three life implantations have been designated as: the central or Eurasian-African, the eastern or Australasian, and the western, embracing Greenland and the Americas.

(668.1) 58:4.3 500,000,000 years ago primitive marine vegetable life was well established on Urantia. Greenland and the arctic land mass, together with North and South America, were beginning their long and slow westward drift. Africa moved slightly south, creating an east and west trough, the Mediterranean basin, between itself and the mother body. Antarctica, Australia, and the land indicated by the islands of the Pacific broke away on the south and east and have drifted far away since that day.

(668.2) 58:4.4 We had planted the primitive form of marine life in the sheltered tropic bays of the central seas of the east-west cleavage of the breaking-up continental land mass. Our purpose in making three marine-life implantations was to insure that each great land mass would carry this life with it, in its warm-water seas, as the land subsequently separated. We foresaw that in the later era of the emergence of land life large oceans of water would separate these drifting continental land masses.

5. The Continental Drift

(668.3) 58:5.1 The continental land drift continued. The earth’s core had become as dense and rigid as steel, being subjected to a pressure of almost 25,000 tons to the square inch, and owing to the enormous gravity pressure, it was and still is very hot in the deep interior. The temperature increases from the surface downward until at the center it is slightly above the surface temperature of the sun.

(668.4) 58:5.2 The outer one thousand miles of the earth’s mass consists principally of different kinds of rock. Underneath are the denser and heavier metallic elements. Throughout the early and preatmospheric ages the world was so nearly fluid in its molten and highly heated state that the heavier metals sank deep into the interior. Those found near the surface today represent the exudate of ancient volcanoes, later and extensive lava flows, and the more recent meteoric deposits.

(668.5) 58:5.3 The outer crust was about forty miles thick. This outer shell was supported by, and rested directly upon, a molten sea of basalt of varying thickness, a mobile layer of molten lava held under high pressure but always tending to flow hither and yon in equalization of shifting planetary pressures, thereby tending to stabilize the earth’s crust.

(668.6) 58:5.4 Even today the continents continue to float upon this noncrystallized cushiony sea of molten basalt. Were it not for this protective condition, the more severe earthquakes would literally shake the world to pieces. Earthquakes are caused by sliding and shifting of the solid outer crust and not by volcanoes.

(668.7) 58:5.5 The lava layers of the earth’s crust, when cooled, form granite. The average density of Urantia is a little more than five and one-half times that of water; the density of granite is less than three times that of water. The earth’s core is twelve times as dense as water.

(668.8) 58:5.6 The sea bottoms are more dense than the land masses, and this is what keeps the continents above water. When the sea bottoms are extruded above the sea level, they are found to consist largely of basalt, a form of lava considerably heavier than the granite of the land masses. Again, if the continents were not lighter than the ocean beds, gravity would draw the edges of the oceans up onto the land, but such phenomena are not observable.

(668.9) 58:5.7 The weight of the oceans is also a factor in the increase of pressure on the sea beds. The lower but comparatively heavier ocean beds, plus the weight of the overlying water, approximate the weight of the higher but much lighter continents. But all continents tend to creep into the oceans. The continental pressure at ocean-bottom levels is about 20,000 pounds to the square inch. That is, this would be the pressure of a continental mass standing 15,000 feet above the ocean floor. The ocean-floor water pressure is only about 5,000 pounds to the square inch. These differential pressures tend to cause the continents to slide toward the ocean beds.

(669.1) 58:5.8 Depression of the ocean bottom during the prelife ages had upthrust a solitary continental land mass to such a height that its lateral pressure tended to cause the eastern, western, and southern fringes to slide downhill, over the underlying semiviscous lava beds, into the waters of the surrounding Pacific Ocean. This so fully compensated the continental pressure that a wide break did not occur on the eastern shore of this ancient Asiatic continent, but ever since has that eastern coast line hovered over the precipice of its adjoining oceanic depths, threatening to slide into a watery grave.

6. The Transition Period

(669.2) 58:6.1 450,000,000 years ago the transition from vegetable to animal life occurred. This metamorphosis took place in the shallow waters of the sheltered tropic bays and lagoons of the extensive shore lines of the separating continents. And this development, all of which was inherent in the original life patterns, came about gradually. There were many transitional stages between the early primitive vegetable forms of life and the later well-defined animal organisms. Even today the transition slime molds persist, and they can hardly be classified either as plants or as animals.

(669.3) 58:6.2 Although the evolution of vegetable life can be traced into animal life, and though there have been found graduated series of plants and animals which progressively lead up from the most simple to the most complex and advanced organisms, you will not be able to find such connecting links between the great divisions of the animal kingdom nor between the highest of the prehuman animal types and the dawn men of the human races. These so-called “missing links” will forever remain missing, for the simple reason that they never existed.

(669.4) 58:6.3 From era to era radically new species of animal life arise. They do not evolve as the result of the gradual accumulation of small variations; they appear as full-fledged and new orders of life, and they appear suddenly.

(669.5) 58:6.4 The sudden appearance of new species and diversified orders of living organisms is wholly biologic, strictly natural. There is nothing supernatural connected with these genetic mutations.

(669.6) 58:6.5 At the proper degree of saltiness in the oceans animal life evolved, and it was comparatively simple to allow the briny waters to circulate through the animal bodies of marine life. But when the oceans were contracted and the percentage of salt was greatly increased, these same animals evolved the ability to reduce the saltiness of their body fluids just as those organisms which learned to live in fresh water acquired the ability to maintain the proper degree of sodium chloride in their body fluids by ingenious techniques of salt conservation.

(669.7) 58:6.6 Study of the rock-embraced fossils of marine life reveals the early adjustment struggles of these primitive organisms. Plants and animals never cease to make these adjustment experiments. Ever the environment is changing, and always are living organisms striving to accommodate themselves to these never-ending fluctuations.

(670.1) 58:6.7 The physiologic equipment and the anatomic structure of all new orders of life are in response to the action of physical law, but the subsequent endowment of mind is a bestowal of the adjutant mind-spirits in accordance with innate brain capacity. Mind, while not a physical evolution, is wholly dependent on the brain capacity afforded by purely physical and evolutionary developments.

(670.2) 58:6.8 Through almost endless cycles of gains and losses, adjustments and readjustments, all living organisms swing back and forth from age to age. Those that attain cosmic unity persist, while those that fall short of this goal cease to exist.

7. The Geologic History Book

(670.3) 58:7.1 The vast group of rock systems which constituted the outer crust of the world during the life-dawn or Proterozoic era does not now appear at many points on the earth’s surface. And when it does emerge from below all the accumulations of subsequent ages, there will be found only the fossil remains of vegetable and early primitive animal life. Some of these older water-deposited rocks are commingled with subsequent layers, and sometimes they yield fossil remains of some of the earlier forms of vegetable life, while on the topmost layers occasionally may be found some of the more primitive forms of the early marine-animal organisms. In many places these oldest stratified rock layers, bearing the fossils of the early marine life, both animal and vegetable, may be found directly on top of the older undifferentiated stone.

(670.4) 58:7.2 Fossils of this era yield algae, corallike plants, primitive Protozoa, and spongelike transition organisms. But the absence of such fossils in the early rock layers does not necessarily prove that living things were not elsewhere in existence at the time of their deposition. Life was sparse throughout these early times and only slowly made its way over the face of the earth.

(670.5) 58:7.3 The rocks of this olden age are now at the earth’s surface, or very near the surface, over about one eighth of the present land area. The average thickness of this transition stone, the oldest stratified rock layers, is about one and one-half miles. At some points these ancient rock systems are as much as four miles thick, but many of the layers which have been ascribed to this era belong to later periods.

(670.6) 58:7.4 In North America this ancient and primitive fossil-bearing stone layer comes to the surface over the eastern, central, and northern regions of Canada. There is also an intermittent east-west ridge of this rock which extends from Pennsylvania and the ancient Adirondack Mountains on west through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Other ridges run from Newfoundland to Alabama and from Alaska to Mexico.

(670.7) 58:7.5 The rocks of this era are exposed here and there all over the world, but none are so easy of interpretation as those about Lake Superior and in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, where these primitive fossil-bearing rocks, existing in several layers, testify to the upheavals and surface fluctuations of those faraway times.

(670.8) 58:7.6 This stone layer, the oldest fossil-bearing stratum in the crust of the earth, has been crumpled, folded, and grotesquely twisted as a result of the upheavals of earthquakes and the early volcanoes. The lava flows of this age brought much iron, copper, and lead up near the planetary surface.

(670.9) 58:7.7 There are few places on the earth where such activities are more graphically shown than in the St. Croix valley of Wisconsin. In this region there occurred one hundred and twenty-seven successive lava flows on land with succeeding water submergence and consequent rock deposition. Although much of the upper rock sedimentation and intermittent lava flow is absent today, and though the bottom of this system is buried deep in the earth, nevertheless, about sixty-five or seventy of these stratified records of past ages are now exposed to view.

(671.1) 58:7.8 In these early ages when much land was near sea level, there occurred many successive submergences and emergences. The earth’s crust was just entering upon its later period of comparative stabilization. The undulations, rises and dips, of the earlier continental drift contributed to the frequency of the periodic submergence of the great land masses.

(671.2) 58:7.9 During these times of primitive marine life, extensive areas of the continental shores sank beneath the seas from a few feet to half a mile. Much of the older sandstone and conglomerates represents the sedimentary accumulations of these ancient shores. The sedimentary rocks belonging to this early stratification rest directly upon those layers which date back far beyond the origin of life, back to the early appearance of the world-wide ocean.

(671.3) 58:7.10 Some of the upper layers of these transition rock deposits contain small amounts of shale or slate of dark colors, indicating the presence of organic carbon and testifying to the existence of the ancestors of those forms of plant life which overran the earth during the succeeding Carboniferous or coal age. Much of the copper in these rock layers results from water deposition. Some is found in the cracks of the older rocks and is the concentrate of the sluggish swamp water of some ancient sheltered shore line. The iron mines of North America and Europe are located in deposits and extrusions lying partly in the older unstratified rocks and partly in these later stratified rocks of the transition periods of life formation.

(671.4) 58:7.11 This era witnesses the spread of life throughout the waters of the world; marine life has become well established on Urantia. The bottoms of the shallow and extensive inland seas are being gradually overrun by a profuse and luxuriant growth of vegetation, while the shore-line waters are swarming with the simple forms of animal life.

(671.5) 58:7.12 All of this story is graphically told within the fossil pages of the vast “stone book” of world record. And the pages of this gigantic biogeologic record unfailingly tell the truth if you but acquire skill in their interpretation. Many of these ancient sea beds are now elevated high upon land, and their deposits of age upon age tell the story of the life struggles of those early days. It is literally true, as your poet has said, “The dust we tread upon was once alive.”

(671.6) 58:7.13 [Presented by a member of the Urantia Life Carrier Corps now resident on the planet.]

The Origin of Urantia*

(651.1) 57:0.1 IN PRESENTING excerpts from the archives of Jerusem for the records of Urantia respecting its antecedents and early history, we are directed to reckon time in terms of current usage — the present leap-year calendar of 365¼ days to the year. As a rule, no attempt will be made to give exact years, though they are of record. We will use the nearest whole numbers as the better method of presenting these historic facts.

(651.2) 57:0.2 When referring to an event as of one or two millions of years ago, we intend to date such an occurrence back that number of years from the early decades of the twentieth century of the Christian era. We will thus depict these far-distant events as occurring in even periods of thousands, millions, and billions of years.

1. The Andronover Nebula

(651.3) 57:1.1 Urantia is of origin in your sun, and your sun is one of the multifarious offspring of the Andronover nebula, which was onetime organized as a component part of the physical power and material matter of the local universe of Nebadon. And this great nebula itself took origin in the universal force-charge of space in the superuniverse of Orvonton, long, long ago.

(651.4) 57:1.2 At the time of the beginning of this recital, the Primary Master Force Organizers of Paradise had long been in full control of the space-energies which were later organized as the Andronover nebula.

(651.5) 57:1.3 987,000,000,000 years ago associate force organizer and then acting inspector number 811,307 of the Orvonton series, traveling out from Uversa, reported to the Ancients of Days that space conditions were favorable for the initiation of materialization phenomena in a certain sector of the, then, easterly segment of Orvonton.

(651.6) 57:1.4 900,000,000,000 years ago, the Uversa archives testify, there was recorded a permit issued by the Uversa Council of Equilibrium to the superuniverse government authorizing the dispatch of a force organizer and staff to the region previously designated by inspector number 811,307. The Orvonton authorities commissioned the original discoverer of this potential universe to execute the mandate of the Ancients of Days calling for the organization of a new material creation.*

(652.1) 57:1.5 The recording of this permit signifies that the force organizer and staff had already departed from Uversa on the long journey to that easterly space sector where they were subsequently to engage in those protracted activities which would terminate in the emergence of a new physical creation in Orvonton.

(652.2) 57:1.6 875,000,000,000 years ago the enormous Andronover nebula number 876,926 was duly initiated. Only the presence of the force organizer and the liaison staff was required to inaugurate the energy whirl which eventually grew into this vast cyclone of space. Subsequent to the initiation of such nebular revolutions, the living force organizers simply withdraw at right angles to the plane of the revolutionary disk, and from that time forward, the inherent qualities of energy insure the progressive and orderly evolution of such a new physical system.

(652.3) 57:1.7 At about this time the narrative shifts to the functioning of the personalities of the superuniverse. In reality the story has its proper beginning at this point — at just about the time the Paradise force organizers are preparing to withdraw, having made the space-energy conditions ready for the action of the power directors and physical controllers of the superuniverse of Orvonton.

2. The Primary Nebular Stage

(652.4) 57:2.1 All evolutionary material creations are born of circular and gaseous nebulae, and all such primary nebulae are circular throughout the early part of their gaseous existence. As they grow older, they usually become spiral, and when their function of sun formation has run its course, they often terminate as clusters of stars or as enormous suns surrounded by a varying number of planets, satellites, and smaller groups of matter in many ways resembling your own diminutive solar system.

(652.5) 57:2.2 800,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover creation was well established as one of the magnificent primary nebulae of Orvonton. As the astronomers of near-by universes looked out upon this phenomenon of space, they saw very little to attract their attention. Gravity estimates made in adjacent creations indicated that space materializations were taking place in the Andronover regions, but that was all.

(652.6) 57:2.3 700,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover system was assuming gigantic proportions, and additional physical controllers were dispatched to nine surrounding material creations to afford support and supply co-operation to the power centers of this new material system which was so rapidly evolving. At this distant date all of the material bequeathed to the subsequent creations was held within the confines of this gigantic space wheel, which continued ever to whirl and, after reaching its maximum of diameter, to whirl faster and faster as it continued to condense and contract.

(652.7) 57:2.4 600,000,000,000 years ago the height of the Andronover energy-mobilization period was attained; the nebula had acquired its maximum of mass. At this time it was a gigantic circular gas cloud in shape somewhat like a flattened spheroid. This was the early period of differential mass formation and varying revolutionary velocity. Gravity and other influences were about to begin their work of converting space gases into organized matter.

3. The Secondary Nebular Stage

(653.1) 57:3.1 The enormous nebula now began gradually to assume the spiral form and to become clearly visible to the astronomers of even distant universes. This is the natural history of most nebulae; before they begin to throw off suns and start upon the work of universe building, these secondary space nebulae are usually observed as spiral phenomena.

(653.2) 57:3.2 The near-by star students of that faraway era, as they observed this metamorphosis of the Andronover nebula, saw exactly what twentieth-century astronomers see when they turn their telescopes spaceward and view the present-age spiral nebulae of adjacent outer space.

(653.3) 57:3.3 About the time of the attainment of the maximum of mass, the gravity control of the gaseous content commenced to weaken, and there ensued the stage of gas escapement, the gas streaming forth as two gigantic and distinct arms, which took origin on opposite sides of the mother mass. The rapid revolutions of this enormous central core soon imparted a spiral appearance to these two projecting gas streams. The cooling and subsequent condensation of portions of these protruding arms eventually produced their knotted appearance. These denser portions were vast systems and subsystems of physical matter whirling through space in the midst of the gaseous cloud of the nebula while being held securely within the gravity grasp of the mother wheel.

(653.4) 57:3.4 But the nebula had begun to contract, and the increase in the rate of revolution further lessened gravity control; and erelong, the outer gaseous regions began actually to escape from the immediate embrace of the nebular nucleus, passing out into space on circuits of irregular outline, returning to the nuclear regions to complete their circuits, and so on. But this was only a temporary stage of nebular progression. The ever-increasing rate of whirling was soon to throw enormous suns off into space on independent circuits.

(653.5) 57:3.5 And this is what happened in Andronover ages upon ages ago. The energy wheel grew and grew until it attained its maximum of expansion, and then, when contraction set in, it whirled on faster and faster until, eventually, the critical centrifugal stage was reached and the great breakup began.

(653.6) 57:3.6 500,000,000,000 years ago the first Andronover sun was born. This blazing streak broke away from the mother gravity grasp and tore out into space on an independent adventure in the cosmos of creation. Its orbit was determined by its path of escape. Such young suns quickly become spherical and start out on their long and eventful careers as the stars of space. Excepting terminal nebular nucleuses, the vast majority of Orvonton suns have had an analogous birth. These escaping suns pass through varied periods of evolution and subsequent universe service.

(653.7) 57:3.7 400,000,000,000 years ago began the recaptive period of the Andronover nebula. Many of the near-by and smaller suns were recaptured as a result of the gradual enlargement and further condensation of the mother nucleus. Very soon there was inaugurated the terminal phase of nebular condensation, the period which always precedes the final segregation of these immense space aggregations of energy and matter.

(654.1) 57:3.8 It was scarcely a million years subsequent to this epoch that Michael of Nebadon, a Creator Son of Paradise, selected this disintegrating nebula as the site of his adventure in universe building. Almost immediately the architectural worlds of Salvington and the one hundred constellation headquarters groups of planets were begun. It required almost one million years to complete these clusters of specially created worlds. The local system headquarters planets were constructed over a period extending from that time to about five billion years ago.

(654.2) 57:3.9 300,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover solar circuits were well established, and the nebular system was passing through a transient period of relative physical stability. About this time the staff of Michael arrived on Salvington, and the Uversa government of Orvonton extended physical recognition to the local universe of Nebadon.

(654.3) 57:3.10 200,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the progression of contraction and condensation with enormous heat generation in the Andronover central cluster, or nuclear mass. Relative space appeared even in the regions near the central mother-sun wheel. The outer regions were becoming more stabilized and better organized; some planets revolving around the newborn suns had cooled sufficiently to be suitable for life implantation. The oldest inhabited planets of Nebadon date from these times.

(654.4) 57:3.11 Now the completed universe mechanism of Nebadon first begins to function, and Michael’s creation is registered on Uversa as a universe of inhabitation and progressive mortal ascension.

(654.5) 57:3.12 100,000,000,000 years ago the nebular apex of condensation tension was reached; the point of maximum heat tension was attained. This critical stage of gravity-heat contention sometimes lasts for ages, but sooner or later, heat wins the struggle with gravity, and the spectacular period of sun dispersion begins. And this marks the end of the secondary career of a space nebula.

4. Tertiary and Quartan Stages

(654.6) 57:4.1 The primary stage of a nebula is circular; the secondary, spiral; the tertiary stage is that of the first sun dispersion, while the quartan embraces the second and last cycle of sun dispersion, with the mother nucleus ending either as a globular cluster or as a solitary sun functioning as the center of a terminal solar system.

(654.7) 57:4.2 75,000,000,000 years ago this nebula had attained the height of its sun-family stage. This was the apex of the first period of sun losses. The majority of these suns have since possessed themselves of extensive systems of planets, satellites, dark islands, comets, meteors, and cosmic dust clouds.

(654.8) 57:4.3 50,000,000,000 years ago this first period of sun dispersion was completed; the nebula was fast finishing its tertiary cycle of existence, during which it gave origin to 876,926 sun systems.

(654.9) 57:4.4 25,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the completion of the tertiary cycle of nebular life and brought about the organization and relative stabilization of the far-flung starry systems derived from this parent nebula. But the process of physical contraction and increased heat production continued in the central mass of the nebular remnant.

(655.1) 57:4.5 10,000,000,000 years ago the quartan cycle of Andronover began. The maximum of nuclear-mass temperature had been attained; the critical point of condensation was approaching. The original mother nucleus was convulsing under the combined pressure of its own internal-heat condensation tension and the increasing gravity-tidal pull of the surrounding swarm of liberated sun systems. The nuclear eruptions which were to inaugurate the second nebular sun cycle were imminent. The quartan cycle of nebular existence was about to begin.

(655.2) 57:4.6 8,000,000,000 years ago the terrific terminal eruption began. Only the outer systems are safe at the time of such a cosmic upheaval. And this was the beginning of the end of the nebula. This final sun disgorgement extended over a period of almost two billion years.

(655.3) 57:4.7 7,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the height of the Andronover terminal breakup. This was the period of the birth of the larger terminal suns and the apex of the local physical disturbances.

(655.4) 57:4.8 6,000,000,000 years ago marks the end of the terminal breakup and the birth of your sun, the fifty-sixth from the last of the Andronover second solar family. This final eruption of the nebular nucleus gave birth to 136,702 suns, most of them solitary orbs. The total number of suns and sun systems having origin in the Andronover nebula was 1,013,628. The number of the solar system sun is 1,013,572.

(655.5) 57:4.9 And now the great Andronover nebula is no more, but it lives on in the many suns and their planetary families which originated in this mother cloud of space. The final nuclear remnant of this magnificent nebula still burns with a reddish glow and continues to give forth moderate light and heat to its remnant planetary family of one hundred and sixty-five worlds, which now revolve about this venerable mother of two mighty generations of the monarchs of light.

5. Origin of Monmatia — The Urantia Solar System

(655.6) 57:5.1 5,000,000,000 years ago your sun was a comparatively isolated blazing orb, having gathered to itself most of the near-by circulating matter of space, remnants of the recent upheaval which attended its own birth.

(655.7) 57:5.2 Today, your sun has achieved relative stability, but its eleven and one-half year sunspot cycles betray that it was a variable star in its youth. In the early days of your sun the continued contraction and consequent gradual increase of temperature initiated tremendous convulsions on its surface. These titanic heaves required three and one-half days to complete a cycle of varying brightness. This variable state, this periodic pulsation, rendered your sun highly responsive to certain outside influences which were to be shortly encountered.

(655.8) 57:5.3 Thus was the stage of local space set for the unique origin of Monmatia, that being the name of your sun’s planetary family, the solar system to which your world belongs. Less than one per cent of the planetary systems of Orvonton have had a similar origin.

(655.9) 57:5.4 4,500,000,000 years ago the enormous Angona system began its approach to the neighborhood of this solitary sun. The center of this great system was a dark giant of space, solid, highly charged, and possessing tremendous gravity pull.

(656.1) 57:5.5 As Angona more closely approached the sun, at moments of maximum expansion during solar pulsations, streams of gaseous material were shot out into space as gigantic solar tongues. At first these flaming gas tongues would invariably fall back into the sun, but as Angona drew nearer and nearer, the gravity pull of the gigantic visitor became so great that these tongues of gas would break off at certain points, the roots falling back into the sun while the outer sections would become detached to form independent bodies of matter, solar meteorites, which immediately started to revolve about the sun in elliptical orbits of their own.

(656.2) 57:5.6 As the Angona system drew nearer, the solar extrusions grew larger and larger; more and more matter was drawn from the sun to become independent circulating bodies in surrounding space. This situation developed for about five hundred thousand years until Angona made its closest approach to the sun; whereupon the sun, in conjunction with one of its periodic internal convulsions, experienced a partial disruption; from opposite sides and simultaneously, enormous volumes of matter were disgorged. From the Angona side there was drawn out a vast column of solar gases, rather pointed at both ends and markedly bulging at the center, which became permanently detached from the immediate gravity control of the sun.

(656.3) 57:5.7 This great column of solar gases which was thus separated from the sun subsequently evolved into the twelve planets of the solar system. The repercussional ejection of gas from the opposite side of the sun in tidal sympathy with the extrusion of this gigantic solar system ancestor, has since condensed into the meteors and space dust of the solar system, although much, very much, of this matter was subsequently recaptured by solar gravity as the Angona system receded into remote space.

(656.4) 57:5.8 Although Angona succeeded in drawing away the ancestral material of the solar system planets and the enormous volume of matter now circulating about the sun as asteroids and meteors, it did not secure for itself any of this solar matter. The visiting system did not come quite close enough to actually steal any of the sun’s substance, but it did swing sufficiently close to draw off into the intervening space all of the material comprising the present-day solar system.

(656.5) 57:5.9 The five inner and five outer planets soon formed in miniature from the cooling and condensing nucleuses in the less massive and tapering ends of the gigantic gravity bulge which Angona had succeeded in detaching from the sun, while Saturn and Jupiter were formed from the more massive and bulging central portions. The powerful gravity pull of Jupiter and Saturn early captured most of the material stolen from Angona as the retrograde motion of certain of their satellites bears witness.

(656.6) 57:5.10 Jupiter and Saturn, being derived from the very center of the enormous column of superheated solar gases, contained so much highly heated sun material that they shone with a brilliant light and emitted enormous volumes of heat; they were in reality secondary suns for a short period after their formation as separate space bodies. These two largest of the solar system planets have remained largely gaseous to this day, not even yet having cooled off to the point of complete condensation or solidification.

(656.7) 57:5.11 The gas-contraction nucleuses of the other ten planets soon reached the stage of solidification and so began to draw to themselves increasing quantities of the meteoric matter circulating in near-by space. The worlds of the solar system thus had a double origin: nucleuses of gas condensation later on augmented by the capture of enormous quantities of meteors. Indeed they still continue to capture meteors, but in greatly lessened numbers.

(657.1) 57:5.12 The planets do not swing around the sun in the equatorial plane of their solar mother, which they would do if they had been thrown off by solar revolution. Rather, they travel in the plane of the Angona solar extrusion, which existed at a considerable angle to the plane of the sun’s equator.

(657.2) 57:5.13 While Angona was unable to capture any of the solar mass, your sun did add to its metamorphosing planetary family some of the circulating space material of the visiting system. Due to the intense gravity field of Angona, its tributary planetary family pursued orbits of considerable distance from the dark giant; and shortly after the extrusion of the solar system ancestral mass and while Angona was yet in the vicinity of the sun, three of the major planets of the Angona system swung so near to the massive solar system ancestor that its gravitational pull, augmented by that of the sun, was sufficient to overbalance the gravity grasp of Angona and to permanently detach these three tributaries of the celestial wanderer.

(657.3) 57:5.14 All of the solar system material derived from the sun was originally endowed with a homogeneous direction of orbital swing, and had it not been for the intrusion of these three foreign space bodies, all solar system material would still maintain the same direction of orbital movement. As it was, the impact of the three Angona tributaries injected new and foreign directional forces into the emerging solar system with the resultant appearance of retrograde motion. Retrograde motion in any astronomic system is always accidental and always appears as a result of the collisional impact of foreign space bodies. Such collisions may not always produce retrograde motion, but no retrograde ever appears except in a system containing masses which have diverse origins.

6. The Solar System Stage — The Planet-Forming Era

(657.4) 57:6.1 Subsequent to the birth of the solar system a period of diminishing solar disgorgement ensued. Decreasingly, for another five hundred thousand years, the sun continued to pour forth diminishing volumes of matter into surrounding space. But during these early times of erratic orbits, when the surrounding bodies made their nearest approach to the sun, the solar parent was able to recapture a large portion of this meteoric material.

(657.5) 57:6.2 The planets nearest the sun were the first to have their revolutions slowed down by tidal friction. Such gravitational influences also contribute to the stabilization of planetary orbits while acting as a brake on the rate of planetary-axial revolution, causing a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases, leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, as is illustrated by the planet Mercury and by the moon, which always turns the same face toward Urantia.

(657.6) 57:6.3 When the tidal frictions of the moon and the earth become equalized, the earth will always turn the same hemisphere toward the moon, and the day and month will be analogous — in length about forty-seven days. When such stability of orbits is attained, tidal frictions will go into reverse action, no longer driving the moon farther away from the earth but gradually drawing the satellite toward the planet. And then, in that far-distant future when the moon approaches to within about eleven thousand miles of the earth, the gravity action of the latter will cause the moon to disrupt, and this tidal-gravity explosion will shatter the moon into small particles, which may assemble about the world as rings of matter resembling those of Saturn or may be gradually drawn into the earth as meteors.

(658.1) 57:6.4 If space bodies are similar in size and density, collisions may occur. But if two space bodies of similar density are relatively unequal in size, then, if the smaller progressively approaches the larger, the disruption of the smaller body will occur when the radius of its orbit becomes less than two and one-half times the radius of the larger body. Collisions among the giants of space are rare indeed, but these gravity-tidal explosions of lesser bodies are quite common.

(658.2) 57:6.5 Shooting stars occur in swarms because they are the fragments of larger bodies of matter which have been disrupted by tidal gravity exerted by near-by and still larger space bodies. Saturn’s rings are the fragments of a disrupted satellite. One of the moons of Jupiter is now approaching dangerously near the critical zone of tidal disruption and, within a few million years, will either be claimed by the planet or will undergo gravity-tidal disruption. The fifth planet of the solar system of long, long ago traversed an irregular orbit, periodically making closer and closer approach to Jupiter until it entered the critical zone of gravity-tidal disruption, was swiftly fragmentized, and became the present-day cluster of asteroids.

(658.3) 57:6.6 4,000,000,000 years ago witnessed the organization of the Jupiter and Saturn systems much as observed today except for their moons, which continued to increase in size for several billions of years. In fact, all of the planets and satellites of the solar system are still growing as the result of continued meteoric captures.

(658.4) 57:6.7 3,500,000,000 years ago the condensation nucleuses of the other ten planets were well formed, and the cores of most of the moons were intact, though some of the smaller satellites later united to make the present-day larger moons. This age may be regarded as the era of planetary assembly.

(658.5) 57:6.8 3,000,000,000 years ago the solar system was functioning much as it does today. Its members continued to grow in size as space meteors continued to pour in upon the planets and their satellites at a prodigious rate.

(658.6) 57:6.9 About this time your solar system was placed on the physical registry of Nebadon and given its name, Monmatia.

(658.7) 57:6.10 2,500,000,000 years ago the planets had grown immensely in size. Urantia was a well-developed sphere about one tenth its present mass and was still growing rapidly by meteoric accretion.

(658.8) 57:6.11 All of this tremendous activity is a normal part of the making of an evolutionary world on the order of Urantia and constitutes the astronomic preliminaries to the setting of the stage for the beginning of the physical evolution of such worlds of space in preparation for the life adventures of time.

7. The Meteoric Era — The Volcanic Age

The Primitive Planetary Atmosphere

(658.9) 57:7.1 Throughout these early times the space regions of the solar system were swarming with small disruptive and condensation bodies, and in the absence of a protective combustion atmosphere such space bodies crashed directly on the surface of Urantia. These incessant impacts kept the surface of the planet more or less heated, and this, together with the increased action of gravity as the sphere grew larger, began to set in operation those influences which gradually caused the heavier elements, such as iron, to settle more and more toward the center of the planet.

(659.1) 57:7.2 2,000,000,000 years ago the earth began decidedly to gain on the moon. Always had the planet been larger than its satellite, but there was not so much difference in size until about this time, when enormous space bodies were captured by the earth. Urantia was then about one fifth its present size and had become large enough to hold the primitive atmosphere which had begun to appear as a result of the internal elemental contest between the heated interior and the cooling crust.

(659.2) 57:7.3 Definite volcanic action dates from these times. The internal heat of the earth continued to be augmented by the deeper and deeper burial of the radioactive or heavier elements brought in from space by the meteors. The study of these radioactive elements will reveal that Urantia is more than one billion years old on its surface. The radium clock is your most reliable timepiece for making scientific estimates of the age of the planet, but all such estimates are too short because the radioactive materials open to your scrutiny are all derived from the earth’s surface and hence represent Urantia’s comparatively recent acquirements of these elements.

(659.3) 57:7.4 1,500,000,000 years ago the earth was two thirds its present size, while the moon was nearing its present mass. Earth’s rapid gain over the moon in size enabled it to begin the slow robbery of the little atmosphere which its satellite originally had.

(659.4) 57:7.5 Volcanic action is now at its height. The whole earth is a veritable fiery inferno, the surface resembling its earlier molten state before the heavier metals gravitated toward the center. This is the volcanic age. Nevertheless, a crust, consisting chiefly of the comparatively lighter granite, is gradually forming. The stage is being set for a planet which can someday support life.

(659.5) 57:7.6 The primitive planetary atmosphere is slowly evolving, now containing some water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen chloride, but there is little or no free nitrogen or free oxygen. The atmosphere of a world in the volcanic age presents a queer spectacle. In addition to the gases enumerated it is heavily charged with numerous volcanic gases and, as the air belt matures, with the combustion products of the heavy meteoric showers which are constantly hurtling in upon the planetary surface. Such meteoric combustion keeps the atmospheric oxygen very nearly exhausted, and the rate of meteoric bombardment is still tremendous.

(659.6) 57:7.7 Presently, the atmosphere became more settled and cooled sufficiently to start precipitation of rain on the hot rocky surface of the planet. For thousands of years Urantia was enveloped in one vast and continuous blanket of steam. And during these ages the sun never shone upon the earth’s surface.

(659.7) 57:7.8 Much of the carbon of the atmosphere was abstracted to form the carbonates of the various metals which abounded in the superficial layers of the planet. Later on, much greater quantities of these carbon gases were consumed by the early and prolific plant life.

(660.1) 57:7.9 Even in the later periods the continuing lava flows and the incoming meteors kept the oxygen of the air almost completely used up. Even the early deposits of the soon appearing primitive ocean contain no colored stones or shales. And for a long time after this ocean appeared, there was virtually no free oxygen in the atmosphere; and it did not appear in significant quantities until it was later generated by the seaweeds and other forms of vegetable life.

(660.2) 57:7.10 The primitive planetary atmosphere of the volcanic age affords little protection against the collisional impacts of the meteoric swarms. Millions upon millions of meteors are able to penetrate such an air belt to smash against the planetary crust as solid bodies. But as time passes, fewer and fewer prove large enough to resist the ever-stronger friction shield of the oxygen-enriching atmosphere of the later eras.

8. Crustal Stabilization

The Age of Earthquakes

The World Ocean and the First Continent

(660.3) 57:8.1 1,000,000,000 years ago is the date of the actual beginning of Urantia history. The planet had attained approximately its present size. And about this time it was placed upon the physical registries of Nebadon and given its name, Urantia.

(660.4) 57:8.2 The atmosphere, together with incessant moisture precipitation, facilitated the cooling of the earth’s crust. Volcanic action early equalized internal-heat pressure and crustal contraction; and as volcanoes rapidly decreased, earthquakes made their appearance as this epoch of crustal cooling and adjustment progressed.

(660.5) 57:8.3 The real geologic history of Urantia begins with the cooling of the earth’s crust sufficiently to cause the formation of the first ocean. Water-vapor condensation on the cooling surface of the earth, once begun, continued until it was virtually complete. By the end of this period the ocean was world-wide, covering the entire planet to an average depth of over one mile. The tides were then in play much as they are now observed, but this primitive ocean was not salty; it was practically a fresh-water covering for the world. In those days, most of the chlorine was combined with various metals, but there was enough, in union with hydrogen, to render this water faintly acid.

(660.6) 57:8.4 At the opening of this faraway era, Urantia should be envisaged as a water-bound planet. Later on, deeper and hence denser lava flows came out upon the bottom of the present Pacific Ocean, and this part of the water-covered surface became considerably depressed. The first continental land mass emerged from the world ocean in compensatory adjustment of the equilibrium of the gradually thickening earth’s crust.

(660.7) 57:8.5 950,000,000 years ago Urantia presents the picture of one great continent of land and one large body of water, the Pacific Ocean. Volcanoes are still widespread and earthquakes are both frequent and severe. Meteors continue to bombard the earth, but they are diminishing in both frequency and size. The atmosphere is clearing up, but the amount of carbon dioxide continues large. The earth’s crust is gradually

These papers were sponsored by a Corps of Local Universe Personalities acting by authority of Gabriel of Salvington

Paper 57 - The Origin of Urantia

Paper 58 - Life Establishment on Urantia

Paper 59 - The Marine-Life Era on Urantia

Paper 60 - Urantia During the Early Land-Life Era

Paper 61 - The Mammalian Era on Urantia

Paper 62 - The Dawn Races of Early Man

Paper 63 - The First Human Family

Paper 64 - The Evolutionary Races of Color

Paper 65 - The Overcontrol of Evolution

Paper 66 - The Planetary Prince of Urantia

Paper 67 - The Planetary Rebellion

Paper 68 - The Dawn of Civilization

Paper 69 - Primitive Human Institutions

Paper 70 - The Evolution of Human Government

Paper 71 - Development of the State

Paper 72 - Government on a Neighboring Planet

Paper 73 - The Garden of Eden

Paper 74 - Adam and Eve

Paper 75 - The Default of Adam and Eve

Paper 76 - The Second Garden

Paper 77 - The Midway Creatures

Paper 78 - The Violet Race After the Days of Adam

Paper 79 - Andite Expansion in the Orient

Paper 80 - Andite Expansion in the Occident

Paper 81 - Development of Modern Civilization

Paper 82 - The Evolution of Marriage

Paper 83 - The Marriage Institution

Paper 84 - Marriage and Family Life

Paper 85 - The Origins of Worship

Paper 86 - Early Evolution of Religion

Paper 87 - The Ghost Cults

Paper 88 - Fetishes, Charms, and Magic

Paper 89 - Sin, Sacrifice and Atonement

Paper 90 - Shamanism- Medicine Men and Priests

Paper 91 - The Evolution of Prayer

Paper 92 - The Later Evolution of Religion

Paper 93 - Machiventa Melchizedek

Paper 94 - The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient

Paper 95 - The Melchizedek Teaching in the Levant

Paper 96 - Yahweh- God of the Hebrews

Paper 97 - Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

Paper 98 - The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident

Paper 99 - The Social Problems of Religion

Paper 100 - Religion in Human Experience

Paper 101 - The Real Nature of Religion

Paper 102 - The Foundations of Religious Faith

Paper 103 - The Reality of Religious Experience

Paper 104 - Growth of the Trinity Concept

Paper 105 - Deity and Reality

Paper 106 - The Universe Levels of Reality

Paper 107 - Origin and Nature of Thought Adjusters

Paper 108 - Mission and Ministry of Thought Adjusters

Paper 109 - Relation of Adjusters to Universe Creatures

Paper 110 - Relation of Adjusters to Individual Mortals

Paper 111 - The Adjuster and The Soul

Paper 112 - Personality Survival

Paper 113 - Seraphic Guardians of Destiny

Paper 114 - Seraphic Planetary Government

Paper 115 - The Supreme Being

Paper 116 - The Almighty Supreme

Paper 117 - God the Supreme

Paper 118 - Supreme and Ultimate - Time and Space

Paper 119 - The Bestowals of Christ Michael

Universal Unity

(637.1) 56:0.1 GOD is unity. Deity is universally co-ordinated. The universe of universes is one vast integrated mechanism which is absolutely controlled by one infinite mind. The physical, intellectual, and spiritual domains of universal creation are divinely correlated. The perfect and imperfect are truly interrelated, and therefore may the finite evolutionary creature ascend to Paradise in obedience to the Universal Father’s mandate: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.”

(637.2) 56:0.2 The diverse levels of creation are all unified in the plans and administration of the Architects of the Master Universe. To the circumscribed minds of time-space mortals the universe may present many problems and situations which apparently portray disharmony and indicate absence of effective co-ordination; but those of us who are able to observe wider stretches of universal phenomena, and who are more experienced in this art of detecting the basic unity which underlies creative diversity and of discovering the divine oneness which overspreads all this functioning of plurality, better perceive the divine and single purpose exhibited in all these manifold manifestations of universal creative energy.

1. Physical Co-ordination

(637.3) 56:1.1 The physical or material creation is not infinite, but it is perfectly co-ordinated. There are force, energy, and power, but they are all one in origin. The seven superuniverses are seemingly dual; the central universe, triune; but Paradise is of single constitution. And Paradise is the actual source of all material universes — past, present, and future. But this cosmic derivation is an eternity event; at no time — past, present, or future — does either space or the material cosmos come forth from the nuclear Isle of Light. As the cosmic source, Paradise functions prior to space and before time; hence would its derivations seem to be orphaned in time and space did they not emerge through the Unqualified Absolute, their ultimate repository in space and their revealer and regulator in time.

(637.4) 56:1.2 The Unqualified Absolute upholds the physical universe, while the Deity Absolute motivates the exquisite overcontrol of all material reality; and both Absolutes are functionally unified by the Universal Absolute. This cohesive correlation of the material universe is best understood by all personalities — material, morontia, absonite, or spiritual — by the observation of the gravity response of all bona fide material reality to the gravity centering on nether Paradise.

(638.1) 56:1.3 Gravity unification is universal and unvarying; pure-energy response is likewise universal and inescapable. Pure energy (primordial force) and pure spirit are wholly preresponsive to gravity. These primal forces, inhering in the Absolutes, are personally controlled by the Universal Father; hence does all gravity center in the personal presence of the Paradise Father of pure energy and pure spirit and in his supermaterial abode.

(638.2) 56:1.4 Pure energy is the ancestor of all relative, nonspirit functional realities, while pure spirit is the potential of the divine and directive overcontrol of all basic energy systems. And these realities, so diverse as manifested throughout space and as observed in the motions of time, are both centered in the person of the Paradise Father. In him they are one — must be unified — because God is one. The Father’s personality is absolutely unified.

(638.3) 56:1.5 In the infinite nature of God the Father there could not possibly exist duality of reality, such as physical and spiritual; but the instant we look aside from the infinite levels and absolute reality of the personal values of the Paradise Father, we observe the existence of these two realities and recognize that they are fully responsive to his personal presence; in him all things consist.

(638.4) 56:1.6 The moment you depart from the unqualified concept of the infinite personality of the Paradise Father, you must postulate MIND as the inevitable technique of unifying the ever-widening divergence of these dual universe manifestations of the original monothetic Creator personality, the First Source and Center — the I AM.

2. Intellectual Unity

(638.5) 56:2.1 The Thought-Father realizes spirit expression in the Word-Son and attains reality expansion through Paradise in the far-flung material universes. The spiritual expressions of the Eternal Son are correlated with the material levels of creation by the functions of the Infinite Spirit, by whose spirit-responsive ministry of mind, and in whose physical-directive acts of mind, the spiritual realities of Deity and the material repercussions of Deity are correlated the one with the other.

(638.6) 56:2.2 Mind is the functional endowment of the Infinite Spirit, therefore infinite in potential and universal in bestowal. The primal thought of the Universal Father eternalizes in dual expression: the Isle of Paradise and his Deity equal, the spiritual and Eternal Son. Such duality of eternal reality renders the mind God, the Infinite Spirit, inevitable. Mind is the indispensable channel of communication between spiritual and material realities. The material evolutionary creature can conceive and comprehend the indwelling spirit only by the ministry of mind.

(638.7) 56:2.3 This infinite and universal mind is ministered in the universes of time and space as the cosmic mind; and though extending from the primitive ministry of the adjutant spirits up to the magnificent mind of the chief executive of a universe, even this cosmic mind is adequately unified in the supervision of the Seven Master Spirits, who are in turn co-ordinated with the Supreme Mind of time and space and perfectly correlated with the all-embracing mind of the Infinite Spirit.

3. Spiritual Unification

(639.1) 56:3.1 As the universal mind gravity is centered in the Paradise personal presence of the Infinite Spirit, so does the universal spirit gravity center in the Paradise personal presence of the Eternal Son. The Universal Father is one, but to time-space he is revealed in the dual phenomena of pure energy and pure spirit.

(639.2) 56:3.2 Paradise spirit realities are likewise one, but in all time-space situations and relations this single spirit is revealed in the dual phenomena of the spirit personalities and emanations of the Eternal Son and the spirit personalities and influences of the Infinite Spirit and associated creations; and there is yet a third — pure-spirit fragmentations — the Father’s bestowal of the Thought Adjusters and other spirit entities which are prepersonal.

(639.3) 56:3.3 No matter on what level of universe activities you may encounter spiritual phenomena or contact with spirit beings, you may know that they are all derived from the God who is spirit by the ministry of the Spirit Son and the Infinite Mind Spirit. And this far-flung spirit functions as a phenomenon on the evolutionary worlds of time as it is directed from the headquarters of the local universes. From these capitals of the Creator Sons come the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth, together with the ministry of the adjutant mind-spirits, to the lower and evolving levels of material minds.

(639.4) 56:3.4 While mind is more unified on the level of the Master Spirits in association with the Supreme Being and as the cosmic mind in subordination to the Absolute Mind, the spirit ministry to the evolving worlds is more directly unified in the personalities resident on the headquarters of the local universes and in the persons of the presiding Divine Ministers, who are in turn well-nigh perfectly correlated with the Paradise gravity circuit of the Eternal Son, wherein occurs final unification of all time-space spirit manifestations.

(639.5) 56:3.5 Perfected creature existence can be attained, sustained, and eternalized by the fusion of self-conscious mind with a fragment of the pre-Trinity spirit endowment of some one of the persons of the Paradise Trinity. The mortal mind is the creation of the Sons and Daughters of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit and, when fused with the Thought Adjuster from the Father, partakes of the threefold spirit endowment of the evolutionary realms. But these three spirit expressions become perfectly unified in the finaliters, even as they were in eternity so unified in the Universal I AM ere he ever became the Universal Father of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit.

(639.6) 56:3.6 Spirit must always and ultimately become threefold in expression and Trinity-unified in final realization. Spirit originates from one source through a threefold expression; and in finality it must and does attain its full realization in that divine unification which is experienced in finding God — oneness with divinity — in eternity, and by means of the ministry of the cosmic mind of the infinite expression of the eternal word of the Father’s universal thought.

4. Personality Unification

(639.7) 56:4.1 The Universal Father is a divinely unified personality; hence will all his ascendant children who are carried to Paradise by the rebound momentum of the Thought Adjusters, who went forth from Paradise to indwell material mortals in obedience to the Father’s mandate, likewise be fully unified personalities ere they reach Havona.

(640.1) 56:4.2 Personality inherently reaches out to unify all constituent realities. The infinite personality of the First Source and Center, the Universal Father, unifies all seven constituent Absolutes of Infinity; and the personality of mortal man, being an exclusive and direct bestowal of the Universal Father, likewise possesses the potential of unifying the constituent factors of the mortal creature. Such unifying creativity of all creature personality is a birthmark of its high and exclusive source and is further evidential of its unbroken contact with this same source through the personality circuit, by means of which the personality of the creature maintains direct and sustaining contact with the Father of all personality on Paradise.

(640.2) 56:4.3 Notwithstanding that God is manifest from the domains of the Sevenfold up through supremacy and ultimacy to God the Absolute, the personality circuit, centering on Paradise and in the person of God the Father, provides for the complete and perfect unification of all these diverse expressions of divine personality so far as concerns all creature personalities on all levels of intelligent existence and in all the realms of the perfect, perfected, and perfecting universes.

(640.3) 56:4.4 While God is to and in the universes all that we have portrayed, nevertheless, to you and to all other God-knowing creatures he is one, your Father and their Father. To personality God cannot be plural. God is Father to each of his creatures, and it is literally impossible for any child to have more than one father.

(640.4) 56:4.5 Philosophically, cosmically, and with reference to differential levels and locations of manifestation, you may and perforce must conceive of the functioning of plural Deities and postulate the existence of plural Trinities; but in the worshipful experience of the personal contact of every worshiping personality throughout the master universe, God is one; and that unified and personal Deity is our Paradise parent, God the Father, the bestower, conservator, and Father of all personalities from mortal man on the inhabited worlds to the Eternal Son on the central Isle of Light.

5. Deity Unity

(640.5) 56:5.1 The oneness, the indivisibility, of Paradise Deity is existential and absolute. There are three eternal personalizations of Deity — the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit — but in the Paradise Trinity they are actually one Deity, undivided and indivisible.

(640.6) 56:5.2 From the original Paradise-Havona level of existential reality, two subabsolute levels have differentiated, and thereon have the Father, Son, and Spirit engaged in the creation of numerous personal associates and subordinates. And while it is inappropriate in this connection to undertake the consideration of absonite deity unification on transcendental levels of ultimacy, it is feasible to look at some features of the unifying function of the various Deity personalizations in whom divinity is functionally manifest to the diverse sectors of creation and to the different orders of intelligent beings.

(640.7) 56:5.3 The present functioning of divinity in the superuniverses is actively manifest in the operations of the Supreme Creators — the local universe Creator Sons and Spirits, the superuniverse Ancients of Days, and the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise. These beings constitute the first three levels of God the Sevenfold leading inward to the Universal Father, and this entire domain of God the Sevenfold is co-ordinating on the first level of experiential deity in the evolving Supreme Being.

(641.1) 56:5.4 On Paradise and in the central universe, Deity unity is a fact of existence. Throughout the evolving universes of time and space, Deity unity is an achievement.

6. Unification of Evolutionary Deity

(641.2) 56:6.1 When the three eternal persons of Deity function as undivided Deity in the Paradise Trinity, they achieve perfect unity; likewise, when they create, either associatively or severally, their Paradise progeny exhibit the characteristic unity of divinity. And this divinity of purpose manifested by the Supreme Creators and Rulers of the time-space domains eventuates in the unifying power potential of the sovereignty of experiential supremacy which, in the presence of the impersonal energy unity of the universe, constitutes a reality tension that can be resolved only through adequate unification with the experiential personality realities of experiential Deity.

(641.3) 56:6.2 The personality realities of the Supreme Being come forth from the Paradise Deities and on the pilot world of the outer Havona circuit unify with the power prerogatives of the Almighty Supreme coming up from the Creator divinities of the grand universe. God the Supreme as a person existed in Havona before the creation of the seven superuniverses, but he functioned only on spiritual levels. The evolution of the Almighty power of Supremacy by diverse divinity synthesis in the evolving universes eventuated in a new power presence of Deity which co-ordinated with the spiritual person of the Supreme in Havona by means of the Supreme Mind, which concomitantly translated from the potential resident in the infinite mind of the Infinite Spirit to the active functional mind of the Supreme Being.

(641.4) 56:6.3 The material-minded creatures of the evolutionary worlds of the seven superuniverses can comprehend Deity unity only as it is evolving in this power-personality synthesis of the Supreme Being. On any level of existence God cannot exceed the conceptual capacity of the beings who live on such a level. Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love and then progress through ascending deity levels to the comprehension of the Supreme. Deity, having been thus grasped as unified in power, can then be personalized in spirit to creature understanding and attainment.

(641.5) 56:6.4 While ascending mortals achieve power comprehension of the Almighty on the capitals of the superuniverses and personality comprehension of the Supreme on the outer circuits of Havona, they do not actually find the Supreme Being as they are destined to find the Paradise Deities. Even the finaliters, sixth-stage spirits, have not found the Supreme Being, nor are they likely to until they have achieved seventh-stage-spirit status, and until the Supreme has become actually functional in the activities of the future outer universes.

(641.6) 56:6.5 But when ascenders find the Universal Father as the seventh level of God the Sevenfold, they have attained the personality of the First Person of all deity levels of personal relationships with universe creatures.

7. Universal Evolutionary Repercussions

(642.1) 56:7.1 The steady progress of evolution in the time-space universes is accompanied by ever-enlarging revelations of Deity to all intelligent creatures. The attainment of the height of evolutionary progress on a world, in a system, constellation, universe, superuniverse, or in the grand universe signalizes corresponding enlargements of deity function to and in these progressive units of creation. And every such local enhancement of divinity realization is accompanied by certain well-defined repercussions of enlarged deity manifestation to all other sectors of creation. Extending outward from Paradise, each new domain of realized and attained evolution constitutes a new and enlarged revelation of experiential Deity to the universe of universes.

(642.2) 56:7.2 As the components of a local universe are progressively settled in light and life, God the Sevenfold is increasingly made manifest. Time-space evolution begins on a planet with the first expression of God the Sevenfold — the Creator Son-Creative Spirit association — in control. With the settling of a system in light, this Son-Spirit liaison attains the fullness of function; and when an entire constellation is thus settled, the second phase of God the Sevenfold becomes more active throughout such a realm. The completed administrative evolution of a local universe is attended by new and more direct ministrations of the superuniverse Master Spirits; and at this point there also begins that ever-expanding revelation and realization of God the Supreme which culminates in the ascender’s comprehension of the Supreme Being while passing through the worlds of the sixth Havona circuit.

(642.3) 56:7.3 The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are existential deity manifestations to intelligent creatures and are not, therefore, similarly expanded in personality relations with the mind and spirit creatures of all creation.

(642.4) 56:7.4 It should be noted that ascending mortals may experience the impersonal presence of successive levels of Deity long before they become sufficiently spiritual and adequately educated to attain experiential personal recognition of, and contact with, these Deities as personal beings.

(642.5) 56:7.5 Each new evolutionary attainment within a sector of creation, as well as every new invasion of space by divinity manifestations, is attended by simultaneous expansions of Deity functional-revelation within the then existing and previously organized units of all creation. This new invasion of the administrative work of the universes and their component units may not always appear to be executed exactly in accordance with the technique herewith outlined because it is the practice to send forth advance groups of administrators to prepare the way for the subsequent and successive eras of new administrative overcontrol. Even God the Ultimate foreshadows his transcendental overcontrol of the universes during the later stages of a local universe settled in light and life.

(642.6) 56:7.6 It is a fact that, as the creations of time and space are progressively settled in evolutionary status, there is observed a new and fuller functioning of God the Supreme concomitant with a corresponding withdrawing of the first three manifestations of God the Sevenfold. If and when the grand universe becomes settled in light and life, what then will be the future function of the Creator-Creative manifestations of God the Sevenfold if God the Supreme assumes direct control of these creations of time and space? Are these organizers and pioneers of the time-space universes to be liberated for similar activities in outer space? We do not know, but we speculate much concerning these and related matters.

(643.1) 56:7.7 As the frontiers of experiential Deity are extended out into the domains of the Unqualified Absolute, we envision the activity of God the Sevenfold during the earlier evolutionary epochs of these creations of the future. We are not all in agreement respecting the future status of the Ancients of Days and the superuniverse Master Spirits. Neither do we know whether or not the Supreme Being will therein function as in the seven superuniverses. But we all conjecture that the Michaels, the Creator Sons, are destined to function in these outer universes. Some hold that the future ages will witness some closer form of union between the associated Creator Sons and Divine Ministers; it is even possible that such a creator union might eventuate in some new expression of associate-creator identity of an ultimate nature. But we really know nothing about these possibilities of the unrevealed future.

(643.2) 56:7.8 We do know, however, that in the universes of time and space, God the Sevenfold provides a progressive approach to the Universal Father, and that this evolutionary approach is experientially unified in God the Supreme. We might conjecture that such a plan must prevail in the outer universes; on the other hand, the new orders of beings that may sometime inhabit these universes may be able to approach Deity on ultimate levels and by absonite techniques. In short, we have not the slightest concept of what technique of deity approach may become operative in the future universes of outer space.*

(643.3) 56:7.9 Nevertheless, we deem that the perfected superuniverses will in some way become a part of the Paradise-ascension careers of those beings who may inhabit these outer creations. It is quite possible that in that future age we may witness outer-spacers approaching Havona through the seven superuniverses, administered by God the Supreme with or without the collaboration of the Seven Master Spirits.

8. The Supreme Unifier

(643.4) 56:8.1 The Supreme Being has a threefold function in the experience of mortal man: First, he is the unifier of time-space divinity, God the Sevenfold; second, he is the maximum of Deity which finite creatures can actually comprehend; third, he is mortal man’s only avenue of approach to the transcendental experience of consorting with absonite mind, eternal spirit, and Paradise personality.

(643.5) 56:8.2 Ascendant finaliters, having been born in the local universes, nurtured in the superuniverses, and trained in the central universe, embrace in their personal experiences the full potential of the comprehension of the time-space divinity of God the Sevenfold unifying in the Supreme. Finaliters serve successively in superuniverses other than those of nativity, thereby superimposing experience upon experience until the fullness of the sevenfold diversity of possible creature experience has been encompassed. Through the ministry of the indwelling Adjusters the finaliters are enabled to find the Universal Father, but it is by these techniques of experience that such finaliters come really to know the Supreme Being, and they are destined to the service and the revelation of this Supreme Deity in and to the future universes of outer space.

(644.1) 56:8.3 Bear in mind, all that God the Father and his Paradise Sons do for us, we in turn and in spirit have the opportunity to do for and in the emerging Supreme Being. The experience of love, joy, and service in the universe is mutual. God the Father does not need that his sons should return to him all that he bestows upon them, but they do (or may) in turn bestow all of this upon their fellows and upon the evolving Supreme Being.

(644.2) 56:8.4 All creational phenomena are reflective of antecedent creator-spirit activities. Said Jesus, and it is literally true, “The Son does only those things which he sees the Father do.” In time you mortals may begin the revelation of the Supreme to your fellows, and increasingly may you augment this revelation as you ascend Paradiseward. In eternity you may be permitted to make increasing revelations of this God of evolutionary creatures on supreme levels — even ultimate — as seventh-stage finaliters.

9. Universal Absolute Unity

(644.3) 56:9.1 The Unqualified Absolute and the Deity Absolute are unified in the Universal Absolute. The Absolutes are co-ordinated in the Ultimate, conditioned in the Supreme, and time-space modified in God the Sevenfold. On subinfinite levels there are three Absolutes, but in infinity they appear to be one. On Paradise there are three personalizations of Deity, but in the Trinity they are one.

(644.4) 56:9.2 The major philosophic proposition of the master universe is this: Did the Absolute (the three Absolutes as one in infinity) exist before the Trinity? and is the Absolute ancestral to the Trinity? or is the Trinity antecedent to the Absolute?

(644.5) 56:9.3 Is the Unqualified Absolute a force presence independent of the Trinity? Does the presence of the Deity Absolute connote the unlimited function of the Trinity? and is the Universal Absolute the final function of the Trinity, even a Trinity of Trinities?

(644.6) 56:9.4 On first thought, a concept of the Absolute as ancestor to all things — even the Trinity — seems to afford transitory satisfaction of consistency gratification and philosophic unification, but any such conclusion is invalidated by the actuality of the eternity of the Paradise Trinity. We are taught, and we believe, that the Universal Father and his Trinity associates are eternal in nature and existence. There is, then, but one consistent philosophic conclusion, and that is: The Absolute is, to all universe intelligences, the impersonal and co-ordinate reaction of the Trinity (of Trinities) to all basic and primary space situations, intrauniversal and extrauniversal. To all personality intelligences of the grand universe the Paradise Trinity forever stands in finality, eternity, supremacy, and ultimacy and, for all practical purposes of personal comprehension and creature realization, as absolute.

(644.7) 56:9.5 As creature minds may view this problem, they are led to the final postulate of the Universal I AM as the primal cause and the unqualified source of both the Trinity and the Absolute. When, therefore, we crave to entertain a personal concept of the Absolute, we revert to our ideas and ideals of the Paradise Father. When we desire to facilitate comprehension or to augment consciousness of this otherwise impersonal Absolute, we revert to the fact that the Universal Father is the existential Father of absolute personality; the Eternal Son is the Absolute Person, though not, in the experiential sense, the personalization of the Absolute. And then we go on to envisage the experiential Trinities as culminating in the experiential personalization of the Deity Absolute, while conceiving the Universal Absolute as constituting the universe and the extrauniverse phenomena of the manifest presence of the impersonal activities of the unified and co-ordinated Deity associations of supremacy, ultimacy, and infinity — the Trinity of Trinities.

(645.1) 56:9.6 God the Father is discernible on all levels from the finite to the infinite, and though his creatures from Paradise to the evolutionary worlds have variously perceived him, only the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit know him as an infinity.

(645.2) 56:9.7 Spiritual personality is absolute only on Paradise, and the concept of the Absolute is unqualified only in infinity. Deity presence is absolute only on Paradise, and the revelation of God must always be partial, relative, and progressive until his power becomes experientially infinite in the space potency of the Unqualified Absolute, while his personality manifestation becomes experientially infinite in the manifest presence of the Deity Absolute, and while these two potentials of infinity become reality-unified in the Universal Absolute.

(645.3) 56:9.8 But beyond subinfinite levels the three Absolutes are one, and thereby is infinity Deity-realized regardless of whether any other order of existence ever self-realizes consciousness of infinity.

(645.4) 56:9.9 Existential status in eternity implies existential self-consciousness of infinity, even though another eternity may be required to experience self-realization of the experiential potentialities inherent in an infinity eternity — an eternal infinity.

(645.5) 56:9.10 And God the Father is the personal source of all manifestations of Deity and reality to all intelligent creatures and spirit beings throughout all the universe of universes. As personalities, now or in the successive universe experiences of the eternal future, no matter if you achieve the attainment of God the Sevenfold, comprehend God the Supreme, find God the Ultimate, or attempt to grasp the concept of God the Absolute, you will discover to your eternal satisfaction that in the consummation of each adventure you have, on new experiential levels, rediscovered the eternal God — the Paradise Father of all universe personalities.

(645.6) 56:9.11 The Universal Father is the explanation of universal unity as it must be supremely, even ultimately, realized in the postultimate unity of absolute values and meanings — unqualified Reality.

(645.7) 56:9.12 The Master Force Organizers go out into space and mobilize its energies to become gravity responsive to the Paradise pull of the Universal Father; and subsequently there come the Creator Sons, who organize these gravity-responding forces into inhabited universes and therein evolve intelligent creatures who receive unto themselves the spirit of the Paradise Father and subsequently ascend to the Father to become like him in all possible divinity attributes.

(645.8) 56:9.13 The ceaseless and expanding march of the Paradise creative forces through space seems to presage the ever-extending domain of the gravity grasp of the Universal Father and the never-ending multiplication of varied types of intelligent creatures who are able to love God and be loved by him, and who, by thus becoming God-knowing, may choose to be like him, may elect to attain Paradise and find God.

(646.1) 56:9.14 The universe of universes is altogether unified. God is one in power and personality. There is co-ordination of all levels of energy and all phases of personality. Philosophically and experientially, in concept and in reality, all things and beings center in the Paradise Father. God is all and in all, and no things or beings exist without him.

10. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

(646.2) 56:10.1 As the worlds settled in life and light progress from the initial stage to the seventh epoch, they successively grasp for the realization of the reality of God the Sevenfold, ranging from the adoration of the Creator Son to the worship of his Paradise Father. Throughout the continuing seventh stage of such a world’s history the ever-progressing mortals grow in the knowledge of God the Supreme, while they vaguely discern the reality of the overshadowing ministry of God the Ultimate.

(646.3) 56:10.2 Throughout this glorious age the chief pursuit of the ever-advancing mortals is the quest for a better understanding and a fuller realization of the comprehensible elements of Deity — truth, beauty, and goodness. This represents man’s effort to discern God in mind, matter, and spirit. And as the mortal pursues this quest, he finds himself increasingly absorbed in the experiential study of philosophy, cosmology, and divinity.

(646.4) 56:10.3 Philosophy you somewhat grasp, and divinity you comprehend in worship, social service, and personal spiritual experience, but the pursuit of beauty — cosmology — you all too often limit to the study of man’s crude artistic endeavors. Beauty, art, is largely a matter of the unification of contrasts. Variety is essential to the concept of beauty. The supreme beauty, the height of finite art, is the drama of the unification of the vastness of the cosmic extremes of Creator and creature. Man finding God and God finding man — the creature becoming perfect as is the Creator — that is the supernal achievement of the supremely beautiful, the attainment of the apex of cosmic art.

(646.5) 56:10.4 Hence materialism, atheism, is the maximation of ugliness, the climax of the finite antithesis of the beautiful. Highest beauty consists in the panorama of the unification of the variations which have been born of pre-existent harmonious reality.

(646.6) 56:10.5 The attainment of cosmologic levels of thought includes:

(646.7) 56:10.6 1. Curiosity. Hunger for harmony and thirst for beauty. Persistent attempts to discover new levels of harmonious cosmic relationshi

The Spheres of Light and Life

(621.1) 55:0.1 THE age of light and life is the final evolutionary attainment of a world of time and space. From the early times of primitive man, such an inhabited world has passed through the successive planetary ages — the pre- and the post-Planetary Prince ages, the post-Adamic age, the post-Magisterial Son age, and the postbestowal Son age. And then is such a world made ready for the culminating evolutionary attainment, the settled status of light and life, by the ministry of the successive planetary missions of the Trinity Teacher Sons with their ever-advancing revelations of divine truth and cosmic wisdom. In these endeavors the Teacher Sons enjoy the assistance of the Brilliant Evening Stars always, and the Melchizedeks sometimes, in establishing the final planetary age.

(621.2) 55:0.2 This era of light and life, inaugurated by the Teacher Sons at the conclusion of their final planetary mission, continues indefinitely on the inhabited worlds. Each advancing stage of settled status may be segregated by the judicial actions of the Magisterial Sons into a succession of dispensations; but all such judicial actions are purely technical, in no way modifying the course of planetary events.

(621.3) 55:0.3 Only those planets which attain existence in the main circuits of the superuniverse are assured of continuous survival, but as far as we know, these worlds settled in light and life are destined to go on throughout the eternal ages of all future time.

(621.4) 55:0.4 There are seven stages in the unfoldment of the era of light and life on an evolutionary world, and in this connection it should be noted that the worlds of the Spirit-fused mortals evolve along lines identical with those of the Adjuster-fusion series. These seven stages of light and life are:

(621.5) 55:0.5 1. The first or planetary stage.

(621.6) 55:0.6 2. The second or system stage.

(621.7) 55:0.7 3. The third or constellation stage.

(621.8) 55:0.8 4. The fourth or local universe stage.

(621.9) 55:0.9 5. The fifth or minor sector stage.

(621.10) 55:0.10 6. The sixth or major sector stage.

(621.11) 55:0.11 7. The seventh or superuniverse stage.

(621.12) 55:0.12 At the conclusion of this narrative these stages of advancing development are described as they relate to the universe organization, but the planetary values of any stage may be attained by any world quite independent of the development of other worlds or of the superplanetary levels of universe administration.

1. The Morontia Temple

(622.1) 55:1.1 The presence of a morontia temple at the capital of an inhabited world is the certificate of the admission of such a sphere to the settled ages of light and life. Before the Teacher Sons leave a world at the conclusion of their terminal mission, they inaugurate this final epoch of evolutionary attainment; they preside on that day when the “holy temple comes down upon earth.” This event, signalizing the dawn of the era of light and life, is always honored by the personal presence of the Paradise bestowal Son of that planet, who comes to witness this great day. There in this temple of unparalleled beauty, this bestowal Son of Paradise proclaims the long-time Planetary Prince as the new Planetary Sovereign and invests such a faithful Lanonandek Son with new powers and extended authority over planetary affairs. The System Sovereign is also present and speaks in confirmation of these pronouncements.

(622.2) 55:1.2 A morontia temple has three parts: Centermost is the sanctuary of the Paradise bestowal Son. On the right is the seat of the former Planetary Prince, now Planetary Sovereign; and when present in the temple, this Lanonandek Son is visible to the more spiritual individuals of the realm. On the left is the seat of the acting chief of finaliters attached to the planet.

(622.3) 55:1.3 Although the planetary temples have been spoken of as “coming down from heaven,” in reality no actual material is transported from the system headquarters. The architecture of each is worked out in miniature on the system capital, and the Morontia Power Supervisors subsequently bring these approved plans to the planet. Here, in association with the Master Physical Controllers, they proceed to build the morontia temple according to specifications.

(622.4) 55:1.4 The average morontia temple seats about three hundred thousand spectators. These edifices are not used for worship, play, or for receiving broadcasts; they are devoted to the special ceremonies of the planet, such as: communications with the System Sovereign or with the Most Highs, special visualization ceremonies designed to reveal the personality presence of spirit beings, and silent cosmic contemplation. The schools of cosmic philosophy here conduct their graduation exercises, and here also do the mortals of the realm receive planetary recognition for achievements of high social service and for other outstanding attainments.

(622.5) 55:1.5 Such a morontia temple also serves as the place of assembly for witnessing the translation of living mortals to the morontia existence. It is because the translation temple is composed of morontia material that it is not destroyed by the blazing glory of the consuming fire which so completely obliterates the physical bodies of those mortals who therein experience final fusion with their divine Adjusters. On a large world these departure flares are almost continuous, and as the number of translations increases, subsidiary morontia life shrines are provided in different areas of the planet. Not long since I sojourned on a world in the far north whereon twenty-five morontia shrines were functioning.

(622.6) 55:1.6 On presettled worlds, planets without morontia temples, these fusion flashes many times occur in the planetary atmosphere, where the material body of a translation candidate is elevated by the midway creatures and the physical controllers.

2. Death and Translation

(623.1) 55:2.1 Natural, physical death is not a mortal inevitability. The majority of advanced evolutionary beings, citizens on worlds existing in the final era of light and life, do not die; they are translated directly from the life in the flesh to the morontia existence.

(623.2) 55:2.2 This experience of translation from the material life to the morontia state — fusion of the immortal soul with the indwelling Adjuster — increases in frequency commensurate with the evolutionary progress of the planet. At first only a few mortals in each age attain translation levels of spiritual progress, but with the onset of the successive ages of the Teacher Sons, more and more Adjuster fusions occur before the termination of the lengthening lives of these progressing mortals; and by the time of the terminal mission of the Teacher Sons, approximately one quarter of these superb mortals are exempt from natural death.

(623.3) 55:2.3 Farther along in the era of light and life the midway creatures or their associates sense the approaching status of probable soul-Adjuster union and signify this to the destiny guardians, who in turn communicate these matters to the finaliter group under whose jurisdiction this mortal may be functioning; then there is issued the summons of the Planetary Sovereign for such a mortal to resign all planetary duties, bid farewell to the world of his origin, and repair to the inner temple of the Planetary Sovereign, there to await morontia transit, the translation flash, from the material domain of evolution to the morontia level of prespirit progression.

(623.4) 55:2.4 When the family, friends, and working group of such a fusion candidate have forgathered in the morontia temple, they are distributed around the central stage whereon the fusion candidates are resting, meantime freely conversing with their assembled friends. A circle of intervening celestial personalities is arranged to protect the material mortals from the action of the energies manifest at the instant of the “life flash” which delivers the ascension candidate from the bonds of material flesh, thereby doing for such an evolutionary mortal everything that natural death does for those who are thereby delivered from the flesh.

(623.5) 55:2.5 Many fusion candidates may be assembled in the spacious temple at the same time. And what a beautiful occasion when mortals thus forgather to witness the ascension of their loved ones in spiritual flames, and what a contrast to those earlier ages when mortals must commit their dead to the embrace of the terrestrial elements! The scenes of weeping and wailing characteristic of earlier epochs of human evolution are now replaced by ecstatic joy and the sublimest enthusiasm as these God-knowing mortals bid their loved ones a transient farewell as they are removed from their material associations by the spiritual fires of consuming grandeur and ascending glory. On worlds settled in light and life, “funerals” are occasions of supreme joy, profound satisfaction, and inexpressible hope.

(623.6) 55:2.6 The souls of these progressing mortals are increasingly filled with faith, hope, and assurance. The spirit permeating those gathered around the translation shrine resembles that of the joyful friends and relatives who might assemble at a graduating exercise for one of their group, or who might come together to witness the conferring of some great honor upon one of their number. And it would be decidedly helpful if less advanced mortals could only learn to view natural death with something of this same cheerfulness and lightheartedness.

(624.1) 55:2.7 Mortal observers can see nothing of their translated associates subsequent to the fusion flash. Such translated souls proceed by Adjuster transit direct to the resurrection hall of the appropriate morontia-training world. These transactions concerned with the translation of living human beings to the morontia world are supervised by an archangel who was assigned to such a world on the day when it was first settled in light and life.

(624.2) 55:2.8 By the time a world attains the fourth stage of light and life, more than half the mortals leave the planet by translation from among the living. Such diminishment of death continues on and on, but I know of no system whose inhabited worlds, even though long settled in life, are entirely free from natural death as the technique of escape from the bonds of flesh. And until such a high state of planetary evolution is uniformly attained, the morontia-training worlds of the local universe must continue in service as educational and cultural spheres for the evolving morontia progressors. The elimination of death is theoretically possible, but it has not yet occurred according to my observation. Perhaps such a status may be attained during the faraway stretches of the succeeding epochs of the seventh stage of settled planetary life.

(624.3) 55:2.9 The translated souls of the flowering ages of the settled spheres do not pass through the mansion worlds. Neither do they sojourn, as students, on the morontia worlds of the system or constellation. They do not pass through any of the earlier phases of morontia life. They are the only ascending mortals who so nearly escape the morontia transition from material existence to semispirit status. The initial experience of such Son-seized mortals in the ascension career is in the services of the progression worlds of the universe headquarters. And from these study worlds of Salvington they go back as teachers to the very worlds they passed by, subsequently going on inward to Paradise by the established route of mortal ascension.

(624.4) 55:2.10 Could you but visit a planet in an advanced stage of development, you would quickly grasp the reasons for providing for the differential reception of ascending mortals on the mansion and higher morontia worlds. You would readily understand that beings passing on from such highly evolved spheres are prepared to resume their Paradise ascent far in advance of the average mortal arriving from a disordered and backward world like Urantia.

(624.5) 55:2.11 No matter from what level of planetary attainment human beings may ascend to the morontia worlds, the seven mansion spheres afford them ample opportunity to gain in experience as teacher-students all of everything which they failed to pass through because of the advanced status of their native planets.

(624.6) 55:2.12 The universe is unfailing in the application of these equalizing techniques designed to insure that no ascender shall be deprived of aught which is essential to his ascension experience.

3. The Golden Ages

(624.7) 55:3.1 During this age of light and life the world increasingly prospers under the fatherly rule of the Planetary Sovereign. By this time the worlds are progressing under the momentum of one language, one religion, and, on normal spheres, one race. But this age is not perfect. These worlds still have well-appointed hospitals, homes for the care of the sick. There still remain the problems of caring for accidental injuries and the inescapable infirmities attendant upon the decrepitude of old age and the disorders of senility. Disease has not been entirely vanquished, neither have the earth animals been subdued in perfection; but such worlds are like Paradise in comparison with the early times of primitive man during the pre-Planetary Prince age. You would instinctively describe such a realm — could you be suddenly transported to a planet in this stage of development — as heaven on earth.

(625.1) 55:3.2 Human government in the conduct of material affairs continues to function throughout this age of relative progress and perfection. The public activities of a world in the first stage of light and life which I recently visited were financed by the tithing technique. Every adult worker — and all able-bodied citizens worked at something — paid ten per cent of his income or increase to the public treasury, and it was disbursed as follows:

(625.2) 55:3.3 1. Three per cent was expended in the promotion of truth — science, education, and philosophy.

(625.3) 55:3.4 2. Three per cent was devoted to beauty — play, social leisure, and art.

(625.4) 55:3.5 3. Three per cent was dedicated to goodness — social service, altruism, and religion.

(625.5) 55:3.6 4. One per cent was assigned to the insurance reserves against the risk of incapacity for labor resultant from accident, disease, old age, or unpreventable disasters.

(625.6) 55:3.7 The natural resources of this planet were administered as social possessions, community property.

(625.7) 55:3.8 On this world the highest honor conferred upon a citizen was the order of “supreme service,” being the only degree of recognition ever to be granted in the morontia temple. This recognition was bestowed upon those who had long distinguished themselves in some phase of supermaterial discovery or planetary social service.

(625.8) 55:3.9 The majority of social and administrative posts were held jointly by men and women. Most of the teaching was also done jointly; likewise all judicial trusts were discharged by similar associated couples.

(625.9) 55:3.10 On these superb worlds the childbearing period is not greatly prolonged. It is not best for too many years to intervene between the ages of a family of children. When close together in age, children are able to contribute much more to their mutual training. And on these worlds they are magnificently trained by the competitive systems of keen striving in the advanced domains and divisions of diverse achievement in the mastery of truth, beauty, and goodness. Never fear but that even such glorified spheres present plenty of evil, real and potential, which is stimulative of the choosing between truth and error, good and evil, sin and righteousness.

(625.10) 55:3.11 Nevertheless, there is a certain, inevitable penalty attaching to mortal existence on such advanced evolutionary planets. When a settled world progresses beyond the third stage of light and life, all ascenders are destined, before attaining the minor sector, to receive some sort of transient assignment on a planet passing through the earlier stages of evolution.

(626.1) 55:3.12 Each of these successive ages represents advancing achievements in all phases of planetary attainment. In the initial age of light the revelation of truth was enlarged to embrace the workings of the universe of universes, while the Deity study of the second age is the attempt to master the protean concept of the nature, mission, ministry, associations, origin, and destiny of the Creator Sons, the first level of God the Sevenfold.

(626.2) 55:3.13 A planet the size of Urantia, when fairly well settled, would have about one hundred subadministrative centers. These subordinate centers would be presided over by one of the following groups of qualified administrators:

(626.3) 55:3.14 1. Young Material Sons and Daughters brought from the system headquarters to act as assistants to the ruling Adam and Eve.

(626.4) 55:3.15 2. The progeny of the semimortal staff of the Planetary Prince who were procreated on certain worlds for this and other similar responsibilities.

(626.5) 55:3.16 3. The direct planetary progeny of Adam and Eve.

(626.6) 55:3.17 4. Materialized and humanized midway creatures.

(626.7) 55:3.18 5. Mortals of Adjuster-fusion status who, upon their own petition, are temporarily exempted from translation by the order of the Personalized Adjuster of universe chieftainship in order that they may continue on the planet in certain important administrative posts.

(626.8) 55:3.19 6. Specially trained mortals of the planetary schools of administration who have also received the order of supreme service of the morontia temple.

(626.9) 55:3.20 7. Certain elective commissions of three properly qualified citizens who are sometimes chosen by the citizenry by direction of the Planetary Sovereign in accordance with their special ability to accomplish some definite task which is needful in that particular planetary sector.

(626.10) 55:3.21 The great handicap confronting Urantia in the matter of attaining the high planetary destiny of light and life is embraced in the problems of disease, degeneracy, war, multicolored races, and multilingualism.

(626.11) 55:3.22 No evolutionary world can hope to progress beyond the first stage of settledness in light until it has achieved one language, one religion, and one philosophy. Being of one race greatly facilitates such achievement, but the many peoples of Urantia do not preclude the attainment of higher stages.

4. Administrative Readjustments

(626.12) 55:4.1 In the successive stages of settled existence the inhabited worlds make marvelous progress under the wise and sympathetic administration of the volunteer Corps of the Finality, ascenders of Paradise attainment who have come back to minister to their brethren in the flesh. These finaliters are active in co-operation with the Trinity Teacher Sons, but they do not begin their real participation in world affairs until the morontia temple appears on earth.

(626.13) 55:4.2 Upon the formal inauguration of the planetary ministry of the Corps of the Finality, the majority of the celestial hosts withdraw. But the seraphic guardians of destiny continue their personal ministry to the progressing mortals in light; indeed such angels come in ever-increasing numbers throughout the settled ages since larger and larger groups of human beings reach the third cosmic circle of co-ordinate mortal attainment during the planetary life span.

(627.1) 55:4.3 This is merely the first of the successive administrative adjustments which attend the unfolding of the successive ages of increasingly brilliant attainment on the inhabited worlds as they pass from the first to the seventh stage of settled existence.

(627.2) 55:4.4 1. The first stage of light and life. A world in this initial settled stage is being administered by three rulers:

(627.3) 55:4.5 a. The Planetary Sovereign, presently to be advised by a counseling Trinity Teacher Son, in all probability the chief of the terminal corps of such Sons to function on the planet.

(627.4) 55:4.6 b. The chief of the planetary corps of finaliters.

(627.5) 55:4.7 c. Adam and Eve, who function jointly as the unifiers of the dual leadership of the Prince-Sovereign and the chief of finaliters.

(627.6) 55:4.8 Acting as interpreters for the seraphic guardians and the finaliters are the exalted and liberated midway creatures. One of the last acts of the Trinity Teacher Sons on their terminal mission is to liberate the midwayers of the realm and to promote (or restore) them to advanced planetary status, assigning them to responsible places in the new administration of the settled sphere. Such changes have already been made in the range of human vision as enable mortals to recognize these heretofore invisible cousins of the early Adamic regime. This is made possible by the final discoveries of physical science in liaison with the enlarged planetary functions of the Master Physical Controllers.

(627.7) 55:4.9 The System Sovereign has authority to release midway creatures any time after the first settled stage so that they may humanize in the morontia by the aid of the Life Carriers and the physical controllers and, after receiving Thought Adjusters, start out on their Paradise ascension.

(627.8) 55:4.10 In the third and subsequent stages, some of the midwayers are still functioning, chiefly as contact personalities for the finaliters, but as each stage of light and life is entered, new orders of liaison ministers largely replace the midwayers; very few of them ever remain beyond the fourth stage of light. The seventh stage will witness the coming of the first absonite ministers from Paradise to serve in the places of certain universe creatures.

(627.9) 55:4.11 2. The second stage of light and life. This epoch is signalized on the worlds by the arrival of a Life Carrier who becomes the volunteer adviser of the planetary rulers regarding the further efforts to purify and stabilize the mortal race. Thus do the Life Carriers actively participate in the further evolution of the human race — physically, socially, and economically. And then they extend their supervision to the further purification of the mortal stock by the drastic elimination of the retarded and persisting remnants of inferior potential of an intellectual, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature. Those who design and plant life on an inhabited world are fully competent to advise the Material Sons and Daughters, who have full and unquestioned authority to purge the evolving race of all detrimental influences.

(627.10) 55:4.12 From the second stage on throughout the career of a settled planet the Teacher Sons serve as counselors to the finaliters. During such missions they serve as volunteers and not by assignment; and they serve exclusively with the finaliter corps except that, upon the consent of the System Sovereign, they may be had as advisers to the Planetary Adam and Eve.

(628.1) 55:4.13 3. The third stage of light and life. During this epoch the inhabited worlds arrive at a new appreciation of the Ancients of Days, the second phase of God the Sevenfold, and the representatives of these superuniverse rulers enter into new relationships with the planetary administration.

(628.2) 55:4.14 In each succeeding age of settled existence the finaliters function in ever-increasing capacities. There exists a close working connection between the finaliters, the Evening Stars (the superangels), and the Trinity Teacher Sons.

(628.3) 55:4.15 During this or the following age a Teacher Son, assisted by the ministering-spirit quartette, becomes attached to the elective mortal chief executive, who now becomes associated with the Planetary Sovereign as joint administrator of world affairs. These mortal chief executives serve for twenty-five years of planetary time, and it is this new development that makes it easy for the Planetary Adam and Eve to secure release from their world of long-time assignment during the following ages.

(628.4) 55:4.16 The ministering-spirit quartettes consist of: the seraphic chief of the sphere, the superuniverse secoraphic counselor, the archangel of translations, and the omniaphim who functions as the personal representative of the Assigned Sentinel stationed on the system headquarters. But these advisers never proffer counsel unless it is asked for.

(628.5) 55:4.17 4. The fourth stage of light and life. On the worlds the Trinity Teacher Sons appear in new roles. Assisted by the creature-trinitized sons so long associated with their order, they now come to the worlds as volunteer counselors and advisers to the Planetary Sovereign and his associates. Such couples — Paradise-Havona-trinitized sons and ascender-trinitized sons — represent differing universe viewpoints and diverse personal experiences which are highly serviceable to the planetary rulers.

(628.6) 55:4.18 At any time after this age the Planetary Adam and Eve can petition the Sovereign Creator Son for release from planetary duties in order to begin their Paradise ascent; or they can remain on the planet as directors of the newly appearing order of increasingly spiritual society composed of advanced mortals striving to comprehend the philosophic teachings of the finaliters portrayed by the Brilliant Evening Stars, who are now assigned to these worlds to collaborate in pairs with the seconaphim from the headquarters of the superuniverse.

(628.7) 55:4.19 The finaliters are chiefly engaged in initiating the new and supermaterial activities of society — social, cultural, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual. As far as we can discern, they will continue this ministry far into the seventh epoch of evolutionary stability, when, possibly, they may go forth to minister in outer space; whereupon we conjecture their places may be taken by absonite beings from Paradise.

(628.8) 55:4.20 5. The fifth stage of light and life. The readjustments of this stage of settled existence pertain almost entirely to the physical domains and are of primary concern to the Master Physical Controllers.

(628.9) 55:4.21 6. The sixth stage of light and life witnesses the development of new functions of the mind circuits of the realm. Cosmic wisdom seems to become constitutive in the universe ministry of mind.

(628.10) 55:4.22 7. The seventh stage of light and life. Early in the seventh epoch the Trinity Teacher counselor of the Planetary Sovereign is joined by a volunteer adviser sent by the Ancients of Days, and later on they will be augmented by a third counselor coming from the superuniverse Supreme Executive.

(629.1) 55:4.23 During this epoch, if not before, Adam and Eve are always relieved of planetary duties. If there is a Material Son in the finaliter corps, he may become associated with the mortal chief executive, and sometimes it is a Melchizedek who volunteers to function in this capacity. If a midwayer is among the finaliters, all of that order remaining on the planet are immediately released.

(629.2) 55:4.24 Upon obtaining release from their agelong assignment, a Planetary Adam and Eve may select careers as follows:

(629.3) 55:4.25 1. They can secure planetary release and from the universe headquarters start out immediately on the Paradise career, receiving Thought Adjusters at the conclusion of the morontia experience.

(629.4) 55:4.26 2. Very often a Planetary Adam and Eve will receive Adjusters while yet serving on a world settled in light concomitant with the receiving of Adjusters by some of their imported pure-line children who have volunteered for a term of planetary service. Subsequently they may all go to universe headquarters and there begin the Paradise career.

(629.5) 55:4.27 3. A Planetary Adam and Eve may elect — as do Material Sons and Daughters from the system capital — to go direct to the midsonite world for a brief sojourn, there to receive their Adjusters.

(629.6) 55:4.28 4. They may decide to return to the system headquarters, there for a time to occupy seats on the supreme court, after which service they will receive Adjusters and begin the Paradise ascent.

(629.7) 55:4.29 5. They may choose to go from their administrative duties back to their native world to serve as teachers for a season and to become Adjuster indwelt at the time of transfer to the universe headquarters.

(629.8) 55:4.30 Throughout all of these epochs the imported assisting Material Sons and Daughters exert a tremendous influence on the progressing social and economic orders. They are potentially immortal, at least until such time as they elect to humanize, receive Adjusters, and start for Paradise.

(629.9) 55:4.31 On the evolutionary worlds a being must humanize to receive a Thought Adjuster. All ascendant members of the Mortal Corps of Finaliters have been Adjuster indwelt and fused except seraphim, and they are Father indwelt by another type of spirit at the time of being mustered into this corps.

5. The Acme of Material Development

(629.10) 55:5.1 Mortal creatures living on a sin-stricken, evil-dominated, self-seeking, isolated world, such as Urantia, can hardly conceive of the physical perfection, the intellectual attainment, and the spiritual development which characterize these advanced epochs of evolution on a sinless sphere.

(629.11) 55:5.2 The advanced stages of a world settled in light and life represent the acme of evolutionary material development. On these cultured worlds, gone are the idleness and friction of the earlier primitive ages. Poverty and social inequality have all but vanished, degeneracy has disappeared, and delinquency is rarely observed. Insanity has practically ceased to exist, and feeble-mindedness is a rarity.

(629.12) 55:5.3 The economic, social, and administrative status of these worlds is of a high and perfected order. Science, art, and industry flourish, and society is a smoothly working mechanism of high material, intellectual, and cultural achievement. Industry has been largely diverted to serving the higher aims of such a superb civilization. The economic life of such a world has become ethical.

(630.1) 55:5.4 War has become a matter of history, and there are no more armies or police forces. Government is gradually disappearing. Self-control is slowly rendering laws of human enactment obsolete. The extent of civil government and statutory regulation, in an intermediate state of advancing civilization, is in inverse proportion to the morality and spirituality of the citizenship.

(630.2) 55:5.5 Schools are vastly improved and are devoted to the training of mind and the expansion of soul. The art centers are exquisite and the musical organizations superb. The temples of worship with their associated schools of philosophy and experiential religion are creations of beauty and grandeur. The open-air arenas of worship assembly are equally sublime in the simplicity of their artistic appointment.

(630.3) 55:5.6 The provisions for competitive play, humor, and other phases of personal and group achievement are ample and appropriate. A special feature of the competitive activities on such a highly cultured world concerns the efforts of individuals and groups to excel in the sciences and philosophies of cosmology. Literature and oratory flourish, and language is so improved as to be symbolic of concepts as well as to be expressive of ideas. Life is refreshingly simple; man has at last co-ordinated a high state of mechanical development with an inspiring intellectual attainment and has overshadowed both with an exquisite spiritual achievement. The pursuit of happiness is an experience of joy and satisfaction.

6. The Individual Mortal

(630.4) 55:6.1 As worlds advance in the settled status of light and life, society becomes increasingly peaceful. The individual, while no less independent and devoted to his family, has become more altruistic and fraternal.

(630.5) 55:6.2 On Urantia, and as you are, you can have little appreciation of the advanced status and progressive nature of the enlightened races of these perfected worlds. These people are the flowering of the evolutionary races. But such beings are still mortal; they continue to breathe, eat, sleep, and drink. This great evolution is not heaven, but it is a sublime foreshadowing of the divine worlds of the Paradise ascent.

(630.6) 55:6.3 On a normal world the biologic fitness of the mortal race was long since br

Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion

(613.1) 54:0.1 EVOLUTIONARY man finds it difficult fully to comprehend the significance and to grasp the meanings of evil, error, sin, and iniquity. Man is slow to perceive that contrastive perfection and imperfection produce potential evil; that conflicting truth and falsehood create confusing error; that the divine endowment of freewill choice eventuates in the divergent realms of sin and righteousness; that the persistent pursuit of divinity leads to the kingdom of God as contrasted with its continuous rejection, which leads to the domains of iniquity.

(613.2) 54:0.2 The Gods neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion. Potential evil is time-existent in a universe embracing differential levels of perfection meanings and values. Sin is potential in all realms where imperfect beings are endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The very conflicting presence of truth and untruth, fact and falsehood, constitutes the potentiality of error. The deliberate choice of evil constitutes sin; the willful rejection of truth is error; the persistent pursuit of sin and error is iniquity.

1. True and False Liberty

(613.3) 54:1.1 Of all the perplexing problems growing out of the Lucifer rebellion, none has occasioned more difficulty than the failure of immature evolutionary mortals to distinguish between true and false liberty.

(613.4) 54:1.2 True liberty is the quest of the ages and the reward of evolutionary progress. False liberty is the subtle deception of the error of time and the evil of space. Enduring liberty is predicated on the reality of justice — intelligence, maturity, fraternity, and equity.

(613.5) 54:1.3 Liberty is a self-destroying technique of cosmic existence when its motivation is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled. True liberty is progressively related to reality and is ever regardful of social equity, cosmic fairness, universe fraternity, and divine obligations.

(613.6) 54:1.4 Liberty is suicidal when divorced from material justice, intellectual fairness, social forbearance, moral duty, and spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart from cosmic reality, and all personality reality is proportional to its divinity relationships.

(613.7) 54:1.5 Unbridled self-will and unregulated self-expression equal unmitigated selfishness, the acme of ungodliness. Liberty without the associated and ever-increasing conquest of self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination. Self-motivated liberty is a conceptual illusion, a cruel deception. License masquerading in the garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage.

(614.1) 54:1.6 True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.

(614.2) 54:1.7 Even wisdom is divine and safe only when it is cosmic in scope and spiritual in motivation.

(614.3) 54:1.8 There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness. Only true and genuine liberty is compatible with the reign of love and the ministry of mercy.

(614.4) 54:1.9 How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.

(614.5) 54:1.10 Evolutionary man may have to contend for his material liberties with tyrants and oppressors on a world of sin and iniquity or during the early times of a primitive evolving sphere, but not so on the morontia worlds or on the spirit spheres. War is the heritage of early evolutionary man, but on worlds of normal advancing civilization physical combat as a technique of adjusting racial misunderstandings has long since fallen into disrepute.

2. The Theft of Liberty

(614.6) 54:2.1 With the Son and in the Spirit did God project eternal Havona, and ever since has there obtained the eternal pattern of co-ordinate participation in creation — sharing. This pattern of sharing is the master design for every one of the Sons and Daughters of God who go out into space to engage in the attempt to duplicate in time the central universe of eternal perfection.

(614.7) 54:2.2 Every creature of every evolving universe who aspires to do the Father’s will is destined to become the partner of the time-space Creators in this magnificent adventure of experiential perfection attainment. Were this not true, the Father would have hardly endowed such creatures with creative free will, neither would he indwell them, actually go into partnership with them by means of his own spirit.

(614.8) 54:2.3 Lucifer’s folly was the attempt to do the nondoable, to short-circuit time in an experiential universe. Lucifer’s crime was the attempted creative disenfranchisement of every personality in Satania, the unrecognized abridgment of the creature’s personal participation — freewill participation — in the long evolutionary struggle to attain the status of light and life both individually and collectively. In so doing this onetime Sovereign of your system set the temporal purpose of his own will directly athwart the eternal purpose of God’s will as it is revealed in the bestowal of free will upon all personal creatures. The Lucifer rebellion thus threatened the maximum possible infringement of the freewill choice of the ascenders and servers of the system of Satania — a threat forevermore to deprive every one of these beings of the thrilling experience of contributing something personal and unique to the slowly erecting monument to experiential wisdom which will sometime exist as the perfected system of Satania. Thus does the Lucifer manifesto, masquerading in the habiliments of liberty, stand forth in the clear light of reason as a monumental threat to consummate the theft of personal liberty and to do it on a scale that has been approached only twice in all the history of Nebadon.

(615.1) 54:2.4 In short, what God had given men and angels Lucifer would have taken away from them, that is, the divine privilege of participating in the creation of their own destinies and of the destiny of this local system of inhabited worlds.

(615.2) 54:2.5 No being in all the universe has the rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty, the right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshiping God and of serving his fellows.

3. The Time Lag of Justice

(615.3) 54:3.1 The moral will creatures of the evolutionary worlds are always bothered with the unthinking question as to why the all-wise Creators permit evil and sin. They fail to comprehend that both are inevitable if the creature is to be truly free. The free will of evolving man or exquisite angel is not a mere philosophic concept, a symbolic ideal. Man’s ability to choose good or evil is a universe reality. This liberty to choose for oneself is an endowment of the Supreme Rulers, and they will not permit any being or group of beings to deprive a single personality in the wide universe of this divinely bestowed liberty — not even to satisfy such misguided and ignorant beings in the enjoyment of this misnamed personal liberty.

(615.4) 54:3.2 Although conscious and wholehearted identification with evil (sin) is the equivalent of nonexistence (annihilation), there must always intervene between the time of such personal identification with sin and the execution of the penalty — the automatic result of such a willful embrace of evil — a period of time of sufficient length to allow for such an adjudication of such an individual’s universe status as will prove entirely satisfactory to all related universe personalities, and which will be so fair and just as to win the approval of the sinner himself.

(615.5) 54:3.3 But if this universe rebel against the reality of truth and goodness refuses to approve the verdict, and if the guilty one knows in his heart the justice of his condemnation but refuses to make such confession, then must the execution of sentence be delayed in accordance with the discretion of the Ancients of Days. And the Ancients of Days refuse to annihilate any being until all moral values and all spiritual realities are extinct, both in the evildoer and in all related supporters and possible sympathizers.

4. The Mercy Time Lag

(615.6) 54:4.1 Another problem somewhat difficult of explanation in the constellation of Norlatiadek pertains to the reasons for permitting Lucifer, Satan, and the fallen princes to work mischief so long before being apprehended, interned, and adjudicated.

(616.1) 54:4.2 Parents, those who have borne and reared children, are better able to understand why Michael, a Creator-father, might be slow to condemn and destroy his own Sons. Jesus’ story of the prodigal son well illustrates how a loving father can long wait for the repentance of an erring child.

(616.2) 54:4.3 The very fact that an evil-doing creature can actually choose to do wrong — commit sin — establishes the fact of free-willness and fully justifies any length delay in the execution of justice provided the extended mercy might conduce to repentance and rehabilitation.

(616.3) 54:4.4 Most of the liberties which Lucifer sought he already had; others he was to receive in the future. All these precious endowments were lost by giving way to impatience and yielding to a desire to possess what one craves now and to possess it in defiance of all obligation to respect the rights and liberties of all other beings composing the universe of universes. Ethical obligations are innate, divine, and universal.

(616.4) 54:4.5 There are many reasons known to us why the Supreme Rulers did not immediately destroy or intern the leaders of the Lucifer rebellion. There are no doubt still other and possibly better reasons unknown to us. The mercy features of this delay in the execution of justice were extended personally by Michael of Nebadon. Except for the affection of this Creator-father for his erring Sons, the supreme justice of the superuniverse would have acted. If such an episode as the Lucifer rebellion had occurred in Nebadon while Michael was incarnated on Urantia, the instigators of such evil might have been instantly and absolutely annihilated.

(616.5) 54:4.6 Supreme justice can act instantly when not restrained by divine mercy. But the ministry of mercy to the children of time and space always provides for this time lag, this saving interval between seedtime and harvest. If the seed sowing is good, this interval provides for the testing and upbuilding of character; if the seed sowing is evil, this merciful delay provides time for repentance and rectification. This time delay in the adjudication and execution of evildoers is inherent in the mercy ministry of the seven superuniverses. This restraint of justice by mercy proves that God is love, and that such a God of love dominates the universes and in mercy controls the fate and judgment of all his creatures.

(616.6) 54:4.7 The mercy delays of time are by the mandate of the free will of the Creators. There is good to be derived in the universe from this technique of patience in dealing with sinful rebels. While it is all too true that good cannot come of evil to the one who contemplates and performs evil, it is equally true that all things (including evil, potential and manifest) work together for good to all beings who know God, love to do his will, and are ascending Paradiseward according to his eternal plan and divine purpose.

(616.7) 54:4.8 But these mercy delays are not interminable. Notwithstanding the long delay (as time is reckoned on Urantia) in adjudicating the Lucifer rebellion, we may record that, during the time of effecting this revelation, the first hearing in the pending case of Gabriel vs. Lucifer was held on Uversa, and soon thereafter there issued the mandate of the Ancients of Days directing that Satan be henceforth confined to the prison world with Lucifer. This ends the ability of Satan to pay further visits to any of the fallen worlds of Satania. Justice in a mercy-dominated universe may be slow, but it is certain.

5. The Wisdom of Delay

(617.1) 54:5.1 Of the many reasons known to me as to why Lucifer and his confederates were not sooner interned or adjudicated, I am permitted to recite the following:

(617.2) 54:5.2 1. Mercy requires that every wrongdoer have sufficient time in which to formulate a deliberate and fully chosen attitude regarding his evil thoughts and sinful acts.

(617.3) 54:5.3 2. Supreme justice is dominated by a Father’s love; therefore will justice never destroy that which mercy can save. Time to accept salvation is vouchsafed every evildoer.

(617.4) 54:5.4 3. No affectionate father is ever precipitate in visiting punishment upon an erring member of his family. Patience cannot function independently of time.

(617.5) 54:5.5 4. While wrongdoing is always deleterious to a family, wisdom and love admonish the upright children to bear with an erring brother during the time granted by the affectionate father in which the sinner may see the error of his way and embrace salvation.

(617.6) 54:5.6 5. Regardless of Michael’s attitude toward Lucifer, notwithstanding his being Lucifer’s Creator-father, it was not in the province of the Creator Son to exercise summary jurisdiction over the apostate System Sovereign because he had not then completed his bestowal career, thereby attaining unqualified sovereignty of Nebadon.

(617.7) 54:5.7 6. The Ancients of Days could have immediately annihilated these rebels, but they seldom execute wrongdoers without a full hearing. In this instance they refused to overrule the Michael decisions.

(617.8) 54:5.8 7. It is evident that Immanuel counseled Michael to remain aloof from the rebels and allow rebellion to pursue a natural course of self-obliteration. And the wisdom of the Union of Days is the time reflection of the united wisdom of the Paradise Trinity.

(617.9) 54:5.9 8. The Faithful of Days on Edentia advised the Constellation Fathers to allow the rebels free course to the end that all sympathy for these evildoers should be the sooner uprooted in the hearts of every present and future citizen of Norlatiadek — every mortal, morontia, or spirit creature.

(617.10) 54:5.10 9. On Jerusem the personal representative of the Supreme Executive of Orvonton counseled Gabriel to foster full opportunity for every living creature to mature a deliberate choice in those matters involved in the Lucifer Declaration of Liberty. The issues of rebellion having been raised, the Paradise emergency adviser of Gabriel portrayed that, if such full and free opportunity were not given all Norlatiadek creatures, then would the Paradise quarantine against all such possible halfhearted or doubt-stricken creatures be extended in self-protection against the entire constellation. To keep open the Paradise doors of ascension to the beings of Norlatiadek, it was necessary to provide for the full development of rebellion and to insure the complete determination of attitude on the part of all beings in any way concerned therewith.

(617.11) 54:5.11 10. The Divine Minister of Salvington issued as her third independent proclamation a mandate directing that nothing be done to half cure, cowardly suppress, or otherwise hide the hideous visage of rebels and rebellion. The angelic hosts were directed to work for full disclosure and unlimited opportunity for sin-expression as the quickest technique of achieving the perfect and final cure of the plague of evil and sin.

(618.1) 54:5.12 11. An emergency council of ex-mortals consisting of Mighty Messengers, glorified mortals who had had personal experience with like situations, together with their colleagues, was organized on Jerusem. They advised Gabriel that at least three times the number of beings would be led astray if arbitrary or summary methods of suppression were attempted. The entire Uversa corps of counselors concurred in advising Gabriel to permit the rebellion to take its full and natural course, even if it should require a million years to wind up the consequences.

(618.2) 54:5.13 12. Time, even in a universe of time, is relative: If a Urantia mortal of average length of life should commit a crime which precipitated world-wide pandemonium, and if he were apprehended, tried, and executed within two or three days of the commission of the crime, would it seem a long time to you? And yet that would be nearer a comparison with the length of Lucifer’s life even if his adjudication, now begun, should not be completed for a hundred thousand Urantia years. The relative lapse of time from the viewpoint of Uversa, where the litigation is pending, could be indicated by saying that the crime of Lucifer was being brought to trial within two and a half seconds of its commission. From the Paradise viewpoint the adjudication is simultaneous with the enactment.

(618.3) 54:5.14 There are an equal number of reasons for not arbitrarily stopping the Lucifer rebellion which would be partially comprehensible to you, but which I am not permitted to narrate. I may inform you that on Uversa we teach forty-eight reasons for permitting evil to run the full course of its own moral bankruptcy and spiritual extinction. I doubt not that there are just as many additional reasons not known to me.

6. The Triumph of Love

(618.4) 54:6.1 Whatever the difficulties evolutionary mortals may encounter in their efforts to understand the Lucifer rebellion, it should be clear to all reflective thinkers that the technique of dealing with the rebels is a vindication of divine love. The loving mercy extended to the rebels does seem to have involved many innocent beings in trials and tribulations, but all these distraught personalities may securely depend upon the all-wise Judges to adjudicate their destinies in mercy as well as justice.

(618.5) 54:6.2 In all their dealings with intelligent beings, both the Creator Son and his Paradise Father are love dominated. It is impossible to comprehend many phases of the attitude of the universe rulers toward rebels and rebellion — sin and sinners — unless it be remembered that God as a Father takes precedence over all other phases of Deity manifestation in all the dealings of divinity with humanity. It should also be recalled that the Paradise Creator Sons are all mercy motivated.

(618.6) 54:6.3 If an affectionate father of a large family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems, constellations, and universes are relationships of association which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other members of the group concerned.

(619.1) 54:6.4 But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suffer the evil consequences of the sin of some member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal, even rebellion in the system or elsewhere — no matter what you may have to endure because of the wrongdoing of your associates, fellows, or superiors — you may rest secure in the eternal assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. None of these fraternal consequences of misbehavior in the group can ever jeopardize your eternal prospects or in the least degree deprive you of your divine right of Paradise ascension and God attainment.

(619.2) 54:6.5 And there is compensation for these trials, delays, and disappointments which invariably accompany the sin of rebellion. Of the many valuable repercussions of the Lucifer rebellion which might be named, I will only call attention to the enhanced careers of those mortal ascenders, the Jerusem citizens, who, by withstanding the sophistries of sin, placed themselves in line for becoming future Mighty Messengers, fellows of my own order. Every being who stood the test of that evil episode thereby immediately advanced his administrative status and enhanced his spiritual worth.

(619.3) 54:6.6 At first the Lucifer upheaval appeared to be an unmitigated calamity to the system and to the universe. Gradually benefits began to accrue. With the passing of twenty-five thousand years of system time (twenty thousand years of Urantia time), the Melchizedeks began to teach that the good resulting from Lucifer’s folly had come to equal the evil incurred. The sum of evil had by that time become almost stationary, continuing to increase only on certain isolated worlds, while the beneficial repercussions continued to multiply and extend out through the universe and superuniverse, even to Havona. The Melchizedeks now teach that the good resulting from the Satania rebellion is more than a thousand times the sum of all the evil.

(619.4) 54:6.7 But such an extraordinary and beneficent harvest of wrongdoing could only be brought about by the wise, divine, and merciful attitude of all of Lucifer’s superiors, extending from the Constellation Fathers on Edentia to the Universal Father on Paradise. The passing of time has enhanced the consequential good to be derived from the Lucifer folly; and since the evil to be penalized was quite fully developed within a comparatively short time, it is apparent that the all-wise and farseeing universe rulers would be certain to extend the time in which to reap increasingly beneficial results. Regardless of the many additional reasons for delaying the apprehension and adjudication of the Satania rebels, this one gain would have been enough to explain why these sinners were not sooner interned, and why they have not been adjudicated and destroyed.

(619.5) 54:6.8 Shortsighted and time-bound mortal minds should be slow to criticize the time delays of the farseeing and all-wise administrators of universe affairs.

(620.1) 54:6.9 One error of human thinking respecting these problems consists in the idea that all evolutionary mortals on an evolving planet would choose to enter upon the Paradise career if sin had not cursed their world. The ability to decline survival does not date from the times of the Lucifer rebellion. Mortal man has always possessed the endowment of freewill choice regarding the Paradise career.

(620.2) 54:6.10 As you ascend in the survival experience, you will broaden your universe concepts and extend your horizon of meanings and values; and thus will you be able the better to understand why such beings as Lucifer and Satan are permitted to continue in rebellion. You will also better comprehend how ultimate (if not immediate) good can be derived from time-limited evil. After you attain Paradise, you will really be enlightened and comforted when you listen to the superaphic philosophers discuss and explain these profound problems of universe adjustment. But even then, I doubt that you will be fully satisfied in your own minds. At least I was not even when I had thus attained the acme of universe philosophy. I did not achieve a full comprehension of these complexities until after I had been assigned to administrative duties in the superuniverse, where by actual experience I have acquired conceptual capacity adequate for the comprehension of such many-sided problems in cosmic equity and spiritual philosophy. As you ascend Paradiseward, you will increasingly learn that many problematic features of universe administration can only be comprehended subsequent to the acquirement of increased experiential capacity and to the achievement of enhanced spiritual insight. Cosmic wisdom is essential to the understanding of cosmic situations.

(620.3) 54:6.11 [Presented by a Mighty Messenger of experiential survival in the first system rebellion in the universes of time now attached to the superuniverse government of Orvonton and acting in this matter by request of Gabriel of Salvington.]