The Urantia Book
PAPER 49
THE INHABITED WORLDS
Presented by a Melchizedek of the Jerusem School of Planetary
Administration.
49:0.1 ALL mortal-inhabited worlds are
evolutionary in origin and nature. These spheres are the
spawning ground, the evolutionary cradle, of the mortal races of
time and space. Each unit of the ascendant life is a veritable
training school for the stage of existence just ahead, and this
is true of every stage of man's progressive Paradise ascent;
just as true of the initial mortal experience on an evolutionary
planet as of the final universe headquarters school of the
Melchizedeks, a school which is not attended by ascending
mortals until just before their translation to the regime of the
superuniverse and the attainment of first-stage spirit
existence.
49:0.2 All inhabited worlds are basically
grouped for celestial administration into the local systems, and
each of these local systems is limited to about one thousand
evolutionary worlds. This limitation is by the decree of the
Ancients of Days, and it pertains to actual evolutionary planets
whereon mortals of survival status are living. Neither worlds
finally settled in light and life nor planets in the prehuman
stage of life development are reckoned in this group.
49:0.3 Satania itself is an unfinished system
containing only 619 inhabited worlds. Such planets are numbered
serially in accordance with their registration as inhabited
worlds, as worlds inhabited by will creatures. Thus was Urantia
given the number 606 of Satania, meaning the 606th world
in this local system on which the long evolutionary life process
culminated in the appearance of human beings. There are
thirty-six uninhabited planets nearing the life-endowment stage,
and several are now being made ready for the Life Carriers.
There are nearly two hundred spheres which are evolving so as to
be ready for life implantation within the next few million
years.
49:0.4 Not all planets are suited to harbor
mortal life. Small ones having a high rate of axial revolution
are wholly unsuited for life habitats. In several of the
physical systems of Satania the planets revolving around the
central sun are too large for habitation, their great mass
occasioning oppressive gravity. Many of these enormous spheres
have satellites, sometimes a half dozen or more, and these moons
are often in size very near that of Urantia, so that they are
almost ideal for habitation.
49:0.5 The oldest inhabited world of Satania,
world number one, is Anova, one of the forty-four satellites
revolving around an enormous dark planet but exposed to the
differential light of three neighboring suns. Anova is in an
advanced stage of progressive civilization.
1. THE PLANETARY LIFE
49:1.1 The universes of time and space are
gradual in development; the progression of life -- terrestrial
or celestial -- is neither arbitrary nor magical. Cosmic
evolution may not always be understandable (predictable), but it
is strictly nonaccidental.
49:1.2 The biologic unit of material life is
the protoplasmic cell, the communal association of chemical,
electrical, and other basic energies. The chemical formulas
differ in each system, and the technique of living cell
reproduction is slightly different in each local universe, but
the Life Carriers are always the living catalyzers who initiate
the primordial reactions of material life; they are the
instigators of the energy circuits of living matter.
49:1.3 All the worlds of a local system
disclose unmistakable physical kinship; nevertheless, each
planet has its own scale of life, no two worlds being exactly
alike in plant and animal endowment. These planetary variations
in the system life types result from the decisions of the Life
Carriers. But these beings are neither capricious nor whimsical;
the universes are conducted in accordance with law and order.
The laws of Nebadon are the divine mandates of Salvington, and
the evolutionary order of life in Satania is in consonance with
the evolutionary pattern of Nebadon.
49:1.4 Evolution is the rule of human
development, but the process itself varies greatly on different
worlds. Life is sometimes initiated in one center, sometimes in
three, as it was on Urantia. On the atmospheric worlds it
usually has a marine origin, but not always; much depends on the
physical status of a planet. The Life Carriers have great
latitude in their function of life initiation.
49:1.5 In the development of planetary life
the vegetable form always precedes the animal and is quite fully
developed before the animal patterns differentiate. All animal
types are developed from the basic patterns of the preceding
vegetable kingdom of living things; they are not separately
organized.
49:1.6 The early stages of life evolution are
not altogether in conformity with your present-day views.
Mortal man is not an evolutionary accident. There is a
precise system, a universal law, which determines the unfolding
of the planetary life plan on the spheres of space. Time and the
production of large numbers of a species are not the controlling
influences. Mice reproduce much more rapidly than elephants, yet
elephants evolve more rapidly than mice.
49:1.7 The process of planetary evolution is
orderly and controlled. The development of higher organisms from
lower groupings of life is not accidental. Sometimes
evolutionary progress is temporarily delayed by the destruction
of certain favorable lines of life plasm carried in a selected
species. It often requires ages upon ages to recoup the damage
occasioned by the loss of a single superior strain of human
heredity. These selected and superior strains of living
protoplasm should be jealously and intelligently guarded when
once they make their appearance. And on most of the inhabited
worlds these superior potentials of life are valued much more
highly than on Urantia.
2. PLANETARY PHYSICAL TYPES
49:2.1 There is a standard and basic pattern
of vegetable and animal life in each system. But the Life
Carriers are oftentimes confronted with the necessity of
modifying these basic patterns to conform to the varying
physical conditions which confront them on numerous worlds of
space. They foster a generalized system type of mortal creature,
but there are seven distinct physical types as well as thousands
upon thousands of minor variants of these seven outstanding
differentiations:
1. Atmospheric types.
2. Elemental types.
3. Gravity types.
4. Temperature types.
5. Electric types.
6. Energizing types.
7. Unnamed types.
49:2.2 The Satania system contains all of
these types and numerous intermediate groups, although some are
very sparingly represented.
49:2.3 1. The atmospheric types. The
physical differences of the worlds of mortal habitation are
chiefly determined by the nature of the atmosphere; other
influences which contribute to the planetary differentiation of
life are relatively minor.
49:2.4 The present atmospheric status of
Urantia is almost ideal for the support of the breathing type of
man, but the human type can be so modified that it can live on
both the superatmospheric and the subatmospheric planets. Such
modifications also extend to the animal life, which differs
greatly on the various inhabited spheres. There is a very great
modification of animal orders on both the sub- and the
superatmospheric worlds.
49:2.5 Of the atmospheric types in Satania,
about two and one-half per cent are subbreathers, about five per
cent superbreathers, and over ninety-one per cent are
mid-breathers, altogether accounting for ninety-eight and
one-half per cent of the Satania worlds.
49:2.6 Beings such as the Urantia races are
classified as mid-breathers; you represent the average or
typical breathing order of mortal existence. If intelligent
creatures should exist on a planet with an atmosphere similar to
that of your near neighbor, Venus, they would belong to the
superbreather group, while those inhabiting a planet with an
atmosphere as thin as that of your outer neighbor, Mars, would
be denominated subbreathers.
49:2.7 If mortals should inhabit a planet
devoid of air, like your moon, they would belong to the separate
order of nonbreathers. This type represents a radical or extreme
adjustment to the planetary environment and is separately
considered. Nonbreathers account for the remaining one and
one-half per cent of Satania worlds.
49:2.8 2. The elemental types. These
differentiations have to do with the relation of mortals to
water, air, and land, and there are four distinct species of
intelligent life as they are related to these habitats. The
Urantia races are of the land order.
49:2.9 It is quite impossible for you to
envisage the environment which prevails during the early ages of
some worlds. These unusual conditions make it necessary for the
evolving animal life to remain in its marine nursery habitat for
longer periods than on those planets which very early provide a
hospitable land-and-atmosphere environment. Conversely, on some
worlds of the superbreathers, when the planet is not too large,
it is sometimes expedient to provide for a mortal type which can
readily negotiate atmospheric passage. These air navigators
sometimes intervene between the water and land groups, and they
always live in a measure upon the ground, eventually evolving
into land dwellers. But on some worlds, for ages they continue
to fly even after they have become land-type beings.
49:2.10 It is both amazing and amusing to
observe the early civilization of a primitive race of human
beings taking shape, in one case, in the air and treetops and,
in another, midst the shallow waters of sheltered tropic basins,
as well as on the bottom, sides, and shores of these marine
gardens of the dawn races of such extraordinary spheres. Even on
Urantia there was a long age during which primitive man
preserved himself and advanced his primitive civilization by
living for the most part in the treetops as did his earlier
arboreal ancestors. And on Urantia you still have a group of
diminutive mammals (the bat family) that are air navigators, and
your seals and whales, of marine habitat, are also of the
mammalian order.
49:2.11 In Satania, of the elemental types,
seven per cent are water, ten per cent air, seventy per cent
land, and thirteen per cent combined land-and-air types. But
these modifications of early intelligent creatures are neither
human fishes nor human birds. They are of the human and prehuman
types, neither superfishes nor glorified birds but distinctly
mortal.
49:2.12 3. The gravity types. By
modification of creative design, intelligent beings are so
constructed that they can freely function on spheres both
smaller and larger than Urantia, thus being, in measure,
accommodated to the gravity of those planets which are not of
ideal size and density.
49:2.13 The various planetary types of mortals
vary in height, the average in Nebadon being a trifle under
seven feet. Some of the larger worlds are peopled with beings
who are only about two and one-half feet in height. Mortal
stature ranges from here on up through the average heights on
the average-sized planets to around ten feet on the smaller
inhabited spheres. In Satania there is only one race under four
feet in height. Twenty per cent of the Satania inhabited worlds
are peopled with mortals of the modified gravity types occupying
the larger and the smaller planets.
49:2.14 4. The temperature types. It is
possible to create living beings who can withstand temperatures
both much higher and much lower than the life range of the
Urantia races. There are five distinct orders of beings as they
are classified with reference to heat-regulating mechanisms. In
this scale the Urantia races are number three. Thirty per cent
of Satania worlds are peopled with races of modified temperature
types. Twelve per cent belong to the higher temperature ranges,
eighteen per cent to the lower, as compared with Urantians, who
function in the mid-temperature group.
49:2.15 5. The electric types. The
electric, magnetic, and electronic behavior of the worlds varies
greatly. There are ten designs of mortal life variously
fashioned to withstand the differential energy of the spheres.
These ten varieties also react in slightly different ways to the
chemical rays of ordinary sunlight. But these slight physical
variations in no way affect the intellectual or the spiritual
life.
49:2.16 Of the electric groupings of mortal
life, almost twenty-three per cent belong to class number four,
the Urantia type of existence. These types are distributed as
follows: number 1, one per cent; number 2, two per cent; number
3, five per cent; number 4, twenty-three per cent; number 5,
twenty-seven per cent; number 6, twenty-four per cent; number 7,
eight per cent; number 8, five per cent; number 9, three per
cent; number 10, two per cent -- in whole percentages.
49:2.17 6. The energizing types. Not
all worlds are alike in the manner of taking in energy. Not all
inhabited worlds have an atmospheric ocean suited to respiratory
exchange of gases, such as is present on Urantia. During the
earlier and the later stages of many planets, beings of your
present order could not exist; and when the respiratory factors
of a planet are very high or very low, but when all other
prerequisites to intelligent life are adequate, the Life
Carriers often establish on such worlds a modified form of
mortal existence, beings who are competent to effect their
life-process exchanges directly by means of light-energy and the
firsthand power transmutations of the Master Physical
Controllers.
49:2.18 There are six differing types of
animal and mortal nutrition: The subbreathers employ the first
type of nutrition, the marine dwellers the second, the
mid-breathers the third, as on Urantia. The superbreathers
employ the fourth type of energy intake, while the nonbreathers
utilize the fifth order of nutrition and energy. The sixth
technique of energizing is limited to the midway creatures.
49:2.19 7. The unnamed types. There are
numerous additional physical variations in planetary life, but
all of these differences are wholly matters of anatomical
modification, physiologic differentiation, and electrochemical
adjustment. Such distinctions do not concern the intellectual or
the spiritual life.
3. WORLDS OF THE NONBREATHERS
49:3.1 The majority of inhabited planets are
peopled with the breathing type of intelligent beings. But there
are also orders of mortals who are able to live on worlds with
little or no air. Of the Orvonton inhabited worlds this type
amounts to less than seven per cent. In Nebadon this percentage
is less than three. In all Satania there are only nine such
worlds.
49:3.2 There are so very few of the
nonbreather type of inhabited worlds in Satania because this
more recently organized section of Norlatiadek still abounds in
meteoric space bodies; and worlds without a protective friction
atmosphere are subject to incessant bombardment by these
wanderers. Even some of the comets consist of meteor swarms, but
as a rule they are disrupted smaller bodies of matter.
49:3.3 Millions upon millions of meteorites
enter the atmosphere of Urantia daily, coming in at the rate of
almost two hundred miles a second. On the nonbreathing worlds
the advanced races must do much to protect themselves from
meteor damage by making electrical installations which operate
to consume or shunt the meteors. Great danger confronts them
when they venture beyond these protected zones. These worlds are
also subject to disastrous electrical storms of a nature unknown
on Urantia. During such times of tremendous energy fluctuation
the inhabitants must take refuge in their special structures of
protective insulation.
49:3.4 Life on the worlds of the nonbreathers
is radically different from what it is on Urantia. The
nonbreathers do not eat food or drink water as do the Urantia
races. The reactions of the nervous system, the heat-regulating
mechanism, and the metabolism of these specialized peoples are
radically different from such functions of Urantia mortals.
Almost every act of living, aside from reproduction, differs,
and even the methods of procreation are somewhat different.
49:3.5 On the nonbreathing worlds the animal
species are radically unlike those found on the atmospheric
planets. The nonbreathing plan of life varies from the technique
of existence on an atmospheric world; even in survival their
peoples differ, being candidates for Spirit fusion.
Nevertheless, these beings enjoy life and carry forward the
activities of the realm with the same relative trials and joys
that are experienced by the mortals living on atmospheric
worlds. In mind and character the nonbreathers do not differ
from other mortal types.
49:3.6 You would be more than interested in
the planetary conduct of this type of mortal because such a race
of beings inhabits a sphere in close proximity to Urantia.
4. EVOLUTIONARY WILL CREATURES
49:4.1
There are great differences between the
mortals of the different worlds, even among those belonging to
the same intellectual and physical types, but all mortals of
will dignity are erect animals, bipeds.
49:4.2 There are six basic evolutionary races:
three primary -- red, yellow, and blue; and three secondary --
orange, green, and indigo. Most inhabited worlds have all of
these races, but many of the three-brained planets harbor only
the three primary types. Some local systems also have only these
three races.
49:4.3 The average special physical-sense
endowment of human beings is twelve, though the special senses
of the three-brained mortals are extended slightly beyond those
of the one- and two-brained types; they can see and hear
considerably more than the Urantia races.
49:4.4 Young are usually born singly, multiple
births being the exception, and the family life is fairly
uniform on all types of planets. Sex equality prevails on all
advanced worlds; male and female are equal in mind endowment and
spiritual status. We do not regard a planet as having emerged
from barbarism so long as one sex seeks to tyrannize over the
other. This feature of creature experience is always greatly
improved after the arrival of a Material Son and Daughter.
49:4.5 Seasons and temperature variations
occur on all sunlighted and sun-heated planets. Agriculture is
universal on all atmospheric worlds; tilling the soil is the one
pursuit that is common to the advancing races of all such
planets.
49:4.6 Mortals all have the same general
struggles with microscopic foes in their early days, such as you
now experience on Urantia, though perhaps not so extensive. The
length of life varies on the different planets from twenty-five
years on the primitive worlds to near five hundred on the more
advanced and older spheres.
49:4.7 Human beings are all gregarious, both
tribal and racial. These group segregations are inherent in
their origin and constitution. Such tendencies can be modified
only by advancing civilization and by gradual spiritualization.
The social, economic, and governmental problems of the inhabited
worlds vary in accordance with the age of the planets and the
degree to which they have been influenced by the successive
sojourns of the divine Sons.
49:4.8 Mind is the bestowal of the Infinite
Spirit and functions quite the same in diverse environments. The
mind of mortals is akin, regardless of certain structural and
chemical differences which characterize the physical natures of
the will creatures of the local systems. Regardless of personal
or physical planetary differences, the mental life of all these
various orders of mortals is very similar, and their immediate
careers after death are very much alike.
49:4.9 But mortal mind without immortal spirit
cannot survive. The mind of man is mortal; only the bestowed
spirit is immortal. Survival is dependent on spiritualization by
the ministry of the Adjuster -- on the birth and evolution of
the immortal soul; at least, there must not have developed an
antagonism towards the Adjuster's mission of effecting the
spiritual transformation of the material mind.
5. THE PLANETARY SERIES OF MORTALS
49:5.1 It will be somewhat difficult to make
an adequate portrayal of the planetary series of mortals because
you know so little about them, and because there are so many
variations. Mortal creatures may, however, be studied from
numerous viewpoints, among which are the following:
1. Adjustment to planetary
environment.
2. Brain-type series.
3. Spirit-reception series.
4. Planetary-mortal epochs.
5. Creature-kinship serials.
6. Adjuster-fusion series.
7. Techniques of terrestrial escape.
49:5.2 The inhabited spheres of the seven
superuniverses are peopled with mortals who simultaneously
classify in some one or more categories of each of these seven
generalized classes of evolutionary creature life. But even
these general classifications make no provision for such beings
as midsoniters nor for certain other forms of intelligent life.
The inhabited worlds, as they have been presented in these
narratives, are peopled with evolutionary mortal creatures, but
there are other life forms.
49:5.3 1. Adjustment to planetary
environment. There are three general groups of inhabited
worlds from the standpoint of the adjustment of creature life to
the planetary environment: the normal adjustment group, the
radical adjustment group, and the experimental group.
49:5.4 Normal adjustments to planetary
conditions follow the general physical patterns previously
considered. The worlds of the nonbreathers typify the radical or
extreme adjustment, but other types are also included in this
group. Experimental worlds are usually ideally adapted to the
typical life forms, and on these decimal planets the Life
Carriers attempt to produce beneficial variations in the
standard life designs. Since your world is an experimental
planet, it differs markedly from its sister spheres in Satania;
many forms of life have appeared on Urantia that are not found
elsewhere; likewise are many common species absent from your
planet.
49:5.5 In the universe of Nebadon, all the
life-modification worlds are serially linked together and
constitute a special domain of universe affairs which is given
attention by designated administrators; and all of these
experimental worlds are periodically inspected by a corps of
universe directors whose chief is the veteran finaliter known in
Satania as Tabamantia.
49:5.6 2. Brain-type series. The one
physical uniformity of mortals is the brain and nervous system;
nevertheless, there are three basic organizations of the brain
mechanism: the one-, the two-, and the three-brained types.
Urantians are of the two-brained type, somewhat more
imaginative, adventurous, and philosophical than the one-brained
mortals but somewhat less spiritual, ethical, and worshipful
than the three-brained orders. These brain differences
characterize even the prehuman animal existences.
49:5.7 From the two-hemisphere type of the
Urantian cerebral cortex you can, by analogy, grasp something of
the one-brained type. The third brain of the three-brained
orders is best conceived as an evolvement of your lower or
rudimentary form of brain, which is developed to the point where
it functions chiefly in control of physical activities, leaving
the two superior brains free for higher engagements: one for
intellectual functions and the other for the spiritual-counterparting
activities of the Thought Adjuster.
49:5.8 While the terrestrial attainments of
the one-brained races are slightly limited in comparison with
the two-brained orders, the older planets of the three-brained
group exhibit civilizations that would astound Urantians, and
which would somewhat shame yours by comparison. In mechanical
development and material civilization, even in intellectual
progress, the two-brained mortal worlds are able to equal the
three-brained spheres. But in the higher control of mind and
development of intellectual and spiritual reciprocation, you are
somewhat inferior.
49:5.9 All such comparative estimates
concerning the intellectual progress or the spiritual
attainments of any world or group of worlds should in fairness
recognize planetary age; much, very much, depends on age, the
help of the biologic uplifters, and the subsequent missions of
the various orders of the divine Sons.
49:5.10 While the three-brained peoples are
capable of a slightly higher planetary evolution than either the
one- or two-brained orders, all have the same type of life plasm
and carry on planetary activities in very similar ways, much as
do human beings on Urantia. These three types of mortals are
distributed throughout the worlds of the local systems. In the
majority of cases planetary conditions had very little to do
with the decisions of the Life Carriers to project these varied
orders of mortals on the different worlds; it is a prerogative
of the Life Carriers thus to plan and execute.
49:5.11 These three orders stand on an equal
footing in the ascension career. Each must traverse the same
intellectual scale of development, and each must master the same
spiritual tests of progression. The system administration and
the constellation overcontrol of these different worlds are
uniformly free from discrimination; even the regimes of the
Planetary Princes are identical.
49:5.12 3. Spirit-reception series.
There are three groups of mind design as related to contact with
spirit affairs. This classification does not refer to the one-,
two-, and three-brained orders of mortals; it refers primarily
to gland chemistry, more particularly to the organization of
certain glands comparable to the pituitary bodies. The races on
some worlds have one gland, on others two, as do Urantians,
while on still other spheres the races have three of these
unique bodies. The inherent imagination and spiritual
receptivity is definitely influenced by this differential
chemical endowment.
49:5.13 Of the spirit-reception types,
sixty-five per cent are of the second group, like the Urantia
races. Twelve per cent are of the first type, naturally less
receptive, while twenty-three per cent are more spiritually
inclined during terrestrial life. But such distinctions do not
survive natural death; all of these racial differences pertain
only to the life in the flesh.
49:5.14 4. Planetary-mortal epochs.
This classification recognizes the succession of temporal
dispensations as they affect man's terrestrial status and his
reception of celestial ministry.
49:5.15 Life is initiated on the planets by
the Life Carriers, who watch over its development until sometime
after the evolutionary appearance of mortal man. Before the Life
Carriers leave a planet, they duly install a Planetary Prince as
ruler of the realm. With this ruler there arrives a full quota
of subordinate auxiliaries and ministering helpers, and the
first adjudication of the living and the dead is simultaneous
with his arrival.
49:5.16 With the emergence of human groupings,
this Planetary Prince arrives to inaugurate human civilization
and to focalize human society. Your world of confusion is no
criterion of the early days of the reign of the Planetary
Princes, for it was near the beginning of such an administration
on Urantia that your Planetary Prince, Caligastia, cast his lot
with the rebellion of the System Sovereign, Lucifer. Your planet
has pursued a stormy course ever since.
49:5.17 On a normal evolutionary world, racial
progress attains its natural biologic peak during the regime of
the Planetary Prince, and shortly thereafter the System
Sovereign dispatches a Material Son and Daughter to that planet.
These imported beings are of service as biologic uplifters;
their default on Urantia further complicated your planetary
history.
49:5.18 When the intellectual and ethical
progress of a human race has reached the limits of evolutionary
development, there comes an Avonal Son of Paradise on a
magisterial mission; and later on, when the spiritual status of
such a world is nearing its limit of natural attainment, the
planet is visited by a Paradise bestowal Son. The chief mission
of a bestowal Son is to establish the planetary status, release
the Spirit of Truth for planetary function, and thus effect the
universal coming of the Thought Adjusters.
49:5.19 Here, again, Urantia deviates: There
has never been a magisterial mission on your world, neither was
your bestowal Son of the Avonal order; your planet enjoyed the
signal honor of becoming the mortal home planet of the Sovereign
Son, Michael of Nebadon.
49:5.20 As a result of the ministry of all the
successive orders of divine sonship, the inhabited worlds and
their advancing races begin to approach the apex of planetary
evolution. Such worlds now become ripe for the culminating
mission, the arrival of the Trinity Teacher Sons. This epoch of
the Teacher Sons is the vestibule to the final planetary age --
evolutionary utopia -- the age of light and life.
49:5.21 This classification of human beings
will receive particular attention in a succeeding paper.
49:5.22 5. Creature-kinship serials.
Planets are not only organized vertically into systems,
constellations, and so on, but the universe administration also
provides for horizontal groupings according to type, series, and
other relationships. This lateral administration of the universe
pertains more particularly to the co-ordination of activities of
a kindred nature which have been independently fostered on
different spheres. These related classes of universe creatures
are periodically inspected by certain composite corps of high
personalities presided over by long-experienced finaliters.
49:5.23 These kinship factors are manifest on
all levels, for kinship serials exist among nonhuman
personalities as well as among mortal creatures -- even between
human and superhuman orders. Intelligent beings are vertically
related in twelve great groups of seven major divisions each.
The co-ordination of these uniquely related groups of living
beings is probably effected by some not fully comprehended
technique of the Supreme Being.
49:5.24 6. Adjuster-fusion series. The
spiritual classification or grouping of all mortals during their
prefusion experience is wholly determined by the relation of the
personality status to the indwelling Mystery Monitor. Almost
ninety per cent of the inhabited worlds of Nebadon are peopled
with Adjuster-fusion mortals in contrast with a near-by universe
where scarcely more than one half of the worlds harbor beings
who are Adjuster-indwelt candidates for eternal fusion.
49:5.25 7. Techniques of terrestrial escape.
There is fundamentally only one way in which individual human
life can be initiated on the inhabited worlds, and that is
through creature procreation and natural birth; but there are
numerous techniques whereby man escapes his terrestrial status
and gains access to the inward moving stream of Paradise
ascenders.
6. TERRESTRIAL
ESCAPE
49:6.1 All of the differing physical types and
planetary series of mortals alike enjoy the ministry of Thought
Adjusters, guardian angels, and the various orders of the
messenger hosts of the Infinite Spirit. All alike are liberated
from the bonds of flesh by the emancipation of natural death,
and all alike go thence to the morontia worlds of spiritual
evolution and mind progress.
49:6.2 From time to time, on motion of the
planetary authorities or the system rulers, special
resurrections of the sleeping survivors are conducted. Such
resurrections occur at least every millennium of planetary time,
when not all but "many of those who sleep in the dust awake."
These special resurrections are the occasion for mobilizing
special groups of ascenders for specific service in the local
universe plan of mortal ascension. There are both practical
reasons and sentimental associations connected with these
special resurrections.
49:6.3 Throughout the earlier ages of an
inhabited world, many are called to the mansion spheres at the
special and the millennial resurrections, but most survivors are
repersonalized at the inauguration of a new dispensation
associated with the advent of a divine Son of planetary service.
49:6.4 1. Mortals of the dispensational or
group order of survival. With the arrival of the first
Adjuster on an inhabited world the guardian seraphim also make
their appearance; they are indispensable to terrestrial escape.
Throughout the life-lapse period of the sleeping survivors the
spiritual values and eternal realities of their newly evolved
and immortal souls are held as a sacred trust by the personal or
by the group guardian seraphim.
49:6.5 The group guardians of assignment to
the sleeping survivors always function with the judgment Sons on
their world advents. "He shall send his angels, and they shall
gather together his elect from the four winds." With each
seraphim of assignment to the repersonalization of a sleeping
mortal there functions the returned Adjuster, the same immortal
Father fragment that lived in him during the days in the flesh,
and thus is identity restored and personality resurrected.
During the sleep of their subjects these waiting Adjusters serve
on Divinington; they never indwell another mortal mind in this
interim.
49:6.6 While the older worlds of mortal
existence harbor those highly developed and exquisitely
spiritual types of human beings who are virtually exempt from
the morontia life, the earlier ages of the animal-origin races
are characterized by primitive mortals who are so immature that
fusion with their Adjusters is impossible. The reawakening of
these mortals is accomplished by the guardian seraphim in
conjunction with an individualized portion of the immortal
spirit of the Third Source and Center.
49:6.7 Thus are the sleeping survivors of a
planetary age repersonalized in the dispensational roll calls.
But with regard to the nonsalvable personalities of a realm, no
immortal spirit is present to function with the group guardians
of destiny, and this constitutes cessation of creature
existence. While some of your records have pictured these events
as taking place on the planets of mortal death, they all really
occur on the mansion worlds.
49:6.8 2. Mortals of the individual orders
of ascension. The individual progress of human beings is
measured by their successive attainment and traversal (mastery)
of the seven cosmic circles. These circles of mortal progression
are levels of associated intellectual, social, spiritual, and
cosmic-insight values. Starting out in the seventh circle,
mortals strive for the first, and all who have attained the
third immediately have personal guardians of destiny assigned to
them. These mortals may be repersonalized in the morontia life
independent of dispensational or other adjudications.
49:6.9 Throughout the earlier ages of an
evolutionary world, few mortals go to judgment on the third day.
But as the ages pass, more and more the personal guardians of
destiny are assigned to the advancing mortals, and thus
increasing numbers of these evolving creatures are
repersonalized on the first mansion world on the third day after
natural death. On such occasions the return of the Adjuster
signalizes the awakening of the human soul, and this is the
repersonalization of the dead just as literally as when the en
masse roll is called at the end of a dispensation on the
evolutionary worlds.
49:6.10 There are three groups of individual
ascenders: The less advanced land on the initial or first
mansion world. The more advanced group may take up the morontia
career on any of the intermediate mansion worlds in accordance
with previous planetary progression. The most advanced of these
orders really begin their morontia experience on the seventh
mansion world.
49:6.11 3. Mortals of the
probationary-dependent orders of ascension. The arrival of
an Adjuster constitutes identity in the eyes of the universe,
and all indwelt beings are on the roll calls of justice. But
temporal life on the evolutionary worlds is uncertain, and many
die in youth before choosing the Paradise career. Such
Adjuster-indwelt children and youths follow the parent of most
advanced spiritual status, thus going to the system finaliter
world (the probationary nursery) on the third day, at a special
resurrection, or at the regular millennial and dispensational
roll calls.
49:6.12 Children who die when too young to
have Thought Adjusters are repersonalized on the finaliter world
of the local systems concomitant with the arrival of either
parent on the mansion worlds. A child acquires physical entity
at mortal birth, but in the matter of survival all Adjusterless
children are reckoned as still attached to their parents.
49:6.13 In due course Thought Adjusters come
to indwell these little ones, while the seraphic ministry to
both groups of the probationary-dependent orders of survival is
in general similar to that of the more advanced parent or is
equivalent to that of the parent in case only one survives.
Those attaining the third circle, regardless of the status of
their parents, are accorded personal guardians.
49:6.14 Similar probation nurseries are
maintained on the finaliter spheres of the constellation and the
universe headquarters for the Adjusterless children of the
primary and secondary modified orders of ascenders.
49:6.15 4. Mortals of the secondary
modified orders of ascension. These are the progressive
human beings of the intermediate evolutionary worlds. As a rule
they are not immune to natural death, but they are exempt from
passing through the seven mansion worlds.
49:6.16 The less perfected group reawaken on
the headquarters of their local system, passing by only the
mansion worlds. The intermediate group go to the constellation
training worlds; they pass by the entire morontia regime of the
local system. Still farther on in the planetary ages of
spiritual striving, many survivors awaken on the constellation
headquarters and there begin the Paradise ascent.
49:6.17 But before any of these groups may go
forward, they must journey back as instructors to the worlds
they missed, gaining many experiences as teachers in those
realms which they passed by as students. They all subsequently
proceed to Paradise by the ordained routes of mortal
progression.
49:6.18 5. Mortals of the primary modified
order of ascension. These mortals belong to the
Adjuster-fused type of evolutionary life, but they are most
often representative of the final phases of human development on
an evolving world. These glorified beings are exempt from
passing through the portals of death; they are submitted to Son
seizure; they are translated from among the living and appear
immediately in the presence of the Sovereign Son on the
headquarters of the local universe.
49:6.19 These are the mortals who fuse with
their Adjusters during mortal life, and such Adjuster-fused
personalities traverse space freely before being clothed with
morontia forms. These fused souls go by direct Adjuster transit
to the resurrection halls of the higher morontia spheres, where
they receive their initial morontia investiture just as do all
other mortals arriving from the evolutionary worlds.
49:6.20 This primary modified order of mortal
ascension may apply to individuals in any of the planetary
series from the lowest to the highest stages of the
Adjuster-fusion worlds, but it more frequently functions on the
older of these spheres after they have received the benefits of
numerous sojourns of the divine Sons.
49:6.21 With the establishment of the
planetary era of light and life, many go to the universe
morontia worlds by the primary modified order of translation.
Further along in the advanced stages of settled existence, when
the majority of the mortals leaving a realm are embraced in this
class, the planet is regarded as belonging to this series.
Natural death becomes decreasingly frequent on these spheres
long settled in light and life.
49:6.22
Presented by a Melchizedek of the Jerusem School of Planetary
Administration.