The Urantia Book
PAPER 50
THE PLANETARY PRINCES
Presented by a Secondary Lanonandek Son of the Reserve Corps.
50:0.1 WHILE belonging to the order of
Lanonandek Sons, the Planetary Princes are so specialized in
service that they are commonly regarded as a distinct group.
After their Melchizedek certification as secondary Lanonandeks,
these local universe Sons are assigned to the reserves of their
order on the constellation headquarters. From here they are
assigned to various duties by the System Sovereign and
eventually commissioned as Planetary Princes and sent forth to
rule the evolving inhabited worlds.
50:0.2 The signal for a System Sovereign to
act in the matter of assigning a ruler to a given planet is the
reception of a request from the Life Carriers for the dispatch
of an administrative head to function on this planet whereon
they have established life and developed intelligent
evolutionary beings. All planets which are inhabited by
evolutionary mortal creatures have assigned to them a planetary
ruler of this order of sonship.
1. MISSION OF THE PRINCES
50:1.1 The Planetary Prince and his assistant
brethren represent the nearest personalized approach (aside from
incarnation) that the Eternal Son of Paradise can make to the
lowly creatures of time and space. True, the Creator Son touches
the creatures of the realms through his spirit, but the
Planetary Prince is the last of the orders of personal Sons
extending out from Paradise to the children of men. The Infinite
Spirit comes very near in the persons of the guardians of
destiny and other angelic beings; the Universal Father lives in
man by the prepersonal presence of the Mystery Monitors; but the
Planetary Prince represents the last effort of the Eternal Son
and his Sons to draw near you. On a newly inhabited world the
Planetary Prince is the sole representative of complete
divinity, springing from the Creator Son (the offspring of the
Universal Father and the Eternal Son) and the Divine Minister
(the universe Daughter of the Infinite Spirit).
50:1.2 The prince of a newly inhabited world
is surrounded by a loyal corps of helpers and assistants and by
large numbers of the ministering spirits. But the directing
corps of such new worlds must be of the lower orders of the
administrators of a system in order to be innately sympathetic
with, and understanding of, the planetary problems and
difficulties. And all of this effort to provide sympathetic
rulership for the evolutionary worlds entails the increased
liability that these near-human personalities may be led astray
by the exaltation of their own minds over and above the will of
the Supreme Rulers.
50:1.3 Being quite alone as representatives of
divinity on the individual planets, these Sons are tested
severely, and Nebadon has suffered the misfortune of several
rebellions. In the creation of the System Sovereigns and the
Planetary Princes there occurs the personalization of a concept
that has been getting farther and farther away from the
Universal Father and the Eternal Son, and there is an increasing
danger of losing the sense of proportion as to one's
self-importance and a greater likelihood of failure to keep a
proper grasp of the values and relationships of the numerous
orders of divine beings and their gradations of authority. That
the Father is not personally present in the local universe also
imposes a certain test of faith and loyalty on all these Sons.
50:1.4 But not often do these world princes
fail in their missions of organizing and administering the
inhabited spheres, and their success greatly facilitates the
subsequent missions of the Material Sons, who come to engraft
the higher forms of creature life on the primitive men of the
worlds. Their rule also does much to prepare the planets for the
Paradise Sons of God, who subsequently come to judge the worlds
and to inaugurate successive dispensations.
2. PLANETARY ADMINISTRATION
50:2.1 All Planetary Princes are under the
universe administrative jurisdiction of Gabriel, the chief
executive of Michael, while in immediate authority they are
subject to the executive mandates of the System Sovereigns.
50:2.2 The Planetary Princes may at any time
seek the counsel of the Melchizedeks, their former instructors
and sponsors, but they are not arbitrarily required to ask for
such assistance, and if such aid is not voluntarily requested,
the Melchizedeks do not interfere with the planetary
administration. These world rulers may also avail themselves of
the advice of the four and twenty counselors, assembled from the
bestowal worlds of the system. In Satania these counselors are
at present all natives of Urantia. And there is an analogous
council of seventy at the constellation headquarters also
selected from the evolutionary beings of the realms.
50:2.3 The rule of the evolutionary planets in
their early and unsettled careers is largely autocratic. The
Planetary Princes organize their specialized groups of
assistants from among their corps of planetary aids. They
usually surround themselves with a supreme council of twelve,
but this is variously chosen and diversely constituted on the
different worlds. A Planetary Prince may also have as assistants
one or more of the third order of his own group of sonship and
sometimes, on certain worlds, one of his own order, a secondary
Lanonandek associate.
50:2.4 The entire staff of a world ruler
consists of personalities of the Infinite Spirit and certain
types of higher evolved beings and ascending mortals from other
worlds. Such a staff averages about one thousand, and as the
planet progresses, this corps of helpers may be increased up to
one hundred thousand or more. At any time need is felt for more
helpers, the Planetary Princes have only to make request of
their brothers, the System Sovereigns, and the petition is
granted forthwith.
50:2.5 Planets vary greatly in nature and
organization and in administration, but all provide for
tribunals of justice. The judicial system of the local universe
has its beginnings in the tribunals of a Planetary Prince, which
are presided over by a member of his personal staff; the decrees
of such courts reflect a highly fatherly and discretionary
attitude. All problems involving more than the regulation of the
planetary inhabitants are subject to appeal to the higher
tribunals, but the affairs of his world domain are largely
adjusted in accordance with the personal discretion of the
prince.
50:2.6 The roving commissions of conciliators
serve and supplement the planetary tribunals, and both spirit
and physical controllers are subject to the findings of these
conciliators. But no arbitrary execution is ever carried out
without the consent of the Constellation Father, for the "Most
Highs rule in the kingdoms of men."
50:2.7 The controllers and transformers of
planetary assignment are also able to collaborate with angels
and other orders of celestial beings in rendering these latter
personalities visible to mortal creatures. On special occasions
the seraphic helpers and even the Melchizedeks can and do make
themselves visible to the inhabitants of the evolutionary
worlds. The principal reason for bringing mortal ascenders from
the system capital as a part of the staff of the Planetary
Prince is to facilitate communication with the inhabitants of
the realm.
3. THE PRINCE'S CORPOREAL STAFF
50:3.1 On going to a young world, a Planetary
Prince usually takes with him a group of volunteer ascending
beings from the local system headquarters. These ascenders
accompany the prince as advisers and helpers in the work of
early race improvement. This corps of material helpers
constitutes the connecting link between the prince and the world
races. The Urantia Prince, Caligastia, had a corps of one
hundred such helpers.
50:3.2 Such volunteer assistants are citizens
of a system capital, and none of them have fused with their
indwelling Adjusters. The status of the Adjusters of such
volunteer servers remains as of the residential standing on the
system headquarters while these morontia progressors temporarily
revert to a former material state.
50:3.3 The Life Carriers, the architects of
form, provide such volunteers with new physical bodies, which
they occupy for the periods of their planetary sojourn. These
personality forms, while exempt from the ordinary diseases of
the realms, are, like the early morontia bodies, subject to
certain accidents of a mechanical nature.
50:3.4 The prince's corporeal staff are
usually removed from the planet in connection with the next
adjudication at the time of the second Son's arrival on the
sphere. Before leaving, they customarily assign their various
duties to their mutual offspring and to certain superior native
volunteers. On those worlds where these helpers of the prince
have been permitted to mate with the superior groups of the
native races, such offspring usually succeed them.
50:3.5 These assistants to the Planetary
Prince seldom mate with the world races, but they do always mate
among themselves. Two classes of beings result from these
unions: the primary type of midway creatures and certain high
types of material beings who remain attached to the prince's
staff after their parents have been removed from the planet at
the time of the arrival of Adam and Eve. These children do not
mate with the mortal races except in certain emergencies and
then only by direction of the Planetary Prince. In such an
event, their children -- the grandchildren of the corporeal
staff -- are in status as of the superior races of their day and
generation. All the offspring of these semimaterial assistants
of the Planetary Prince are Adjuster indwelt.
50:3.6 At the end of the prince's
dispensation, when the time comes for this "reversion staff" to
be returned to the system headquarters for the resumption of the
Paradise career, these ascenders present themselves to the Life
Carriers for the purpose of yielding up their material bodies.
They enter the transition slumber and awaken delivered from
their mortal investment and clothed with morontia forms, ready
for seraphic transportation back to the system capital, where
their detached Adjusters await them. They are a whole
dispensation behind their Jerusem class, but they have gained a
unique and extraordinary experience, a rare chapter in the
career of an ascending mortal.
4. THE PLANETARY HEADQUARTERS AND SCHOOLS
50:4.1 The prince's corporeal staff early
organize the planetary schools of training and culture, wherein
the cream of the evolutionary races are instructed and then sent
forth to teach these better ways to their people. These schools
of the prince are located at the material headquarters of the
planet.
50:4.2 Much of the physical work connected
with the establishment of this headquarters city is performed by
the corporeal staff. Such headquarters cities, or settlements,
of the early times of the Planetary Prince are very different
from what a Urantia mortal might imagine. They are, in
comparison with later ages, simple, being characterized by
mineral embellishment and by relatively advanced material
construction. And all of this stands in contrast with the Adamic
regime centering around a garden headquarters, from which their
work in behalf of the races is prosecuted during the second
dispensation of the universe Sons.
50:4.3 In the headquarters settlement on your
world every human habitation was provided with abundance of
land. Although the remote tribes continued in hunting and food
foraging, the students and teachers in the Prince's schools were
all agriculturists and horticulturists. The time was about
equally divided between the following pursuits:
1. Physical labor.
Cultivation of the soil, associated with home building and
embellishment.
2. Social activities. Play
performances and cultural social groupings.
3. Educational application.
Individual instruction in connection with family-group teaching,
supplemented by specialized class training.
4. Vocational training.
Schools of marriage and homemaking, the schools of art and craft
training, and the classes for the training of teachers --
secular, cultural, and religious.
5. Spiritual culture. The
teacher brotherhood, the enlightenment of childhood and youth
groups, and the training of adopted native children as
missionaries to their people.
50:4.4 A Planetary Prince is not visible to
mortal beings; it is a test of faith to believe the
representations of the semimaterial beings of his staff. But
these schools of culture and training are well adapted to the
needs of each planet, and there soon develops a keen and
laudatory rivalry among the races of men in their efforts to
gain entrance to these various institutions of learning.
50:4.5 From such a world center of culture and
achievement there gradually radiates to all peoples an uplifting
and civilizing influence which slowly and certainly transforms
the evolutionary races. Meantime the educated and spiritualized
children of the surrounding peoples who have been adopted and
trained in the prince's schools are returning to their native
groups and, to the best of their ability, are there establishing
new and potent centers of learning and culture which they carry
on according to the plan of the prince's schools.
50:4.6 On Urantia these plans for planetary
progress and cultural advancement were well under way,
proceeding most satisfactorily, when the whole enterprise was
brought to a rather sudden and most inglorious end by
Caligastia's adherence to the Lucifer rebellion.
50:4.7 It was one of the most profoundly
shocking episodes of this rebellion for me to learn of the
callous perfidy of one of my own order of sonship, Caligastia,
who, in deliberation and with malice aforethought,
systematically perverted the instruction and poisoned the
teaching provided in all the Urantia planetary schools in
operation at that time. The wreck of these schools was speedy
and complete.
50:4.8 Many of the offspring of the ascenders
of the Prince's materialized staff remained loyal, deserting the
ranks of Caligastia. These loyalists were encouraged by the
Melchizedek receivers of Urantia, and in later times their
descendants did much to uphold the planetary concepts of truth
and righteousness. The work of these loyal evangels helped to
prevent the total obliteration of spiritual truth on Urantia.
These courageous souls and their descendants kept alive some
knowledge of the Father's rule and preserved for the world races
the concept of the successive planetary dispensations of the
various orders of divine Sons.
5. PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION
50:5.1 The loyal princes of the inhabited
worlds are permanently attached to the planets of their original
assignment. Paradise Sons and their dispensations may come and
go, but a successful Planetary Prince continues on as the ruler
of his realm. His work is quite independent of the missions of
the higher Sons, being designed to foster the development of
planetary civilization.
50:5.2 The progress of civilization is hardly
alike on any two planets. The details of the unfoldment of
mortal evolution are very different on numerous dissimilar
worlds. Notwithstanding these many diversifications of planetary
development along physical, intellectual, and social lines, all
evolutionary spheres progress in certain well-defined
directions.
50:5.3 Under the benign rule of a Planetary
Prince, augmented by the Material Sons and punctuated by the
periodic missions of the Paradise Sons, the mortal races on an
average world of time and space will successively pass through
the following seven developmental epochs:
50:5.4 1. The nutrition epoch. The
prehuman creatures and the dawn races of primitive man are
chiefly concerned with food problems. These evolving beings
spend their waking hours either in seeking food or in fighting,
offensively or defensively. The food quest is paramount in the
minds of these early ancestors of subsequent civilization.
50:5.5 2. The security age. Just as
soon as the primitive hunter can spare any time from the search
for food, he turns this leisure to augmenting his security. More
and more attention is devoted to the technique of war. Homes are
fortified, and the clans are solidified by mutual fear and by
the inculcation of hate for foreign groups. Self-preservation is
a pursuit which always follows self-maintenance.
50:5.6 3. The material-comfort era.
After food problems have been partially solved and some degree
of security has been attained, the additional leisure is
utilized to promote personal comfort. Luxury vies with necessity
in occupying the center of the stage of human activities. Such
an age is all too often characterized by tyranny, intolerance,
gluttony, and drunkenness. The weaker elements of the races
incline towards excesses and brutality. Gradually these
pleasure-seeking weaklings are subjugated by the more strong and
truth-loving elements of the advancing civilization.
50:5.7 4. The quest for knowledge and
wisdom. Food, security, pleasure, and leisure provide the
foundation for the development of culture and the spread of
knowledge. The effort to execute knowledge results in wisdom,
and when a culture has learned how to profit and improve by
experience, civilization has really arrived. Food, security, and
material comfort still dominate society, but many
forward-looking individuals are hungering for knowledge and
thirsting for wisdom. Every child is provided an opportunity to
learn by doing; education is the watchword of these ages.
50:5.8 5. The epoch of philosophy and
brotherhood. When mortals learn to think and begin to profit
by experience, they become philosophical -- they start out to
reason within themselves and to exercise discriminative
judgment. The society of this age becomes ethical, and the
mortals of such an era are truly becoming moral beings. Wise
moral beings are capable of establishing human brotherhood on
such a progressing world. Ethical and moral beings can learn how
to live in accordance with the golden rule.
50:5.9 6. The age of spiritual striving.
When evolving mortals have passed through the physical,
intellectual, and social stages of development, sooner or later
they attain those levels of personal insight which impel them to
seek for spiritual satisfactions and cosmic understandings.
Religion is completing the ascent from the emotional domains of
fear and superstition to the high levels of cosmic wisdom and
personal spiritual experience. Education aspires to the
attainment of meanings, and culture grasps at cosmic
relationships and true values. Such evolving mortals are
genuinely cultured, truly educated, and exquisitely God-knowing.
50:5.10 7. The era of light and life.
This is the flowering of the successive ages of physical
security, intellectual expansion, social culture, and spiritual
achievement. These human accomplishments are now blended,
associated, and co-ordinated in cosmic unity and unselfish
service. Within the limitations of finite nature and material
endowments there are no bounds set upon the possibilities of
evolutionary attainment by the advancing generations who
successively live upon these supernal and settled worlds of time
and space.
50:5.11 After serving their spheres through
successive dispensations of world history and the progressing
epochs of planetary progress, the Planetary Princes are elevated
to the position of Planetary Sovereigns upon the inauguration of
the era of light and life.
6. PLANETARY CULTURE
50:6.1 The isolation of Urantia renders it
impossible to undertake the presentation of many details of the
life and environment of your Satania neighbors. In these
presentations we are limited by the planetary quarantine and by
the system isolation. We must be guided by these restrictions in
all our efforts to enlighten Urantia mortals, but in so far as
is permissible, you have been instructed in the progress of an
average evolutionary world, and you are able to compare such a
world's career with the present state of Urantia.
50:6.2 The development of civilization on
Urantia has not differed so greatly from that of other worlds
which have sustained the misfortune of spiritual isolation. But
when compared with the loyal worlds of the universe, your planet
seems most confused and greatly retarded in all phases of
intellectual progress and spiritual attainment.
50:6.3 Because of your planetary misfortunes,
Urantians are prevented from understanding very much about the
culture of normal worlds. But you should not envisage the
evolutionary worlds, even the most ideal, as spheres whereon
life is a flowery bed of ease. The initial life of the mortal
races is always attended by struggle. Effort and decision are an
essential part of the acquirement of survival values.
50:6.4 Culture presupposes quality of mind;
culture cannot be enhanced unless mind is elevated. Superior
intellect will seek a noble culture and find some way to attain
such a goal. Inferior minds will spurn the highest culture even
when presented to them ready-made. Much depends, also, upon the
successive missions of the divine Sons and upon the extent to
which enlightenment is received by the ages of their respective
dispensations.
50:6.5 You should not forget that for two
hundred thousand years all the worlds of Satania have rested
under the spiritual ban of Norlatiadek in consequence of the
Lucifer rebellion. And it will require age upon age to retrieve
the resultant handicaps of sin and secession. Your world still
continues to pursue an irregular and checkered career as a
result of the double tragedy of a rebellious Planetary Prince
and a defaulting Material Son. Even the bestowal of Christ
Michael on Urantia did not immediately set aside the temporal
consequences of these serious blunders in the earlier
administration of the world.
7. THE REWARDS OF ISOLATION
50:7.1 On first thought it might appear that
Urantia and its associated isolated worlds are most unfortunate
in being deprived of the beneficent presence and influence of
such superhuman personalities as a Planetary Prince and a
Material Son and Daughter. But isolation of these spheres
affords their races a unique opportunity for the exercise of
faith and for the development of a peculiar quality of
confidence in cosmic reliability which is not dependent on sight
or any other material consideration. It may turn out,
eventually, that mortal creatures hailing from the worlds
quarantined in consequence of rebellion are extremely fortunate.
We have discovered that such ascenders are very early intrusted
with numerous special assignments to cosmic undertakings where
unquestioned faith and sublime confidence are essential to
achievement.
50:7.2 On Jerusem the ascenders from these
isolated worlds occupy a residential sector by themselves and
are known as the agondonters, meaning evolutionary will
creatures who can believe without seeing, persevere when
isolated, and triumph over insuperable difficulties even when
alone. This functional grouping of the agondonters persists
throughout the ascension of the local universe and the traversal
of the superuniverse; it disappears during the sojourn in Havona
but promptly reappears upon the attainment of Paradise and
definitely persists in the Corps of the Mortal Finality.
Tabamantia is an agondonter of finaliter status, having
survived from one of the quarantined spheres involved in the
first rebellion ever to take place in the universes of time and
space.
50:7.3 All through the Paradise career, reward
follows effort as the result of causes. Such rewards set off the
individual from the average, provide a differential of creature
experience, and contribute to the versatility of ultimate
performances in the collective body of the finaliters.
50:7.4
Presented by a Secondary Lanonandek Son of the Reserve Corps.
