 
Urantia United

Urantia United

Tapping Into The Mind Of God

For Answers On Achieving

Religious Equality

A Transcendologist

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher.

Urantia United

Tapping Into The Mind Of God For Religious Equality

All Rights Reserved

First Edition

Copyright © 2007 A Transcendentalist

V2.0

Copyright © 2011 A Transcendologist

All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Revised 2nd Edition

Copyright © 2011

A Transcendologist http://www.urantia.us

ISBN-10: 0-6154-3623-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-6154-3623-4

The Transcendologist's Spiritual Journey

He was mentally communicating and in sync with everyone. There were many of the prophets of the Bible and historical people; there was Jesus, Abraham, Moses, and even Muhammad whom he just read about. He saw his father and some of his deceased acquaintances and relatives. He felt an engulfing love and support from everyone as they surrounded and embraced him. He again looked around for God and though he felt as if he was with God, there was no dominant force, no forceful leader. He somehow knew who everyone was; his thoughts interacted with the entire community, it was like _Tapping Into the Mind of God_ _._

### Foreword

The goals of most religions are the same, a deserved, appropriate, just finale. As time passes and when people eventually transcend their religious prejudices they will assign equal validity to all religions that promote peace, love and compassion for others. Righteous living determines the continuity and destiny of our soul. Our goal in life should be to acquire knowledge, gather positive experiences and live righteously so that our soul can be a part of, and add to the glory of God.

"Follow the religion that is in your heart", be it Bahaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, etc. "Every religion leads to the same divine goal. The three basic principles are: Truth, Simplicity, and Love". ~ Babaji

Pope John Paul described heaven as "neither an abstraction nor a physical place among the clouds, but a blessed community".

The Pope's interpretation was based on his insight and intellect and if we continue to build on that premise, religious discord can be subdued and eventually eliminated. In order to give equal weight to all beliefs one has to admit that the ultimate truth is indecipherable by the human mind and can only be divulged to the spirit which also often misinterprets its meaning, hence we have various religions and beliefs.

"The Messengers of God are the principal and the first teachers. Whenever this world becomes dark, and divided in its opinions and indifferent, God will send one of His Holy Messengers...." and "Therefore we must follow and adore the virtues revealed in the Messengers of God whether in Abraham, Moses, Jesus" Muhammad "or other prophets but we must not adhere to and adore the lamp. We must recognize the sun no matter from what dawning-point it may shine forth, be it Mosaic, Abrahamic or any personal point of orientation whatever, for we are lovers of sunlight and not of orientation". ~ Abdu'l-Baha

### Urantia United - Table Of Content

Home

Foreword

Table Of Content

1. Giving Equal Validity To All Religions

2. My Spiritual Journey

3. Near Death Experiences

4. Transcendology

4. The Pithiness Of Life

6. Histories And Future Of Our World

7. Origin of the Book

The Urantia United Book

_PART I - The Central Universe_ _

__Chapter 1: The Universal Father_[  
](http://urantia.us/Urantia_United1.htm) _  
1:0. The Universal Father  
1:1. The Father's Name  
1:2. The Reality of God  
1:3. God is Universal Spirit  
1:4. The Mystery of God  
1:5. Personality of the Universal Father  
1:6. Personality in the Universe  
1:7. Spiritual Value of the Personality Concept_

_

_ _Chapter 2: The Nature of God_ _

2:0. The Nature of God  
2:1. The Infinity of God  
2:2. The Father's Eternal Perfection  
2:3. Justice and Righteousness  
2:4. The Divine Mercy  
2:5. The Love of God  
2:6. The Goodness of God  
2:7. Divine Truth and Beauty  
_

_Chapter 3: The Attributes of God_ _

3:0. The Attributes of God  
3:1. God's Everywhereness  
3:2. God's Infinite Power  
3:3. God's Universal Knowledge  
3:4. God's Limitlessness  
3:5. The Father's Supreme Rule  
3:6. The Father's Primacy_

Chapter 4: God's Relation to the Universe

4:0. God's Relation to the Universe  
4:1. The Universe Attitude of the Father  
4:2. God and Nature  
4:3. God's Unchanging Character  
4:4. The Realization of God  
4:5. Erroneous Ideas of God

Chapter 5: God's Relation to the Individual

5:0. God's Relation to the Individual  
5:1. The Approach to God  
5:2. The Presence of God  
5:3. True Worship  
5:4. God in Religion  
5:5. The Consciousness of God  
5:6. The God of Personality

Chapter 6: The Infinite Spirit

6:0. The Infinite Spirit  
6:1. The God of Action  
6:2. Nature of the Infinite Spirit  
6:3. The Spirit of Divine Ministry  
6:4. The Presence of God  
6:5. Personality of the Infinite Spirit

Chapter 7: Relation of the Infinite Spirit to the Universe

7:0. Relation of the Infinite Spirit to the Universe  
7:1. Attributes of the Second Source and Center  
7:2. The Omnipresent Spirit  
7:3. The Universal Manipulator  
7:4. The Absolute Mind  
7:5. The Ministry of Mind  
7:6. The Mind-gravity Circuit  
7:7. Universe Reflectivity  
7:8. Personalities of the Infinite Spirit

Chapter 8: The Eternal Isle of Paradise

8.0. The Eternal Isle of Paradise  
8.1. Nature of the Eternal Isle  
8.2. Paradise  
8.3. Nether Paradise  
8.4. Space Respiration  
8.5. Space Functions of Paradise  
8.6. Paradise Gravity  
8.7. The Uniqueness of Paradise

Chapter 9: The Master Universe

9.0. The Master Universe  
9:1. Space Levels of the Master Universe  
9:2. The Unqualified Absolute  
9:3. Universal Gravity  
9:4. Space and Motion  
9:5. Space and Time  
9:6. Universal Overcontrol  
9:7. The Part and the Whole  
9:8. Matter, Mind, and Spirit  
9:9. Personal Realities

Chapter 10: The Central Universe

10:0. The Central Universe  
10:1. The Paradise-Heaven Organization  
10:2. The Heaven Unity  
10:3. Life In Heaven  
10:4. The Purpose of the Central Universe

Chapter 11: Personalities Of The Grand Universe

11:0. Personalities Of The Grand Universe

11:1. The Paradise Classification

11:2. The Courtesy Colonies

11:3. The Eternal Purpose

11:4. Architects of the Master Universe
PART II. – The Local Universe

Chapter 12: Evolution Of Our Universe

12:0. Evolution Of Our Universe

12:1. Physical Emergence of Universes  
12:2. Universe Organization  
12:3. The Evolutionary Idea  
12:4. God's Relation to Local Universe  
12:5. The Eternal and Divine Purpose

12:6. The Spirit In Man  
12:7. The Spirit And The Flesh

Chapter 13: The Life Carriers

13:0. The Life Carriers

13:1. Nature Of Life Carriers

13:2. The Life Carrier Worlds  
13:3. Life Transplantation  
13:4. The Seven Adjutant Mind-Spirits  
13:5. Living Forces

Chapter 14: Physical Aspects of the Local Universe

14:0. Physical Aspects of the Local Universe  
14:1. Our Starry Associates  
14:2. Sun Density  
14:3. Solar Radiation  
14:4. Calcium -The Wanderer of Space  
14:5. Sources of Solar Energy  
14:6. Solar-energy Reactions  
14:7. Sun Stability  
14:8. Origin of Inhabited Worlds

Chapter 15: Energy -- Mind and Matter

15:0. Energy -- Mind and Matter  
15:1. Paradise Forces and Energies  
15:2. Physical Energies  
15:3. Classification of Matter  
15:4. Energy and Matter Transmutations  
15:5. Wave-energy Manifestations  
15:6. Ultimatons, Electrons, and Atoms  
15:7. Atomic Matter  
15:8. Atomic Cohesion  
15:9. Natural Philosophy  
15:10. Material Mind Systems  
15:11. Universe Mechanisms  
15:12. Pattern and Form -- Mind Dominance

Chapter 16: The Celestial Artisans

16:0. The Celestial Artisans  
16:1. The Celestial Musicians  
16:2. The Heavenly Reproducers  
16:3. The Divine Builders  
16:4. The Thought Recorders  
16:5. The Energy Manipulators  
16:6. The Designers and Embellishers  
16:7. The Harmony Workers  
16:8. Mortal Aspirations and Morontia Achievements

Chapter 17: The Inhabited Worlds

17:0. The Inhabited Worlds  
17:1. The Planetary Life  
17:2. Planetary Physical Types  
17:3. Worlds of the Nonbreathers  
17:4. Evolutionary Will Creatures  
17:5. The Planetary Series of Mortals  
17:6. Mortal Dependents  
17:5. Progressive Civilization  
17:6. Planetary Culture

Chapter 18: Planetary Mortal Epochs

18:0. Planetary Mortal Epochs  
18:1. Primitive Man  
18:2. Spirituality And Sex Equality  
18:3. Age Of Inventions  
18:4. The Era Of Light And Life

Chapter 19: The Spheres of Light and Life

19:0. The Spheres of Light and Life  
19:1. The Golden Ages  
19:2. The Acme of Material Development  
19:3. The Individual Mortal  
19:4. The Constellation Stage

19:5. The Holy Spirit Ministry

19:6. The First Two Planetary Stages

19:7. The Third Or Constellation Stage

19:8. The Fourth Or Local Universe Stage

19:9. The Minor And Major Stages

19:10. The Seventh Or Superuniverse Stage

Chapter 20: Universal Unity

20:0. Universal Unity  
20:1. Physical Co-ordination  
20:2. Intellectual Unity  
20:3. Spiritual Unification  
20:4. Personality Unification  
20:5. Deity Unity  
20:6. Unification of Evolutionary Deity  
20:7. Universal Evolutionary Repercussions  
20:8. The Supreme Unifier  
20:9. Universal Absolute Unity  
20:10. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

PART III - The History of Earth

Chapter 21: The Origin of Earth

21:0. The Origin of Urantia  
21:1. The Andronover Nebula  
21:2. The Primary Nebular Stage  
21:3. The Secondary Nebular Stage  
21:4. Tertiary and Quartan Stages  
21:5. Origin of Monmatia -- The Earth Solar System  
21:6. The Solar System Stage  
21:7. The Meteoric Era  
21:8. Crustal Stabilization

Chapter 22: Life Establishment on Earth

22:0. Life Establishment on Earth  
22:1. Physical-life Prerequisites  
22:2. The Earth Atmosphere  
22:3. Spatial Environment  
22:4. The Life-dawn Era  
22:5. The Continental Drift  
22:6. The Transition Period  
22:7. The Geologic History Book

Chapter 23: The Marine-Life Era on Earth

23:0. The Marine-Life Era on Earth  
23:1. Early Marine Life in the Shallow Seas  
23:2. The First Continental Flood Stage  
23:3. The Second Great Flood Stage  
23:4. The Great Land-Emergence Stage  
23:5. The Crustal-Shifting Stage  
23:6. The Climatic Transition Stage

Chapter 24: Earth During the Early Land-Life Era

24:0. Earth During the Early Land-Life Era  
24:1. The Early Reptilian Age  
24:2. The Later Reptilian Age  
24:3. The Cretaceous Stage  
24:4. The End of the Chalk Period

Chapter 25: The Mammalian Era on Earth

25:0. The Mammalian Era on Earth  
25:1. The New Continental Land Stage  
25:2. The Recent Flood Stage  
25:3. The Modern Mountain Stage  
25:4. The Recent Continental-Elevation Stage  
25:5. The Early Ice Age  
25:6. Primitive Man in the Ice Age  
25:7. The Continuing Ice Age

Chapter 26: The Dawn Races of Early Man

26:0. The Dawn Races of Early Man  
26:1. The Early Lemur Types  
26:2. The Dawn Mammals  
26:3. The Mid-Mammals  
26:4. The Primates  
26:5. The First Human Beings  
26:6. Recognition as an Inhabited World

Chapter 27: The First Human Family

27:0. The First Human Family  
27:1. Andon and Eva  
27:2. The Flight of the Twins  
27:3. Andon's Family  
27:4. The Andonic Clans  
27:5. Dispersion of the Andonites  
27:6. Onagar -- The First Truth Teacher

Chapter 28: The Evolutionary Races of Color

28:0. The Evolutionary Races of Color  
28:1. The Andonic Aborigines  
28:2. The Foxhall Peoples  
28:3. The Badonan Tribes  
28:4. The Neanderthal Races  
28:5. Origin of the Races of Color  
28:6. The Six Sangik Races of Earth  
28:7. Dispersion of the Races of Color

Chapter 29: The Guides of Evolution

29:0. The Guides of Evolution  
29:1. Life Carrier Functions  
29:2. The Evolutionary Panorama  
29:3. The Fostering of Evolution  
29:4. The Earth Adventure  
29:5. Life-Evolution Vicissitudes  
29:6. Evolutionary Techniques of Life  
29:7. Evolutionary Mind Levels  
29:8. Evolution in Time and Space

Chapter 30: The Dawn of Civilization

30:0. The Dawn of Civilization  
30:1. Protective Socialization  
30:2. Factors in Social Progression  
30:3. Evolution of the Mores  
30:4. Land Techniques Maintenance Arts  
30:5. Evolution of Culture

Chapter 31: Primitive Human Institutions

31:0. Primitive Human Institutions  
31:1. Basic Human Institutions  
31:2. The Dawn of Industry  
31:3. The Specialization of Labor  
31:4. The Beginnings of Trade  
31:5. The Beginnings of Capital  
31:6. Fire in Relation to Civilization  
31:7. The Utilization of Animals  
31:8. Slavery as Factor in Civilization  
31:9. Private Property

Chapter 32: The Evolution of Human Government

32:0. The Evolution of Human Government  
32:1. The Genesis of War  
32:2. The Social Value of War  
32:3. Early Human Associations  
32:4. Clans and Tribes  
32:5. The Beginnings of Government  
32:6. Monarchial Government  
32:7. Primitive Clubs and Secret Societies  
32:8. Social Classes  
32:9. Human Rights  
32:10. Evolution of Justice  
32:11. Laws and Courts  
32:12. Allocation of Civil Authority

Chapter 33: Development of the State

33:0. Development of the State  
33:1. The Embryonic State  
33:2. The Evolution of Representative Government  
33:3. The Ideals of Statehood  
33:4. Progressive Civilization  
33:5. The Evolution of Competition  
33:6. The Profit Motive  
33:7. Education  
33:8. The Character of Statehood

Chapter 34: The Legend of Creation

34:0. The Legend of Creation

34:1. Story of Noah's Flood

34:2. The Sumerians – The Andites

34:3. Andite Expansion in the Orient  
34:4. The Andite Conquest of India  
34:5. Dravidian India  
34:6. Red Man and Yellow Man  
34:7. Dawn of Chinese Civilization  
34:8. The Andites Enter China  
34:9. Later Chinese Civilization

Chapter 35: Various Religious Teachings

35:0. Various Religious Teachings  
35:1. The Salem Teachings in Vedic India  
35:2. Brahmanism  
35:3. Brahmanic Philosophy  
35:4. The Hindu Religion  
35:5. The Struggle for Truth in China  
35:6. Lao-tse and Confucius  
35:7. Gautama Siddhartha  
35:8. The Buddhist Faith  
35:9. The Spread of Buddhism  
35:10. Religion in Tibet  
35:11. Buddhist Philosophy  
35:12. The God Concept of Buddhism  
35:13. The Islam Religion

35:14. The Bahá'í Faith

Chapter 36: The Melchizedek Teachings in the Levant

36:0. The Melchizedek Teachings in the Levant  
36:1. The Salem Religion in Mesopotamia  
36:2. Early Egyptian Religion  
36:3. Evolution of Moral Concepts  
36:4. The Teachings of Amenemope  
36:5. The Remarkable Ikhnaton  
36:6. The Salem Doctrines in Iran  
36:7. The Salem Teachings in Arabia

Chapter 37: Yahweh -- God of the Hebrews

37:0. Yahweh -- God of the Hebrews  
37:1. Deity Concepts Among the Semites  
37:2. The Semitic Peoples  
37:3. The Matchless Moses  
37:4. The Proclamation of Yahweh  
37:5. The Teachings of Moses  
37:6. The God Concept After Moses' Death  
37:7. Psalms and the Book of Job

Chapter 38: Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

38:0. Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews  
38:1. Samuel - First of the Hebrew Prophets  
38:2. Elijah and Elisha  
38:3. Yahweh and Baal  
38:4. Amos and Hosea  
38:5. The First Isaiah  
38:6. Jeremiah the Fearless  
38:7. The Second Isaiah

38:8. Sacred and Profane History  
38:9. Hebrew History  
38:10. The Hebrew Religion

Chapter 39: Religious Teachings in the Occident

39:0. Religious Teachings in the Occident  
39:1. The Salem Religion Among the Greeks  
39:2. Greek Philosophic Thought  
39:3. The Melchizedek Teachings in Rome

39:4. Mithraism and Christianity  
39:5. The Christian Religion

39:6. Influence of the Greeks  
39:7. The Roman Influence

39:8. Under the Roman Empire

39:9. The European Dark Ages

39:10. The Modern Problems

Chapter 40: Faith and Belief

40:0. Faith and Belief

40:1. Religion and Morality  
40:2. Religion as Man's Liberator

40:3. Assurance of Faith

40:4. Religion and Reality

**40** :5. Knowledge, Wisdom, and Insight  
40:6. The Fact of Experience  
40:7. The Certainty of Religious Faith  
40:8. The Certitude of the Divine  
40:8. The Evidences of Religion

Chapter 41: The Reality of Religious Experience

41:0. The Reality of Religious Experience  
41:1. Philosophy of Religion  
41:2. Religion and the Individual  
41:3. Religion and the Human Race  
41:4. Nature of the Soul  
41:5. The Evolving Soul  
41:6. The Inner Life  
41:7. The Consecration of Choice  
41:8. The Human Paradox

**Home**

1. Giving Equal Validity To All Religions

Several people whom I interacted with pointed out that my spiritual journeys were similar to what was written in the Urantia Book. I perused the book and was amazed at the superior knowledge that this book contained; the only thing lacking there from was the message from God: " _All religions that promote peace, love and compassion toward others have equal validity_ ". This I have attempted to portray by editing the Urantia Book and retaining similarities therein of what my spirit witnessed in my spiritual interactions with God.

The Urantia Book beautifully depicts the life and teachings of Jesus, and if Christians follow the examples set by him, without promoting exclusivity and prejudice, they will achieve their goal of having their soul united with God. My spiritual revelation showed that Jesus was a Messenger Of God and that he has been appropriately called the "Son of God" and "Prince of Peace". We are often reminded of the teachings of peace and love from Jesus whose words have survived two millennia. His disciples and followers kept him alive in the memories of all who heard and believed his words.

Those who believe that Jesus was a prophet and Messenger of God, rather than the only Son of God will share Heaven equally with all who have lived righteously. We are all children of God and as children of God, we are also sons and daughters of God; God shows no favoritism, He loves all of his children equally. Messengers of God and Men of God, who contributed to the compilation of the writings in the Holy Books such as the Torah, Bible, Koran, etc., were inspired by God to give us guidelines to live by.

In this 21st Century, the Age of Technology, we are still plagued by religious beliefs that are a contributing cause toward terrorism, killings and wars between nations. Belief in a deity, who has caused catastrophes, thereby punishing people, was brought about by hysteria and superstitions. These thought processes need to be reassessed and brought up to date. Open-minded people must use common sense to determine whether God was incorrectly perceived, misinterpreted and misunderstood by the masses of a bygone era.

2. My Spiritual Journey

Some will say that my personal experience of _Oneness with the Holy Spirit of God_ is nothing but a dream or a vivid imagination. It doesn't matter whether you accept or totally reject my story, what does matter is that we evolve to a point whereby we can encourage open-minded people to offer solutions on how our religious beliefs can be brought into the 21st century.

My concept is that God is a Spiritual Unity, A Oneness, a structured government-like Spiritual Collective. God is a Master Planner who guides the development of the universe. God is the progressive and accumulative Spiritual Intelligence of the universe. God is the united peaceful coexistence of the souls of many of our forefathers, past prophets, and all who have lived righteously. Cultures change with time and God has always been the same but our perception of God will vary with time.

November 11, 2001

I woke from a restless night's sleep, sauntered to the breakfast table and was greeted by my wife as she stunningly gazed at the television. The commentator was screaming, "they just flew an airplane into the World Trade Center and another one is heading for the other building". A thick cloud billowed from a collapsed structure and people were crying and screaming as they were running. The evening news media portrayed that some passengers phoned their relatives who confirmed that the attacks had been carried out by Muslim terrorists who commandeered the planes and repeated the phrase "God is great" before the planes flew into the buildings.

I had prior business dealings with several Muslims. They, like my departed father were deeply religious. Malik the electrician had spent some time with me explaining how the Islam religion requires prayer five times daily and forbade the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Now I was puzzled, "How can devout religious people kill others while claiming that God is great?" I stopped by at the local bookstore and picked up a copy of 'Muhammad' by Karen Armstrong. It explained about how Muhammad had formed the Islam religion. I read the book deep into the night and again for the next two days until I was finished with it.

As I lay next to my wife that night, the television clock showed it to be 12:35 A.M. My wife was sleeping peacefully but my spirit was restless. The words, " _How this is possible_ " kept repeating themselves in my mind as my mind went into deep meditation. One and a half hour went by, it was now 2:05 A.M. as I felt a sharp pain in my head, I closed his eyes momentarily and when I opened them I was staring down at myself looking at the clock with my wife sleeping next to me. I felt surrounded by a beautiful, pleasant bright light.

I felt an exhilarating burst of energy, I experienced my spirit being transmitted, whisked at a powerful speed as if through a light tunnel and being united with a receiver at the other end, with a spiritual unity. My whole life was revealed to me during the seemingly long journey.

"Am I in Heaven, am I with God?" I wondered as I experienced being in a place with a gathering of spirits. I felt the greatest peace, tranquility and ecstasy. I felt a rapture that was beyond a person's imagination. I felt as if he was a part of ALL, a part of God. I was mentally communicating and in sync with everyone. There were many of the prophets of the Bible and historical people; there was Jesus, Abraham, Moses, and even Muhammad whom I just read about. I saw my father and some of my deceased acquaintances and relatives. I felt an engulfing love and support from everyone as they surrounded and embraced me. I again looked around for God and though I felt as if I was with God, there was no dominant force, no forceful leader. I somehow knew who everyone was; my thoughts interacted with the entire community, it was like _Tapping Into the Mind of God_ _._

"But which is the true religion?" my thoughts momentarily queried.

A scenario rapidly unfolded that was like a staged play with actors situated in their respective positions.

A Rabbi, a Christian minister, and an Islamic cleric appeared at an area that was marked "The Gates of Heaven". They eyed each other suspiciously. Peter (the gatekeeper) asked if there was a problem.

The Rabbi told Peter, "Ours is the true religion. We have the word of God that this is so and it is written in the Torah that God said we are the chosen children of God, not the Christians or the Muslims."

The Christian minister said, "Jesus told us that he is the Son of God and that the only way to God was by following his teachings and that unless one is born again, one would not get into heaven. What Jesus said is the word of God and it is written in the Holy Bible".

The Muslim cleric said, "God has told Muhammad that he was the last true prophet and that everything that God told him was written in the Koran and that those who did not follow what was written there, would not get into heaven".

Other souls appeared and some sided with and gathered around each of their leaders, while some other souls who sided with no one entered directly through the gates of heaven.

Eventually Peter told the souls who had gathered around the souls of their clerics, "In heaven there can be no disagreement and until you all are in agreement, you have to move to the Purgatory area". No agreement was reached and eventually those souls seemed to fade away.

A sweet gentle voice seemed to relay:

"The lesson is that having tunnel-vision or being closed-minded, without compassion for the belief of others around you can be bad for the body and the soul. Most religions have the same goals and all who live righteously will be with us".

In a flash, as if in a recreation, I was taken back to 1956 when I was fifteen years old. My father took me to a doctor who diagnosed it to be double pneumonia, gave me a penicillin injection and recommended immediate hospitalization. I thought that I was going to die. My father was temporarily out of work and our family had no medical insurance or money, so my father took me home to recuperate. I remembered the drive home vividly. Every breath was painful and my chest felt as though a great weight was upon it. I watched the cars and trucks drive by and I wondered how people could make long-term plans when life was so unpredictable.

While I was recuperating I read the Bible diligently, then one night I had what seemed like a puzzling experience of my spirit interacting with a spiritual existence. As the years passed, I thought that this spiritual interaction probably had been a dream. I didn't think about it much afterwards and lived my life normally, but I had no fear of death after that because I felt that the afterlife would be much better than the present one.

A week after the dramatic experience following 9-11-01, I had another spiritual experience that was in a progression that seemed to last throughout the entire night. My spirit was weightless, uninhibited by any resistance or external influences; I could travel to any star or planet instantly, explore the beauty of the universe, and still be in sync with what I considered to be God.

My spirit witnessed the universe stretched out like a vast expanse with spirits engaged in mental interaction, much like master craftsmen contemplating the creation of a new frontier. My spirit observed the entire history and the evolution of the universe and peoples varying perceptions of Jehovah, Allah and God as if in a fast-forward film. My spirit witnessed the beginning of life and then physical rational life in the universe, and the bonding of the first two souls that was the beginning of a spiritual unity. My spirit witnessed the development of mankind and man's first perception of God from the story of Adam & Eve. My spirit witnessed Abraham & Moses, their quest into spirituality, their interaction with God and the beginning of Judaism. My spirit witnessed God's interaction with Jesus and his life and physical death. My spirit witnessed the beginning of Christianity & the senseless killings in the Crusades; also God's interaction with Muhammad, the beginning of the Islam faith & the Arab struggles. My spirit witnessed the senseless New York Twin Towers tragedy of 9-11-01. (See picture)

My spirit understood that our life on earth was to prepare us and to give us examples of the hereafter, that everything is progressive and accumulative. We exist on earth to accumulate experiences of feelings, the beauty of every organism that surrounds us, the landscape that adds to our perception and then, when our life on Earth ends, we would begin our next spiritual journey.

I understood that we should live our life to its fullest. One hundred years from now, almost every single person alive today will have died. Several billion people wiped off the face of this earth. Our life is but a blip on the radar screen of time. We are the most important person responsible for whether our soul will live to attain continuity with God. Here we learn how to intertwine with a community, there we can experience anything that the imagination can perceive.

Envision yourself as a spirit that is uninhibited by any resistance or external influences; you can travel to any star or planet instantly, explore the beauty of the universe, and still be in sync with God. As an example: Imagine the most advanced form of Virtual Reality that can access a super-computer and place you in whichever setting you desire; you can play with the animals, be with your loved ones, listen to the greatest opera, stage or musical performances, or simply relax next to a bubbling brook and enjoy the scenery. You feel no pain, despair, heartache, or negative emotions.

I have stated above that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit has interacted with my spirit and if that is not the truth then I will have to bear the consequences for it. I unequivocally state that I know, as I know that my spirit will be united with God upon my demise, that the only things God requires from us is to lead a righteous life.

Human fallibility and misconceptions have labeled God for the past several millennia as one who interferes with the natural forces and free will of people by threatening punishment to those who disobey his bidding. The spiritual existence of this deity, if one decides to accept this premise, could not have changed with the times but the perception of who or what this deity is should change as societies eliminate their superstitious beliefs. God is not encumbered by human attributes, needs, desires to be worshiped, prayed to, exalted, venerated, deified, or anything else that mankind has to offer. It is also the human characteristics and attributes that exercise upon others power, control, dominance, destruction, punishment, revenge, and judgment.

The destruction of civilizations, most sufferings and premature deaths are due to human frailties, stupidity or imperfections and are not God's doings. God is interested in and is involved in humanity, but does not interfere in any way in our physical lives. God guides the development of the universe and everything thereon like a Master Planner. Our relationship and interaction of our spirit with the Spirit of God is for our, not God's benefit.

3. Near Death Experiences

My experiences are not unique; many people have had spiritual interactions and NDE's. Dr. Lommel provides an explanation for many of the questions about near death experiences (NDE's) at the website of International Association for Near-Death Studies.

Melvin Morse, MD, Pediatrics; Michael Sabom, MD, Cardiology; Peter Fenwick, MD, Neuropsychiatry and Pim van Lommel, MD, Cardiology all have one thing in common. They're in pursuit of verifiable evidence of life after death. Dr Lommel, et al, stirred a bit of controversy back in 2001 when they were published in Lancet, England's noted medical journal. The publication described near death experiences (NDE's) in survivors of cardiac arrest.

I corresponded with Dr. Lommel about my spiritual experiences that he graciously clarified. My questions were:

Dr. Lommel,

I agree with your thesis about "The Continuity Of Our Consciousness" and also with your statement that religions are mostly "about power, not about spirituality".

I would appreciate your opinion on a few points that you wrote about. You stated:

1. "According to our concept, which is based on the reported aspects of consciousness experienced during cardiac arrest, we can conclude that our consciousness could be based on fields of information, consisting of waves, and that it originates in the phase-space".

Q: If we assume that consciousness originates in, yet is outside of the brain, can we call this consciousness "spirit" and when is this spirit able to intertwine with another spiritual existence?

2. "During life we can receive aspects of our consciousness into our body as our waking consciousness. During cardiac arrest, the functioning of the brain and of other cells in our body stops because of anoxia. The electromagnetic fields of our neurons and other cells disappear, and the possibility of resonance, the interface between consciousness and our physical body is interrupted, and our heightened consciousness may be experienced outside the body, sometimes in another dimension without our material concept of time and space".

Q. My first experience was a NDE due to severe pneumonia at age 15. The body's function had been subdued and the brain was in stasis.

In November 2001, at my age 60, after the World Trade Center Tragedy, my mind was preoccupied with how supposedly; Islamists, or religious people could commit such acts. I then attempted and succeeded in executing two similar near-death episodes. I placed myself into a trance by using self-hypnosis. I mentally repeated the words "How is this possible" until mental oblivion set in, then the subconscious or spirit seemed to take over and my spiritual adventure began.

After my last two experiences my mind was somewhat trance-like or in a daze for a couple of days and my spirit seemed to pre-occupy my mental faculties for several months afterwards, endeavouring to interpret what had transpired. I have since that time unsuccessfully attempted to repeat these episodes several times. Does your research confirm that deep mental stress could be a contributing factor toward these incidents?

3. "Such understanding fundamentally changes one's opinion about death, because of the almost unavoidable conclusion that at the time of physical death consciousness will continue to be experienced in another dimension, in an invisible and immaterial world, the phase-space, in which all past, present and future is enclosed. Research on NDE cannot give us the irrefutable scientific proof of this conclusion, because people with an NDE did not quite die, but they all were very, very close to death, without a functioning brain".

Q. Is this phase-space possibly the fourth dimension? Science has recently somewhat replicated NDE's through inductions of electrical currents on the brain and people have experienced bliss and seeing invisible lights, but have you had any patients experience more than one vivid, graphic experience similar to mine?

4. "The conclusion that consciousness can be experienced independently of brain function might well induce a huge change in the scientific paradigm in western medicine, and could have practical implications in actual medical and ethical problems such as the care for comatose or dying patients, euthanasia, abortion, and the removal of organs for transplantation from somebody in the dying process with a beating heart in a warm body but a diagnosis of brain death".

Q. Isn't a brain dead person diagnosed as completely being incapable of receiving stimuli?

"There are still more questions than answers, but, based on the aforementioned theoretical aspects of the obviously experienced continuity of our consciousness, we finally should consider the possibility that death, like birth, may well be a mere passing from one state of consciousness to another".

Q. I agree. Will you conduct further research that extends past NDE's in order to find out if other people have had similar experiences as I have? Is there a possibility that the people who are written about in the Bible had spiritual interactions and that these interactions were then interpreted by preconditioned minds; hence we have various religions?

I look forward to your response.

K.

Dr.Lommel's responded.

Dear K,

Thank you for mailing to me your near-death experience. The response from your father is what you usually hear from people who have experienced such an experience and try to communicate about it. This is such a hard confrontation. But I also know, that many, many people are open for it, and I also know that this is not a dream, hallucination or a vivid imagination.

Be careful in communicating about your experience, and listen to your intuition in finding people who want to listen. Be patient. I wish you all the best.

Q1. You can call consciousness outside the brain "spirit", if you like, but this can be confusing because not everybody has the same ideas about what exactly "spirit" should be. And there are several "levels" of consciousness, waking consciousness, dreaming consciousness, "subconsciousness", collective human consciousness, morphogenetic consciousness, higher consciousness, cosmic consciousness, and Divine consciousness. All these levels of consciousness are interconnected, and available, also during our life in our body.

Q2. I agree with you that also deep mental stress can facilitate the access to other levels or other aspects of our consciousness, See also answer Q1. But also NDE, meditation, regression therapy, isolation, depression, terminal illness and other circumstances can facilitate this effect.

Q3. This phase-space is a higher dimensional space, presumably not just the fourth dimension, according to Quantum Mechanics. Induced experiences are never the same as a NDE, sometimes several elements can be experienced, like flashes of the past, a feeling of not being in the body, or a period of unconsciousness, but aspects like a life-review, or transformation after the experience are hardly mentioned after induced experiences.

All ND-experiences are personal experiences, where finding words for it is very difficult, and cultural, demographic and religious factors play a role in this. So I have never heard a similar experience ever.

Q4. Brain-dead is a sometimes very difficult diagnosis. But when the brain has no function any more, without circulation in the brain, there should be no access to stimuli whatsoever according current medical science, which "believes" that consciousness is exclusively produced in and located in the brain.

With kind regards,

Pim van Lommel, cardiologist

4. Transcendology

Transcendology is the study of transcending, or going beyond, empiricism, and ascertaining a priori the fundamental principles of human knowledge.

Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others were "messenger of God" whose mind interpreted their spirit's interaction with the Spirit of God according to his conditioning in that time period. Subsequent messengers were Muhammad, Ahmad, and Bahá'u'lláh. The mind's ability to interpret the spirit's interactions and messages, is often deficient. The mind also misinterprets these interactions due to its prior conditioning; hence we have the creation of various religions. There will always be subsequent messengers as long as mankind exists.

Jesus' baptism by John at the age of thirty marked the turning point in his life. His spirit interacted with the Spirit of God and he now had a mission. He has been appropriately symbolically called the "Son of God" and "Prince of Peace". The title "son or daughter of God" is also applicable to all people who live righteously. Messengers, or "Men of God" who contributed to the compilation of the scriptures or writings in the Qur'an, Bible and Torah were inspired by God to give us guidelines to live by.

Our spirit has the ability to interact with God's spirit via deep meditation. Meditation is the attempt to raise the self-conscious mind to the level of its spiritual counterpart, to unite manas with a ray from buddhi. It is a positive attitude of mind, a state of consciousness rather than a system or a time period of intensive thinking. It corresponds in its more perfect form to the ecstasy of Plotinus, which he defines as "the liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming one and identified with the Infinite." It is silent prayer in one real sense, for the heart aspires upwards to become freed from all desire for personal benefit, and the mind frames no specific object, but both unite in the aspiration; not my will, but thine, be done. When engaged in at the outset of the day, or on retiring to sleep, it often takes the form of reflecting profoundly and impersonally on spiritual teachings, as well as self-examination, attuning of the mind and heart to calm and unselfish thought and feelings, as well as the endeavor to realize in consciousness one's highest ideals of duty, purity, and truth, and inducing thereby a general harmonizing and one-pointed adjustment of the whole nature.

The spirit or soul exists in the collective mental processes of the subconscious the subconscious part of the mind and is also where the mental processes of creativity originate. The conscience adds to and stores life experiences into the subconscious of the mind, which is the spirit or soul. If the conscience is anesthetized by other than righteous conduct the existence of the spirit gradually fades and is eventually extinguished.

Existence is reality. When physical existence ceases, conclusions are often surmised that all existence ceases and spirituality is sometimes perceived to be an illusion in the physical dimension. The Ultimate Reality is spiritual and is often an illusion to the physical reality.

It is of no importance during our physical life whether a spiritual existence or God exists or not if one so chooses. Whether or not one believes in a spirit or God really makes no difference. Righteous living determines the continuance and destiny of our spirit/soul. One's life can be enhanced by receiving solace and being comforted during life's trials and tribulations and by having our spirit rejoice by a belief and hope of a spiritual continuance after physical death. The alternative is despair of a complete and useless death forever.

Hope and inspiration rejoices our spirit and gives us a reason for continuing during hopeless times. There is a reason for our existence just like there is a reason for the existence of everything in the universe.

We are here mainly to gather experiences that will add to the glory of God.

5. The Pithiness Of Life

The pithiness of my life engulfs my senses  
Words project within my spirit that seem to speak  
The relenting of the mind, it dominates the all.

My "I" absolved within its hold.  
Am I the I that lives within this life, am I the spirit there within?  
The conscience troubles my understanding

Am I still the I, or is the I my transcendation?  
My spirit I beseech thee, where does this journey end?  
"I am spirit, I now control this voyage".

"Let meditation absolve the bonds within", I am told  
I now freely go where I must go.  
The peaceful flight, the brilliant light, I am now there.

The puzzlement of it all is now upon me  
I am here I am there; I am everywhere.

A part of me is within, the beauty beyond belief.

The peace was my calm relief.  
The interactions of the all; most questions disappear;  
Though one part of me is like a child

The spirit seeks answers. How can this be?  
Are you the deity of whom my father preached?  
Who is the you? Who is the I?

I see it now. I am a part of time.  
A apart of God, the Great Spirit of all past.  
I am within, tapping the mind of creation.

A fleeting thought appears; am I still the I part of my psyche?  
Only for this small moment, I comprehend.  
Now my psyche is overwhelmed with anticipation

The spirit, the mind is one of understanding  
Love washes over me like a tide,  
I go back to my beginning.

A child is born in the Baltic, I see it now, it is I  
Within three periods, three revolutions around the sun  
The mother with her child must flee oppression.

The father must remain to serve the cause  
The second great war brings chaos like never before.  
Refuge is now in the land where the confusion began.

A prisoner of war and five more periods pass,  
The father is again united with his loved ones.  
The family seeks then in the New World, a new beginning,

In the promised land promises fall short,  
Life again is a struggle, twelve more periods pass,  
Then pneumonia sets in.

The pain of breathing, the body almost succumbs.  
It becomes a trial of survival; am I to die?  
How well I remember, to God I did pray

If my life is to end, can I be with you?  
I studied the scriptures; I read them to end.  
Suddenly I, my spirit its first journey did take.

The glee, the adulation; I felt it all; A union with God.  
But am I alive or has my spirit transcended?  
The answers seem clear though not quite comprehended.

I look for a master, yet none do I see.  
I feel the ecstasy of God; I am within  
A gathering of souls. There, Jesus I now see.

Moses, Abraham and Jacob,  
I know you all, I read of you.  
And many more thereof, how can this be?

Be at peace my child, unison of thought I could feel  
This is not yet your destiny, but soon,  
Only then, when your mission is done.

I am back now at peace in my bed, my body heals quickly  
Soon I forget. Was this but a dream?  
A dream I eventually did think

As the years passed, I continued my life.  
I am in my youth now, 18 periods since birth  
I had dragons to slay, to conquer with mirth.

The armed services I then did join, to see Germany again  
And to my surprise, an angel I met, a beautiful girl full of joy.  
She stole my heart; she made me whole.

Could this be love, I wondered?  
Should I let my spirit bond with this creature of beauty  
Should I ask her to share my joys, my pains, my life?

As love transcends our spirits unite.  
Our souls are like one.  
She is now my wife.

As I reminisce now 45 years later, I wonder  
Was it fate that brought us together?  
I look at my two daughters, their families, their children.

I have proof that miracles really do happen  
When our choices are right and then I am reminded  
Of the love that has held us together every day and night.

But then I look back and wonder  
Has the pithiness of my life  
Had the effect that was delegated to me?

Your work is not yet done, my spirit, the I is again reminded.  
Two more times within a short span  
My spirit has again transcended the realm of time.

Into another dimension, the spiritual, the unity of souls  
The progressive intelligence that inspires all  
Those who seek guidance for the betterment of man.

My spirit is shown the beginning, the beginning of man  
But who is before man, how did God, this unity begin?  
Come with me my son and you will see.

The beginning of God was many, many eons ago,  
Travel with me to the start of time  
To the beginning of the universe and where life began

That life form seems foreign, yet it is full of love  
A rationality there from sprang then two, then more  
The unity of spirit upon their demise began.

Now we will go back to your world, the start of man.  
In the distance I see a speck, like a kernel of sand  
Is that my land, my earth amongst the vast expanse?

Yes, this is where your kind has fought over me  
And killed its kind. Come I will show you,  
There is your Adam and your Eve

There also is Abraham, the leader of men  
His wife and his children and the strife that began  
When he talked about his God

It was the interaction of his spirit with ours  
That puzzled his mind  
He began to pray and worship and his missions began.

This guidance, though sometimes it has produced pain,  
Has served man well. Man needed a God to rely on  
To know that his life is not in vain.

Then there was Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed,  
My messengers who inspired their people  
To lift their spirits when life seems bleak.

Often during the physical lives of my messengers  
The viciousness of man came out of a need for survival,  
But if their spirit remained clean their soul is now a part of us.

The Crusades came, the killings, the enslavement  
They said that it was logical and rational  
That God was like a king, a ruler, a dominator.

Who needed man's worship and obedience  
They built churches, temples and mosques  
This was not God's making, it is the want of man.

The tragedies of late have burdened your soul  
With an attempt to find answers.  
We, the unity can guide and suggest, but it is up to you

To change the destiny of man.  
Man desires to fight but eventually this too will end.  
So complete your mission the best that you can.

Dear God I am but a simple man, I am not well learned.  
I have many shortcomings. Who will listen?  
Fret not and do your best, this is all I ask.

Now go forth and perform your task.  
Whimper not, stand proud and tall  
And you will be rewarded with the union of your soul

Again I am reminded of the pithiness of man.  
How I wish that I had more time  
To live it again.

### 6. Histories And Future of Our World

The writers introduce the word _Urantia_ as the name of the planet Earth and state their intent is to "present enlarged concepts and advanced truth" in an "endeavor to expand cosmic consciousness and enhance spiritual perception." Among many other topics, it expounds on the origin and meaning of life, describes humankind's place in the universe, discusses the relationship between God and people.

Urantia is considered one inhabited sphere among millions of others in the universe. The book's extensive teachings about the history of the world include its physical development billions of years ago from cataclysmic meteor captures, the gradual changes in conditions that allowed life to develop, and the long ages of organic evolution that started with microscopic marine life and led to plant and animal life in the oceans, later on land. The emergence of humans is presented as having occurred about a million years ago from a branch of superior primates originating from a lemur ancestor.

The Book says "this story is graphically told within the fossil pages of the vast 'stone book' of world record ... the pages of this gigantic biogeologic record unfailingly tell the truth if you but acquire skill in their interpretation". Unlike current scientific views, evolution is said to be orderly and controlled. According to the book, Primordial life had been intelligently planned, implanted, and monitored by "Life Carriers", instead of arising spontaneously. The book says that "mortal man is not an evolutionary accident", and that the purpose of evolution on a planet such as Urantia is to produce creatures of "will dignity" that can develop spiritual natures and survive material existence, going on to have eternal spiritual careers.

The Book teaches not only biological evolution, but also that human society and spiritual understandings evolve by slow progression, subject both to periods of rapid improvement and the possibility of retrogression. Progress is said to follow a divine plan that includes periodic gifts of revelation and ministry by heavenly teachers, which eventually will lead to an ideal world status of "light and life" in the far distant future.

Though there is the ideal and divine plan, it is said to be fostered and administered by various orders of celestial beings who are less than perfect. Through mistakes or deliberate rebellion, the plan can be wrecked, requiring long spans of time to recoup lost progress. Urantia is said to be a markedly "dark and confused" planet that is "greatly retarded in all phases of intellectual progress and spiritual attainment" compared to more typical inhabited worlds, due to an unusually severe history of rebellion and default by its spiritual supervisors.

### 7. Origin of the Book

(Wikipedia)

The exact circumstances of the origin of the original Urantia Book are unknown. The book and its publishers do not name a human author: instead, it is said, to be written as if directly presented by numerous celestial beings appointed to the task of providing an "epochal" spiritual revelation to humankind. For each paper, either a name, or an order of celestial being, or a group of beings is credited as its author.

The Book is a spiritual and philosophical book that discusses God, science, cosmology, religion, history, and destiny. It originated in Chicago, Illinois, USA, sometime between 1924 and 1955. There has been much debate and speculation on how the papers were produced and who the authors were.

In 2001, a United States jury trial in Oklahoma City found that the Urantia Foundation's 1983 renewal of the book's copyright was invalid. This decision was upheld in the United States Court of Appeals 10th District, and the English version of the book is considered to have entered the public domain in the U.S. as of 1983. In 2006, the international copyright on the English text expired.

In 1911, William S. Sadler and his wife Lena Sadler were physicians in Chicago and well known in the community. They were approached by a neighbor who was concerned because she would occasionally find her husband in a deep sleep and breathing abnormally. She reported that she was unable to wake him at these times. The Sadlers came to observe the episodes, and over time, the individual produced verbal communications that claimed to be from "student visitor" spiritual beings. This changed in early 1925 with a "voluminous handwritten document", which from then on became the regular method of purported communication. The Sadlers were both respected physicians, and William Sadler was a debunker of paranormal claims, who is portrayed as not believing in the supernatural. In 1929, he published a book called _The Mind at Mischief_ , in which he explained the fraudulent methods of mediums and how self-deception leads to psychic claims. He wrote in an appendix that there were two cases that he had not explained to his satisfaction.

"The other exception has to do with a rather peculiar case of psychic phenomena, one which I find myself unable to classify, and which I would like very much to narrate more fully; I cannot do so here, however, because of a promise which I feel under obligation to keep sacredly. In other words, I have promised not to publish this case during the lifetime of the individual. I hope sometime to secure a modification of that promise and be able to report this case more fully because of its interesting features. I was brought in contact with it, in the summer of 1911, and I have had it under my observation more or less ever since, having been present at probably 250 of the night sessions, many of which have been attended by a stenographer who made voluminous notes.

A thorough study of this case has convinced me that it is not one of ordinary trance. While the sleep seems to be quite of a natural order, it is very profound, and so far we have never been able to awaken the subject when in this state; but the body is never rigid, and the heart action is never modified, though respiration is sometimes markedly interfered with. This man is utterly unconscious, wholly oblivious to what takes place, and unless told about it subsequently, never knows that he has been used as a sort of clearing house for the coming and going of alleged extra-planetary personalities. In fact, he is more or less indifferent to the whole proceeding, and shows a surprising lack of interest in these affairs as they occur from time to time.

Eighteen years of study and careful investigation have failed to reveal the psychic origin of these messages. I find myself at the present time just where I was when I started. Psychoanalysis, hypnotism, intensive comparison, fail to show that the written or spoken messages of this individual have origin in his own mind. Much of the material secured through this subject is quite contrary to his habits of thought, to the way in which he has been taught, and to his entire philosophy. In fact, of much that we have secured, we have failed to find anything of its nature in existence. Its philosophic content is quite new, and we are unable to find where very much of it has ever found human expression."

In 1924, a group of Sadler's friends, former patients, and colleagues began meeting for Sunday intellectual discussions, but became interested in the strange communications when Sadler mentioned the case and read samples at their request. Shortly afterwards, a communication reportedly was received that this group would be allowed to devise questions and that answers would be given by celestial beings through the "contact personality".

Sadler presented this development to the group, and they generated hundreds of questions without full seriousness, but their claim is that it resulted in the appearance of answers in the form of fully written papers. They became more impressed with the quality of the answers and continued to ask questions, until all papers now collected together as the Urantia Book were obtained. The group was known as the Forum. A smaller group of five individuals called the Contact Commission, including the Sadlers, was responsible for gathering the questions from the Forum, acting as the custodians of the handwritten manuscripts that were presented as answers, and arranging for proofreading and typing of the material.

The Sadlers and others involved, now all deceased, claimed that the papers of the book were physically materialized from 1925 until 1935 in a way that was not understood even by them, with the first three parts being completed in 1934 and the fourth in 1935. The last Forum gathering was in 1942. Also documented are methods of reception that Sadler denied as the way the papers were received.

After all of the written material was received in 1935, an additional period of time supposedly took place where requests for clarifications resulted in revisions. Sadler and his son William (Bill) Sadler, Jr. at one point wrote a draft introduction and were told that they could not add their introduction because "A city can not be lit by a candle." Bill Sadler is noted to have composed the table of contents that is published with the book.

Only the members of the Contact Commission witnessed the activities of the sleeping subject, and only they knew his identity. The individual, it was claimed, has been kept anonymous in order to prevent undesirable future veneration or reverence for him. Martin Gardner states that an explanation concerning the origin of the book more plausible than celestial beings is that the Contact Commission, particularly William Sadler, was responsible. Gardner's conclusion is that a man named Wilfred Kellogg was the sleeping subject and authored the work from his subconscious mind, with William Sadler subsequently editing and authoring parts. A statistical analysis using the Mosteller and Wallace methods of stylometry indicates at least nine authors were involved, and by comparatively analyzing the book against Sadler's _The Mind at Mischief_ , does not indicate authorship or extensive editing by Sadler, without ruling out the possibility of limited edits.

### The Urantia United Book

Urantia United (Earth United) is in large part an edited, condensed version of the Urantia Book. This editor has not contributed to the original version of the book nor does he claim any credit therefore. The reason for editing the original book, was to assign equal validity to all religions and also to confirm its contents by this editor's own spiritual journey. These writings are comprised of a broad range of subjects that can help you in your quest to deepen your understanding of and relationship with God.

### Part I. The Central Universe  
The Universal Father

### Chapter 1

P21:1, 1:0.1The Universal Father is the God of all, the First Source and Center of all things and beings. First think of God as a creator, then as a controller, and lastly as an infinite upholder. The truth about the Universal Father had begun to dawn upon mankind when the prophet said: "You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them. The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain." Only the concept of the Universal Father -- one God in the place of many gods -- enabled mortal man to comprehend the Father as divine creator and infinite controller.

P21:2, 1:0.2 The myriads of planetary systems were all made to be eventually inhabited by many different types of intelligent creatures, beings who could know God, receive the divine affection, and love him in return. The universe of universes is the work of God and the dwelling place of his diverse creatures. "God created the heavens and formed the earth; he established the universe and created this world not in vain; he formed it to be inhabited."

P21:3, 1:0.3 The enlightened worlds all recognize and worship the Universal Father, the eternal maker and infinite upholder of all creation. The will creatures of universe upon universe have embarked upon the long, long Paradise journey, and the fascinating struggle of the eternal adventure of attaining God the Father. The transcendent goal of the children of time is to find the eternal God, to comprehend the divine nature, to recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have only one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to become, as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Paradise perfection of personality and in his universal sphere of righteous supremacy. From the Universal Father who inhabits eternity there has gone forth the supreme mandate, "Be you perfect, even as I am perfect." In love and mercy the messengers of Paradise have carried this divine exhortation down through the ages and out through the universes, even to such lowly animal-origin creatures as the human races of Earth.

P22:1, 1:0.4 This magnificent and universal injunction to strive for the attainment of the perfection of divinity is the first duty, and should be the highest ambition, of all the struggling creature creation of the God of perfection. This possibility of the attainment of divine perfection is the final and certain destiny of all man's eternal spiritual progress.

P22:2, 1:0.5 Earth mortals can hardly hope to be perfect in the infinite sense, but it is entirely possible for human beings, starting out as they do on this planet, to attain the supernal and divine goal which the infinite God has set for mortal man; and when they do achieve this destiny, they will, in all that pertains to self-realization and mind attainment, be just as replete in their sphere of divine perfection as God himself is in his sphere of infinity and eternity. Such perfection may not be universal in the material sense, unlimited in intellectual grasp, or final in spiritual experience, but it is final and complete in all finite aspects of divinity of will, perfection of personality motivation, and God-consciousness.

P22:3, 1:0.6 This is the true meaning of that divine command, "Be you perfect, even as I am perfect," which ever urges mortal man onward and beckons him inward in that long and fascinating struggle for the attainment of higher and higher levels of spiritual values and true universe meanings. This sublime search for the God of universes is the supreme adventure of the inhabitants of all the worlds of time and space.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 1.  
The Father's Name

P22:4, 1:1.1 Of all the names by which God the Father is known throughout the universes, those which designate him as the First Source and the Universe Center are most often encountered. The Father is known by various names in different universes and in different sectors of the same universe. The names which the creature assigns to the Creator are much dependent on the creature's concept of the Creator. The First Source and Universe Center has never revealed himself by name, only by nature. If we believe that we are the children of this Creator, it is only natural that we should eventually call him Father. But this is the name of our own choosing, and it grows out of the recognition of our personal relationship with the First Source and Center.

P22:5, 1:1.2 The Universal Father never imposes any form of arbitrary recognition, formal worship, or slavish service upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes. The evolutionary inhabitants of the worlds of time and space may of themselves -- in their own hearts -- recognize, love, and voluntarily worship him, if they so desire. The Creator refuses to coerce or compel the submission of the spiritual free wills of his material creatures. The affectionate dedication of the human will to the doing of the Father's will is man's choicest gift to God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes man's only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father. In God, man lives, moves, and has his being; there is nothing which man can give to God except this choosing to abide by the Father's will, and such decisions, effected by the intelligent will creatures of the universes, constitute the reality of that true worship which is so satisfying to the loving nature of the Creator Father.

P22:6, 1:1.3 When you have once become truly God-conscious, after you really discover the majestic Creator and begin to experience the realization of the indwelling presence of the divine controller, then, in accordance with your enlightenment and in accordance with the manner and method by which the divine spirits reveal God, you will find a name for the Universal Father which will be adequately expressive of your concept of the First Great Source and Center. And so, on different worlds and in various universes, the Creator becomes known by numerous appellations, in spirit of relationship all meaning the same but, in words and symbols, each name standing for the degree, the depth, of his enthronement in the hearts of his creatures of any given realm.

P23:1, 1:1.4 Near the center of the universe, the Universal Father is generally known by names which may be regarded as meaning the First Source. Farther out in the universes of space, the terms employed to designate the Universal Father more often mean the Universal Center. Still farther out in the starry creation, he is known as in your universe, as the First Creative Source and Divine Center. In one near-by constellation God is called the Father of Universes; in another, the Infinite Upholder, and the Divine Controller. He has also been designated the Father of Lights, the Gift of Life, and the All-powerful One.

P23:2, 1:1.5 On the world where a Messenger has lived a bestowal life, God is generally known by some name indicative of personal relationship, tender affection, and fatherly devotion. God is referred to as the Universal Father, the Father of Fathers, the Paradise Father, the Spirit Father. Those who know God through the revelations of the bestowals of the Messengers, eventually yield to the sentimental appeal of the touching relationship of the creature-Creator association and refer to God as "our Father."

P23:3, 1:1.6 On a planet of sex creatures, in a world where the impulses of parental emotion are inherent in the hearts of its intelligent beings, the term Father becomes a very expressive and appropriate name for the eternal God. He is best known, most universally acknowledged, on planet Earth by the name _God or Allah._ The name he is given is of little importance; the significant thing is that you should know him and aspire to be like him. Your prophets of old truly called him "the everlasting God" and referred to him as the one who "inhabits eternity."

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 2.  
The Reality Of God

P23:4, 1:2.1 God is primal reality in the spirit world; God is the source of truth in the mind spheres; God overshadows all throughout the material realms. To all created intelligences God is a personality, and to the universe of universes he is the First Source and Center of eternal reality. God is neither manlike nor machinelike. The First Father is universal spirit, eternal truth, infinite reality, and father personality.

P23:5, 1:2.2 The eternal God is infinitely more than reality idealized or the universe personalized. God is not simply the supreme desire of man, the mortal quest objectified. Neither is God merely a concept, the power-potential of righteousness. The Universal Father is not a synonym for nature, neither is he natural law personified. God is a spiritual unity, a transcendent reality, not merely man's traditional concept of supreme values. God is not a psychological focalization of spiritual meanings; neither is he "the noblest work of man." God may be any or all of these concepts in the minds of men, but he is more. He is a saving person and a loving Father to all who enjoy spiritual peace on earth, and who crave to experience personality survival in death.

P24:1, 1:2.3 The actuality of the existence of God is demonstrated in human experience by the indwelling of the divine presence, the spirit Monitor sent from Paradise to live in the mortal mind of man and there to assist in evolving the immortal soul of eternal survival. The presence of this divine Adjuster in the human mind is disclosed by three experiential phenomena:

  1. The intellectual capacity for knowing God -- God-consciousness.

  2. The spiritual urge to find God -- God-seeking.

  3. The personalities craving to be like God -- the wholehearted desire to do the Father's will.

P24:5, 1:2.4 The existence of God can never be proved by scientific experiment or by the pure reason of logical deduction. God can be realized only in the realms of human experience; nevertheless, the true concept of the reality of God is reasonable to logic, plausible to philosophy, essential to religion, and indispensable to any hope of personality survival.

P24:6, 1:2.5 Those who know God have experienced the fact of his presence; such God-knowing mortals hold in their personal experience the only positive proof of the existence of the living God which one human being can offer to another. The existence of God is utterly beyond all possibility of demonstration except for the contact between the God-consciousness of the human mind and the God-presence of the Thought Adjuster that indwells the mortal intellect and is bestowed upon man as the free gift of the Universal Father.

P24:7, 1:2.6 In theory you may think of God as the Creator, and he is the creator of Paradise and the central universe of perfection, but the universes of time and space are all created and organized by the Paradise unity. Though the Father does not personally create the evolutionary universes, he does control them in many of their universal relationships and in certain of their manifestations of physical, mental, and spiritual energies. God the Father is the personal creator of the Paradise universe and the creator of all other universes.

P24:8, 1:2.7 As a physical controller in the material universe of universes, the First Source and Center functions in the patterns of the eternal Isle of Paradise, and through this absolute gravity center the eternal God exercises cosmic overcontrol of the physical level equally throughout the universe. As mind, God functions in the Deity of the Infinite Spirit; as spirit, God is manifest in the person of the Messengers and in the persons of the divine children of the Messengers. This interrelation of the First Source and Center with the co-ordinate Persons and Absolutes of Paradise does not in the least preclude the _direct_ personal action of the Universal Father throughout all creation and on all levels thereof. Through the presence of his fragmentized spirit the Creator Father maintains immediate contact with his creature children and his created universe.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 3.  
God Is A Universal Spirit

P25:1, 1:3.1 "God is a spiritual unity." He is a universal spiritual presence. The Universal Father is an infinite spiritual reality; he is "the sovereign, eternal, immortal, invisible, and only true God." Even though you are "the offspring of God," you ought not to think that the Father is like yourselves in form and physique because you are said to be created "in his image" -- indwelt by Mystery Monitors dispatched from the central abode of his eternal presence. Spirit beings are real; notwithstanding they are invisible to human eyes; even though they have not flesh and blood.

P25:2, 1:3.2 Said the seer of old: "Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not; he passes on also, but I perceive him not." We may constantly observe the works of God, we may be highly conscious of the material evidences of his majestic conduct, but rarely may we gaze upon the visible manifestation of his divinity, not even to behold the presence of his delegated spirit of human indwelling.

P25:3, 1:3.3 The Universal Father is not invisible because he is hiding himself away from the lowly creatures of materialistic handicaps and limited spiritual endowments. The situation rather is: "You cannot see my face, for no mortal can see me and live." No material man could behold the spirit God and preserve his mortal existence. The glory and the spiritual brilliance of the divine personality presence is impossible of approach by the lower groups of spirit beings or by any order of material personalities. The spiritual luminosity of the Father's personal presence is a "light which no mortal man can approach; which no material creature has seen or can see." But it is not necessary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in order to discern him by the faith-vision of the spiritualized mind.

P25:5, 1:3.4 God is a universal spirit; God is the universal person. The supreme personal reality of the finite creation is spirit; the ultimate reality of the personal cosmos is absolute spirit. The levels of infinity are absolute, but only on such levels is there finality of oneness between matter, mind, and spirit.

P25:6, 1:3.5 In the universes God the Father is, in potential, the over controller of matter, mind, and spirit. Only by means of his far-flung personality circuit does God deal directly with the personalities of his vast creation of will creatures, but he is contactable (outside of Paradise) only in the presences of his fragmented entities, the will of God abroad in the universes. This Paradise spirit that indwells the minds of the mortals of time and there fosters the evolution of the immortal soul of the surviving creature is of the nature and divinity of the Universal Father. But the minds of such evolutionary creatures originate in the local universes and must gain divine perfection by achieving those experiential transformations of spiritual attainment that are the inevitable result of a creature's choosing to do the will of the Father in heaven.

P26:1, 1:3.6 In the inner experience of man, mind is joined to matter. Such material-linked minds cannot survive mortal death. The technique of survival is embraced in those adjustments of the human will and those transformations in the mortal mind whereby such a God-conscious intellect gradually becomes spirit taught and eventually spirit led. This evolution of the human mind from matter association to spirit union results in the transmutation of the potentially spirit phases of the mortal mind into the realities of the immortal soul. Mortal mind subservient to matter is destined to become increasingly material and consequently to suffer eventual personality extinction; mind yielded to spirit is destined to become increasingly spiritual and ultimately to achieve oneness with the surviving and guiding divine spirit and in this way to attain survival and eternity of personality existence.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 4.  
The Mystery Of God

P26:3, 1:4.1 The infinity of the perfection of God is such that it eternally constitutes him mystery. And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.

P26:4, 1:4.2 The physical bodies of mortals are "the temples of God." Mortal men have something from God himself that actually dwells within them; their bodies are the temples thereof.

P26:5, 1:4.3 When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle "returns to the earth whence it came"; then, it is revealed, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God who gave it." There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.

P26:6, 1:4.4 We are constantly confronted with this mystery of God; we are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of the endless panorama of the truth of his infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character.

P26:7, 1:4.5 The divine mystery consists in the inherent difference which exists between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, the time-space creature and the Universal Creator, the material and the spiritual, the imperfection of man and the perfection of Paradise Deity. The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature's capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and goodness.

P27:1, 1:4.6 To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence, which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment, is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the super material world.

P27:2, 1:4.7 As a reality in human spiritual experience God is not a mystery. But when an attempt is made to make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds of time and space.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 5.  
Personality Of The Universal Father

P27:3, 1:5.1 Do not permit the magnitude of God, his infinity, either to obscure or eclipse his personality. "He who planned the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he not see?" The Universal Father is the acme of divine personality; he is the origin and destiny of personality throughout all creation. God is both infinite and personal; he is an infinite personality. The Father is truly a personality, notwithstanding that the infinity of his person places him forever beyond the full comprehension of material and finite beings.

P27:4, 1:5.2 God is much more than a personality as personality is understood by the human mind; he is even far more than any possible concept of a super personality. But it is utterly futile to discuss such incomprehensible concepts of divine personality with the minds of material creatures whose maximum concept of the reality of being consists in the idea and ideal of personality. The material creature's highest possible concept of the Universal Creator is embraced within the spiritual ideals of the exalted idea of divine personality. Therefore, although you may know that God must be much more than the human conception of personality, you equally well know that the Universal Father cannot possibly be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality.

P27:5, 1:5.3 God is not hiding from any of his creatures. He is unapproachable to so many orders of beings only because he "dwells in a light which no material creature can approach." The immensity and grandeur of the divine personality is beyond the grasp of the unperfected mind of evolutionary mortals. He "measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, measures a universe with the span of his hand. It is he who sits on the circle of the earth, who stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a universe to dwell in." "Lift up your eyes on high and behold who has created all these things, who brings out their worlds by number and calls them all by their names"; and so it is true that "the invisible things of God are partially understood by the things which are made." Today, and as you are, you must discern the invisible Maker through his manifold and diverse creation, as well as through the revelation.

P28:1, 1:5.4 Even though material mortals cannot see the person of God, they should rejoice in the assurance that he is a person; by faith accept the truth which portrays that the Universal Father so loved the world as to provide for the eternal spiritual progression of its lowly inhabitants; that he "delights in his children." God is lacking in none of those superhuman and divine attributes that constitute a perfect, eternal, loving, and infinite Creator personality.

P28:2, 1:5.5 In the local creations God has no personal or residential manifestation aside from the Messengers who are inhabitants of the world. Mortal man simply cannot see God until he achieves completed spirit transformation and actually attains Paradise.

P28:4, 1:5.6 Without God and except for his great and central person, there would be no personality throughout all the vast universe of universes. _God is personality_.

P28:5, 1:5.7 Notwithstanding that God is an eternal power, a majestic presence, a transcendent ideal, and a glorious spirit, though he is all these and infinitely more, nonetheless, he is truly and everlastingly a perfect Creator personality, a person who can "know and be known," who can "love and be loved," and one who can befriend us; while you can be known, as other humans have been known, as the friend of God. He is a real spirit and a spiritual reality.

P28:6, 1:5.9 As we see the Universal Father revealed throughout his universe; as we discern him indwelling his myriads of creatures; as we continue to sense his divine presence here and there, near and afar, let us not doubt nor question his personality primacy. Notwithstanding all these far-flung distributions, he remains a true person and everlastingly maintains personal connection with the countless hosts of his creatures scattered throughout the universe of universes.

P28:7, 1:5.10 The idea of the personality of the Universal Father is an enlarged and truer concept of God which has come to mankind chiefly through revelation. Reason, wisdom, and religious experience all infer and imply the personality of God, but they do not altogether validate it. Even the indwelling Thought Adjuster is prepersonal. The truth and maturity of any religion is directly proportional to its concept of the infinite personality of God and to its grasp of the absolute unity of Deity. The idea of a personal Deity becomes, then, the measure of religious maturity after religion has first formulated the concept of the unity of God.

P29:1, 1:5.11 Primitive religion had many personal gods, and they were fashioned in the image of man. Revelation affirms the validity of the personality concept of God which is merely possible in the scientific postulate of a First Cause and is only provisionally suggested in the philosophic idea of Universal Unity. Only by personality approach can any person begin to comprehend the unity of God. To deny the personality of the First Source and Center leaves one only the choice of two philosophic dilemmas: materialism or pantheism.

P29:2, 1:5.12 In the contemplation of Deity, the concept of personality must be divested of the idea of corporeality. A material body is not indispensable to personality in either man or God. The corporeality error is shown in both extremes of human philosophy. In materialism, since man loses his body at death, he ceases to exist as a personality; in pantheism, since God has no body, he is not, therefore, a person. The superhuman type of progressing personality functions in a union of mind and spirit.

P29:3, 1:5.13 Personality is not simply an attribute of God; it rather stands for the totality of the coordinated infinite nature and the unified divine will which is exhibited in eternity and universality of perfect expression. Personality, in the supreme sense, is the revelation of God to the universe of universes.

P29:4, 1:5.14 God, being eternal, universal, absolute, and infinite, does not grow in knowledge nor increase in wisdom. God does not acquire experience, as finite man might conjecture or comprehend, but he does, within the realms of his own eternal personality, enjoy those continuous expansions of self-realization that are in certain ways comparable to, and analogous with, the acquirement of new experience by the finite creatures of the evolutionary worlds.

P29:5, 1:5.15 The absolute perfection of the infinite God would cause him to suffer the awful limitations of unqualified finality of perfectness were it not a fact that the Universal Father directly participates in the personality struggle of every imperfect soul in the wide universe who seeks, by divine aid, to ascend to the spiritually perfect worlds on high. This progressive experience of every spirit being and every mortal creature throughout the universe of universes is a part of the Father's ever-expanding Deity-consciousness of the never-ending divine circle of ceaseless self-realization.

P29:6, 1:5.16  It is literally true: "In all your afflictions he is afflicted." "In all your triumphs he triumphs in and with you." His prepersonal divine spirit is a real part of you. The Isle of Paradise responds to all the physical metamorphoses of the universe of universes; the Conjoint Actor encompasses all the mind expression of the expanding cosmos. The Universal Father realizes in the fullness of the divine consciousness all the individual experience of the progressive struggles of the expanding minds and the ascending spirits of every entity, being, and personality of the whole evolutionary creation of time and space. And all this is literally true, for "in him we all live and move and have our being."

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 6.  
Personality In The Universe

P29:7, 1:6.1 Human personality is the time-space image-shadow cast by the divine Creator personality. And no actuality can ever be adequately comprehended by an examination of its shadow. Shadows should be interpreted in terms of the true substance.

P30:1, 1:6.2 God is to science a cause, to philosophy an idea, to religion a person, even the loving heavenly Father. God is to the scientist a primal force, to the philosopher a hypothesis of unity, to the religionist a living spiritual experience. Man's inadequate concept of the personality of the Universal Father can be improved only by man's spiritual progress in the universe and will become truly adequate only when the pilgrims of time and space finally attain the divine embrace of the living God on Paradise.

P30:2, 1:6.3 Never lose sight of the antipodal viewpoints of personality as it is conceived by God and man. Man views and comprehends personality, looking from the finite to the infinite; God looks from the infinite to the finite. Man possesses the lowest type of personality; God, the highest, even supreme, ultimate, and absolute. Therefore the better concepts of the divine personality have patiently to await the appearance of improved ideas of human personality, especially the enhanced revelation to human Messengers.

P30:3, 1:6.4 The prepersonal divine spirit which indwells the mortal mind carries, in its very presence, the valid proof of its actual existence, but the concept of the divine personality can be grasped only by the spiritual insight of genuine personal religious experience. Any person, human or divine, may be known and comprehended quite apart from the external reactions or the material presence of that person.

P30:4, 1:6.5 Some degree of moral affinity and spiritual harmony is essential to friendship between two persons; a loving personality can hardly reveal himself to a loveless person. Even to approach the knowing of a divine personality, all of man's personality endowments must be wholly consecrated to the effort; halfhearted, partial devotion will be unavailing.

P30:5, 1:6.6 The more completely man understands himself and appreciates the personality values of his fellows, the more he will crave to know the Original Personality, and the more earnestly such a God-knowing human will strive to become like the Original Personality. You can argue over opinions about God, but experience with him and in him exists above and beyond all human controversy and mere intellectual logic. The God-knowing man describes his spiritual experiences, not to convince unbelievers, but for the edification and mutual satisfaction of believers.

P30:6, 1:6.7 To assume that the universe can be known, that it is intelligible, is to assume that the universe is mind made and personality managed. Man's mind can only perceive the mind phenomena of other minds, be they human or superhuman. If man's personality can experience the universe, there is a divine mind and an actual personality somewhere concealed in that universe.

P30:7, 1:6.8 God is spirit, a spiritual unity -- spirit personality; man is also a spirit -- potential spirit personality. Many Messengers have attained the full realization of this potential of spirit personality in human experience; therefore their life of achieving the Father's will becomes man's most real and ideal revelation of the personality of God. Even though the personality of the Universal Father can be grasped only in actual religious experience, in a Messenger's earth life we are inspired by the perfect demonstration of such a realization and revelation of the personality of God in a truly human experience.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 1: Section 8.  
Spiritual Value Of The Personality Concept

P31:1, 1:7.1 When God's Messenger Jesus talked about "the living God," he referred to a personal Deity -- the Father in heaven. The concept of the personality of Deity facilitates fellowship; it favors intelligent worship; it promotes refreshing trustfulness. Interactions can be had between nonpersonal things, but not fellowship. The fellowship relation of father and son, as between God and man, cannot be enjoyed unless except through their spirit. Only spiritual personalities can commune with each other, albeit this personal communion may be greatly facilitated by the presence of just such an impersonal entity as the Thought Adjuster.

P31:2, 1:7.2 Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of water might find unity with the ocean. Man attains divine union by progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, by personality intercourse with the personal God, by increasingly attaining the divine nature through wholehearted and intelligent conformity. Such a sublime relationship can exist only between personalities.

P31:3, 1:7.3 The concept of truth might possibly be entertained apart from personality, the concept of beauty may exist without personality, but the concept of divine goodness is understandable only in relation to personality. Only a _person_ can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be divorced from survival hope if they were not attributes of a personal God, a loving Father.

P31:4, 1:7.4 We cannot fully understand how God can be primal, changeless, all-powerful, and perfect, and at the same time be surrounded by an ever-changing and apparently law-limited universe, an evolving universe of relative imperfections. But we can _know_ such a truth in our own personal experience since we all maintain identity of personality and unity of will in spite of the constant changing of both ourselves and our environment.

P31:5, 1:7.5 Ultimate universe reality cannot be grasped by mathematics, logic, or philosophy, only by personal experience in progressive conformity to the divine will of a personal God. Neither science or philosophy nor theology can validate the personality of God. Only the personal experience of the spirit can effect the actual spiritual realization of the personality of God.

P31:6, 1:7.6 The higher concepts of universe personality imply: identity, self-consciousness, self-will, and possibility for self-revelation. And these characteristics further imply fellowship with other and equal personalities, such as exists in the personality associations of the Paradise Deities. And the absolute unity of these associations is so perfect that divinity becomes known by indivisibility, by oneness. "The Lord God is One, a spiritual unity _._ " Indivisibility of personality does not interfere with God's bestowing his spirit to live in the hearts of mortal men. Indivisibility of a human father's personality does not prevent the reproduction of mortal sons and daughters.

P31:7, 1:7.7 This concept of indivisibility in association with the concept of unity implies transcendence of both time and space by the Ultimacy of Deity; therefore neither space nor time can be absolute or infinite. The First Source and Center is that infinity that unqualifiedly transcends all mind, all matter, and all spirit.

P31:8, 1:7.8 No language adequate to make clear to the mortal mind how these universe problems appear to us. But do not become discouraged; not all of these things are wholly clear to even the high personalities of Paradise beings. Ever bear in mind that these profound truths pertaining to Deity will increasingly clarify as your minds become progressively spiritualized during the successive epochs of the long mortal ascent to Paradise.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 2  
The Nature Of God

P33:1, 2:0.1 Inasmuch as man's highest possible concept of God is embraced within the human idea and ideal of a primal and infinite personality, it is permissible, and may prove helpful, to study certain characteristics of the divine nature which constitute the character of Deity. The nature of God can best be understood by the revelation of the Father to his Messengers. Man can also better understand the divine nature if he regards himself as a child of God and looks up to the Paradise Creator as a true spiritual Father.

P33:2, 2:0.2 The nature of God can be studied in a revelation of supreme ideas, the divine character can be envisaged as a portrayal of supernal ideals, but the most enlightening and spiritually edifying of all revelations of the divine nature is to be found in the comprehension of the religious life of Messenger Jesus of Nazareth, both before and after his attainment of full consciousness of divinity.

P33:3, 2:0.3 In all our efforts to enlarge and spiritualize the human concept of God, we are tremendously handicapped by the limited capacity of the mortal mind. We are also seriously handicapped in the execution of our assignment by the limitations of language and by the poverty of material which can be utilized for purposes of illustration or comparison in our efforts to portray divine values and to present spiritual meanings to the finite, mortal mind of man. All our efforts to enlarge the human concept of God would be well-nigh futile except for the fact that the mortal mind is indwelt by the bestowed Adjuster of the Universal Father.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 2: Section 1.  
The Infinity Of God

P33:4, 2:1.1 "Touching the Infinite, we cannot find him out. The divine footsteps are not known." "His understanding is infinite and his greatness is unreachable." The blinding light of the Father's presence is such that to his lowly creatures he apparently "dwells in the thick darkness." Not only are his thoughts and plans unreachable, but also "he does great and marvelous things without number." "God is great; we comprehend him not, neither can the number of his years be searched out." "Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven (universe) and the heaven of heavens (universe of universes) cannot contain him." "How unreachable are his ways!"

P34:1, 2:1.2 "There is but one God, the infinite Father, who is also a faithful Creator." "The divine Creator is also the Universal Disposer, the source and destiny of souls. He is the Supreme Soul, the Primal Mind, and the Unlimited Spirit of all creation." "The great Controller makes no mistakes. He is resplendent in majesty and glory." "The Creator God is wholly devoid of fear and enmity. He is immortal, eternal, self-existent, divine, and bountiful." "How pure and beautiful, how deep and unfathomable is the supernal Ancestor of all things!" "The Infinite is most excellent in that he imparts himself to men. He is the beginning and the end, the Father of every good and perfect purpose." "With God all things are possible; the eternal Creator is the cause of causes."

P34:2, 2:1.3 Notwithstanding the infinity of the stupendous manifestations of the Father's eternal and universal personality, he is unqualifiedly self-conscious of both his infinity and eternity; likewise he knows fully his perfection and power. He is the only being in the universe, aside from his divine co-ordinates, who experiences a perfect, proper, and complete appraisal of himself.

P34:3, 2:1.4 The Father constantly and unfailingly meets the need of the differential of demand for himself as it changes from time to time in various sections of his master universe. The great God knows and understands himself; he is infinitely self-conscious of all his primal attributes of perfection. God is not a cosmic accident; neither is he a universe experimenter. The Universal Father sees the end from the beginning, and his divine plan and eternal purpose actually embrace and comprehend all the experiments and all the adventures of all his subordinates in every world, system, and constellation in every universe of his vast domains.

P34:4, 2:1.5 No thing is new to God, and no cosmic event ever comes as a surprise; he inhabits the circle of eternity. He is without beginning or end of days. To God there is no past, present, or future; all time is present at any given moment. He is the great and only I AM.

P34:5, 2:1.6 The Universal Father is absolutely and without qualification infinite in all his attributes; and this fact, in and of itself, automatically shuts him off from all direct personal communication with finite material beings and other lowly created intelligences.

P34:6, 2:1.7 And all this necessitates such arrangements for contact and communication with his manifold creatures as have been ordained, first, in the personalities of his Messengers, who also partake of the nature of the very flesh and blood of the planetary races, being one of you and one with you. And second, there are the personalities of the Infinite Spirit, the various orders of the seraphic hosts and other celestial intelligences who draw near to the material beings of lowly origin and in so many ways minister to them and serve them. And third, there are the impersonal Mystery Monitors, Thought Adjusters who indwell the humble minds of those mortals who possess the capacity for God-consciousness or the potential therefore.

P35:1, 2:1.8 In these ways and in many others, in ways unknown to you and utterly beyond finite comprehension, does the Paradise Father lovingly and willingly down step and otherwise modify, dilute, and attenuate his infinity in order that he may be able to draw nearer the finite minds of his creature children. And so, through a series of personality distributions which are diminishingly absolute, the infinite Father is enabled to enjoy close contact with the diverse intelligences of the many realms of his far-flung universe.

P3:2, 2:1.9 All this he has done and now does, and evermore will continue to do, without in the least detracting from the fact and reality of his infinity, eternity, and primacy. And these things are absolutely true, notwithstanding the difficulty of their comprehension, the mystery in which they are enshrouded, or the impossibility of their being fully understood by creatures such as dwell on Earth.

P35:3, 2:1.10 Because the First Father is infinite in his plans and eternal in his purposes, it is inherently impossible for any finite being ever to grasp or comprehend these divine plans and purposes in their fullness. Mortal man can glimpse the Father's purposes only now and then, here and there, as they are revealed in relation to the outworking of the plan of creature ascension on its successive levels of universe progression. Though man cannot encompass the significance of infinity, the infinite Father does most certainly fully comprehend and lovingly embrace all the finite of all his children.

P35:4, 2:1.11  Divinity and eternity the Father shares with all Paradise beings, universal primacy is fully shared with all dwellers of Paradise. Infinity of personality must, perforce, embrace all finitude of personality; hence the truth -- literal truth -- of the teaching which declares that "In him we live and move and have our being." That fragment of the pure Deity of the Universal Father that indwells mortal man _is_ a part of the infinity of the First Great Source and Center, the Father of Fathers.
Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 2: Section 2.  
The Father's Eternal Perfection

P35:5, 2:2.1 Even your olden prophets understood the eternal, never-beginning, never-ending, circular nature of the Universal Father. God is literally and eternally present in the universe. He inhabits the present moment with all his absolute majesty and eternal greatness. "The Father has life in himself, and this life is eternal life." Throughout the eternal ages it has been the Father who "gives to all life." There is infinite perfection in the divine integrity. "I am the Lord; I change not." Our knowledge of the universe discloses not only that he is the Father of lights, but also that in his conduct of interplanetary affairs there "is no variableness neither shadow of changing." He "declares the end from the beginning." He says: "My counsel shall stand; I will do all my pleasures" "according to the eternal purpose which I purposed." Thus are the plans and purposes of the First Source and Center like himself: eternal, perfect, and forever changeless.

P35:6, 2:2.2 There is finality of completeness and perfection of repleteness in the mandates of the Father. "Whatsoever God does, it shall be forever; nothing can be added to it nor anything taken from it." The Universal Father does not repent of his original purposes of wisdom and perfection. His plans are steadfast, his counsel immutable, while his acts are divine and infallible. "A thousand years in his sight are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night." The perfection of divinity and the magnitude of eternity are forever beyond the full grasp of the circumscribed mind of mortal man.

P36:1, 2:2.3 The reactions of a changeless God, in the execution of his eternal purpose, may seem to vary in accordance with the changing attitude and the shifting minds of his created intelligences; that is, they may apparently and superficially vary; but underneath the surface and beneath all outward manifestations, there is still present the changeless purpose, the everlasting plan, of the eternal God.

P36:2, 2:2.4 Out in the universe, perfection must necessarily be a relative term, but in the central universe and especially on Paradise, perfection is undiluted; in certain phases it is even absolute.

P36:3, 2:2.5 God's primal perfection consists not in an assumed righteousness but rather in the inherent perfection of the goodness of his divine nature. He is final, complete, and perfect. There is no thing lacking in the beauty and perfection of his righteous character. And the whole scheme of living existences on the worlds of space is centered in the divine purpose of elevating all will creatures to the high destiny of the experience of sharing the Father's Paradise perfection. God is neither self-centered nor self-contained; he never ceases to bestow himself upon all self-conscious creatures of the universes.

P36:4, 2:2.6 God is eternally and infinitely perfect; he cannot personally know imperfection as his own experience, but he does share the consciousness of all the experience of imperfectness of all the struggling creatures of the evolutionary universes. The personal and liberating touch of the God of perfection overshadows the hearts and encircles the natures of all those mortal creatures who have ascended to the universe level of moral discernment. In this manner, as well as through the contacts of the divine presence, the Universal Father actually participates in the experience _with_ immaturity and imperfection in the evolving career of every moral being of the entire universe.

P36:5, 2:2.7 Human limitations, potential evil, are not a part of the divine nature, but mortal experience _with_ evil and all man's relations thereto are most certainly a part of God's ever-expanding self-realization in the children of time -- creatures of moral responsibility who have been created or evolved by the Creator.

Part I. The Central Universes  
Chapter 2: Section 3.  
Justice And Righteousness

P36:6, 2:3.1 God is righteous; therefore is he just. God is righteous in all his ways. The justice of the Universal Father cannot be influenced by the acts and performances of his creatures, "for there is no iniquity with God, no respect of persons, no taking of gifts."

P36:7, 2:3.2 How futile to make puerile appeals to such a God to modify his changeless decrees so that we can avoid the just consequences of the operation of his wise natural laws and righteous spiritual mandates! The final result of wholehearted sin is annihilation of the soul.

P37:1, 2:3.3 Cessation of existence is usually decreed at the dispensational or epochal adjudication of the realm or realms. On a world such as Earth it comes at the end of a planetary dispensation.

P37:2, 2:3.4 The sin-identified being who has annihilated his conscience, upon physical death, becomes as though he had not been. There is no resurrection from such a fate; it is everlasting and eternal. The living energy factors of identity are resolved by the transformations of time and the metamorphoses of space into the cosmic potentials whence they once emerged. As for the personality of the iniquitous one, it is deprived of a continuing life vehicle by the creature's failure to make those choices and final decisions which would have assured eternal life. When the continued embrace of sin by the associated mind culminates in complete self-identification with iniquity, then upon the cessation of life, upon cosmic dissolution, such an isolated personality is absorbed into the oversoul of creation, becoming a part of the evolving experience of the Supreme Being. Never again does it appear as a personality; its identity becomes as though it had never been. In the case of an Adjuster-indwelt personality, the experiential spirit values survive in the reality of the continuing Adjuster.

P37:3, 2:3.5 Between actual levels of reality, the personality of the higher level will ultimately triumph over the personality of the lower level. This inevitable outcome of universe controversy is inherent in the fact that divinity of quality equals the degree of reality or actuality of any will creature. Undiluted evil, complete error, willful sin, and unmitigated iniquity are inherently and automatically suicidal. Such attitudes of cosmic unreality can survive in the universe only because of transient mercy-tolerance pending the action of the justice-determining and fairness-finding mechanisms of the universe tribunals of righteous adjudication.

P37:4, 2:3.6 The rule of the Creator is one of creation and spiritualization. He devotes himself to the effective execution of the Paradise plan of progressive mortal ascension, to the rehabilitation of rebels and wrong thinkers, but when all such loving efforts are finally and forever rejected, the final decree of dissolution is executed by forces acting under the jurisdiction of the Ancients of Days.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 2: Section 4.  
The Divine Mercy

P38:1, 2:4.1 Mercy is simply justice tempered by that wisdom which grows out of perfection of knowledge and the full recognition of the natural weaknesses and environmental handicaps of finite creatures. The mercy of God is from everlasting to everlasting; his mercy endures forever. He executes loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, he does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men; he is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort."

P38:2, 2:4.2 God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful. And never is it necessary that any influence be brought to bear upon the Father to call forth his loving-kindness. The creature's need is wholly sufficient to insure the full flow of the Father's tender mercies and his grace. God knows all about his children and treats them all like a loving Earth father would treat his children.

P38:3, 2:4.3 Only the discernment of infinite wisdom enables a righteous God to minister justice and mercy at the same time and in any given universe situation. The heavenly Father is never torn by conflicting attitudes towards his universe children; God is never a victim of attitudinal antagonisms. God's all-knowingness unfailingly directs his mercy in the choosing of that universe conduct which perfectly, simultaneously, and equally satisfies the demands of all his divine attributes and the infinite qualities of his eternal nature.

P38:4, 2:4.4 Mercy is the natural and inevitable offspring of goodness and love. The good nature of a loving Father could not possibly withhold the wise ministry of mercy to each member of every group of his universe children. Eternal justice and divine mercy together constitute what in human experience would be called _fairness_.

P38:5, 2:4.5 Divine mercy represents a fairness technique of adjustment between the universe levels of perfection and imperfection. Mercy is the justice of Supremacy adapted to the situations of the evolving finite, the righteousness of eternity modified to meet the highest interests and universe welfare of the children of time. Mercy is not a contravention of justice but rather an understanding interpretation of the demands of supreme justice as it is fairly applied to the material creatures of the evolving universes. Mercy is the justice of the Paradise Trinity wisely and lovingly visited upon the manifold intelligences of the creations of time and space as it is formulated by divine wisdom and determined by the all-knowing mind of the Universal Father.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 2: Section 5.  
The Love Of God

P38:6, 2:5.1 "God is love"; therefore his only personal attitude towards the affairs of the universe is always a reaction of divine affection. The Father loves us sufficiently to bestow his life upon us. "He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

P39:1, 2:5.2 It is wrong to think of God as being coaxed into loving his children because of the sacrifices of his children, "for the Father himself loves you." It is in response to this paternal affection that God sends the marvelous Adjusters to indwell the minds of men. God's love is universal.

P39:2, 2:5.3 God's love is by nature a fatherly affection. Even during your fiery trials remember, "in all our afflictions he is with us.

P39:3, 2:5.4 God is divinely kind to. When rebels return to righteousness, they are mercifully received, "for our God will abundantly pardon. It is he who blots out your transgressions, and will not remember your sins. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God.

P39:4, 2:5.5 After all, the greatest evidence of the goodness of God and the supreme reason for loving him is the indwelling gift of the Father -- the Adjuster who so patiently awaits the hour when you both shall be eternally made one. Though you cannot find God by searching, if you will submit to the leading of the indwelling spirit, you will be unerringly guided, step-by-step, life-by-life and age-by-age, until you finally unite with the Paradise personality of the Universal Father.

P39:5, 2:5.6 Between you and God there is a spiritual differential which must be bridged by your spirit; but stop and ponder the solemn fact that God lives within you; he has in his own way already bridged the gulf. He has sent of himself, his spirit, to live in you and to toil with you as you pursue your eternal universe career.

P39:6, 2:5.7 Man naturally loves one who is so powerful in creation and in the control thereof, and yet who is so perfect in goodness and so faithful in the loving-kindness which constantly overshadows us. We all love the Father more because of his nature than in recognition of his amazing attributes.

P39:7, 2:5.8 When you observe the Creator struggling so valiantly with the manifold difficulties of time inherent in the evolution of the universes of space, you will discover that we all, including the mortals of the realms, love the Universal Father and all other beings, divine or human, because we discern that these personalities truly love us. The experience of loving is very much a direct response to the experience of being loved. Knowing that God loves us, we should continue to love him supremely.

P40:1, 2:5.9 The Father's love follows us now and throughout the endless circle of the eternal ages. As you ponder the loving nature of God, there is only one reasonable and natural personality reaction thereto: You will increasingly love your Maker; you will yield to God an affection analogous to that given by a child to an earthly parent; for, as a father, a real father, a true father, loves his children, so the Universal Father loves and forever seeks the welfare of his created sons and daughters.

P40:2, 2:5.10 The love of God is an intelligent and farseeing parental affection. The divine love functions in unified association with divine wisdom and all other infinite characteristics of the perfect nature of the Universal Father. God is love, but love is not God. The greatest manifestation of the divine love for mortal beings is observed in the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters. It is the indwelling Adjuster who individualizes the love of God to each human soul.

P40:3, 2:5.11 At times we may be almost pained to be compelled to portray the divine affection of the heavenly Father for his universe children by the employment of the human word symbol _love._ This term, even though it does connote man's highest concept of the mortal relations of respect and devotion, is so frequently designative of so much of human relationship that is wholly ignoble and utterly unfit to be known by any word that is also used to indicate the matchless affection of the living God for his universe creatures. One cannot make use of some supernal and exclusive term that would convey to the mind of man the true nature and exquisitely beautiful significance of the divine affection of the Paradise Father.

P40:4, 2:5.12 When man loses sight of the love of a personal God, the kingdom of God becomes merely the kingdom of good. Notwithstanding the infinite unity of the divine nature, love is the dominant characteristic of all God's personal dealings with his creatures.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 2: Section 6.  
The Goodness Of God

P40:5, 2:6.1 In the physical universe we may see the divine beauty, in the intellectual world we may discern eternal truth, but the goodness of God is found also in the spiritual world of personal religious experience. God could be great and absolute, somehow even intelligent and personal, in philosophy, but in religion God must also be moral; he must be good. Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God. This goodness of God is a part of the personality of God, and its full revelation appears as the personal religious experience of his children.

P40:6, 2:6.2 Evolutionary religion may become ethical, but only revealed religion becomes truly and spiritually moral. The olden concept that God is a Deity dominated by kingly morality was portrayed by Jesus to that affectionately touching level of intimate family morality of the parent-child relationship, than which there is none more tender and beautiful in mortal experience.

P41:1, 2:6.3 The "richness of the goodness of God leads erring man to repentance." "God is good; he is the eternal refuge of the souls of men." "The Lord God is merciful and gracious. He is long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth." "Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts him." "The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. He is the God of salvation." "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up the wounds of the soul. He is man's all-powerful benefactor."

P41:2, 2:6.4 The concept of God as a king-judge, although it fostered a high moral standard and created a law-respecting people as a group, left the individual believer in a sad position of insecurity respecting his status in time and in eternity. The later Hebrew prophets proclaimed God to be a Father to Israel; Jesus revealed God as the Father of each human being. The entire mortal concept of God is transcendently illuminated by the life of Jesus. Selflessness is inherent in parental love. God loves not _like_ a father, but _as_ a father. He is the Paradise Father of every universe personality.

P41:3, 2:6.5 Righteousness implies that God is the source of the moral law of the universe. Truth exhibits God as a revealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves affection, seeks understanding fellowship such as exists between parent and child. Righteousness may be the divine thought, but love is a father's attitude. The erroneous supposition that the righteousness of God was irreconcilable with the selfless love of the heavenly Father presupposed absence of unity in the nature of Deity and led directly to the elaboration of the atonement doctrine, which is a philosophic assault upon both the unity and the free-willness of God.

P41:4, 2:6.6 The affectionate heavenly Father, whose spirit indwells his children on earth, is not a divided personality -- one of justice and one of mercy -- neither does it require a mediator to secure the Father's favor or forgiveness. Strict retributive justice does not dominate divine righteousness; God as a father transcends God as a judge.

P41:5, 2:6.7 God is never wrathful, vengeful, or angry. The Father is not an inconsistent personality; the divine unity is perfect.

P41:6, 2:6.8 God loves the sinner and _hates_ the sin: such a statement is true philosophically, but God is a transcendent personality, and persons can only love and hate other persons. Sin is not a person. God loves the sinner because he is a personality reality (potentially eternal), while towards sin God strikes no personal attitude, for sin is not a spiritual reality; it is not personal; therefore does only the justice of God take cognizance of its existence. The love of God saves the sinner; the law of God destroys the sin. This attitude of the divine nature would apparently change if the sinner finally identified himself wholly with sin just as the same mortal mind may also fully identify itself with the indwelling spirit Adjuster. Such a sin-identified mortal would then become wholly unspiritual in nature (and therefore personally unreal) and would experience eventual extinction of being and spirit. Unreality, even incompleteness of creature nature, cannot exist forever in a progressing real and increasingly spiritual universe.

P42:1, 2:6.9 Facing the world of personality, God is discovered to be a loving person; facing the spiritual world, he is a personal love; in religious experience he is both. Love identifies the volitional will of God. The goodness of God rests at the bottom of the divine free-willness -- the universal tendency to love, show mercy, manifest patience, and minister forgiveness.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 2: Section 7.  
Divine Truth And Beauty

P42:2, 2:7.1 All finite knowledge and creature understanding are _relative._ Information and intelligence, gleaned from even high sources, is only relatively complete, locally accurate, and personally true.

P42:3, 2:7.2 Physical facts are fairly uniform, but truth is a living and flexible factor in the philosophy of the universe. Evolving personalities are only partially wise and relatively true in their communications. They can be certain only as far as their personal experience extends. That which apparently may be wholly true in one place may be only relatively true in another segment of creation.

P42:4, 2:7.3 Divine truth, final truth, is uniform and universal, but the story of things spiritual, as it is told by numerous individuals hailing from various spheres, may sometimes vary in details owing to this relativity in the completeness of knowledge and in the repleteness of personal experience as well as in the length and extent of that experience. While the laws and decrees, the thoughts and attitudes, of the First Great Source and Center are eternally, infinitely, and universally true; at the same time, their application to, and adjustment for, every universe, system, world, and created intelligence, are in accordance with the plans and technique of the Creator, as well as in harmony with the local plans and procedures of the Infinite Spirit.

P42:5, 2:7.4 The false science of materialism would sentence mortal man to become an outcast in the universe. Such partial knowledge is potentially evil; it is knowledge composed of both good and evil. Truth is beautiful because it is both replete and symmetrical. When man searches for truth, he pursues the divinely real.

P42:6, 2:7.5 Philosophers commit their gravest error when they are misled into the fallacy of abstraction, the practice of focusing the attention upon one aspect of reality and then of pronouncing such an isolated aspect to be the whole truth. The wise philosopher will always look for the creative design that is behind, and pre-existent to, all universe phenomena. The creator thought invariably precedes creative action.

P42:7, 2:7.6 Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth. Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be _acted out;_ it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience. Divine truth is best known by its _spiritual flavor_.

P42:8, 2:7.7 The eternal quest is for unification, for divine coherence. The far-flung physical universe coheres in the Isle of Paradise; the intellectual universe coheres in the God of mind, the Conjoint Actor; the spiritual universe is coherent. But the isolated mortal of time and space coheres in God the Father through the direct relationship between the indwelling Thought Adjuster and the Universal Father. Man's Adjuster is a fragment of God and everlastingly seeks for divine unification; it coheres with, and in, the Paradise Deity of the First Source and Center.

P43:1, 2:7.8 The discernment of supreme beauty is the discovery and integration of reality: The discernment of the divine goodness in the eternal truth, that is ultimate beauty. Even the charm of human art consists in the harmony of its unity.

P43:2, 2:7.9 The overstressed and isolated morality of modern religion, which fails to hold the devotion and loyalty of many twentieth-century men, would rehabilitate itself if, in addition to its moral mandates, it would give equal consideration to the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience, and to the beauties of the physical creation, the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur of genuine character achievement.

P43:3, 2:7.10 The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul. Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly coordinated and unified in God, who is love.

P43:4, 2:7.11 All truth -- material, philosophic, or spiritual -- is both beautiful and good. All real beauty -- material art or spiritual symmetry -- is both true and good. All genuine goodness -- whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry -- is equally true and beautiful. Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.

P43:5, 2:7.12 Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are coordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. The real purpose of all universe education is to affect the better co-ordination of the isolated child of the worlds with the larger realities of his expanding experience. Reality is finite on the human level, infinite and eternal on the higher and divine levels.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 3  
The Attributes Of God

P44:1, 3:0.1 God is a spiritual unity. God is everywhere present; the Universal Father rules the circle of eternity. "God has given us eternal life, and this life is available to all of his children." Living righteously is the only requirement.

P44:2, 3:0.2 Creatorship is hardly an attribute of God; it is rather the aggregate of his acting nature. And this universal function of creatorship is eternally manifested as it is conditioned and controlled by all the coordinated attributes of the infinite and divine reality of the First Source and Center.

P44:3, 3:0.3 We sincerely doubt whether any one characteristic of the divine nature can be regarded as being antecedent to the others, but if such were the case, then the creatorship nature of Deity would take precedence over all other natures, activities, and attributes. And the creatorship of Deity culminates in the universal truth of the Fatherhood of God.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 3: Section 1.  
God's Everywhereness

P44:4, 3:1.1 The ability of the Universal Father to be everywhere present, and at the same time, constitutes his omnipresence. God alone can be in two places, in numberless places, at the same time. God is simultaneously present "in heaven above and on the earth beneath"; as the Psalmist exclaimed: "Whither shall I go from your spirit...or, whither shall I flee from your presence?"

P44:5, 3:1.2 The Universal Father is all the time present in all parts and in all hearts of his far-flung creation. He is "the fullness of him who fills all and in all," and "who works all in all," and further, the concept of his personality is such that "the heavens cannot contain him." It is literally true that God is all and in all. But even that is not _all_ of God. The Infinite can be finally revealed only in infinity; the cause can never be fully comprehended by an analysis of effects; the living God is immeasurably greater than the sum total of creation that has come into being as a result of the creative acts of his unfettered free will. God is revealed throughout the cosmos, but the cosmos can never contain or encompass the entirety of the infinity of God.

P45:1, 3:1.3 The Father's presence unceasingly patrols the master universe. "His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit to the ends of it; and there is nothing hidden from the light thereof."

P45:2, 3:1.4 The creature not only exists in God, but God also lives in the creature. "We know we dwell in him because he lives in us; he has given us his spirit. This gift from the Paradise Father is man's inseparable companion." "He is the ever-present and all-pervading God." "The spirit of the everlasting Father is concealed in the mind of every mortal child." "Man goes forth searching for a friend while that very friend lives within his own heart." "The true God is not afar off; he is a part of us; his spirit speaks from within us." "The Father lives in the child. God is always with us. He is the guiding spirit of eternal destiny."

P45:3, 3:1.5 Truly of the human race has it been said, "You are of God" because "he who dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him." Even in wrongdoing you torment the indwelling gift of God, for the Thought Adjuster must needs go through the consequences of evil thinking with the human mind of its incarceration.

P45:4, 3:1.6 The omnipresence of God is in reality a part of his infinite nature; space constitutes no barrier to Deity. God is, in perfection and without limitation, discernibly present only on Paradise and in the central universe.

P45:5, 3:1.7 The Universal Controller is potentially present in the gravity circuits of the Isle of Paradise in all parts of the universe at all times and in the same degree, in accordance with the mass, in response to the physical demands for this presence, and because of the inherent nature of all creation which causes all things to adhere and consist in him. Likewise is the First Source and Center potentially present in the Unqualified Absolute, the repository of the uncreated universes of the eternal future. God thus potentially pervades the physical universes of the past, present, and future. He is the primordial foundation of the coherence of the so-called material creation.

P45:6, 3:1.8 The mind presence of God is correlated with the absolute mind of the Conjoint Actor, the Infinite Spirit, but in the finite creations it is better discerned in the everywhere functioning of the cosmic mind of the Paradise Master Spirits. Just as the First Source and Center is potentially present in the mind circuits of the Conjoint Actor, so is he potentially present in the tensions of the Universal Absolute.

P46:1, 3:1.9 The everywhere-present spirit of the Universal Father is coordinated with the function of the universal spirit presence of the Eternal Spirit and the everlasting divine potential of the Deity Absolute.

P46:2, 3:1.10 Concerning God's presence in a planet, system, constellation, or a universe, the degree of such presence in any creational unit is a measure of the degree of the evolving presence of the Supreme Being: It is determined by the en masse recognition of God and loyalty to him on the part of the vast universe organization, running down to the systems and planets themselves.

P46:3, 3:1.11 The _fact_ of God's presence in creature minds is determined by whether or not they are indwelt by Father fragments, such as the Mystery Monitors, but his _effective_ presence is determined by the degree of cooperation accorded these indwelling Adjusters by the minds of their sojourn.

P46:4, 3:1.12 The fluctuations of the Father's presence are not due to the changeableness of God. The Father does not retire in seclusion because he has been slighted; his affections are not alienated because of the creature's wrongdoing. Rather, having been endowed with the power of choice (concerning himself), his children, in the exercise of that choice, directly determine the degree and limitations of the Father's divine influence in their own hearts and souls. The Father has freely bestowed himself upon us without limit and without favor.

The Central and Universe  
Chapter 3: Section 2.  
God's Infinite Power

P46:6, 3:2.2 Within the bounds of that which is consistent with the divine nature, it is literally true that "with God all things are possible." The long-drawn-out evolutionary processes of peoples, planets, and universes are under the perfect control of the universe creators and administrators and unfold in accordance with the eternal purpose of the Universal Father, proceeding in harmony and order and in keeping with the all-wise plan of God. There is only one lawgiver. He upholds the worlds in space and swings the universes around the endless circle of the eternal circuit.

P47:1, 3:2.3 Of all the divine attributes, his omnipotence, especially as it prevails in the material universe, is the best understood. Viewed as an unspiritual phenomenon, God is energy. This declaration of physical fact is predicated on the incomprehensible truth that the First Source and Center is the primal cause of the universal physical phenomena of all space. From this divine activity all physical energy and other material manifestations are derived. Light, that is, light without heat, is another of the nonspiritual manifestations of the Deities. And there is still another form of nonspiritual energy that is virtually unknown on Earth; it is as yet unrecognized.

P47:2, 3:2.4 God controls all power; he has made "a way for the lightning"; he has ordained the circuits of all energy. He has decreed the time and manner of the manifestation of all forms of energy-matter. And all these things are held forever in his everlasting grasp -- in the gravitational control centering on nether Paradise. The light and energy of the eternal God thus swing on forever around his majestic circuit, the endless but orderly procession of the starry hosts composing the universe of universes. All creation circles eternally around the Paradise-Personality center of all things and beings.

P47:3, 3:2.5 The omnipotence of the Father pertains to the everywhere dominance of the absolute level, whereon the three energies, material, mindal, and spiritual, are indistinguishable in close proximity to him -- the Source of all things. Creature mind, being neither Paradise monota nor Paradise spirit, is not directly responsive to the Universal Father. God _adjusts_ with the mind of imperfection -- with Earth mortals through the Thought Adjusters.

P47:4, 3:2.6 The Universal Father is not a transient force, a shifting power, or a fluctuating energy. The power and wisdom of the Father are wholly adequate to cope with any and all universe exigencies. As the emergencies of human experience arise, he has foreseen them all, and therefore he does not react to the affairs of the universe in a detached way but rather in accordance with the dictates of eternal wisdom and in consonance with the mandates of infinite judgment. Regardless of appearances, the power of God is not functioning in the universe as a blind force.

P47:5, 3:2.7 Situations do arise in which it appears that natural laws have been suspended, that misadaptations have been recognized, and that an effort is being made to rectify the situation; but such is not the case. Such concepts of God have their origin in the limited range of your viewpoint, in the finiteness of your comprehension, and in the circumscribed scope of your survey; such misunderstanding of God is due to the profound ignorance you enjoy regarding the existence of the higher laws of the realm, the magnitude of the Father's character, the infinity of his attributes, and the fact of his free-willness.

P47:6, 3:2.8 The planetary creatures of God's spirit indwelling, scattered hither and yon throughout the universes of space, are so nearly infinite in number and order, their intellects are so diverse, their minds are so limited and sometimes so gross, their vision is so curtailed and localized, that it is almost impossible to formulate generalizations of law adequately expressive of the Father's infinite attributes and at the same time to any degree comprehensible to these created intelligences. God's doings are all purposeful, intelligent, wise, kind, and eternally considerate of the best good, not always of an individual being, an individual race, an individual planet, or even an individual universe; but they are for the welfare and best good of all concerned, from the lowest to the highest. In the epochs of time the welfare of the part may sometimes appear to differ from the welfare of the whole; in the circle of eternity such apparent differences are nonexistent.

P48:1, 3:2.9 We are all a part of the family of God, and we must therefore sometimes share in the family discipline. Many of the acts of God which so disturb and confuse us are the result of the decisions and final rulings of all-wisdom, empowering the Conjoint Actor to execute the choosing of the infallible will of the infinite mind, to enforce the decisions of the personality of perfection, whose survey, vision, and solicitude embrace the highest and eternal welfare of all his vast and far-flung creation.

P48:2, 3:2.10 Thus it is that your detached, sectional, finite, gross, and highly materialistic viewpoint and the limitations inherent in the nature of your being constitute such a handicap that you are unable to see, comprehend, or know the wisdom and kindness of many of the divine acts which to you seem fraught with such crushing cruelty, and which seem to be characterized by such utter indifference to the comfort and welfare, to the planetary happiness and personal prosperity, of your fellow creatures. It is because of the limits of human vision, it is because of your circumscribed understanding and finite comprehension, that you misunderstand the motives, and pervert the purposes, of God. But many things occur on the evolutionary worlds that are not the personal doings of the Universal Father.

P48:3, 3:2.11 The divine omnipotence is perfectly coordinated with the other attributes of the personality of God. The power of God is, ordinarily, only limited in its universe spiritual manifestation by three conditions or situations:

  1. By the nature of God, especially by his infinite love, by truth, beauty, and goodness.

  2. By the will of God, by his mercy ministry and fatherly relationship with the personalities of the universe.

  3. By the law of God, by the righteousness and justice of the eternal Paradise Trinity.

P48:7, 3:2.12 God is unlimited in power, divine in nature, final in will, infinite in attributes, eternal in wisdom, and absolute in reality. Outside of Paradise and the central universe of Heaven, everything pertaining to God is limited by the evolutionary presence of the Supreme, conditioned by the eventuating presence of the Ultimate, and coordinated by the three existential Absolutes -- Deity, Universal, and Unqualified. And God's presence is thus limited because such is the will of God.

Part I. The Central Universes  
Chapter 3: Section 3.  
God's Universal Knowledge

P48:5, 3:3.1 "God knows all things." The divine mind is conscious of, and conversant with, the thought of all creation. His knowledge of events is universal and perfect. The divine entities going out from him are a part of him; he who "balances the clouds" is also "perfect in knowledge." "The eyes of the Lord are in every place." Said your great teacher of the insignificant sparrow, "One of them shall not fall to the ground without my Father's knowledge," and also, "The very hairs of your head are numbered." "He tells the number of the stars; he calls them all by their names."

P49:1, 3:3.2 The Universal Father is the only personality in all the universe who does actually know the number of the stars and planets of space. All the worlds of every universe are constantly within the consciousness of God. He also says: "I have surely seen the affliction of my people, I have heard their cry, and I know their sorrows." For "the Lord looks from heaven; he beholds all the sons of men; from the place of his habitation he looks upon all the inhabitants of the earth." Every creature child may truly say: "He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." "God knows our downs and our uprisings; he understands our thoughts afar off and is acquainted with all our ways." "All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do."

P49:2, 3:3.3 God is possessed of unlimited power to know all things; his consciousness is universal. His personal circuit encompasses all personalities, and his knowledge of even the lowly creatures and directly through the indwelling Thought Adjusters. And furthermore, the Infinite Spirit is all the time everywhere present.

P49:3, 3:3.4 We are not wholly certain as to whether or not God chooses to foreknow events of sin. But even if God should foreknow the freewill acts of his children, such foreknowledge does not in the least abrogate their freedom. One thing is certain: God is never subjected to surprise.

P49:4, 3:3.5 Omnipotence does not imply the power to do the non-doable, the un-godlike act. Neither does omniscience imply the knowing of the unknowable. But such statements can hardly be made comprehensible to the finite mind. The creature can hardly understand the range and limitations of the will of the Creator.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 3: Section 4.  
God's Limitlessness

P49:5, 3:4.1 The successive bestowal of himself upon the universes as they are brought into being in no wise lessens the potential of power or the store of wisdom as they continue to reside and repose in the central personality of Deity. In potential of force, wisdom, and love, the Father has never lessened aught of his possession nor become divested of any attribute of his glorious personality as the result of the unstinted bestowal of himself upon his subordinate creations, and upon the manifold creatures thereof.

P49:6, 3:4.2 The creation of every new universe calls for a new adjustment of gravity; but even if creation should continue indefinitely, eternally, even to infinity, so that eventually the material creation would exist without limitations, still the power of control and co-ordination reposing in the Isle of Paradise would be found equal to, and adequate for, the mastery, control, and co-ordination of such an infinite universe. And subsequent to this bestowal of limitless force and power upon a boundless universe, the Infinite would still be surcharged with the same degree of force and energy; the Unqualified Absolute would still be undiminished; God would still possess the same infinite potential, just as if force, energy, and power had never been poured forth for the endowment of universe upon universe.

P50:1, 3:4.3 And so with wisdom: The fact that mind is so freely distributed to the thinking of the realms in no wise impoverishes the central source of divine wisdom. As the universes multiply, and beings of the realms increase in number to the limits of comprehension, if mind continues without end to be bestowed upon these beings of high and low estate, still will God's central personality continue to embrace the same eternal, infinite, and all-wise mind.

P50:2, 3:4.4 The fact that he sends forth spirit messengers from himself to indwell the men and women of your world and other worlds in no wise lessens his ability to function as a divine and all-powerful spirit personality; and there is absolutely no limit to the extent or number of such spirit Monitors which he can and may send out. This giving of himself to his creatures creates a boundless, almost inconceivable future possibility of progressive and successive existences for these divinely endowed mortals. And this prodigal distribution of himself as these ministering spirit entities in no manner diminishes the wisdom and perfection of truth and knowledge which repose in the person of the all-wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful Father.

P50:3, 3:4.5 To the mortals of time there is a future, but God inhabits eternity. Even though I hail from near the very abiding place of Deity, We cannot presume to speak with perfection of understanding concerning the infinity of many of the divine attributes. Infinity of mind alone can fully comprehend infinity of existence and eternity of action.

P50:4, 3:4.6 Mortal man cannot possibly know the infinitude of the heavenly Father. Finite mind cannot think through such an absolute truth or fact. But this same finite human being can actually _feel_ \-- literally experience -- the full and undiminished impact of such an infinite Father's love. Such a love can be truly experienced, albeit while quality of experience is unlimited, quantity of such an experience is strictly limited by the human capacity for spiritual receptivity and by the associated capacity to love the Father in return.

P50:5, 3:4.7 Finite appreciation of infinite qualities far transcends the logically limited capacities of the creature because of the fact that mortal man is made in the image of God -- there lives within him a fragment of infinity. Therefore man's nearest and dearest approach to God is by and through love, for God is love. And all of such a unique relationship is an actual experience in cosmic sociology, the Creator-creature relationship \-- the Father-child affection.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 3: Section 5.  
The Father Supreme

P50:6, 3:5.1 The Universal Father's choice is always one of unfailing perfection and infinite wisdom.

P51:2, 3:5.3 In the affairs of men's hearts the Universal Father may not always have his way; but in the conduct and destiny of a planet the divine plan prevails; the eternal purpose of wisdom and love triumphs.

P51:3, 3:5.4 As you glimpse the manifold workings and view the staggering immensity of God's well-nigh limitless creation, you may falter in your concept of his primacy, but you should not fail to accept him as securely and everlastingly enthroned at the Paradise center of all things and as the beneficent Father of all intelligent beings. There is but "one God and Father of all, who is above all and in all," "and he is before all things, and in him all things consist."

P51:4, 3:5.5 The uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God. All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain _inevitabilities._ Consider the following:

P51:5, 3:5.6 1. Is _courage_ \-- strength of character -- desirable? Then must man be reared in an environment that necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.

P51:6, 3:5.7 2. Is _altruism_ \-- service of one's fellows -- desirable? Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.

P51:7, 3:5.8 3. Is _hope_ \-- the grandeur of trust -- desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.

P51:8, 3:5.9 4. Is _faith_ \-- the supreme assertion of human thought -- desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.

P51:9, 3:5.10 5. Is the _love of truth_ and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible?

P51:10, 3:5.11 6. Is _idealism_ \-- the approaching concept of the divine -- desirable? Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.

P51:11, 3:5.12 7. Is _loyalty_ \-- devotion to highest duty -- desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion. The valor of devotion to duty consists in the implied danger of default.

P51:12, 3:5.13 8. Is _unselfishness_ \-- the spirit of self-forgetfulness -- desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.

P51:13, 3:5.14 9. Is _pleasure_ \-- the satisfaction of happiness -- desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.

P52:1, 3:5.15 Throughout the universe, every unit is regarded as a part of the whole. Survival of the part is dependent on co-operation with the plan and purpose of the whole, the wholehearted desire and perfect willingness to do the Father's divine will. The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgment) would be a world without _free_ intelligence. In the universe there are a billion perfect worlds with their perfect inhabitants, but evolving man must be fallible if he is to be free. Free and inexperienced intelligence cannot possibly at first be uniformly wise. The possibility of mistaken judgment (evil) becomes sin only when the human will consciously endorses and knowingly embraces a deliberate immoral judgment.

P52:2, 3:5.16 The full appreciation of truth, beauty, and goodness is inherent in the perfection of the divine universe. The inhabitants of the worlds do not require the potential of relative value levels as a choice stimulus; such perfect beings are able to identify and choose the good in the absence of all contrastive and thought-compelling moral situations. But all such perfect beings are, in moral nature and spiritual status, what they are by virtue of the fact of existence. They have experientially earned advancement only within their inherent status. Mortal man earns even his status as an ascension candidate by his own faith and hope. Everything divine that the human mind grasps and the human soul acquires is an experiential attainment; it is a _reality_ of personal experience and is therefore a unique possession in contrast to the inherent goodness and righteousness of the inerrant personalities.

P52:3, 3:5.17 The creatures of the Heavens are naturally brave, but they are not courageous in the human sense. They are innately kind and considerate, but hardly altruistic in the human way. They are expectant of a pleasant future, but not hopeful in the exquisite manner of the trusting mortal of the uncertain evolutionary spheres. They have faith in the stability of the universe, but they are utter strangers to that saving faith whereby mortal man climbs from the status of an animal up to the portals of Paradise. They love the truth, but they know nothing of its soul-saving qualities. They are idealists, but they were born that way; they are wholly ignorant of the ecstasy of becoming such by exhilarating choice. They are loyal, but they have never experienced the thrill of wholehearted and intelligent devotion to duty in the face of temptation to default. They are unselfish, but they never gained such levels of experience by the magnificent conquest of a belligerent self. They enjoy pleasure, but they do not comprehend the sweetness of the pleasure escape from the pain potential.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 3: Section 6.  
The Father's Primacy

P52:4, 3:6.1 With divine selflessness, consummate generosity, the Universal Father's hand is on the mighty lever of the circumstances of the universal realms; he wields the all-powerful veto scepter of his eternal purpose with unchallengeable authority over the welfare and destiny of the outstretched, whirling, and ever-circling creation.

P52:5, 3:6.2 The sovereignty of God is unlimited; it is the fundamental fact of all creation. The universe was not inevitable. The universe is not an accident, neither is it self-existent. The universe is a work of creation and is therefore wholly subject to the will of the Creator. The will of God is divine truth, living love; therefore are the perfecting creations of the evolutionary universes characterized by goodness -- nearness to divinity; by potential evil -- remoteness from divinity.

P53:1, 3:6.3 All religious philosophy, sooner or later, arrives at the concept of unified universe rule, of one God. Universe causes cannot be lower than universe effects. The source of the streams of universe life and of the cosmic mind must be above the levels of their manifestation. The human mind cannot be consistently explained in terms of the lower orders of existence. Man's mind can be truly comprehended only by recognizing the reality of higher orders of thought and purposive will. Man as a moral being is inexplicable unless the reality of the Universal Father is acknowledged.

P53:2, 3:6.4 The mechanistic philosopher professes to reject the idea of a universal and sovereign will, the very sovereign will whose activity in the elaboration of universe laws he so deeply reverences. What unintended homage the mechanist pays the law-Creator when he conceives such laws to be self-acting and self-explanatory!

P53:3, 3:6.5 It is a great blunder to humanize God, except in the concept of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, but even that is not so stupid as completely to _mechanize_ the idea of the First Great Source and Center.

P53:4, 3:6.6 Does the Paradise Father suffer? He has said of the mortal races, "In all your afflictions I am afflicted." He unquestionably experiences a fatherly and sympathetic understanding; he may truly suffer, but we cannot comprehend the nature thereof.

P53:5, 3:6.7 The infinite and eternal Ruler of the universe of universes is power, form, energy, process, pattern, principle, presence, and idealized reality. But he is more; he is personal; he experiences self-consciousness of divinity, executes the mandates of a creative mind, pursues the satisfaction of the realization of an eternal purpose, and manifests a Father's love and affection for his universe children.

P53:6, 3:6.8 God the Father loves mankind. God the Spirit inspires the children of the universe to the ever-ascending adventure of finding God the Father by the ways ordained through the ministry of the grace of God the Spirit.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 4  
God's Relation To The Universe

P54:1, 4:0.1 The Universal Father has an eternal purpose pertaining to the material, intellectual, and spiritual phenomena of the universes, which he is executing throughout all time. God created the universes of his own free and sovereign will, and he created them in accordance with his all-wise and eternal purpose. It is doubtful whether anyone except the Paradise Residents really knows very much about the eternal purpose of God.

P54:2, 4:0.2 It is easy to deduce that the purpose in creating the perfect central universe and Heaven was purely the satisfaction of the divine nature. Heaven may serve as the pattern creation for all other universes and as the finishing school for the pilgrims of time on their way to Paradise; however, such a supernal creation must exist primarily for the satisfaction of the perfect and infinite Creator.

P54:3, 4:0.3 The amazing plan for perfecting evolutionary mortals and, after their attainment of Paradise is by no means the exclusive occupation of the universe intelligences. There are, indeed, many other fascinating pursuits that occupy the time and enlist the energies of the celestial hosts.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 4: Section 1.  
The Universe Attitude Of The Father

P54:4, 4:1.1 For ages the inhabitants of Earth have misunderstood the providence of God. There is a providence of divine outworking on your world, but it is not the childish, arbitrary, and material ministry many mortals have conceived it to be. The providence of God consists in the interlocking activities of the celestial beings and the divine spirits who, in accordance with cosmic law, unceasingly work in the unity of God and for the spiritual advancement of his universe children.

P54:5, 4:1.2 Can you not advance in your concept of God's dealing with man to that level where you recognize that the watchword of the universe is _progress?_ Through long ages the human race has struggled to reach its present position. Throughout all these millenniums Providence has been working out the plan of progressive evolution. The two thoughts are not opposed in practice, only in man's mistaken concepts. Divine providence is never arrayed in opposition to true human progress, either temporal or spiritual. Providence is always consistent with the unchanging and perfect nature of the supreme God.

P55:1, 4:1.3 "God is faithful and just." "His faithfulness is established in the very skies." "Your faithfulness is to all generations; you have established the earth and it abides." "He is a faithful Creator."

P55:2, 4:1.4 There is no limitation of the forces that the Father may use to uphold his purpose and sustain his creatures. "The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." "Behold, he who keeps us shall neither slumber nor sleep." "We know that all things work together for good to those who love God," "for the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers."

P55:3, 4:1.5 God upholds "all things by the word of his power." And when new worlds are born, God not only creates, but he "preserves them all." God constantly upholds all things material and all beings spiritual. The universes are eternally stable. There is stability in the midst of apparent instability. There is an underlying order and security in the midst of the energy upheavals and the physical cataclysms of the starry realms.

P55:4, 4:1.6 The Universal Father has not withdrawn from the management of the universes; he is not an inactive Deity. If God should retire as the present upholder of all creation, there would immediately occur a universal collapse. Except for God, there would be no such thing as _reality._ At this very moment, as during the remote ages of the past and in the eternal future, God continues to uphold. The divine reach extends around the circle of eternity. The universe is not wound up like a clock to run just so long and then cease to function; all things are constantly being renewed. The Father unceasingly pours forth energy, light, and life. The work of God is literal as well as spiritual. "He stretches out the north over the empty space and hangs the earth upon nothing."

P55:5, 4:1.7 A being of my order is able to discover ultimate harmony and to detect far-reaching and profound co-ordination in the routine affairs of universe administration. Much that seems disjointed and haphazard to the mortal mind appears orderly and constructive to my understanding. But there is very much going on in the universes that we do not fully comprehend. We have a general understanding of how these agencies and personalities operate and intimately familiarity with the workings of the accredited spirit intelligences of the grand universe. Notwithstanding our knowledge of the phenomena of the universes, we are constantly confronted with cosmic reactions that we cannot fully fathom. We are continually encountering apparently fortuitous conspiracies of the interassociation of forces, energies, intellects, and spirits, which we cannot satisfactorily explain.  
P55:6, 4:1.8 We may be competent to trace out and to analyze the working of all phenomena directly resulting from the functioning of the Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit, and, to a large extent, the Isle of Paradise but often our perplexity is occasioned by encountering what appears to be the performance of their mysterious co-ordinates, the three Absolutes of potentiality. These Absolutes seem to supersede matter, to transcend mind, and to supervene spirit. We may be constantly confused and often perplexed by our inability to comprehend these complex transactions that we attribute to the presences and performances of the Unqualified Absolute, the Deity Absolute, and the Universal Absolute.

P56:1, 4:1.9 These Absolutes must be the not-fully-revealed presences abroad in the universe which, in the phenomena of space potency and in the function of other superultimates, render it impossible for physicists, philosophers, or even religionists to predict with certainty as to just how the primordials of force, concept, or spirit will respond to demands made in a complex reality situation involving supreme adjustments and ultimate values.

P56:2, 4:1.10 There is also an organic unity in the universes of time and space which seems to underlie the whole fabric of cosmic events. This living presence of the evolving Supreme Being, this Immanence of the Projected Incomplete, is inexplicably manifested ever and anon by what appears to be an amazingly fortuitous co-ordination of apparently unrelated universe happenings. This must be the function of Providence -- the realm of the Supreme Being and the Conjoint Actor.

P56:3, 4:1.11 We are inclined to believe that it is this far-flung and generally unrecognizable control of the co-ordination and interassociation of all phases and forms of universe activity that causes such a variegated and apparent medley of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual phenomena so unerringly to work out to the glory of God and for the good of men.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 4: Section 2.  
God And Nature

P56:5, 4:2.1 Nature is in a limited sense the physical habit of God. The conduct, or action, of God is qualified and provisionally modified by the experimental plans and the evolutionary patterns of a local universe, a constellation, a system, or a planet. God acts in accordance with a well-defined, unchanging, immutable law throughout the wide-spreading master universe; but he modifies the patterns of his action so as to contribute to the co-ordinate and balanced conduct of each universe, constellation, system, planet, and personality in accordance with the local objects, aims, and plans of the finite projects of evolutionary unfolding.  
P56:6, 4:2.2 Therefore, nature, as mortal man understands it, presents the underlying foundation and fundamental background of a changeless Deity and his immutable laws, modified by, fluctuating because of, and experiencing upheavals through, the working of the local plans, purposes, patterns, and conditions which have been inaugurated and are being carried out by the local universe, constellation, system, and planetary forces and personalities.

P56:7, 4:2.3 Nature is a time-space resultant of two cosmic factors: first, the immutability, perfection, and rectitude of Paradise Deity, and second, the experimental plans, executive blunders, insurrectionary errors and incompleteness of development. Nature therefore carries a uniform, unchanging, majestic, and marvelous thread of perfection from the circle of eternity; but in each universe, on each planet, and in each individual life, this nature is modified, qualified, and perchance marred by the acts, the mistakes, and the disloyalties of the creatures of the evolutionary systems and universes; and therefore must nature ever be of a changing mood, whimsical withal, though stable underneath, and varied in accordance with the operating procedures of a local universe.

P57:1, 4:2.4 Nature is the perfection of Paradise divided by the incompletion of the unfinished universes. This quotient is thus expressive of both the perfect and the partial, of both the eternal and the temporal. Continuing evolution modifies nature by augmenting the content of Paradise perfection and by diminishing the content of the disharmony of relative reality.

P57:2, 4:2.5 God is not personally present in nature or in any of the forces of nature, for the phenomenon of nature is the superimposition of the imperfections of progressive evolution and, sometimes, the consequences of insurrectionary rebellion, upon the Paradise foundations of God's universal law. As it appears on such a world as Earth, nature can never be the adequate expression, the true representation, the faithful portrayal, of an all-wise and infinite God.

P57:3, 4:2.6 Nature on Earth is a qualification of the laws of perfection by the evolutionary plans of the local universe. What a travesty to worship nature because it is in a limited, qualified sense pervaded by God; because it is a phase of the universal and, therefore, divine power! Nature also is a manifestation of the unfinished, the incomplete, the imperfect outworking of the development, growth, and progress of a universe experiment in cosmic evolution.

P57:4, 4:2.7 The apparent defects of the natural world are not indicative of any such corresponding defects in the character of God. Rather are such observed imperfections merely the inevitable stop-moments in the exhibition of the ever-moving reel of the infinity picture. It is these very defect-interruptions of perfection-continuity that make it possible for the finite mind of material man to catch a fleeting glimpse of divine reality in time and space. The material manifestations of divinity appear defective to the evolutionary mind of man only because mortal man persists in viewing the phenomena of nature through natural eyes, human vision unaided by revelation, its compensatory substitute on the worlds of time.

P57:5, 4:2.8 And nature is marred, her beautiful face is scarred, her features are seared, by the rebellion, the misconduct, the misthinking of the myriads of creatures who are a part of nature, but who have contributed to her disfigurement in time. No, nature is not God. Nature is not an object of worship.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 4: Section 3.  
God's Unchanging Character

P57:6, 4:3.1 All too long has man thought of God as one like himself. God is not, never was, and never will be jealous of man or any other being in the universe of universes. Knowing that the God intended man to be the masterpiece of the planetary creation, to be the ruler of all the earth, the sight of his being dominated by his own baser passions, the spectacle of his bowing down before idols of wood, stone, gold, and selfish ambition \-- these sordid scenes stir God to be jealous _for_ man, but never of him.

P57:7, 4:3.2 The eternal God is incapable of wrath and anger in the sense of these human emotions and as man understands such reactions. These sentiments are mean and despicable; they are hardly worthy of being called human, much less divine; and such attitudes are utterly foreign to the perfect nature and gracious character of the Universal Father.

P58:2, 4:3.4 God repents of nothing he has ever done, now does, or ever will do. He is all-wise as well as all-powerful. Man's wisdom grows out of the trials and errors of human experience; God's wisdom consists in the unqualified perfection of his infinite universe insight, and this divine foreknowledge effectively directs the creative free will.

P58:3, 4:3.5 The Universal Father never does anything that causes subsequent sorrow or regret. The Father neither makes mistakes, harbors regrets, nor experiences sorrows, he is a being with a father's affection, and his heart is undoubtedly grieved when his children fail to attain the spiritual levels they are capable of reaching with the assistance which has been so freely provided by his Messengers.

P58:4, 4:3.6 The infinite goodness of the Father is beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of time; hence must there always be afforded a contrast with comparative evil (not sin) for the effective exhibition of all phases of relative goodness. Perfection of divine goodness can be discerned by mortal imperfection of insight only because it stands in contrastive association with relative imperfection in the relationships of time and matter in the motions of space.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 4: Section 4.  
The Realization Of God

P58:6, 4:4.1 God is the only stationary, self-contained, and changeless being in the whole universe of universes, having no outside, no beyond, no past, and no future. God is purposive energy (creative spirit) and absolute will, and these are self-existent and universal.

P58:7, 4:4.2 Since God is self-existent, he is absolutely independent. The very identity of God is inimical to change. "I, the Lord, change not." God is immutable; but not until you achieve Paradise status can you even begin to understand how God can pass from simplicity to complexity, from identity to variation, from quiescence to motion, from infinity to finitude, from the divine to the human, and from unity to duality. And God can thus modify the manifestations of his absoluteness because divine immutability does not imply immobility; God has will -- he _is_ will.

P58:8, 4:4.3 God is the being of absolute self-determination; there are no limits to his universe reactions save those which are self-imposed, and his freewill acts are conditioned only by those divine qualities and perfect attributes which inherently characterize his eternal nature. Therefore is God related to the universe as the being of final goodness plus a free will of creative infinity.

P58:9, 4:4.4 The Father-Absolute is the creator of the central and perfect universe. Personality, goodness, and numerous other characteristics, God shares with man and other beings, but infinity of will is his alone. God is limited in his creative acts only by the sentiments of his eternal nature and by the dictates of his infinite wisdom. God personally chooses only that which is infinitely perfect, hence the supernal perfection of the central universe fully shares his divinity, even phases of his absoluteness, they are not altogether limited by that finality of wisdom which directs the Father's infinity of will. The Father is infinite and eternal, but to deny the possibility of his volitional self-limitation amounts to a denial of this very concept of his volitional absoluteness.

P59:1, 4:4.5 God's absoluteness pervades all levels of universe reality. And the whole of this absolute nature is subject to the relationship of the Creator to his universe creature family. His vast family relationship with the creatures of time God is governed by _divine sentiment._ First and last -- eternally -- the infinite God is a _Father._ Of all the possible titles by which he might appropriately be known, God of all creation is the Universal Father.

P59:2, 4:4.6 In God the Father freewill performances are not ruled by power, nor are they guided by intellect alone; the divine personality is defined as consisting in spirit and manifesting himself to the universes as love. In all his personal relations with the creature personalities of the universes, the First Source and Center is always and consistently a loving Father. God is a Father in the highest sense of the term. He is eternally motivated by the perfect idealism of divine love, and that tender nature finds its strongest expression and greatest satisfaction in loving and being loved.

P59:3, 4:4.7 In science, God is the First Cause; in religion, the universal and loving Father; in philosophy, the one being who exists by himself, not dependent on any other being for existence but beneficently conferring reality of existence on all things and upon all other beings. But it requires revelation to show that the First Cause of science and the self-existent Unity of philosophy are the God of religion, full of mercy and goodness and pledged to effect the eternal survival of his children on Earth.

P59:4, 4:4.8 We crave the concept of the Infinite, but we worship the experience-idea of God, our anywhere and any-time capacity to grasp the personality and divinity factors of our highest concept of Deity.

P59:5, 4:4.9 The consciousness of a victorious human life on Earth is born of that creature faith which dares to challenge each recurring episode of existence when confronted with the awful spectacle of human limitations, by the unfailing declaration: Even if we cannot do this, there lives in us one who can and will do it, a part of the Father-Absolute of the universe of universes. And that is "the victory which overcomes the world, even your faith.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 4: Section 5.  
Erroneous Ideas Of God

P59:6, 4:5.1 Religious tradition is the imperfectly preserved record of the experiences of the God-knowing men of past ages, but such records are untrustworthy as guides for religious living or as the source of true information about the Universal Father. Such ancient beliefs have been invariably altered by the fact that primitive man was a mythmaker.

P60:2, 4:5.3 The people of Earth continue to suffer from the influence of primitive concepts of God. The God who goes on a rampage in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who inflict their judgments of displeasure in times of famine and flood -- this is the God of primitive religion; it is not the God who lives and rule the universes. Such concepts are a relic of the times when men supposed that the universe was under the guidance and domination of the whims of such an imaginary God. But mortal man is beginning to realize that he lives in a realm of comparative law and order as far as concerns the administrative policies and conduct of the Supreme Creator. .

P60:3, 4:5.4 The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine ruler who serve and reign in the universe. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.

P60:4, 4:5.5 It was believed that "without the shedding of blood there could be no remission of sin." They had not found deliverance from the old and pagan idea that the Gods could not be appeased except by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a distinct advance when he forbade human sacrifices and substituted therefore, in the primitive minds of his childlike Bedouin followers, the ceremonial sacrifice of animals.

P60:5, 4:5.6 The bestowal of God's Messenger Jesus was inherent in the situation of closing a planetary age; it was inescapable, and it was not made necessary for the purpose of winning the favor of God. What a travesty upon the infinite character of God! This teaching that his fatherly heart in all its austere coldness and hardness was so untouched by the misfortunes and sorrows of his creatures that his tender mercies were not forthcoming until he saw his blameless Messenger bleeding and dying upon the cross!

P60:6, 4:5.7 But the inhabitants of Earth are to find deliverance from these ancient errors and pagan superstitions respecting the nature of the Universal Father. The revelation of the truth about God is appearing, and the human race is destined to know the Universal Father in all that beauty of character and loveliness.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 5  
God's Relation To The Individual

P62:1, 5:0.1 If the finite mind of man is unable to comprehend how a great and majestic God as the Universal Father can descend from his eternal abode in infinite perfection to fraternize with the individual human creature, then must such a finite intellect rest assurance of divine fellowship upon the truth of the fact that an actual fragment of the living God resides within the intellect of every normal-minded and morally conscious Earth mortal. Man does not have to go farther than his own inner experience of the soul's contemplation of this spiritual-reality presence to find God and attempt communion with him.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 5: Section 1.  
The Approach To God

P62:3, 5:1.1 The inability of the finite creature to approach the infinite Father is inherent, not in the Father's aloofness, but in the finiteness and material limitations of created beings. The magnitude of the spiritual difference between the highest personality of universe existence and the lower groups of created intelligences is inconceivable but it possible, as in the case of the Messengers, for the lower orders of intelligence's spirit to be transported instantly into the presence of, and to be temporarily united with the Father himself. There is a long, long road ahead of mortal man before he can consistently and within the realms of possibility ask for safe conduct into the Paradise presence of the Universal Father. Spiritually, man's spirit must first be cleansed of impurities; (born-again) before he can attain a plane that will yield the spiritual vision that will enable him to see God.

P62:4, 5:1.2 Our Father is not in hiding; he is not in arbitrary seclusion. He has mobilized the resources of divine wisdom in a never-ending effort to reveal himself to the children of his universal domains. There is an infinite grandeur and an inexpressible generosity connected with the majesty of his love which causes him to yearn for the association of every created being who can comprehend, love, or approach him; and it is, therefore, the limitations inherent in man, inseparable from the finite personality and material existence, that determine the time and place and circumstances in which one may achieve the goal of the journey of spiritual ascension and be united with the Father at the center of all things.

P63:1, 5:1.3 Although the approach to the Paradise presence of the Father must await your attainment of the highest finite levels of spirit progression, one should rejoice in the recognition of the ever-present possibility of immediate communion with the bestowal spirit of the Father so intimately associated with your inner soul and your spiritualizing self.

P63:2, 5:1.4 The mortals of the realms of time and space may differ greatly in innate abilities and intellectual endowment, they may enjoy environments exceptionally favorable to social advancement and moral progress, or they may suffer from the lack of almost every human aid to culture and supposed advancement in the arts of civilization; but the possibilities for spiritual progress in the ascension career are equal to all; increasing levels of spiritual insight and cosmic meanings are attained quite independently of all differentials of the diversified material environments on the evolutionary worlds.

P63:3, 5:1.5 Earth mortals may differ in their intellectual, social, economic, and even moral opportunities and endowments, forget not that their spiritual endowment is uniform and unique. They all enjoy the same divine presence of the gift from the Father, and they are all equally privileged to seek intimate personal communion with this indwelling spirit of divine origin; they may all equally choose to accept the uniform spirituality.

P63:4, 5:1.6 If mortal man is wholeheartedly spiritually motivated, unreservedly consecrated to the Father, then, since he is so certainly and so effectively spiritually endowed by the spirit, there cannot fail to materialize in that individual's experience the sublime consciousness of knowing God and the supernal assurance of surviving for the purpose of finding God by the progressive experience of becoming more and more like him.

P63:5, 5:1.7 Man is spiritually indwelt by a surviving Thought Adjuster. If such a human mind is sincerely and spiritually motivated, if such a human soul desires to know God and become like him, honestly wants unite with the Father, there exists no negative influence of mortal deprivation nor positive power of possible interference which can prevent such a divinely motivated soul from securely ascending to the portals of Paradise.

P63:6, 5:1.8 The Father desires all his creatures to be in personal communion with him. Our survival status and spiritual nature make possible such attainment. Therefore settle in your philosophy now and forever: To each and to all of us, God is approachable; the Father is attainable, the way is open; the forces of divine love and the ways and means of divine administration are all interlocked in an effort to facilitate the advancement of every worthy intelligence to the Paradise presence of the Universal Father.

P63:7, 5:1.9 The fact that great effort is involved in the attainment of God makes the presence and personality of the Infinite none-the-less real. Some day, doubt not, you shall stand in the divine and central presence and see him, figuratively speaking, face-to-face. It is a question of the attainment of actual and literal spiritual levels; and these spiritual levels are attainable by any being who has been indwelt by the spirit, and who has subsequently eternally fused with that Thought Adjuster.

P64:1, 5:1.10 The Father is not in spiritual hiding, but so many of his creatures have hidden themselves away in the mists of their own willful decisions and for the time being have separated themselves from the communion of his spirit by the choosing of their own perverse ways and by the indulgence of the self-assertiveness of their intolerant minds and unspiritual natures.

P64:2, 5:1.11 Mortal man may draw near God and may repeatedly forsake the divine will so long as the power of choice remains. Man's final doom is not sealed until he has lost the power to choose the Father's will. There is never a closure of the Father's heart to the need and the petition of his children. Only do his offspring close their hearts forever to the Father's drawing power when they finally and forever lose the desire to do his divine will -- to know him and to be like him. Likewise is man's eternal destiny assured when Adjuster fusion proclaims to the universe that such an ascender has made the final and irrevocable choice to live the Father's will.

P64:3, 5:1.12 The great God makes direct contact with mortal man and gives a part of his infinite and eternal and incomprehensible self to live and dwell within him. God has embarked upon the eternal adventure with man. If you yield to the leadings of the spiritual forces in you and around you, you cannot fail to attain the high destiny established by a loving God as the universe goal of his ascendant creatures from the evolutionary worlds of space.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 5: Section 2.  
The Presence Of God

P64:4, 5:2.3 The physical presence of the Infinite is the reality of the material universe. The mind presence of Deity must be determined by the depth of individual intellectual experience and by the evolutionary personality level. The spiritual presence of Divinity must of necessity be differential in the universe. It is determined by the spiritual capacity of receptivity and by the degree of the consecration of the creature's will to the doing of the divine will. The spirit of the Universal Father lives within your own mind.

P64:7, 5:2.4 It is because of the God fragment that indwells you that you can hope, as you progress in harmonizing with the Adjuster's spiritual leadings, more fully to discern the presence and transforming power of those other spiritual influences that surround you and impinge upon you but do not function as an integral part of you. The fact that you are not intellectually conscious of close and intimate contact with the indwelling Adjuster does not in the least disprove such an exalted experience. The proof of fraternity with the divine Adjuster consists wholly in the nature and extent of the fruits of the spirit that are yielded in the life experience of the individual believer. "By their fruits you shall know them."

P65:1, 5:2.5 It is exceedingly difficult for the meagerly spiritualized, material mind of mortal man to experience marked consciousness of the spirit activities of such divine entities as the Paradise Adjusters. As the soul of joint mind and Adjuster creation becomes increasingly existent, there also evolves a new phase of soul consciousness that is capable of experiencing the presence, and of recognizing the spirit leadings and other super material activities of the Monitors.

P65:2, 5:2.6 The entire experience of Adjuster communion is one involving moral status, mental motivation, and spiritual experience. The self-realization of such an achievement is mainly, though not exclusively, limited to the realms of soul consciousness, but the proofs are forthcoming and abundant in the manifestation of the fruits of the spirit in the lives of all such inner-spirits.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 5: Section 3.  
True Worship

P65:3, 5:3.1 In the highest sense, we worship the Universal Father and him only. True, some mortals do sometimes pray to the Father's Messenger, but it is the Father, directly or indirectly, who is worshiped and adored.

P65:4, 5:3.2 Prayers, all formal communications, everything except adoration and worship of the Universal Father, are matters that concern a local universe; they do not ordinarily proceed out of the realm of its jurisdiction. But worship is undoubtedly encircuited and dispatched to the Creator by the function of the Father's personality circuit. We further believe that such registry of the homage of an Adjuster-indwelt creature is facilitated by the Father's spirit presence. There exists a tremendous amount of evidence to substantiate such a belief, and we know that all orders of Father fragments are empowered to register the bona fide adoration of their subjects acceptably in the presence of the Universal Father. The Adjusters undoubtedly also utilize direct prepersonal channels of communication with God, and they are likewise also able to utilize the spirit-gravity circuits.

P65:5, 5:3.3 Worship is for its own sake; prayer embodies a self- or creature-interest element; that is the great difference between worship and prayer. There is absolutely no self-request or other element of personal interest in true worship; we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects nothing for the worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father's matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes.

P65:6, 5:3.4 The moment the element of self-interest intrudes upon worship, that instant devotion translates from worship to prayer. In practical religious experience there exists no reason why prayer should not be addressed to God the Father as true worship.

P66:1, 5:3.5 When you deal with the practical affairs of your daily life you worship God; pray to, and commune with him and work out the details of your earthly sojourn in connection with the intelligences of the Infinite Spirit operating on your world and throughout your universe.

P66:2, 5:3.6 The Father hears the adoration of worship and gives ear to the pleas of their petitioning subjects throughout their respective creations. The Infinite Spirit maintains personal contact with the children of the realms through the Universe Spirits.

P66:3, 5:3.7 Sincere worship connotes the mobilization of all the powers of the human personality under the dominance of the evolving soul and subject to the divine directionization of the associated Thought Adjuster. The mind of material limitations can never become highly conscious of the real significance of true worship. Man's realization of the reality of the worship experience is chiefly determined by the developmental status of his evolving immortal soul. The spiritual growth of the soul takes place wholly independently of the intellectual self-consciousness.

P66:4, 5:3.8 The worship experience consists in the sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to communicate to the divine Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable aspirations of the human soul -- the conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the God-revealing immortal Adjuster. Worship is, therefore, the act of the material mind's assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under the guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith child of the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the immortal soul craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence conducts such worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal soul. True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual, and the personal -- the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their unification in personality.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 5: Section 4.  
God In Religion

P66:5, 5:4.1 The morality of the religions of evolution _drives_ men forward in the God quest by the motive power of fear. The religions of revelation _allure_ men to seek for a God of love because they crave to become like him. But religion is not merely a passive feeling of "absolute dependence" and "surety of survival"; it is a living and dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on humanity service.

P66:6, 5:4.2 The great and immediate service of true religion is the establishment of an enduring unity in human experience, a lasting peace and a profound assurance. With primitive man, even polytheism is a relative unification of the evolving concept of Deity; polytheism is monotheism in the making. Sooner or later, God is destined to be comprehended as the reality of values, the substance of meanings, and the life of truth.

P67:1, 5:4.3 God is not only the determiner of destiny; he _is_ man's eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings.

P67:2, 5:4.4 The domains of philosophy and art intervene between the nonreligious and the religious activities of the human self. Through art and philosophy the material-minded man is inveigled into the contemplation of the spiritual realities and universe values of eternal meanings.

P67:3, 5:4.5 Most religions teach the worship of Deity and some doctrine of human salvation. The Buddhist religion promises salvation from suffering, unending peace; the Jewish religion promises salvation from difficulties, prosperity predicated on righteousness; the Greek religion promised salvation from disharmony, ugliness, by the realization of beauty; Christianity promises salvation from sin, sanctity; Islam provides deliverance identical to the rigorous moral standards of Judaism and Christianity.

P67:4, 5:4.6 The Hebrews based their religion on goodness; the Greeks on beauty; both religions sought truth. Jesus revealed a God of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness.

P67:5, 5:4.7 The Zoroastrians have a religion of morals; the Hindus a religion of metaphysics; the Confucianists a religion of ethics. Jesus lived a religion of _service._ All these religions are of value in that they are equally valid. Religion should be destined to become the reality of the spiritual unification of all that is good, beautiful, and true in human experience.

P67:6, 5:4.8 The Greek religion had a watchword "Know yourself"; the Hebrews centered their teaching on "Know your God"; the Christians preach a gospel aimed at a "knowledge of the Jesus; Jesus proclaimed the good news of "knowing God, and yourself as a child of God." These differing concepts of the purpose of religion determine the individual's attitude in various life situations and foreshadow the depth of worship and the nature of his personal habits of prayer. The spiritual status of any religion may be determined by the nature of its prayers.

P67:7, 5:4.9 The concept of a semi human and jealous God is an inevitable transition between polytheism and sublime monotheism.

P67:8, 5:4.10 The Christian concept of God is considered by some religions as a selfish attempt to combine three separate teachings:

  1. _The Hebrew concept_ \-- God as a vindicator of moral values, a righteous God.

  2. _The Greek concept_ \-- God as a unifier, a God of wisdom.

  3. _Jesus' concept_ \-- God as a living friend, a loving Father, the divine presence.

P68:2, 5:4.11 It must therefore be evident that composite Christian theology encounters great difficulty in attaining consistency. This difficulty is further aggravated by the fact that the doctrines of early Christianity were generally based on the personal religious experience of three different persons: Philo of Alexandria, Jesus of Nazareth, and Paul of Tarsus.

P68:3, 5:4.12 In the study of the religious life of Jesus, view him positively. Think of his righteousness, his loving service. Jesus upstepped the passive love disclosed in the Hebrew concept of the heavenly Father to the higher _active_ and creature-loving affection of a God who is the Father of every individual, even of the wrongdoer.

Part I. The Central and Universes  
Chapter 5: Section 5.  
The Consciousness Of God

P68:3, 5:5.1 Morality has its origin in the reason of self-consciousness; it is super animal but wholly evolutionary. Human evolution embraces in its unfolding all endowments antecedent to the bestowal of the Adjusters and to the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth. But the attainment of levels of morality does not deliver man from the real struggles of mortal living. Man's physical environment entails the battle for existence; the social surroundings necessitate ethical adjustments; the moral situations require the making of choices in the highest realms of reason; the spiritual experience (having realized God) demands that man find him and sincerely strive to be like him.

P68:4, 5:5.2 Religion is not grounded in the facts of science, the obligations of society, the assumptions of philosophy, or the implied duties of morality. Religion is an independent realm of human response to life situations and is unfailingly exhibited at all stages of human development that are post moral. Religion may permeate all four levels of the realization of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship: the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional level of fellowship; the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship.

P68:5, 5:5.3 The fact-seeking scientist conceives of God as the First Cause, a God of force. The emotional artist sees God as the ideal of beauty, a God of aesthetics. The reasoning philosopher is sometimes inclined to posit a God of universal unity, even a pantheistic Deity. The religionist of faith believes in a God who fosters survival, the Father in heaven, the God of love.

P68:6, 5:5.4 Moral conduct is always an antecedent of evolved religion and a part of even revealed religion, but never the whole of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living. Morality does not biologically lead to the higher spiritual levels of religious experience. The adoration of the abstract beautiful is not the worship of God; neither is exaltation of nature nor the reverence of unity the worship of God.

P68:7, 5:5.5 Evolutionary religion is the mother of the science, art, and philosophy which elevated man to the level of receptivity to revealed religion, including the bestowal of Adjusters and the coming of the Spirit of Truth. The evolutionary picture of human existence begins and ends with religion, albeit very different qualities of religion, one evolutional and biological, the other revelational and periodical. And so, while religion is normal and natural to man, it is also optional. Man does not have to be religious against his will.

P69:1, 5:5.6 Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind; hence the function of theology, the psychology of religion. The essential doctrine of the human realization of God creates a paradox in finite comprehension. It is well nigh impossible for human logic and finite reason to harmonize the concept of divine immanence, God within and a part of every individual, with the idea of God's transcendence, the divine domination of the universe. These two essential concepts of Deity must be unified in the faith-grasp of the concept of the transcendence of a personal God and in the realization of the indwelling presence of a fragment of that God in order to justify intelligent worship and validate the hope of personality survival. The difficulties and paradoxes of religion are inherent in the fact that the realities of religion are utterly beyond the mortal capacity for intellectual comprehension.

P69:2, 5:5.7 Mortal man secures three great satisfactions from religious experience, even in the days of his temporal sojourn on earth:

P69:3, 5:5.8 1. _Intellectually_ he acquires the satisfactions of a more unified human consciousness.

P69:4, 5:5.9 2. _Philosophically_ he enjoys the substantiation of his ideals of moral values.

P69:5, 5:5.10 3. _Spiritually_ he thrives in the experience of divine companionship, in the spiritual satisfactions of true worship.

P69:6, 5:5.11 God-consciousness, as it is experienced by an evolving mortal of the realms, must consist of three varying factors, three differential levels of reality realization. There is first the mind consciousness -- the comprehension of the _idea_ of God. Then follows the soul consciousness -- the realization of the _ideal_ of God. Last, dawns the spirit consciousness -- the realization of the _spirit reality_ of God. By the unification of these factors of the divine realization, no matter how incomplete, the mortal personality at all times overspreads all conscious levels with a realization of the _personality_ of God. In those mortals who have attained all this, will in time lead to the realization of the _supremacy_ of God and may subsequently eventuate in the realization of the _ultimacy_ of God, some phase of the absonite super consciousness of the Paradise Father.

P69:7, 5:5.12 The experience of God-consciousness remains the same from generation to generation, but with each advancing epoch in human knowledge the philosophic concept and the theological definitions of God _must_ change. God-knowingness, religious consciousness, is a universe reality, but no matter how valid (real) religious experience is, it must be willing to subject itself to intelligent criticism and reasonable philosophic interpretation; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the totality of human experience.

P69:8, 5:5.13 Eternal survival of personality is wholly dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind, whose decisions determine the survival potential of the immortal soul. When the mind believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster, they all _desire_ God, then is survival assured. Limitations of intellect, curtailment of education, deprivation of culture, impoverishment of social status, even inferiority of the human standards of morality resulting from the unfortunate lack of educational, cultural, and social advantages, cannot invalidate the presence of the divine spirit in such unfortunate and humanly handicapped but believing individuals. The indwelling of the spirit constitutes the inception and insures the possibility of the potential of growth and survival of the immortal soul.

P70:1, 5:5.14 The ability of mortal parents to procreate is not predicated on their educational, cultural, social, or economic status. The union of the parental factors under natural conditions is quite sufficient to initiate offspring. A human mind discerning right and wrong and possessing the capacity to worship God, in union with a divine Adjuster, is all that is required in that mortal to initiate and foster the production of his immortal soul of survival qualities if such a spirit-endowed individual seeks God and sincerely desires to become like him and elects to live righteously.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 5: Section 6.  
The God Of Personality

P70:2, 5:6.1 The Universal Father is the God of personalities. The domain of universe personality, from the lowest mortal and material creature of personality status to the highest persons of creator dignity, has its center and circumference in the Universal Father. God the Father is the Bestower and the conservator of every personality. And the Paradise Father is likewise the destiny of all those finite personalities who wholeheartedly choose to do the divine will, those who love God and long to be like him.

P70:3, 5:6.2 Personality is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universes. We are able to form adequate concepts of the factors entering into the make-up of various orders and levels of personality, but we do not fully comprehend the real nature of the personality itself. We clearly perceive the numerous factors which, when put together, constitute the vehicle for human personality, but we do not fully comprehend the nature and significance of such a finite personality.

P70:4, 5:6.3  Personality is potential in all creatures who possess a mind endowment ranging from the minimum of self-consciousness to the maximum of God-consciousness. But mind endowment alone is not personality, neither is spirit nor physical energy. Personality is that quality and value in cosmic reality that is exclusively bestowed by God the Father upon these living systems of the associated and coordinated energies of matter, mind, and spirit. Neither is personality a progressive achievement. Personality may be material or spiritual, but there either is personality or there is no personality. The other-than-personal never attains the level of the personal except by the direct act of the Paradise Father.

P70:5, 5:6.4 The bestowal of personality is the exclusive function of the Universal Father, the personalization of the living energy systems which he endows with the attributes of relative creative consciousness and the freewill control thereof . The fundamental attributes of human selfhood, as well as the absolute Adjuster nucleus of the human personality, are the bestowals of the Universal Father, acting in his exclusively personal domain of cosmic ministry.

P70:6, 5:6.5 The Adjusters of prepersonal status indwell numerous types of mortal creatures, thus insuring that these same beings may survive mortal death to personalize as morontial creatures with the potential of ultimate spirit attainment. For, when such a creature mind of personality endowment is indwelt by a fragment of the spirit of the eternal God, the prepersonal bestowal of the personal Father, then does this finite personality possess the potential of the divine and the eternal and aspire to a destiny akin to the Ultimate, even reaching out for a realization of the Absolute.

P71:1, 5:6.6 Capacity for divine personality is inherent in the prepersonal Adjuster; capacity for human personality is potential in the cosmic-mind endowment of the human being. But the experiential personality of mortal man is not observable as an active and functional reality until after the material life vehicle of the mortal creature has been touched by the liberating divinity of the Universal Father, being thus launched upon the seas of experience as a self-conscious and a (relatively) self-determinative and self-creative personality. The material self is truly and _unqualifiedly personal_.

P71:2, 5:6.7 The material self has personality and identity, temporal identity; the prepersonal spirit Adjuster also has identity, eternal identity. This material personality and this spirit pre-personality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes as to bring into existence the surviving identity of the immortal soul.

P71:3, 5:6.8 Having thus provided for the growth of the immortal soul and having liberated man's inner self from the fetters of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside. Now, man having thus been liberated from the fetters of causation response, at least as pertains to eternal destiny, and provision having been made for the growth of the immortal self, the soul, it remains for man himself to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and eternal self which is his for the choosing. No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal. As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.

P71:4, 5:6.9 The bestowal of creature personality confers relative liberation from slavish response to antecedent causation, and the personalities of all such moral beings, evolutionary or otherwise, are centered in the personality of the Universal Father. They are ever drawn towards his Paradise presence by that kinship of being which constitutes the vast and universal family circle and fraternal circuit of the eternal God. There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality.

P71:5, 5:6.10 The personality circuit of the universe of universes is centered in the person of the Universal Father, and the Paradise Father is personally conscious of, and in personal touch with, all personalities of all levels of self-conscious existence. And this personality consciousness of all creation exists independently of the mission of the Thought Adjusters.

P71:6, 5:6.11 As all gravity is circuited in the Isle of Paradise, so is all personality circuited in the personal presence of the Universal Father and this circuit unerringly transmits the worship of all personalities to the Original and Eternal Personality.

P71:7, 5:6.12 Concerning those personalities who are not Adjuster indwelt: The attribute of choice-liberty is also bestowed by the Universal Father, and such persons are likewise embraced in the great circuit of divine love, the personality circuit of the Universal Father. God provides for the sovereign choice of all true personalities. No personal creature can be coerced into the eternal adventure.

P72:1, 5:6.13 God is your universe Father and all are his planetary children.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 6  
The Infinite Spirit

P90:1, 8:0.1 Back in eternity, when the Universal Father's "first" infinite and absolute thought finds a perfect and adequate word for its divine expression, there ensues the supreme desire of both the Thought-God and the Word-God for a universal and infinite agent of mutual expression and combined action.

P90:2, 8:0.2 In the dawn of eternity both the Father and the Infinite Spirit become infinitely cognizant of their mutual interdependence, their eternal and absolute oneness; and therefore do they enter into an infinite and everlasting covenant of divine partnership. This never-ending compact is made for the execution of their united concepts throughout the entire circle of eternity; and ever since this eternity event the Father and the Infinite Spirit continue in this divine union.

P90:3, 8:0.3 We are now face to face with the eternity origin of the Infinite Spirit, the second part of Deity. The very instant that God the Father conceives an infinite action \-- the execution of an absolute thought-plan -- that very moment, the Infinite Spirit springs full-fledged into existence.

P90:4, 8:0.4 In thus reciting the order of the origin of the Deities, we wish to enable you to think of their relationship. In reality they are both existent from eternity; they are existential. They are without beginning or ending of days; they are co-ordinate, supreme, ultimate, absolute, and infinite. They are and always have been and ever shall be.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 6: Section 1.  
The God Of Action

P90:5, 8:1.1 In the eternity of the past, upon the personalization of the Infinite Spirit the divine personality cycle becomes perfect and complete. The God of Action is existent, and the vast stage of space is set for the stupendous drama of creation -- the universal adventure -- the divine panorama of the eternal ages.

P90:6, 8:1.2 The first act of the Infinite Spirit is the inspection and recognition of his divine Father. He, the Spirit, unqualifiedly identifies both of them. He is fully cognizant of their separate personalities and infinite attributes as well as of their combined nature and united function. Next, voluntarily, with transcendent willingness and inspiring spontaneity, pledges eternal loyalty to God the Father and acknowledges everlasting dependence upon God.

P90:7, 8:1.3 Inherent in the nature of this transaction and in mutual recognition of the personality independence of each and the executive unions, the cycle of eternity is established. The Paradise Unity is existent. The stage of universal space is set for the manifold and never-ending panorama of the creative unfolding of the purpose of the Universal Father by the execution of the God of Action, the executive agency for the reality performances of the Father-Unity creator partnership.

P91:1, 8:1.4 The God of Action functions and the dead vaults of space are astir. One billion perfect spheres flash into existence. Prior to this hypothetical eternity moment the space-energies inherent in Paradise are existent and potentially operative, but they have no actuality of being; neither can physical gravity be measured except by the reaction of material realities to its incessant pull. There is no material universe at this (assumed) eternally distant moment, but the very instant that one billion worlds materialize, there is in evidence gravity sufficient and adequate to hold them in the everlasting grasp of Paradise.

P91:2, 8:1.5 There now flashes through the creation of God the second form of energy. Thus the twofold gravity-embraced universe is touched with the energy of infinity and immersed in the spirit of divinity. In this way is the soil of life prepared for the consciousness of mind made manifest in the associated intelligence circuits of the Infinite Spirit.

P91:3, 8:1.6 Upon these seeds of potential existence, diffused throughout the central creation of God, the Father acts, and creature personality appears. Then does the presence of the Paradise Deities fill all organized space and begin effectively to draw all spirituality and spiritual beings toward Paradise.

P91:4, 8:1.7 The Infinite Spirit eternalizes concurrently with the birth of the Heaven worlds, this central universe being created by him and with him and in him in obedience to the combined concepts and united wills of the Father and the Spirit. The Infinite Spirit deitizes by this very act of conjoint creation, and he thus forever becomes the Conjoint Creator.

P91:5, 8:1.8 These are the grand and awful times of the creative expansion of the Father and the Spirit by, and in, the action of their conjoint associate and exclusive executive, the Second Source and Center. There exists no record of these stirring times. We have only the meager disclosures of the Infinite Spirit to substantiate these mighty transactions, and he merely verifies the fact that the central universe and all that pertains thereto eternalized simultaneously with his attainment of personality and conscious existence.

P91:6, 8:1.9 In brief, the Infinite Spirit testifies that, since he is eternal, so also is the central universe eternal. And this is the traditional starting point of the history of the universe of universes. Absolutely nothing is known, and no records are in existence, regarding any event or transaction prior to this stupendous eruption of creative energy and administrative wisdom that crystallized the vast universe which exists, and so exquisitely functions, at the center of all things. Beyond this event lie the unsearchable transactions of eternity and the depths of infinity -- absolute mystery.

P91:7, 8:1.10 And we thus portray the sequential origin of the Second Source and Center as an interpretative condescension to the time-bound and space-conditioned mind of mortal creatures. The mind of man must have a starting point for the visualization of universe history, and we have been directed to provide this technique of approach to the historic concept of eternity. In the material mind, consistency demands a First Cause; therefore do we postulate the Universal Father as the First Source and the Absolute Center of all creation, at the same time instructing all creature minds that the Spirit is coeternal with the Father in all phases of universe history and in all realms of creative activity. And we do this without in any sense being disregardful of the reality and eternity of the Isle of Paradise and of the Unqualified, Universal, and Deity Absolutes.

P92:1, 8:1.11 It is enough of a reach of the material mind of the children of time to conceive of the Father in eternity. We know that any child can best relate himself to reality by first mastering the relationships of the child-parent situation and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. Subsequently the growing mind of the child will be able to adjust to the concept of family relations, to relationships of the community, the race, and the world, and then to those of the universe.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 6: Section 2.  
Nature Of The Infinite Spirit

P92:2, 8:2.1 The Conjoint Creator is from eternity and is wholly and without qualification one with the Universal Father. The Infinite Spirit reflects in perfection the nature of the Paradise Father.

P92:3, 8:2.2 The Third Source and Center is known by numerous titles: the Universal Spirit, the Supreme Guide, the Conjoint Creator, the Divine Executive, the Infinite Mind, the Spirit of Spirits, the Paradise Mother Spirit, the Conjoint Actor, the Final Coordinator, the Omnipresent Spirit, the Absolute Intelligence, the Divine Action; and on Earth he is sometimes confused with the cosmic mind.

P92:4, 8:2.3 God is spirit, but material creatures who tend towards the error of viewing matter as basic reality and mind, together with spirit, as postulates rooted in matter, would better comprehend the Third Source and Center if he were called the Infinite Reality, the Universal Organizer, or the Personality Coordinator.

P92:5, 8:2.4 The Infinite Spirit, as a universe revelation of divinity, is unsearchable and utterly beyond human comprehension. To sense the absoluteness of the Spirit, you need only contemplate the infinity of the Universal Father.

P92:6, 8:2.5 There is mystery indeed in the person of the Infinite Spirit. Of all aspects of the Father's nature, the Conjoint Creator most strikingly discloses his infinity. Even if the master universe eventually expands to infinity, the spirit presence, energy control, and mind potential of the Conjoint Actor will be found adequate to meet the demands of such a limitless creation.

P92:7, 8:2.6 Though in every way sharing the perfection, the righteousness, and the love of the Universal Father, the Infinite Spirit inclines towards mercy, thus becoming the mercy minister of the Paradise Deities to the grand universe. Ever and always -- universally and eternally -- the Spirit is a mercy minister, for the divine Spirit depicts the mercy of God.

P93:1, 8:2.7 It is not possible that the Spirit could have more of goodness than the Father since all goodness takes origin in the Father, but in the acts of the Spirit we can the better comprehend such goodness. The Father's faithfulness is made very real to the spirit beings and the material creatures of the spheres by the loving ministry and ceaseless service of the personalities of the Infinite Spirit.

P93:2, 8:2.8 The Conjoint Creator inherits all the Father's beauty of thought and character of truth. And these sublime traits of divinity are coordinated in the near-supreme levels of the cosmic mind in subordination to the infinite and eternal wisdom of the unconditioned and limitless mind of the Second Source and Center.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 6: Section 3.  
The Spirit Of Divine Ministry

P94:4, 8:4.1 Paralleling the physical universe Paradise gravity holds all things together in the spiritual universe. In and through all this material and spiritual creation there is a vast stage whereon the Infinite Spirit and his spirit offspring show forth the combined mercy, patience, and everlasting affection of the divine Father towards the intelligent children of their co-operative devising and making. Everlasting ministry to mind is the essence of the Spirit's divine character. And all the spirit offspring of the Conjoint Actor partake of this desire to minister, this divine urge to service.

P94:5, 8:4.2 God is love and mercy, the Spirit is ministry -- the ministry of divine love and endless mercy to all intelligent creation. The Spirit is the personification of the Father's love and mercy; in him are they eternally united for universal service. The Spirit is _love applied_ to the creature creation, the love of the Father.

P94:6, 8:4.3 On Earth the Infinite Spirit is known as an omnipresent influence, a universal presence, but in Heaven you shall know him as a personal presence of actual ministry. Here the ministry of the Paradise Spirit is the exemplary and inspiring pattern for each of his co-ordinate Spirits and subordinate personalities ministering to the created beings on the worlds of time and space. In this divine universe he becomes the sympathetic and understanding spirit minister to every pilgrim of time traversing these perfect circles on high.

P94:7, 8:4.4 The Infinite Spirit pledges itself as the tireless devoted task of fostering the ascension of the material creatures to higher and higher levels of spiritual attainment. And all this work of creature ministry is done in perfect harmony with the purposes, and in close association with God.

P94:8, 8:4.5 The Infinite Spirit is dedicated to the unending ministry of revealing the love of the Father to the individual minds of all the children of each universe. In these local creations the Spirit does not come down to the material races in the likeness of mortal flesh, but the Infinite Spirit and his co-ordinate Spirits do down step themselves, do joyfully undergo an amazing series of divinity attenuations, until they appear as angels to stand by your side and guide you through the lowly paths of earthly existence.

P95:1, 8:4.6 By this very diminishing series the Infinite Spirit does actually, and as a person, draw very near to every being of the animal-origin spheres.

P95:2, 8:4.7 The Conjoint Creator is truly and forever the great ministering personality, the universal mercy minister. To comprehend the ministry of the Spirit, ponder the truth that he is the combined portrayal of the Father's unending love and eternal mercy. The Spirit's ministry is not, however, restricted solely to the representation of the Universal Father. The Infinite Spirit also possesses the power to minister to the creatures of the realm in his own name and right; he is of divine dignity and also bestows the universal ministry of mercy in his own behalf.

P95:3, 8:4.8 As man learns more of the loving and tireless ministry of the lower orders of the creature family of this Infinite Spirit, he will all the more admire and adore the transcendent nature and matchless character of this combined Action. Indeed is this Spirit "the eyes of the Lord which are ever over the righteous" and "the divine ears which are ever open to their prayers."

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 6: Section 4.  
The Presence Of God

P95:4, 8:5.1 The outstanding attribute of the Infinite Spirit is omnipresence. Throughout the entire universe there is everywhere present this all-pervading spirit, which is so akin to the presence of a universal and divine mind.

P95:5, 8:5.2 The Father is _infinite_ and is therefore limited only by volition. In the bestowal of Adjusters and in the encircuitment of personality, the Father acts alone, but in the contact of spirit forces with intelligent beings, he utilizes the spirits and personalities of the Infinite Spirit. He is at will spiritually present equally with the Conjoint Actor; he is present _in_ the Spirit. The Father is most certainly everywhere present, and we discern his presence by and through any and all of these diverse but associated forces, influences, and presences.

P95:6, 8:5.3 In the sacred writings the term _Spirit of God_ seems to be used interchangeably to designate both the Infinite Spirit on Paradise and the Creative Spirit of your local universe.

P95:7, 8:5.4 There are many spiritual influences, and they are all as _one._ Even the work of the Thought Adjusters, though independent of all other influences, unvaryingly coincides with the spirit ministry of the combined influences of the Infinite Spirit and a local universe Spirit. As these spiritual presences operate in the lives of Earth, they cannot be segregated. In your minds and upon your souls they function as one spirit, notwithstanding their diverse origins. And as this united spiritual ministration is experienced, it becomes to you the influence of the Supreme, "who is ever able to keep you from failing and to present you blameless before your Father on high."

P96:1, 8:5.5 Ever remember that the Infinite Spirit is the _Conjoint_ Actor; the Father functions in and through him; he is present not only as himself but also as the Father. In recognition of this and for many additional reasons the spirit presence of the Infinite Spirit is often referred to as "the spirit of God."

P96:2, 8:5.6 It would also be consistent to refer to the liaison of all spiritual ministry as the spirit of God, for such a liaison is truly the union of the spirit of God the Father.

Part I. The Central Universe

Chapter 6: Section 5.  
Personality Of The Infinite Spirit

P96:3, 8:6.1 The Infinite Spirit is a universe presence, an eternal action, a cosmic power, a holy influence, and a universal mind; he is all of these and infinitely more, but he is also a true and divine personality.

P96:4, 8:6.2 The Infinite Spirit is a complete and perfect personality, the divine equal and co-ordinate of the Universal Father. The Conjoint Creator is just as real and visible to the higher intelligences of the universes as is the Father; indeed more so, for it is the Spirit whom all ascenders must attain before they may approach the Father.

P96:5, 8:6.3 The Infinite Spirit, is possessed of all the attributes which you associate with personality. The Spirit is endowed with absolute mind: "The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God." The Spirit is endowed not only with mind but also with will. In the bestowal of his gifts it is recorded: "But all these works that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally and as he wills."

P96:6, 8:6.4 "The love of the Spirit" is real, as also are his sorrows; therefore "Grieve not the Spirit of God." Whether we observe the Infinite Spirit as Paradise Deity or as a local universe Creative Spirit, we find that the Conjoint Creator is not only the Second Source and Center but also a divine person. This divine personality also reacts to the universe as a person. The Spirit speaks to you, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says." "The Spirit himself makes intercession for you." The Spirit exerts a direct and personal influence upon created beings, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

P96:7, 8:6.5 Even though we behold the phenomenon of the ministry of the Infinite Spirit to the remote worlds of the universe of universes, even though we envisage this same coordinating Deity acting in and through the untold legions of the manifold beings who take origin in the Source and Center, even though we recognize the omnipresence of the Spirit, nonetheless, we still affirm that this same Second Source and Center is a person, the Conjoint Creator of all things and all beings and all universes.

P96:8, 8:6.6 In the administration of universes the Father and Spirit are perfectly and eternally interassociated. Though each is engaged in a personal ministry to all creation, both are divinely and absolutely interlocked in a service of creation and control that forever makes them _one_.

P97:1, 8:6.7 In the person of the Infinite Spirit the Father is mutually present, always and in unqualified perfection, for the Spirit is like the Father as they two are forever one.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7  
Relation Of The Infinite Spirit To The Universe

P98:2, 9:0.2 The Father is infinite in love and volition, in spiritual thought and purpose; he is the universal upholder. Paradise is infinite in potential for force endowment and in capacity for energy dominance; it is the universal stabilizer. The Conjoint Actor possesses unique prerogatives of synthesis, infinite capacity to co-ordinate all existing universe energies, all actual universe spirits, and all real universe intellects; the Second Source and Center is the universal unifier of the manifold energies and diverse creations which have appeared in consequence of the divine plan and the eternal purpose of the Universal Father.

P98:3, 9:0.3 The Infinite Spirit, the Conjoint Creator, is a universal and divine minister. The Spirit unceasingly ministers the Father's love and mercy, even in harmony with the stable, unvarying, and righteous justice of the Paradise Unity. His influence and personalities are ever near you; they really know and truly understand you.

P98:4, 9:0.4 Throughout the universes the agencies of the Conjoint Actor ceaselessly manipulate the forces and energies of all space. Like the First Source and Center, the Second is responsive to both the spiritual and the material. The Conjoint Actor is the revelation of the unity of God, in whom all things consist -- things, meanings, and values; energies, minds, and spirits.

P98:5, 9:0.5 The Infinite Spirit pervades all space; he indwells the circle of eternity; and the Spirit, like the Father, is perfect and changeless -- absolute.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 1.  
Attributes Of The Second Source And Center

P98:6, 9:1.1 The Second Source and Center is known by many names, all designative of relationship and in recognition of function: As God the Spirit, he is the personality co-ordinate and divine equal of God the Father. As the Infinite Spirit, he is an omnipresent spiritual influence. As the Universal Manipulator, he is the ancestor of the power-control creatures and the activator of the cosmic forces of space. As the Conjoint Actor, he is the joint representative and partnership executive of the Father. As the Absolute Mind, he is the source of the endowment of intellect throughout the universes. As the God of Action, he is the apparent ancestor of motion, change, and relationship.

P99:1, 9:1.2 Some of the attributes of the Second Source and Center are derived from the Father, while still others are not observed to be actively and personally present in the Father -- attributes that can hardly be explained except by assuming that the Father partnership which eternalizes the Second Source and Center consistently functions in consonance with, and in recognition of, the eternal fact of the absoluteness of Paradise. The Conjoint Creator embodies the fullness of the combined and infinite concepts of the First and Second Persons of Deity.

P99:2, 9:1.3 While you envisage the Father as an original creator, you should think of the Second Source and Center as a universal coordinator, a minister of unlimited co-operation. The Conjoint Actor is the correlator of all actual reality; he is the Deity repository of the Father's thought and in action is eternally regardful of the material absoluteness of the central Isle. The Paradise Unity has ordained the universal order of _progress,_ and the providence of God is the domain of the Conjoint Creator and the evolving Supreme Being. No actual or actualizing reality can escape eventual relationship with the Second Source and Center.

P99:3, 9:1.4 The Universal Father presides over the realms of pre-energy, pre-spirit, and personality; the presence of the Isle of Paradise unifies the domain of physical energy and materializing power; the Conjoint Actor operates not only as an infinite spirit but also as a universal manipulator of the forces and energies of Paradise, thus bringing into existence the universal and absolute mind. The Conjoint Actor functions throughout the grand universe as a positive and distinct personality; especially in the higher spheres of spiritual values, physical-energy relationships, and true mind meanings. He functions specifically wherever and whenever energy and spirit associate and interact; he dominates all reactions with mind, wields great power in the spiritual world, and exerts a mighty influence over energy and matter. At all times the Second Source is expressive of the nature of the First Source and Center.

P99:4, 9:1.5 The Second Source and Center perfectly and without qualification shares the omnipresence of the First Source and Center, sometimes being called the Omnipresent Spirit. In a peculiar and very personal manner the God of mind shares the omniscience of the Universal Father; the knowledge of the Spirit is profound and complete. The Conjoint Creator manifests certain phases of the omnipotence of the Universal Father but is actually omnipotent only in the domain of mind. The Second Person of Deity is the intellectual center and the universal administrator of the mind realms; herein is he absolute -- his sovereignty is unqualified.

P99:5, 9:1.6 The Conjoint Actor seems to be motivated by the Father, but all his actions appear to recognize the Father-Paradise relationship. At times and in certain functions he seems to compensate for the incompleteness of the development of the experiential Deities -- God the Supreme and God the Ultimate.

P100:2, 9:1.8 In addition to the super control of energy and things physical, the Infinite Spirit is superbly endowed with those attributes of patience, mercy, and love which are so exquisitely revealed in his spiritual ministry. The Spirit is supremely competent to minister love and to overshadow justice with mercy. God the Spirit possesses all the supernal kindness and merciful affection of the Father. The universe of your origin is being forged out between the anvil of justice and the hammer of suffering; but those who wield the hammer are the children of mercy, the spirit offspring of the Infinite Spirit.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 2.  
The Omnipresent Spirit

P100:3, 9:2.1 God is spirit in a twofold sense: Conjoint Actor, as spirit allied with mind. And in addition to these spiritual realities, we think we discern levels of experiential spirit phenomena -- the spirits of the Supreme Being, Ultimate Deity, and Deity Absolute.

P100:4, 9:2.2 The Infinite Spirit is a personalized spiritualization of the Universal Father.

P100:5, 9:2.3 There are many untrammeled lines of spiritual force and sources of super material power linking the people of Earth directly with the Deities of Paradise. There exist the connection of the Thought Adjusters direct with the Universal Father and the spiritual presence of the Conjoint Creator. The Second Person in his spiritual ministry may function as mind plus spirit or as spirit alone.

P100:6, 9:2.4 In addition to these Paradise presences, Earthlings benefit by the spiritual influences and activities of the universe, with their almost endless array of loving personalities who ever lead the true of purpose and the honest of heart upward and inward towards the ideals of divinity and the goal of supreme perfection.

P100:7, 9:2.5 The presence of the Infinite Spirit, the Second Person of Deity, even mortal man may know, for material creatures can actually experience the beneficence of this divine influence which functions as the Holy Spirit of local universe bestowal upon the races of mankind. Human beings can also in some degree become conscious of the Adjuster, the impersonal presence of the Universal Father. These divine spirits that work for man's uplifting and spiritualization all act in unison and in perfect co-operation. They are as one in the spiritual operation of the plans of mortal ascension and perfection attainment.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 3.  
The Universal Manipulator

P101:1, 9:3.1 The Isle of Paradise is the source and substance of physical gravity; and that should be sufficient to inform you that gravity is one of the most _real_ and eternally dependable things in the whole physical universe of universes. Gravity cannot be modified or annulled except by the forces and energies conjointly sponsored by the Father, which have been entrusted to, and are functionally associated with, the person of the Second Source and Center.

P101:2, 9:3.2 The Infinite Spirit possesses a unique and amazing power -- _antigravity._ This power is not functionally (observably) present in the Father. This ability to withstand the pull of material gravity, inherent in the Second Source, is revealed in the personal reactions of the Conjoint Actor to certain phases of universe relationships. And this unique attribute is transmissible to certain of the higher personalities of the Infinite Spirit.

P101:3, 9:3.3 Antigravity can annul gravity within a local frame; it does so by the exercise of equal force presence. It operates only with reference to material gravity, and it is not the action of mind. The gravity-resistant phenomenon of a gyroscope is a fair illustration of the _effect_ of antigravity but of no value to illustrate the _cause_ of antigravity.

P101:4, 9:3.4 Still further does the Conjoint Actor display powers which can transcend force and neutralize energy. Such powers operate by slowing down energy to the point of materialization and by other techniques unknown to you.

P101:5, 9:3.5 The Conjoint Creator is not energy nor the source of energy nor the destiny of energy; he is the _manipulator_ of energy. The Conjoint Creator is action -- motion, change, modification, co-ordination, stabilization, and equilibrium. The energies subject to the direct or indirect control of Paradise are by nature responsive to the acts of the Second Source and Center and his manifold agencies.

P101:6, 9:3.6 The universe is permeated by the power-control creatures of the Second Source and Center: physical controllers, power directors, power centers, and other representatives of the God of Action who have to do with the regulation and stabilization of physical energies. These unique creatures of physical function all possess varying attributes of power control, such as antigravity, which they utilize in their efforts to establish the physical equilibrium of the matter and energies of the grand universe.

P101:7, 9:3.7 All these material activities of the God of Action appear to relate his function to the Isle of Paradise, and indeed the agencies of power are all regardful of, even dependent on, the absoluteness of the eternal Isle. But the Conjoint Actor does not act for, or in response to, Paradise. He acts, personally, for the Father. Paradise is not a person. The nonpersonal, impersonal, and otherwise not personal doings of the Second Source and Center are all volitional acts of the Conjoint Actor himself; they are not reflections, derivations, or repercussions of anything or anybody.

P101:8, 9:3.8 Paradise is the pattern of infinity; the God of Action is the activator of that pattern. Paradise is the material fulcrum of infinity; the agencies of the Second Source and Center are the levers of intelligence that motivate the material level and inject spontaneity into the mechanism of the physical creation.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 4.  
The Absolute Mind

P102:1, 9:4.1 There is an intellectual nature of the Second Source and Center that is distinct from his physical and spiritual attributes. Such a nature is hardly contactable, but it is associable -- intellectually though not personally. It is distinguishable from the physical attributes and the spiritual character of the Second Person on mind levels of function, but to the discernment of personalities this nature never functions independently of physical or spiritual manifestations.

P102:2, 9:4.2 The absolute mind is the mind of the Second Person; it is inseparable from the personality of God the Spirit. Mind, in functioning beings, is not separated from energy or spirit, or both. Mind is not inherent in energy; energy is receptive and responsive to mind; mind can be superimposed upon energy, but consciousness is not inherent in the purely material level. Mind does not have to be added to pure spirit, for spirit is innately conscious and identifying. Spirit is always intelligent, _minded_ in some way. It may be this mind or that mind, it may be pre-mind or super-mind, even spirit mind, but it does the equivalent of thinking and knowing. The insight of spirit transcends, supervenes, and theoretically antedates the consciousness of mind.

P102:3, 9:4.3 The Conjoint Creator is absolute only in the domain of mind, in the realms of universal intelligence. The mind of the Second Source and Center is infinite; it utterly transcends the active and functioning mind circuits of the universe.

P102:4, 9:4.4 Infinite mind ignores time, ultimate mind transcends time, cosmic mind is conditioned by time. And so with space: The Infinite Mind is independent of space, but as descent is made from the infinite to the adjutant levels of mind, intellect must increasingly reckon with the fact and limitations of space.

P102:5, 9:4.5 Cosmic force responds to mind even as cosmic mind responds to spirit. Spirit is divine purpose, and spirit mind is divine purpose in action. Energy is thing, mind is meaning, spirit is value. Even in time and space, mind establishes those relative relationships between energy and spirit, which are suggestive of mutual kinship in eternity.

P102:6, 9:4.6 Mind transmutes the values of spirit into the meanings of intellect; volition has power to bring the meanings of mind to fruit in both the material and spiritual domains. The Paradise ascent involves a relative and differential growth in spirit, mind, and energy. The personality is the unifier of these components of experiential individuality.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 5.  
The Ministry Of Mind

P102:7, 9:5.1 The Second Source and Center is infinite in mind. If the universe should grow to infinity, still his mind potential would be adequate to endow limitless numbers of creatures with suitable minds and other prerequisites of intellect.

P102:8, 9:5.2 In the domain of _created mind_ the Second Person, with his co-ordinate and rules supreme. The realms of creature mind are of exclusive origin in the Second Source and Center; he is the Bestower of mind. Even the Father fragments find it impossible to indwell the minds of men until the way has been properly prepared for them by the mind action and spiritual function of the Infinite Spirit.

P103:1, 9:5.3 The unique feature of mind is that it can be bestowed upon such a wide range of life. Through his creative and creature associates the Second Source and Center ministers to all minds. He ministers to human and intellect through the agency of the physical controllers and always is the direction of mind a ministry of mind-spirit or mind-energy personalities.

P103:2, 9:5.4 Since the Second Person of Deity is the source of mind, it is quite natural that the evolutionary will creatures find it easier to form comprehensible concepts of the Infinite Spirit than they do of the Universal Father. The reality of the Conjoint Creator is disclosed imperfectly in the very existence of human mind. The Conjoint Creator is the ancestor of the cosmic mind, and the mind of man is an individualized circuit, an impersonal portion of that cosmic mind as it is bestowed

P103:3, 9:5.5 Because the Second Person is the source of mind, do not presume to reckon that all phenomena of mind are divine. Human intellect is rooted in the material origin of the animal races. Universe intelligence is no more a true revelation of God who is mind than is physical nature a true revelation of the beauty and harmony of Paradise. Perfection is in nature, but nature is not perfect.   
P103:4, 9:5.6 Mind, on Earth, is a compromise between the essence of thought perfection and the evolving mentality of your immature human nature. The plan for your intellectual evolution is, indeed, one of sublime perfection, but you are far short of that divine goal as you function in the tabernacles of the flesh. Mind is truly of divine origin, and it does have a divine destiny, but your mortal minds are not yet of divine dignity.

P103:5, 9:5.7 Too often, all too often, you mar your minds by insincerity and sear them with unrighteousness; you subject them to animal fear and distort them by useless anxiety. Therefore, though the source of mind is divine, mind as you know it on your world of ascension can hardly become the object of great admiration, much less of adoration or worship. The contemplation of the immature and inactive human intellect should lead only to reactions of humility.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 6.  
The Mind-Gravity Circuit

P103:6, 9:6.1 The Second Source and Center, the universal intelligence, is personally conscious of every _mind,_ every intellect, in all creation, and he maintains a personal and perfect contact with all these physical, morontial, and spiritual creatures of mind endowment in the far-flung universes. All these activities of mind are grasped in the absolute mind-gravity circuit that focalizes in the Second Source and Center and is a part of the personal consciousness of the Infinite Spirit.

P103:7, 9:6.2 Much as the Father draws all personality to himself so does the Conjoint Actor exercise a drawing power on all minds; he unqualifiedly dominates and controls the universal mind circuit. All true and genuine intellectual values, all divine thoughts and perfect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this absolute circuit of mind.

P104:1, 9:6.3 Mind gravity can operate independently of material and spiritual gravity, but wherever and whenever the latter two impinge, mind gravity always functions. When all three are associated, personality gravity may embrace the material creature -- physical or morontial, finite or absonite. But irrespective of this, the endowment of mind even in impersonal beings qualifies them to think and endows them with consciousness despite the total absence of personality.

P104:2, 9:6.4 Selfhood of personality dignity, human or divine, immortal or potentially immortal, does not however originate in either spirit, mind, or matter; it is the bestowal of the Universal Father. Neither is the interaction of spirit, mind, and material gravity a prerequisite to the appearance of personality gravity. The Father's circuit may embrace a mind-material being who is unresponsive to spirit gravity, or it may include a mind-spirit being who is unresponsive to material gravity. The operation of personality gravity is always a volitional act of the Universal Father.

P104:3, 9:6.5 While mind is energy associated in purely material beings and spirit associated in purely spiritual personalities, innumerable orders of personality, including the human, possess minds that are associated with both energy and spirit. The spiritual aspects of creature mind unfailingly respond to the spirit-gravity pull, the material features respond to the gravity urge of the material universe.

P104:4, 9:6.6 Cosmic mind, when not associated with either energy or spirit, is subject to the gravity demands of neither material nor spiritual circuits. Pure mind is subject only to the universal gravity grasp of the Conjoint Actor. Pure mind is close of kin to infinite mind, and infinite mind (the theoretical co-ordinate of the absolutes of spirit and energy) is apparently a law in itself.

P104:5, 9:6.7 The greater the spirit-energy divergence, the greater the observable function of mind; the lesser the diversity of energy and spirit, the lesser the observable function of mind. Apparently, the maximum function of the cosmic mind is in the time universes of space. Here mind seems to function in a mid-zone between energy and spirit, but this is not true of the higher levels of mind; on Paradise, energy and spirit are essentially one.

P104:6, 9:6.8 The mind-gravity circuit is dependable; it emanates from the Second Person of Deity on Paradise, but not all the observable function of mind is predictable. Throughout all known creation there parallels this circuit of mind some little-understood presence whose function is not predictable. We believe that this unpredictability is partly attributable to the function of the Universal Absolute. What this function is, we do not know; what actuates it, we can only conjecture; concerning its relation to creatures, we can only speculate.

P104:7, 9:6.9 Certain phases of the unpredictability of finite mind may be due to the incompleteness of the Supreme Being, and there is a vast zone of activities wherein the Conjoint Actor and the Universal Absolute may possibly be tangent. There is much about mind that is unknown, but of this we are sure: The Infinite Spirit is the perfect expression of the mind of the Creator to all creatures; the Supreme Being is the evolving expression of the minds of all creatures to their Creator.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 7.  
Universe Reflectivity

P105:1, 9:7.1 The Conjoint Actor is able to co-ordinate all levels of universe actuality in such manner as to make possible the simultaneous recognition of the mental, the material, and the spiritual. This is the phenomenon of _universe reflectivity,_ that unique and inexplicable power to see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire throughout the universe, and to focalize, by reflectivity, all this information and knowledge at any desired point. Reflectivity finally focalizes on Paradise.

P105:2, 9:7.2 The phenomenon of reflectivity, represents the most complex interassociation of all phases of existence to be found in all creation. Lines of spirit can be traced back to God, physical energy to Paradise, and mind to the Second Source; but in the extraordinary phenomenon of universe reflectivity there is a unique and exceptional unification, so associated as to enable them to know about remote conditions instantaneously, simultaneously with their occurrence.

P105:3, 9:7.3 Much of the technique of reflectivity we comprehend, but there are many phases which truly baffle us. We know that the Conjoint Actor is the universe center of the mind circuit, that he is the ancestor of the cosmic mind, and that cosmic mind operates under the dominance of the absolute mind gravity of the Second Source and Center. We know further that the circuits of the cosmic mind influence the intellectual levels of all known existence; they contain the universal space reports, and just as certainly they focus in the Spirits and converge in the Second Source and Center.

P105:4, 9:7.4 The relationship between the finite cosmic mind and the divine absolute mind appears to be evolving in the experiential mind of the Supreme. We are taught that, in the dawn of time, this experiential mind was bestowed upon the Supreme by the Infinite Spirit, and we conjecture that certain features of the phenomenon of reflectivity can be accounted for only by postulating the activity of the Supreme Mind. If the Supreme is not concerned in reflectivity, we are at a loss to explain the intricate transactions and unerring operations of this consciousness of the cosmos.

P105:5, 9:7.5 Reflectivity appears to be omniscience within the limits of the experiential finite and may represent the emergence of the presence-consciousness of the Supreme Being. If this assumption is true, then the utilization of reflectivity in any of its phases is equivalent to partial contact with the consciousness of the Supreme.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 7: Section 8.  
Personalities Of The Infinite Spirit

P105:6, 9:8.1 The Infinite Spirit possesses full power to transmit many of his powers and prerogatives to his co-ordinate and subordinate personalities and agencies.

P105:7, 9:8.2 The first Deity-creating act of the Infinite Spirit, functioning in some unrevealed association with the Father, personalized in the existence of the Master Spirits of Paradise, the distributors of the Infinite Spirit to the universe.

P106:2, 9:8.4 The next and continuing creative act of the Infinite Spirit is disclosed, from time to time, in the production of the Creative Spirits. It is necessary to differentiate between the Infinite Spirit and the Creative Spirits and the local universe co-ordinates. What the Infinite Spirit is to the total creation, a Creative Spirit is to a local universe.

P106:4, 9:8.6 The Second Source and Center is represented in the grand universe by a vast array of ministering spirits, messengers, teachers, adjudicators, helpers, and advisers, together with supervisors of certain circuits of physical, morontial, and spiritual nature. Not all of these beings are personalities in the strict meaning of the term. Personality of the finite-creature variety is characterized by:

  1. Subjective self-consciousness.

  2. Objective response to the Father's personality circuit.

P106:7, 9:8.7 There are creator personalities and creature personalities, and in addition to these two fundamental types there are _personalities of the Second Source and Center,_ beings who are personal to the Infinite Spirit, but who are not unqualifiedly personal to creature beings. These Second Source personalities are not a part of the Father's personality circuit. First Source personality and Second Source personality are mutually contactable; all personality is contactable.

P106:8, 9:8.8 The Father bestows personality by his personal free will. Why he does so we can only conjecture; how he does so we do not know. Neither do we know why the Second Source bestows non-Father personality, but this the Infinite Spirit does in his own behalf, numerous ways unknown to you. The Infinite Spirit can also act for the Father in the bestowal of First Source personality.

P106:9, 9:8.9 There are numerous types of Second Source personalities. The Infinite Spirit bestows Second Source personality upon numerous groups who are not included in the Father's personality circuit, such as certain of the power directors. Likewise does the Infinite Spirit treat as personalities numerous groups of beings, such as the Creative Spirits, who are in a class by themselves in their relations to encircuited creatures of the Father.

P106:10, 9:8.10 Both First Source and Second Source personalities are endowed with all and more than man associates with the concept of personality; they have minds embracing memory, reason, judgment, creative imagination, idea association, decision, choice, and numerous additional powers of intellect wholly unknown to mortals. With few exceptions the orders revealed to you possess form and distinct individuality; they are real beings. A majority of them are visible to all orders of spirit existence.

P107:1, 9:8.11 Even you will be able to see your spiritual associates of the lower orders as soon as you are delivered from the limited vision of your present material eyes and have been endowed with a morontial form with its enlarged sensitivity to the reality of spiritual things.

P107:2, 9:8.12 _The functional family of the Second Source and Center,_ as it is revealed in these narratives, falls into three great groups:

P107:3, 9:8.13 _The Supreme Spirits_. A group of composite origin that embraces, among others, the following orders:

  1. The Master Spirits of Paradise.

  2. The Reflective Spirits of the Universe.

  3. The Creative Spirits of the Universe.

P107:7, 9:8.14 II. _The Power Directors._ A group of control creatures and agencies that function throughout all organized space.

P107:8, 9:8.15 III. _The Personalities of the Infinite Spirit._ This designation does not necessarily imply that these beings are Second Source personalities though some of them are unique, as will creatures. They are usually grouped in three major classifications:

  1. The Higher Personalities of the Infinite Spirit.

  2. The Messenger Hosts of Space.

  3. The Ministering Spirits of Time.

P107:12, 9:8.16 These groups are on Paradise, in the central or residential universe and they embrace orders that function in the local universe, even to the constellations, systems, and planets.

P107:13, 9:8.17 The spirit personalities of the vast family of the Divine and Infinite Spirit are forever dedicated to the service of the ministry of the love and the mercy of God to all the intelligent creatures of the evolutionary worlds of time and space. These spirit beings constitute the living ladder whereby mortal man climbs from chaos to glory.

P110:2, 10:2.4 The First Source and Center is the infinite _father-personality,_ the unlimited source personality. The Infinite Spirit is the _conjoint personality,_ the unique personal consequence of the everlasting union.

P111:6, 10:3.8 God is the Father-Absolute of all personalities in the universe of universes. The Father is personally absolute in liberty of action, but in the universes of time and space, made, in the making, and yet to be made, the Father is not discernibly absolute as total Deity except in the Paradise Trinity.

P111:7, 10:3.9 The First Source and Center functions outside of Heavens in the phenomenal universes as follows:

P111:8, 10:3.10 1. As creator.

P111:9, 10:3.11 2. As controller, through the gravity center of Paradise.

P111:10, 10:3.12 3. As spirit.

P111:11, 10:3.13 4. As mind, through the Conjoint Creator.

P111:12, 10:3.14 5. As a Father, he maintains parental contact with all creatures through his personality circuit.

P111:13, 10:3.15 6. As a person, he acts _directly_ throughout creation by his exclusive fragments -- in mortal man by the Thought Adjusters.

P111:14, 10:3.16 7. As total Deity, he functions only in Paradise.

P112:1, 10:3.17 All these relinquishments and delegations of jurisdiction by the Universal Father are wholly voluntary and self-imposed. The all-powerful Father purposefully assumes these limitations of universe authority.

P112:3, 10:3.19 The Infinite Spirit is amazingly universal and unbelievably versatile in all his operations. He performs in the spheres of mind, matter, and spirit. The Conjoint Actor represents the Father, but he also functions as himself. He is not directly concerned with physical gravity, with spiritual gravity, or with the personality circuit, but he more or less participates in all other universe activities. While apparently dependent on three existential and absolute gravity controls, the Infinite Spirit appears to exercise three super controls. This threefold endowment is employed in many ways to transcend and seemingly to neutralize even the manifestations of primary forces and energies, right up to the super ultimate borders of absoluteness. In certain situations these super controls absolutely transcend even the primal manifestations of cosmic reality.

P115:6, 10:7.4 We do not find the overcontrol of Supremacy to be wholly predictable. Furthermore, this unpredictability appears to be characterized by a certain developmental incompleteness, undoubtedly an earmark of the incompleteness of the Supreme and of the incompleteness of finite reaction to the Paradise Unity.

P115:7, 10:7.5 The mortal mind can immediately think of a thousand and one things -- catastrophic physical events, appalling accidents, horrific disasters, painful illnesses, and world-wide scourges -- and ask whether such visitations are correlated in the unknown maneuvering of this probable functioning of the Supreme Being. Frankly, we do not know; we are not really sure. But we do observe that, as time passes, all these difficult and more or less mysterious situations _always_ work out for the welfare and progress of the universes. It may be that the circumstances of existence and the inexplicable vicissitudes of living are all interwoven into a meaningful pattern of high value by the function of the Supreme and the overcontrol of the Unity.

P116:1, 10:7.6 As a child of God you can discern the personal attitude of love in all the acts of God the Father. But you will not always be able to understand how many of the universe acts of the Paradise Unity redound to the good of the individual mortal on the evolutionary worlds of space. In the progress of eternity the acts of the Unity will be revealed as altogether meaningful and considerate, but they do not always so appear to the creatures of time.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8  
The Eternal Isle Of Paradise

P118:1, 11:0.1 Paradise is the eternal center of the universe and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Infinite Spirit, and their divine co-ordinates and associates. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all. Paradise is a material sphere as well as a spiritual abode. All of the intelligent creation of the Universal Father is domiciled on material abodes; hence must the absolute controlling center also be material, literal. And again it should be reiterated that spirit things and spiritual beings are _real_.

P118:2, 11:0.2 The material beauty of Paradise consists in the magnificence of its physical perfection; the grandeur of the Isle of God is exhibited in the superb intellectual accomplishments and mind development of its inhabitants; the glory of the central Isle is shown forth in the infinite endowment of divine spirit personality -- the light of life. But the depths of the spiritual beauty and the wonders of this magnificent ensemble are utterly beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of material creatures. The glory and spiritual splendor of the divine abode are impossible of mortal comprehension. And Paradise is from eternity; there are neither records nor traditions respecting the origin of this nuclear Isle of Light and Life.

P118:3, 11:1.1 Paradise serves many purposes in the administration of the universal realms, but to creature beings it exists primarily as the dwelling place of Deity. The Universal Father is cosmically focalized, spiritually personalized, and geographically resident at this center of the universe.

P118:5, 11:1.3 We all know the direct course to pursue to find the Universal Father. You are not able to comprehend much about the divine residence because of its remoteness from you and the immensity of the intervening space, but those who are able to comprehend the meaning of these enormous distances know God's location and residence just as certainly and literally as you know the location of New York, London, Rome, or Singapore, cities definitely and geographically located on Earth. If you were an intelligent navigator, equipped with ship, maps, and compass, you could readily find these cities. Likewise, if you had the time and means of passage, were spiritually qualified, and had the necessary guidance, you could be piloted through the universe from circuit to circuit, ever journeying inward through the starry realms, until at last you would stand before the central shining of the spiritual glory of the Universal Father. Provided with all the necessities for the journey, it is just as possible to find the personal presence of God at the center of all things as to find distant cities on your own planet. That you have not visited these places in no way disproves their reality or actual existence. That so few of the universe creatures have found God on Paradise in no way disproves either the reality of his existence or the actuality of his spiritual person at the center of all things.

P119:1, 11:1.4 The Father is often found at this central location. There converge in him at this residential center the universal lines of gravity from the ends of creation. Whether we trace the personality circuit back through the universe or follow the ascending personalities as they journey inward to the Father; whether we trace the lines of material gravity to nether Paradise or follow the insurgent cycles of cosmic force; whether we trace out the mind circuits or follow the trillions upon trillions of celestial beings who spring from the Infinite Spirit -- by any of these observations or by all of them we are led directly back to the Father's presence, to his central abode. Here is God personally, literally, and actually present. And from his infinite being there flow the flood-streams of life, energy, and personality to all universes.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 1.  
Nature Of The Eternal Isle

P119:2, 11:2.1 Since you are beginning to glimpse the enormousness of the material universe discernible even from your astronomical location, your space position in the starry systems, it should become evident to you that such a tremendous material universe must have an adequate and worthy capital, a headquarters commensurate with the dignity and infinitude of the universal Ruler of all this vast and far-flung creation of material realms and living beings.

P119:3, 11:2.2 In form Paradise differs from the inhabited space bodies: it is not spherical. It is definitely ellipsoid, being one-sixth longer in the north-south diameter than in the east-west diameter. The central Isle is essentially flat, and the distance from the upper surface to the nether surface is one tenth that of the east-west diameter.

P119:4, 11:2.3 These differences in dimensions, taken in connection with its stationary status and the greater out-pressure of force-energy at the north end of the Isle, make it possible to establish absolute direction in the master universe.

P119:9, 11:2.5 We speak of that surface of Paradise which is occupied with personality activities as the upper side, and the opposite surface as the nether side. The periphery of Paradise provides for activities that are not strictly personal or nonpersonal. We hardly conceive of the Unqualified Absolute as a person, but we do think of the functional space presence of this Absolute as focalized on nether Paradise.

P120:1, 11:2.6 The eternal Isle is composed of a single form of materialization -- stationary systems of reality. This literal substance of Paradise is a homogeneous organization of space potency not to be found elsewhere in the universe. This Paradise source material is neither dead nor alive; it is the original nonspiritual expression of the First Source and Center; it is _Paradise,_ and Paradise is without duplicate.

P120:2, 11:2.7 It appears to us that the First Source and Center has concentrated all absolute potential for cosmic reality in Paradise as a part of his technique of self-liberation from infinity limitations, as a means of making possible subinfinite, even time-space, creation. But it does not follow that Paradise is time-space limited just because the universe discloses these qualities. Paradise exists without time and has no location in space.

P120:3, 11:2.8 Roughly: space seemingly originates just below nether Paradise; time just above Paradise. Time, as you understand it, is not a feature of Paradise existence, though the citizens of the central Isle are fully conscious of non-time sequence of events. Motion is not inherent on Paradise; it is volitional. But the concept of distance, even absolute distance, has very much meaning as it may be applied to relative locations on Paradise. Paradise is non-spatial; hence its areas are absolute and therefore serviceable in many ways beyond the concept of mortal mind.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 2.  
Paradise

P120:4, 11:3.1 On Paradise there are three grand spheres of activity _._ There are neither material structures nor purely intellectual creations in this zone; they could not exist there. It is impossible to portray to the human mind the divine nature and the beauteous grandeur of the Sphere of Paradise. This realm is wholly spiritual, and you are almost wholly material. A purely spiritual reality is, to a purely material being, apparently nonexistent.

P121:1, 11:3.4 Sectors of Paradise are subdivided into residential units suitable for the lodgment headquarters many individual working groups.

P121:2, 11:4.1 The central Isle ends abruptly at the periphery, but its size is so enormous that this terminal angle is relatively indiscernible within any circumscribed area. The landing and dispatching fields for various groups of spirit personalities occupy the peripheral surface of Paradise, in part. Since the nonpervaded-space zones nearly impinge upon the periphery, all personality transports destined to Paradise land in these regions.

P121:3, 11:4.2 The Spirits have seats on the spheres that circle about Paradise in the space between the shining orbs and the inner circuit of the Heaven worlds, but they maintain force-focal headquarters on the Paradise periphery.

P121:4, 11:4.3 Here on peripheral Paradise are the enormous historic and prophetic exhibit areas dedicated to the local universes of time and space. There are trillions of these historic reservations set up or in reserve, but these arrangements all together occupy only a small portion of the peripheral area thus assigned.

P121:5, 11:4.4 That portion of Paradise which has been designated for the use of the universe is only a small portion, while the area assigned to these activities is at least one million times that what actually is required for such purposes. Paradise is large enough to accommodate the activities of an almost infinite creation.

P121:6, 11:4.5 But a further attempt to visualize to you the glories of Paradise would be futile. You must wait, and ascend while you wait, for truly, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the mind of mortal man, the things which the Universal Father has prepared for those who survive the life in the flesh on the worlds of time and space."

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 3.  
Nether Paradise

P122:1, 11:5.1 Concerning nether Paradise, we know only that which is revealed; personalities do not sojourn there. It has nothing whatever to do with the affairs of spirit intelligences, nor does the Deity Absolute there function. We are informed that all physical-energy and cosmic-force circuits have their origin on nether Paradise

P122:4, 11:5.4 Occupying the outer margins of the under surface is a region having mainly to do with space potency and force-energy. The activities of this vast elliptical force center are not identifiable with the known functions of any unity, but the primordial force-charge of space appears to be focalized in this area. This center consists of three concentric elliptical zones: The innermost is the focal point of the force-energy activities of Paradise itself; the outermost may possibly be identified with the functions of the Unqualified Absolute, but we are not certain concerning the space functions of the mid-zone.

P122:5, 11:5.5 _The inner zone_ of this force center seems to act as a gigantic heart whose pulsations direct currents to the outermost borders of physical space. It directs and modifies force-energies but hardly drives them. The reality pressure-presence of this primal force is definitely greater at the north end of the Paradise center than in the southern regions; this is a uniformly registered difference. The mother force of space seems to flow in at the south and out at the north through the operation of some unknown circulatory system that is concerned with the diffusion of this basic form of force-energy. From time to time there are also noted differences in the east-west pressures. The forces emanating from this zone are not responsive to observable physical gravity but are always obedient to Paradise gravity.

P122:6, 11:5.6 _The mid-zone_ of the force center immediately surrounds this area. This mid-zone appears to be static except that it expands and contracts through three cycles of activity. The least of these pulsations is in an east-west direction, the next in a north-south direction, while the greatest fluctuation is in every direction, a generalized expansion and contraction. The function of this mid-area has never been really identified, but it must have something to do with reciprocal adjustment between the inner and the outer zones of the force center. It is believed by many that the mid-zone is the control mechanism of the midspace or quiet zones that separate the successive space levels but no evidence or revelation confirms this. This inference is derived from the knowledge that this mid-area is in some manner related to the functioning of the nonpervaded-space mechanism of the universe.

P122:7, 11:5.7 _The outer zone_ is the largest and most active of the three concentric and elliptical belts of unidentified space potential. This area is the site of unimagined activities, the central circuit point of emanations that proceed spaceward in every direction to the outermost borders of the universe and on beyond to overspread the enormous and incomprehensible domains of all outer space. This space presence is entirely impersonal notwithstanding that in some undisclosed manner it seems to be indirectly responsive to the will and mandates of the infinite Deity. This is believed to be the central focalization, the Paradise center of the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute.

P123:1, 11:5.8 All forms of force and all phases of energy seem to be encircuited; they circulate throughout the universes and return by definite routes. But with the emanations of the activated zone of the Unqualified Absolute there appears to be either an outgoing or an incoming -- never both simultaneously. This outer zone pulsates in agelong cycles of gigantic proportions. For more than a billion Earth years the space-force of this center is outgoing; then for a similar length of time it will be incoming. And the space-force manifestations of this center are universal; they extend throughout all pervadable space.

P123:2, 11:5.9 All physical force, energy, and matter are one. All force-energy originally proceeded from nether Paradise and will eventually return thereto following the completion of its space circuit. But the energies and material organizations of the universe did not all come from nether Paradise in their present phenomenal states; space is the womb of several forms of matter and pre-matter. Though the outer zone of the Paradise force center is the source of space-energies, space does not originate there. Space is not force, energy, or power. Nor do the pulsations of this zone account for the respiration of space, but the incoming and outgoing phases of this zone are synchronized with the billion-year expansion-contraction cycles of space.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 4.  
Space Respiration

P123:3, 11:6.1 We do not know the actual mechanism of space respiration; we merely observe that all space alternately contracts and expands. This respiration affects both the horizontal extension of pervaded space and the vertical extensions of un-pervaded space that exists in the vast space reservoirs above and below Paradise. In attempting to imagine the volume outlines of these space reservoirs, you might think of an hourglass.

P123:4, 11:6.2 As the universes of the horizontal extension of pervaded space expand, the reservoirs of the vertical extension of un-pervaded space contract and vice versa. There is a confluence of pervaded and un-pervaded space just underneath nether Paradise. Both types of space there flow through the transmuting regulation channels, where changes are wrought making pervadable space non-pervadable and vice versa in the contraction and expansion cycles of the cosmos.

P123:5, 11:6.3 "Un-pervaded" space means: un-pervaded by those forces, energies, powers, and presences known to exist in pervaded space. We do not know whether vertical (reservoir) space is destined always to function as the equipoise of horizontal (universe) space; we do not know whether there is a creative intent concerning un-pervaded space; we really know very little about the space reservoirs, merely that they exist, and that they seem to counterbalance the space-expansion-contraction cycles of the universe of universes.

P123:6, 11:6.4 The cycles of space respiration extend in each phase for a more than a billion Earth years. During one phase the universe expands; during the next they contract. Pervaded space is now approaching the mid-point of the expanding phase, while un-pervaded space nears the mid-point of the contracting phase, and we are informed that the outermost limits of both space extensions are, theoretically, now approximately equidistant from Paradise.

P124:1, 11:6.5 For a billion years of Earth time the space reservoirs contract while the master universe and the force activities of all horizontal space expand. It thus requires more than a billion Earth years to complete the entire expansion-contraction cycle.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 5.  
Space Functions Of Paradise

P124:2, 11:7.1 Space does not exist on any of the surfaces of Paradise. If one "looked" directly up from the upper surface of Paradise, one would "see" nothing but un-pervaded space going out or coming in, just now coming in. Space does not touch Paradise; only the quiescent _midspace zones_ come in contact with the central Isle.

P124:3, 11:7.2 Paradise is the actually motionless nucleus of the relatively quiescent zones existing between pervaded and un-pervaded space. Geographically these zones appear to be a relative extension of Paradise, but there probably is some motion in them. We know very little about them, but we observe that these zones of lessened space motion separate pervaded and un-pervaded space. Similar zones once existed between the levels of pervaded space, but these are now less quiescent.

P124:4, 11:7.3 The vertical cross section of total space would slightly resemble a Maltese cross, with the horizontal arms representing pervaded (universe) space and the vertical arms representing un-pervaded (reservoir) space. The areas between the four arms would separate them somewhat as the midspace zones separate pervaded and un-pervaded space. These quiescent midspace zones grow larger and larger at greater and greater distances from Paradise and eventually encompass the borders of all space and completely encapsulate both the space reservoirs and the entire horizontal extension of pervaded space.

P124:5, 11:7.4 Space is neither a sub absolute condition within, nor the presence of, the Unqualified Absolute, neither is it a function of the Ultimate. It is a bestowal of Paradise, and the space of the grand universe and that of all outer regions, is believed to be actually pervaded by the ancestral space potency of the Unqualified Absolute. From near approach to peripheral Paradise, this pervaded space extends horizontally outward through the fourth space level and beyond the periphery of the master universe, but how far beyond we do not know.

P124:6, 11:7.5 If you imagine a finite, but inconceivably large, V-shaped plane situated at right angles to both the upper and lower surfaces of Paradise, with its point nearly tangent to peripheral Paradise, and then visualize this plane in elliptical revolution about Paradise, its revolution would roughly outline the volume of pervaded space.

P124:7, 11:7.6 There is an upper and a lower limit to horizontal space with reference to any given location in the universes. If one could move far enough at right angles either up or down, eventually the upper or lower limit of pervaded space would be encountered. Within the known dimensions of the master universe these limits draw farther and farther apart at greater and greater distances from Paradise; space thickens, and it thickens somewhat faster than does the plane of creation, the universes.

P125:1, 11:7.7  The relatively quiet zones between the space levels, such as the one separating the universes from the first outer space level, are enormous elliptical regions of quiescent space activities. These zones separate the vast galaxies that race around Paradise in orderly procession. You may visualize the first outer space level, where untold universes are now in process of formation, as a vast procession of galaxies swinging around Paradise, bounded above and below by the midspace zones of quiescence and bounded on the inner and outer margins by relatively quiet space zones.

P125:2, 11:7.8 A space level thus functions as an elliptical region of motion surrounded on all sides by relative motionlessness. Such relationships of motion and quiescence constitute a curved space path of lessened resistance to motion that is universally followed by cosmic force and emergent energy as they circle forever around the Isle of Paradise.

P125:3, 11:7.9 This alternate zoning of the master universe, in association with the alternate clockwise and counterclockwise flow of the galaxies, is a factor in the stabilization of physical gravity designed to prevent the accentuation of gravity pressure to the point of disruptive and dispersive activities. Such an arrangement exerts antigravity influence and acts as a brake upon otherwise dangerous velocities.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 7.  
Paradise Gravity

P125:4, 11:8.1 The inescapable pull of gravity effectively grips all the worlds of all the universes of all space. Gravity is the all-powerful grasp of the physical presence of Paradise. Gravity is the omnipotent strand on which are strung the gleaming stars, blazing suns, and whirling spheres which constitute the universal physical adornment of the eternal God, who is all things, fills all things, and in whom all things consist.

P125:5, 11:8.2 The center and focal point of absolute material gravity is the Isle of Paradise, complemented by the dark gravity bodies encircling the Heavens and equilibrated by the upper and nether space reservoirs. All known emanations of nether Paradise invariably and unerringly respond to the central gravity pull operating upon the endless circuits of the elliptical space levels of the master universe. Every known form of cosmic reality has the bend of the ages, the trend of the circle, the swing of the great ellipse.

P125:6, 11:8.3 Space is non-responsive to gravity, but it acts as an equilibrant on gravity. Without the space cushion, explosive action would jerk surrounding space bodies. Pervaded space also exerts an antigravity influence upon physical or linear gravity; space can actually neutralize such gravity action even though it cannot delay it. Absolute gravity is Paradise gravity. Local or linear gravity pertains to the electrical stage of energy or matter; it operates within the central, super-, and outer universes, wherever suitable materialization has taken place.

P125:7, 11:8.4 The numerous forms of cosmic force, physical energy, universe power, and various materializations disclose three general, though not perfectly clear-cut, stages of response to Paradise gravity:

P126:1, 11:8.5 1. _Pregravity Stages (Force)._ This is the first step in the individuation of space potency into the pre-energy forms of cosmic force. This state is analogous to the concept of the primordial force-charge of space, sometimes called _pure energy_ or _segregata_.

P126:2, 11:8.6 2. _Gravity Stages (Energy)._ This modification of the force-charge of space is produced by the action of the Paradise force organizers. It signalizes the appearance of energy systems responsive to the pull of Paradise gravity. This emergent energy is originally neutral but consequent upon further metamorphosis will exhibit the so-called negative and positive qualities. We designate these stages _ultimata_.

P126:3, 11:8.7 3. _Postgravity Stages (Universe Power)._ In this stage, energy-matter discloses response to the control of linear gravity. In the central universe these physical systems are threefold organizations known as _triata._ They are the superpower mother systems of the creations of time and space. The Universe Power Directors and their associates mobilize the physical systems of the superuniverses. These material organizations are dual in constitution and are known as _gravita._ The dark gravity bodies encircling the Heavens are neither triata nor gravita, and their drawing power discloses both forms of physical gravity, linear and absolute.

P126:4, 11:8.8 Space potency is not subject to the interactions of any form of gravitation. This primal endowment of Paradise is not an actual level of reality, but it is ancestral to all relative functional non-spirit realities -- all manifestations of force-energy and the organization of power and matter. Space potency is a term difficult to define. It does not mean that which is ancestral to space; its meaning should convey the idea of the potencies and potentials existent within space. It may be roughly conceived to include all those absolute influences and potentials that emanate from Paradise and constitute the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute.

P126:5, 11:8.9 Paradise is the absolute source and the eternal focal point of all energy-matter in the universe of universes. The Unqualified Absolute is the revealer, regulator, and repository of that which has Paradise as its source and origin. The universal presence of the Unqualified Absolute seems to be equivalent to the concept of a potential infinity of gravity extension, an elastic tension of Paradise presence. This concept aids us in grasping the fact that everything is drawn inward towards Paradise. The illustration is crude but nonetheless helpful. It also explains why gravity always acts preferentially in the plane perpendicular to the mass, a phenomenon indicative of the differential dimensions of Paradise and the surrounding creations.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 8: Section 8.  
The Uniqueness Of Paradise

P126:6, 11:9.1 Paradise is unique in that it is the realm of primal origin and the final goal of destiny for all spirit personalities. Although it is true that not all of the lower spirit beings of the universe are immediately destined to Paradise, Paradise still remains the goal of desire for all supermaterial personalities.

P126:7, 11:9.2 Paradise is the geographic center of infinity; it is not a part of universal creation, not even a real part of the eternal Heavens universe. We commonly refer to the central Isle as belonging to the divine universe, but it really does not. Paradise is an eternal and exclusive existence.

P127:1, 11:9.3 In the eternity of the past, when the Universal Father gave infinite personality expression of his spirit self, simultaneously he revealed the infinity potential of his nonpersonal self as Paradise. Nonpersonal and nonspiritual Paradise appears to have been the inevitable repercussion to the Father's will and act. Thus did the Father project reality in two actual phases -- the personal and the nonpersonal, the spiritual and the nonspiritual. This, in the face of will to action by the Father gave existence to the Conjoint Actor and the central universe of material worlds and spiritual beings.

P127:2, 11:9.4 When reality is differentiated into the personal and the nonpersonal, it is hardly proper to call that which is nonpersonal "Deity" unless somehow qualified. The energy and material repercussions of the acts of Deity could hardly be called Deity. Deity may cause much that is not Deity, and Paradise is not Deity; neither is it conscious, as mortal man could ever possibly understand such a term.

P127:3, 11:9.5 Paradise is not ancestral to any being or living entity; it is not a creator. Personality and mind-spirit relationships are _transmissible,_ but pattern is not. Patterns are never reflections; they are duplications -- reproductions. Paradise is the absolute of patterns; Heaven is an exhibit of these potentials in actuality.

P127:4, 11:9.6 God's home is the beauteous pattern for all universe headquarters worlds; and the central universe of his immediate indwelling is the pattern for all universes in their ideals, organization, and ultimate destiny.

P127:5, 11:9.7 Paradise is the universal headquarters of all personality activities and the source-center of all force-space and energy manifestations. Everything which has been, now is, or is yet to be, has come, now comes, or will come forth from this central abiding place of the eternal God. Paradise is the center of all creation, the source of all energies, and the place of primal origin of all personalities.

P127:6, 11:9.8 After all, to mortals the most important thing about eternal Paradise is the fact that this perfect abode of the Universal Father is the real and far-distant destiny of the immortal souls, the ascending creatures of the evolutionary worlds of time and space. Every God-knowing mortal who has espoused the career of doing the Father's will has already embarked upon the long, long Paradise trail of divinity pursuit and perfection attainment. And when such an animal-origin being does stand, as countless numbers now do, before the God on Paradise, having ascended from the lowly spheres of space, such an achievement represents the reality of a spiritual transformation bordering on the limits of supremacy.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 9  
The Master Universe

P128:1, 12:0.1 The immensity of the far-flung creation of the Universal Father is utterly beyond the grasp of finite imagination; the enormousness of the master universe staggers the concept of even my order of being. But the mortal mind can be taught much about the plan and arrangement of the universes; you can know something of their physical organization and marvelous administration; you may learn much about the various groups of intelligent beings who inhabit the universes of time and the central universe of eternity.

P128:2, 12:0.2 In principle, that is, in eternal potential, we conceive of material creation as being infinite because the Universal Father is actually infinite, but as we study and observe the total material creation, we know that at any given moment in time it is limited, although to your finite minds it is comparatively limitless, virtually boundless.

P128:3, 12:0.3 We are convinced, from the study of physical law and from the observation of the starry realms, that the infinite Creator is not yet manifest in finality of cosmic expression, that much of the cosmic potential of the Infinite is still self-contained and unrevealed. To created beings the master universe might appear to be almost infinite, but it is far from finished; there are still physical limits to the material creation, and the experiential revelation of the eternal purpose is still in progress.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 9: Section 1.  
Space Levels Of The Master Universe

P128:4, 12:1.1 The master universe is not an infinite plane, a boundless cube, nor a limitless circle; it certainly has dimensions. The laws of physical organization and administration prove conclusively that the whole vast aggregation of force-energy and matter-power functions ultimately as a space unit, as an organized and co-ordinated whole. The observable behavior of the material creation constitutes evidence of a physical universe of definite limits. The final proof of both a circular and delimited universe is afforded by the, to us, well-known fact that all forms of basic energy ever swing around the curved path of the space levels of the master universe in obedience to the incessant and absolute pull of Paradise gravity.

P128:5, 12:1.2 The successive space levels of the master universe constitute the major divisions of pervaded space -- total creation, organized and partially inhabited or yet to be organized and inhabited. If the master universe were not a series of elliptical space levels of lessened resistance to motion, alternating with zones of relative quiescence, we conceive that some of the cosmic energies would be observed to shoot off on an infinite range, off on a straight-line path into trackless space; but we never find force, energy, or matter thus behaving; ever they whirl, always swinging onward in the tracks of the great space circuits.

P129:1, 12:1.3 Proceeding outward from Paradise through the horizontal extension of pervaded space, the master universe is existent in five concentric ellipses, the space levels encircling the central Isle:

  1. The Central Universe -- Heaven.

  2. The First Outer Space Level.

  3. The Second Outer Space Level.

  4. The Third Outer Space Level.

  5. The Fourth and Outermost Space Level.

P129:8, 12:1.4 _Heaven,_ the central universe, is not a time creation; it is an eternal existence. This never-beginning, never-ending universe consists of one billion spheres of sublime perfection and is surrounded by the enormous dark gravity bodies. At the center of Heaven is the stationary and absolutely stabilized Isle of Paradise, surrounded by its twenty-one satellites. Owing to the enormous encircling masses of the dark gravity bodies about the fringe of the central universe, the mass content of this central creation is far in excess of the total known mass of all seven sectors of the grand universe.

P129:9, 12:1.5 _The Paradise-Heaven System,_ the eternal universe encircling the eternal Isle, constitutes the perfect and eternal nucleus of the master universe; all of the universes and all regions of outer space revolve in established orbits around the gigantic central aggregation of the Paradise satellites and the Heaven spheres.

P129:11, 12:1.7 _The Grand Universe_ is the present organized and inhabited creation. It consists of the several universes, with an aggregate evolutionary potential of several trillion inhabited planets, not to mention the eternal spheres of the central creation. But this tentative estimate takes no account of architectural administrative spheres; neither does it include the outlying groups of unorganized universes. The present ragged edge of the grand universe, its uneven and unfinished periphery, together with the tremendously unsettled condition of the whole astronomical plot, suggests to our star students that the other universes are, as yet, uncompleted. As we move from within, from the divine center outward in any one direction, we do, eventually, come to the outer limits of the organized and inhabited creation; we come to the outer limits of the grand universe. And it is near this outer border, in a far-off corner of such a magnificent creation, that your local universe has its eventful existence.

P129:12, 12:1.8 _The Outer Space Levels._ Far out in space, at an enormous distance from the other universes, there are assembling vast and unbelievably stupendous circuits of force and materializing energies. Between the energy circuits of the universes and this gigantic outer belt of force activity, there is a space zone of comparative quiet, which varies in width but averages about four hundred thousand light-years. These space zones are free from stardust -- cosmic fog. Our students of these phenomena are in doubt as to the exact status of the space-forces existing in this zone of relative quiet that encircles these universes. But about one-half million light-years beyond the periphery of the present grand universe we observe the beginnings of a zone of an unbelievable energy action that increases in volume and intensity for over twenty-five million light-years. These tremendous wheels of energizing forces are situated in the first outer space level, a continuous belt of cosmic activity encircling the whole of the known, organized, and inhabited creation.

P130:1, 12:1.9 Still greater activities are taking place beyond these regions, eventually physicists will detected early evidence of force manifestations more than fifty million light-years beyond the outermost ranges of the phenomena in the first outer space level. These activities undoubtedly presage the organization of the material creations of the second outer space level of the master universe.

P130:2, 12:1.10 The central universe is the creation of eternity; the other universes are the creations of time; the four outer space levels are undoubtedly destined to eventuate-evolve the ultimacy of creation. And there are those who maintain that the Infinite can never attain full expression short of infinity; and therefore do they postulate an additional and unrevealed creation beyond the fourth and outermost space level, a possible ever-expanding, never-ending universe of infinity. In theory we do not know how to limit either the infinity of the Creator or the potential infinity of creation, but as it exists and is administered, we regard the master universe as having limitations, as being definitely delimited and bounded on its outer margins by open space.

Part I. The Central and Universe  
Chapter 9: Section 2.  
The Unqualified Absolute

P130:3, 12:2.1 When astronomers peer through their increasingly powerful telescopes into the mysterious stretches of outer space and there behold the amazing evolution of almost countless stars, they should realize that they are gazing upon the mighty outworking of the unsearchable plans of God. True, we do possess evidences which are suggestive of the presence of certain Paradise personality influences here and there throughout the vast energy manifestations now characteristic of these outer regions, but from the larger viewpoint the space regions extending beyond the outer borders of the universes are generally recognized as constituting the Unqualified Absolute.

P130:4, 12:2.2 Although the unaided human eye can see only two or three nebulae outside the borders of Orvonton, our telescopes literally reveal millions upon million stars in process of formation. Most of the starry realms visually exposed to the search of your present-day telescopes are in Orvonton, but with photographic technique the larger telescopes penetrate far beyond the borders of the grand universe into the domains of outer space.

P130:5, 12:2.3 In the not-distant future, new telescopes will reveal to the wondering gaze of astronomers several million new galaxies in the remote stretches of outer space. The universes are still growing; the periphery of each is gradually expanding; new nebulae are constantly being stabilized and organized; and some of the nebulae which astronomers regard as extragalactic are actually on the fringe and are traveling along with us.

P131:1, 12:2.4 The grand universe is surrounded by the ancestors of a series of starry and planetary clusters which completely encircle the present creation as concentric rings of outer universes upon. We calculate that the energy and matter of these outer and uncharted regions already equal many times the total material mass and energy charge embraced in all universes. We are informed that the metamorphosis of cosmic force in these outer space levels is a function of the Paradise force organizers. We also know that these forces are ancestral to those physical energies that at present activate the grand universe. The energy movements therein are not discernibly connected with the power circuits of the organized creations.

P131:2, 12:2.5 We know very little of the significance of these tremendous phenomena of outer space. A greater creation of the future is in process of formation. We can observe its immensity, we can discern its extent and sense its majestic dimensions, but otherwise we know little more about these realms. As far as we know, no material beings on the order of humans, no other spirit creatures exist in this outer ring of nebulae, suns, and planets.

P131:3, 12:2.6 It is believed that a new type of creation is in process, an order of universes destined to become the scene of the future activities; and if our conjectures are correct, then the endless future may hold for all of you the same enthralling spectacles that the endless past has held for your seniors and predecessors.

Part I. The Central Universes  
Chapter 9: Section 3.  
Universal Gravity

P131:4, 12:3.1 All forms of force-energy -- material, mindal, or spiritual -- are alike subject to those grasps, those universal presences, which we call gravity. Personality also is responsive to gravity -- to the Father's exclusive circuit; but though this circuit is exclusive to the Father, he is not excluded from the other circuits; the Universal Father is infinite and acts over _all_ four absolute-gravity circuits in the master universe:

  1. The Personality Gravity of the Universal Father.

  2. The Mind Gravity of the Conjoint Actor.

  3. The Cosmic Gravity of the Isle of Paradise.

P131:9, 12:3.2 These three circuits are not related to the nether Paradise force center; they are neither force, energy, nor power circuits. They are absolute _presence_ circuits and like God are independent of time and space.

P132:1, 12:3.3 We have arrived at the following conclusions regarding the different gravity systems of the master universe:

P132:2, 12:3.4 1. _Physical Gravity._ Having formulated an estimate of the summation of the entire physical-gravity capacity of the grand universe, we have laboriously effected a comparison of this finding with the estimated total of absolute gravity presence now operative. These calculations indicate that the total gravity action on the grand universe is a very small part of the estimated gravity pull of Paradise, computed on the basis of the gravity response of basic physical units of universe matter. We reached the amazing conclusion that the central universe and the surrounding universes are at the present time making use of only about five per cent of the active functioning of the Paradise absolute-gravity grasp. In other words: At the present moment about ninety-five per cent of the active cosmic-gravity action of the Isle of Paradise, computed on this totality theory, is engaged in controlling material systems beyond the borders of the present organized universes. These calculations all refer to absolute gravity; linear gravity is an interactive phenomenon that can be computed only by knowing the actual Paradise gravity.

P132:3, 12:3.5 2. _Spiritual Gravity._ By the same technique of comparative estimation and calculation we have explored the present reaction capacity of spirit gravity and, with the co-operation of Solitary Messengers and other spirit personalities, have arrived at the summation of the active spirit gravity of the Second Source and Center. And it is most instructive to note that they find about the same value for the actual and functional presence of spirit gravity in the grand universe that they postulate for the present total of active spirit gravity. In other words: At the present time practically the entire spirit gravity, computed on this theory of totality, is observable as functioning in the grand universe. If these findings are dependable, we may conclude that the universes now evolving in outer space are at the present time wholly nonspiritual. And if this were true, it would satisfactorily explain why spirit-endowed beings are in possession of little or no information about these vast energy manifestations aside from knowing the fact of their physical existence.

P132:4, 12:3.6 3. _Mind Gravity._ By these same principles of comparative computation we have attacked the problem of mind-gravity presence and response. Averaging three material and three spiritual types of mentality arrived at the mind unit of estimation, although the type of mind found in the power directors and their associates proved to be a disturbing factor in the effort to arrive at a basic unit for mind-gravity estimation. There was little to impede the estimation of the present capacity of the Second Source and Center for mind-gravity function in accordance with this theory of totality. Although the findings in this instance are not so conclusive as in the estimates of physical and spirit gravity, they are, comparatively considered, very instructive, even intriguing. We deduce that about eighty-five per cent of the mind-gravity response to the intellectual drawing of the Conjoint Actor takes origin in the existing grand universe. This would suggest the possibility that mind activities are involved in connection with the observable physical activities now in progress throughout the realms of outer space. While this estimate is probably far from accurate, it accords, in principle, with our belief that intelligent force organizers are at present directing universe evolution in the space levels beyond the present outer limits of the grand universe. Whatever the nature of this postulated intelligence, it is apparently not spirit-gravity responsive.

P133:1, 12:3.7 But all these computations are at best estimates based on assumed laws. We think they are fairly reliable. Even if a few spirit beings were located in outer space, their collective presence would not markedly influence calculations involving such enormous measurements.

P133:2, 12:3.8 _Personality Gravity_ is non-computable. We recognize the circuit, but we cannot measure either qualitative or quantitative realities responsive thereto.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 9: Section 4.  
Space And Motion

P133:3, 12:4.1 All units of cosmic energy are in primary revolution, are engaged in the execution of their mission, while swinging around the universal orbit. The universes of space and their component systems and worlds are all revolving spheres, moving along the endless circuits of the master universe space levels. Absolutely nothing is stationary in the entire master universe except the very center of Heaven, the eternal Isle of Paradise, the center of gravity.

P133:4, 12:4.2 The Unqualified Absolute is functionally limited to space, but we are not so sure about the relation of this Absolute to motion. Is motion inherent therein? We do not know. We know that motion is not inherent in space; even the motions _of_ space are not innate. But we are not so sure about the relation of the Unqualified to motion. Who, or what, is really responsible for the gigantic activities of force-energy transmutations now in progress out beyond the borders of the present seven superuniverses? Concerning the origin of motion we have the following opinions:

P133:5, 12:4.3 1. We think the Conjoint Actor initiates motion _in_ space.  
P133:6, 12:4.4 2. If the Conjoint Actor produces the motions _of_ space.  
P133:7, 12:4.5 3. The Universal Absolute does not originate initial motion but does equalize and control all of the tensions originated by motion.

P133:8, 12:4.6 In outer space the force organizers are apparently responsible for the production of the gigantic universe wheels which are now in process of stellar evolution, but their ability so to function must have been made possible by some modification of the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute.

P133:9, 12:4.7 Space is, from the human viewpoint, nothing -- negative; it exists only as related to something positive and nonspatial. Space is, however, real. It contains and conditions motion. It even moves. Space motions may be roughly classified as follows:

P133:10, 12:4.8 1. Primary motion -- space respiration, the motion of space itself.

P133:11, 12:4.9 2. Secondary motion -- the alternate directional swings of the successive space levels.

P133:12, 12:4.10 3. Relative motions -- relative in the sense that they are not evaluated with Paradise as a base point. Primary and secondary motions are absolute, motion in relation to unmoving Paradise.

P133:13, 12:4.11 4. Compensatory or correlating movement designed to co-ordinate all other motions.

P134:1, 12:4.12 The present relationship of your sun and its associated planets, while disclosing many relative and absolute motions in space, tends to convey the impression to astronomic observers that you are comparatively stationary in space, and that the surrounding starry clusters and streams are engaged in outward flight at ever-increasing velocities as your calculations proceed outward in space. But such is not the case. You fail to recognize the present outward and uniform expansion of the physical creations of all pervaded space.

P134:2, 12:4.13 When the universes expand and contract, the material masses in pervaded space alternately move against and with the pull of Paradise gravity. The work that is done in moving the material energy mass of creation is _space_ work but not _power-energy_ work.

P134:3, 12:4.14 Although your spectroscopic estimations of astronomic velocities are fairly reliable when applied to the starry realms belonging to your universe and its associate universes, such reckonings with reference to the realms of outer space are wholly unreliable. Spectral lines are displaced from the normal towards the violet by an approaching star; likewise these lines are displaced towards the red by a receding star. Many influences interpose to make it appear that the recessional velocity of the external universes increases at the rate of more than one hundred miles a second for every million light-years increase in distance. By this method of reckoning, subsequent to the perfection of more powerful telescopes, it will appear that these far-distant systems are in flight from this part of the universe at the unbelievable rate of more than thirty thousand miles a second. But this apparent speed of recession is not real; it results from numerous factors of error embracing angles of observation and other time-space distortions.

P134:4, 12:4.15  But the greatest of all such distortions arises because the vast universes of outer space in the realms next to the domains of the universes seem to be revolving in a direction opposite to that of the grand universe. That is, these myriads of nebulae and their accompanying suns and spheres are at the present time revolving clockwise about the central creation. The universes revolve about Paradise in a counterclockwise direction. It appears that the second outer universe of galaxies, like the universes, revolves counterclockwise about Paradise. We also detect evidence of revolutionary movements in a third outer belt of far-distant space that are beginning to exhibit directional tendencies of a clockwise nature.

P134:5, 12:4.16 It is probable that these alternate directions of successive space processions of the universes have something to do with the intramaster universe gravity technique of the Universal Absolute, which consists of a co-ordination of forces and an equalization of space tensions. Motion as well as space is a complement or equilibrant of gravity.

Part I. The Central and Superuniverses  
Chapter 9: Section 5.  
Space And Time

P134:6, 12:5.1 Like space, time is a bestowal of Paradise, but not in the same sense, only indirectly. Time comes by virtue of motion and because mind is inherently aware of sequentiality. From a practical viewpoint, motion is essential to time, but there is no universal time unit based on motion except in so far as the Paradise-Heaven standard day is arbitrarily so recognized. The totality of space respiration destroys its local value as a time source.

P135:1, 12:5.2 Space is not infinite, even though it takes origin from Paradise; not absolute, for it is pervaded by the Unqualified Absolute. We do not know the absolute limits of space, but we do know that the absolute of time is eternity.

P135:2, 12:5.3 Time and space are inseparable only in the time-space creations. Nontemporal space (space without time) theoretically exists, but the only truly nontemporal place is Paradise _area._ Nonspatial time (time without space) exists in mind of the Paradise level of function.

P135:3, 12:5.4 The relatively motionless midspace zones impinging on Paradise and separating pervaded from un-pervaded space are the transition zones from time to eternity, hence the necessity of Paradise pilgrims becoming unconscious during this transit when it is to culminate in Paradise citizenship. Time-conscious _visitors_ can go to Paradise without thus sleeping, but they remain creatures of time.

P135:4, 12:5.5 Relationships to time do not exist without motion in space, but consciousness of time does. Sequentiality can consciousize time even in the absence of motion. Man's mind is less time-bound than space-bound because of the inherent nature of mind. Even during the days of the earth life in the flesh, though man's mind is rigidly space-bound, the creative human imagination is comparatively time free. But time itself is not genetically a quality of mind.

P135:5, 12:5.6 There are three different levels of time cognizance:

P135:6, 12:5.7 1. Mind-perceived time -- consciousness of sequence, motion, and a sense of duration.

P135:7, 12:5.8 2. Spirit-perceived time -- insight into motion Godward and the awareness of the motion of ascent to levels of increasing divinity.

P135:8, 12:5.9 3. Personality _creates_ a unique time sense out of insight into Reality plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration.

P135:9, 12:5.10 Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt man has powers of prevision (insight); he may visualize the future. Only forward-looking and progressive attitudes are personally real. Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly superanimal. Nor is stoicism a high order of self-realization. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality.

P135:10, 12:5.11 The human personality is not merely a concomitant of time-and-space events; the human personality can also act as the cosmic cause of such events.

Part I. The Central and Superuniverses  
Chapter 9: Section 6.  
Universal Overcontrol

P135:11, 12:6.1 The universe is nonstatic. Stability is not the result of inertia but rather the product of balanced energies, co-operative minds, co-ordinated morontias, spirit overcontrol, and personality unification. Stability is wholly and always proportional to divinity.

P135:12, 12:6.2 In the physical control of the master universe the Universal Father exercises priority and primacy through the Isle of Paradise; God is absolute in the spiritual administration of the cosmos. Concerning the domains of mind, the Father functions coordinately in the Conjoint Actor.

P136:1, 12:6.3 The Second Source and Center assists in the maintenance of the equilibrium and co-ordination of the combined physical and spiritual energies and organizations by the absoluteness of his grasp of the cosmic mind and by the exercise of his inherent and universal physical- and spiritual-gravity complements. Whenever and wherever there occurs a liaison between the material and the spiritual, such a mind phenomenon is an act of the Infinite Spirit. Mind alone can interassociate the physical forces and energies of the material level with the spiritual powers and beings of the spirit level.

P136:2, 12:6.4 In all your contemplation of universal phenomena, make certain that you take into consideration the interrelation of physical, intellectual, and spiritual energies, and that due allowance is made for the unexpected phenomena attendant upon their unification by personality and for the unpredictable phenomena resulting from the actions and reactions of experiential Deity and the Absolutes.

P136:3, 12:6.5 The universe is highly predictable only in the quantitative or gravity-measurement sense; even the primal physical forces are not responsive to linear gravity, nor are the higher mind meanings and true spirit values of ultimate universe realities. Qualitatively, the universe is not highly predictable as regards new associations of forces, physical, mindal, or spiritual, although many such combinations of energies or forces become partially predictable when subjected to critical observation. When matter, mind, and spirit are unified by creature personality, we are unable fully to predict the decisions of such a freewill being.

P136:4, 12:6.6 All phases of primordial force, nascent spirit, and other nonpersonal ultimates appear to react in accordance with certain relatively stable but unknown laws and are characterized by a latitude of performance and an elasticity of response which are often disconcerting when encountered in the phenomena of a circumscribed and isolated situation. What is the explanation of this unpredictable freedom of reaction disclosed by these emerging universe actualities? These unknown, unfathomable unpredictables -- whether pertaining to the behavior of a primordial unit of force, the reaction of an unidentified level of mind, or the phenomenon of a vast pre-universe in the making in the domains of outer space -- probably disclose the activities of the Ultimate and the presence-performances of the Absolutes, which antedate the function of all universe Creators.

P136:5, 12:6.7 We do not really know, but we surmise that such amazing versatility and such profound co-ordination signify the presence and performance of the Absolutes, and that such diversity of response in the face of apparently uniform causation discloses the reaction of the Absolutes, not only to the immediate and situational causation, but also to all other related causations throughout the entire master universe.

P136:6, 12:6.8 Individuals have their guardians of destiny; planets, systems, constellations, and universes each have their respective rulers who labor for the good of their domains. Heaven and even the grand universe are watched over by those entrusted with such high responsibilities. But who fosters and cares for the fundamental needs of the master universe as a whole, from Paradise to the fourth and outermost space level? Existentially such overcare is probably attributable to Paradise, but from an experiential viewpoint the appearance of the post-Heaven universes is dependent on:

  1. The Absolutes in potential.

  2. The Ultimate in direction.

  3. The Supreme in evolutionary co-ordination.

  4. The Architects of the Master Universe in administration prior to the appearance of specific rulers.

P137:3, 12:6.9 The Unqualified Absolute pervades all space. We are not altogether clear as to the exact status of the Deity and Universal Absolutes, but we know the latter functions wherever the Deity and Unqualified Absolutes function. The Deity Absolute may be universally present but hardly space present. The Ultimate is, or sometime will be, space present to the outer margin space level. We doubt that the Ultimate will ever have a space presence beyond the periphery of the master universe, but within this limit the Ultimate is progressively integrating the creative organization of the potentials of the three Absolutes.

Part I. The Central Universe  
PAPER 9: Section 7.  
The Part And The Whole

P137:2, 12:7.1 There is operative throughout all time and space and with regard to all reality of whatever nature an inexorable and impersonal law which is equivalent to the function of a cosmic providence. Mercy characterizes God's attitude of love for the individual; impartiality motivates God's attitude toward the total. The will of God does not necessarily prevail in the part \-- the heart of any one personality -- but his will does actually rule the whole, the universe of universes.

P137:3, 12:7.2 In all his dealings with all his beings it is true that the laws of God are not inherently arbitrary. To us, with our limited vision and finite viewpoint, the acts of God must often appear to be dictatorial and arbitrary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of repeatedly doing things; and he ever does all things well. We observe that God does the same thing in the same way, repeatedly, simply because that is the best way to do that particular thing in a given circumstance; and the best way is the right way, and therefore does infinite wisdom always order it done in that precise and perfect manner. We should also remember that nature is not the exclusive act of Deity; other influences are present in those phenomena which man calls nature.

P137:4, 12:7.3 It is repugnant to the divine nature to suffer any sort of deterioration or ever to permit the execution of any purely personal act in an inferior way. It should be made clear, however, that, _if,_ in the divinity of any situation, in the extremity of any circumstance, in any case where the course of supreme wisdom might indicate the demand for different conduct -- if the demands of perfection might for any reason dictate another method of reaction, a better one, then and there would the all-wise God function in that better and more suitable way. That would be the expression of a higher law, not the reversal of a lower law.

P137:5, 12:7.4 God is not a habit-bound slave to the chronicity of the repetition of his own voluntary acts. There is no conflict among the laws of the Infinite; they are all perfections of the infallible nature; they are all the unquestioned acts expressive of faultless decisions. Law is the unchanging reaction of an infinite, perfect, and divine mind. The acts of God are all volitional notwithstanding this apparent sameness. In God there "is no variableness neither shadow of changing." But all this, which can be truly said of the Universal Father, cannot be said with equal certainty of all his subordinate intelligences or of his evolutionary creatures.

P137:6, 12:7.5 Because God is changeless, therefore can you depend, in all ordinary circumstances, on his doing the same thing in the same identical and ordinary way. God is the assurance of stability for all created things and beings.

P138:1, 12:7.6 And all this steadfastness of conduct and uniformity of action is personal, conscious, and highly volitional, for the great God is not a helpless slave to his own perfection and infinity. God is not a self-acting automatic force; he is not a slavish law-bound power. God is neither a mathematical equation nor a chemical formula. He is a freewill and primal personality. He is the Universal Father, a being surcharged with personality and the universal fount of all creature personality.

P138:2, 12:7.7 The will of God does not uniformly prevail in the heart of the God-seeking material mortal, but if the time frame is enlarged beyond the moment to embrace the whole of the first life, then does God's will become increasingly discernible in the spirit fruits which are borne in the lives of the spirit-led children of God. And then, if human life is further enlarged to include the morontia experience, the divine will is observed to shine brighter and brighter in the spiritualizing acts of those creatures of time who have begun to taste the divine delights of experiencing the relationship of the personality of man with the personality of the Universal Father.

P138:3, 12:7.8 The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves _each_ individual as an individual child in the heavenly family. Yet God thus loves _every_ individual; he is no respecter of persons, and the universality of his love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the universal brotherhood.

P138:4, 12:7.9 The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity. The Father's love glorifies each child of God, illuminating each member of the celestial family, sharply silhouetting the unique nature of each personal being against the impersonal levels that lie outside the fraternal circuit of the Father of all. The love of God strikingly portrays the transcendent value of each will creature, unmistakably reveals the high value which the Universal Father has placed upon each and every one of his children from the highest creator personality of Paradise status to the lowest personality of will dignity among the savage tribes of men in the dawn of the human species on some evolutionary world of time and space.

P138:5, 12:7.10 This very love of God for the individual brings into being the divine family of all individuals, the universal brotherhood of the freewill children of the Paradise Father. And this brotherhood, being universal, is a relationship of the whole. Brotherhood, when universal, discloses not the _each_ relationship, but the _all_ relationship. Brotherhood is a reality of the total and therefore discloses qualities of the whole in contradistinction to qualities of the part.

P138:6, 12:7.11 Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every personality in universal existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons. The part profits or suffers in measure with the whole. The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the tribulation of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole; as the progress of the whole, so the progress of the part. The relative velocities of part and whole determine whether the part is retarded by the inertia of the whole or is carried forward by the momentum of the cosmic brotherhood.

P139:1, 12:7.12 It is a mystery that God is a highly personal self-conscious being who is personally present in such a vast universe and personally in contact with such a well-nigh infinite number of beings. That such a phenomenon is a mystery beyond human comprehension should not in the least lessen your faith. We should not allow the magnitude of the infinity, the immensity of the eternity, and the grandeur and glory of the matchless character of God to overawe, stagger, or discourage us; for the Father is not very far from any one of us; he dwells within us, and in him do we all literally move, actually live, and veritably have our being.

P139:2, 12:7.13 Even though the Paradise Father functions through his associates and his creature children, he also enjoys the most intimate inner contact with us, so sublime, so highly personal, -- that mysterious communion of the Father fragment with the human soul and with the mortal mind of its actual indwelling. Knowing what we do of these gifts of God, we therefore know that the Father is in intimate touch, not only with his divine associates, but also with his evolutionary mortal children of time. The Father's divine presence dwells in the minds of men.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 9: Section 8.  
Matter, Mind, And Spirit

P139:4, 12:8.1 "God is spirit," but Paradise is not. The material universe is always the arena wherein take place all spiritual activities; spirit beings and spirit ascenders live and work on physical spheres of material reality.

P139:5, 12:8.2 The bestowal of cosmic force, the domain of cosmic gravity, is the function of the Isle of Paradise. All original force-energy proceeds from Paradise, and the matter for the making of untold universes now circulates throughout the master universe in the form of a super-gravity presence which constitutes the force-charge of pervaded space.

P139:6, 12:8.3 Whatever the transformations of force in the outlying universes, having gone out from Paradise, it journeys on subject to the never-ending, ever-present, unfailing pull of the eternal Isle, obediently and inherently swinging on forever around the eternal space paths of the universes. Physical energy is the one reality that is true and steadfast in its obedience to universal law. Only in the realms of creature volition has there been deviation from the divine paths and the original plans. Power and energy are the universal evidences of the stability, constancy, and eternity of the central Isle of Paradise.

P139:7, 12:8.4 The bestowal of spirit and the spiritualization of personalities, the domain of spiritual gravity, is the realm of God. And this spirit gravity, ever drawing all spiritual realities to himself, is just as real and absolute as is the all-powerful material grasp of the Isle of Paradise. But material-minded man is naturally more familiar with the material manifestations of a physical nature than with the equally real and mighty operations of a spiritual nature that are discerned only by the spiritual insight of the soul.

P140:1, 12:8.5 As the mind of any personality in the universe becomes more spiritual -- Godlike -- it becomes less responsive to material gravity. Reality, measured by physical-gravity response, is the antithesis of reality as determined by quality of spirit content. Physical-gravity action is a quantitative determiner of non-spirit energy; spiritual-gravity action is the qualitative measure of the living energy of divinity.

P140:2, 12:8.6 What Paradise is to the physical creation, and what God is to the spiritual universe, the Conjoint Actor is to the realms of mind -- the intelligent universe of material, morontial, and spiritual beings and personalities.

P140:3, 12:8.7 The Conjoint Actor reacts to both material and spiritual realities and therefore inherently becomes the universal minister to all intelligent beings, beings who may represent a union of both the material and spiritual phases of creation. The endowment of intelligence, the ministry to the material and the spiritual in the phenomenon of mind, is the exclusive domain of the Conjoint Actor, who thus becomes the partner of the spiritual mind, the essence of the morontia mind, and the substance of the material mind of the evolutionary creatures of time.

P140:4, 12:8.8 Mind is the technique whereby spirit realities become experiential to creature personalities. And in the last analysis the unifying possibilities of even human mind, the ability to co-ordinate things, ideas, and values, is supermaterial.

P140:5, 12:8.9 Though it is hardly possible for the mortal mind to comprehend all levels of relative cosmic reality, the human intellect should be able to grasp much of the meaning of three functioning levels of finite reality:

P140:6, 12:8.10 1. _Matter._ Organized energy that is subject to linear gravity except as it is modified by motion and conditioned by mind.

P140:7, 12:8.11 2. _Mind._ Organized consciousness which is not wholly subject to material gravity, and which becomes truly liberated when modified by spirit.

P140:8, 12:8.12 3. _Spirit._ The highest personal reality. True spirit is not subject to physical gravity but eventually becomes the motivating influence of all evolving energy systems of personality dignity.

P140:9, 12:8.13 The goal of existence of all personalities is spirit; material manifestations are relative, and the cosmic mind intervenes between these universal opposites. The bestowal of mind and the ministration of spirit are the work of the associate persons of Deity and the Infinite Spirit. Total Deity reality is not mind but spirit-mind -- mind-spirit unified by personality. Nevertheless the absolutes of both the spirit and the thing converge in the person of the Universal Father.

P140:10, 12:8.14 On Paradise the three energies, physical, mindal, and spiritual, are co-ordinate. In the evolutionary cosmos energy-matter is dominant except in personality, where spirit, through the mediation of mind, is striving for the mastery. Spirit is the fundamental reality of the personality experience of all creatures because God is spirit. Spirit is unchanging, and therefore, in all personality relations, it transcends both mind and matter, which are experiential variables of progressive attainment.

P140:11, 12:8.15 In cosmic evolution matter becomes a philosophic shadow cast by mind in the presence of spirit luminosity of divine enlightenment, but this does not invalidate the reality of matter-energy. Mind, matter, and spirit are equally real, but they are not of equal value to personality in the attainment of divinity. Consciousness of divinity is a progressive spiritual experience.

P141:1, 12:8.16 The brighter the shining of the spiritualized personality (the Father in the universe, the fragment of potential spirit personality in the individual creature), the greater the shadow cast by the intervening mind upon its material investment. In time, man's body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (identity) and spirit survive while the body does not. A cosmic reality can be nonexistent in personality experience. And so your Greek figure of speech -- the material as the shadow of the more real spirit substance -- does have a philosophic significance.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 9: Section 9.  
Personal Realities

P141:2, 12:9.1 Spirit is the basic personal reality in the universe, and personality is basic to all progressing experience with spiritual reality. Every phase of personality experience on every successive level of universe progression swarms with clues to the discovery of alluring personal realities. Man's true destiny consists in the creation of new and spirit goals and then in responding to the cosmic allurements of such supernal goals of nonmaterial value.

P141:3, 12:9.2 Love is the secret of beneficial association between personalities. You cannot really know a person as the result of a single contact. One cannot appreciate or know music through mathematical deduction, even though music is a form of mathematical rhythm. The number assigned to a telephone subscriber does not in any manner identify the personality of that subscriber or signify anything concerning his character.

P141:4, 12:9.3 Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something _more_ than, or something _different_ from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively super-additive substance -- liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

P141:5, 12:9.4 Technical analysis does not reveal what a person or a thing can do. For example: Water is used effectively to extinguish fire. That water will put out fire is a fact of everyday experience, but no analysis of water could ever be made to disclose such a property. Analysis determines that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen; a further study of these elements discloses that oxygen is the real supporter of combustion and that hydrogen will itself freely burn.

P141:6, 12:9.5 Our religion is becoming real because it is emerging from the slavery of fear and the bondage of superstition. Our philosophy struggles for emancipation from dogma and tradition. Our science is engaged in the agelong contest between truth and error while it fights for deliverance from the bondage of abstraction, the slavery of mathematics, and the relative blindness of mechanistic materialism.

P142:1, 12:9.6 Mortal man has a spirit nucleus. The mind is a personal-energy system existing around a divine spirit nucleus and functioning in a material environment. Such a living relationship of personal mind and spirit constitutes the universe potential of eternal personality. Real trouble, lasting disappointment, serious defeat, or inescapable death can come only after self-concepts presume fully to displace the governing power of the central spirit nucleus, thereby disrupting the cosmic scheme of personality identity.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 10  
The Central Universe

P152:1, 14:0.1  Paradise is in the Central Universe; it is the gigantic nuclear Isle of absolute stability that rests motionless at the very heart of the magnificent eternal universe. This perfect universe occupies the center of all creation; it is the eternal core around which the vast creations of time and space revolve. It is of enormous dimensions and almost unbelievable mass and consists of probably a billion spheres of unimagined beauty and superb grandeur, but the true magnitude of this vast creation is really beyond the understanding grasp of the human mind.

P152:2, 14:0.2 Paradise is the one and only settled, perfect, and established aggregation of existences. This is a wholly created and perfect universe; it is not an evolutionary development. This is the eternal core of perfection, about which swirls that endless procession of universes that constitute the tremendous evolutionary experiment; the audacious adventure of the Creator, it duplicates in time and reproduces in space the pattern universe, the ideal of divine completeness, supreme finality, ultimate reality, and eternal perfection.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 10: Section 1.  
The Paradise-Heaven Organization

P154:3, 14:2.1 Spirit beings do not dwell in nebulous space; they do not inhabit ethereal worlds; they are domiciled on actual spheres of a material nature, worlds just as real as those on which mortals live. The Heaven world is actual and literal, albeit their literal substance differs from the material organization of the planets of the universes.

P154:4, 14:2.2 The physical realities of Heaven represent an order of energy organization radically different from any prevailing in the evolutionary universes of space. Heaven energies are threefold; universe units of energy-matter contain a twofold energy charge, although one form of energy exists in negative and positive phases.

P154:5, 14:2.3 The material of Heaven consists of the organization of many basic chemical elements and the balanced function of the forms of Heaven energy. Each of these basic energies manifests several phases of excitation, so that the Heaven natives respond to many differing sensation stimuli. In other words, viewed from a purely physical standpoint, the natives of the central universe possess many specialized forms of sensation. The morontia senses are several, and the higher spiritual orders of reaction response vary in different types of beings.

P154:6, 14:2.4 None of the beings of the central universe would be visible to us. Neither would any of the physical stimuli of those faraway worlds excite a reaction in our gross sense organs. If we could be transported to Heaven physically, we would there be deaf, blind, and utterly lacking in all other sense reactions; we could only function as a limited self-conscious being deprived of all environmental stimuli and all reactions thereto.

P154:7, 14:2.5 There are numerous physical phenomena and spiritual reactions transpiring in the central creation which are unknown to us. The basic organization of a threefold creation is wholly unlike that of the twofold constitution of the created universes of time and space.

P154:8, 14:2.6 All natural law is co-ordinated on a basis entirely different than in the dual-energy systems of the evolving creations. The entire central universe is organized in accordance with the threefold system of perfect and symmetrical control. Throughout the whole Paradise-Heaven system there is maintained a perfect balance between all cosmic realities and all spiritual forces. Paradise, with an absolute grasp of material creation, perfectly regulates and maintains the physical energies of this central universe. On Paradise nothing is experimental, and the Paradise-Heaven system is a unit of creative perfection.

P155:1, 14:2.7 The universal spiritual gravity is amazingly active throughout the central universe. All spirit values and spiritual personalities are unceasingly drawn inward towards the abode of God. This Godward urge is intense and inescapable. The ambition to attain God is stronger in the central universe, not because spirit gravity is stronger than in the outlying universes, but because those beings who have attained Heaven are more fully spiritualized and hence more responsive to the ever-present action of the universal spirit-gravity pull.

P155:2, 14:2.8 Likewise does the Infinite Spirit draw all intellectual values Paradise ward. Throughout the central universe the mind gravity of the Infinite Spirit functions and constitutes the urge of the ascendant souls to find God, to attain Deity, to achieve Paradise, and to know the Father.

P155:3, 14:2.9 Heaven is a spiritually perfect and physically stable universe. The control and balanced stability of the central universe appear to be perfect. Everything is perfectly predictable, but mind phenomena and personality volition are not. But there has never been an instance of misconduct by any creature of any group of personalities ever created in, or admitted to, the central Heaven universe. So perfect and so divine are the methods and means of selection in the universes of time that never in the records of Heaven has an error occurred; no mistakes have ever been made; no ascendant soul has ever been prematurely permitted to remain in the central universe.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 10: Section 2.  
The Heaven Unity

P155:4, 14:3.1 Heaven is a spiritual unity. Concerning the government of the central universe, there is none. Heaven is so exquisitely perfect that no intellectual system of government is required. There are no regularly constituted courts, neither are there legislative assemblies; Heaven requires only administrative direction. Here may be observed the height of the ideals of true _self_ -government.

P155:5, 14:3.2 There is no need of government among such perfect and near-perfect intelligences. They stand in no need of regulation, for they are beings of native perfection interspersed with evolutionary creatures that have long since passed the scrutiny of the supreme tribunals of the superuniverses.

P155:6, 14:3.3 The administration of Heaven is automatic, it is marvelously perfect and divinely efficient. It is chiefly planetary and is vested and directed by the elected Intern of each Heaven sphere. The residents are also perfect administrators. They teach with supreme skill and direct their planetary children with a perfection of wisdom bordering on absoluteness.

P156:1, 14:3.4 Personalities native to Paradise and Heaven serve as receptionists for ascending souls from the evolutionary worlds of time. In the execution of the Universal Father's great plan of soul ascension the pilgrims of time are landed on the receiving areas of the circuit.

P156:2, 14:3.5 Although the spheres of the circuits are maintained in all their supernal glory, only about one per cent of all planetary capacity is utilized in the work of furthering the Father's universal plan of mortal ascension. Only a small amount of these enormous areas are dedicated to the life and activities of the Receivers, beings eternally settled in light and life that often sojourns on the Heavens. These exalted beings have their personal residences on Paradise.

P156:3, 14:3.6 The planetary construction of the Heaven spheres is entirely unlike that of the evolutionary worlds and systems of space. Nowhere else in all the grand universe is it convenient to utilize such enormous spheres as inhabited worlds. Its physical constitution, coupled with the balancing effect of the immense dark gravity bodies, makes it possible so perfectly to equalize the physical forces and so exquisitely to balance the various attractions of this tremendous creation. Antigravity is also employed in the organization of the material functions and the spiritual activities of these enormous worlds.

P156:4, 14:3.7 The architecture, lighting, and heating, as well as the biologic and artistic embellishment, of the Heaven spheres are quite beyond the greatest possible stretch of human imagination. You cannot be told much about Heaven; to understand its beauty and grandeur you must see it. There are also real rivers and lakes on these perfect worlds.

P156:5, 14:3.8 Spiritually these worlds are ideally united; they are fittingly adapted to their purpose of harboring the numerous tasks of differing beings who function in the central universe. Manifold activities take place on these beautiful worlds that are far beyond human comprehension.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 10: Section 3.  
Life In Heaven

P158:4, 14:5.1 On Earth we pass through a short period of time during our initial life of material existence. On the mansion worlds and up through our system, constellation, and local universe, we traverse the morontia phases of ascension. On the circuits of Heaven our attainment is intellectual, spiritual, and experiential.

P158:5, 14:5.2 Life on the divine worlds of the central universe is so rich and full, so complete and replete, that it wholly transcends the human concept of anything a created being could possibly experience. The social and economic activities of this eternal creation are entirely dissimilar to the occupations of material creatures living on evolutionary worlds like Earth. Even the technique of Heaven thought is unlike the process of thinking on Earth.

P158:7, 14:5.4 When intelligent beings first attain the central universe, they are received and domiciled on the pilot world of the Heaven circuit. As the new arrivals adapt to their new spirituality, attain identity comprehension of their superuniverse Master Spirit, they are transferred to the sixth circle. (It is from these arrangements in the central universe that the circles of progress in the human mind have been designated.) After ascenders have attained a realization of Supremacy and are thereby prepared for the Deity adventure, they are taken to the fifth circuit; and after attaining the Infinite Spirit; they are transferred to the fourth. Arrival on the first circuit of Heaven signifies the acceptance of the candidates of time into Paradise. Indefinitely, according to the length and nature of the creature ascension, they will tarry on the inner circuit of progressive spiritual attainment. From this inner circuit the ascending pilgrims pass inward to Paradise residence and admission to the Corps of the Finality.

P159:1, 14:5.5 During your sojourn in Heaven as a pilgrim of ascent, you will be allowed to visit freely among the worlds of the circuit. And all this is possible to those who sojourn on the circles of Heaven without the necessity of being ensupernaphimed. The pilgrims of time are able to equip themselves to traverse "achieved" space but must depend on the ordained technique to negotiate "unachieved" space; a pilgrim cannot leave Heaven nor go forward beyond his assigned circuit without the aid of a transport supernaphim.

P159:2, 14:5.6 There is a refreshing originality about this vast central creation. Aside from the physical organization of matter and the fundamental constitution of the basic orders of intelligent beings and other living things, there is nothing in common between the worlds of Heaven. Every one of these planets is an original, unique, and exclusive creation; each planet is a matchless, superb, and perfect production. And this diversity of individuality extends to all features of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of planetary existence. Each of these numerous perfection spheres has been developed and embellished in accordance with the plans of the residents. And this is just why no two of them are alike.

P159:3, 14:5.7 Not until you traverse the last of the Heaven circuits and visit the last of the Heaven worlds, will the tonic of adventure and the stimulus of curiosity disappear from you. And then will the urge, the forward impulse of eternity, replace its forerunner, the adventure lure of time.

P159:4, 14:5.8 Monotony is indicative of immaturity of the creative imagination and inactivity of intellectual co-ordination with the spiritual endowment. By the time an ascendant mortal begins the exploration of these heavenly worlds, he has already attained emotional, intellectual, and social, if not spiritual, maturity.

P159:5, 14:5.9 Not only will you find undreamed-of changes confronting you as you advance from circuit to circuit in Heaven, but your astonishment will be inexpressible as you progress from planet to planet within each circuit. Each of these numerous study worlds is a veritable university of surprises. Continuing astonishment, unending wonder, is the experience of those who traverse these circuits and tour these gigantic spheres. Monotony is not a part of the Heavens.

P159:6, 14:5.10 Love of adventure, curiosity, and dread of monotony -- these traits inherent in evolving human nature \-- were not put there just to aggravate and annoy us during our short sojourn on earth. Physical death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery.

P160:1, 14:5.11 Curiosity -- the spirit of investigation, the urge of discovery, the drive of exploration -- is a part of the inborn and divine endowment of evolutionary space creatures. These natural impulses were not given you merely to be frustrated and repressed. True, these ambitious urges must frequently be restrained during your short life on earth, disappointment must be often experienced, but they are to be fully realized and gloriously gratified during the long ages to come.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 10: Section 4.  
The Purpose Of The Central Universe

P160:2, 14:6.1 The range of the activities of Heaven is enormous. In general, they may be described as:

  1. Heavenly.

  2. Paradisiacal.

  3. Ascendant-finite -- Supreme-Ultimate evolutional.

P160:6, 14:6.2 Many superfinite activities take place in the Heaven of the present universe age, involving untold diversities of absonite and other phases of mind and spirit functions. It is possible that the central universe serves many purposes that are not revealed to us, as it functions in numerous ways beyond the comprehension of the created mind. Nevertheless, we will endeavor to depict how this perfect creation ministers to the needs and contributes to the satisfactions of the orders of universe intelligence.

P160:7, 14:6.3 1. _The Universal Father_ \-- the First Source and Center. God the Father derives supreme parental satisfaction from the perfection of the central creation. He enjoys the experience of love satiety on near-equality levels. The perfect Creator is divinely pleased with the adoration of the perfect creature.

P160:8, 14:6.4 Heaven affords the Father supreme achievement gratification. The perfection realization in Heaven compensates for the time-space delay of the eternal urge of infinite expansion.

P160:9, 14:6.5 The Father enjoys the Heaven reciprocation of the divine beauty. It satisfies the divine mind to afford a perfect pattern of exquisite harmony for all evolving universes.

P160:10, 14:6.6 Our Father beholds the central universe with perfect pleasure because it is a worthy revelation of spirit reality to all personalities of the universe of universes.

P160:11, 14:6.7 The God of universes has favorable regard for Heaven and Paradise as the eternal power nucleus for all subsequent universe expansion in time and space.

P160:12, 14:6.8 The eternal Father views with never-ending satisfaction the Heaven creation as the worthy and alluring goal for the ascension candidates of time, his mortal grandchildren of space achieving their Creator-Father's eternal home. And God takes pleasure in the Paradise-Heaven universe as the eternal home of Deity and the divine family.

P161:4, 14:6.14 3. _The Infinite Spirit_ \-- the Second Source and Center. The Heaven universe affords the Infinite Spirit proof of being the Conjoint Actor. In Heaven the Infinite Spirit derives the combined satisfaction of functioning as a creative activity while enjoying the satisfaction of absolute coexistence with this divine achievement.

P161:5, 14:6.15 In Heaven the Infinite Spirit found an arena wherein he could demonstrate the ability and willingness to serve as a potential mercy minister. In this perfect creation the Spirit rehearsed for the adventure of ministry in the evolutionary universes.

P161:6, 14:6.16 This perfect creation afforded the Infinite Spirit opportunity to participate in universe administration -- to administer a universe as associate-Creator offspring, thereby preparing for the joint administration of the local universes.

P161:7, 14:6.17 The Heaven worlds are the mind laboratory of the creators of the cosmic mind and the ministers to every creature mind in existence. Mind is different on each Heaven world and serves as the pattern for all spiritual and material creature intellects.

P161:8, 14:6.18 These perfect worlds are the mind graduate schools for all beings destined for Paradise society. They afforded the Spirit abundant opportunity to test out the technique of mind ministry on safe and advisory personalities.

P161:9, 14:6.19 Heaven is a compensation to the Infinite Spirit for his widespread and unselfish work in the universes of space. Heaven is the perfect home and retreat for the untiring Mind Minister of time and space.

P161:10, 14:6.20 4. _The Supreme Being_ \-- the evolutionary unification of experiential Deity. The Heaven creation is the eternal and perfect proof of the spiritual reality of the Supreme Being. This perfect creation is a revelation of the perfect and symmetrical spirit nature of God the Supreme before the beginnings of the power-personality synthesis of the finite reflections of the Paradise Deities in the experiential universes of time and space.

P161:11, 14:6.21 In Heaven the power potentials of the Almighty are unified with the spiritual nature of the Supreme. This central creation is an exemplification of the future-eternal unity of the Supreme.

P161:12, 14:6.22 Heaven is a perfect pattern of the universality potential of the Supreme. This universe is a finished portrayal of the future perfection of the Supreme and is suggestive of the potential of the Ultimate.

P162:1, 14:6.23 Heaven exhibits finality of spirit values existing as living will creatures of supreme and perfect self-control; mind existing as ultimately equivalent to spirit; reality and unity of intelligence with an unlimited potential.

P162:12, 14:6.34 7. _The Evolutionary Mortals of the Ascending Career_. Heaven is the home of the pattern personality of every mortal type and the home of all human personalities of mortal association who are not native to the creations of time.

P162:13, 14:6.35 These worlds provide the stimulus of all human impulses towards the attainment of true spirit values on the highest conceivable reality levels. Heaven is the pre-Paradise training goal of every ascending mortal. Heaven stands before every will creature as the portal to Paradise and God attainment.

P163:1, 14:6.36 Paradise is the home, and Heaven the workshop and playground, of the finaliters. And every God-knowing mortal craves to be a finaliter.

P163:2, 14:6.37 The central universe is not only man's established destiny, but it is also the starting place of the eternal career of the finaliters as they shall sometime be started out on the undisclosed and universal adventure in the experience of exploring the infinity of the Universal Father.

P163:3, 14:6.38 Heaven will unquestionably continue to function with absonite significance even in future universe ages which may witness space pilgrims attempting to find God on superfinite levels. Heaven has capacity to serve as a training universe for absonite beings. It will probably be the finishing school when other universes are functioning as the intermediate school for the graduates of the primary schools of outer space. And we incline to the opinion that the potentials of eternal Heavens are really unlimited, that the central universe has eternal capacity to serve as an experiential training universe for all past, present, or future types of created beings.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 11  
Personalities In The Grand Universe

P330:1, 30:0.1 The personalities and other-than-personal entities now functioning on Paradise and in the grand universe constitute a well-nigh limitless number of living beings. Even the number of major orders and types would stagger the human imagination, let alone the countless subtypes and variations. It is, however, desirable to present something of two basic classifications of living beings -- a suggestion of the Paradise classification and an abbreviation of the Heaven Personality Register.

P330:2, 30:0.2 It is not possible to formulate comprehensive and entirely consistent classifications of the personalities of the grand universe because _all_ of the groups are not revealed. It would require numerous additional papers to cover the further revelation required to systematically classify all groups. Such conceptual expansion would hardly be desirable, as it would deprive the thinking mortals of the next thousand years of that stimulus to creative speculation that these partially revealed concepts supply. It is best that man not have an over-revelation; it stifles imagination.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 11: Section 1.  
The Paradise Classification

P330:3, 30:1.1 Living beings are classified on Paradise in accordance with inherent and attained relationship to the Paradise Deities. During the grand gatherings of the central and superuniverses those present are often grouped in accordance with origin: those of triune origin, or of Trinity attainment; those of dual origin; and those of single origin. It is difficult to interpret the Paradise classification of living beings to the mortal mind.

P334:7, 30:1.23 There are spirits: spirit entities, spirit presences, personal spirits, prepersonal spirits, superpersonal spirits, spirit existences, spirit personalities -- but neither mortal language nor mortal intellect are adequate. We may however state that there are no personalities of "pure mind"; no entity has personality unless God who is spirit endows him with it. Any mind entity that is not associated with either spiritual or physical energy is not a personality. But in the same sense that there are spirit personalities who have mind there are mind personalities who have spirit. There are whole unrevealed orders of such _mind personalities,_ but they are always spirit associated. Certain other unrevealed creatures are what might be termed _mindal- and physical-energy personalities._ This type of being is nonresponsive to spirit gravity but is nonetheless a true personality -- is within the Father's circuit.

P334:8, 30:1.24 We cannot even begin to exhaust the story of the living creatures, creators, eventuators, and still-otherwise-existent beings who live and serve in the swarming universes of time and in the central universe of eternity. You mortals are persons; hence we can describe beings that are _personalized,_ but how could an _absonitized_ being ever be explained to you?

P334:17, 30:2.2 The groups of will creatures are divided into numerous classes and minor subdivisions. The presentation of this classification of the personalities of the grand universe is however chiefly concerned in setting forth those orders of intelligent beings who have been revealed in these narratives, most of whom will be encountered in the ascendant experience of the mortals of time.

P337:31, 30:2.21 There are in Heaven the records of numerous additional groups of intelligent beings, beings that are also closely related to the organization and administration of the grand universe.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 11: Section 2.  
The Courtesy Colonies

P338:5, 30:3.1 The seven courtesy colonies sojourn on the architectural spheres for a longer or shorter time while engaged in the furtherance of their missions and in the execution of their special assignments. Their work may be described as follows:

P338:6, 30:3.2 1. _The Star Students,_ the celestial astronomers, choose to work on spheres like Uversa because such specially constructed worlds are unusually favorable for their observations and calculations. Uversa is favorably situated for the work of this colony, not only because of its central location, but also because there are no gigantic living or dead suns near at hand to disturb the energy currents. These students are not in any manner organically connected with the affairs of the universe; they are merely guests.

P338:7, 30:3.3 The astronomical colony of Uversa contains individuals from many near-by realms, from the central universe. Any being on any world in any system of any universe may become a star student, may aspire to join some corps of celestial astronomers. The only requisites are: continuing life and sufficient knowledge of the worlds of space, especially their physical laws of evolution and control.

P339:1, 30:3.4 The star-observer colony of Uversa now numbers over a million. These astronomers come and go, though some remain for comparatively long periods. They carry on their work with the aid of a multitude of mechanical instruments and physical appliances; they are also greatly assisted by the Solitary Messengers and other spirit explorers. These celestial astronomers make constant use of the living energy transformers and transmitters, as well as of the reflective personalities, in their work of star study and space survey. They study all forms and phases of space material and energy manifestations, and they are just as much interested in force function as in stellar phenomena; nothing in all space escapes their scrutiny.

P339:2, 30:3.5 Similar astronomer colonies are to be found on the sector headquarters worlds as well as on the architectural capitals and their administrative subdivisions. Except on Paradise, knowledge is not inherent; understanding of the physical universe is largely dependent on observation and research.

P339:3, 30:3.6 2. _The Celestial Artisans_ serve throughout the universes. Ascending mortals have their initial contact with these groups in the morontia career of the local universe in connection with which these artisans will be more fully discussed.

P339:4, 30:3.7 3. _The Reversion Directors_ are the promoters of relaxation and humor -- reversion to past memories. They are of great service in the practical operation of the ascending scheme of mortal progression, especially during the earlier phases of morontia transition and spirit experience. Their story belongs to the narrative of the mortal career in the local universe.

P339:5, 30:3.8 4. _Extension-School Instructors._ The next higher residential world of the ascendant career always maintains a strong corps of teachers on the world just below, a sort of preparatory school for the progressing residents of that sphere; this is a phase of the ascendant scheme for advancing the pilgrims of time. These schools, their methods of instruction and examinations, are wholly unlike anything that you essay to conduct on Urantia.

P339:6, 30:3.9 The entire ascendant plan of mortal progression is characterized by the practice of giving out to other beings new truth and experience just as soon as acquired. You work your way through the long school of Paradise attainment by serving as teachers to those pupils just behind you in the scale of progression.

P339:7, 30:3.10 5. _The Various Reserve Corps._ Vast reserves of beings not under our immediate supervision are mobilized on Uversa as the reserve-corps colony. There are many primary divisions of this colony on Uversa, and it is a liberal education to be permitted to spend a season with these extraordinary personalities. Similar general reserves are maintained on universe capitals; they are dispatched on active service on the requisition of their respective group directors.

P339:8, 30:3.11 6. _The Student Visitors._ From the entire universe a constant stream of celestial visitors pours through the various headquarters worlds. As individuals and as classes these various types of beings flock in upon us as observers, exchange pupils, and student helpers. On Uversa, at present, there are numerous persons in this courtesy colony. Some of these visitors may tarry a day, others may remain a year, all dependent on the nature of their mission. This colony contains almost every class of universe beings except Creator personalities and morontias.

P340:1, 30:3.12  Morontias are student visitors only within the confines of the local universe of their origin. They may visit in that capacity only after they have attained spirit status. Fully one half of our visitor colony consists of " stopovers," beings en route elsewhere. These personalities may be executing a universe assignment, or they may be enjoying a period of leisure -- freedom from assignment. The privilege of intra-universe travel and observation is a part of the career of all ascending beings. The human desire to travel and observe new peoples and worlds will be fully gratified during the travel through the local and central universes.

P340:2, 30:3.13 7. _The Ascending Pilgrims._ As the ascending pilgrims are assigned to various areas, they are domiciled as a courtesy colony on the various headquarters spheres. While functioning here and there throughout a universe, such groups are largely self-governing. They are an ever-shifting colony embracing the ascending associates.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 11: Section 3.  
The Eternal Purpose

P364:3, 32:5.1 There is a great and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space. All of your mortal struggling is not in vain. We are all part of an immense plan, a gigantic enterprise, and it is the vastness of the undertaking that renders it impossible to see very much of it at any one time and during any one life. We are all a part of an eternal project that God is supervising and outworking. The whole marvelous and universal mechanism moves on majestically through space to the music of the meter of the infinite thought and the eternal purpose of the First Great Source and Center.

P364:4, 32:5.2 The eternal purpose of the eternal God is a high spiritual ideal. The events of time and the struggles of material existence are but the transient scaffolding which bridges over to the other side, to the promised land of spiritual reality and supernal existence. Of course mortals find it difficult to grasp the idea of an eternal purpose; you are virtually unable to comprehend the thought of eternity, something never beginning and never ending. Everything familiar to you has an end.

P364:5, 32:5.3 As regards an individual life, the duration of a realm, or the chronology of any connected series of events, it would seem that we are dealing with an isolated stretch of time; everything seems to have a beginning and an end. And it would appear that a series of such experiences, lives, ages, or epochs, when successively arranged, constitutes a straightaway drive, an isolated event of time flashing momentarily across the infinite face of eternity. But when we look at all this from behind the scenes, a more comprehensive view and a more complete understanding suggest that such an explanation is inadequate, disconnected, and wholly unsuited properly to account for, and otherwise to correlate, the transactions of time with the underlying purposes and basic reactions of eternity.

P364:6, 32:5.4 It seems more fitting, for purposes of explanation to the mortal mind, to conceive of eternity as a cycle and the eternal purpose as an endless circle, a cycle of eternity in some way synchronized with the transient material cycles of time. As regards the sectors of time connected with, and forming a part of, the cycle of eternity, we are forced to recognize that such temporary epochs are born, live, and die just as the temporary beings of time are born, live, and die. Most human beings die because, having failed to achieve the spirit level of Adjuster fusion, the metamorphosis of death constitutes the only possible procedure whereby they may escape the fetters of time and the bonds of material creation, thereby being enabled to strike spiritual step with the progressive procession of eternity. Having survived the trial life of time and material existence, it becomes possible for us to continue on in touch with, even as a part of, eternity, swinging on forever with the worlds of space around the circle of the eternal ages.

P365:1, 32:5.5 The sectors of time are like the flashes of personality in temporal form; they appear for a season, and then they are lost to human sight, only to reappear as new actors and continuing factors in the higher life of the endless swing around the eternal circle. Eternity can hardly be conceived as a straightaway drive, in view of our belief in a delimited universe moving over a vast, elongated circle around the central dwelling place of the Universal Father.

P365:2, 32:5.6 Eternity is incomprehensible to the finite mind of time. One simply cannot grasp it; one cannot comprehend it.

P365:3, 32:5.7 There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are ours for the striving!

P365:4, 32:5.8 The goal of eternity is ahead! The adventure of divinity attainment lies before you. The race for perfection is on! Whosoever will may enter, and certain victory will crown the efforts of every human being who will run the race of faith and trust, depending every step of the way on the leading of the indwelling Adjuster and on the guidance of that good spirit which so freely has been poured out upon all flesh.

Part I. The Central Universe  
Chapter 11: Section 4.  
Architects of the Master Universe

P352:9, 31:10.1 The senior Master Architect has the oversight of the Corps of the Finality.

P353:2, 31:10.3 The gathering together of these finaliter corps signifies reality mobilization of potentials, personalities, minds, spirits, absonites, and experiential actualities that probably transcend even the future master universe functions of the Supreme Being. These finaliter corps probably signifies the present activity of the Ultimate Unity engaged in mustering the forces of the finite and the absonite in preparation for inconceivable developments in the universes of outer space. Nothing like this mobilization has taken place since the near times of eternity when the Paradise Unity similarly mobilized the then existing personalities of Paradise and Heaven and commissioned them as administrators and rulers of the projected universes of time and space. The finaliter corps represents the divinity response of the grand universe to the future needs of the undeveloped potentials in the outer universes of future-eternal activities.

P353:3, 31:10.4 We venture the forecast of future and greater outer universes of inhabited worlds, new spheres peopled with new orders of exquisite and unique beings, a material universe sublime in its ultimacy, a vast creation lacking in only one important detail -- the presence of actual _finite experience_ in the universal life of ascendant existence. Such a universe will come into being under a tremendous experiential handicap: the deprivation of participation in the evolution of the Almighty Supreme. These outer universes will all enjoy the matchless ministry and supernal overcontrol of the Supreme Being, but the very fact of his active presence precludes their participation in the actualization of the Supreme Deity.

P353:4, 31:10.5 During the present universe age the evolving personalities of the grand universe suffer many difficulties due to the incomplete actualization of the sovereignty of God the Supreme, but we are all sharing the unique experience of his evolution. We evolve in him and he evolves in us. Sometime in the eternal future the evolution of Supreme Deity will become a completed fact of universe history, and the opportunity to participate in this wonderful experience will have passed from the stage of cosmic action.

P353:5, 31:10.6 But those of us who have acquired this unique experience during the youth of the universe will treasure it throughout all future eternity. And many of us speculate that it may be the mission of the gradually accumulating reserves of the ascendant and perfected mortals of the Corps of the Finality, in association with the other similarly recruiting corps, to administer these outer universes in an effort to compensate their experiential deficiencies in not having participated in the time-space evolution of the Supreme Being.

P353:6, 31:10.7 These deficiencies are inevitable on all levels of universe existence. During the present universe age we of the higher levels of spiritual existences now come down to administer the evolutionary universes and minister to the ascending mortals, thus endeavoring to atone for their deficiencies in the realities of the higher spiritual experience.

P354:1, 31:10.8 But though we really know nothing about the plans of the Architects of the Master Universe respecting these outer creations, nevertheless, of three things we are certain:

P354:2, 31:10.9 1. There actually is a vast and new system of universes gradually organizing in the domains of outer space. New orders of physical creations, enormous and gigantic circles of swarming universes upon universes far out beyond the present bounds of the peopled and organized creations are actually visible through your telescopes. At present, these outer creations are wholly physical; they are apparently uninhabited and seem to be devoid of creature administration.

P354:3, 31:10.10 2. For ages upon ages there continues the unexplained and wholly mysterious Paradise mobilization of the perfected and ascendant beings of time and space, in association with the six other finaliter corps.

P354:4, 31:10.11 3. Concomitantly with these transactions the Supreme Person of Deity is powerizing as the almighty sovereign of the super-creations.

P354:5, 31:10.12 As we view this development, embracing creatures, universes, and Deity, can we be criticized for anticipating that something new and unrevealed is approaching culmination in the master universe? Is it not natural that we should associate this agelong mobilization and organization of physical universes on such a hitherto unknown scale and the personality emergence of the Supreme Being with this stupendous scheme of upstepping the mortals of time to divine perfection and with their subsequent mobilization on Paradise in the Corps of the Finality -- a designation and destiny enshrouded in universe mystery? It is increasingly the belief of all Uversa that the assembling Corps of the Finality are destined to some future service in the universes of outer space, where we already are able to identify the clustering of at least seventy thousand aggregations of matter, each of which is greater than any one of the present superuniverses.

P354:6, 31:10.13 Evolutionary mortals are born on the planets of space, pass through the morontia worlds, ascend the spirit universes, traverse the Heaven spheres, unite with God, attain Paradise, and are mustered into the primary Corps of the Finality. And as we view this sublime spectacle, we all exclaim: What a glorious destiny for the animal-origin children of time, the material children of space!

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12  
Evolution Of Our Universe

P637:1, 56:0.1 God is universally coordinated. The universe is one vast integrated mechanism that is controlled by one infinite unity. 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."

P637:2, 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 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 1.  
Physical Emergence Of Our Universes

P357:5, 32:1.1 The pre-universe manipulations of space-force and the primordial energies are the work of the Paradise Master Force Organizers; but in the universe domains, when emergent energy becomes responsive to local or linear gravity, they retire in favor of the power directors of the universe concerned.

P357:6, 32:1.2 These power directors function alone in the prematerial and post-force phases of a local universe creation. There is no opportunity for a Creator to begin universe organization until the power directors have effected the mobilization of the space-energies sufficiently to provide a material foundation -- literal suns and material spheres -- for the emerging universe.

P357:7, 32:1.3 The local universes are all approximately of the same energy potential, though they differ greatly in physical dimensions and may vary in visible-matter content from time to time. The power charge and potential-matter endowment of a local universe are determined by the manipulations of the power directors and their predecessors as well as by the Creator's activities and by the endowment of the inherent physical control possessed by his creative associate.

P358:2, 32:1.5 When energy-matter has attained a certain stage in mass materialization, work is begun upon the architectural sphere which is to become the headquarters world of the projected local universe. For long ages such a local creation evolves, suns become stabilized, planets form and swing into their orbits, while the work of creating the architectural worlds which are to serve as constellation headquarters and system capitals continues.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 2.  
Universe Organization

P358:3, 32:2.1 The Creator is preceded in universe organization by the power directors and other beings originating in the Second Source and Center. From the energies of space, thus previously organized they established the inhabited realms of other universes and ever since have been painstakingly devoted to their administration. From pre-existent energy the power directors materialize visible matter, project living creatures, and with the co-operation of the universe presence of the Infinite Spirit, create a diverse retinue of spirit personalities.

P358:4, 32:2.2 These power directors and energy controllers who long preceded the Creator in the preliminary physical work of universe organization later serve in magnificent liaison, forever remaining in associated control of those energies which they originally organized and circuitized.

P358:5, 32:2.3 The first completed act of physical creation consisted in the organization of the headquarters world, the architectural sphere with its satellites. From the time of the initial moves of the power centers and physical controllers to the arrival of the living staff on the completed spheres, there intervened a little over one billion years of our present planetary time. The construction was immediately followed by the creation of the hundred headquarters worlds of the projected constellations and the numerous headquarters spheres of the projected local systems of planetary control and administration, together with their architectural satellites. Such architectural worlds are designed to accommodate both physical and spiritual personalities as well as the intervening morontia or transition stages of being.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 3.  
The Evolutionary Idea

P360:3, 32:3.1 The only creation that is perfectly settled is Heaven, the central universe; it was made directly by the energy and thought of the Universal Father. Heaven is an existential, perfect, and replete universe, surrounding the home of the eternal Deities, the center of all things. The creations of other universes are finite, evolutionary, and consistently progressive.

P360:4, 32:3.2 The physical systems of time and space are all evolutionary in origin. They are not even physically stabilized until they are swung into the settled circuits of the other universes. Neither is a local universe settled in light and life until its physical possibilities of expansion and development have been exhausted, and until the spiritual status of all its inhabited worlds has been forever settled and stabilized.

P360:5, 32:3.3 Except in the central universe, perfection is a progressive attainment. In the central creation we have a pattern of perfection, but all other realms must attain that perfection by the methods established for the advancement of those particular worlds or universes. And an almost infinite variety characterizes the plans of the Creator for organizing, evolving, disciplining, and settling the respective local universes.

P360:6, 32:3.4 With the exception of the deity presence of the Father, every local universe is, in a certain sense, a duplication of the administrative organization of the central or pattern creation. Although the Universal Father is personally present in the residential universe, he does not indwell the minds of the beings originating in that universe as he does literally dwell with the souls of the mortals of time and space. There seems to be an all-wise compensation in the adjustment and regulation of the spiritual affairs of the far-flung creation. In the central universe the Father is personally present as such but absent in the minds of the children of that perfect creation; in the universes of space the Father is absent in person, while he is intimately present in the minds of his mortal children, being spiritually represented by the prepersonal presence of the Mystery Monitors that reside in the minds of these will creatures.

P360:7, 32:3.5 On the headquarters of a local universe there reside all those creator and creative personalities who represent self-contained authority and administrative autonomy except the personal presence of the Universal Father. In the local universe there are to be found something of everyone and someone of almost every class of intelligent beings existing in the central universe except the Universal Father.

P361:1, 32:3.6 The farther down the scale of life we go, the more difficult it becomes to locate, with the eye of faith, the invisible Father. The lower creatures -- and sometimes even the higher personalities -- find it difficult always to envisage the Universal Father. And so, pending the time of their spiritual exaltation, when perfection of development will enable them to see God in person, they grow weary in progression, entertain spiritual doubts, stumble into confusion, and thus isolate themselves from the progressive spiritual aims of their time and universe. In this way they lose the ability to see the Father. The surest safeguard for the creature throughout the long struggle to attain the Father, during this time when inherent conditions make such attainment impossible, is tenaciously to hold on to the truth-fact of the Father's presence.

P361:2, 32:3.7 The personalities of a given universe are settled and dependable, at the start, only in accordance with their degree of kinship to Deity. When creature origin departs sufficiently far from the original and Sources, there is an increase in the possibility of disharmony, confusion, and sometimes rebellion.

P361:3, 32:3.8 Excepting perfect beings of Deity origin, all will creatures in the universe are of evolutionary nature, beginning in lowly estate and climbing ever upward, in reality inward. Even highly spiritual personalities continue to ascend the scale of life by progressive translations from life to life and from sphere to sphere. And in the case of those who entertain the Mystery Monitors, there is indeed no limit to the possible heights of their spiritual ascent and universe attainment.

P361:4, 32:3.9 The perfection of the creatures of time, when finally achieved, is wholly an acquirement, a bona fide personality possession. While the elements of grace are freely admixed, nevertheless, the creature attainments are the result of individual effort and actual living, personality reaction to the existing environment.

P361:5, 32:3.10 The fact of animal evolutionary origin does not attach stigma to any personality in the sight of the universe as that is the exclusive method of producing one of the two basic types of finite intelligent will creatures. When the heights of perfection and eternity are attained, all the more honor to those who began at the bottom and joyfully climbed the ladder of life, round by round, and who, when they do reach the heights of glory, will have gained a personal experience which embodies an actual knowledge of every phase of life from the bottom to the top.

P361:6, 32:3.11 In all this is shown the wisdom of the Creator. It would be just as easy for the Universal Father to make all mortals perfect beings, to impart perfection by his divine word. But that would deprive them of the wonderful experience of the adventure and training associated with the long and gradual inward climb, an experience to be had only by those who are so fortunate as to begin at the very bottom of living existence.

P362:1, 32:3.12 In the universes encircling Heaven there are provided only a sufficient number of perfect creatures to meet the need for pattern teacher guides for those who are ascending the evolutionary scale of life. The experiential nature of the evolutionary type of personality is the natural cosmic complement of the ever-perfect natures of the Paradise-Heaven creatures. In reality, both perfect and perfected creatures are incomplete as regards finite totality. But in the complemental association of the existentially perfect creatures of the Paradise-Heaven system with the experientially perfected finaliters ascending from the evolutionary universes, both types find release from inherent limitations and thus may conjointly attempt to reach the sublime heights of the ultimate of creature status.

P362:2, 32:3.13 These creature transactions are the universe repercussions of actions and reactions within the Deity, wherein the eternal divinity of the Paradise is conjoined with the evolving divinity of the Supreme Creators of the time-space universes in, by, and through the power-actualizing Deity of the Supreme Being.

P362:3, 32:3.14 The divinely perfect creature and the evolutionary perfected creature are equal in degree of divinity potential, but they differ in kind. Each must depend on the other to attain supremacy of service. The evolutionary universes depend on perfect Heaven to provide the final training for their ascending citizens, but so does the perfect central universe require the existence of the perfecting universes to provide for the full development of its descending inhabitants.

P362:4, 32:3.15 The two prime manifestations of finite reality, innate perfection and evolved perfection, be they personalities or universes, are co-ordinate, dependent, and integrated. Each requires the other to achieve completion of function, service, and destiny.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 4.  
God's Relation To Our Universe

P362:5, 32:4.1 Do not entertain the idea that, since the Universal Father has delegated so much of himself and his power to others, he is a silent or inactive member of the Deity partnership. Aside from personality domains and Adjuster bestowal, he is apparently the least active of the Paradise Deities in that he allows his Deity co-ordinates, numerous created intelligences to perform so much in the carrying out of his eternal purpose. He is the silent member only in that he never does aught which any of his co-ordinate or subordinate associates can do.

P362:6, 32:4.2 God has full understanding of the need of every intelligent creature for function and experience, and therefore, in every situation, be it concerned with the destiny of a universe or the welfare of the humblest of his creatures, God retires from activity in favor of the galaxy of creature and Creator personalities who inherently intervene between himself and any given universe situation or creative event. But notwithstanding this retirement, this exhibition of infinite co-ordination, there is on God's part an actual, literal, and personal participation in these events by and through these ordained agencies and personalities. The Father is working in and through all these channels for the welfare of all his far-flung creation.

P363:1, 32:4.3 As regards the policies, conduct, and administration of our local universe, the Universal Father acts in association with the Second Source and Center, or in the relationship between any other creatures, such as human beings -- as concerns such associations the Universal Father never intervenes. The law and rule of the Constellation Fathers, the System Sovereigns, and the Planetary Princes -- the ordained policies and procedures for that universe -- always prevail. There is no division of authority; never is there a cross working of divine power and purpose. They are in perfect and eternal unanimity.

P363:2, 32:4.4 The Universal Father may in his own way intervene and do aught that pleases the divine mind with any _individual creature_ throughout all creation, as pertains to that individual's present status or future prospects and as concerns the Father's eternal plan and infinite purpose.

P363:3, 32:4.5 In the mortal will creatures the Father is actually present in the indwelling Adjuster, a fragment of his prepersonal spirit; and the Father is also the source of the personality of such a mortal will creature.

P363:4, 32:4.6 These Thought Adjusters, the bestowals of the Universal Father, are comparatively isolated; they indwell human minds but have no discernible connection with the ethical affairs of a local creation. They are not directly co-ordinated with the seraphic service or with the administration of systems, constellations, or a local universe.

P363:5, 32:4.7 The indwelling Adjusters are one of God's separate but unified modes of contact with the creatures of his all but infinite creation. Thus does he who is invisible to mortal man manifest his presence, and could he do so, he would show himself to us in still other ways, but such further revelation is not divinely possible.

P363:6, 32:4.8 We cannot fully comprehend the methods whereby God is so fully and personally conversant with the details of the universe, although we at least can recognize the avenue whereby the Universal Father can receive information regarding, and manifest his presence to, the beings of his immense creation. Through the personality circuit the Father is cognizant \-- has personal knowledge -- of all the thoughts and acts of all the beings in all the systems of all the universes of all creation. Though we cannot fully grasp this technique of God's communion with his children, we can be strengthened in the assurance that the "Lord knows his children," and that of each one of us "he takes note where we were born."

P363:7, 32:4.9 In your universe and in your heart the Universal Father is present, spiritually speaking, by one of the Spirits of central abode and, specifically, by the divine Adjuster who lives and works and waits in the depths of the mortal mind.

P363:8, 32:4.10 God is not a self-centered personality; the Father freely distributes himself to his creation and to his creatures. The Universal Father though, has divested himself of every function that it is possible for another being to perform.

P364:1, 32:4.11 In this universal bestowal of himself we have abundant proof of both the magnitude and the magnanimity of the Father's divine nature. If God has withheld aught of himself from the universal creation, then of that residue he is in lavish generosity bestowing the Thought Adjusters upon the mortals of the realms, the Mystery Monitors of time, who so patiently indwell the mortal candidates for life everlasting.

P364:2, 32:4.12 The Universal Father has poured out himself, as it were, to make all creation rich in personality possession and potential spiritual attainment. God has given us himself that we may be like him, and he has reserved for himself of power and glory only that which is necessary for the maintenance of those things for the love of which he has thus divested himself of all things else.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 5.  
The Eternal And Divine Purpose

P364:3, 32:5.1 There is a great and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space. All of your mortal struggling is not in vain. We are all part of an immense plan, a gigantic enterprise, and it is the vastness of the undertaking that renders it impossible to see very much of it at any one time and during any one life. We are all a part of an eternal project that God is supervising and outworking. The whole marvelous and universal mechanism moves on majestically through space to the music of the meter of the infinite thought and the eternal purpose of the First Great Source and Center.

P364:4, 32:5.2 The eternal purpose of the eternal God is a high spiritual ideal. The events of time and the struggles of material existence are but the transient scaffolding which bridges over to the other side, to the promised land of spiritual reality and supernal existence.

P364:5, 32:5.3 As regards an individual life, the duration of a realm, or the chronology of any connected series of events, it would seem that we are dealing with an isolated stretch of time; everything seems to have a beginning and an end. And it would appear that a series of such experiences, lives, ages, or epochs, when successively arranged, constitutes a straightaway drive, an isolated event of time flashing momentarily across the infinite face of eternity. But when we look at all this from behind the scenes, a more comprehensive view and a more complete understanding suggest that such an explanation is inadequate, disconnected, and wholly unsuited properly to account for, and otherwise to correlate, the transactions of time with the underlying purposes and basic reactions of eternity.

P364:6, 32:5.4 It seems more fitting, for purposes of explanation to the mortal mind, to conceive of eternity as a cycle and the eternal purpose as an endless circle, a cycle of eternity in some way synchronized with the transient material cycles of time. As regards the sectors of time connected with, and forming a part of, the cycle of eternity, we are forced to recognize that such temporary epochs are born, live, and die just as the temporary beings of time are born, live, and die. Most human beings die because, having failed to achieve the spirit level of Adjuster fusion, the metamorphosis of death constitutes the only possible procedure whereby they may escape the fetters of time and the bonds of material creation, thereby being enabled to strike spiritual step with the progressive procession of eternity. Having survived the trial life of time and material existence, it becomes possible for us to continue on in touch with, even as a part of, eternity, swinging on forever with the worlds of space around the circle of the eternal ages.

P365:1, 32:5.5 The sectors of time are like the flashes of personality in temporal form; they appear for a season, and then they are lost to human sight, only to reappear as new actors and continuing factors in the higher life of the endless swing around the eternal circle. Eternity can hardly be conceived as a straightaway drive, in view of our belief in a delimited universe moving over a vast, elongated circle around the central dwelling place of the Universal Father.

P365:2, 32:5.6 Frankly, eternity is incomprehensible to the finite mind of time. One simply cannot grasp it; one cannot comprehend it.

P365:3, 32:5.7 There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. And the infinite treasures of such a matchless career are ours for the striving!

P365:4, 32:5.8 The goal of eternity is ahead! The adventure of divinity attainment lies before us. The race for perfection is on! Whosoever will may enter, and certain victory will crown the efforts of every human being who will run the race of faith and trust, depending every step of the way on the leading of the indwelling Adjuster and on the guidance of that good spirit that so freely has been poured out upon all flesh.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 6.  
The Spirit In Man

P380:2, 34:6.1 With the advancing evolution of an inhabited planet and the further spiritualization of its inhabitants, additional spiritual influences may be received by such mature personalities. As mortals progress in mind control and spirit perception, these multiple spirit ministries become more and more co-ordinate in function.

P380:3, 34:6.2 Although Divinity may be plural in manifestation, in human experience Deity is singular, always _one._ Neither is spiritual ministry plural in human experience. Regardless of plurality of origin, all spirit influences are one in function. Indeed they are one, being the spirit ministry of God in and to the creatures of the grand universe; and as creatures grow in appreciation of, and receptivity for, this unifying ministry of the spirit, it becomes in their experience the ministry of God the Supreme.

P380:4, 34:6.3 From the heights of eternal glory the divine Spirit descends to meet you as you are and where you are and then, in the partnership of faith, lovingly to embrace the soul of mortal origin and to embark on the sure and certain retracement of those steps of condescension, never stopping until the evolutionary soul is safely exalted to the very heights of bliss from which the divine Spirit originally sallied forth on this mission of mercy and ministry.

P380:5, 34:6.4 Spiritual forces unerringly seek and attain their own original levels. Having gone out from the Eternal, they are certain to return thereto, bringing with them all those children of time and space who have espoused the leading and teaching of the indwelling Adjuster.

P380:6, 34:6.5 The divine Spirit is the source of continual ministry and encouragement to the children of men. Your power and achievement is "according to his mercy, through the renewing of the Spirit." Spiritual life, like physical energy, is consumed. Spiritual effort results in relative spiritual exhaustion. The whole ascendant experience is real as well as spiritual; therefore, it is truly written, "It is the Spirit that quickens." "The Spirit gives life."

P380:7, 34:6.6 The dead theory of even the highest religious doctrines is powerless to transform human character or to control mortal behavior. What the world of today needs is the truth that your teacher of old declared: "Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit." The seed of theoretical truth is dead, the highest moral concepts without effect, unless and until the divine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quickens the formulas of righteousness.

P381:1, 34:6.7 Those who have received and recognized the indwelling of God have been born of the Spirit. "You are the temple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you." It is not enough that this spirit be poured out upon you; the divine Spirit must dominate and control every phase of human experience.

P381:2, 34:6.8 It is the presence of the divine Spirit, the water of life, that prevents the consuming thirst of mortal discontent and that indescribable hunger of the unspiritualized human mind. Spirit-motivated beings "never thirst, for this spiritual water shall be in them a well of satisfaction springing up into life everlasting." Such divinely watered souls are all but independent of material environment as regards the joys of living and the satisfactions of earthly existence. They are spiritually illuminated and refreshed, morally strengthened and endowed.

P381:3, 34:6.9 In every mortal there exists a dual nature: the inheritance of animal tendencies and the high urge of spirit endowment. During the short life we live on Earth, these two diverse and opposing urges can seldom be fully reconciled; they can hardly be harmonized and unified; but throughout our lifetime the combined Spirit ever ministers to assist you in subjecting the flesh more and more to the leading of the Spirit. Even though we must live our material life through, even though we cannot escape the body and its necessities, nonetheless, in purpose and ideals we are empowered increasingly to subject the animal nature to the mastery of the Spirit. There truly exists within us a conspiracy of spiritual forces, a confederation of divine powers, whose exclusive purpose is to effect our final deliverance from material bondage and finite handicaps.

P381:4, 34:6.10 The purpose of all this ministration is, "That you may be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner man." And all this represents but the preliminary steps to the final attainment of the perfection of faith and service, that experience wherein you shall be "filled with all the fullness of God," "for all those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God."

P381:5, 34:6.11 The Spirit never _drives,_ only leads. If you are a willing learner, if you want to attain spirit levels and reach divine heights, if you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then the divine Spirit will gently and lovingly lead you along the pathway of spiritual progress. Every step you take must be one of willingness, intelligent and cheerful co-operation. The domination of the Spirit is never tainted with coercion nor compromised by compulsion.

P381:6, 34:6.12 And when such a life of spirit guidance is freely and intelligently accepted, there gradually develops within the human mind a positive consciousness of divine contact and assurance of spirit communion; sooner or later "the Spirit bears witness with your spirit (the Adjuster) that you are a child of God." Already has your own Thought Adjuster told you of your kinship to God so that the record testifies that the Spirit bears witness " _with_ your spirit," not _to_ your spirit.

P381:7, 34:6.13 The consciousness of the spirit domination of a human life is presently attended by an increasing exhibition of the characteristics of the Spirit in the life reactions of such a spirit-led mortal, "for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance." Such spirit-guided and divinely illuminated mortals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in human faithfulness perform the duties of their earthly assignments, have already begun to discern the lights of eternal life as they glimmer on the faraway shores of another world; already have they begun to comprehend the reality of that inspiring and comforting truth, "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." And throughout every trial and in the presence of every hardship, spirit-born souls are sustained by that hope which transcends all fear because the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the presence of the divine Spirit.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 12: Section 7.  
The Spirit And The Flesh

P382:1, 34:7.1 The flesh, the inherent nature derived from the animal-origin races, does not naturally bear the fruits of the divine Spirit. When the mortal nature has been upstepped, then is the way better prepared for the Spirit of Truth to co-operate with the indwelling Adjuster to bring forth the beautiful harvest of the character fruits of the spirit. If you do not reject this spirit, even though eternity may be required to fulfill the commission, "he will guide you into all truth."

P383:1, 34:7.7 Those God-knowing men and women who cooperate with the Spirit experience no more conflict with their mortal natures. The normal urges of animal beings and the natural appetites and impulses of the physical nature are not in conflict with even the highest spiritual attainment except in the minds of ignorant, mistaught, or unfortunately over-conscientious persons.

P383:2, 34:7.8 Having started out on the way of life everlasting, do not fear the dangers of human forgetfulness and mortal inconstancy, do not be troubled with doubts of failure or by perplexing confusion, do not falter and question your status and standing, for in every dark hour, at every crossroad in the forward struggle, the Spirit of Truth will always guide you.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 13  
The Life Carriers

P396:1, 36:0.1 Life does not originate spontaneously. Life is constructed according to plans formulated by the Architects of Being and appears on the inhabited planets either by direct importation or as a result of the operations of the Life Carriers of the local universe. These carriers of life are entrusted with designing and carrying creature life to the planetary spheres. And after planting this life on such new worlds, they remain there for long periods to foster its development.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 13: Section 1.  
Nature Of Life Carriers

P396:4, 36:1.3 Life Carriers are graded into three grand divisions: The first division is the senior Life Carriers, the second, assistants, and the third, custodians. The primary division is subdivided into groups of specialists in the various forms of life manifestation.

P396:5, 36:1.4 When an evolutionary planet is finally settled in light and life, the Life Carriers are organized into the higher deliberative bodies of advisory capacity to assist in the further administration and development of the world and its glorified beings. In the later and settled ages of an evolving universe these Life Carriers are entrusted with many new duties.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 13: Section 2.  
The Life Carrier Worlds

P397:1, 36:2.1 The worlds of the Life Carriers are designated as follows:

  1. The Life Carrier headquarters.

  2. The life-planning sphere.

  3. The life-conservation sphere.

  4. The sphere of life evolution.

  5. The sphere of life associated with mind.

  6. The sphere of mind and spirit in living beings.

  7. The sphere of unrevealed life.

P397:9, 36:2.2 Each of these primary spheres is surrounded by six satellites, on which the special phases of all the Life Carrier activities in the universe are centered.

P397:10, 36:2.3 _World Number One,_ the headquarters sphere, together with its six tributary satellites, is devoted to the study of universal life, life in all of its known phases of manifestation. Here is located the college of life planning, wherein function teachers and advisers from Uversa and Heaven, even from Paradise.

P397:11, 36:2.4 The number ten -- the decimal system -- is inherent in the physical universe but not in the spiritual. The domain of life is characterized by three, seven, and twelve or by multiples and combinations of these basic numbers. There are three primal and essentially different life plans, after the order of the three Paradise Sources and Centers; these three basic forms of life are segregated on three different types of planets. There were, originally, twelve distinct and divine concepts of transmissible life. This number twelve, with its subdivisions and multiples, runs throughout all basic life patterns of all universes. There are also seven architectural types of life design, fundamental arrangements of the reproducing configurations of living matter. The Orvonton life patterns are configured as twelve inheritance carriers. The differing orders of will creatures are configured as 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, and 768. On Earth there are forty-eight units of pattern control -- trait determiners -- in the sex cells of human reproduction.

P397:12, 36:2.5 _The Second World_ is the life-designing sphere; here all new modes of life organization are worked out. While the Creator provides the original life designs, the actual outworking of these plans is entrusted to the Life Carriers and their associates. When the general life plans for a new world have been formulated, they are transmitted to the headquarters sphere, where they are minutely scrutinized by the supreme council of the senior Life Carriers in collaboration with a corps of consultants. If the plans are a departure from previously accepted formulas, they must be passed upon, and endorsed by, the Creator.

P397:13, 36:2.6 Planetary life, therefore, while similar in some respects, differs in many ways on each evolutionary world. Even in a uniform life series in a single family of worlds, life is not exactly the same on any two planets; there is always a planetary type, for the Life Carriers work constantly in an effort to improve the vital formulas committed to their keeping.

P398:1, 36:2.7 There are over one million fundamental or cosmic chemical formulas which constitute the parent patterns and the numerous basic functional variations of life manifestations. Satellite number one of the life-planning sphere is the realm of the universe physicists and electrochemists who serve as technical assistants to the Life Carriers in the work of capturing, organizing, and manipulating the essential units of energy which are employed in building up the material vehicles of life transmission, the so-called germ plasm.

P398:2, 36:2.8 The planetary life-planning laboratories are situated on the second satellite of this world number two. In these laboratories the Life Carriers and all their associates collaborate in the effort to modify and possibly improve the life designed for implantation on the _decimal planets_. The life now evolving on Earth was planned and partially worked out on this very world, for Urantia is a decimal planet, a life-experiment world. On one world in each ten a greater variance in the standard life designs is permitted than on the other (non-experimental) worlds.

P398:3, 36:2.9 _World Number Three_ is devoted to the conservation of life. Here various modes of life protection and preservation are studied and developed by the assistants and custodians of the Life Carrier corps. The life plans for every new world always provide for the early establishment of the life-conservation commission, consisting of custodian specialists in the expert manipulation of the basic life patterns. On Earth there were several such custodian commissioners, two for each fundamental or parent pattern of the architectural organization of the life material. On planets such as yours a life-carrying bundle that possesses several pattern units reproduces the highest form of life. (And since the intellectual life grows out of, and upon the foundation of, the physical, there come into existence the basic orders of psychic organization.)

P398:4, 36:2.10 _Sphere Number Four_ and its tributary satellites are devoted to the study of the evolution of creature life in general and to the evolutionary antecedents of any one life level in particular. The original life plasm of an evolutionary world must contain the full potential for all future developmental variations and for all subsequent evolutionary changes and modifications. The provision for such far-reaching projects of life metamorphosis may require the appearance of many apparently useless forms of animal and vegetable life. Such by-products of planetary evolution, foreseen or unforeseen, appear upon the stage of action only to disappear, but in and through all this long process there runs the thread of the wise and intelligent formulations of the original designers of the planetary life plan and species scheme. The manifold by-products of biologic evolution are all essential to the final and full function of the higher intelligent forms of life, notwithstanding that great outward disharmony may prevail from time to time in the long upward struggle of the higher creatures to effect the mastery of the lower forms of life, many of which are sometimes so antagonistic to the peace and comfort of the evolving will creatures.

P398:5, 36:2.11 _Number Five World_ is concerned wholly with life associated with mind. Each of its satellites is devoted to the study of a single phase of creature mind correlated with creature life. Mind such as man comprehends is an endowment of the seven adjutant mind-spirits superimposed on the non-teachable or mechanical levels of mind by the agencies of the Infinite Spirit. The life patterns are variously responsive to these adjutants and to the different spirit ministries operating throughout the universes of time and space. The capacity of material creatures to effect spirit response is entirely dependent on the associated mind endowment, which, in turn, has directionized the course of the biologic evolution of these same mortal creatures.

P399:1, 36:2.12 _World Number Six_ is dedicated to the correlation of mind with spirit as they are associated with living forms and organisms. This world and its six tributaries embrace the schools of creature co-ordination, wherein teachers from both the central universe and the superuniverse collaborate with the instructors in presenting the highest levels of creature attainment in time and space.

P399:2, 36:2.13 _The Seventh Sphere_ of the Life Carriers is dedicated to the unrevealed domains of evolutionary creature life as it is related to the cosmic philosophy of the expanding factualization of the Supreme Being.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 13: Section 3.  
Life Transplantation

P399:3, 36:3.1 Life does not spontaneously appear in the universe; the Life Carriers must initiate it on the barren planets. They are the carriers, disseminators, and guardians of life as it appears on the evolutionary worlds of space.

P399:4, 36:3.2 The corps of Life Carriers commissioned to plant life upon a new world usually consists of several senior carriers, assistants and custodians. The Life Carriers often carry actual life plasm to a new world, but not always. They sometimes organize the life patterns after arriving on the planet of assignment in accordance with formulas previously approved for a new adventure in life establishment. Such was the origin of the planetary life of Earth.

P399:5, 36:3.3 When, in accordance with approved formulas, the physical patterns have been provided, then do the Life Carriers catalyze this lifeless material, imparting through their persons the vital spirit spark; and forthwith do the inert patterns become living matter.

P399:6, 36:3.4 The vital spark -- the mystery of life -- is bestowed through the Life Carriers, not by them. They do indeed supervise such transactions, they formulate the life plasm itself, but it is the Spirit who supplies the essential factor of the living plasm. From the Infinite Spirit comes that energy spark which enlivens the body and presages the mind.

P399:7, 36:3.5 In the bestowal of life the Life Carriers transmit nothing of their personal natures, not even on those spheres where new orders of life are projected. At such times they simply initiate and transmit the spark of life, start the required revolutions of matter in accordance with the physical, chemical, and electrical specifications of the ordained plans and patterns. Life Carriers are living catalytic presences that agitate, organize, and vitalize the otherwise inert elements of the material order of existence.

P400:1, 36:3.6 The Life Carriers of a planetary corps are given a certain period in which to establish life on a new world. At the termination of this period, indicated by certain developmental attainments of the planetary life, they cease implantation efforts, and they may not subsequently add anything new or supplemental to the life of that planet.

P400:2, 36:3.7 During the ages intervening between life establishment and the emergence of human creatures of moral status, the Life Carriers are permitted to manipulate the life environment and otherwise favorably directionize the course of biologic evolution. And this they do for long periods of time.

P400:3, 36:3.8 When the Life Carriers operating on a new world have once succeeded in producing a being with will, with the power of moral decision and spiritual choice, then and there their work terminates -- they are through; they may manipulate the evolving life no further. From this point forward the evolution of living things must proceed in accordance with the endowment of the inherent nature and tendencies which have already been imparted to, and established in, the planetary life formulas and patterns. The Life Carriers are not permitted to experiment or to interfere with will; they are not allowed to dominate or arbitrarily influence moral creatures.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 13: Section 4.  
The Seven Adjutant Mind-Spirits

P401:5, 36:5.1 It is the presence of the seven adjutant mind-spirits on the primitive worlds that conditions the course of organic evolution; that explains why evolution is purposeful and not accidental. These adjutants represent that function of the mind ministry of the Infinite Spirit that is extended to the lower orders of intelligent life through the operations of a local universe Spirit. The adjutants are the children of the Spirit and constitute her personal ministry to the material minds of the realms. Wherever and whenever such mind is manifest, these spirits are variously functioning.

P401:6, 36:5.2 The seven adjutant mind-spirits are called by names which are the equivalents of the following designations: intuition, understanding, courage, knowledge, counsel, worship, and wisdom. These mind-spirits send forth their influence into all the inhabited worlds as a differential urge, each seeking receptivity capacity for manifestation quite apart from the degree to which its fellows may find reception and opportunity for function.

P401:7, 36:5.3 The central lodgments of the adjutant spirits on the Life Carrier headquarters world indicate to the Life Carrier supervisors the extent and quality of the mind function of the adjutants on any world and in any given living organism of intellect status. These life-mind emplacements are perfect indicators of living mind function for the first five adjutants. But with regard to the sixth and seventh adjutant spirits -- worship and wisdom -- these central lodgments record only a qualitative function.

P402:1, 36:5.4 The seven adjutant mind-spirits always accompany the Life Carriers to a new planet, but they should not be regarded as entities; they are more like circuits. The spirits of the seven universe adjutants do not function as personalities apart from the universe presence of the Divine Minister; they are in fact a level of consciousness of the Divine Minister.

P402:2, 36:5.5 We are handicapped for words adequately to designate these seven adjutant mind-spirits. They are ministers of the lower levels of experiential mind, and they may be described, in the order of evolutionary attainment, as follows:

P402:3, 36:5.6 1. _The spirit of intuition_ \-- quick perception, the primitive physical and inherent reflex instincts, the directional and other self-preservative endowments of all mind creations; the only one of the adjutants to function so largely in the lower orders of animal life and the only one to make extensive functional contact with the non-teachable levels of mechanical mind.

P402:4, 36:5.7 2. _The spirit of understanding_ \-- the impulse of co-ordination, the spontaneous and apparently automatic association of ideas. This is the gift of the co-ordination of acquired knowledge, the phenomenon of quick reasoning, rapid judgment, and prompt decision.

P402:5, 36:5.8 3. _The spirit of courage_ \-- the fidelity endowment -- in personal beings, the basis of character acquirement and the intellectual root of moral stamina and spiritual bravery. When enlightened by facts and inspired by truth, this becomes the secret of the urge of evolutionary ascension by the channels of intelligent and conscientious self-direction.

P402:6, 36:5.9 4. _The spirit of knowledge_ \-- the curiosity-mother of adventure and discovery, the scientific spirit; the guide and faithful associate of the spirits of courage and counsel; the urge to direct the endowments of courage into useful and progressive paths of growth.

P402:7, 36:5.10 5. _The spirit of counsel_ \-- the social urge, the endowment of species co-operation; the ability of will creatures to harmonize with their fellows; the origin of the gregarious instinct among the more lowly creatures.

P402:8, 36:5.11 6. _The spirit of worship_ \-- the religious impulse, the first differential urges separating mind creatures into the two basic classes of mortal existence. The spirit of worship forever distinguishes the animal of its association from the soulless creatures of mind endowment. Worship is the badge of spiritual-ascension candidacy.

P402:9, 36:5.12 7. _The spirit of wisdom_ \-- the inherent tendency of all moral creatures towards orderly and progressive evolutionary advancement. This is the highest of the adjutants, the spirit coordinator and articulator of the work of all the others. This spirit is the secret of that inborn urge of mind creatures which initiates and maintains the practical and effective program of the ascending scale of existence; that gift of living things which accounts for their inexplicable ability to survive and, in survival, to utilize the co-ordination of all their past experience and present opportunities for the acquisition of all of everything that all of the other six mental ministers can mobilize in the mind of the organism concerned. Wisdom is the acme of intellectual performance. Wisdom is the goal of a purely mental and moral existence.

P403:1, 36:5.13 The adjutant mind-spirits experientially grow, but they never become personal. They evolve in function, and the function of the first five in the animal orders is to a certain extent essential to the function of all seven as human intellect. This animal relationship makes the adjutants more practically effective as human mind; hence animals are to a certain extent indispensable to man's intellectual as well as to his physical evolution.

P403:2, 36:5.14 These mind-adjutants of a local Universe Spirit are related to creature life of intelligence status much as the power centers and physical controllers are related to the nonliving forces of the universe. They perform invaluable service in the mind circuits on the inhabited worlds and are effective collaborators with the Master Physical Controllers, who also serve as controllers and directors of the preadjutant mind levels, the levels of non-teachable or mechanical mind.

P403:3, 36:5.15 Living mind, prior to the appearance of capacity to learn from experience, is the ministry domain of the Master Physical Controllers. Creature mind, before acquiring the ability to recognize divinity Deity, is the exclusive domain of the adjutant spirits. With the appearance of the spiritual response of the creature intellect, such created minds at once become super-minded, being instantly encircuited in the spirit cycles of the local universe Spirit.

P403:4, 36:5.16 The adjutant mind-spirits are in no manner directly related to the diverse and highly spiritual function of the spirit of the personal presence of the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit of the inhabited worlds; but they are functionally antecedent to, and preparatory for, the appearance of this very spirit in evolutionary man. The adjutants afford the Universe Spirit a varied contact with, and control over, the material living creatures of a local universe, but they do not repercuss in the Supreme Being when acting on prepersonality levels.

P403:5, 36:5.17 Nonspiritual mind is either a spirit-energy manifestation or a physical-energy phenomenon. Even human mind, personal mind, has no survival qualities apart from spirit identification. Mind is a divinity bestowal, but it is not immortal when it functions without spirit insight, and when it is devoid of the ability to worship and crave survival.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 13: Section 5.  
Living Forces

P403:6, 36:6.1 Life is both mechanistic and vitalistic -- material and spiritual. Ever will our physicists and chemists progress in their understanding of the protoplasmic forms of vegetable and animal life, but never will they be able to produce living organisms. Life is something different from all energy manifestations; even the material life of physical creatures is not inherent in matter.

P403:7, 36:6.2 Things material may enjoy an independent existence, but life springs only from life. Mind can be derived only from pre-existent mind. Spirit takes origin only from spirit ancestors. The creature may produce the forms of life, but only a creator personality or a creative force can supply the activating living spark.

P404:1, 36:6.3 Life Carriers can organize the material forms, or physical patterns, of living beings, but the Spirit provides the initial spark of life and bestows the endowment of mind. Even the living forms of experimental life, which the Life Carriers organize on their worlds, are always devoid of reproductive powers. When the life formulas and the vital patterns are correctly assembled and properly organized, the presence of a Life Carrier is sufficient to initiate life, but all such living organisms are lacking in two essential attributes -- mind endowment and reproductive powers. Animal mind and human mind are gifts of the local Universe Spirit, functioning through the seven adjutant mind-spirits, while creature ability to reproduce is the specific and personal impartation of the Universe Spirit to the ancestral life plasm inaugurated by the Life Carriers.

P404:2, 36:6.4 When the Life Carriers have designed the patterns of life, after they have organized the energy systems, there must occur an additional phenomenon; the "breath of life" must be imparted to these lifeless forms. God can construct the forms of life, but it is the Spirit of God who really contributes the vital spark. And when the life thus imparted is spent, then again the remaining material body becomes dead matter. When the bestowed life is exhausted, the body returns to the bosom of the material universe from which it was borrowed by the Life Carriers to serve as a transient vehicle for that life endowment which they conveyed to such a visible association of energy-matter.

P404:3, 36:6.5 The life bestowed upon plants and animals by the Life Carriers does not return to the Life Carriers upon the death of plant or animal. The departing life of such a living thing possesses neither identity nor personality; it does not individually survive death. During its existence and the time of its sojourn in the body of matter, it has undergone a change; it has undergone energy evolution and survives only as a part of the cosmic forces of the universe; it does not survive as individual life. The survival of mortal creatures is wholly predicated on the evolvement of an immortal soul within the mortal mind.

P404:4, 36:6.6 We speak of life as "energy" and as "force," but it is really neither. Force-energy is variously gravity responsive; life is not. Pattern is also nonresponsive to gravity, being a configuration of energies that have already fulfilled all gravity-responsive obligations. Life, as such, constitutes the animation of some pattern-configured or otherwise segregated system of energy -- material, mindal, or spiritual.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14  
Physical Aspects Of The Local Universe

P455:1, 41:0.1 The characteristic space phenomenon which sets off each local creation from all others is the presence of the Creative Spirit. A Master Physical Controller works in co-ordination with the system power center, serving as liaison chief of the power inspectors and functioning throughout the local system.

P457:3, 41:2.4 The circuitizing and channelizing of energy is supervised by the living and intelligent energy manipulators. Through the action of such physical controllers the supervising power centers are in complete and perfect control of a majority of the basic energies of space, including the emanations of highly heated orbs and the dark energy-charged spheres. This group can mobilize, transform, transmute, manipulate, and transmit nearly all of the physical energies of organized space.

P457:4, 41:2.5 Life has inherent capacity for the mobilization and transmutation of universal energy. You are familiar with the action of vegetable life in transforming the material energy of light into the varied manifestations of the vegetable kingdom. You also know something of the method whereby this vegetative energy can be converted into the phenomena of animal activities, but you know practically nothing of the technique of the power directors and the physical controllers, who are endowed with ability to mobilize, transform, directionize, and concentrate the manifold energies of space.

P457:5, 41:2.6 These controllers do not directly concern themselves with energy as a component factor of living creatures, not even with the domain of physiological chemistry. They are sometimes concerned with the physical preliminaries of life, with the elaboration of those energy systems that may serve as the physical vehicles for the living energies of elementary material organisms. In a way the physical controllers are related to the pre-living manifestations of material energy as the adjutant mind-spirits are concerned with the pre-spiritual functions of material mind.

P457:6, 41:2.7 These power controllers and energy directors must adjust their technique on each sphere in accordance with the physical constitution and architecture of the planet. They unfailingly utilize the calculations and deductions of their respective staffs of physicists and other technical advisers regarding the local influence of highly heated suns and other types of supercharged stars. Even the enormous cold and dark giants of space and the swarming clouds of stardust must be reckoned with; all of these material things are concerned in the practical problems of energy manipulation.

P457:7, 41:2.8 The power-energy supervision of the evolutionary inhabited worlds is the responsibility of the Master Physical Controllers, but these controllers are not responsible for all energy misbehavior on Earth. There are a number of reasons for such disturbances, some of which are beyond the domain and control of the physical custodians. Earth is in the lines of tremendous energies, a small planet in the circuit of enormous masses, and the local controllers sometimes employ enormous numbers of their order in an effort to equalize these lines of energy.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14: Section 1.  
Our Starry Associates

P458:1, 41:3.1 The Universe Power Directors initiate the specialized currents of energy which play between the individual stars and their respective systems. These solar furnaces, together with the dark giants of space, serve the power centers and physical controllers as way stations for the effective concentrating and directionizing of the energy circuits of the material creations.

P458:2, 41:3.2 The material composition of all suns, dark islands, planets, and satellites, even meteors, is quite identical. These suns have an average diameter of about one million miles, that of your own solar orb being slightly less. The largest star in the universe, the stellar cloud Antares, is four hundred and fifty times the diameter of your sun and is sixty million times its volume. But there is abundant space to accommodate all of these enormous suns. They have just as much comparative elbowroom in space, as one dozen oranges would have if they were circulating about throughout the interior of Earth, and were the planet a hollow globe.

P458:3, 41:3.3 All suns are originally truly gaseous, though they may later transiently exist in a semi-liquid state. When your sun attained this quasi-liquid state of super-gas pressure, it was not sufficiently large to split equatorially, this being one type of double star formation.

P458:4, 41:3.4 When less than one tenth the size of your sun, these fiery spheres rapidly contract, condense, and cool. When upwards of thirty times its size -- rather thirty times the gross content of actual material -- suns readily split into two separate bodies, either becoming the centers of new systems or else remaining in each other's gravity grasp and revolving about a common center as one type of double star.

P458:5, 41:3.5 The most recent of the major cosmic eruptions was the extraordinary double star explosion, the light of which reached Earth in A.D. 1572. This conflagration was so intense that the explosion was clearly visible in broad daylight.

P458:6, 41:3.6 Not all stars are solid, but many of the older ones are. Some of the reddish, faintly glimmering stars have acquired a density at the center of their enormous masses which would be expressed by saying that one cubic inch of such a star, if on Earth, would weigh six thousand pounds. The enormous pressure, accompanied by loss of heat and circulating energy, has resulted in bringing the orbits of the basic material units closer and closer together until they now closely approach the status of electronic condensation. This process of cooling and contraction may continue to the limiting and critical explosion point of ultimatonic condensation.

P459:1, 41:3.7 Most of the giant suns are relatively young; most of the dwarf stars are old, but not all. The collisional dwarfs may be very young and may glow with an intense white light, never having known an initial red stage of youthful shining. Both very young and very old suns usually shine with a reddish glow. The yellow tinge indicates moderate youth or approaching old age, but the brilliant white light signifies robust and extended adult life.

P459:2, 41:3.8 While all adolescent suns do not pass through a pulsating stage, at least not visibly, when looking out into space you may observe many of these younger stars whose gigantic respiratory heaves require from two to seven days to complete a cycle. Our own sun still carries a diminishing legacy of the mighty upswellings of its younger days, but the period has lengthened from the former three and one-half day pulsations to the present eleven and one-half year sunspot cycles.

P459:3, 41:3.9 Stellar variables have numerous origins. In some double stars the tides caused by rapidly changing distances as the two bodies swing around their orbits also occasion periodic fluctuations of light. These gravity variations produce regular and recurrent flares, just as the capture of meteors by the accretion of energy-material at the surface would result in a comparatively sudden flash of light that would speedily recede to normal brightness for that sun. Sometimes a sun will capture a stream of meteors in a line of lessened gravity opposition, and occasionally collisions cause stellar flare-ups, but the majority of such phenomena are wholly due to internal fluctuations.

P459:4, 41:3.10 In one group of variable stars the period of light fluctuation is directly dependent on luminosity, and knowledge of this fact enables astronomers to utilize such suns as universe lighthouses or accurate measuring points for the further exploration of distant star clusters. By this technique it is possible to measure stellar distances most precisely up to more than one million light-years. Better methods of space measurement and improved telescopic technique will allow us to recognize several of these immense sectors as enormous and fairly symmetrical star clusters.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14: Section 2.  
Sun Density

P459:5, 41:4.1 The mass of our sun, according to physicists, is about two octillion (2 x 10^27) tons. It now exists about halfway between the densest and the most diffuse stars, having about one and one-half times the density of water. But our sun is neither a liquid nor a solid -- it is gaseous -- and this is true notwithstanding the difficulty of explaining how gaseous matter can attain this and even much greater densities.

P459:6, 41:4.2 Gaseous, liquid, and solid states are matters of atomic-molecular relationships, but density is a relationship of space and mass. Density varies directly with the quantity of mass in space and inversely with the amount of space in mass, the space between the central cores of matter and the particles that whirl around these centers as well as the space within such material particles.

P459:7, 41:4.3 Cooling stars can be physically gaseous and tremendously dense at the same time. Many people are not familiar with the solar _super-gases,_ but these and other unusual forms of matter explain how even nonsolid suns can attain a density equal to iron -- about the same as Earth -- and yet be in a highly heated gaseous state and continue to function as suns. The atoms in these dense super-gases are exceptionally small; they contain few electrons. Such suns have also largely lost their free ultimatonic stores of energy.

P460:1, 41:4.4  One of our near-by suns, which started life with about the same mass as ours, has now contracted almost to the size of Earth, having become sixty thousand times as dense as our sun. The weight of this hot-cold gaseous-solid is about one ton per cubic inch. And still this sun shines with a faint reddish glow, the senile glimmer of a dying monarch of light.

P460:2, 41:4.5 Most of the suns, however, are not so dense. One of your nearer neighbors has a density exactly equal to that of our atmosphere at sea level. If you were in the interior of this sun, you would be unable to discern anything. And temperature permitting, you could penetrate the majority of the suns which twinkle in the night sky and notice no more matter than you perceive in the air of your earthly living rooms.

P460:3, 41:4.6 The massive sun of Veluntia, one of the largest in Orvonton, has a density only one one-thousandth that of Earth's atmosphere. Were it in composition similar to your atmosphere and not superheated, it would be such a vacuum that human beings would speedily suffocate if they were in or on it.

P460:4, 41:4.7 Another of the Orvonton giants now has a surface temperature a trifle under three thousand degrees. Its diameter is over three hundred million miles -- ample room to accommodate our sun and the present orbit of the earth. And yet, for all this enormous size, over forty million times that of our sun, its mass is only about thirty times greater. These enormous suns have an extending fringe that reaches almost from one to the other.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14: Section 3.  
Solar Radiation

P460:5, 41:5.1 That the suns of space are not very dense is proved by the steady streams of escaping light-energies. Too great a density would retain light by opacity until the light-energy pressure reached the explosion point. There is a tremendous light or gas pressure within a sun to cause it to shoot forth such a stream of energy as to penetrate space for millions upon millions of miles to energize, light, and heat the distant planets. Fifteen feet of surface of the density of Earth would effectually prevent the escape of all X rays and light-energies from a sun until the rising internal pressure of accumulating energies resulting from atomic dismemberment overcame gravity with a tremendous outward explosion.

P460:6, 41:5.2 Light, in the presence of the propulsive gases, is highly explosive when confined at high temperatures by opaque retaining walls. Light is real. As you value energy and power on your world, sunlight would be economical at a million dollars a pound.

P460:7, 41:5.3 The interior of our sun is a vast X-ray generator. The suns are supported from within by the incessant bombardment of these mighty emanations.

P460:8, 41:5.4 It requires more than one-half million years for an X-ray-stimulated electron to work its way from the very center of an average sun up to the solar surface, whence it starts out on its space adventure, maybe to warm an inhabited planet, to be captured by a meteor, to participate in the birth of an atom, to be attracted by a highly charged dark island of space, or to find its space flight terminated by a final plunge into the surface of a sun similar to the one of its origin.

P461:1, 41:5.5 The X rays of a sun's interior charge the highly heated and agitated electrons with sufficient energy to carry them out through space, past the hosts of detaining influences of intervening matter and, in spite of divergent gravity attractions, on to the distant spheres of the remote systems. The great energy of velocity required to escape the gravity clutch of a sun is sufficient to insure that the sunbeam will travel on with unabated velocity until it encounters considerable masses of matter; whereupon it is quickly transformed into heat with the liberation of other energies.

P461:2, 41:5.6 Energy, whether as light or in other forms, in its flight through space moves straight forward. The actual particles of material existence traverse space like a fusillade. They go in a straight and unbroken line or procession except as they are acted on by superior forces, and except as they ever obey the linear-gravity pull inherent in material mass and the circular-gravity presence of the Isle of Paradise.

P461:3, 41:5.7 Solar energy may seem to be propelled in waves, but that is due to the action of coexistent and diverse influences. A given form of organized energy does not proceed in waves but in direct lines. The presence of a second or a third form of force-energy may cause the stream under observation to _appear_ to travel in wavy formation, just as, in a blinding rainstorm accompanied by a heavy wind, the water sometimes appears to fall in sheets or to descend in waves. The raindrops are coming down in a direct line of unbroken procession, but the action of the wind is such as to give the visible appearance of sheets of water and waves of raindrops.

P461:4, 41:5.8 The action of certain secondary and other undiscovered energies present in the space regions of your local universe is such that solar-light emanations appear to execute certain wavy phenomena as well as to be chopped up into infinitesimal portions of definite length and weight. And, practically considered, that is exactly what happens. We can hardly hope to arrive at a better understanding of the behavior of light until such a time as we acquire a clearer concept of the interaction and interrelationship of the various space-forces and solar energies operating in the space regions of Nebadon. Our present confusion is also due to our incomplete grasp of this problem as it involves the interassociated activities of the personal and nonpersonal control of the master universe -- the presences, the performances, and the co-ordination of the Conjoint Actor and the Unqualified Absolute.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter14: Section 4.  
Calcium -- The Wanderer Of Space

P461:5, 41:6.1 In deciphering spectral phenomena, it should be remembered that space is not empty; that light, in traversing space, is sometimes slightly modified by the various forms of energy and matter which circulate in all organized space. Some of the lines indicating unknown matter that appear in the spectra of our sun are due to modifications of well-known elements which are floating throughout space in shattered form, the atomic casualties of the fierce encounters of the solar elemental battles. These wandering derelicts, especially sodium and calcium, pervade space.

P461:6, 41:6.2 Calcium is, in fact, the chief element of the matter-permeation of space throughout Orvonton. Our whole superuniverse is sprinkled with minutely pulverized stone. Stone is literally the basic building matter for the planets and spheres of space. The cosmic cloud, the great space blanket, consists for the most part of the modified atoms of calcium. The stone atom is one of the most prevalent and persistent of the elements. It not only endures solar ionization -- splitting -- but also persists in an associative identity even after the destructive X rays have battered it and shattered by the high solar temperatures. Calcium possesses individuality and a longevity excelling all of the more common forms of matter.

P462:1, 41:6.3 As physicists have suspected, these mutilated remnants of solar calcium literally ride the light beams for varied distances, and thus their widespread dissemination throughout space is tremendously facilitated. The sodium atom, under certain modifications, is also capable of light and energy locomotion. The calcium feat is all the more remarkable since this element has almost twice the mass of sodium. Local space-permeation by calcium is due to the fact that it escapes from the solar photosphere, in modified form, by literally riding the outgoing sunbeams. Of all the solar elements, calcium, notwithstanding its comparative bulk -- containing as it does twenty revolving electrons -- is the most successful in escaping from the solar interior to the realms of space. This explains why there is a calcium layer, a gaseous stone surface, on the sun six thousand miles thick; and this despite the fact that nineteen lighter elements, and numerous heavier ones, are underneath.

P462:2, 41:6.4 Calcium is an active and versatile element at solar temperatures. The stone atom has two agile and loosely attached electrons in the two outer electronic circuits, which are very close together. Early in the atomic struggle it loses its outer electron; whereupon it engages in a masterful act of juggling the nineteenth electron back and forth between the nineteenth and twentieth circuits of electronic revolution. By tossing this nineteenth electron back and forth between its own orbit and that of its lost companion more than twenty-five thousand times a second, a mutilated stone atom is able partially to defy gravity and thus successfully to ride the emerging streams of light and energy, the sunbeams, to liberty and adventure. This calcium atom moves outward by alternate jerks of forward propulsion, grasping and letting go the sunbeam about twenty-five thousand times each second. And this is why stone is the chief component of the worlds of space. Calcium is the most expert solar-prison escaper.

P462:3, 41:6.5 The agility of this acrobatic calcium electron is indicated by the fact that, when tossed by the temperature-X-ray solar forces to the circle of the higher orbit, it only remains in that orbit for about one one-millionth of a second; but before the electric-gravity power of the atomic nucleus pulls it back into its old orbit, it is able to complete one million revolutions about the atomic center.

P462:4, 41:6.6 Our sun has parted with an enormous quantity of its calcium, having lost tremendous amounts during the times of its convulsive eruptions in connection with the formation of the solar system. Much of the solar calcium is now in the outer crust of the sun.

P462:5, 41:6.7 It should be remembered that spectral analyses show only sun-surface compositions. For example: Solar spectra exhibit many iron lines, but iron is not the chief element in the sun. This phenomenon is almost wholly due to the present temperature of the sun's surface, a little less than 6,000 degrees, this temperature being very favorable to the registry of the iron spectrum.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter14: Section 5.  
Sources Of Solar Energy

P463:1, 41:7.1 The internal temperature of many of the suns, even our own, is much higher than is commonly believed. In the interior of a sun practically no whole atoms exist; they are all more or less shattered by the intensive X-ray bombardment that is indigenous to such high temperatures. Regardless of what material elements may appear in the outer layers of a sun, those in the interior are rendered very similar by the dissociative action of the disruptive X rays. X ray is the great leveler of atomic existence.

P463:2, 41:7.2  The surface temperature of our sun is almost 6,000 degrees, but it rapidly increases as the interior is penetrated until it attains the unbelievable height of about 35,000,000 degrees in the central regions. (All of these temperatures refer to the Fahrenheit scale.)

P463:3, 41:7.3 All of these phenomena are indicative of enormous energy expenditure, and the sources of solar energy, named in the order of their importance, are:

  1. Annihilation of atoms and, eventually, of electrons.

  2. Transmutation of elements, including the radioactive group of energies thus liberated.

  3. The accumulation and transmission of certain universal space-energies.

  4. Space matter and meteors that are incessantly diving into the blazing suns.

  5. Solar contraction; the cooling and consequent contraction of a sun yields energy and heat sometimes greater than that supplied by space matter.

  6. Gravity action at high temperatures transforms certain circuitized power into radioactive energies.

  7. Recaptive light and other matter which are drawn back into the sun after having left it, together with other energies having extra-solar origin.

P463:11, 41:7.4 There exists a regulating blanket of hot gases (sometimes millions of degrees in temperature) which envelops the suns, and which acts to stabilize heat loss and otherwise prevent hazardous fluctuations of heat dissipation. During the active life of a sun the internal temperature of 35,000,000 degrees remains about the same quite regardless of the progressive fall of the external temperature.

P463:12, 41:7.5 You might try to visualize 35,000,000 degrees of heat, in association with certain gravity pressures, as the electronic boiling point. Under such pressure and at such temperature all atoms are degraded and broken up into their electronic and other ancestral components; even the electrons and other associations of ultimatons may be broken up, but the suns are not able to degrade the ultimatons.

P463:13, 41:7.6 These solar temperatures operate to enormously speed up the ultimatons and the electrons, at least such of the latter as continue to maintain their existence under these conditions. You will realize what high temperature means by way of the acceleration of ultimatonic and electronic activities when you pause to consider that one drop of ordinary water contains over one billion trillions of atoms. This is the energy of more than one hundred horsepower exerted continuously for two years. The total heat now given out by the solar system sun each second is sufficient to boil all the water in all the oceans on Earth in just one second of time.

P464:1, 41:7.7 Only those suns which function in the direct channels of the main streams of universe energy can shine on forever. Such solar furnaces blaze on indefinitely, being able to replenish their material losses by the intake of space-force and analogous circulating energy. But stars far removed from these chief channels of recharging are destined to undergo energy depletion -- gradually cool off and eventually burn out.

P464:2, 41:7.8 Such dead or dying suns can be rejuvenated by collisional impact or can be recharged by certain non-luminous energy islands of space or through gravity-robbery of near-by smaller suns or systems. The majority of dead suns will experience revivification by these or other evolutionary techniques. Those that are not thus eventually recharged are destined to undergo disruption by mass explosion when the gravity condensation attains the critical level of ultimatonic condensation of energy pressure. Such disappearing suns thus become energy of the rarest form, admirably adapted to energize other more favorably situated suns.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14: Section 6.  
Solar-Energy Reactions

P464:3, 41:8.1 In those suns which are encircuited in the space-energy channels, solar energy is liberated by various complex nuclear-reaction chains, the most common of which is the hydrogen-carbon-helium reaction. In this metamorphosis, carbon acts as an energy catalyst since it is in no way actually changed by this process of converting hydrogen into helium. Under certain conditions of high temperature the hydrogen penetrates the carbon nuclei. Since the carbon cannot hold more than four such protons, when this saturation state is attained, it begins to emit protons as fast as new ones arrive. In this reaction the ingoing hydrogen particles come forth as a helium atom.

P464:4, 41:8.2 Reduction of hydrogen content increases the luminosity of a sun. In the suns destined to burn out, the height of luminosity is attained at the point of hydrogen exhaustion. Subsequent to this point, the resultant process of gravity contraction maintains brilliance. Eventually, such a star will become a so-called white dwarf, a highly condensed sphere.

P464:5, 41:8.3 In large suns -- small circular nebulae -- when hydrogen is exhausted and gravity contraction ensues, if such a body is not sufficiently opaque to retain the internal pressure of support for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny particles devoid of electric potential, and such particles readily escape from the solar interior, thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days. It was such an emigration of these "runaway particles" that occasioned the collapse of the giant nova of the Andromeda nebula about a hundred years ago. This vast stellar body collapsed in forty minutes.

P464:6, 41:8.4 As a rule, the vast extrusion of matter continues to exist about the residual cooling sun as extensive clouds of nebular gases. And all this explains the origin of many types of irregular nebulae, such as the Crab nebula, which had its origin about nine hundred fifty years ago, and which still exhibits the mother sphere as a lone star near the center of this irregular nebular mass.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14: Section 7.  
Sun Stability

P465:1, 41:9.1 The larger suns maintain such a gravity control over their electrons that light escapes only with the aid of the powerful X rays. These helper rays penetrate all space and are concerned in the maintenance of the basic ultimatonic associations of energy. The great energy losses in the early days of a sun, subsequent to its attainment of maximum temperature -- upwards of 35,000,000 degrees -- are not so much due to light escape as to ultimatonic leakage. These ultimaton energies escape out into space, to engage in the adventure of electronic association and energy materialization, as a veritable energy blast during adolescent solar times.

P465:2, 41:9.2 Atoms and electrons are subject to gravity. The ultimatons are _not_ subject to local gravity, the interplay of material attraction, but they are fully obedient to absolute or Paradise gravity, to the trend, the swing, of the universal and eternal circle of the universe of universes. Ultimatonic energy does not obey the linear or direct gravity attraction of near-by or remote material masses, but it does ever swing true to the circuit of the great ellipse of the far-flung creation.

P465:3, 41:9.3 Our solar center radiates almost one hundred billion tons of actual matter annually, while the giant suns lose matter at a prodigious rate during their earlier growth, the first billion years. A sun's life becomes stable after the maximum of internal temperature is reached, and the subatomic energies begin to be released. And it is just at this critical point that the larger suns are given to convulsive pulsations.

P465:4, 41:9.4 Sun stability is wholly dependent on the equilibrium between gravity-heat contention -- tremendous pressures counterbalanced by unimagined temperatures. The interior gas elasticity of the suns upholds the overlying layers of varied materials, and when gravity and heat are in equilibrium, the weight of the outer materials exactly equals the temperature pressure of the underlying and interior gases. In many of the younger stars continued gravity condensation produces ever-heightening internal temperatures, and as internal heat increases, the interior X-ray pressure of super-gas winds becomes so great that, in connection with the centrifugal motion, a sun begins to throw its exterior layers off into space, thus redressing the imbalance between gravity and heat.

P465:5, 41:9.5 Our sun has long since attained relative equilibrium between its expansion and contraction cycles, those disturbances which produce the gigantic pulsations of many of the younger stars. Our sun is now passing out of its six billionth year. At the present time it is functioning through the period of greatest economy. It will shine on as of present efficiency for more than twenty-five billion years. It will probably experience a partially efficient period of decline as long as the combined periods of its youth and stabilized function.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 14: Section 8.  
Origin Of Inhabited Worlds

P465:6, 41:10.1 Some of the variable stars, in or near the state of maximum pulsation, are in process of giving origin to subsidiary systems, many of which will eventually be much like your own sun and its revolving planets. Your sun was in just such a state of mighty pulsation when the massive Angona system swung into near approach, and the outer surface of the sun began to erupt veritable streams -- continuous sheets -- of matter. This kept up with ever-increasing violence until nearest apposition, when the limits of solar cohesion were reached and a vast pinnacle of matter, the ancestor of the solar system, was disgorged. In similar circumstances the closest approach of the attracting body sometimes draws off whole planets, even a quarter or third of a sun. These major extrusions form certain peculiar cloud-bound types of worlds, spheres much like Jupiter and Saturn.

P466:1, 41:10.2 The majority of solar systems, however, had an origin entirely different from ours, and this is true even of those which were produced by gravity-tidal technique. But no matter what technique of world building obtains, gravity always produces the solar system type of creation; that is, a central sun or dark island with planets, satellites, sub-satellites, and meteors.

P466:2, 41:10.3 The physical aspects of the individual worlds are largely determined by mode of origin, astronomical situation, and physical environment. Age, size, rate of revolution, and velocity through space are also determining factors. Both the gas-contraction and the solid-accretion worlds are characterized by mountains and, during their earlier life, when not too small, by water and air. The molten-split and collisional worlds are sometimes without extensive mountain ranges.

P466:3, 41:10.4 During the earlier ages of all these new worlds, earthquakes are frequent, and they are all characterized by great physical disturbances; especially is this true of the gas-contraction spheres, the worlds born of the immense nebular rings which are left behind in the wake of the early condensation and contraction of certain individual suns. Planets having a dual origin like Earth pass through a less violent and stormy youthful career. Even so, our world experienced an early phase of mighty upheavals, characterized by volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and terrific storms.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15  
Energy -- Mind And Matter

P467:1, 42:0.1 The foundation of the universe is material in the sense that energy is the basis of all existence, and pure energy is controlled by the Universal Father. Force, energy, is the one thing that stands as an everlasting monument demonstrating and proving the existence and presence of the Universal Absolute. This vast stream of energy proceeding from the Paradise Presences has never lapsed, never failed; there has never been a break in the infinite upholding.

P467:2, 42:0.2 The manipulation of universe energy is ever in accordance with the personal will and the all-wise mandates of the Universal Father. This personal control of manifested power and circulating energy is modified by the co-ordinate acts and decisions of the Father executed by the Conjoint Actor. They act personally and as individuals; they also function in the persons and powers of an almost unlimited number of subordinates, each variously expressive of the eternal and divine purpose in the universe. But these functional and provisional modifications or transmutations of divine power in no way lessen the truth of the statement that all force-energy is under the ultimate control of a personal God at the center of all things.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 1.  
Paradise Forces And Energies

P467:3, 42:1.1 The foundation of the universe is material, but the essence of life is spirit. The Father of spirits is also the ancestor of universes; the eternal Father is also the eternity-source of the original pattern, the Isle of Paradise.

P467:4, 42:1.2 Matter -- energy -- for they are but diverse manifestations of the same cosmic reality, as a universe phenomenon is inherent in the Universal Father. "In him all things consist." Matter may appear to manifest inherent energy and to exhibit self-contained powers, but the lines of gravity involved in the energies concerned in all these physical phenomena are derived from, and are dependent on, Paradise. The ultimaton, the first measurable form of energy, has Paradise as its nucleus.

P467:5, 42:1.3 There is innate in matter and present in universal space a form of energy not yet known. When this discovery is finally made, then will physicists feel that they have solved, almost at least, the mystery of matter. And so will they have approached one step nearer the Creator; so will they have mastered one more phase of the divine technique; but in no sense will they have found God, neither will they have established the existence of matter or the operation of natural laws apart from the cosmic technique of Paradise and the motivating purpose of the Universal Father.

P468:1, 42:1.4 Subsequent to even still greater progress and further discoveries, after Earth has advanced immeasurably in comparison with present knowledge, though you should gain control of the energy revolutions of the electrical units of matter to the extent of modifying their physical manifestations -- even after all such possible progress, forever will scientists be powerless to create one atom of matter or to originate one flash of energy or ever to add to matter that which we call life.

P468:2, 42:1.5 The creation of energy and the bestowal of life are the prerogatives of the Universal Father and his associate Creator personalities. The river of energy and life is a continuous outpouring, the universal and united stream of Paradise force going forth to all space. This divine energy pervades all creation. The force organizers initiate those changes and institute those modifications of space-force that eventuate in energy; the power directors transmute energy into matter; thus the material worlds are born. The Life Carriers initiate those processes in dead matter that we call life, material life. The Power Supervisors likewise perform throughout the transition realms between the material and the spiritual worlds. The higher spirits Creators inaugurate similar processes in divine forms of energy, and there ensue the higher spirit forms of intelligent life.

P468:3, 42:1.6 Energy proceeds from Paradise, fashioned after the divine order. Energy -- pure energy -- partakes of the nature of the divine organization, as they function at the headquarters of the universes. And all force is circuited in Paradise, comes from the Paradise Presences and returns thereto, and is in essence a manifestation of the uncaused Cause -- the Universal Father; and without the Father would not anything exist that does exist.

P468:4, 42:1.7 Force derived from self-existent Deity is in itself ever existent. Force-energy is imperishable, indestructible; these manifestations of the Infinite may be subject to unlimited transmutation, endless transformation, and eternal metamorphosis; but in no sense or degree, not even to the slightest imaginable extent, could they or ever shall they suffer extinction. But energy, though springing from the Infinite, is not infinitely manifest; there are outer limits to the presently conceived master universe.

P468:5, 42:1.8 Energy is eternal but not infinite; it ever responds to the all-embracing grasp of Infinity. Forever force and energy go on; having gone out from Paradise, they must return thereto, even if age upon age were required for the completion of the ordained circuit. That which is of Paradise Deity origin can have only a Paradise destination or a Deity destiny.

P468:6, 42:1.9 And all this confirms our belief in a circular, somewhat limited, but orderly and far-flung universe. If this were not true, then evidence of energy depletion at some point would sooner or later appear. All laws, organizations, administration, and the testimony of universe explorers -- everything points to the existence of an infinite God but, as yet, a finite universe, a circularity of endless existence, well nigh limitless but, nevertheless, finite in contrast with infinity.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 2.  
Physical Energies

P469:1, 42:2.1 It is indeed difficult to find suitable words in the English language whereby to designate and wherewith to describe the various levels of force and energy -- physical, mindal, or spiritual. These narratives cannot altogether follow accepted definitions of force, energy, and power. There is such paucity of language that we must use these terms in multiple meanings. In this chapter, for example, the word _energy_ is used to denote all phases and forms of phenomenal motion, action, and potential, while _force_ is applied to the pre-gravity, and _power_ to the post-gravity, stages of energy.

P469:2, 42:2.2 We can lessen conceptual confusion by suggesting the advisability of adopting the following classification for cosmic force, emergent energy, and universe power -- physical energy:

P469:3, 42:2.3 1. _Space potency._ This is the unquestioned free space presence of the Unqualified Absolute. The extension of this concept connotes the universe force-space potential inherent in the functional totality of the Unqualified Absolute, while the intension of this concept implies the totality of cosmic reality -- universes -- which emanated forever from the never-beginning, never-ending, never-moving, never-changing Isle of Paradise.

P469:4, 42:2.4 The phenomena indigenous to the nether side of Paradise probably embrace three zones of absolute force presence and performance: the fulcral zone of the Unqualified Absolute, the zone of the Isle of Paradise itself, and the intervening zone of certain unidentified equalizing and compensating agencies or functions. These tri-concentric zones are the centrum of the Paradise cycle of cosmic reality.

P469:5, 42:2.5 Space potency is a pre-reality; it is the domain of the Unqualified Absolute and is responsive only to the personal grasp of the Universal Father, notwithstanding that it is seemingly modifiable by the presence of the Primary Master Force Organizers.

P469:7, 42:2.7 2. _Primordial force._ This represents the first basic change in space potency and may be one of the nether Paradise functions of the Unqualified Absolute. We know that the space presence going out from nether Paradise is modified in some manner from that which is incoming. But regardless of any such possible relationships, the openly recognized transmutation of space potency into primordial force is the primary differentiating function of the tension-presence of the living Paradise force organizers.

P469:8, 42:2.8 Passive and potential force becomes active and primordial in response to the resistance afforded by the space presence of the Primary Eventuated Master Force Organizers. Force is now emerging from the exclusive domain of the Unqualified Absolute into the realms of multiple response -- response to certain primal motions initiated by the God of Action and thereupon to certain compensating motions emanating from the Universal Absolute. Primordial force is seemingly reactive to transcendental causation in proportion to absoluteness.

P469:9, 42:2.9 Primordial force is sometimes spoken of as _pure energy._

P470:1, 42:2.10 3. _Emergent energies._ The passive presence of the primary force organizers is sufficient to transform space potency into primordial force, and it is upon such an activated space field that these same force organizers begin their initial and active operations. Primordial force is destined to pass through two distinct phases of transmutation in the realms of energy manifestation before appearing as universe power. These two levels of emerging energy are:

P470:2, 42:2.11 a. _Puissant energy._ This is the powerful-directional, mass- movemented, mighty- tensioned, and forcible-reacting energy -- gigantic energy systems set in motion by the activities of the primary force organizers. This primary or puissant energy is not at first definitely responsive to the Paradise-gravity pull though probably yielding an aggregate-mass or space-directional response to the collective group of absolute influences operative from the nether side of Paradise. When energy emerges to the level of initial response to the circular and absolute-gravity grasp of Paradise, the primary force organizers give way to the functioning of their secondary associates.

P470:3, 42:2.12 b. _Gravity energy._ The now-appearing gravity-responding energy carries the potential of universe power and becomes the active ancestor of all universe matter. This secondary or gravity energy is the product of the energy elaboration resulting from the pressure-presence and the tension-trends set up by the Associate Transcendental Master Force Organizers. In response to the work of these force manipulators, space-energy rapidly passes from the puissant to the gravity stage, thus becoming directly responsive to the circular grasp of Paradise (absolute) gravity while disclosing a certain potential for sensitivity to the linear-gravity pull inherent in the soon appearing material mass of the electronic and the post-electronic stages of energy and matter. Upon the appearance of gravity response, the Associate Master Force Organizers may retire from the energy cyclones of space provided the Universe Power Directors are assignable to that field of action.

P470:4, 42:2.13 We are quite uncertain regarding the exact causes of the early stages of force evolution, but we recognize the intelligent action of the Ultimate in both levels of emergent-energy manifestation.

P470:5, 42:2.14 4. _Universe power._ Space-force has been changed into space-energy and thence into the energy of gravity control. Thus has physical energy been ripened to that point where it can be directed into channels of power and made to serve the manifold purposes of the universe Creators. The versatile directors, centers, and controllers of physical energy in the grand universe -- the organized and inhabited creations, carry on this work. These Universe Power Directors assume the more or less complete control of twenty-one of the thirty phases of energy constituting the present energy system of the universes.

P470:7, 42:2.16 5. _Heaven energy._ In concept this narrative has been moving Paradise-ward, as transmuting space-force has been followed, level-by-level, to the working level of the energy-power of the universes of time and space. Continuing Paradise-ward, there is next encountered a pre-existent phase of energy which is characteristic of the central universe. Here the evolutionary cycle seems to turn back upon itself; energy-power now seems to begin to swing back towards force, but force of a nature very unlike that of space potency and primordial force. This is the existential energy domain of the Conjoint Actor.

P471:1, 42:2.18 6. _Transcendental energy._ This energy system operates on and from the upper level of Paradise and only in connection with the absonite peoples.

P471:2, 42:2.19 7. _Monota._ Energy is close of kin to divinity when it is Paradise energy. We incline to the belief that monota is the living, non-spirit energy of Paradise -- an eternity counterpart of the living, spirit energy of the Universal Father.

P471:5, 42:2.22 The power directors themselves are energy catalyzers; that is, they cause energy to segment, organize, or assemble in unit formation by their presence. And all this implies that there must be something inherent in energy which causes it thus to function in the presence of these power entities.

P471:6, 42:2.23 Notwithstanding our inability fully to comprehend the origin, nature, and transmutations of cosmic force, we are fully conversant with all phases of emergent-energy behavior from the times of its direct and unmistakable response to the action of Paradise gravity -- about the time of the beginning of the function of the universe power directors.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 3.  
Classification Of Matter

P471:7, 42:3.1 Matter in all universes, excepting in the central universe, is identical. Matter in its physical properties depends on the revolutionary rates of its component members, the number and size of the revolving members, their distance from the nuclear body or the space content of matter, as well as on the presence of certain forces as yet undiscovered on Earth.

P471:8, 42:3.2 In the varied suns, planets, and space bodies there are ten grand divisions of matter:

P471:9, 42:3.3 1. Ultimatonic matter -- the prime physical units of material existence, the energy particles that go to make up electrons.

P472:1, 42:3.4 2. Sub-electronic matter -- the explosive and repellent stage of the solar gases.

P472:2, 42:3.5 3. Electronic matter -- the electrical stage of material differentiation -- electrons, protons, and various other units entering into the varied constitution of the electronic groups.

P472:3, 42:3.6 4. Subatomic matter -- matter existing extensively in the interior of the hot suns.

P472:4, 42:3.7 5. Shattered atoms -- found in the cooling suns and throughout space.

P472:5, 42:3.8 6. Ionized matter -- individual atoms stripped of their outer (chemically active) electrons by electrical, thermal, or X-ray activities and by solvents.

P472:6, 42:3.9 7. Atomic matter -- the chemical stage of elemental organization, the component units of molecular or visible matter.

P472:7, 42:3.10 8. The molecular stage of matter \-- matter as it exists on Earth in a state of relatively stable materialization under ordinary conditions.

P472:8, 42:3.11 9. Radioactive matter -- the disorganizing tendency and activity of the heavier elements under conditions of moderate heat and diminished gravity pressure.

P472:9, 42:3.12 10. Collapsed matter -- the relatively stationary matter found in the interior of the cold or dead suns. This form of matter is not really stationary; there is still some ultimatonic even electronic activity, but these units are in very close proximity, and their rates of revolution are greatly diminished.

P472:10, 42:3.13 The foregoing classification of matter pertains to its organization rather than to the forms of its appearance. Neither does it take into account the pre-emergent stages of energy nor the eternal materializations on Paradise and in the central universe.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 4.  
Energy And Matter Transmutations

P472:11, 42:4.1 Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemism, energy, and matter are -- in origin, nature, and destiny -- one and the same thing, together with other material realities as yet undiscovered on Earth.

P472:12, 42:4.2 We do not fully comprehend the almost endless changes to which physical energy may be subject. In one universe it appears as light, in another as light plus heat, in another as forms of energy unknown on Earth; in untold millions of years it may reappear as some form of restless, surging electrical energy or magnetic power; and still later on it may again appear in a subsequent universe as some form of variable matter going through a series of metamorphoses, to be followed by its outward physical disappearance in some great cataclysm of the realms. And then, after countless ages and almost endless wandering through numberless universes, again may this same energy re-emerge and many times change its form and potential; and so do these transformations continue through successive ages and throughout countless realms. Thus matter sweeps on, undergoing the transmutations of time but swinging ever true to the circle of eternity; even if long prevented from returning to its source, it is ever responsive thereto, and it ever proceeds in the path ordained by the Infinite Personality who sent it forth.

P473:1, 42:4.3 The power centers and their associates are much concerned in the work of transmuting the ultimaton into the circuits and revolutions of the electron. These unique beings control and compound power by their skillful manipulation of the basic units of materialized energy, the ultimatons. They are masters of energy as it circulates in this primitive state. In liaison with the physical controllers they are able to effectively control and direct energy even after it has transmuted to the electrical level, the so-called electronic stage. But their range of action is enormously curtailed when electronically organized energy swings into the whirls of the atomic systems. Upon such materialization, these energies fall under the complete grasp of the drawing power of linear gravity.

P473:2, 42:4.4 Gravity acts positively on the power lanes and energy channels of the power centers and the physical controllers, but these beings have only a negative relation to gravity -- the exercise of their antigravity endowments.

P473:3, 42:4.5 Throughout all space, cold and other influences are at work creatively organizing ultimatons into electrons. Heat is the measurement of electronic activity, while cold merely signifies absence of heat -- comparative energy rest -- the status of the universal force-charge of space provided neither emergent energy nor organized matter were present and responding to gravity.

P473:4, 42:4.6 Gravity presence and action is what prevents the appearance of the theoretical absolute zero, for interstellar space does not have the temperature of absolute zero. Throughout all organized space there are gravity-responding energy currents, power circuits, and ultimatonic activities, as well as organizing electronic energies. Practically speaking, space is not empty. Even the atmosphere of Earth thins out increasingly until at about three thousand miles it begins to shade off into the average space matter in this section of the universe. The most nearly empty space known in Nebadon would yield about one hundred ultimatons -- the equivalent of one electron -- in each cubic inch. Such scarcity of matter is regarded as practically empty space.

P473:5, 42:4.7 Temperature -- heat and cold -- is secondary only to gravity in the realms of energy and matter evolution. Ultimatons are humbly obedient to temperature extremes. Low temperatures favor certain forms of electronic construction and atomic assembly, while high temperatures facilitate all sorts of atomic breakup and material disintegration.

P473:6, 42:4.8 When subjected to the heat and pressure of certain internal solar states, all but the most primitive associations of matter may be broken up. Heat can thus largely overcome gravity stability. But no known solar heat or pressure can convert ultimatons back into puissant energy.

P473:7, 42:4.9 The blazing suns can transform matter into various forms of energy, but the dark worlds and all outer space can slow down electronic and ultimatonic activity to the point of converting these energies into the matter of the realms. Certain electronic associations of a close nature, as well as many of the basic associations of nuclear matter, are formed in the exceedingly low temperatures of open space, being later augmented by association with larger accretions of materializing energy.

P473:8, 42:4.10 Throughout all of this never-ending metamorphosis of energy and matter we must reckon with the influence of gravity pressure and with the antigravity behavior of the ultimatonic energies under certain conditions of temperature, velocity, and revolution. Temperature, energy currents, distance, and the presence of the living force organizers and the power directors also have a bearing on all transmutation phenomena of energy and matter.

P474:1, 42:4.11 The increase of mass in matter is equal to the increase of energy divided by the square of the velocity of light. In a dynamic sense the work which resting matter can perform is equal to the energy expended in bringing its parts together from Paradise minus the resistance of the forces overcome in transit and the attraction exerted by the parts of matter on one another.

P474:2, 42:4.12 The existence of pre-electronic forms of matter is indicated by the two atomic weights of lead. The lead of original formation weighs slightly more than that produced through uranium disintegration by way of radium emanations; and this difference in atomic weight represents the actual loss of energy in the atomic breakup.

P474:3, 42:4.13 The relative integrity of matter is assured by the fact that energy can be absorbed or released only in those exact amounts which scientists have designated quanta. This wise provision in the material realms serves to maintain the universes as going concerns.

P474:4, 42:4.14 The quantity of energy taken in or given out when electronic or other positions are shifted is always a "quantum" or some multiple thereof, but the vibratory or wavelike behavior of such units of energy is wholly determined by the dimensions of the material structures concerned. Such wavelike energy ripples are 860 times the diameters of the ultimatons, electrons, atoms, or other units thus performing. The never-ending confusion attending the observation of the wave mechanics of quantum behavior is due to the superimposition of energy waves: Two crests can combine to make a double-height crest, while a crest and a trough may combine, thus producing mutual cancellation.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 5.  
Wave-Energy Manifestations

P474:5, 42:5.1  In the universe of Orvonton there are one hundred octaves of wave energy. Of these one hundred groups of energy manifestations, sixty-four are wholly or partially recognized on Earth. The sun's rays constitute four octaves in the superuniverse scale, the visible rays embracing a single octave, number forty-six in this series. The ultraviolet group comes next, while ten octaves up are the X rays, followed by the gamma rays of radium. Thirty-two octaves above the visible light of the sun are the outer-space energy rays so frequently commingled with their associated highly energized minute particles of matter. Next downward from visible sunlight appear the infrared rays, and thirty octaves below are the radio transmission group.

P474:6, 42:5.2 Wavelike energy manifestations -- from the standpoint of twentieth-century Urantia scientific enlightenment -- may be classified into the following ten groups:

P474:7, 42:5.3 1. _Infraultimatonic rays_ \-- the borderland revolutions of ultimatons as they begin to assume definite form. This is the first stage of emergent energy in which wavelike phenomena can be detected and measured.

P474:8, 42:5.4 2. _Ultimatonic rays._ The assembly of energy into the minute spheres of the ultimatons occasions vibrations in the content of space that are discernible and measurable. And long before physicists ever discover the ultimaton, they will undoubtedly detect the phenomena of these rays as they shower in upon Earth. These short and powerful rays represent the initial activity of the ultimatons as they are slowed down to that point where they veer towards the electronic organization of matter. As the ultimatons aggregate into electrons, condensation occurs with a consequent storage of energy.

P475:1, 42:5.5 3. _The short space rays._ These are the shortest of all purely electronic vibrations and represent the preatomic stage of this form of matter. These rays require extraordinarily high or low temperatures for their production. There are two sorts of these space rays: one attendant upon the birth of atoms and the other indicative of atomic disruption. They emanate in the largest quantities from the densest plane of the superuniverse, the Milky Way, which is also the densest plane of the outer universes.

P475:2, 42:5.6 4. _The electronic stage._ This stage of energy is the basis of all materialization in the seven superuniverses. When electrons pass from higher to lower energy levels of orbital revolution, quanta are always given off. Orbital shifting of electrons results in the ejection or the absorption of very definite and uniform measurable particles of light-energy, while the individual electron always gives up a particle of light-energy when subjected to collision. Wavelike energy manifestations also attend upon the performances of the positive bodies and the other members of the electronic stage.

P475:3, 42:5.7 5. _Gamma rays_ \-- those emanations that characterize the spontaneous dissociation of atomic matter. The best illustration of this form of electronic activity is in the phenomena associated with radium disintegration.

P475:4, 42:5.8 6. _The X-ray group._ The next step in the slowing down of the electron yields the various forms of solar X rays together with artificially generated X rays. The electronic charge creates an electric field; movement gives rise to an electric current; the current produces a magnetic field. When an electron is suddenly stopped, the resultant electromagnetic commotion produces the X ray; the X ray is _that_ disturbance. The solar X rays are identical with those that are mechanically generated for exploring the interior of the human body except that they are a trifle longer.

P475:5, 42:5.9 7. _The ultraviolet_ or chemical rays of sunlight and the various mechanical productions.

P475:6, 42:5.1  8. _The white light_ \-- the whole visible light of the suns.

P475:7, 42:5.1  9. _Infrared rays_ \-- the slowing down of electronic activity still nearer the stage of appreciable heat.

P475:8, 42:5.1  10. _Hertzian waves_ \-- those energies utilized on Earth for broadcasting.

P475:9, 42:5.1  Of all these ten phases of wavelike energy activity, the human eye can react to just one octave, the whole light of ordinary sunlight.

P475:10, 42:5.1  The so-called ether is merely a collective name to designate a group of force and energy activities occurring in space. Ultimatons, electrons, and other mass aggregations of energy are uniform particles of matter, and in their transit through space they really proceed in direct lines. Light and all other forms of recognizable energy manifestations consist of a succession of definite energy particles that proceed in direct lines except as modified by gravity and other intervening forces. That these processions of energy particles appear as wave phenomena when subjected to certain observations is due to the resistance of the undifferentiated force blanket of all space, the hypothetical ether, and to the intergravity tension of the associated aggregations of matter. The spacing of the particle-intervals of matter, together with the initial velocity of the energy beams, establishes the undulatory appearance of many forms of energy-matter.

P476:1, 42:5.1  The excitation of the content of space produces a wavelike reaction to the passage of rapidly moving particles of matter, just as the passage of a ship through water initiates waves of varying amplitude and interval.

P476:2, 42:5.1  Primordial-force behavior does give rise to phenomena which are in many ways analogous to your postulated ether. Space is not empty; the spheres of all space whirl and plunge on through a vast ocean of outspread force-energy; neither is the space content of an atom empty. Nevertheless there is no ether, and the very absence of this hypothetical ether enables the inhabited planet to escape falling into the sun and the encircling electron to resist falling into the nucleus.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 6.  
Ultimatons, Electrons, And Atoms

P476:3, 42:6.1 While the space charge of universal force is homogeneous and undifferentiated, the organization of evolved energy into matter entails the concentration of energy into discrete masses of definite dimensions and established weight -- precise gravity reaction.

P476:4, 42:6.2 Local or linear gravity becomes fully operative with the appearance of the atomic organization of matter. Preatomic matter becomes slightly gravity responsive when activated by X ray and other similar energies, but no measurable linear-gravity pull is exerted on free, unattached, and uncharged electronic-energy particles or on unassociated ultimatons.

P476:5, 42:6.3 Ultimatons function by mutual attraction, responding only to the circular Paradise-gravity pull. Without linear-gravity response they are thus held in the universal space drift. Ultimatons are capable of accelerating revolutionary velocity to the point of partial antigravity behavior, but they cannot, independent of force organizers or power directors, attain the critical escape velocity of deindividuation, return to the puissant-energy stage. In nature, ultimatons escape the status of physical existence only when participating in the terminal disruption of a cooled-off and dying sun.

P476:6, 42:6.4 The ultimatons, unknown on Earth, slow down through many phases of physical activity before they attain the revolutionary-energy prerequisites to electronic organization. Ultimatons have three varieties of motion: mutual resistance to cosmic force, individual revolutions of antigravity potential, and the intraelectronic positions of the one hundred mutually interassociated ultimatons.

P476:7, 42:6.5 Mutual attraction holds one hundred ultimatons together in the constitution of the electron; and there are never more nor less than one hundred ultimatons in a typical electron. The loss of one or more ultimatons destroys typical electronic identity, thus bringing into existence one of the ten modified forms of the electron.

P476:8, 42:6.6 Ultimatons do not describe orbits or whirl about in circuits within the electrons, but they do spread or cluster in accordance with their axial revolutionary velocities, thus determining the differential electronic dimensions. This same ultimatonic velocity of axial revolution also determines the negative or positive reactions of the several types of electronic units. The entire segregation and grouping of electronic matter, together with the electric differentiation of negative and positive bodies of energy-matter, result from these various functions of the component ultimatonic interassociation.

P477:1, 42:6.7 Each atom is a trifle over 1/100,000,000th of an inch in diameter, while an electron weighs a little less than 1/2,000th of the smallest atom, hydrogen. The positive proton, characteristic of the atomic nucleus, while it may be no larger than a negative electron, weighs from two to three thousand times more.

P477:2, 42:6.8 If the mass of matter should be magnified until that of an electron equaled one tenth of an ounce, then were size to be proportionately magnified, the volume of such an electron would become as large as that of the earth. If the volume of a proton -- eighteen hundred times as heavy as an electron -- should be magnified to the size of the head of a pin, then, in comparison, a pin's head would attain a diameter equal to that of the earth's orbit around the sun.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 7.  
Atomic Matter

P477:3, 42:7.1 The formation of all matter is on the order of the solar system. There is at the center of every minute universe of energy a relatively stable, comparatively stationary, nuclear portion of material existence. This central unit is endowed with a threefold possibility of manifestation. Surrounding this energy center there whirl, in endless profusion but in fluctuating circuits, the energy units which are faintly comparable to the planets encircling the sun of some starry group like our own solar system.

P477:4, 42:7.2 Within the atom the electrons revolve about the central proton with about the same comparative room the planets have as they revolve about the sun in the space of the solar system. There is the same relative distance, in comparison with actual size, between the atomic nucleus and the inner electronic circuit as exists between the inner planet, Mercury, and your sun.

P477:5, 42:7.3 The electronic axial revolutions and their orbital velocities about the atomic nucleus are both beyond the human imagination, not to mention the velocities of their component ultimatons. The positive particles of radium fly off into space at the rate of ten thousand miles a second, while the negative particles attain a velocity approximating that of light.

P477:6, 42:7.4 The local universes are of decimal construction. There are just one hundred distinguishable atomic materializations of space-energy in a dual universe; that is the maximum possible organization of matter in Nebadon. These one hundred forms of matter consist of a regular series in which from one to one hundred electrons revolve around a central and relatively compact nucleus. It is this orderly and dependable association of various energies that constitutes matter.

P477:7, 42:7.5 Not every world will show one hundred recognizable elements at the surface, but they are somewhere present, have been present, or are in process of evolution. Conditions surrounding the origin and subsequent evolution of a planet determine how many of the one hundred atomic types will be observable. The heavier atoms are not found on the surface of many worlds. Even on Earth the known heavier elements manifest a tendency to fly to pieces, as is illustrated by radium behavior.

P477:8, 42:7.6 Stability of the atom depends on the number of electrically inactive neutrons in the central body. Chemical behavior is wholly dependent on the activity of the freely revolving electrons.

P478:1, 42:7.7  When one hundred and one have been artificially introduced into the orbital field, the result has always been the instantaneous disruption of the central proton with the wild dispersion of the electrons and other liberated energies.

P478:2, 42:7.8 While atoms may contain from one to one hundred orbital electrons, only the outer ten electrons of the larger atoms revolve about the central nucleus as distinct and discrete bodies, intactly and compactly swinging around on precise and definite orbits. The thirty electrons nearest the center are difficult of observation or detection as separate and organized bodies. This same comparative ratio of electronic behavior in relation to nuclear proximity obtains in all atoms regardless of the number of electrons embraced. The nearer the nucleus, the less there is of electronic individuality. The wavelike energy extension of an electron may so spread out as to occupy the whole of the lesser atomic orbits; especially is this true of the electrons nearest the atomic nucleus.

P478:3, 42:7.9 The thirty innermost orbital electrons have individuality, but their energy systems tend to intermingle, extending from electron to electron and well-nigh from orbit to orbit. The next thirty electrons constitute the second family, or energy zone, and are of advancing individuality, bodies of matter exerting a more complete control over their attendant energy systems. The next thirty electrons, the third energy zone, are still more individualized and circulate in more distinct and definite orbits. The last ten electrons, present in only the ten heaviest elements, are possessed of the dignity of independence and are, therefore, able to escape more or less freely from the control of the mother nucleus. With a minimum variation in temperature and pressure, the members of this fourth and outermost group of electrons will escape from the grasp of the central nucleus, as is illustrated by the spontaneous disruption of uranium and kindred elements.

P478:4, 42:7.10 The first twenty-seven atoms, those containing from one to twenty-seven orbital electrons, are more easy of comprehension than the rest. From twenty-eight upward we encounter more and more of the unpredictability of the supposed presence of the Unqualified Absolute. But some of this electronic unpredictability is due to differential ultimatonic axial revolutionary velocities and to the unexplained " huddling" proclivity of ultimatons. Other influences -- physical, electrical, magnetic, and gravitational -- also operate to produce variable electronic behavior. Atoms therefore are similar to persons as to predictability. Statisticians may announce laws governing a large number of either atoms or persons but not for a single individual atom or person.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 8.  
Atomic Cohesion

P478:5, 42:8.1 While gravity is one of several factors concerned in holding together a tiny atomic energy system, there is also present in and among these basic physical units a powerful and unknown energy, the secret of their basic constitution and ultimate behavior, a force which remains to be discovered on Earth. This universal influence permeates all the space embraced within this tiny energy organization.

P478:6, 42:8.2 The interelectronic space of an atom is not empty. Throughout an atom this interelectronic space is activated by wavelike manifestations that are perfectly synchronized with electronic velocity and ultimatonic revolutions. Our recognized laws of positive and negative attraction do not wholly dominate this force; its behavior is therefore sometimes unpredictable. This unnamed influence seems to be a space-force reaction of the Unqualified Absolute.

P479:1, 42:8.3 The charged protons and the uncharged neutrons of the nucleus of the atom are held together by the reciprocating function of the mesotron, a particle of matter 180 times as heavy as the electron. Without this arrangement the electric charge carried by the protons would be disruptive of the atomic nucleus.

P479:2, 42:8.4 As atoms are constituted, neither electric nor gravitational forces could hold the nucleus together. The integrity of the nucleus is maintained by the reciprocal cohering function of the mesotron, which is able to hold charged and uncharged particles together because of superior force-mass power and by the further function of causing protons and neutrons constantly to change places. The mesotron causes the electric charge of the nuclear particles to be incessantly tossed back and forth between protons and neutrons. At one infinitesimal part of a second a given nuclear particle is a charged proton and the next an uncharged neutron. And these alternations of energy status are so unbelievably rapid that the electric charge is deprived of all opportunity to function as a disruptive influence. Thus does the mesotron function as an " energy-carrier" particle that mightily contributes to the nuclear stability of the atom.

P479:3, 42:8.5 The presence and function of the mesotron also explains another atomic riddle. When atoms perform radioactively, they emit far more energy than would be expected. This excess of radiation is derived from the breaking up of the mesotron "energy carrier," which thereby becomes a mere electron. The mesotronic disintegration is also accompanied by the emission of certain small-uncharged particles.

P479:4, 42:8.6 The mesotron explains certain cohesive properties of the atomic nucleus, but it does not account for the cohesion of proton to proton nor for the adhesion of neutron to neutron. The paradoxical and powerful force of atomic cohesive integrity is a form of energy as yet undiscovered on Urantia.

P479:5, 42:8.7 These mesotrons are found abundantly in the space rays which so incessantly impinge upon our planet.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 9.  
Natural Philosophy

P479:6, 42:9.1 Religion is not alone dogmatic; natural philosophy equally tends to dogmatize. When a renowned religious teacher reasoned that the number seven was fundamental to nature because there are seven openings in the human head, if he had known more of chemistry, he might have advocated such a belief founded on a true phenomenon of the physical world. There is in all the physical universes of time and space, notwithstanding the universal manifestation of the decimal constitution of energy, the ever-present reminder of the reality of the sevenfold electronic organization of pre-matter.

P479:7, 42:9.2 The number seven is basic to the central universe and the spiritual system of inherent transmissions of character, but the number ten, the decimal system, is inherent in energy, matter, and the material creation. Nevertheless the atomic world does display a certain periodic characterization that recurs in groups of seven -- a birthmark carried by this material world indicative of its far-distant spiritual origin.

P480:1, 42:9.3 This sevenfold persistence of creative constitution is exhibited in the chemical domains as a recurrence of similar physical and chemical properties in segregated periods of seven when the basic elements are arranged in the order of their atomic weights. When the Earth chemical elements are thus arranged in a row, any given quality or property tends to recur by sevens. This periodic change by sevens recurs diminishingly and with variations throughout the entire chemical table, being most markedly observable in the earlier or lighter atomic groupings. Starting from any one element, after noting some one property, such a quality will change for six consecutive elements, but on reaching the eighth, it tends to reappear, that is, the eighth chemically active element resembles the first, the ninth the second, and so on. Such a fact of the physical world unmistakably points to the sevenfold constitution of ancestral energy and is indicative of the fundamental reality of the sevenfold diversity of the creations of time and space. We should also note that there are seven colors in the natural spectrum.

P480:2, 42:9.4 But not all the suppositions of natural philosophy are valid; for example, the hypothetical ether, which represents an ingenious attempt of man to unify his ignorance of space phenomena. The philosophy of the universe cannot be predicated on the observations of so-called science. If such a metamorphosis could not be seen, a scientist would be inclined to deny the possibility of developing a butterfly out of a caterpillar.

P480:3, 42:9.5 Physical stability associated with biologic elasticity is present in nature only because of the well-nigh infinite wisdom possessed by the Master Architects of creation. Nothing less than transcendental wisdom could ever design units of matter that are at the same time so stable and so efficiently flexible.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 10.  
Material Mind Systems

P480:4, 42:10.1  The endless sweep of relative cosmic reality, from the absoluteness of Paradise monota to the absoluteness of space potency, is suggestive of certain evolutions of relationship in the nonspiritual realities of the First Source and Center -- those realities which are concealed in space potency, revealed in monota, and provisionally disclosed on intervening cosmic levels. This eternal cycle of energy, being circuited in the Father of universes, is absolute and, being absolute, is expansile in neither fact nor value; nevertheless the Primal Father is even now -- as always -- self-realizing of an ever-expanding arena of time-space, and of time-space-transcended, meanings, an arena of changing relationships wherein energy-matter is being progressively subjected to the overcontrol of living and divine spirit through the experiential striving of living and personal mind.

P480:5, 42:10.2 The universal nonspiritual energies are reassociated in the living systems of non-Creator minds on various levels, certain of which may be depicted as follows:

P480:6, 42:10.3 1. _Preadjutant-spirit minds._ This level of mind is nonexperiencing and on the inhabited worlds is ministered by the Master Physical Controllers. This is mechanical mind, the nonteachable intellect of the most primitive forms of material life, but the nonteachable mind functions on many levels beside that of primitive planetary life.

P481:1, 42:10.4 2. _Adjutant-spirit minds._ This is the ministry of a local Universe Spirit functioning through her seven adjutant mind-spirits on the teachable (nonmechanical) level of material mind. On this level material mind is experiencing: as subhuman (animal) intellect in the first five adjutants; as human (moral) intellect in the seven adjutants; as superhuman (midwayer) intellect in the last two adjutants.

P481:2, 42:10.5 3. _Evolving morontia minds_ \-- the expanding consciousness of evolving personalities in the local universe ascending careers. This mind level connotes the organization of the morontia type of life vehicle, a synthesis of the material and the spiritual that is effected by the Morontia Power Supervisors of a local universe. Morontia mind functions differentially in response to the 570 levels of morontia life, disclosing increasing associative capacity with the cosmic mind on the higher levels of attainment. This is the evolutionary course of mortal creatures, but a Universe Spirit upon the nonmorontia children of the local creations also bestow mind of a nonmorontia order.

P481:3, 42:10.6 _The cosmic mind._ The cosmic mind encompasses all finite-mind levels and co-ordinates experientially with the evolutionary-deity levels of the Supreme Mind and transcendentally with the existential levels of absolute mind -- the direct circuits of the Conjoint Actor.

P481:4, 42:10.7 On Paradise, mind is absolute and in Heaven, absonite. Mind always connotes the presence-activity of living ministry plus varied energy systems, and this is true of all levels and of all kinds of mind. But beyond the cosmic mind it becomes increasingly difficult to portray the relationships of mind to nonspiritual energy. Heaven mind is subabsolute but super-revolutionary; being existential-experiential, it is nearer the absonite than any other concept revealed to you. Paradise mind is beyond human understanding; it is existential, nonspatial, and nontemporal. Nevertheless, all of these levels of mind are overshadowed by the universal presence of the Conjoint Actor -- by the mind-gravity grasp of the God of mind on Paradise.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 11.  
Universe Mechanisms

P481:5, 42:11.1 In the evaluation and recognition of mind it should be remembered that the universe is neither mechanical nor magical; it is a creation of mind and a mechanism of law. But while in practical application the laws of nature operate in what seems to be the dual realms of the physical and the spiritual, in reality they are one. The First Source and Center is the primal cause of all materialization and at the same time the first and final Father of all spirits.

P481:6, 42:11.2 Mechanisms do not absolutely dominate the total creation; the universe of universes _in toto_ is mind planned, mind made, and mind administered. But the divine mechanism of the universe of universes is altogether too perfect for the scientific methods of the finite mind of man to discern even a trace of the dominance of the infinite mind. For this creating, controlling, and upholding mind is neither material mind nor creature mind; it is spirit-mind functioning on and from creator levels of divine reality.

P482:1, 42:11.3 The ability to discern and discover mind in universe mechanisms depends entirely on the ability, scope, and capacity of the investigating mind engaged in such a task of observation. Time-space minds, organized out of the energies of time and space, are subject to the mechanisms of time and space.

P482:2, 42:11.4 Motion and universe gravitation are twin facets of the impersonal time-space mechanism of the universe of universes. The levels of gravity response for spirit, mind, and matter are quite independent of time, but only true spirit levels of reality are independent of space (nonspatial). The higher mind levels of the universe -- the spirit-mind levels -- may also be nonspatial, but the levels of material mind, such as human mind, are responsive to the interactions of universe gravitation, losing this response only in proportion to spirit identification. Their spirit content recognizes spirit-reality levels, and spirituality in time and space is measured inversely to the linear-gravity response.

P482:3, 42:11.5 Linear-gravity response is a quantitative measure of nonspirit energy. All mass -- organized energy -- is subject to this grasp except as motion and mind act upon it. Linear gravity is the short-range cohesive force of the macrocosmos somewhat as the forces of intra-atomic cohesion are the short-range forces of the microcosmos. Physical materialized energy, organized as so-called matter, cannot traverse space without affecting linear-gravity response. Although such gravity response is directly proportional to mass, it is so modified by intervening space that the final result is no more than roughly approximated when expressed as inversely according to the square of the distance. Space eventually conquers linear gravitation because of the presence therein of the antigravity influences of numerous supermaterial forces that operate to neutralize gravity action and all responses thereto.

P482:4, 42:11.6 Extremely complex and highly automatic-appearing cosmic mechanisms always tend to conceal the presence of the originative or creative indwelling mind from any and all intelligences very far below the universe levels of the nature and capacity of the mechanism itself. Therefore is it inevitable that the higher universe mechanisms must appear to be mindless to the lower orders of creatures. The only possible exception to such a conclusion would be the implication of mindedness in the amazing phenomenon of an _apparently self-maintaining universe_ \-- but that is a matter of philosophy rather than one of actual experience.

P482:5, 42:11.7 Since mind co-ordinates the universe, fixity of mechanisms is nonexistent. The phenomenon of progressive evolution associated with cosmic self-maintenance is universal. The evolutionary capacity of the universe is inexhaustible in the infinity of spontaneity. Progress towards harmonious unity, a growing experiential synthesis superimposed on an ever-increasing complexity of relationships, could be effected only by a purposive and dominant mind.

P482:6, 42:11.8 The higher the universe mind associated with any universe phenomenon, the more difficult it is for the lower types of mind to discover it. And since the mind of the universe mechanism is creative spirit-mind (even the mindedness of the Infinite), it can never be discovered or discerned by the lower-level minds of the universe, much less by the _lowest_ mind of all, the human. The evolving animal mind, while naturally God-seeking, is not alone and of itself inherently God-knowing.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 15: Section 12.  
Pattern And Form -- Mind Dominance

P483:1, 42:12.1 The evolution of mechanisms implies and indicates the concealed presence and dominance of creative mind. The ability of the mortal intellect to conceive, design, and create automatic mechanisms demonstrates the superior, creative, and purposive qualities of man's mind as the dominant influence on the planet. Mind always reaches out towards:

  1. Creation of material mechanisms.

  2. Discovery of hidden mysteries.

  3. Exploration of remote situations.

  4. Formulation of mental systems.

  5. Attainment of wisdom goals.

  6. Achievement of spirit levels.

  7. The accomplishment of divine destinies \-- supreme, ultimate, and absolute.

P483:9, 42:12.2 Mind is always creative. The mind endowment of an individual animal, mortal, morontian, spirit ascender, or finality attainer is always competent to produce a suitable and serviceable body for the living creature identity. But the presence phenomenon of a personality or the pattern of an identity, as such, is not a manifestation of energy, either physical, mindal, or spiritual. The personality form is the _pattern_ aspect of a living being; it connotes the _arrangement_ of energies, and this, plus life and motion, is the _mechanism_ of creature existence.

P483:10, 42:12.3 Even spirit beings have form, and these spirit forms (patterns) are real. Even the highest types of spirit personalities have forms -- personality presences in every sense analogous to Earth mortal bodies. Nearly all beings encountered in the universes are possessed of forms. But there are a few exceptions to this general rule: Thought Adjusters appear to be without form until after fusion with the surviving souls of their mortal associates. Solitary Messengers, Inspired Trinity Spirits, Personal Aids of the Infinite Spirit, Gravity Messengers, Transcendental Recorders, and certain others are also without discoverable form. But these are typical of the exceptional few; the great majorities have bona fide personality forms, forms which are individually characteristic, and which are recognizable and personally distinguishable.

P483:11, 42:12.4 The liaison of the cosmic mind and the ministry of the adjutant mind-spirits evolve a suitable physical tabernacle for the evolving human being. Likewise does the morontia mind individualize the morontia form for all mortal survivors. As the mortal body is personal and characteristic for every human being, so will the morontia form be highly individual and adequately characteristic of the creative mind that dominates it. No two morontia forms are any more alike than any two human bodies. The Morontia Power Supervisors sponsor, and the attending seraphim provide, the undifferentiated morontia material wherewith the morontia life can begin to work. And after the morontia life it will be found that spirit forms are equally diverse, personal, and characteristic of their respective spirit-mind indwellers.

P483:12, 42:12.5 On a material world you think of a body as having a spirit, but we regard the spirit as having a body. The material eyes are truly the windows of the spirit-born soul. The spirit is the architect, the mind is the builder, and the body is the material building.

P484:1, 42:12.6 Physical, spiritual, and mindal energies, as such and in their pure states, do not fully interact as actuals of the phenomenal universes. On Paradise the three energies are co-ordinate, in Heaven co-ordinated, while in the universe levels of finite activities there must be encountered all ranges of material, mindal, and spiritual dominance. In nonpersonal situations of time and space, physical energy seems to predominate, but it also appears that the more nearly spirit-mind function approaches divinity of purpose and supremacy of action, the more nearly does the spirit phase become dominant; that on the ultimate level spirit-mind may become all but completely dominant. On the absolute level spirit certainly is dominant. And from there on out through the realms of time and space, wherever a divine spirit reality is present, whenever a real spirit-mind is functioning, there always tends to be produced a material or physical counterpart of that spirit reality.

P484:2, 42:12.7 The spirit is the creative reality; the physical counterpart is the time-space reflection of the spirit reality, the physical repercussion of the creative action of spirit-mind.

P484:3, 42:12.8 Mind universally dominates matter, even as it is in turn responsive to the ultimate overcontrol of spirit. And with mortal man, only that mind which freely submits itself to the spirit direction can hope to survive the mortal time-space existence as an immortal child of the eternal spirit world of the Supreme, the Ultimate, and the Absolute: the Infinite.
Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16

The Celestial Artisans

P497:1, 44:0.1 Among the courtesy colonies of the various divisional and universe headquarters worlds may be found the unique order of composite personalities denominated the celestial artisans. These beings are the master artists and artisans of the morontia and lower spirit realms. They are the spirits and semispirits who are engaged in morontia embellishment and in spiritual beautification. Such artisans are distributed throughout the grand universe -- on the headquarters worlds of the universes, the constellations, and systems, as well as on all spheres settled in light and life; but their chief realm of activity is in the constellations.

P497:2, 44:0.2 Though their work may be almost incomprehensible to the material mind, it should be understood that the morontia and spirit worlds are not without their high arts and supernal cultures.

P497:3, 44:0.3 The celestial artisans are not created as such; they are a selected and recruited corps of beings composed of certain teacher personalities native to the central universe and their volunteer pupils drawn from the ascending mortals and numerous other celestial groups. The original teaching corps of these artisans was sometime assigned by the Infinite Spirit in collaboration with the Master Spirits and consisted of numerous Heaven instructors. With such a nucleus to start with, there has developed through the ages this brilliant body of skillful workers in spirit and morontia affairs.

P497:4, 44:0.4 Any morontia personality or spirit entity is eligible for admission to the corps of the celestial artisans.

P497:5, 44:0.5 All celestial artisans are commissioned in the following seven major divisions of activity by the central corps of morontia supervisors functioning on the headquarters world of each local universe:

  1. Celestial Musicians.

  2. Heavenly Reproducers.

  3. Divine Builders.

  4. Thought Recorders.

  5. Energy Manipulators.

  6. Designers and Embellishers.

  7. Harmony Workers.

P498:4, 44:0.6 The original teachers of these seven groups all hailed from the perfect worlds of Heaven, and Heaven contains the patterns, the pattern studies, for all phases and forms of spirit artistry. While it is a gigantic task to undertake to transfer these arts of Heaven to the worlds of space, the celestial artisans have improved in technique and execution from age to age. As in all other phases of the ascending career those who are most advanced in any line of endeavor are required constantly to impart their superior knowledge and skill to their less favored fellows.

P498:5, 44:0.7 You will first begin to glimpse these transplanted arts of Heaven, and their beauty and your appreciation of their beauty will heighten and brighten until you stand and behold the inspiring masterpieces of the supernal artists of the spirit realms.

P498:6, 44:0.8 All these activities of the morontia and spirit worlds are real. To spirit beings the spirit world is a reality. To us the material world is the more unreal. The higher forms of spirits freely pass through ordinary matter. High spirits are reactive to nothing material excepting certain of the basic energies. To material beings the spirit world is more or less unreal; to spirit beings the material world is almost entirely unreal, being merely a shadow of the substance of spirit realities.

P498:7, 44:0.9 We discern how these material structures appear by viewing a spirit counterpart presented to our minds by one of our attending energy transformers. This material building is not exactly real to a spirit being, but it is, of course, very real and very serviceable to material mortals.

P498:8, 44:0.1  There are certain types of beings who are capable of discerning the reality of the creatures of both the spirit and the material worlds. The angels of time and space are endowed with the ability to discern both spirit and material beings as also are the ascending mortals subsequent to deliverance from the life in the flesh. After attainment of the higher spirit levels the ascenders are able to recognize material, morontia, and spirit realities.

P498:9, 44:0.1  Never in your long ascendancy will you lose the power to recognize your associates of former existences. Always, as you ascend inward in the scale of life, will you retain the ability to recognize and fraternize with the fellow beings of your previous and lower levels of experience. Each new translation or resurrection will add one more group of spirit beings to your vision range without in the least depriving you of the ability to recognize your friends and fellows of former estates.

P498:10, 44:0.1  All this is made possible in the experience of ascending mortals by the action of the indwelling Thought Adjusters. Through their retention of the duplicates of your entire life's experiences, you are assured of never losing any true attribute you once had; and these Adjusters are going through with you, as a part of you, in reality, as _you_.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 1.  
The Celestial Musicians

P499:3, 44:1.1 With the limited range of mortal hearing, you can hardly conceive of morontia melodies. There is even a material range of beautiful sound unrecognized by the human sense of hearing, not to mention the inconceivable scope of morontia and spirit harmony. Spirit melodies are not material sound waves but spirit pulsations received by the spirits of celestial personalities. There is a vastness of range and a soul of expression, as well as grandeur of execution, associated with the melody of the spheres, that are wholly beyond human comprehension. Enraptured beings are held in sublime ecstasy while the melody of the realm rolled in upon the spirit energy of the celestial circuits. These marvelous melodies can be broadcast to the uttermost parts of a universe.  
P499:4, 44:1.2 The celestial musicians are occupied with the production of celestial harmony by the manipulation of the following spirit forces:

  1. _Spiritual sound_ \-- spirit current interruptions.

  2. _Spiritual light_ \-- the control and intensification of the light of the morontia and spiritual realms.

  3. _Energy impingements_ \-- melody produced by the skillful management of the morontia and spirit energies.

  4. _Color symphonies_ \-- melody of morontia color tones; this ranks among the highest accomplishments of the celestial musicians.

  5. _Harmony of associated spirits_ \-- the very arrangement and association of different orders of morontia and spirit beings produce majestic melodies.

  6. _Melody of thought_ \-- the thinking of spiritual thoughts can be so perfected as to burst forth in the melodies of Heaven.

  7. _The music of space_ \-- by proper attunement the melodies of other spheres can be picked up on the universe broadcast circuits.

P500:1, 44:1.3 There are numerous different modes of sound, color, and energy manipulation, techniques analogous to the human employment of musical instruments. Our ensembles of dancing undoubtedly represent a crude and grotesque attempt of material creatures to approach the celestial harmony of being placement and personality arrangement. The other five forms of morontia melody are unrecognized by the sensory mechanism of material bodies.

P500:2, 44:1.4 Harmony, the music of the seven levels of melodious association, is the one universal code of spirit communication.

P500:3, 44:1.5 Appreciation of music on Earth is both physical and spiritual; and our musicians have done much to elevate musical taste from the barbarous monotony of our early ancestors to the higher levels of sound appreciation. The majorities react to music so largely with the material muscles and so slightly with the mind and spirit; but there has been a steady improvement in musical appreciation for more than thirty-five thousand years.

P500:4, 44:1.6 Tuneful syncopation represents a transition from the musical monotony of primitive man to the expressionful harmony and meaningful melodies of our later-day musicians. These earlier types of rhythm stimulate the reaction of the music-loving sense without entailing the exertion of the higher intellectual powers of harmony appreciation and thus more generally appeal to immature or spiritually indolent individuals.

P500:5, 44:1.7 The best music of Earth is just a fleeting echo of the magnificent strains heard by the celestial associates of our musicians, who left but snatches of these harmonies of morontia forces on record as the musical melodies of sound harmonics. Spirit-morontia music not infrequently employs all seven modes of expression and reproduction, so that the human mind is tremendously handicapped in any attempt to reduce these melodies of the higher spheres to mere notes of musical sound. Such an effort would be something like endeavoring to reproduce the strains of a great orchestra by means of a single musical instrument.

P500:6, 44:1.8 It is literally true, "melody has power a whole world to transform." Forever, music will remain the universal language of men, angels, and spirits. Harmony is the speech of Heaven.

Part II. The Local Universe  
PAPER 16: Section 2.  
The Heavenly Reproducers

P500:7, 44:2.1 Mortal man can hardly hope for more than a meager and distorted concept of the functions of the heavenly reproducers. The spirit-morontia world has a thousand and one things of supreme value, things worthy of reproduction but unknown on Earth, experiences that belong in the category of the activities which have hardly "entered into the mind of man," those realities which God has in waiting for those who survive the life in the flesh.

P501:1, 44:2.2 There are seven groups of the heavenly reproducers by the following classification:

P501:2, 44:2.3 1. _The singers_ \-- harmonists who reiterate the specific harmonies of the past and interpret the melodies of the present. But all of this is effected on the morontia level.

P501:3, 44:2.4 2. _The color workers_ \-- those artists of light and shade you might call sketchers and painters, artists who preserve passing scenes and transient episodes for future morontia enjoyment.

P501:4, 44:2.5 3. _The light picturizers_ \-- the makers of the real semispirit-phenomena preservations of which motion pictures would be a very crude illustration.

P501:5, 44:2.6 4. _The historic pageanteers_ \-- those who dramatically reproduce the crucial events of universe records and history.

P501:6, 44:2.7 5. _The prophetic artists_ \-- those who project the meanings of history into the future.

P501:7, 44:2.8 6. _The life-story tellers_ \-- those who perpetuate the meaning and significance of life experience. The projection of present personal experiences into future attainment values.

P501:8, 44:2.9 7. _The administrative enactors_ \-- those who depict the significance of governmental philosophy and administrative technique, the celestial dramatists of sovereignty.

P501:9, 44:2.10 Very often and effectively the heavenly reproducers collaborate with the reversion directors in combining memory recapitulation with certain forms of mind rest and personality diversion. Before the morontia conclaves and spirit assemblies these reproducers sometimes associate themselves in tremendous dramatic spectacles representative of the purpose of such gatherings.

P501:10, 44:2.11 The higher intellectual teachers and the transition ministers freely and effectively utilize these various groups of reproducers in their morontia educational activities. But not all of their efforts are devoted to transient illustration; much, very much, of their work is of a permanent nature and will forever remain as a legacy to all future time. So versatile are these artisans that, when they function en masse, they are able to re-enact an age, and in collaboration with the seraphic ministers they can actually portray the eternal values of the spirit world to the mortal seers of time.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 3.  
The Divine Builders

P501:11, 44:3.1 There are cities "whose builder and maker is God." In spirit counterpart we have all that you mortals are familiar with and inexpressibly more. We have homes, spirit comforts, and morontia necessities. For every material satisfaction which humans are capable of enjoying, we have thousands of spiritual realities that serve to enrich and enlarge our existence. The divine builders function in seven groups:

P502:1, 44:3.2 1. _The home designers and builders_ \-- those who construct and remodel the abodes assigned to individuals and working groups. These morontia and spirit domiciles are real. They would be invisible to your short-range vision, but they are very real and beautiful to us. To a certain extent, all spirit beings may share with the builders certain details of the planning and creation of their morontia or spirit abodes. These homes are fitted up and embellished in accordance with the needs of the morontia or of the spirit creatures who are to inhabit them. There is abundant variety and ample opportunity for individual expression in all these constructions.

P502:2, 44:3.3 2. _The vocation builders_ \-- those who function in designing and assembling the abodes of the regular and routine workers of the spirit and morontia realms. These builders are comparable to those who construct the Earth workshops and other industrial plants. The transition worlds have a necessary economy of mutual ministry and specialized division of labor. We do not all do everything; there is diversity of function among morontia beings and evolving spirits, and these vocation builders not only build better workshops but also contribute to the vocational enhancement of the worker.

P502:3, 44:3.4 3. _The play builders._ Enormous edifices are utilized during the seasons of rest, what mortals would call recreation and, in a certain sense, play. Provision is made for a suitable setting for the reversion directors, the humorists of the morontia worlds, those transition spheres whereon takes place the training of ascendant beings but recently removed from the evolutionary planets. Even the higher spirits engage in a certain form of reminiscent humor during their periods of spiritual recharging.

P502:4, 44:3.5 4. _The worship builders_ \-- the experienced architects of the spirit and the morontia temples. All the worlds of mortal ascent have temples of worship, and they are the most exquisite creations of the morontia realms and the spirit spheres.

P502:5, 44:3.6 5. _The education builders_ \-- those who build the headquarters of morontia training and advanced spirit learning. Always is the way open to acquire more knowledge, to gain additional information respecting one's present and future work as well as universal cultural knowledge, information designed to make ascending mortals more intelligent and effective citizens of the morontia and spirit worlds.

P502:6, 44:3.7 6. _Morontia planners_ \-- those who build for the co-ordinate association of all the personalities of all realms as they are at any one time present on any one sphere. These planners collaborate with the Morontia Power Supervisors to enrich the co-ordination of the progressive morontia life.

P502:7, 44:3.8 7. _The public builders_ \-- the artisans who plan and construct the designated places of assembly other than those of worship. Great and magnificent are the places of common assembly.

P502:8, 44:3.9 While neither these structures nor their embellishment would be exactly real to the sensory comprehension of material mortals, they are very real to us. You would be unable to see these temples could you be there in the flesh; nevertheless, all of these supermaterial creations are actually there, and we clearly discern them and just as fully enjoy them.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 4.  
The Thought Recorders

P503:1, 44:4.1 These artisans are devoted to the preservation and reproduction of the superior thought of the realms, and they function in seven groups:

P503:2, 44:4.2 1. _Thought preservers._ These are the artisans dedicated to the preservation of the higher thought of the realms. On the morontia worlds they truly treasure the gems of mentation; thought recorders preserve such noble ideas.

P503:3, 44:4.3 In the central universe there is little need of a language; there exists perfect and well-nigh complete understanding. A chance meeting on Paradise reveals more of mutual understanding than could be communicated by a mortal language in a thousand years.

P503:4, 44:4.4 The ability to translate thought into language in the morontia and spirit spheres is beyond mortal comprehension. Our rate of reducing thought to a permanent record can be so speeded up by the expert recorders that the equivalent of over half a million words, or thought symbols, can be registered in one minute of Earth time. These universe languages are far more replete than the speech of the evolving worlds. The concept symbols of Earth embrace more than a billion characters, although the basic alphabet contains only seventy symbols.

P503:5, 44:4.5 2. _Concept recorders._ This second group of recorders are concerned with the preservation of concept pictures, idea patterns. This is a form of permanent recording unknown on the material realms, and by this method one could gain more knowledge in one hour of your time than you could gain in one hundred years of perusing ordinary written language.

P503:6, 44:4.6 3. _Ideograph recorders._ They have the equivalent of both your written and spoken word, but in preserving thought, they usually employ concept picturization and ideograph techniques. Those who preserve ideographs are able to improve one thousandfold upon the work of the concept recorders.

P503:7, 44:4.7 4. _Promoters of oratory._ These groups of recorders are occupied with the task of preserving thought for reproduction by oratory. Your way of comprehending these transactions is to pause and consider the technique of your disordered and garbled dream life -- how you can in a few seconds traverse years of experience in these fantasies of the night season.

P503:8, 44:4.8 The oratory of the spirit world is one of the rare treats which await you who have heard only the crude and stumbling orations of Earth. There is harmony of music and euphony of expression in the orations that are inspiring beyond description. These burning concepts are like gems of beauty in diadems of glory.

P504:1, 44:4.9 5. _The broadcast directors._ The broadcasts of Paradise and the local universes are under the general supervision of this group of thought conservers. They serve as censors and editors as well as coordinators of the broadcast material, making a universe adaptation of all Paradise broadcasts and adapting and translating the broadcasts into the individual tongues of the local universes.

P504:2, 44:4.10 The local universe broadcasts must also be modified for reception by the systems and the individual planets. The transmittal of these space reports is carefully supervised, and there is always a back registry to insure the proper reception of every report on every world in a given circuit. These broadcast directors are technically expert in the utilization of the currents of space for all purposes of intelligence communication.

P504:3, 44:4.11 6. _The rhythm recorders._ Earthlings would undoubtedly denominate these artisans poets, although their work is very different from, and almost infinitely transcends, your poetic productions. Rhythm is less exhausting to both morontia and spirit beings, and so an effort is frequently made to increase efficiency, as well as to augment pleasure, by executing numerous functions in rhythmic form.

P504:4, 44:4.12 7. _The morontia recorders._ It is hard to depict to the material mind the function of this important group of thought recorders assigned to the work of preserving the ensemble pictures of the various groupings of morontia affairs and spirit transactions; crudely illustrated, they are the group photographers of the transition worlds. They save for the future the vital scenes and associations of these progressive epochs, preserving them in the archives of the morontia halls of records.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 5.  
The Energy Manipulators

P504:5, 44:5.1 These interesting and effective artisans are concerned with every kind of energy: physical, mindal, and spiritual.

P504:6, 44:5.2 1. _Physical-energy manipulators._ The physical-energy manipulators serve for long periods with the power directors and are experts in the manipulation and control of many phases of physical energy. They are conversant with the three basic currents and the thirty subsidiary energy segregations of the superuniverses. These beings are of inestimable assistance to the Morontia Power Supervisors of the transition worlds. They are the persistent students of the cosmic projections of Paradise.

P504:7, 44:5.3 2. _Mind-energy manipulators._ These are the experts of intercommunication between morontia and other types of intelligent beings. This form of communication between mortals is practically nonexistent on Earth. These are the specialists who promote the ability of the ascending morontia beings to communicate with one another, and their work embraces numerous unique adventures in intellect liaison that are far beyond my power to portray to the material mind. These artisans are the keen students of the mind circuits of the Infinite Spirit.

P505:1, 44:5.4 3. _Spiritual-energy manipulators._ The manipulators of spiritual energy are an intriguing group. Spiritual energy acts in accordance with established laws, just as does physical energy. That is, spirit force, when studied, yields dependable deductions and can be precisely dealt with, even as can the physical energies. There are just as certain and reliable laws in the spirit world as obtain in the material realms.

P505:2, 44:5.5 4. _The compound manipulators._ This is the adventurous group of well-trained beings who are dedicated to the functional association of the three original phases of divine energy manifested throughout the universes as physical, mindal, and spiritual energies. These are the keen personalities who are in reality seeking to discover the universe presence of God the Supreme, for in this Deity personality there must occur the experiential unification of all grand universe divinity. And to a certain extent, these artisans have in recent times met with some success.

P505:3, 44:5.6 5. _The transport advisers._ This corps of technical advisers to the transport seraphim is most proficient in collaborating with the star students in working out routings and in otherwise assisting the chiefs of transport on the worlds of space. They are the traffic supervisors of the spheres and are present on all inhabited planets.

P505:4, 44:5.7 6. _The experts of communication._ Twelve technicians of interplanetary and interuniverse communication, likewise, serve Earth. These long-experienced beings are expert in the knowledge of the laws of transmittal and interference as applied to the communications of the realms. This corps is concerned with all forms of space messages except those of Gravity and Solitary Messengers.

P505:5, 44:5.8 7. _The teachers of rest._ Divine rest is associated with the technique of spiritual-energy intake. Morontia and spirit energy must be replenished just as certainly as physical energy in order to recuperate depleting energies.

P505:6, 44:5.9 After the pilgrims of space have traversed the preceding circles, they must be inducted into the long and revivifying rest of Paradise. This is not only a technical requirement of transit from the career of time to the service of eternity, but it is also a necessity, a form of rest required to replenish the energy losses incident to the final steps of the ascendant experience and to store reserves of spirit power for the next stage of the endless career.

P506:1, 44:5.10 These energy manipulators also function in hundreds of other ways too numerous to catalogue, such as counseling regarding the most efficient modes of energy intake and as to the maintenance of the most helpful balances of divergent forces. In many other ways do these experts lend assistance to morontia and spirit creatures in their efforts to understand the divine rest, which is so essential to the effective utilization of the basic energies of space.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 6.  
The Designers And Embellishers

P506:3, 44:6.2 This corps, while embracing over one thousand subdivisions of activity, is grouped under the following seven major heads:

P506:4, 44:6.3 1. _The craftworkers of color._ These are they who make the ten thousand color tones of spirit reflection peal forth their exquisite messages of harmonious beauty. Aside from color perception there is nothing in human experience to which these activities may be compared.

P506:5, 44:6.4 2. _The sound designers._ Spirit waves of diverse identity and morontia appreciation are depicted by these designers of what you would call sound. These impulses are in reality the superb reflections of the naked and glorious spirit-souls of the celestial hosts.

P506:6, 44:6.5 3. _The emotion designers._ These enhancers and conservators of feeling are those who preserve the sentiments of morontia and the emotions of divinity for the study and edification of the children of time and for the inspiration and beautification of morontia progressors and advancing spirits.

P506:7, 44:6.6 4. _The artists of odor._ This comparison of supernal spirit activities to the physical recognition of chemical odors is, indeed, unfortunate, but Earth mortals could hardly recognize this ministry by any other name. These artisans create their varied symphonies for the edification and delight of the advancing children of light. We have nothing on Earth to which this type of spiritual grandeur can be even remotely compared.

P506:8, 44:6.7 5. _The presence embellishers._ These artisans are not occupied with the arts of self-adornment or the technique of creature beautification. They are devoted to the production of multitudinous and joyous reactions in individual morontia and spirit creatures by dramatizing the significance of relationship through the positional values assigned to different morontia and spirit orders in the composite ensembles of these diversified beings. These artists arrange supermaterial beings, as you would live musical notes, odors, sights, and then blend them into the anthems of glory.

P506:9, 44:6.8 6. _The taste designers._ They are improvers of morontia taste, and they also endeavor to increase the appreciation of beauty through the sharpening of the evolving spirit senses.

P507:1, 44:6.9 7. _The morontia synthesizers._ These are the master craftsmen who, when all others have made their respective contributions, then add the culminating and finishing touches to the morontia ensemble, thus achieving an inspiring portrayal of the divinely beautiful, an enduring inspiration to spirit beings and their morontia associates. It is hard to conceive of the artistic glories and aesthetic beauties of the morontia and spirit worlds.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 7.  
The Harmony Workers

P507:2, 44:7.1 These artists are not concerned with music, painting, or anything similar. They are occupied with the manipulation and organization of specialized forces and energies which are present in the spirit world, but which are not recognized by mortals.

P507:3, 44:7.2 Beauty, rhythm, and harmony are intellectually associated and spiritually akin. Truth, fact, and relationship are intellectually inseparable and associated with the philosophic concepts of beauty. Goodness, righteousness, and justice are philosophically interrelated and spiritually bound up together with living truth and divine beauty.

P507:4, 44:7.3 Cosmic concepts of true philosophy, the portrayal of celestial artistry, or the mortal attempt to depict the human recognition of divine beauty can never be truly satisfying if such attempted creature progression is un-unified. These expressions of the divine urge within the evolving creature may be intellectually true, emotionally beautiful, and spiritually good; but the real soul of expression is absent unless these realities of truth, meanings of beauty, and values of goodness are unified in the life experience of the artisan, the scientist, or the philosopher.

P507:5, 44:7.4 These divine qualities are perfectly and absolutely unified in God. And every God-knowing man possesses the potential of unlimited self-expression on ever-progressive levels of unified self-realization by the technique of the never-ending achievement of Godlikeness -- the experiential blending in the evolutionary experience of eternal truth, universal beauty, and divine goodness.

The Local Universe  
Chapter 16: Section 8.  
Mortal Aspirations And Achievements

P507:6, 44:8.1 Although celestial artisans do not personally work on material planets, such as Earth, they do come, from time to time, from the headquarters of the system to proffer help to the naturally gifted individuals of the mortal races. When thus assigned, these artisans temporarily work under the supervision of the planetary angels of progress. These hosts co-operate with these artisans in attempting to assist those mortal artists who possess inherent endowments, and who also possess Adjusters of special and previous experience.

P507:7, 44:8.2 There are three possible sources of special human ability: At the bottom _always_ there exists the natural or inherent aptitude. Special ability is never an arbitrary gift of God; there is always an ancestral foundation for every outstanding talent. In addition to this natural ability, or rather supplemental thereto, there may be contributed the leadings of the Thought Adjuster in those individuals whose indwelling Adjusters may have had actual and bona fide experiences along such lines on other worlds and in other mortal creatures. In those cases where both the human mind and the indwelling Adjuster are unusually skillful, the spirit artisans may be delegated to act as harmonizers of these talents and otherwise to assist and inspire these mortals to seek for ever-perfecting ideals and to attempt their enhanced portrayal for the edification of the realm.

P508:1, 44:8.3 There is no caste in the ranks of spirit artisans. No matter how lowly your origin, if you have ability and the gift of expression, you will gain adequate recognition and receive due appreciation as you ascend upward in the scale of morontia experience and spiritual attainment. There can be no handicap of human heredity or deprivation of mortal environment that the morontia career will not fully compensate and wholly remove. And all such satisfactions of artistic achievement and expressionful self-realization will be effected by your own personal efforts in progressive advancement. At last the aspirations of evolutionary mediocrity may be realized. While God does not arbitrarily bestow talents and ability upon the children of time, He does provide for the attainment of the satisfaction of all their noble longings and for the gratification of all human hunger for supernal self-expression.

P508:2, 44:8.4 But every human being should remember: Many ambitions to excel which tantalize mortals in the flesh will not persist with these same mortals in the morontia and spirit careers. The ascending morontians learn to socialize their former purely selfish longings and egoistic ambitions. Nevertheless, those things which you so earnestly longed to do on earth and which circumstances so persistently denied you, if, after acquiring true mota insight in the morontia career, you still desire to do, then will you most certainly be granted every opportunity fully to satisfy your long-cherished desires.

P508:3, 44:8.5 Before ascending mortals leave the local universe to embark upon their spirit careers, they will be satiated respecting every intellectual, artistic, and social longing or true ambition which ever characterized their mortal or morontia planes of existence. This is the achievement of equality of the satisfaction of self-expression and self-realization but not the attainment of identical experiential status nor the complete obliteration of characteristic individuality in skill, technique, and expression. But the new spirit differential of personal experiential attainment will not become thus leveled off and equalized until after you have finished the last circle of the Heaven career. And then will the Paradise residents be confronted with the necessity of adjusting to that absonite differential of personal experience which can be leveled off only by the group attainment of the ultimate of creature status -- the seventh-stage-spirit destiny of the mortal finaliters.

P508:4, 44:8.6 And this is the story of the celestial artisans, that cosmopolitan body of exquisite workers who do so much to glorify the architectural spheres with the artistic portrayals of the divine beauty of the Paradise Creators.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17  
The Inhabited Worlds

P559:1, 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 which is not attended by ascending mortals until just before their translation and the attainment of first-stage spirit existence.

P559:2, 49:0.2 All inhabited worlds are basically grouped for celestial administration into the local systems.

P559:3, 49:0.3 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 that are evolving so as to be ready for life implantation within the next few million years.

P559:4, 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 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 Earth, so that they are almost ideal for habitation.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 1.  
The Planetary Life

P559:6, 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 non-accidental.

P560:1, 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.

P560:2, 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.

P560:3, 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 Earth. 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.

P560:4, 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.

P560:5, 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.

P560:6, 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 Earth.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 2.  
Planetary Physical Types

P560:7, 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 that 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.

P561:9, 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 that contribute to the planetary differentiation of life are relatively minor.

P561:10, 49:2.4 The present atmospheric status of Earth 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.

P561:12, 49:2.6 Beings such as the Earth 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.

P561:13, 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.

P561:14, 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 Earth races are of the land order.

P561:15, 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 that 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 that 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.

P562:1, 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 Earth 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 Earth 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.

P562:3, 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 Earth, thus being, in measure, accommodated to the gravity of those planets which are not of ideal size and density.

P562:4, 49:2.13 The various planetary types of mortals vary in height. Some of the larger worlds are peopled with beings that are quite small in height.

P562:5, 49:2.14 4. _The temperature types._ It is possible to create living beings that can withstand temperatures both much higher and much lower than the life range of the Earth races. There are five distinct orders of beings as they are classified with reference to heat-regulating mechanisms. In this scale the Earth races are number three. Thirty per cent of the 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 Earthlings, who function in the mid-temperature group.

P562:6, 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.

P562:7, 49:2.16 Of the electric groupings of mortal life, almost twenty-five per cent belong to class number four, the Earth type of existence.

P563:1, 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 Earth. 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.

P563:2, 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 Earth. 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.

P563:3, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 3.  
Worlds Of The Nonbreathers

P563:4, 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.

P563:5, 49:3.2 There are very few of the nonbreather type of inhabited worlds because this more recently organized section 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.

P563:6, 49:3.3  Millions upon millions of meteorites enter the atmosphere of Earth 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 that 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 Earth. During such times of tremendous energy fluctuation the inhabitants must take refuge in their special structures of protective insulation.

P564:1, 49:3.4 Life on the worlds of the nonbreathers is radically different from what it is on Earth. The nonbreathers do not eat food or drink water, as do the Earth 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 Earth mortals. Almost every act of living, aside from reproduction, differs, and even the methods of procreation are somewhat different.

P564:2, 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.

P564:3, 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 Earth.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 4.  
Evolutionary Will Creatures

P564:4, 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.

P564:5, 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.

P564:6, 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 Earth races.

P564:7, 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.

P564:8, 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.

P564:9, 49:4.6 Mortals all have the same general struggles with microscopic foes in their early days, such as you now experience on Earth, 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.

P564:10, 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.

P564:11, 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 that 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.

P565:1, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 5.  
The Planetary Series Of Mortals

P565:2, 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.

P565:10, 49:5.2 The inhabited spheres of the universes 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.

P565:11, 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.

P565:12, 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; many forms of life have appeared on Earth that are not found elsewhere; likewise are many common species absent from your planet.

P565:13, 49:5.5 In another universe, 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.

P566:1, 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. Earthlings are of the two-brained type, somewhat more imaginative, adventurous, and philosophical than the one-brained mortals but somewhat less spiritual and ethical than the three-brained orders. These brain differences characterize even the prehuman animal existences.

P566:2, 49:5.7 From the two-hemisphere type of the Earthling 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.  
P566:3, 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 Earthlings, 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.

P566:4, 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.

P566:5, 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 Earth. 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.

P566:6, 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.

P566:7, 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 Earthlings, 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.

P566:8, 49:5.13 Of the spirit-reception types, sixty-five per cent are of the second group, like the Earth 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.

P567:1, 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.

P567:2, 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.

P567:9, 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 that have been independently fostered on different spheres.

P568:1, 49:5.23 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.

P568:2, 49:5.24 6. _Adjuster-fusion series._ The relation of the personality status to the indwelling Mystery Monitor wholly determines the spiritual classification or grouping of all mortals during their prefusion experience. Almost ninety per cent of some of the inhabited worlds 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.

P568:3, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 6.  
Mortal Dependents

P568:4, 49:6.1 All of the differing physical types and planetary series of mortals alike enjoy the ministry of Thought Adjusters 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.

P569:6, 49:6.11 _Mortal dependents._ 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)

P570:1, 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.

P570:2, 49:6.13 In due course Thought Adjusters come to indwell these little ones, while the 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.

P570:3, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 7.  
Progressive Civilization

P576:5, 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 evolution progresses in certain well-defined directions.

P576:6, 50:5.3 The mortal races on an average world of time and space will successively pass through the following seven developmental epochs:

P576:7, 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.

P576:8, 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 that always follows self-maintenance.

P577:1, 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.

P577:2, 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.

P577:3, 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.

P577:4, 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 that 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.

P577:5, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 17: Section 8.  
Planetary Culture

P578:1, 50:6.1 The isolation of Earth renders it impossible to undertake the presentation of many details of the life and environment of your 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 Earth 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 Earth.

P578:2, 50:6.2 The development of civilization on Earth 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.

P578:3, 50:6.3 Because of your planetary misfortunes, Earthlings 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.

P578:4, 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 extent to which enlightenment is received by the ages of their respective dispensations.

Part II. The Local Universe  
PAPER 52  
Planetary Mortal Epochs

P589:1, 52:0.1  From the inception of life on an evolutionary planet to the time of its final flowering in the era of light and life, there appear upon the stage of world action, epochs of human life. On an average inhabited world these epochs appear in the following order:

  1. Primitive Man.

  2. Spirituality And Sex Equality.

  3. Age Of Technology.

  4. The Era of Light and Life.

P589:9, 52:0.2 The worlds of space, as soon as they are physically suitable for life, are placed on the registry of the Life Carriers, and in due time they are dispatched to such planets for the purpose of initiating life. The entire period from life initiation to the appearance of man is designated the prehuman era and precedes the successive mortal epochs considered in this narrative.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 18: Section 1.  
Primitive Man

P589:10, 52:1.1 From the time of man's emergence from the animal level mortal will creatures are called _primitive men._ There are six basic types or races of primitive men, and these early peoples successively appear in the order of the spectrum colors, beginning with the red. The length of time consumed in this early life evolution varies greatly on the different worlds, ranging from one hundred and fifty thousand years to over one million years of Earth time.

P589:11, 52:1.2 The evolutionary races of color -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo -- begin to appear about the time that primitive man is developing a simple language and is beginning to exercise the creative imagination. By this time man is well accustomed to standing erect.

P589:12, 52:1.3 Primitive men are mighty hunters and fierce fighters. The law of this age is the physical survival of the fittest; the government of these times is wholly tribal. During the early racial struggles on many worlds some of the evolutionary races are obliterated, as occurred on Earth. Those who survive are usually subsequently blended with the later imported violet race.

P589:13, 52:1.4 In the light of subsequent civilization, this era of primitive man is a long, dark, and bloody chapter. The ethics of the jungle and the morals of the primeval forests are not in keeping with the standards of later dispensations of revealed religion and higher spiritual development. On normal and nonexperimental worlds this epoch is very different from the prolonged and extraordinarily brutal struggles that characterized this age on Earth. When you have emerged from your first world experience, you will begin to see why this long and painful struggle on the evolutionary worlds occurs, and as you go forward in the Paradise path, you will increasingly understand the wisdom of these apparently strange doings. But notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the early ages of human emergence, the performances of primitive man represent a splendid, even a heroic, chapter in the annals of an evolutionary world of time and space.

P590:1, 52:1.5 Early evolutionary man is not a colorful creature. In general, these primitive mortals are cave dwellers or cliff residents. They also build crude huts in the large trees. Before they acquire a high order of intelligence, the planets are sometimes overrun with the larger types of animals. But early in this era mortals learn to kindle and maintain fire, and with the increase of inventive imagination and the improvement in tools, evolving man soon vanquishes the larger and more unwieldy animals. The early races also make extensive use of the larger flying animals. These enormous birds are able to carry one or two average-sized men for a nonstop flight of over five hundred miles. On some planets these birds are of great service since they possess a high order of intelligence, often being able to speak many words of the languages of the realm. These birds are most intelligent, very obedient, and unbelievably affectionate. Such passenger birds have been long extinct on Earth, but your early ancestors enjoyed their services.

P590:2, 52:1.6 Man's acquirement of ethical judgment, moral will, is usually coincident with the appearance of early language. Upon attaining the human level, after this emergence of mortal will, these beings become receptive to the temporary indwelling of the divine Adjusters.

P590:3, 52:1.7 All mortals who are indwelt by Thought Adjusters are potential worshipers; they have been "lighted by the true light," and they possess capacity for seeking reciprocal contact with divinity. Nevertheless, the early or biologic religion of primitive man is largely a persistence of animal fear coupled with ignorant awe and tribal superstition. The survival of superstition in the Earth races is hardly complimentary to your evolutionary development nor compatible with your otherwise splendid achievements in material progress. But this early fear religion serves a very valuable purpose in subduing the fiery tempers of these primitive creatures.

P590:4, 52:1.8 Within about one hundred thousand years from the time man acquires erect posture, the Holy Spirit of God makes contact with a mortal who will be installed as the Spiritual Messenger. The Spirit has been dispatched by the System Sovereign upon the report of the Life Carriers that will is functioning, even though comparatively few individuals have thus developed to receive the Spirit. Primitive mortals usually welcome the Spiritual Messenger; in fact, they often look upon them with awe and reverence, almost with worshipfulness, if they are not restrained.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 18: Section 2.  
Spirituality And Sex Equality

P591:1, 52:2.1 With the arrival of the Spiritual Messenger a new dispensation begins. Government appears on earth, and the advanced tribal epoch is attained. Great social strides are made during a few thousand years of this regime. Under normal conditions mortals attain a high state of civilization during this age. They do not struggle so long in barbarism as did the Earth races. But life on an inhabited world is so changed by rebellion that you can have little or no idea of such a regime on a normal planet.

P591:2, 52:2.2 The average length of this dispensation is around five hundred thousand years, some longer, some shorter. During this era the planet is established in the circuits of the system, and a full quota of seraphic and other celestial helpers is assigned to its administration.

P591:3, 52:2.3 When the Spiritual Messenger arrives on a primitive world, the evolved religion of fear and ignorance prevails. The Messenger and his staff make the first revelations of higher truth and universe organization. These initial presentations of revealed religion are very simple, and they usually pertain to the affairs of the local system. Religion is wholly an evolutionary process prior to the arrival of the Messenger. Subsequently, religion progresses by graduated revelation as well as by evolutionary growth. Each dispensation, each mortal epoch, receives an enlarged presentation of spiritual truth and religious ethics. The evolution of the religious capacity of receptivity in the inhabitants of a world largely determines their rate of spiritual advancement and the extent of religious revelation.

P591:4, 52:2.4 This dispensation witnesses a spiritual dawn, and the different races and their various tribes tend to develop specialized systems of religious and philosophic thought. There uniformly run through all of these racial religions two strains: the early fears of primitive men and the later revelations of the Messenger. In some respects Earthlings do not seem to have wholly emerged from this stage of planetary evolution. As you pursue this study, you will the more clearly discern how far your world departs from the average course of evolutionary progress and development.

P591:5, 52:2.5 But the Messenger is not always "the Prince of Peace." Racial struggles and tribal wars continue over into this dispensation but with diminishing frequency and severity. This is the great age of racial dispersion, and it culminates in a period of intense nationalism. Color is the basis of tribal and national groupings, and the different races often develop separate languages. Each expanding group of mortals tends to seek isolation. This segregation is favored by the existence of many languages. Before the unification of the several races their relentless warfare sometimes results in the obliteration of whole peoples; the orange and green men are particularly subject to such extinction.

P591:6, 52:2.6 On average worlds, during the latter part, national life begins to replace tribal organization or rather to be superimposed upon the existing tribal groupings. But the great social achievement of the epoch is the emergence of family life. Heretofore, human relationships have been chiefly tribal; now, the home begins to materialize.

P592:1, 52:2.7 This is the dispensation of the realization of sex equality. On some planets the male may rule the female; on others the reverse prevails. During this age normal worlds establish full equality of the sexes, this being preliminary to the fuller realization of the ideals of home life. This is the dawn of the golden age of the home. The idea of tribal rule gradually gives way to the dual concept of national life and family life.

P592:2, 52:2.8 During this age agriculture makes its appearance. The growth of the family idea is incompatible with the roving and unsettled life of the hunter. Gradually the practices of settled habitations and the cultivation of the soil become established. The domestication of animals and the development of home arts proceed apace. Upon reaching the apex of biologic evolution, a high level of civilization has been attained, but there is little development of a mechanical order; invention is the characteristic of the succeeding age.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 18: Section 3.  
Age Of Inventions

P592:7, 52:3.1 When the original impetus of evolutionary life has run its biologic course, when man has reached the apex of animal development, there arrives the second order and the second dispensation of grace and ministry is inaugurated. This is true on all evolutionary worlds. When the highest possible level of evolutionary life has been attained, when primitive man has ascended as far as possible in the biologic scale, a new Messenger always appears on the planet.

P593:1, 52:3.2 Thought Adjusters are increasingly bestowed upon men and these mortals attain capacity for subsequent Adjuster fusion and become legitimate candidates for the reception, in due time, of the Mystery Monitors.

P593:5, 52:3.6 The result of the gift of a new life plasm to the mortal races is an immediate upstepping of intellectual capacity and an acceleration of spiritual progress. There is usually some physical improvement also. On an average world this dispensation results in an age of great invention, energy control, and mechanical development. This is the era of the appearance of multiform manufacture and the control of natural forces; it is the golden age of exploration and the final subduing of the planet. Much of the material progress of a world occurs during this time of the inauguration of the development of the physical sciences, just such an epoch as Earth is now experiencing.

P593:6, 52:3.7 By the end of the dispensation era on a normal planet the races are practically blended, so that it can be truly proclaimed that "God has made of one blood all the nations," and "has made of one color all peoples." The color of such an amalgamated race is somewhat of an olive shade of the violet hue, the racial "white" of the spheres.

P593:7, 52:3.8 Primitive man is for the most part carnivorous, but their offspring within a few generations usually gravitate to the omnivorous level, although whole groups of their descendants sometimes remain nonflesh eaters. This double origin of the races explains how such blended human stocks exhibit anatomic vestiges belonging to both the herbivorous and carnivorous animal groups.

P593:8, 52:3.9 Within ten thousand years of racial amalgamation the resultant stocks show varying degrees of anatomic blend, some strains carrying more of the marks of the nonflesh-eating ancestry, others exhibiting more of the distinguishing traits and physical characteristics of their carnivorous evolutionary progenitors. The majority of these world races soon become omnivorous, subsisting upon a wide range of viands from both the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

P594:1, 52:3.10 This epoch is the dispensation of internationalism. With the near completion of the task of race blending, nationalism wanes, and the brotherhood of man really begins to materialize. Representative government begins to take the place of the monarchial or paternal form of rulership. The educational system becomes worldwide, and gradually the languages of the races give way to the tongue of the violet people. Universal peace and co-operation are seldom attained until the races are fairly well blended, and until they speak a common language.

P594:2, 52:3.11 During the closing centuries there develops new interest in art, music, and literature. The crowning development of this era is the universal interest in intellectual realities, true philosophy. Religion becomes less nationalistic, becomes more and more a planetary affair. New revelations of truth characterize these ages.

P594:3, 52:3.12 Great ethical advancement characterizes this era; the brotherhood of man is the goal of its society. Worldwide peace is attained with the cessation of race and religion conflict and national animosity.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 18: Section 4.  
The Era of Light and Life

P597:2, 52:6.1 The "Peace on earth and good will among men." On normal worlds this is a dispensation of worldwide peace; the nations no more learn war.

P597:3, 52:6.2 On normal evolutionary worlds the realization of the world-wide brotherhood of man is not an easy accomplishment. On a confused and disordered planet like Earth such an achievement requires a much longer time and necessitates far greater effort. Unaided social evolution can hardly achieve such happy results on a spiritually isolated sphere. Religious revelation is essential to the realization of brotherhood on Earth. While Jesus has shown the way to the immediate attainment of spiritual brotherhood, the realization of social brotherhood on your world depends much on the achievement of the following personal transformations and planetary adjustments:

P597:4, 52:6.3 1. _Social fraternity._ Multiplication of international and interracial social contacts and fraternal associations through travel, commerce, and competitive play. Development of a common language and the multiplication of multilinguists. The racial and national interchange of students, teachers, industrialists, and religious philosophers.

P597:5, 52:6.4 2. _Intellectual cross-fertilization._ Brotherhood is impossible on a world whose inhabitants are so primitive that they fail to recognize the folly of unmitigated selfishness. There must occur an exchange of national and racial literature. Each race must become familiar with the thought of all races; each nation must know the feelings of all nations. Ignorance breeds suspicion, and suspicion is incompatible with the essential attitude of sympathy and love.

P597:6, 52:6.5 3. _Ethical awakening._ Only ethical consciousness can unmask the immorality of human intolerance and the sinfulness of fratricidal strife. Only a moral conscience can condemn the evils of national envy and racial jealousy. Only moral beings will ever seek for that spiritual insight which is essential to living the golden rule.

P598:1, 52:6.6 4. _Political wisdom._ Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal -- destructive of all those enduring qualities that insure planetary group survival.

P598:2, 52:6.7 5. _Spiritual insight._ The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Earth is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the worldwide realization of the brotherhood of man.

P598:3, 52:6.8 If you could be transplanted from your backward and confused world to some normal planet, you would think you had been translated to the heaven of your traditions. You would hardly believe that you were observing the normal evolutionary workings of a mortal sphere of human habitation. These worlds are in the spiritual circuits of their realm, and they enjoy all the advantages of the universe broadcasts and the reflectivity services of the superuniverse.

P598:6, 52:7.3 The revelation of truth is now extended to the central universe and to Paradise. The races are becoming highly spiritual. A great people have evolved and a great age is approaching. The educational, economic, and administrative systems of the planet are undergoing radical transformations. New values and relationships are being established. The kingdom of heaven is appearing on earth, and the glory of God is being shed abroad in the world.

P599:1, 52:7.5 Life during this era is pleasant and profitable. Degeneracy and the antisocial end products of the long evolutionary struggle have been virtually obliterated. The length of life approaches One hundred fifty Earth years, and the reproductive rate of racial increase is intelligently controlled. An entirely new order of society has arrived. There are still great differences among mortals, but the state of society more nearly approaches the ideals of social brotherhood and spiritual equality. Representative government is vanishing, and the world is passing under the rule of individual self-control. The function of government is chiefly directed to collective tasks of social administration and economic co-ordination. The golden age is coming on apace; the temporal goal of the long and intense planetary evolutionary struggle is in sight. The reward of the ages is soon to be realized; the wisdom of the Gods is about to be manifested.

P599:2, 52:7.6 The planet is in close touch with universe affairs, and its people scan the latest broadcasts with the same keen interest you now manifest in the latest editions of your daily newspapers. These races are occupied with a thousand things of interest unknown on your world.

P599:3, 52:7.7 Increasingly, true planetary allegiance to the Supreme Being grows. Generation after generation, more and more of the race step into line with those who practice justice and live mercy. Slowly but surely the world is being won to the joyous glory of God. The physical difficulties and material problems have been largely solved; the planet is ripening for advanced life and a more settled existence.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19  
The Spheres Of Light And Life

P621:1, 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.

P621:2, 55:0.2 This era of light and life continues indefinitely on the inhabited worlds. Each advancing stage of settled status may be segregated into a succession of dispensations; but all such actions are purely technical, in no way modifying the course of planetary events.

P621:4, 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:

  1. The first or planetary stage.

  2. The second or system stage.

  3. The third or constellation stage.

  4. The fourth or local universe stage.

  5. The fifth or minor sector stage.

  6. The sixth or major sector stage.

  7. The seventh or superuniverse stage.

P621:12, 55:0.5 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 1.  
The Golden Ages

P624:7, 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. You would instinctively describe such a realm -- could you be suddenly transported to a planet in this stage of development -- as heaven on earth.

P625:1, 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 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:

P625:2, 55:3.3 1. Three per cent was expended in the promotion of truth -- science, education, and philosophy.

P625:3, 55:3.4 2. Three per cent was devoted to beauty -- play, social leisure, and art.

P625:4, 55:3.5 3. Three per cent was dedicated to goodness -- social service, altruism, and religion.

P625:5, 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.

P625:6, 55:3.7 The natural resources of this planet were administered as social possessions, community property.

P625:7, 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. This recognition was bestowed upon those who had long distinguished themselves in some phase of supermaterial discovery or planetary social service.

P625:8, 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; similar associated couples discharged likewise all judicial trusts.

P625:9, 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.

P626:1, 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.

P626:2, 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 universes.

P626:3, 55:3.13 A planet the size of Earth, when fairly well settled, would have about one hundred sub-administrative centers. These subordinate centers would be presided over by groups of qualified administrators.

P626:10, 55:3.14 The great handicap confronting Earth 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.

P626:11, 55:3.15 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 Earth do not preclude the attainment of higher stages.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 2.  
The Acme Of Material Development

P629:10, 55:5.1 Mortal creatures living on an evil-dominated, self-seeking, isolated world, such as Earth, can hardly conceive of the physical perfection, the intellectual attainment, and the spiritual development which characterize these advanced epochs of evolution on a supreme sphere.

P629:11, 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.

P629:12, 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.

P630:1, 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.

P630:2, 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.

P630:3, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 3.  
The Individual Mortal

P630:4, 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.

P630:5, 55:6.2 On Earth, 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.

P630:6, 55:6.3 On a normal world the biologic fitness of the mortal race was long since brought up to a high level during the Technology epochs; and now, from age to age throughout the settled eras the physical evolution of man continues. Both vision and hearing are extended. By now the population has become stationary in numbers. Reproduction is regulated in accordance with planetary requirements and innate hereditary endowments. The continued improvement of such a magnificent race throughout the era of light and life is largely a matter of selective reproduction of those strains that exhibit superior qualities of a social, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature.

P630:7, 55:6.4 The Messengers continue to come as in former evolutionary eras, and as the epochs pass, these mortals are increasingly able to commune with the indwelling Father fragment. During the embryonic and prespiritual stages of development the adjutant mind-spirits are still functioning. The Holy Spirit ministry is even more effective as the successive epochs of settled life are experienced. In the fourth stage of light and life the advanced mortals seem to experience considerable conscious contact with the spirit presence of the Master Spirit, while the philosophy of such a world is focused upon the attempt to comprehend the new revelations of God the Supreme. More than one half of the human inhabitants on planets of this advanced status experience translation to the morontia state from among the living. Even so, "old things are passing away; behold, all things are becoming new."

P631:1, 55:6.5 We conceive that physical evolution will have attained its full development by the end of the epoch of the light-and-life era. Adjuster-fusion level of conjoint morontia values and cosmic meanings determines the upper limits of spiritual development associated with evolving human mind. But concerning wisdom: While we do not really know, we conjecture that there can never be a limit to intellectual evolution and the attainment of wisdom. On a seventh-stage world, wisdom can exhaust the material potentials, enter upon mota insight, and eventually even taste of absonite grandeur.

P631:2, 55:6.6 We observe that on this highly evolved worlds human beings fully learn the local universe language, the tongue of the superuniverse.

P631:3, 55:6.7 This is the story of the magnificent goal of mortal striving on the evolutionary worlds; and it all takes place even before human beings enter upon their morontia careers; all of this splendid development is attainable by material mortals on the inhabited worlds, the very first stage of that endless and incomprehensible career of Paradise ascension and divinity attainment.

P631:4, 55:6.8 But can you possibly imagine what sort of evolutionary mortals are now coming up from worlds long existing in the epoch of settled light and life? It is such as these who go on to the morontia worlds of the local universe capital to begin their ascension careers.

P631:5, 55:6.9 If the mortals of distraught Earth could only view one of these more advanced worlds long settled in light and life, they would nevermore question the wisdom of the evolutionary scheme of creation. Were there no future of eternal creature progression, still the superb evolutionary attainments of the mortal races on such settled worlds of perfected achievement would amply justify man's creation on the worlds of time and space.

P632:3, 55:7.4  This settled age continues on and on until every inhabited planet in the system attains the era of stabilization; and then, when the youngest world -- the last to achieve light and life -- has experienced such settledness for one millennium of system time, the entire system enters the stabilized status, and the individual worlds are ushered into the system epoch of the era of light and life.

P632:7, 55:8.4 During this epoch of stabilization, for the first time midsoniters come from the universe headquarters worlds of their sojourn to act as counselors to the legislative assemblies and advisers to the adjudication tribunals. These midsoniters also carry on certain efforts to inculcate new mota meanings of supreme value into the teaching enterprises that they sponsor jointly with the finaliters. The midsoniters work alongside these unified and glorified humans in the ever-advancing realms of philosophy and spiritualized thinking.

P633:3, 55:8.7 As the systems one by one become settled in light by virtue of the progress of their component worlds, the time comes when the last system in a given constellation attains stabilization.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 4.  
The Constellation Stage

P633:4, 55:9.1 The unification of a whole constellation of settled systems is attended by new distributions of readjustments of universe administration. This epoch witnesses advanced attainment on every inhabited world but is particularly characterized by readjustments on the constellation headquarters, with marked modification of relationships with both the system supervision and the local universe government. During this age many constellation and universe activities are transferred to the system capitals, and the representatives of the superuniverse assume new and more intimate relations with the planetary, system, and universe administrators. Concomitant with these new associations, certain superuniverse administrators establish themselves on the constellation capitals as volunteer advisers to the Most High Fathers.

P633:5, 55:9.2 When a constellation is thus settled in light, the legislative function ceases, and the house of System Sovereigns, presided over by the Most Highs, functions instead. Now, for the first time, such administrative groups deal directly with the superuniverse government in matters pertaining to Heaven and Paradise relationships. Otherwise the constellation remains related to the local universe as before. From stage to stage in the settled life the univitatia continue to administer the constellation morontia worlds.

P633:6, 55:9.3 As the ages pass, the Constellation Fathers take over more and more of the detailed administrative or supervising functions which were formerly centered on the universe headquarters. By the attainment of that stage of stabilization these unified constellations will have reached the position of well-nigh complete autonomy. To all intents and purposes the constellations will then deal directly with the superuniverse administrators, while the local universe government will expand to grasp the responsibilities of new grand universe obligations.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 5.  
The Holy Spirit Ministry

P630:4, 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.

P630:5, 55:6.2 On Earth, 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.

P630:6, 55:6.3 On a normal world the biologic fitness of the mortal race was long since brought up to a high level during the epochs; and now, from age to age throughout the settled eras the physical evolution of man continues. Both vision and hearing are extended. By now the population has become stationary in numbers. The continued improvement of such a magnificent race throughout the era of light and life is largely a matter of the selective reproduction of those strains that exhibit superior qualities of a social, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature.

P630:7, 55:6.4 The Adjusters continue to come as in former evolutionary eras, and as the epochs pass, these mortals are increasingly able to commune with the indwelling Father fragment. During the embryonic and prespiritual stages of development the adjutant mind-spirits are still functioning. The Holy Spirit ministry is even more effective as the successive epochs of settled life are experienced. In the fourth stage of light and life the advanced mortals seem to experience considerable conscious contact with the spirit presence of the Master Spirit of superuniverse jurisdiction, while the philosophy of such a world is focused upon the attempt to comprehend the new revelations of God the Supreme. More than one half of the human inhabitants on planets of this advanced status experience translation to the morontia state from among the living. Even so, "old things are passing away; behold, all things are becoming new."

P631:1, 55:6.5 We conceive that physical evolution will have attained its full development by the end of the fifth epoch of the light-and-life era. We observe that the upper limits of spiritual development associated with evolving human mind are determined by the Adjuster-fusion level of conjoint morontia values and cosmic meanings. But concerning wisdom: While we do not really know, we conjecture that there can never be a limit to intellectual evolution and the attainment of wisdom. On a seventh-stage world, wisdom can exhaust the material potentials, enter upon mota insight, and eventually even taste of absonite grandeur.

P631:2, 55:6.6 We observe that on these highly evolved and long seventh-stage worlds human beings fully learn the local universe language before they are translated.

P631:3, 55:6.7 This is the story of the magnificent goal of mortal striving on the evolutionary worlds; and it all takes place even before human beings enter upon their morontia careers; all of this splendid development is attainable by material mortals on the inhabited worlds, the very first stage of that endless and incomprehensible career of Paradise ascension and divinity attainment.

P631:4, 55:6.8 But can you possibly imagine what sort of evolutionary mortals are now coming up from worlds long existing in the seventh epoch of settled light and life? It is such as these who go on to the morontia worlds of the local universe capital to begin their ascension careers.

P631:5, 55:6.9 If the mortals of distraught Earth could only view one of these more advanced worlds long settled in light and life, they would nevermore question the wisdom of the evolutionary scheme of creation. Were there no future of eternal creature progression, still the superb evolutionary attainments of the mortal races on such settled worlds of perfected achievement would amply justify man's creation on the worlds of time and space.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 6.  
The First Two Planetary Stages

P631:7, 55:7.1 This epoch extends from the appearance of the morontia temple at the new planetary headquarters to the time of the settling of the entire system in light and life. Concomitant therewith the finaliters inaugurate their active participation in planetary affairs.

P632:1, 55:7.2 The actual directors of such a world settled in light and life are the finaliters. They are invisible except when in the morontia temple.

P632:3, 55:7.4  This settled age continues on and on until every inhabited planet in the system attains the era of stabilization; and then, when the youngest world -- the last to achieve light and life -- has experienced such settledness for one millennium of system time, the entire system enters the stabilized status, and the individual worlds are ushered into the system epoch of the era of light and life.

P632:4, 55:8.1 When an entire system becomes settled in life, a new order of government is inaugurated. The Planetary Sovereigns become members of the system conclave and functions as the new administrative body. Such a system of inhabited worlds becomes virtually self-governing. The system legislative assembly is constituted on the headquarters world, and each planet sends representatives thereto.

P632:5, 55:8.2 With the settling of the system the Assigned Sentinel, representative of the universe Supreme Executive, becomes the volunteer adviser to the system supreme court and actual presiding officer of the new legislative assembly.

P632:6, 55:8.3 After the settling of an entire system in light and life the System Sovereigns will no more come and go. Such a sovereign remains perpetually at the head of his system. The assistant sovereigns continue to change as in former ages.

P632:7, 55:8.4 During this epoch of stabilization, for the first time midsoniters come from the universe headquarters worlds of their sojourn to act as counselors to the legislative assemblies and advisers to the adjudicational tribunals. These midsoniters also carry on certain efforts to inculcate new mota meanings of supreme value into the teaching enterprises that they sponsor jointly with the finaliters. These midsoniters now work with these unified and glorified humans in the ever-advancing realms of philosophy and spiritualized thinking.

P633:3, 55:8.7 As the systems one by one become settled in light by virtue of the progress of their component worlds, the time comes when the last system in a given constellation attains stabilization, and the universe administrators arrive for a visit to the capital of the constellation of the newly perfected family of one hundred settled systems of inhabited worlds.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 7.  
The Third Or Constellation Stage

P633:4, 55:9.1 The unification of a whole constellation of settled systems is attended by new distributions of executive authority and additional readjustments of universe administration. This epoch witnesses advanced attainment on every inhabited world but are particularly characterized by readjustments on the constellation headquarters, with marked modification of relationships with both the system supervision and the local universe government. During this age many constellation and universe activities are transferred to the system capitals, and the representatives of the universe assume new and more intimate relations with the planetary, system, and universe rulers. Concomitant with these new associations, certain universe administrators establish themselves on the constellation capitals as volunteer advisers to the Most High Fathers.

P633:5, 55:9.2 When a constellation is thus settled in light, the legislative function ceases, and the house of System Sovereigns, presided over by the Most Highs, functions instead. Now, for the first time, such administrative groups deal directly with the superuniverse government in matters pertaining to Heaven and Paradise relationships. Otherwise the constellation remains related to the local universe as before. From stage to stage in the settled life the univitatia continue to administer the constellation morontia worlds.

P633:6, 55:9.3 As the ages pass, the Constellation Fathers take over more and more of the detailed administrative or supervising functions which were formerly centered on the universe headquarters. By the attainment of the sixth stage of stabilization these unified constellations will have reached the position of well-nigh complete autonomy. Entrance upon the seventh stage of settledness will no doubt witness the exaltation of these advisors to the true dignity signified by their names, the Most Highs. To all intents and purposes the constellations will then deal directly with the superuniverse rulers, while the local universe government will expand to grasp the responsibilities of new grand universe obligations.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 8.  
The Fourth Or Local Universe Stage

P634:1, 55:10.1 When a universe becomes settled in light and life, it soon swings into the established superuniverse circuits. The council of authority is chiefly concerned with the new problems and the new conditions arising out of the advanced status of light and life.

P634:3, 55:10.3 The Associate Inspector now mobilizes all Assigned Sentinels to constitute the _stabilization corps of the local universe._ And now, for the first time, a corps of the Inspired Spirits is assigned to its service.

P634:4, 55:10.4 The settling of an entire local universe in light and life inaugurates profound readjustments in the entire scheme of administration, from the individual inhabited worlds to the universe headquarters. New relationships extend down to the constellations and systems. The newly assigned Universe Spirit experiences new liaison relations with the Master Spirit of the superuniverse.

P634:5, 55:10.5 During this and subsequent ages the Universe Spirit continues to function as dispensational adjudicators and will become the supreme counselor stationed on the headquarters world of each local system until the seventh stage of unity is attained.

P634:6, 55:10.6 During this epoch volunteer advisers similarly serve the Constellation Fathers and are also assigned to the service of the supreme council.

P634:7, 55:10.7 The finaliter corps now, for the first time, acknowledges the jurisdiction of an extra-Paradise authority, the supreme council. Heretofore the finaliters have recognized no supervision this side of Paradise.

P634:9, 55:10.9 The Divine Minister is progressively blending her ministry with that of the superuniverse Master Spirit and the Infinite Spirit. There seems to be evolving a new and sublime relationship between the Creative Spirit and the ever-increasing finaliter corps.

P635:1, 55:10.10 At the same time new status would be imparted to all orders of permanent citizenship, such as univitatia, midsoniters, susatia, and Spirit-fused mortals. But as long as evolution continues, the seraphim will be required in universe administration.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 9.  
The Minor And Major Sector Stages

P635:3, 55:11.1 Minor and major sectors of the superuniverse do not figure directly in the plan of being settled in light and life. Such an evolutionary progression pertains primarily to the local universe as a unit and concerns only the components of a local universe. A superuniverse is settled in light and life when all of its component local universes are thus perfected.

P635:4, 55:11.2 _The minor sector age._ As far as observations can penetrate, the fifth or minor sector stage of stabilization has exclusively to do with physical status and with the co-ordinate settling of other associated local universes in the established circuits of the superuniverse. Apparently none but the power centers and their associates are concerned in these realignments of the material creation.

P635:6, 55:11.4 Since the minor sector status has to do with co-ordinate physical equilibrium, we infer that major sector unification will be concerned with certain new intellectual levels of attainment, possibly some advanced achievements in the supreme realization of cosmic wisdom.

P635:7, 55:11.5 We arrive at conclusions regarding the readjustments which would probably attend the realization of hitherto unattained levels of evolutionary progress by observing the results of such achievements on the individual worlds and in the experiences of individual mortals living on these older and highly developed spheres.

P635:8, 55:11.6 Let it be made clear that the administrative mechanisms and governmental techniques of a universe or a superuniverse cannot in any manner limit or retard the evolutionary development or spiritual progress of an individual inhabited planet or of any individual mortal on such a sphere.

P635:9, 55:11.7 In some of the older universes we find worlds settled in the fifth and the sixth stages of light and life -- even far extended into the seventh epoch -- whose local systems are not yet settled in light. Younger planets may delay system unification, but this does not in the least handicap the progress of an older and advanced world. Neither can environmental limitations, even on an isolated world, thwart the personal attainment of the individual mortal; God's Messenger Jesus of Nazareth, as a man among men, personally achieved the status of light and life over two thousand years ago on Earth.

P636:1, 55:11.8 It is by observing what takes place on long-settled worlds that we arrive at fairly reliable conclusions as to what will happen when a whole superuniverse is settled in light, even if we cannot safely postulate the event of the stabilization of the superuniverses.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 19: Section 10.  
The Seventh Or Superuniverse Stage

P636:2, 55:12.1 We cannot positively forecast what would occur when a superuniverse became settled in light because such an event has never factualized. We infer that sweeping changes would be made in the entire organization and administration of every unit of the creations of time and space extending from the inhabited worlds to the superuniverse headquarters.

P636:4, 55:12.3 If and when a superuniverse should be settled in light and life, we believe that the now advisory Unqualified Supervisors of the Supreme would become the high administrative body on the headquarters world of the superuniverse. These are the personalities who are able to contact directly with the absonite administrators, who will forthwith become active in the settled superuniverse. Although these Unqualified Supervisors have long functioned as advisers and counselors in advanced evolutionary units of creation, they do not assume administrative responsibilities until the authority of the Supreme Being becomes sovereign.

P636:5, 55:12.4 The Unqualified Supervisors of the Supreme, who function more extensively during this epoch, are not finite, absonite, ultimate, or infinite; they _are_ supremacy and only represent God the Supreme. They are the personalization of time-space supremacy and therefore do not function in Heaven. They function only as supreme unifiers. They may possibly be involved in the technique of universe reflectivity, but we are not certain.

P636:6, 55:12.5  None of us entertain a satisfactory concept of what will happen when the grand universe becomes entirely settled in light and life. That event will undoubtedly be the most profound occurrence in the annals of eternity since the appearance of the central universe. There are those who hold that the Supreme Being himself will emerge from the Heaven mystery enshrouding his spirit person and will become residential on the headquarters of the superuniverse as the almighty and experiential supervisor of the perfected creations of time and space. But we really do not know.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20  
Universal Unity

P637:1, 56:0.1 God is universally coordinated. The universe of universes is one vast integrated mechanism that 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 accordance with the Universal Father's mandate: "Be you perfect, even as I am perfect."

P637:2, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 1.  
Physical Co-Ordination

P637:3, 56:1.1 The physical or material creation is not infinite, but it is perfectly coordinated. There are force, energy, and power, but they are all one in origin. The superuniverses are seemingly dual 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.

P637:4, 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.

P638:1, 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. The Universal Father personally controls these primal forces, inhering in the Absolutes, hence does all gravity center in the personal presence of the Paradise Father of pure energy and pure spirit.P638:2, 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.

P638:3, 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.

P638:4, 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 2.  
Intellectual Unity

P638:5, 56:2.1 The Thought-Father attains reality expansion through Paradise in the far-flung material universes.

P638:6, 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. 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.

P638:7, 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 Master Spirits, who are in turn coordinated with the Supreme Mind of time and space and perfectly correlated with the all-embracing mind of the Infinite Spirit.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 3.  
Spiritual Unification

P639:1, 56:3.1 The universal mind gravity is centered in the Paradise personal presence of the Infinite Spirit. The Universal Father is one, but to time-space he is revealed in the dual phenomena of pure energy and pure spirit.

P639:2, 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 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.

P639:3, 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 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 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.

P639:4, 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 circuits, wherein occurs final unification of all time-space spirit manifestations.

P639:5, 56:3.5 Perfected creature existence can be attained, sustained, and eternalized by the fusion of self-conscious mind with a fragment of the Infinite Spirit. The mortal mind is the creation of the Infinite Spirit and, when fused with the Thought Adjuster from the Father, partakes of the spirit endowment of the evolutionary realms. But these 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 Infinite Spirit.

P639:6, 56:3.6 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 4.  
Personality Unification

P639:7, 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 Heaven.

P640:1, 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 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.

P640:2, 56:4.3 Notwithstanding that God is manifest 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.

P640:3, 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.

P640:4, 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; 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 central Isle of Light.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 5.  
Deity Unity

P640:5, 56:5.1 The oneness, the indivisibility, of Paradise Deity is existential and absolute. There are two eternal personalizations of Deity -- the Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit -- but in Paradise they are _actually_ one Deity, undivided and indivisible.

P640:6, 56:5.2 From the original Paradise-Heaven level of existential reality, two subabsolute levels have differentiated, and thereon have the Father 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.

P640:7, 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 Spirits and the Master Spirits of Paradise. These beings constitute the first levels of God leading inward to the Universal Father, and this entire domain of God is coordinating on the first level of experiential deity in the evolving Supreme Being.

P641:1, 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

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 6.  
Unification Of Evolutionary Deity

P641:2, 56:6.1 When the eternal persons of Deity function as undivided Deity in Paradise, 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 Administrators 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.

P641:3, 56:6.2 The personality realities of the Supreme Being come forth from the Paradise Deities and on the pilot world of the outer Heaven circuit unify with the power prerogatives of the Almighty Supreme coming up from the Creator divinities of the grand universe. God the Supreme existed in Heaven before the creation of the 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 Supreme in Heaven 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.

P641:4, 56:6.3 The material-minded creatures of the evolutionary worlds of the 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 that 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.

P641:5, 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 Heaven, 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.

P641:6, 56:6.5 But when ascenders find the Universal Father as the seventh level of God, they have attained the personality of the First Person of _all_ deity levels of personal relationships with universe creatures.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 7.  
Universal Evolutionary Repercussions

P642:1, 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 universes.

P642:2, 56:7.2 As the components of a local universe are progressively settled in light and life, God is increasingly made manifest. Time-space evolution begins on a planet with the first expression of God and the Creative Spirit association -- in control. With the settling of a system in light, this Spirit liaison attains the fullness of function; and when an entire constellation is thus settled, the second phase of God 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 universe 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 Heaven circuit.

P642:3, 56:7.3 The Universal Father 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.

P642:4, 56:7.4 It should be noted that ascending souls 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.

P642:5, 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.

P642:6, 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 manifestations of God. If and when the grand universe becomes settled in light and life, what then will be the future function of the Creator-Creative manifestations 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.

P643:1, 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 during the earlier evolutionary epochs of these creations of the future and hold that the future ages will witness some closer form of union between the associated Creators 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.  
P643:2, 56:7.8  We do know, however, that in the universes of time and space, we are provided 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.

P643:3, 56:7.9 Nevertheless, we deem that the perfected superuniverse 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 Heaven through the superuniverses, administered by God the Supreme with or without the collaboration of the Master Spirits.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 8.  
The Supreme Unifier

P643:4, 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; 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.

P643:5, 56:8.2 Ascendant finaliters, having been born in the local universes, nurtured in the superuniverse, and trained in the central universe, embrace in their personal experiences the full potential of the comprehension of the time-space divinity of unifying in the Supreme. Finaliters serve successively in the superuniverse other than those of nativity, thereby superimposing experience upon experience until the fullness of the 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.

P644:1, 56:8.3 Bear in mind, all that God the Father does 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 children 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.

P644:2, 56:8.4 All creational phenomena are reflective of antecedent creator-spirit activities. 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 9.  
Universal Absolute Unity

P644:3, 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. On subinfinite levels there are _two_ Absolutes, but in infinity they appear to be _one._ On Paradise there are three personalizations of Deity, but they _are_ one.

P644:7, 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 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 personalization of the Absolute.

P645:1, 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 Infinite Spirit knows him as an infinity.

P645:2, 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.

P645:3, 56:9.8 But beyond subinfinite levels the two Absolutes _are_ one, and thereby is infinity Deity-realized regardless of whether any other order of existence ever self-realizes consciousness of infinity.

P645:4, 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.

P645:5, 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 of the universes. As personalities, now or in the successive universe experiences of the eternal future, no matter if you achieve the attainment of God, 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.

P645:6, 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.

P645:7, 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 Creators, 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.

P645:8, 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.

P646:1, 56:9.14 The universes are 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.

Part II. The Local Universe  
Chapter 20: Section 10.  
Truth, Beauty, And Goodness

P646:2, 56:10.1 As the worlds settled in life and light progress from the initial stage to the final epochs, they successively grasp for the realization of the reality of God. Throughout the continuing stages 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.

P646:3, 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.

P646:4, 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.

P646:5, 56:10.4 Highest beauty consists in the panorama of the unification of the variations which have been born of pre-existent harmonious reality.

P646:6, 56:10.5 The attainment of cosmologic levels of thought includes:

P646:7, 56:10.6 1. _Curiosity._ Hunger for harmony and thirst for beauty. Persistent attempts to discover new levels of harmonious cosmic relationships.

P646:8, 56:10.7 2. _Aesthetic appreciation._ Love of the beautiful and ever-advancing appreciation of the artistic touch of all creative manifestations on all levels of reality.

P646:9, 56:10.8 3. _Ethic sensitivity._ Through the realization of truth the appreciation of beauty leads to the sense of the eternal fitness of those things that impinge upon the recognition of divine goodness in Deity relations with all beings; and thus even cosmology leads to the pursuit of divine reality values -- to God-consciousness.

P646:10, 56:10.9 The worlds settled in light and life are so fully concerned with the comprehension of truth, beauty, and goodness because these quality values embrace the revelation of Deity to the realms of time and space. The meanings of eternal truth make a combined appeal to the intellectual and spiritual natures of mortal man. Universal beauty embraces the harmonious relations and rhythms of the cosmic creation; this is more distinctly the intellectual appeal and leads towards unified and synchronous comprehension of the material universe. Divine goodness represents the revelation of infinite values to the finite mind, therein to be perceived and elevated to the very threshold of the spiritual level of human comprehension.

P647:1, 56:10.10 Truth is the basis of science and philosophy, presenting the intellectual foundation of religion. Beauty sponsors art, music, and the meaningful rhythms of all human experience. Goodness embraces the sense of ethics, morality, and religion -- experiential perfection-hunger.

P647:2, 56:10.11 The existence of beauty implies the presence of appreciative creature mind just as certainly as the fact of progressive evolution indicates the dominance of the Supreme Mind. Beauty is the intellectual recognition of the harmonious time-space synthesis of the far-flung diversification of phenomenal reality, all of which stems from pre-existent and eternal oneness.

P647:3, 56:10.12 Goodness is the mental recognition of the relative values of the diverse levels of divine perfection. The recognition of goodness implies a mind of moral status, a personal mind with ability to discriminate between good and evil. But the possession of goodness, greatness, is the measure of real divinity attainment.

P647:4, 56:10.13 The recognition of _true relations_ implies a mind competent to discriminate between truth and error. The bestowal Spirit of Truth that invests the human minds of Earth is unerringly responsive to truth -- the living spirit relationship of all things and all beings as they are coordinated in the eternal ascent Godward.

P647:5, 56:10.14 Every impulse of every electron, thought, or spirit is an acting unit in the whole universe. The universe is a whole; no thing or being exists or lives in isolation. Cosmic socialization constitutes the highest form of personality unification. Said Jesus: "He who would be greatest among you, let him become server of all."

P647:6, 56:10.15 Even truth, beauty, and goodness \-- man's intellectual approach to the universe of mind, matter, and spirit -- must be combined into one unified concept of a divine and supreme _ideal._ As mortal personality unifies the human experience with matter, mind, and spirit, so does this divine and supreme ideal become power-unified in Supremacy and then personalized as a God of fatherly love.

P647:7, 56:10.16 All insight into the relations of the parts to any given whole requires an understanding grasp of the relation of all parts to that whole; and in the universe this means the relation of created parts to the Creative Whole. Deity thus becomes the transcendental, even the infinite, goal of universal and eternal attainment.

P647:8, 56:10.17 Universal beauty is the recognition of the reflection of the Isle of Paradise in the material creation, Divine goodness is more fully shown forth in the loving ministry of the manifold personalities of the Infinite Spirit. But love, the sum total of these three qualities, is man's perception of God as his spirit Father.

P648:1, 56:10.18 Physical matter is the time-space shadow of the Paradise energy-shining of the absolute Deity. Truth meanings are the mortal-intellect repercussions of the eternal word of Deity -- the time-space comprehension of supreme concepts. The goodness values of divinity are the merciful ministries of the spirit personalities of the Universal, the Eternal, and the Infinite to the time-space finite creatures of the evolutionary spheres.

P648:2, 56:10.19 These meaningful reality values of divinity are blended in the Father's relation with each personal creature as divine love. They manifest their qualities through the Spirit and his spirit children as divine ministry, the portrayal of loving mercy to the children of time. The Supreme Being as power-personality synthesis primarily manifests these divinities. They are variously shown forth by God in differing associations of divine meanings and values on ascending levels.

P648:3, 56:10.20 To finite man truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. The advanced mortals on a world in the stages of light and life have learned that love is the greatest thing in the universe -- and they know that God is love.

P648:4, 56:10.21 Love is the desire to do good to others.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21  
The Origin Of Earth

P651:1, 57:0.1 In presenting excerpts from the archives for the records of Earth 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.

P651:2, 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 twenty first 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 1.  
The Andronover Nebula

P651:3, 57:1.1 Earth 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.

P651:4, 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.

P651:5, 57:1.3 Billions of years ago associate force organizers and then acting inspectors of the Orvonton series who had traveled out from Uversa reported that space conditions were favorable for the initiation of materialization phenomena in a certain sector of the, then, easterly segment of Orvonton.

P651:6, 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 calling for the organization of a new material creation.

P652:1, 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.

P652:2, 57:1.6 Only the presence of the force organizer and the liaison staff was required to inaugurate the energy whirl that 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.

P652:3, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 2.  
The Primary Nebular Stage

P652:4, 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.

P652:5, 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.

P652:6, 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.

P652:7, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 3.  
The Secondary Nebular Stage

P653:1, 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_.

P653:2, 57:3.2 The near-by star students of that faraway era, as they observed this metamorphosis of the Andronover nebula, saw exactly what twenty-first-century astronomers see when they turn their telescopes spaceward and view the present-age spiral nebulae of adjacent outer space.

P653:3, 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.

P653:4, 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.

P653:5, 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.

P653:6, 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 path of escape determined its orbit. 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.

P653:7, 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 that always precedes the final segregation of these immense space aggregations of energy and matter.

P654:1, 57:3.8 Almost immediately the architectural worlds of Salvington and the constellation headquarters groups of planets were begun. It required almost a 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.

P654:2, 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 Uversa government of Orvonton extended physical recognition to the local universe of Nebadon.

P654:3, 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.

P654:4, 57:3.11 Now the completed universe mechanism of Nebadon first begins to function, and is registered on Uversa as a universe of inhabitation and progressive mortal ascension.

P654:5, 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.
Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 4.  
Tertiary And Quartan Stages

P654:6, 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.

P654:7, 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.

P654:8, 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.

P654:9, 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.

P655:1, 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 that were to inaugurate the second nebular sun cycle were imminent. The quartan cycle of nebular existence was about to begin.

P655:2, 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.

P655:3, 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.

P655:4, 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.  
P655:5, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 5.  
Origin Of Monmatia -- The Earth Solar System

P655:6, 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.

P655:7, 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 that were to be shortly encountered.

P655:8, 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.

P655:9, 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.

P656:1, 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.

P656:2, 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.

P656:3, 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.

P656:4, 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.

P656:5, 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.

P656:6, 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.

P656:7, 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.

P657:1, 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.

P657:2, 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.

P657:3, 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 that have diverse origins.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 6.  
The Solar System Stage -- The Planet-Forming Era

P657:4, 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.

P657:5, 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.

P657:6, 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.

P658:1, 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.

P658:2, 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.

P658:3, 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.

P658:4, 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.

P658:5, 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.

P658:6, 57:6.9 About this time your solar system was placed on the physical registry of Nebadon and given its name, Monmatia.

P658:7, 57:6.10 _2,500,000,000_ years ago the planets had grown immensely in size. Earth was a well-developed sphere about one-tenth its present mass and was still growing rapidly by meteoric accretion.

P658:8, 57:6.11 All of this tremendous activity is a normal part of the making of an evolutionary world on the order of Earth 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 7.  
The Meteoric Era -- Volcanic Age --Planetary Atmosphere

P658:9, 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 Earth. 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.

P659:1, 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 the earth captured enormous space bodies. Earth 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.

P659:2, 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 Earth 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 Earth's comparatively recent acquirements of these elements.

P659:3, 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 that its satellite originally had.

P659:4, 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 that can someday support life.

P659:5, 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.

P659:6, 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 Earth was enveloped in one vast and continuous blanket of steam. And during these ages the sun never shone upon the earth's surface.

P659:7, 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.

P660:1, 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 the seaweeds and other forms of vegetable life later generated it.

P660:2, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 21: Section 8.  
Crustal Stabilization  
The Age of Earthquakes  
The World Ocean and the First Continent

P660:3, 57:8.1 _1,000,000,000_ years ago is the date of the actual beginning of Earth 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, _Earth_.

P660:4, 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.  
P660:5, 57:8.3 The real geologic history of Earth 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 worldwide, 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.

P660:6, 57:8.4 At the opening of this faraway era, Earth 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.

P660:7, 57:8.5 _950,000,000_ years ago Earth 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 stabilizing.

P661:1, 57:8.7 _900,000,000_ years ago, after making a painstaking survey of the planet, the Life Carriers were notified that they would be granted permission to institute new patterns of mechanical, chemical, and electrical mobilization at the time of their subsequent arrival with life transplantation and implantation mandates.

P661:3, 57:8.9 In due course arrangements for the planetary occupation were completed by the mixed commission and approved by the planetary commission. These plans, proposed by the advisory counselors of the Life Carriers, were finally accepted on Salvington. Soon thereafter the Nebadon broadcasts carried the announcement that Earth would become the stage whereon the Life Carriers would execute their experiment designed to amplify and improve the Nebadon life patterns.

P661:4, 57:8.10 Shortly after Earth was first recognized on the universe broadcasts to all Nebadon, it was accorded full universe status. Soon thereafter it was registered in the records of the minor and the major sector headquarters planets of the superuniverse; and before this age was over, Earth had found entry on the planetary-life registry of Uversa.

P661:5, 57:8.11 This entire age was characterized by frequent and violent storms. The early crust of the earth was in a state of continual flux. Surface cooling alternated with immense lava flows. Nowhere can there be found on the surface of the world anything of this original planetary crust. It has all been mixed up too many times with extruding lavas of deep origins and admixed with subsequent deposits of the early worldwide ocean.

P661:6, 57:8.12 Nowhere on the surface of the world will there be found more of the modified remnants of these ancient pre-ocean rocks than in northeastern Canada around Hudson Bay. This extensive granite elevation is composed of stone belonging to the pre-oceanic ages. These rock layers have been heated, bent, twisted, upcrumpled, and again and again have they passed through these distorting metamorphic experiences.

P661:7, 57:8.13 Throughout the oceanic ages, enormous layers of fossil-free stratified stone were deposited on this ancient ocean bottom. (Limestone can form as a result of chemical precipitation; not all of the older limestone was produced by marine-life deposition.) In none of these ancient rock formations will there be found evidences of life; they contain no fossils unless, by some chance, later deposits of the water ages have become mixed with these older pre-life layers.

P662:1, 57:8.14 The earth's early crust was highly unstable, but mountains were not in process of formation. The planet contracted under gravity pressure as it formed. Mountains are not the result of the collapse of the cooling crust of a contracting sphere; they appear later on as a result of the action of rain, gravity, and erosion.

P662:2, 57:8.15 The continental land mass of this era increased until it covered almost ten per cent of the earth's surface. Severe earthquakes did not begin until the continental mass of land emerged well above the water. When they once began, they increased in frequency and severity for ages. For millions upon millions of years earthquakes have diminished, but Earth still has an average of fifteen daily.

P662:3, 57:8.16 _850,000,000_ years ago the first real epoch of the stabilization of the earth's crust began. Most of the heavier metals had settled down toward the center of the globe; the cooling crust had ceased to cave in on such an extensive scale as in former ages. There was established a better balance between the land extrusion and the heavier ocean bed. The flow of the sub-crustal lava bed became well nigh worldwide, and this compensated and stabilized the fluctuations due to cooling, contracting, and superficial shifting.

P662:4, 57:8.17 Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes continued to diminish in frequency and severity. The atmosphere was clearing of volcanic gases and water vapor, but the percentage of carbon dioxide was still high.

P662:5, 57:8.18  Electric disturbances in the air and in the earth were also decreasing. The lava flows had brought to the surface a mixture of elements that diversified the crust and better insulated the planet from certain space-energies. And all of this did much to facilitate the control of terrestrial energy and to regulate its flow, as is disclosed by the functioning of the magnetic poles.

P662:6, 57:8.19 _800,000,000_ years ago witnessed the inauguration of the first great land epoch, the age of increased continental emergence.

P662:7, 57:8.20 Since the condensation of the earth's hydrosphere, first into the world ocean and subsequently into the Pacific Ocean, this latter body of water should be visualized as then covering nine tenths of the earth's surface. Meteors falling into the sea accumulated on the ocean bottom, and meteors are, generally speaking, composed of heavy materials. Those falling on the land were largely oxidized, subsequently worn down by erosion, and washed into the ocean basins. Thus the ocean bottom grew increasingly heavy, and added to this was the weight of a body of water at some places ten miles deep.

P662:8, 57:8.21 The increasing downthrust of the Pacific Ocean operated further to upthrust the continental land mass. Europe and Africa began to rise out of the Pacific depths along with those masses now called Australia, North and South America, and the continent of Antarctica, while the bed of the Pacific Ocean engaged in a further compensatory sinking adjustment. By the end of this period almost one third of the earth's surface consisted of land, all in one continental body.

P662:9, 57:8.22 With this increase in land elevation the first climatic differences of the planet appeared. Land elevation, cosmic clouds, and oceanic influences are the chief factors in climatic fluctuation. The backbone of the Asiatic land mass reached a height of almost nine miles at the time of the maximum land emergence. Had there been much moisture in the air hovering over these highly elevated regions, enormous ice blankets would have formed; the ice age would have arrived long before it did. It was several hundred millions of years before so much land again appeared above water.

P663:1, 57:8.23 _750,000,000_ years ago the first breaks in the continental land mass began as the great north-and-south cracking, which later admitted the ocean waters and prepared the way for the westward drift of the continents of North and South America, including Greenland. The long east-and-west cleavage separated Africa from Europe and severed the landmasses of Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Antarctica from the Asiatic continent.

P663:2, 57:8.24 _700,000,000_ years ago Earth was approaching the ripening of conditions suitable for the support of life. The continental land drift continued; increasingly the ocean penetrated the land as long fingerlike seas providing those shallow waters and sheltered bays that are so suitable as a habitat for marine life.

P663:3, 57:8.25 _650,000,000_ years ago witnessed the further separation of the land masses and, in consequence, a further extension of the continental seas. And these waters were rapidly attaining that degree of saltiness that was essential to Earth life.

P663:4, 57:8.26 It was these seas and their successors that laid down the life records of Earth, as subsequently discovered in well-preserved stone pages, volume upon volume, as era succeeded era and age grew upon age. These inland seas of olden times were truly the cradles of evolution.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22  
Life Establishment On Earth

P664:1, 58:0.1 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.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 22: Section 1.  
Physical-Life Prerequisites

P664:2, 58:1.1 _600,000,000_ years ago the commission of Life Carriers sent out arrived on Earth and began the study of physical conditions preparatory to launching life.

P664:3, 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.

P664:4, 58:1.3 The 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 Earth 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."

P664:5, 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.

P664:6, 58:1.5 But as this era opens, Earth 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.

P665:1, 58:1.6 Subsequently the commission of Life Carriers 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.

P665:2, 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.

P665:3, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22: Section 2.  
The Earth Atmosphere

P665:4, 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 Earth embracing wavelengths ranging both above and below the recognition range of human vision.

P665:5, 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 Earth inhabitants from 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.

P665:6, 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 Earth 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.

P666:1, 58:2.4 Your sun pours forth a veritable flood of death-dealing rays, and your pleasant life on Earth is due to the "fortuitous" influence of more than two-score apparently accidental protective operations similar to the action of this unique ozone layer.

P666:2, 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.

P666:3, 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.

P666:4, 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.

P666:5, 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.

P666:6, 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.

P666:7, 58:2.1  It is the presence of two different levels of electrified conducting regions in the super stratosphere that accounts for the long-distance transmission of your long- and short-wave radiobroadcasts. Your broadcasting is sometimes disturbed by the terrific storms that occasionally rage in the realms of these outer ionospheres.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22: Section 3.  
Spatial Environment

P666:8, 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 that 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 Earth.

P667:1, 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.

P667:2, 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.

P667:3, 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 that 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 this entire amazing flood of the short space rays of universe energy.

P667:4, 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 Earth.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22: Section 4.  
The Life-Dawn Era

P667:5, 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 Earth. Earth life is unique, original with the planet. This sphere is a life-modification world; all life appearing hereon was formulated right here on the planet; and there is no other planet that has a life existence just like that of Earth.

P667:6, 58:4.2 _550,000,000_ years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Earth. 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) 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.

P668:1, 58:4.3 _500,000,000_ years ago primitive marine vegetable life was well established on Earth. Greenland and the arctic landmass, 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.

P668:2, 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 landmasses.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22: Section 5.  
The Continental Drift

P668:3, 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.

P668:4, 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 pre-atmospheric 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 exudates of ancient volcanoes, later and extensive lava flows, and the more recent meteoric deposits.

P668:5, 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.

P668:6, 58:5.4 Even today the continents continue to float upon this non-crystallized cushiony sea of molten basalt. Were it not for this protective condition, the more severe earthquakes would literally shake the world to pieces. Sliding and shifting of the solid outer crust cause earthquakes; volcanoes do not cause them.

P668:7, 58:5.5 The lava layers of the earth's crust, when cooled, form granite. The average density of Earth 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.

P668:8, 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 landmasses. 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.

P668:9, 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.

P669:1, 58:5.8 Depression of the ocean bottom during the pre-life 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 semi-viscous 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22: Section 6.  
The Transition Period

P669:2, 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 shorelines 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.

P669:3, 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.

P669:4, 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_.

P669:5, 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.

P669:6, 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.

P669:7, 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 environments are changing, and always are living organisms striving to accommodate themselves to these never-ending fluctuations.

P670:1, 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.

P670:2, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 22: Section 7.  
The Geologic History Book

P670:3, 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.

P670:4, 58:7.2 Fossils of this era yield algae, coral-like plants, primitive Protozoa, and sponge-like 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.

P670:5, 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 that have been ascribed to this era belong to later periods.

P670:6, 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 that 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.

P670:7, 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.

P670:8, 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.

P670:9, 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.

P671:1, 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 landmasses.

P671:2, 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 worldwide ocean.

P671:3, 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 shoreline. The iron mines of North America and Europe are located in deposits and extrusions lying partly in the older un-stratified rocks and partly in these later stratified rocks of the transition periods of life formation.

P671:4, 58:7.11 This era witnesses the spread of life throughout the waters of the world; marine life has become well established on Earth. The bottoms of the shallow and extensive inland seas are being gradually overrun by a profuse and luxuriant growth of vegetation, while the shoreline waters are swarming with the simple forms of animal life.

P671:5, 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 bio-geologic record unfailingly tell the truth if you but acquire skill in their interpretation. Many of these ancient seabeds 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."

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23  
The Marine-Life Era On Earth

P672:1, 59:0.1 We reckon the history of Earth as beginning about one billion years ago and extending through five major eras:

P672:2, 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_.

P672:3, 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. Your researchers know this era as the _Proterozoic._

P672:4, 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._

P672:5, 59:0.5 4. _The early land-life era_ extends over the next one hundred million years and is known as the _Mesozoic._

P672:6, 59:0.6 5. _The mammalian era_ occupies the last fifty million years. This recent-times era is known as the _Cenozoic_.

P672:7, 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.

P672:8, 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 coastlines of the various landmasses 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 that was so methodically laid down during the succeeding ages.

P672:9, 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 that clearly segregate these two stages of planetary development.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23: Section 1.  
Early Marine Life In The Shallow Seas  
The Trilobite Age

P673:1, 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. Amoebas are typical survivors of this initial stage of animal life, having made their appearance toward the close of the preceding transition period.

P673:2, 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.

P673:3, 59:1.3 Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a non-marine habitat.

P673:4, 59:1.4 _Suddenly_ and without gradation ancestry the first multi-cellular 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.

P673:5, 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.

P673:6, 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 that contain trilobite fossils. There were many long fingerlike gulfs projecting into the landmasses in which were deposited these fossil-bearing rocks.

P673:7, 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.

P673:8, 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 coastlines. 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.

P673:9, 59:1.9 The sedimentary deposits of these ages are of four sorts:

  1. Conglomerates -- matter deposited near the shorelines.

  2. Sandstones -- deposits made in shallow water but where the waves were sufficient to prevent mud settling.

  3. Shales -- deposits made in the deeper and quieter water.

  4. Limestone -- including the deposits of trilobite shells in deep water.

P673:14, 59:1.10 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.

P674:1, 59:1.11 _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 un-dramatic, taking place slowly over millions of years.

P674:2, 59:1.12 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.

P674:3, 59:1.13 _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.

P674:4, 59:1.14  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 that has come down to the present time practically unchanged.

P674:5, 59:1.15 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 multi-celled animal that could \-- explains their great increase and long survival.

P674:6, 59:1.16 This was the bio-geologic 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_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23: Section 2.  
The First Continental Flood Stage

The Invertebrate-Animal Age

P674:7, 59:2.1 The periodic phenomena of land elevation and land sinking characteristic of these times were all gradual and non-spectacular, 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 that may be discovered on the other continents. In recent ages Asia has been the most stable of all the landmasses.

P675:1, 59:2.2 _350,000,000_ years ago saw the beginning of the great flood period of all the continents except central Asia. The landmasses 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.

P675:2, 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.  
P675:3, 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.

P675:4, 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.

P675:5, 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.

P675:6, 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.

P675:7, 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.

P675:8, 59:2.9 This was the great age of individual animal organism 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 that 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 that 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.  
P676:1, 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.

P676:2, 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 that 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.

P676:3, 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.

P676:4, 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._

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23: Section 3.  
The Second Great Flood Stage

The Coral Period -- The Brachiopod Age

P676:5, 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 shorelines. 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.

P676:6, 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.

P676:7, 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 landmasses 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.

P677:1, 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.

P677:2, 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.

P677:3, 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 seabed, 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.

P677:4, 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. Gastropod, brachiopods, sponges, and reef-making corals continued to increase.

P677:5, 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.

P677:6, 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 subsidence. This salt settled in great lagoons that 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.

P677:7, 59:3.1 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.

P677:8, 59:3.1 Toward the close of the final Silurian submergence there is a great increase in the echinoderms \-- the stone lilies -- as is evidenced by the crinoids 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.

P678:1, 59:3.1 These developments terminate the third marine-life period, covering twenty-five million years and known to your researchers as the _Silurian_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23: Section 4.  
The Great Land-Emergence Stage

The Vegetative Land-Life Period The Age Of Fishes

P678:2, 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, slender isthmuses and narrow land bridges connect practically all of the land of the world.

P678:3, 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.

P678:4, 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.

P678:5, 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.

P678:6, 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.

P678:7, 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.

P678:8, 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 that 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.

P679:1, 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.

P679:2, 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.

P679:3, 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 pre-fish. But these preliminary types were quickly destroyed when the fishes, the first vertebrates of the animal world, made their _sudden_ appearance from the north.

P679:4, 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.

P679:5, 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.

P679:6, 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 the still earlier appearing bacteria usually destroyed them.

P679:7, 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.

P679:8, 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.

P679:9, 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.

P680:1, 59:4.17 The elevation of the continents proceeded, and the atmosphere was becoming enriched with oxygen. Vast forests of ferns overspread the earth 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.

P680:2, 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_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23: Section 5.  
The Crustal-Shifting Stage

The Fern-Forest Carboniferous Period

The Age Of Frogs

P680:3, 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.

P680:4, 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.

P680:5, 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 shorelines. 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 worldwide decline in marine life and the opening of the subsequent land-life period.

P680:6, 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.

P680:7, 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.

P680:8, 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_.

P680:9, 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. Dragonflies measured thirty inches across. One thousand species of cockroaches developed, and some grew to be four inches long.

P680:10, 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 the crinoids were making much of the limestone. The finer building limestone was laid down during this epoch.

P681:1, 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.

P681:2, 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.

P681:3, 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.

P681:4, 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.

P681:5, 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.

P681:6, 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.

P681:7, 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.

P681:8, 59:5.16 The presence of roots of trees as they grew in the clay underlying the present coal beds demonstrates that coal was formed exactly where it is now found. Coal is the water-preserved and pressure-modified remains of the rank vegetation growing in the bogs and on the swamp shores of this faraway age. Coal layers often hold both gas and oil. Peat beds, the remains of past vegetable growth, would be converted into a type of coal if subjected to proper pressure and heat. Anthracite has been subjected to more pressure and heat than other coal.

P681:9, 59:5.17 In North America the layers of coal in the various beds, which indicate the number of times the land fell and rose, vary from ten in Illinois, twenty in Pennsylvania, thirty-five in Alabama, to seventy-five in Canada. Both fresh- and salt-water fossils are found in the coal beds.

P682:1, 59:5.18 Throughout this epoch the mountains of North and South America were active, both the Andes and the southern ancestral Rocky Mountains rising. The great Atlantic and Pacific high coastal regions began to sink, eventually becoming so eroded and submerged that the coast lines of both oceans withdrew to approximately their present positions. The deposits of this inundation average about one thousand feet in thickness.

P682:2, 59:5.19 _190,000,000_ years ago witnessed a westward extension of the North American Carboniferous sea over the present Rocky Mountain region, with an outlet to the Pacific Ocean through northern California. Coal continued to be laid down throughout the Americas and Europe, layer upon layer, as the coastlands rose and fell during these ages of seashore oscillations.

P682:3, 59:5.20 _180,000,000_ years ago brought the close of the Carboniferous period, during which coal had been formed all over the world -- in Europe, India, China, North Africa, and the Americas. At the close of the coal-formation period North America east of the Mississippi valley rose, and most of this section has ever since remained above the sea. This land-elevation period marks the beginning of the modern mountains of North America, both in the Appalachian regions and in the west. Volcanoes were active in Alaska and California and in the mountain-forming regions of Europe and Asia. The continent of Greenland connected Eastern America and Western Europe.

P682:4, 59:5.21 Land elevation began to modify the marine climate of the preceding ages and to substitute therefore the beginnings of the less mild and more variable continental climate.

P682:5, 59:5.22 The plants of these times were spore bearing, and the wind was able to spread them far and wide. The trunks of the Carboniferous trees were commonly seven feet in diameter and often one hundred and twenty-five feet high. The modern ferns are truly relics of these bygone ages.

P682:6, 59:5.23 In general, these were the epochs of development for fresh-water organisms; little change occurred in the previous marine life. But the important characteristic of this period was the _sudden_ appearance of the frogs and their many cousins. The life features of the coal age were _ferns_ and _frogs_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 23: Section 6.  
The Climatic Transition Stage  
The Seed-Plant Period  
The Age Of Biologic Tribulation

P682:7, 59:6.1 This period marks the end of pivotal evolutionary development in marine life and the opening of the transition period leading to the subsequent ages of land animals.

P682:8, 59:6.2 This age was one of great life impoverishment. Thousands of marine species perished, and life was hardly yet established on land. This was a time of biologic tribulation, the age when life nearly vanished from the face of the earth and from the depths of the oceans. Toward the close of the long marine-life era there were more than one hundred thousand species of living things on earth. At the close of this period of transition less than five hundred had survived.

P682:9, 59:6.3 The peculiarities of this new period were not due so much to the cooling of the earth's crust or to the long absence of volcanic action as to an unusual combination of commonplace and pre-existing influences -- restrictions of the seas and increasing elevation of enormous land masses. The mild marine climate of former times was disappearing, and the harsher continental type of weather was fast developing.

P683:1, 59:6.4 _170,000,000_ years ago great evolutionary changes and adjustments were taking place over the entire face of the earth. Land was rising all over the world as the ocean beds were sinking. Isolated mountain ridges appeared. The eastern part of North America was high above the sea; the west was slowly rising. Great and small salt lakes and numerous inland seas, which were connected with the oceans by narrow straits, covered the continents. The strata of this transition period vary in thickness from 1,000 to 7,000 feet.

P683:2, 59:6.5 The earth's crust folded extensively during these land elevations. This was a time of continental emergence except for the disappearance of certain land bridges, including the continents that had so long connected South America with Africa and North America with Europe.

P683:3, 59:6.6 Gradually the inland lakes and seas were drying up all over the world. Isolated mountain and regional glaciers began to appear, especially over the Southern Hemisphere, and in many regions the glacial deposit of these local ice formations may be found even among some of the upper and later coal deposits. Two new climatic factors appeared -- glaciations and aridity. Many of the earth's higher regions had become arid and barren.

P683:4, 59:6.7 Throughout these times of climatic change, great variations also occurred in the land plants. The _seed plants_ first appeared, and they afforded a better food supply for the subsequently increased land-animal life. The insects underwent a radical change. The _resting stages_ evolved to meet the demands of suspended animation during winter and drought.

P683:5, 59:6.8 Among the land animals the frogs reached their climax in the preceding age and rapidly declined, but they survived because they could long live even in the drying-up pools and ponds of these far-distant and extremely trying times. During this declining frog age, in Africa, the first step in the evolution of the frog into the reptile occurred. And since the land masses were still connected, this pre-reptilian creature, an air breather, spread over the entire world. By this time the atmosphere had been so changed that it served admirably to support animal respiration. It was soon after the arrival of these pre-reptilian frogs that North America was temporarily isolated, cut off from Europe, Asia, and South America.

P683:6, 59:6.9 The gradual cooling of the ocean waters contributed much to the destruction of oceanic life. The marine animals of those ages took temporary refuge in three favorable retreats: the present Gulf of Mexico region, the Ganges Bay of India, and the Sicilian Bay of the Mediterranean basin. And it was from these three regions that the new marine species, born to adversity, later went forth to replenish the seas.

P683:7, 59:6.10 _160,000,000_ years ago the land was largely covered with vegetation adapted to support land-animal life, and the atmosphere had become ideal for animal respiration. Thus ends the period of marine-life curtailment and those testing times of biologic adversity which eliminated all forms of life except such as had survival value, and which were therefore entitled to function as the ancestors of the more rapidly developing and highly differentiated life of the ensuing ages of planetary evolution.

P684:1, 59:6.11 The ending of this period of biologic tribulation, known as the _Permian,_ also marks the end of the long _Paleozoic_ era, which covers one quarter of the planetary history, two hundred and fifty million years.

P684:2, 59:6.12 The vast oceanic nursery of life on Earth has served its purpose. During the long ages when the land was unsuited to support life, before the atmosphere contained sufficient oxygen to sustain the higher land animals, the sea mothered and nurtured the early life of the realm. Now the biologic importance of the sea progressively diminishes as the second stage of evolution begins to unfold on the land.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 24  
Earth During The Early Land-Life Era

P685:1, 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.

P685:2, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 24: Section 1.  
The Early Reptilian Age

P685:3, 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.

P685:4, 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.

P685:5, 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.

P685:6, 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.

P686:1, 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.

P686:2, 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.

P686:3, 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 that occurred underground. The petrified forests of many regions belong to this epoch.

P686:4, 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.

P686:5, 60:1.9 _140,000,000_ years ago, _suddenly_ and with only the hint of the two pre-reptilian 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.

P686:6, 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 kangaroo-like 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.

P686:7, 60:1.11 Several million years later the first mammals appeared. They were non-placental and proved a speedy failure; none survived. This was an experimental effort to improve mammalian types, but it did not succeed on Earth.

P686:8, 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.

P686:9, 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.

P686:10, 60:1.14 This period extended over twenty-five million years and is known as the _Triassic_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 24: Section 2.  
The Later Reptilian Age

P687:1, 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 non-carnivorous dinosaurs, seventy-five feet long, that have never since been equaled in bulk by any living creature.

P687:2, 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.

P687:3, 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.

P687:4, 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 both the northern sea and the Pacific, which extended eastward to the Dakota Black Hills region, later invaded even these regions.

P687:5, 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.

P687:6, 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.

P687:7, 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.

P687:8, 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.

P688:1, 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.

P688:2, 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.

P688:3, 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.

P688:4, 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 bat-like 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 that would enable them to survive as air navigators. They represent the non-surviving strains of bird ancestry.

P688:5, 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.

P688:6, 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.

P688:7, 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_.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 24: Section 3.  
The Cretaceous Stage  
The Flowering-Plant Period  
The Age Of Birds

P688:8, 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 Earth 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.

P689:1, 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.

P689:2, 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 shoreline. 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.

P689:3, 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 shoreline. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans were then about as they are today.

P689:4, 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.

P689:5, 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.

P689:6, 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.

P689:7, 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.

P689:8, 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.

P690:1, 60:3.10 All over the world these strata are permeated with chalk, and these layers of porous semi-rock pick up water at upturned outcrops and convey it downward to furnish the water supply of much of the earth's present arid regions.

P690:2, 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 shoreline of both North and South America and initiated profound repercussional changes along the Pacific shores of Asia. This circum-pacific land elevation, which culminated in present-day mountain ranges, is more than twenty-five thousand miles long. And the upheavals attendant upon its birth was the greatest surface distortions to take place since life appeared on Earth. The lava flows, both above and below ground, were extensive and widespread.

P690:3, 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.

P690:4, 60:3.13 The back thrust 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.

P690:5, 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 over thrust 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 over thrust; here may be found the prelife stone layers shoved out over the then recent Cretaceous deposits.

P690:6, 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.

P690:7, 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.

P690:8, 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.

P690:9, 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.

P690:10, 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.

P691:1, 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 cape-like 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.

P691:2, 60:3.21 The wading and swimming pre-birds 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.

P691:3, 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 pigeon-like 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 or 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 24: Section 4.  
The End Of The Chalk Period

P691:4, 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.

P691:5, 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 up thrusts of land occur without folding. But in connection with the rise of the Rocky Mountains, great folding and tilting occurred, coupled with enormous over thrusts of the various layers, both underground and at the surface.

P692:1, 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 circum-pacific 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.

P692:2, 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 that 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.

P692:3, 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 pine and other modern trees, including the gigantic redwoods, largely replaced the fern forests. 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.

P692:4, 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 pre-mammalian era of land life, which extends over a period of one hundred million years and is known as the _Mesozoic_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25  
The Mammalian Era On Earth

P693:1, 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.

P693:2, 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.

P693:3, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25: Section 1.  
The New Continental Land Stage  
The Age of Early Mammals

P693:4, 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

P693:5, 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 non-placental 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.

P693:6, 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:

  1. Bring forth relatively mature and well-developed offspring.

  2. Nourish, nurture, and protect their offspring with affectionate regard.

  3. Employ their superior brainpower in self-perpetuation.

  4. Utilize increased agility in escaping from enemies.

  5. Apply superior intelligence to environmental adjustment and adaptation.

P694:1, 61:1.4 _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 ostrich-like land bird developed to a height of ten feet and laid an egg nine by thirteen inches.

P694:2, 61:1.5 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.

P694:3, 61:1.6 _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.

P694:4, 61:1.7 During the latter part of this epoch most of Europe was submerged. Following a slight land rise, lakes and bays covered the continent. 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.

P694:5, 61:1.8 Considerable foraminifera 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.

P694:6, 61:1.9 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 primitive mammalian fauna of various types gradually overran the world.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25: Section 2.  
The Recent Flood Stage  
The Age Of Advanced Mammals

P694:7, 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.

P694:8, 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.

P695:1, 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.

P695:2, 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.

P695:3, 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.

P695:4, 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.

P695:5, 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.

P695:6, 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.

P695:7, 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 hog-like 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.

P696:1, 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.

P696:2, 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.

P696:3, 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.

P696:4, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25: Section 3.  
The Modern Mountain Stage  
Age Of The Elephant And The Horse

P696:5, 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.

P696:6, 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.

P696:7, 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.

P696:8, 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.

P696:9, 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.

P697:1, 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 a huge animal with a brain sufficiently large to enable it to carry on dominated the world. 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.

P697:2, 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.

P697:3, 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.

P697:4, 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.

P697:5, 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 the rapidly increasing cat family soon destroyed it.

P697:6, 61:3.11 As Earth 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.

P697:7, 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 that were, later on, to become the ancestors of the human race.

P697:8, 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.

P698:1, 61:3.14 Birds continued to evolve, though few marked changes occurred. Reptiles were similar to modern types \-- snakes, crocodiles, and turtles.

P698:2, 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_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25: Section 4.  
The Recent Continental-Elevation Stage

The Last Great Mammalian Migration

P698:3, 61:4.1 This is the period of pre-glacial 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.

P698:4, 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.

P698:5, 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 sloth, 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.

P698:6, 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 giraffe-like 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 sloth, 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.

P698:7, 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.

P698:8, 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.

P698:9, 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_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25: Section 5.  
The Early Ice Age

P699:1, 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.

P699:2, 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.

P699:3, 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.

P699:4, 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.

P699:5, 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.

P699:6, 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.

P699:7, 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 sloth, giant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, sloth 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.

P700:1, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 25: Section 6.  
Primitive Man In The Ice Age

P700:2, 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 brainpower -- 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.)

P700:3, 61:6.2 _1,000,000_ years ago Earth 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.

P700:4, 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 Earth aborigines, the Eskimos, even now prefer to dwell in frigid northern climes.

P700:5, 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.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 25: Section 7.  
The Continuing Ice Age

P700:6, 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.

P701:1, 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.

P701:2, 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.

P701:3, 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, one race mutated from the aboriginal human stock.

P701:4, 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.

P701:5, 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.

P701:6, 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.

P701:8, 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.

P701:9, 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 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.

P702:1, 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.

P702:2, 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.

P702:3, 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 that was made necessary by the advancing and retreating ice. Those animals that followed the glaciers back and forth over the land were the bear, bison, reindeer, musk ox, mammoth, and mastodon.

P702:4, 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.

P702:5, 61:7.15 In North America, during the last glaciation, the horse, tapir, llama, and saber-toothed tiger became extinct. In their places sloth, armadillos, and water hogs came up from South America.

P702:6, 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.

P702:7, 61:7.17 The ice age is the last completed geologic period, the so-called _Pleistocene,_ over two million years in length.

P702:8, 61:7.18  _35,000_ years ago marks the termination of the great ice age excepting in the polar regions of the planet..

P702:9, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26  
The Dawn Races Of Early Man

P703:1, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26: Section 1.  
The Early Lemur Types

P703:2, 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.

P703:3, 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 laying 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.

P703:4, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26: Section 2.  
The Dawn Mammals

P703:5, 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.

P704:1, 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.

P704:2, 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 that 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.

P704:3, 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.

P704:4, 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 non-carnivorous monkeylike tribes survived.

P704:5, 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 Earth.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26: Section 3.  
The Mid-Mammals

P704:6, 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.

P705:1, 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.

P705:2, 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 several 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.

P705:3, 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.

P705:4, 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.

P705:5, 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.

P705:6, 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.

P705:7, 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. But peace once more prevailed, and this lone surviving tribe built anew its treetop bedrooms and once again resumed a normal and semi-peaceful existence.

P705:8, 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 lemur-like mother of the dawn-mammal species escaped death several times by mere hairbreadth margins before she gave birth to the father of the new and higher mammalian order. These evolving animals were 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 away from this locality and began the construction of new treetop abodes and new ground shelters -- their transient retreats in time of sudden danger.

P706:1, 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.

P706:3, 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.

P706:4, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26: Section 4.  
The Primates

P706:5, 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.

P707:1, 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.

P707:2, 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.

P707:3, 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 brainpower, but they did not yet possess minds that could really be called human.

P707:4, 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.

P707:6, 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.

P707:5, 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.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26: Section 5.  
The First Human Beings

P707:8, 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.

P708:1, 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.

P708:2, 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.

P708:3, 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.

P708:4, 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.

P708:5, 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.

P708:6, 62:5.8 When about nine years of age, they journeyed off down the river one bright day and held a momentous conference. 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.

P708:7, 62:5.9 The twins migrated _northward_ to a secluded region where they escaped the possibility of biologic degradation through admixture with their inferior relatives of the Primates tribes.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 26: Section 6.  
Recognition As An Inhabited World

P709:8, 62:7.1 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 Earth. On the third day after the elopement of the twins, and before the Life Carrier corps departed, there arrived the Nebadon representative of initial planetary circuit establishment.

P710:1, 62:7.2 It was an eventful day on Earth when our small group gathered about the planetary pole of space communication 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 corps, said:

P710:2, 62:7.3 "To the Life Carriers on Urantia \-- Greetings! We transmit assurance of great pleasure on Salvington, in honor of the registration on the headquarters of Nebadon of the signal of the existence on Earth 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 earth and automatically establishes the circuit of communication over which this initial message of acknowledgment is transmitting."

P710:3, 62:7.4 Next over this new circuit came the instructions for the resident Life Carriers forbidding them to interfere with the pattern of life they had established. They 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 they do not. But up to this time they 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.

P710:4, 62:7.5 Then the Life Carriers heard the words of their chief and received his permission to return to home. This message contained the official acceptance of the Life Carriers' work on Earth and absolved them from all future criticism of any of their efforts to improve the life patterns of Nebadon as established in the system.

P710:5, 62:7.6 These messages from Salvington formally marked the termination of the Life Carriers' agelong supervision of the planet. For ages they had been on duty, assisted only by the 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, they realized that their work was finished, and their group prepared to depart. Earth being a life-modification world, permission was granted to leave behind two senior Life Carriers with their assistants.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27  
The First Human Family

P711:1, 63:0.1 Earth was registered as an inhabited world when the first two human beings -- the twins -- were eleven years old, and before they had become the parents of the first-born of the second generation of actual human beings. And the message from Salvington, on this occasion of formal planetary recognition, closed with these words:

P711:2, 63:0.2 " Man-mind has appeared and these parents of the new race shall be called _Andon_ and _Eva._ And we pray that these creatures may speedily be endowed with the personal indwelling of the gift of the spirit of the Universal Father."

P711:3, 63:0.3 Andon is the Nebadon name which signifies "the first Fatherlike creature to exhibit human perfection. Eva signifies "loved by mother." Andon and Eva never knew these names until they were bestowed upon them at the time of fusion with their Thought Adjusters. Throughout their mortal sojourn on Earth they called each other Andon and Eva. They gave themselves these names, and the meanings are significant of their mutual regard and affection.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27: Section 1.  
Andon And Eva

P711:4, 63:1.1 In many respects, Andon and Eva were the most remarkable pair of human beings that have ever lived on the face of the earth. This wonderful pair, the actual parents of all mankind, was in every way superior to many of their immediate descendants, and they were radically different from all of their ancestors, both immediate and remote.

P711:5, 63:1.2 The parents of this first human couple were apparently little different from the average of their tribe, though they were among its more intelligent members, that group which first learned to throw stones and to use clubs in fighting. They also made use of sharp spicules of stone, flint, and bone.

P711:6, 63:1.3 While still living with his parents, Andon had fastened a sharp piece of flint on the end of a club, using animal tendons for this purpose, and on no less than a dozen occasions he made good use of such a weapon in saving both his own life and that of his equally adventurous and inquisitive sister, who unfailingly accompanied him on all of his tours of exploration.

P711:7, 63:1.4 The decision of Andon and Eva to flee from the Primates tribes implies a quality of mind far above the baser intelligence which characterized so many of their later descendants who stooped to mate with their retarded cousins of the simian tribes. But their vague feeling of being something more than mere animals was due to the possession of personality and was augmented by the indwelling presence of the Thought Adjusters.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27: Section 2.  
The Flight Of The Twins

P712:1, 63:2.1 After Andon and Eva had decided to flee northward, they succumbed to their fears for a time, especially the fear of displeasing their father and immediate family. They envisaged being set upon by hostile relatives and thus recognized the possibility of meeting death at the hands of their already jealous tribesmen. As youngsters, the twins had spent most of their time in each other's company and for this reason had never been overly popular with their animal cousins of the Primates tribe. Nor had they improved their standing in the tribe by building a separate, and a very superior, tree home.

P712:2, 63:2.2 And it was in this new home among the treetops, one night after they had been awakened by a violent storm, and as they held each other in fearful and fond embrace, that they finally and fully made up their minds to flee from the tribal habitat and the home treetops.

P712:3, 63:2.3 They had already prepared a crude treetop retreat some half-day's journey to the north. This was their secret and safe hiding place for the first day away from the home forests. Notwithstanding that the twins shared the Primates' deathly fear of being on the ground at nighttime, they sallied forth shortly before nightfall on their northern trek. While it required unusual courage for them to undertake this night journey, even with a full moon, they correctly concluded that they were less likely to be missed and pursued by their tribesmen and relatives. And they safely made their previously prepared rendezvous shortly after midnight.

P712:4, 63:2.4 On their northward journey they discovered an exposed flint deposit and, finding many stones suitably shaped for various uses, gathered up a supply for the future. In attempting to chip these flints so that they would be better adapted for certain purposes, Adam discovered their sparking quality and conceived the idea of building fire. But the notion did not take firm hold of him at the time as the climate was still salubrious and there was little need of fire.

P712:5, 63:2.5 But the autumn sun was getting lower in the sky, and as they journeyed northward, the nights grew cooler and cooler. Already they had been forced to make use of animal skins for warmth. Before they had been away from home one moon, Andon signified to his mate that he thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to utilize the flint spark for kindling a fire but only met with failure. Each day this couple would strike the flints and endeavor to ignite the wood. Finally, one evening about the time of the setting of the sun, the secret of the technique was unraveled when it occurred to Eva to climb a near-by tree to secure an abandoned bird's nest. The nest was dry and highly inflammable and consequently flared right up into a full blaze the moment the spark fell upon it. They were so surprised and startled at their success that they almost lost the fire, but they saved it by the addition of suitable fuel, and then began the first search for firewood by the parents of all mankind.

P712:6, 63:2.6 This was one of the most joyous moments in their short but eventful lives. All night long they sat up watching their fire burn, vaguely realizing that they had made a discovery which would make it possible for them to defy climate and thus forever to be independent of their animal relatives of the southern lands. After three days' rest and enjoyment of the fire, they journeyed on.

P712:7, 63:2.7 The Primates ancestors of Andon had often replenished fire which had been kindled by lightning, but never before had the creatures of earth possessed a method of starting fire at will. But it was a long time before the twins learned that dry moss and other materials would kindle fire just as well as birds' nests.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27: Section 3.  
Andon's Family

P713:1, 63:3.1 It was almost two years from the night of the twins' departure from home before their first child was born. They named him Sontad; and Sontad was the first creature to be born on Earth who was wrapped in protective coverings at the time of birth. The human race had begun, and with this new evolution there appeared the instinct properly to care for the increasingly enfeebled infants which would characterize the progressive development of mind of the intellectual order as contrasted with the more purely animal type.

P713:2, 63:3.2 Andon and Eva had nineteen children in all, and they lived to enjoy the association of almost half a hundred grandchildren and half a dozen great-grandchildren. The family was domiciled in four adjoining rock shelters, or semi-caves, three of which were interconnected by hallways that had been excavated in the soft limestone with flint tools devised by Andon's children.

P713:3, 63:3.3 These early Andonites evinced a very marked clannish spirit; they hunted in groups and never strayed very far from the homesite. They seemed to realize that they were an isolated and unique group of living beings and should therefore avoid becoming separated. This feeling of intimate kinship was undoubtedly due to the enhanced mind ministry of the adjutant spirits.

P713:4, 63:3.4 Andon and Eva labored incessantly for the nurture and uplift of the clan. They lived to the age of forty-two, when both were killed at the time of an earthquake by the falling of an overhanging rock. Five of their children and eleven grandchildren perished with them, and almost a score of their descendants suffered serious injuries.

P713:5, 63:3.5 Upon the death of his parents, Sontad, despite a seriously injured foot, immediately assumed the leadership of the clan and was ably assisted by his wife, his eldest sister. Their first task was to roll up stones to effectively entomb their dead parents, brothers, sisters, and children. Undue significance should not attach to this act of burial. Their ideas of survival after death were very vague and indefinite, being largely derived from their fantastic and variegated dream life.

P713:6, 63:3.6 This family of Andon and Eva held together until the twentieth generation, when combined food competition and social friction brought about the beginning of dispersion.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27: Section 4.  
The Andonic Clans

P713:7, 63:4.1 Primitive man -- the Andonites -- had black eyes and a swarthy complexion, something of a cross between yellow and red. Melanin is a coloring substance that is found in the skins of all human beings. It is the original Andonic skin pigment. In general appearance and skin color these early Andonites more nearly resembled the present-day Eskimo than any other type of living human beings. They were the first creatures to use the skins of animals as a protection against cold; they had little more hair on their bodies than present-day humans.

P713:8, 63:4.2 The tribal life of the animal ancestors of these early men had foreshadowed the beginnings of numerous social conventions, and with the expanding emotions and augmented brain powers of these beings, there was an immediate development in social organization and a new division of clan labor. They were exceedingly imitative, but the play instinct was only slightly developed, and the sense of humor was almost entirely absent. Primitive man smiled occasionally, but he never indulged in hearty laughter. These early human beings were not so sensitive to pain or so reactive to unpleasant situations as were many of the later evolving mortals. Childbirth was not a painful or distressing ordeal to Eva and her immediate progeny.

P714:1, 63:4.3 They were a wonderful tribe. The males would fight heroically for the safety of their mates and their offspring; the females were affectionately devoted to their children. But their patriotism was wholly limited to the immediate clan. They were very loyal to their families; they would die without question in defense of their children, but they were not able to grasp the idea of trying to make the world a better place for their grandchildren. Altruism was as yet unborn in the human heart, notwithstanding that all of the emotions essential to the birth of religion were already present in these Earth aborigines.

P714:2, 63:4.4 These early men possessed a touching affection for their comrades and certainly had a real, although crude, idea of friendship. It was a common sight in later times, during their constantly recurring battles with the inferior tribes, to see one of these primitive men valiantly fighting with one hand while he struggled on, trying to protect and save an injured fellow warrior. Many of the most noble and highly human traits of subsequent evolutionary development were touchingly foreshadowed in these primitive peoples.

P714:3, 63:4.5 The original Andonic clan maintained an unbroken line of leadership until the twenty-seventh generation, when, no male offspring appearing among Sontad's direct descendants, two rival would-be rulers of the clan fell to fighting for supremacy.

P714:4, 63:4.6 Before the extensive dispersion of the Andonic clans a well-developed language had evolved from their early efforts to intercommunicate. This language continued to grow, and almost daily additions were made to it because of the new inventions and adaptations to environment that were developed by these active, restless, and curious people. And this language became the word of Earth, the tongue of the early human family, until the later appearance of the colored races.

P714:5, 63:4.7 As time passed, the Andonic clans grew in number, and the contact of the expanding families developed friction and misunderstandings. Only two things came to occupy the minds of these peoples: hunting to obtain food and fighting to avenge themselves against some real or supposed injustice or insult at the hands of the neighboring tribes.

P714:6, 63:4.8 Family feuds increased, tribal wars broke out, and serious losses were sustained among the very best elements of the more able and advanced groups. Some of these losses were irreparable; some of the most valuable strains of ability and intelligence were forever lost to the world. This early race and its primitive civilization were threatened with extinction by this incessant warfare of the clans.

P714:7, 63:4.9 It is impossible to induce such primitive beings long to live together in peace. Man is the descendant of fighting animals, and when closely associated, uncultured people irritate and offend each other. The Life Carriers know this tendency among evolutionary creatures and accordingly make provision for the eventual separation of developing human beings into at least three, and more often six, distinct and separate races.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27: Section 5.  
Dispersion Of The Andonites

P715:1, 63:5.1 The early Andon races did not penetrate very far into Asia, and they did not at first enter Africa. The geography of those times pointed them north, and farther and farther north these people journeyed until the slowly advancing ice of the third glacier hindered them.

P715:2, 63:5.2 Before this extensive ice sheet reached France and the British Isles, the descendants of Andon and Eva had pushed on westward over Europe and had established more than one thousand separate settlements along the great rivers leading to the then warm waters of the North Sea.

P715:3, 63:5.3 These Andonic tribes were the early river dwellers of France; they lived along the river Somme for tens of thousands of years. The Somme is the one river unchanged by the glaciers, running down to the sea in those days much as it does today. And that explains why so much evidence of the Andonic descendants is found along the course of this river valley.

P715:4, 63:5.4 These aborigines of Earth were not tree dwellers, though in emergencies they still betook themselves to the treetops. They regularly dwelt under the shelter of overhanging cliffs along the rivers and in hillside grottoes that afforded a good view of the approaches and sheltered them from the elements. They could thus enjoy the comfort of their fires without being too much inconvenienced by the smoke. They were not really cave dwellers either, though in subsequent times the later ice sheets came farther south and drove their descendants to the caves. They preferred to camp near the edge of a forest and beside a stream.

P715:5, 63:5.5 They very early became remarkably clever in disguising their partially sheltered abodes and showed great skill in constructing stone sleeping chambers, dome-shaped stone huts, into which they crawled at night. The entrance to such a hut was closed by rolling a stone in front of it, a large stone that had been placed inside for this purpose before the roof stones were finally put in place.

P715:6, 63:5.6 The Andonites were fearless and successful hunters and, with the exception of wild berries and certain fruits of the trees, lived exclusively on flesh. As Andon had invented the stone ax, so his descendants early discovered and made effective use of the throwing stick and the harpoon. At last a tool-creating mind was functioning in conjunction with an implement-using hand, and these early humans became highly skillful in the fashioning of flint tools. They traveled far and wide in search of flint, much as present-day humans journey to the ends of the earth in quest of gold, platinum, and diamonds.

P715:7, 63:5.7 And in many other ways these Andon tribes manifested a degree of intelligence which their retrogressing descendants did not attain in half a million years, though they did again and again rediscover various methods of kindling fire.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 27: Section 6.  
Onagar -- The First Truth Teacher

P715:8, 63:6.1 As the Andonic dispersion extended, the cultural and spiritual status of the clans retrogressed for nearly ten thousand years until the days of Onagar, who assumed the leadership of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the worship of the "Breath Giver to men and animals."

P716:1, 63:6.2 Andon's philosophy had been most confused; he had barely escaped becoming a fire worshiper because of the great comfort derived from his accidental discovery of fire. Reason, however, directed him from his own discovery to the sun as a superior and more awe-inspiring source of heat and light, but it was too remote, and so he failed to become a sun worshiper.

P716:2, 63:6.3 The Andonites early developed a fear of the elements -- thunder, lightning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the constantly recurring urge of these early days, and since they largely subsisted on animals, they eventually evolved a form of animal worship. To Andon, the larger food animals were symbols of creative might and sustaining power. From time to time it became the custom to designate several of these larger animals as objects of worship. During the vogue of a particular animal, crude outlines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as continued progress was made in the arts, such an animal god was engraved on various ornaments.

P716:3, 63:6.4 Very early the Andonic peoples formed the habit of refraining from eating the flesh of the animal of tribal veneration. Presently, in order more suitably to impress the minds of their youths, they evolved a ceremony of reverence that was carried out about the body of one of these venerated animals; and still later on, this primitive performance developed into the more elaborate sacrificial ceremonies of their descendants. And this is the origin of sacrifices as a part of worship. This idea was elaborated by Moses in the Hebrew ritual and was preserved, in principle, by the Apostle Paul as the doctrine of atonement for sin by "the shedding of blood."

P716:4, 63:6.5 That food was the all-important thing in the lives of these primitive human beings is shown by the prayer taught these simple folks by Onagar, their great teacher. And this prayer was:

P716:5, 63:6.6 "O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily food, deliver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our forest enemies, and with mercy receive us into the Great Beyond."

P716:6, 63:6.7 Onagar maintained headquarters on the northern shores of the ancient Mediterranean in the region of the present Caspian Sea at a settlement called Oban, the tarrying place on the westward turning of the travel trail leading up northward from the Mesopotamian southland. From Oban he sent out teachers to the remote settlements to spread his new doctrines of one Deity and his concept of the hereafter, which he called the Great Beyond. These emissaries of Onagar were the world's first missionaries; they were also the first human beings to cook meat, the first regularly to use fire in the preparation of food. They cooked flesh on the ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in the fire, but their descendants almost entirely reverted to the use of raw flesh.

P716:7, 63:6.8 Onagar lived to be sixty-nine years of age. The record of the achievements of this mastermind and spiritual leader is a thrilling recital of the organization of these primitive peoples into a real society. He instituted an efficient tribal government, the like of which was not attained by succeeding generations in many millenniums. These simple people had a real though primitive religion, but it was subsequently lost to their deteriorating descendants.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28  
The Evolutionary Races Of Color

P718:1, 64:0.1 This is the story of the evolutionary races of Andon from the days of Andon and Eva, almost one million years ago, to the end of the ice age.

P718:2, 64:0.2 The human race is almost one million years old. The latter half of the history of mankind begins at the appearance of the six colored races and roughly corresponds to the period commonly regarded as the Old Stone Age.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 1.  
The Andonic Aborigines

P718:3, 64:1.1 Primitive man made his evolutionary appearance on earth a little less than one million years ago, and he had a vigorous experience. He instinctively sought to escape the danger of mingling with the inferior simian tribes. But he could not migrate eastward because of the arid Tibetan land elevations, 30,000 feet above sea level; neither could he go south nor west because of the expanded Mediterranean Sea, which then extended eastward to the Indian Ocean; and as he went north, he encountered the advancing ice. But even when the ice blocked further migration, and though the dispersing tribes became increasingly hostile, the more intelligent groups never entertained the idea of going southward to live among their hairy tree-dwelling cousins of inferior intellect.

P718:4, 64:1.2 Many of man's earliest religious emotions grew out of his feeling of helplessness in the shut-in environment of this geographic situation -- mountains to the right, water to the left, and ice in front. But these progressive Andonites would not turn back to their inferior tree-dwelling relatives in the south.

P718:5, 64:1.3 These Andonites avoided the forests in contrast with the habits of their nonhuman relatives. In the forests man has always deteriorated; human evolution has made progress only in the open and in the higher latitudes. The cold and hunger of the open lands stimulate action, invention, and resourcefulness. While these Andonic tribes were developing the pioneers of the present human race amidst the hardships and privations of these rugged northern climes, their backward cousins were luxuriating in the southern tropical forests of the land of their early common origin.

P718:6, 64:1.4 These events occurred during the times of the third glacier, the first according to the reckoning of geologists. The first two glaciers were not extensive in northern Europe.

P718:7, 64:1.5 During most of the ice age England was connected by land with France, while later on Africa was joined to Europe by the Sicilian land bridge. At the time of the Andonic migrations there was a continuous land path from England in the west on through Europe and Asia to Java in the east; but Australia was again isolated, which further accentuated the development of its own peculiar fauna.

P719:1, 64:1.6 _950,000_ years ago the descendants of Andon and Eva had migrated far to the east and to the west. To the west they passed over Europe to France and England. In later times they penetrated eastward as far as Java, where their bones were so recently found -- the so-called Java man \-- and then journeyed on to Tasmania.

P719:2, 64:1.7 The groups going west became less contaminated with the backward stocks of mutual ancestral origin than those going east, who mingled so freely with their retarded animal cousins. These unprogressive individuals drifted southward and presently mated with the inferior tribes. Later on, increasing numbers of their mongrel descendants returned to the north to mate with the rapidly expanding Andonic peoples, and such unfortunate unions unfailingly deteriorated the superior stock. Fewer and fewer of the primitive settlements maintained the worship of the Breath Giver. This early dawn civilization was threatened with extinction.

P719:3, 64:1.8 And thus it has ever been on Earth. Civilizations of great promise have successively deteriorated and have finally been extinguished by the folly of allowing the superior freely to procreate with the inferior.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 2.  
The Foxhall Peoples

P719:4, 64:2.1 _900,000_ years ago the arts of Andon and Eva and the culture of Onagar were vanishing from the face of the earth; culture, religion, and even flintworking were at their lowest ebb.

P719:5, 64:2.2 These were the times when large numbers of inferior mongrel groups were arriving in England from southern France. These tribes were so largely mixed with the forest apelike creatures that they were scarcely human. They had no religion but were crude flintworkers and possessed sufficient intelligence to kindle fire.

P719:6, 64:2.3 They were followed in Europe by a somewhat superior and prolific people, whose descendants soon spread over the entire continent from the ice in the north to the Alps and Mediterranean in the south. These tribes are the so-called _Heidelberg race._

P719:7, 64:2.4 During this long period of cultural decadence the Foxhall peoples of England and the Badonan tribes northwest of India continued to hold on to some of the traditions of Andon and certain remnants of the culture of Onagar.

P719:8, 64:2.5 The Foxhall peoples were farthest west and succeeded in retaining much of the Andonic culture; they also preserved their knowledge of flintworking, which they transmitted to their descendants, the ancient ancestors of the Eskimos.

P719:9, 64:2.6 Though the remains of the Foxhall peoples were the last to be discovered in England, these Andonites were really the first human beings to live in those regions. At that time the land bridge still connected France with England; and since most of the early settlements of the Andon descendants were located along the rivers and seashores of that early day, they are now under the waters of the English Channel and the North Sea, but some three or four are still above water on the English coast.

P720:1, 64:2.7 Many of the more intelligent and spiritual of the Foxhall peoples maintained their racial superiority and perpetuated their primitive religious customs. And these people, as they were later admixed with subsequent stocks, journeyed on west from England after a later ice visitation and have survived as the present-day Eskimos.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 3.  
The Badonan Tribes

P720:2, 64:3.1 Besides the Foxhall peoples in the west, another struggling center of culture persisted in the east. This group was located in the foothills of the northwestern Indian highlands among the tribes of Badonan, a great great grandson of Andon. These people were the only descendants of Andon who never practiced human sacrifice.

P720:3, 64:3.2 These highland Badonites occupied an extensive plateau surrounded by forests, traversed by streams, and abounding in game. Like some of their cousins in Tibet, they lived in crude stone huts, hillside grottoes, and semi underground passages.

P720:4, 64:3.3 While the tribes of the north grew more and more to fear the ice, those living near the homeland of their origin became exceedingly fearful of the water. They observed the Mesopotamian peninsula gradually sinking into the ocean, and though it emerged several times, the traditions of these primitive races grew up around the dangers of the sea and the fear of periodic engulfment. And this fear, together with their experience with river floods, explains why they sought out the highlands as a safe place in which to live.

P720:5, 64:3.4 To the east of the Badonan peoples, in the Siwalik Hills of northern India, may be found fossils that approach nearer to transition types between man and the various prehuman groups than any others on earth.

P720:6, 64:3.5 _850,000_ years ago the superior Badonan tribes began a warfare of extermination directed against their inferior and animalistic neighbors. In less than one thousand years most of the borderland animal groups of these regions had been either destroyed or driven back to the southern forests. This campaign for the extermination of inferiors brought about a slight improvement in the hill tribes of that age. And the mixed descendants of this improved Badonites stock appeared on the stage of action as an apparently new people -- the _Neanderthal race_.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 4.  
The Neanderthal Races

P720:7, 64:4.1 The Neanderthalers were excellent fighters, and they traveled extensively. They gradually spread from the highland centers in northwest India to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the times of the migration of the evolutionary races of color.

P720:8, 64:4.2 _800,000_ years ago game was abundant; many species of deer, as well as elephants and hippopotamuses, roamed over Europe. Cattle were plentiful; horses and wolves were everywhere. The Neanderthalers were great hunters, and the tribes in France were the first to adopt the practice of giving the most successful hunters the choice of women for wives.

P721:1, 64:4.3 The reindeer was highly useful to these Neanderthal peoples, serving as food, clothing, and for tools, since they made various uses of the horns and bones. They had little culture, but they greatly improved the work in flint until it almost reached the levels of the days of Andon. Large flints attached to wooden handles came back into use and served as axes and picks.

P721:2, 64:4.4 _750,000_ years ago the fourth ice sheet was well on its way south. With their improved implements the Neanderthalers made holes in the ice covering the northern rivers and thus were able to spear the fish that came up to these vents. Ever these tribes retreated before the advancing ice, which at this time made its most extensive invasion of Europe.

P721:3, 64:4.5 In these times the Siberian glacier was making its southernmost march, compelling early man to move southward, back toward the lands of his origin. But the human species had so differentiated that the danger of further mingling with its non-progressive simian relatives was greatly lessened.

P721:4, 64:4.6 _700,000_ years ago the fourth glacier, the greatest of all in Europe, was in recession; men and animals were returning north. The climate was cool and moist, and primitive man again thrived in Europe and western Asia. Gradually the forests spread north over land that had been so recently covered by the glacier.

P721:5, 64:4.7 Mammalian life had been little changed by the great glacier. These animals persisted in that narrow belt of land lying between the ice and the Alps and, upon the retreat of the glacier, again rapidly spread out over all Europe. There arrived from Africa, over the Sicilian land bridge, straight-tusked elephants, broad- nosed rhinoceroses, hyenas, and African lions, and these new animals virtually exterminated the saber-toothed tigers and the hippopotamuses.

P721:6, 64:4.8 _650,000_ years ago witnessed the continuation of the mild climate. By the middle of the interglacial period it had become so warm that the Alps were almost denuded of ice and snow.

P721:7, 64:4.9 _600,000_ years ago the ice had reached its then northernmost point of retreat and, after a pause of a few thousand years, started south again on its fifth excursion. But there was little modification of climate for fifty thousand years. Man and the animals of Europe were little changed. The slight aridity of the former period lessened, and the alpine glaciers descended far down the river valleys.

P721:8, 64:4.10 _550,000_ years ago the advancing glacier again pushed man and the animals south. But this time man had plenty of room in the wide belt of land stretching northeast into Asia and lying between the ice sheet and the then greatly expanded Black Sea extension of the Mediterranean.

P721:9, 64:4.11 These times of the fourth and fifth glaciers witnessed the further spread of the crude culture of the Neanderthal races. But there was so little progress that it truly appeared as though the attempt to produce a new and modified type of intelligent life on Urantia was about to fail. For almost a quarter of a million years these primitive peoples drifted on, hunting and fighting, by spells improving in certain directions, but, on the whole, steadily retrogressing as compared with their superior Andonic ancestors.

P721:10, 64:4.12 During these spiritually dark ages the culture of superstitious mankind reached its lowest levels. The Neanderthalers really had no religion beyond a shameful superstition. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more especially of mists and fogs. A primitive religion of the fear of natural forces gradually developed, while animal worship declined as improvement in tools, with abundance of game, enabled these people to live with lessened anxiety about food; the sex rewards of the chase tended greatly to improve hunting skill. This new religion of fear led to attempts to placate the invisible forces behind these natural elements and culminated, later on, in the sacrificing of humans to appease these invisible and unknown physical forces. And the more backward peoples of Earth right on down to the twentieth century have perpetuated this terrible practice of human sacrifice.

P722:1, 64:4.13 These early Neanderthalers could hardly be called sun worshipers. They rather lived in fear of the dark; they had a mortal dread of nightfall. As long as the moon shone a little, they managed to get along, but in the dark of the moon they grew panicky and began the sacrifice of their best specimens of manhood and womanhood in an effort to induce the moon again to shine. The sun, they early learned, would regularly return, but the moon they conjectured only returned because they sacrificed their fellow tribesmen. As the race advanced, the object and purpose of sacrifice progressively changed, but the offering of human sacrifice as a part of religious ceremonial long persisted.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 5.  
Origin Of The Races Of Color

P722:2, 64:5.1 _500,000_ years ago the Badonan tribes of the northwestern highlands of India became involved in another great racial struggle. For more than one hundred years this relentless warfare raged, and when the long fight was finished, only about one hundred families were left. But these survivors were the most intelligent and desirable of all the then living descendants of Andon and Eva.

P722:3, 64:5.2 And now, among these highland Badonites there was a new and strange occurrence. A man and woman living in the northeastern part of the then inhabited highland region began _suddenly_ to produce a family of unusually intelligent children. This was the _Sangik family,_ the ancestors of all of the six colored races of Earth.

P722:4, 64:5.3 These Sangik children, nineteen in number, were not only intelligent above their fellows, but their skins manifested a unique tendency to turn various colors upon exposure to sunlight. Among these nineteen children were five red, two orange, four yellow, two green, four blue, and two indigo. These colors became more pronounced as the children grew older, and when these youths later mated with their fellow tribesmen, all of their offspring tended toward the skin color of the Sangik parent.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 6.  
The Six Sangik Races Of Earth

P722:6, 64:6.1 On an average evolutionary planet the six evolutionary races of color appear one by one; the red man is the first to evolve, and for ages he roams the world before the succeeding colored races make their appearance. The simultaneous emergence of all six races on Earth, _and in one family,_ was most unusual.

P723:1, 64:6.2 The appearance of the earlier Andonites on Earth was also something new. On no other world in the local system has such a race of will creatures evolved in advance of the evolutionary races of color.

P723:2, 64:6.3 1. _The red man._ These peoples were remarkable specimens of the human race, in many ways superior to Andon and Eva. They were a most intelligent group and were the first of the Sangik children to develop a tribal civilization and government. They were always monogamous; even their mixed descendants seldom practiced plural mating.

P723:3, 64:6.4 In later times they had serious and prolonged trouble with their yellow brethren in Asia. They were aided by their early invention of the bow and arrow, but they had unfortunately inherited much of the tendency of their ancestors to fight among themselves, and this so weakened them that the yellow tribes were able to drive them off the Asiatic continent.

P723:4, 64:6.5 About eighty-five thousand years ago the comparatively pure remnants of the red race went en masse across to North America, and shortly thereafter the Bering land isthmus sank, thus isolating them. No red man ever returned to Asia. But throughout Siberia, China, central Asia, India, and Europe they left behind much of their stock blended with the other colored races.

P723:5, 64:6.6 When the red man crossed over into America, he brought along much of the teachings and traditions of his early origin. In a short time after reaching the Americas there occurred a great decline in their intellectual and spiritual culture. Very soon these people again fell to fighting so fiercely among themselves that it appeared that these tribal wars would result in the speedy extinction of this remnant of the comparatively pure red race.

P723:6, 64:6.7 Because of this great retrogression the red men seemed doomed when, about sixty-five thousand years ago, Onamonalonton appeared as their leader and spiritual deliverer. He brought temporary peace among the American red men and revived their worship of the "Great Spirit." Onamonalonton lived to be ninety-six years of age and maintained his headquarters among the great redwood trees of California. Many of his later descendants have come down to modern times among the Blackfoot Indians.

P723:7, 64:6.8 As time passed, the teachings of Onamonalonton became hazy traditions. Internecine wars were resumed, and never after the days of this great teacher did another leader succeed in bringing universal peace among them. Increasingly the more intelligent strains perished in these tribal struggles; otherwise these able and intelligent red men would have built a great civilization upon the North American continent.

P723:8, 64:6.9 After crossing over to America from China, the northern red man never again came in contact with other world influences (except the Eskimo) until he was later discovered by the white man. It was most unfortunate that the red man almost completely missed his opportunity of being upstepped by the admixture of the later stock. As it was, the red man could not rule the white man, and he would not willingly serve him. In such a circumstance, if the two races do not blend, one or the other is doomed.

P723:9, 64:6.10 2. _The orange man._ The outstanding characteristic of this race was their peculiar urge to build, to build anything and everything, even to the piling up of vast mounds of stone just to see which tribe could build the largest mound.

P724:1, 64:6.11 The orange race was the first to follow the coast line southward toward Africa as the Mediterranean Sea withdrew to the west. But they never secured a favorable footing in Africa and were wiped out of existence by the later arriving green race.

P724:2, 64:6.12 Before the end came, this people lost much cultural and spiritual ground. But there was a great revival of higher living as a result of the wise leadership of Porshunta, the mastermind of this unfortunate race.

P724:3, 64:6.13 The last great struggle between the orange and the green men occurred in the region of the lower Nile valley in Egypt. This long-drawn-out battle was waged for almost one hundred years, and at its close very few of the orange race were left alive. The shattered remnants of these people were absorbed by the green and by the later arriving indigo men. But as a race the orange man ceased to exist about one hundred thousand years ago.

P724:4, 64:6.14 3. _The yellow man._ The primitive yellow tribes were the first to abandon the chase, establish settled communities, and develop a home life based on agriculture. Intellectually they were somewhat inferior to the red man, but socially and collectively they proved themselves superior to all of the Sangik peoples in the matter of fostering racial civilization. Because they developed a fraternal spirit, the various tribes learning to live together in relative peace, they were able to drive the red race before them as they gradually expanded into Asia.

P724:5, 64:6.15 There occurred one brilliant age among this people when Singlangton, about one hundred thousand years ago, assumed the leadership of these tribes and proclaimed the worship of the "One Truth."

P724:6, 64:6.16 The survival of comparatively large numbers of the yellow race is due to their intertribal peacefulness. From the days of Singlangton to the times of modern China, the yellow race has been numbered among the more peaceful of the nations of Earth.

P724:7, 64:6.17 4. _The green man._ The green race was one of the less able groups of primitive men, and they were greatly weakened by extensive migrations in different directions. Before their dispersion these tribes experienced a great revival of culture under the leadership of Fantad, some three hundred and fifty thousand years ago.

P724:8, 64:6.18 The green race split into three major divisions: The northern tribes were subdued, enslaved, and absorbed by the yellow and blue races. The eastern group was amalgamated with the Indian peoples of those days, and remnants still persist among them. The southern nation entered Africa, where they destroyed their almost equally inferior orange cousins.

P724:9, 64:6.19 In many ways both groups were evenly matched in this struggle since each carried strains of the great order. These strains of the green man were mostly confined to this southern or Egyptian nation.

P725:1, 64:6.20 The remnants of the victorious green men were subsequently absorbed by the indigo race, the last of the colored peoples to develop and emigrate from the original Sangik center of race dispersion.

P725:2, 64:6.21 5. _The blue man._ The blue men were a great people. They early invented the spear and subsequently worked out the rudiments of many of the arts of modern civilization. The blue man had the brainpower of the red man associated with the soul and sentiment of the yellow man.

P725:3, 64:6.22 The early blue men, like other primitive races, never fully recovered from the turmoil produced by their leader Caligastia, nor did they ever completely overcome their tendency to fight among themselves.

P725:4, 64:6.23 About five hundred years after Caligastia's downfall a widespread revival of learning and religion of a primitive sort -- but none the less real and beneficial -- occurred. Orlandof became a great teacher among the blue race and led many of the tribes back to the worship of the true God under the name of the "Supreme Chief." This was the greatest advance of the blue man until those later times when this race was so greatly upstepped by the admixture of other stock.

P725:5, 64:6.24 The European researches and explorations of the Old Stone Age have largely to do with unearthing the tools, bones, and art craft of these ancient blue men, for they persisted in Europe until recent times. The so-called _white races_ of Earth are the descendants of these blue men as they were first modified by slight mixture with yellow and red, and as they were later greatly upstepped by assimilating the greater portion of the violet race.

P725:6, 64:6.25 6. _The indigo race._ As the red men were the most advanced of all the Sangik peoples, so the black men were the least progressive. They were the last to migrate from their highland homes. They journeyed to Africa, taking possession of the continent, and have ever since remained there except when they wandered out of the land or were forcibly taken away, from age to age, as slaves.  
P725:7, 64:6.26 Alone in Africa, the indigo race made little advancement until the days of Orvonon, when they experienced a great spiritual awakening. While they later almost entirely forgot the "God of Gods" proclaimed by Orvonon, they did not entirely lose the desire to worship the Unknown; at least they maintained a form of worship up to a few thousand years ago.

P725:8, 64:6.27 Notwithstanding their backwardness, these indigo peoples have exactly the same standing before the celestial powers as any other earthly race.

P726:1, 64:6.28 These were ages of intense struggles between the various races, but the more enlightened and more recently taught groups lived together in comparative harmony.

P726:2, 64:6.29 From time to time all of these different peoples experienced cultural and spiritual revivals. Mention is made only of those outstanding leaders and teachers who markedly influenced and inspired a whole race. With the passing of time, many other teachers arose in different regions; and in the aggregate they contributed much to the sum total of those saving influences that prevented the total collapse of cultural civilization.

P726:3, 64:6.30 There are many good and sufficient reasons for the plan of evolving either three or six colored races on the worlds of space. Though Earth mortals may not be in a position fully to appreciate all of these reasons, we would call attention to the following:

P726:4, 64:6.31 1. Variety is indispensable to opportunity for the wide functioning of natural selection, differential survival of superior strains.

P726:5, 64:6.32 2. Stronger and better races are to be had from the interbreeding of diverse peoples when these different races are carriers of superior inheritance factors.

P726:6, 64:6.33 3. Competition is healthfully stimulated by diversification of races.

P726:7, 64:6.34 4. Differences in status of the races and of groups within each race are essential to the development of human tolerance and altruism.

P726:8, 64:6.35 5. Homogeneity of the human race is not desirable until the peoples of an evolving world attain comparatively high levels of spiritual development.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 28: Section 7.  
Dispersion Of The Races Of Color

P726:9, 64:7.1 When the descendants of the Sangik family began to multiply, and as they sought opportunity for expansion into adjacent territory, the fifth glacier, the third of geologic count, was well advanced on its southern drift over Europe and Asia. These early races of color were extraordinarily tested by the rigors and hardships of the glacial age of their origin. This glacier was so extensive in Asia that for thousands of years migration to eastern Asia was cut off. And not until the later retreat of the Mediterranean Sea, consequent upon the elevation of Arabia, was it possible for them to reach Africa.

P726:10, 64:7.2 Thus it was that for almost one hundred thousand years these Sangik peoples spread out around the foothills and mingled together more or less, notwithstanding the peculiar but natural antipathy which early manifested itself between the different races.

P726:11, 64:7.3 India became the home of the most cosmopolitan population ever to be found on the face of the earth. But it was unfortunate that this mixture came to contain so much of the green, orange, and indigo races. These secondary Sangik peoples found existence more easy and agreeable in the southlands, and many of them subsequently migrated to Africa. The primary Sangik peoples, the superior races, avoided the tropics, the red man going northeast to Asia, closely followed by the yellow man, while the blue race moved northwest into Europe.

P727:1, 64:7.4 The red men early began to migrate to the northeast, on the heels of the retreating ice, passing around the highlands of India and occupying all of northeastern Asia. The yellow tribes, who subsequently drove them out of Asia into North America, closely followed them.

P727:2, 64:7.5 When the relatively pure-line remnants of the red race forsook Asia, there were eleven tribes, and they numbered a little over seven thousand men, women, and children. These tribes were accompanied by three small groups of mixed ancestry, the largest of these being a combination of the orange and blue races. These three groups never fully fraternized with the red man and early journeyed southward to Mexico and Central America, where they were later joined by a small group of mixed yellows and reds. These peoples all intermarried and founded a new and amalgamated race, one that was much less warlike than the pure-line red men. Within five thousand years this amalgamated race broke up into three groups, establishing the civilizations respectively of Mexico, Central America, and South America.

P727:3, 64:7.6 To a certain extent the early red and yellow men mingled in Asia, and the offspring of this union journeyed on to the east and along the southern seacoast and, eventually, were driven by the rapidly increasing yellow race onto the peninsulas and near-by islands of the sea. They are the present-day brown men.

P727:4, 64:7.7 The yellow race has continued to occupy the central regions of eastern Asia. Of all the six colored races they have survived in greatest numbers. While the yellow men now and then engaged in racial war, they did not carry on such incessant and relentless wars of extermination as were waged by the red, green, and orange men. These three races virtually destroyed themselves before they were finally all but annihilated by their enemies of other races.

P727:5, 64:7.8 Since the fifth glacier did not extend so far south in Europe, the way was partially open for these Sangik peoples to migrate to the northwest; and upon the retreat of the ice the blue men, together with a few other small racial groups, migrated westward along the old trails of the Andon tribes. They invaded Europe in successive waves, occupying most of the continent.

P727:6, 64:7.9 In Europe they soon encountered the Neanderthal descendants of their early and common ancestor, Andon. These older European Neanderthalers had been driven south and east by the glacier and thus were in position quickly to encounter and absorb their invading cousins of the Sangik tribes.

P727:7, 64:7.10 In general and to start with, the Sangik tribes were more intelligent than, and in most ways far superior to, the deteriorated descendants of the early Andonic plainsmen; and the mingling of these Sangik tribes with the Neanderthal peoples led to the immediate improvement of the older race. It was this infusion of Sangik blood, more especially that of the blue man, which produced that marked improvement in the Neanderthal peoples exhibited by the successive waves of increasingly intelligent tribes that swept over Europe from the east.

P727:8, 64:7.11 During the following interglacial period this new Neanderthal race extended from England to India. The remnant of the blue race left in the old Persian peninsula later amalgamated with certain others, primarily the yellow; and the resultant blend, subsequently somewhat upstepped by the violet race, has persisted as the swarthy nomadic tribes of modern Arabs.

P728:2, 64:7.13 The violet races sought the northern or temperate climes, while the orange, green, and indigo races successively gravitated to Africa over the newly elevated land bridge which separated the westward retreating Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean.

P728:3, 64:7.14 The last of the Sangik peoples to migrate from their center of race origin was the indigo man. About the time the green man was killing off the orange race in Egypt and greatly weakening himself in so doing, the great black exodus started south through Palestine along the coast; and later, when these physically strong indigo peoples overran Egypt, they wiped the green man out of existence by sheer force of numbers. These indigo races absorbed the remnants of the orange man and much of the stock of the green man, and certain of the indigo tribes were considerably improved by this racial amalgamation.

P728:4, 64:7.15 And so it appears that Egypt was first dominated by the orange man, then by the green, followed by the indigo (black) man, and still later by a mongrel race of indigo, blue, and modified green men. The blue men of Europe and the mixed races of Arabia had driven the indigo race out of Egypt and far south on the African continent.

P728:5, 64:7.16 As the Sangik migrations draw to a close, the green and orange races are gone, the red man holds North America, the yellow man eastern Asia, the blue man Europe, and the indigo race has gravitated to Africa. India harbors a blend of the secondary Sangik races, and the brown man, a blend of the red and yellow, holds the islands off the Asiatic coast. An amalgamated race occupies the highlands of South America. The purer Andonites live in the extreme northern regions of Europe and in Iceland, Greenland, and northeastern North America.

P728:6, 64:7.17 During the periods of farthest glacial advance the westernmost of the Andon tribes came very near being driven into the sea. They lived for years on a narrow southern strip of the present island of England. And it was the tradition of these repeated glacial advances that drove them to take to the sea when the sixth and last glacier finally appeared. They were the first marine adventurers. They built boats and started in search of new lands that they hoped might be free from the terrifying ice invasions. And some of them reached Iceland, others Greenland, but the vast majority perished from hunger and thirst on the open sea.

P728:7, 64:7.18 A little more than eighty thousand years ago, shortly after the red man entered northwestern North America, the freezing over of the north seas and the advance of local ice fields on Greenland drove these Eskimo descendants of the aborigines to seek a better land, a new home; and they were successful, safely crossing the narrow straits which then separated Greenland from the northeastern land masses of North America. They reached the continent about twenty-two hundred years after the red man arrived in Alaska. Subsequently some of the mixed stock of the blue man journeyed westward and amalgamated with the later-day Eskimos, and this union was slightly beneficial to the Eskimo tribes.

P728:8, 64:7.19 About five thousand years ago a chance meeting occurred between an Indian tribe and a lone Eskimo group on the southeastern shores of Hudson Bay. These two tribes found it difficult to communicate with each other, but very soon they intermarried with the result that the more numerous red men eventually absorbed these Eskimos. And this represents the only contact of the North American red man with any other human stock down to about one thousand years ago, when the white man first chanced to land on the Atlantic coast.

P729:1, 64:7.20 The struggles of these early ages were characterized by courage, bravery, and even heroism. It is regrettable that so many of those sterling and rugged traits of our early ancestors have been lost to the later-day races. While we appreciate the value of many of the refinements of advancing civilization, we miss the magnificent persistency and superb devotion of our early ancestors, which oftentimes bordered on grandeur and sublimity.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29  
The Guides Of Evolution

P730:1, 65:0.1 Basic evolutionary material life – pre-mind life -- is the formulation of the Master Physical Guides and the life-impartation ministry of the Master Spirits in conjunction with the active ministration of the ordained Life Carriers. As a result of the co-ordinate function of this threefold creativity there develops organismal physical capacity for mind -- material mechanisms for intelligent reaction to external environmental stimuli and, later on, to internal stimuli, influences taking origin in the organismal mind itself.

P730:2, 65:0.2 There are, then, three distinct levels of life production and evolution:

  1. The physical-energy domain -- mind-capacity production.

  2. The mind ministry of the adjutant spirits -- impinging upon spirit capacity.

  3. The spirit endowment of mortal mind -- culminating in Thought Adjuster bestowal.

P730:6, 65:0.3 The mechanical-nonteachable levels of organismal environmental response are the domains of the physical controllers. The adjutant mind-spirits activate and regulate the adaptative or nonmechanical-teachable types of mind -- those response mechanisms of organisms capable of learning from experience. And as the spirit adjutants thus manipulate mind potentials, so do the Life Carriers exercise considerable discretionary control over the environmental aspects of evolutionary processes right up to the time of the appearance of human will -- the ability to know God and the power of choosing to worship him.

P730:7, 65:0.4 It is the integrated functioning of the Life Carriers, the physical guides, and the spirit adjutants that conditions the course of organic evolution on the inhabited worlds. And this is why evolution -- on Earth or elsewhere -- is always purposeful and never accidental.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29: Section 1.  
Life Carrier Functions

P730:8, 65:1.1 The Life Carriers are endowed with potentials of personality metamorphosis which but few orders of creatures possess. They are capable of functioning in three diverse phases of being. They ordinarily perform their duties as mid-phase beings, that being the state of their origin. But a Life Carrier in such a stage of existence could not possibly function in the electrochemical domains as a fabricator of physical energies and material particles into units of living existence.

P730:9, 65:1.2 Life Carriers are able to function and do function on the following three levels:

  1. The physical level of electrochemistry.

  2. The usual mid-phase of quasi-morontial existence.

  3. The advanced semi-spiritual level.

P731:1, 65:1.3 When the Life Carriers make ready to engage in life implantation, and after they have selected the sites for such an undertaking, they summon the archangel commission of Life Carrier transmutation. This group consists of ten orders of diverse personalities, including the physical controllers and their associates. When these beings are properly encircuited, they can effect such modifications in the Life Carriers as will enable them immediately to function on the physical levels of electrochemistry.

P731:2, 65:1.4 After the life patterns have been formulated and the material organizations have been duly completed, the supermaterial forces concerned in life propagation become forthwith active, and life is existent. Whereupon the Life Carriers are immediately returned to their normal mid-phase of personality existence, in which estate they can manipulate the living units and maneuver the evolving organisms, even though they are shorn of all ability to organize -- create -- new patterns of living matter.

P731:3, 65:1.5 After organic evolution has run a certain course and free will of the human type has appeared in the highest evolving organisms, the Life Carriers must either leave the planet or take renunciation vows; that is, they must pledge themselves to refrain from all attempts further to influence the course of organic evolution. Such vows are voluntarily taken by those Life Carriers who choose to remain on the planet as future advisers to those who shall be intrusted with the fostering of the newly evolved will creatures and forthwith these Life Carriers are transmuted to the third phase of personality existence -- the semi-spiritual level of being.

P731:4, 65:1.6 Life Carriers look forward to a time when the universe may be settled in light and life, to a possible fourth stage of being wherein they shall be wholly spiritual.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 29: Section 2.  
The Evolutionary Panorama

P731:5, 65:2.1 The story of man's ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind survival. Man's primordial ancestors were literally the slime and ooze of the ocean bed in the sluggish and warm-water bays and lagoons of the vast shorelines of the ancient inland seas, those very waters in which the Life Carriers established the three independent life implantations on Earth.

P731:6, 65:2.2 Very few species of the early types of marine vegetation that participated in those epochal changes which resulted in the animal-like borderland organisms are in existence today. The sponges are the survivors of one of these early midway types, those organisms through which the _gradual_ transition from the vegetable to the animal took place. These early transition forms, while not identical with modern sponges, were much like them; they were true borderline organisms -- neither vegetable nor animal -- but they eventually led to the development of the true animal forms of life.

P732:1, 65:2.3 The bacteria, simple vegetable organisms of a very primitive nature, are very little changed from the early dawn of life; they even exhibit a degree of retrogression in their parasitic behavior. Many of the fungi also represent a retrograde movement in evolution, being plants that have lost their chlorophyll-making ability and have become more or less parasitic. The majority of disease-causing bacteria and their auxiliary virus bodies really belong to this group of renegade parasitic fungi. During the intervening ages the entire vast kingdom of plant life has evolved from ancestors from which the bacteria have also descended.

P732:2, 65:2.4  The higher protozoan type of animal life soon appeared, and appeared _suddenly._ And from these far distant times the amoeba, the typical single-celled animal organism, has come on down but little modified. He disports himself today much as he did when he was the last and greatest achievement in life evolution. This minute creature and his protozoan cousins are to the animal creation what bacteria are to the plant kingdom; they represent the survival of the first early evolutionary steps in life differentiation together with _failure of subsequent development_.

P732:3, 65:2.5 Before long the early single-celled animal types associated themselves in communities, first on the plan of the Volvox and presently along the lines of the Hydra and jellyfish. Still later there evolved the starfish, stone lilies, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, centipedes, insects, spiders, crustaceans, and the closely related groups of earthworms and leeches, soon followed by the mollusks -- the oyster, octopus, and snail. Hundreds upon hundreds of species intervened and perished; mention is made only of those that survived the long, long struggle. Such non-progressive specimens, together with the later appearing fish family, today represent the stationary types of early and lower animals, branches of the tree of life which failed to progress.

P732:4, 65:2.6 The stage was thus set for the appearance of the first backboned animals, the fishes. From this fish family there sprang two unique modifications, the frog and the salamander. And it was the frog that began that series of progressive differentiations in animal life that finally culminated in man himself.

P732:5, 65:2.7 The frog is one of the earliest of surviving human-race ancestors, but it also failed to progress, persisting today much as in those remote times. The frog is the only species ancestor of the early dawn races now living on the face of the earth. The human race has no surviving ancestry between the frog and the Eskimo.

P732:6, 65:2.8 The frogs gave rise to the Reptilians, a great animal family which is virtually extinct, but which, before passing out of existence, gave origin to the whole bird family and the numerous orders of mammals.

P732:7, 65:2.9 Probably the greatest single leap of all prehuman evolution was executed when the reptile became a bird. The bird types of today -- eagles, ducks, pigeons, and ostriches -- all descended from the enormous reptiles of long, long ago.

P732:8, 65:2.10 The kingdom of reptiles, descended from the frog family, is today represented by four surviving divisions: two non-progressive, snakes and lizards, together with their cousins, alligators and turtles; one partially progressive, the bird family, and the fourth, the ancestors of mammals and the direct line of descent of the human species. But though long departed, the massiveness of the passing Reptilians found echo in the elephant and mastodon, while their peculiar forms were perpetuated in the leaping kangaroos.

P733:1, 65:2.11 Only fourteen phyla have appeared on Earth, the fishes being the last, and no new classes have developed since birds and mammals.

P733:2, 65:2.12 It was from an agile little reptilian dinosaur of carnivorous habits but having a comparatively large brain that the placental mammals _suddenly_ sprang. These mammals developed rapidly and in many different ways, not only giving rise to the common modern varieties but also evolving into marine types, such as whales and seals, and into air navigators like the bat family.

P733:3, 65:2.13 Man thus evolved from the higher mammals derived principally from the _western implantation_ of life in the ancient east-west sheltered seas. The _eastern_ and _central groups_ of living organisms were early progressing favorably toward the attainment of prehuman levels of animal existence. But as the ages passed, the eastern focus of life emplacement failed to attain a satisfactory level of intelligent prehuman status, having suffered such repeated and irretrievable losses of its highest types of germ plasm that it was forever shorn of the power to rehabilitate human potentialities.

P733:4, 65:2.14 Since the quality of the mind capacity for development in this eastern group was so definitely inferior to that of the other two groups, the Life Carriers, with the consent of their superiors, so manipulated the environment as further to circumscribe these inferior prehuman strains of evolving life. To all outward appearances the elimination of these inferior groups of creatures was accidental, but in reality it was altogether purposeful.

P733:5, 65:2.15 Later in the evolutionary unfolding of intelligence, the lemur ancestors of the human species were far more advanced in North America than in other regions; and they were therefore led to migrate from the arena of western life implantation over the Bering land bridge and down the coast to southwestern Asia, where they continued to evolve and to benefit by the addition of certain strains of the central life group. Man thus evolved out of certain western and central life strains but in the central to near-eastern regions.

P733:6, 65:2.16 In this way the life that was planted on Earth evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and began his eventful planetary career. And this appearance of primitive man on earth during the ice age was not just an accident; it was by design. The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous survival endowment.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29: Section 3.  
The Fostering Of Evolution

P733:7, 65:3.1 It will hardly be possible to explain to the present-day human mind many of the queer and apparently grotesque occurrences of early evolutionary progress. A purposeful plan was functioning throughout all of these seemingly strange evolutions of living things, but we are not allowed arbitrarily to interfere with the development of the life patterns after they have once been set in operation.

P733:8, 65:3.2 Life Carriers may employ every possible natural resource and may utilize any and all fortuitous circumstances which will enhance the developmental progress of the life experiment, but we are not permitted mechanically to intervene in, or arbitrarily to manipulate the conduct and course of, either plant or animal evolution.

P733:9, 65:3.3 You have been informed that Earth mortals evolved by way of primitive frog development, and that this ascending strain, carried in potential in a single frog, narrowly escaped extinction on a certain occasion. But it should not be inferred that the evolution of mankind would have been terminated by an accident at this juncture. At that very moment we were observing and fostering no less than one thousand different and remotely situated mutating strains of life that could have been directed into various different patterns of prehuman development. This particular ancestral frog represented our third selection, the two prior life strains having perished in spite of all our efforts toward their conservation.

P734:1, 65:3.4 Even the loss of Andon and Eva before they had offspring, though delaying human evolution, would not have prevented it. Subsequent to the appearance of Andon and Eva and before the mutating human potentials of animal life were exhausted, there evolved no less than seven thousand favorable strains which could have achieved some sort of human type of development. And the various branches of the expanding human species subsequently assimilated many of these better stocks.

P734:2, 65:3.5 Long before the biologic uplifters arrive on a planet the human potentials of the evolving animal species have been exhausted. This biologic status of animal life is disclosed to the Life Carriers by the phenomenon of the third phase of adjutant spirit mobilization, which automatically occurs concomitantly with the exhaustion of the capacity of all animal life to give origin to the mutant potentials of prehuman individuals.

P734:3, 65:3.6 Mankind on Earth must solve its problems of mortal development with the human stocks it has -- no more races will evolve from prehuman sources throughout all future time. But this fact does not preclude the possibility of the attainment of vastly higher levels of human development through the intelligent fostering of the evolutionary potentials still resident in the mortal races. That which the Life Carriers do toward fostering and conserving the life strains before the appearance of human will, man must do for himself after such an event and subsequent to our retirement from active participation in evolution. In a general way, man's evolutionary destiny is in his own hands, and scientific intelligence must sooner or later supersede the random functioning of uncontrolled natural selection and chance survival.

P734:4, 65:3.7 And in discussing the fostering of evolution, it would not be amiss to point out that, in the long future ahead, when you may sometime be attached to a corps of Life Carriers, you will have abundant and ample opportunity to offer suggestions and make any possible improvements in the plans and technique of life management and transplantation. Be patient! If you have good ideas, if your minds are fertile with better methods of administration for any part of the universal domains, you are certainly going to have an opportunity to present them to your associates and fellow administrators in the ages to come.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29: Section 4.  
The Earth Adventure

P734:5, 65:4.1 Do not overlook the fact that Earth was assigned to Life Carriers as a life-experiment world. On this planet we made our sixtieth attempt to modify and, if possible, improve the adaptation of the Nebadon life designs, and it is of record that we achieved numerous beneficial modifications of the standard life patterns. To be specific, on Earth we worked out and have satisfactorily demonstrated not less than twenty-eight features of life modification which will be of service to all Nebadon throughout all future time.

P735:1, 65:4.2 But the establishment of life on no world is ever experimental in the sense that something untried and unknown is attempted. The evolution of life is a technique ever progressive, differential, and variable, but never haphazard, uncontrolled, nor wholly experimental, in the accidental sense.

P735:2, 65:4.3 Many features of human life afford abundant evidence that the phenomenon of mortal existence was intelligently planned, that organic evolution is not a mere cosmic accident. When a living cell is injured, it possesses the ability to elaborate certain chemical substances which are empowered so to stimulate and activate the neighboring normal cells that they immediately begin the secretion of certain substances which facilitate healing processes in the wound; and at the same time these normal and uninjured cells begin to proliferate -- they actually start to work creating new cells to replace any fellow cells which may have been destroyed by the accident.

P735:3, 65:4.4 This chemical action and reaction concerned in wound healing and cell reproduction represents the choice of the Life Carriers of a formula embracing over one hundred thousand phases and features of possible chemical reactions and biologic repercussions. More than half a million specific experiments were made by the Life Carriers in their laboratories before they finally settled upon this formula for the Earth life experiment.

P735:4, 65:4.5 When Earth scientists know more of these healing chemicals, they will become more efficient in the treatment of injuries, and indirectly they will know more about controlling certain serious diseases.

P735:5, 65:4.6 Since life was established on Earth, the Life Carriers have improved this healing technique as it has been introduced on other worlds, in that it affords more pain relief and exercises better control over the proliferation capacity of the associated normal cells.

P735:6, 65:4.7 There were many unique features of the Earth life experiment, but the two outstanding episodes were the appearance of the Andonic race prior to the evolution of the six peoples of color and the later simultaneous appearance of the Sangik mutants in a single family. Earth is the first world where the six colored races sprang from the same human family. They ordinarily arise in diversified strains from independent mutations within the prehuman animal stock and usually appear on earth one at a time and successively over long periods of time, beginning with the red man and passing on down through the colors to indigo.

P735:8, 65:4.9 Earth, having been designated a life-modification planet, it was by pre-agreement that observers were sent as advisers to the Life Carriers and as overseers of the planet. Then decisions were made that enabled Thought Adjusters to indwell their mortal minds.

P736:1, 65:4.10 On Earth the endeavors of the Life Carriers to improve the life patterns necessarily resulted in the production of many apparently useless forms of transition life. But the gains already accrued are sufficient to justify the Earth modifications of the standard life designs.

P736:2, 65:4.11 It was our intention to produce an early manifestation of will in the evolutionary life of Earth, and we succeeded. Ordinarily, will does not emerge until the races of color have long been in existence. Your world is the only planet where the human type of will has appeared in a pre-colored race.

P736:3, 65:4.12 But in our effort to provide for that combination and association of inheritance factors which finally gave rise to the mammalian ancestors of the human race, we were confronted with the necessity of permitting hundreds and thousands of other and comparatively useless combinations and associations of inheritance factors to take place. Many of these seemingly strange by-products of our efforts are certain to meet your gaze as you dig back into the planetary past, and we can well understand how puzzling some of these things must be to the human viewpoint.

The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29: Section 5.  
Life-Evolution Vicissitudes

P736:5, 65:5.2 Throughout all of the biologic adventures on Earth, our greatest disappointment grew out of the reversion of certain primitive plant life to the pre-chlorophyll levels of parasitic bacteria on such an extensive and unexpected scale. This eventuality in plant-life evolution caused many distressful diseases in the higher mammals, particularly in the more vulnerable human species. When we were confronted with this perplexing situation, we somewhat discounted the difficulties involved because we knew that the subsequent admixture of life plasm would so reinforce the resisting powers of the resulting blended race as to make it practically immune to all diseases produced by the vegetable type of organism.

P736:6, 65:5.3 The universe, including this small world called Earth, is not being managed merely to meet our approval nor just to suit our convenience, much less to gratify our whims and satisfy our curiosity. The wise and all-powerful beings who are responsible for universe management undoubtedly know exactly what they are about; and so it becomes Life Carriers and behooves mortal minds to enlist in patient waiting and hearty co-operation with the rule of wisdom and the march of progress.

P736:7, 65:5.4 There are, of course, certain compensations for tribulation. But irrespective of all such considerations, the later celestial supervisors of this planet express complete confidence in the ultimate evolutionary triumph of the human race and in the eventual vindication of our original plans and life patterns.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 29: Section 6.  
Evolutionary Techniques Of Life

P737:1, 65:6.1 It is impossible accurately to determine, simultaneously, the exact location and the velocity of a moving object; any attempt at measurement of either inevitably involves change in the other. The same sort of a paradox confronts mortal man when he undertakes the chemical analysis of protoplasm. The chemist can elucidate the chemistry of _dead_ protoplasm, but he cannot discern either the physical organization or the dynamic performance of _living_ protoplasm. Ever will the scientist come nearer and nearer the secrets of life, but never will he find them and for no other reason than that he must kill protoplasm in order to analyze it. Dead protoplasm weighs the same as living protoplasm, but it is not the same.

P737:2, 65:6.2 There is original endowment of adaptation in living things and beings. In every _living_ plant or animal cell, in every _living_ organism -- material or spiritual -- there is an insatiable craving for the attainment of ever-increasing perfection of environmental adjustment, organismal adaptation, and augmented life realization. These interminable efforts of all living things evidence the existence within them of an innate striving for perfection.

P737:3, 65:6.3 The most important step in plant evolution was the development of chlorophyll-making ability, and the second greatest advance was the evolution of the spore into the complex seed. The spore is most efficient as a reproductive agent, but it lacks the potentials of variety and versatility inherent in the seed.

P737:4, 65:6.4 One of the most serviceable and complex episodes in the evolution of the higher types of animals consisted in the development of the ability of the iron in the circulating blood cells to perform in the double role of oxygen carrier and carbon dioxide remover. And this performance of the red blood cells illustrates how evolving organisms are able to adapt their functions to varying or changing environment. The higher animals, including man, oxygenate their tissues by the action of the iron of the red blood cells, which carries oxygen to the living cells and just as efficiently removes the carbon dioxide. But other metals can be made to serve the same purpose. The cuttlefish employs copper for this function, and the sea squirt utilizes vanadium.

P737:5, 65:6.5 The continuation of such biologic adjustments is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these attained to thirty-six in man's remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative readjustment toward thirty-two in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the human species is slowly gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of evolution is still active and adaptative in progress on this planet.

P737:6, 65:6.6 But many seemingly mysterious adjustments of living organisms are purely chemical, wholly physical. At any moment of time, in the blood stream of any human being there exists the possibility of upward of 15,000,000 chemical reactions between the hormone output of a dozen ductless glands.

P737:7, 65:6.7 The lower forms of plant life are wholly responsive to physical, chemical, and electrical environment. But as the scale of life ascends, one by one the mind ministries of the adjutant spirits become operative, and the mind becomes increasingly adjustive, creative, coordinative, and dominative. The ability of animals to adapt themselves to air, water, and land is not a supernatural endowment, but it is a superphysical adjustment.

P738:1, 65:6.8 Physics and chemistry alone cannot explain how a human being evolved out of the primeval protoplasm of the early seas. The ability to learn, memory and differential response to environment, is the endowment of mind. The laws of physics are not responsive to training; they are immutable and unchanging. The reactions of chemistry are not modified by education; they are uniform and dependable. Aside from the presence of the Unqualified Absolute, electrical and chemical reactions are predictable. But mind can profit from experience, can learn from reactive habits of behavior in response to repetition of stimuli.

P738:2, 65:6.9 Pre-intelligent organisms react to environmental stimuli, but those organisms which are reactive to mind ministry can adjust and manipulate the environment itself.

P738:3, 65:6.10 The physical brain with its associated nervous system possesses innate capacity for response to mind ministry just as the developing mind of a personality possesses a certain innate capacity for spirit receptivity and therefore contains the potentials of spiritual progress and attainment. Intellectual, social, moral, and spiritual evolution are dependent on the mind ministry of the seven adjutant spirits and their superphysical associates.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29: Section 7.  
Evolutionary Mind Levels

P738:4, 65:7.1 The seven adjutant mind-spirits are the versatile mind ministers to the lower intelligent existences of a local universe. This order of mind is ministered from the local universe headquarters or from some world connected therewith, but there is influential direction of lower-mind function from the system capitals.

P738:5, 65:7.2 On an evolutionary world much, very much, depends on the work of these seven adjutants. But they are mind ministers; they are not concerned in physical evolution, the domain of the Life Carriers. Nevertheless, the perfect integration of these spirit endowments with the ordained and natural procedure of the unfolding and inherent regime of the Life Carriers is responsible for the mortal inability to discern, in the phenomenon of mind, aught but the hand of nature and the outworking of natural processes, albeit you are occasionally somewhat perplexed in explaining all of everything connected with the natural reactions of mind as it is associated with matter. And if Urantia were operating more in accordance with the original plans, you would observe even less to arrest your attention in the phenomenon of mind.

P738:6, 65:7.3 The seven adjutant spirits are more circuit-like than entity-like, and on ordinary worlds they are encircuited with other adjutant functioning throughout the local universe. On life-experiment planets, however, they are relatively isolated. And on Earth, owing to the unique nature of the life patterns, the lower adjutants experienced far more difficulty in contacting with the evolutionary organisms than would have been the case in a more standardized type of life endowment.

P738:7, 65:7.4 Again, on an average evolutionary world the seven adjutant spirits are far better synchronized with the advancing stages of animal development than they were on Earth. With but a single exception, the adjutants experienced the greatest difficulty in contacting with the evolving minds of Earth organisms that they had ever had in all their functioning throughout the universe of Nebadon. On this world there developed many forms of border phenomena -- confusional combinations of the mechanical-nonteachable and the nonmechanical-teachable types of organismal response.

P739:1, 65:7.5 The seven adjutant spirits do not make contact with the purely mechanical orders of organismal environmental response. Such pre-intelligent responses of living organisms pertain purely to the energy domains of the power centers, the physical controllers, and their associates.

P739:2, 65:7.6 The acquisition of the potential of the ability to _learn_ from experience marks the beginning of the functioning of the adjutant spirits, and they function from the lowliest minds of primitive and invisible existences up to the highest types in the evolutionary scale of human beings. They are the source and pattern for the otherwise more or less mysterious behavior and incompletely understood quick reactions of mind to the material environment. Long must these faithful and always dependable influences carry forward their preliminary ministry before the animal mind attains the human levels of spirit receptivity.

P739:3, 65:7.7 The adjutants function exclusively in the evolution of experiencing mind up to the level of the sixth phase, the spirit of worship. At this level there occurs that inevitable overlapping of ministry -- the phenomenon of the higher reaching down to co-ordinate with the lower in anticipation of subsequent attainment of advanced levels of development. And still additional spirit ministry accompanies the action of the seventh and last adjutant, the spirit of wisdom. Throughout the ministry of the spirit world the individual never experiences abrupt transitions of spirit co-operation; always are these changes gradual and reciprocal.

P739:4, 65:7.8 Always should the domains of the physical (electrochemical) and the mental response to environmental stimuli be differentiated, and in turn must they all be recognized as phenomena apart from spiritual activities. The domains of physical, mental, and spiritual gravity are distinct realms of cosmic reality, notwithstanding their intimate interrelations.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 29: Section 8.  
Evolution In Time And Space

P739:5, 65:8.1 Time and space are indissolubly linked; there is an innate association. The delays of time are inevitable in the presence of certain space conditions.

P739:6, 65:8.2 If spending so much time in effecting the evolutionary changes of life development occasions perplexity, we cannot time the life processes to unfold any faster than the physical metamorphoses of a planet will permit. We must wait upon the natural, physical development of a planet; we have absolutely no control over geologic evolution. If the physical conditions would allow, we could arrange for the completed evolution of life in considerably less than one million years. But we are all under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Rulers of Paradise, and time is nonexistent on Paradise.  
P739:7, 65:8.3 The individual's yardstick for time measurement is the length of his life. All creatures are thus time conditioned, and therefore do they regard evolution as being a long-drawn-out process. To those of us whose life span is not limited by a temporal existence, evolution does not seem to be such a protracted transaction. On Paradise, where time is nonexistent, these things are all _present_ in the mind of Infinity and the acts of Eternity.

P739:8, 65:8.4 As mind evolution is dependent on, and delayed by, the slow development of physical conditions, so is spiritual progress dependent on mental expansion and unfailingly delayed by intellectual retardation. But this does not mean that spiritual evolution is dependent on education, culture, or wisdom. The soul may evolve regardless of mental culture but not in the absence of mental capacity and desire -- the choice of survival and the decision to achieve ever-increasing perfection -- to please the Father in heaven. Although survival may not depend on the possession of knowledge and wisdom, progression most certainly does.

P740:1, 65:8.5 In the cosmic evolutionary laboratories mind is always dominant over matter, and spirit is ever correlated with mind. Failure of these diverse endowments to synchronize and co-ordinate may cause time delays, but if the individual really knows God and desires to find him and become like him, then survival is assured regardless of the handicaps of time. Physical status may handicap mind, and mental perversity may delay spiritual attainment, but none of these obstacles can defeat the whole-souled choice of will.

P740:2, 65:8.6 When physical conditions are ripe, _sudden_ mental evolutions take place; when mind status is propitious, _sudden_ spiritual transformations may occur; when spiritual values receive proper recognition, then cosmic meanings become discernible, and increasingly the personality is released from the handicaps of time and delivered from the limitations of space.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 30  
The Dawn Of Civilization

P763:1, 68:0.1 This is the beginning of the narrative of the long, long forward struggle of the human species from a status that was little better than an animal existence, through the intervening ages, and down to the later times when a real, though imperfect, civilization had evolved among the higher races of mankind.

P763:2, 68:0.2 Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment of culture, while each succeeding generation of youth must receive anew its education. The superior qualities of civilization -- scientific, philosophic, and religious -- are not transmitted from one generation to another by direct inheritance. These cultural achievements are preserved only by the enlightened conservation of social inheritance.

P763:3, 68:0.3 Social evolution of the co-operative order was initiated by the Dalamatia teachers, and for three hundred thousand years mankind was nurtured in the idea of group activities. The blue man most of all profited by these early social teachings and the red man and the black man to a slightly lesser extent. In more recent times the yellow race and the white race have presented the most advanced social development on Earth.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 30: Section 1.  
Protective Socialization

P763:4, 68:1.1 When brought closely together, men often learn to like one another, but primitive man was not naturally overflowing with the spirit of brotherly feeling and the desire for social contact with his fellows. Rather did the early races learn by sad experience that "in union there is strength"; and it is this lack of natural brotherly attraction that now stands in the way of immediate realization of the brotherhood of man on Earth.

P763:5, 68:1.2 Association early became the price of survival. The lone man was helpless unless he bore a tribal mark which testified that he belonged to a group which would certainly avenge any assault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fatal to go abroad alone without some mark of group association. Civilization has become man's insurance against violent death, while the premiums are paid by submission to society's numerous law demands.

P763:6, 68:1.3 Primitive society was thus founded on the reciprocity of necessity and on the enhanced safety of association. And human society has evolved in agelong cycles as a result of this isolation fear and by means of reluctant co-operation.

P763:7, 68:1.4 Primitive human beings early learned that groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their individual units. One hundred men united and working in unison can move a great stone; a score of well-trained guardians of the peace can restrain an angry mob. And so society was born, not of mere association of numbers, but rather as a result of the _organization_ of intelligent co-operators. But co-operation is not a natural trait of man; he learns to co-operate first through fear and then later because he discovers it is most beneficial in meeting the difficulties of time and guarding against the supposed perils of eternity.

P764:1, 68:1.5 The peoples who thus early organized themselves into a primitive society became more successful in their attacks on nature as well as in defense against their fellows; they possessed greater survival possibilities; hence has civilization steadily progressed on Earth, notwithstanding its many setbacks. And it is only because of the enhancement of survival value in association that man's many blunders have thus far failed to stop or destroy human civilization.

P764:2, 68:1.6 Among uncivilized peoples it may still be observed something of the early group hostility, personal suspicion, and other highly antisocial traits which were so characteristic of all primitive races. These remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the natural individualistic tendency of man cannot successfully compete with the more potent and powerful organizations and associations of social progression. These suspicious antisocial races that speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles illustrate what a world you might now be living in but for the combined teaching of racial uplifters.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 30: Section 2.  
Factors In Social Progression

P764:4, 68:2.1 Civilized society is the result of man's early efforts to overcome his dislike of _isolation._ But this does not necessarily signify mutual affection, and the present turbulent state of certain primitive groups well illustrates what the early tribes came up through. But though the individuals of a civilization may collide with each other and struggle against one another, and though civilization itself may appear to be an inconsistent mass of striving and struggling, it does evidence earnest striving, not the deadly monotony of stagnation.

P764:5, 68:2.2 While the level of intelligence has contributed considerably to the rate of cultural progress, society is essentially designed to lessen the risk element in the individual's mode of living, and it has progressed just as fast as it has succeeded in lessening pain and increasing the pleasure element in life. Thus does the whole social body push on slowly toward the goal of destiny -- extinction or survival -- depending on whether that goal is self-maintenance or self-gratification. Self-maintenance originates society, while excessive self-gratification destroys civilization.

P764:6, 68:2.3 Society is concerned with self-perpetuation, self-maintenance, and self-gratification, but human self-realization is worthy of becoming the immediate goal of many cultural groups.

P765:1, 68:2.4 The herd instinct in natural man is hardly sufficient to account for the development of such a social organization. Though this innate gregarious propensity lies at the bottom of human society, much of man's sociability is an acquirement. Two great influences which contributed to the early association of human beings were food hunger and sex love; these instinctive urges man shares with the animal world. Two other emotions which drove human beings together and _held_ them together were vanity and fear, more particularly ghost fear.

P765:2, 68:2.5 History is but the record of man's agelong food struggle. _Primitive man only thought when he was hungry;_ food saving was his first self-denial, self-discipline. With the growth of society, food hunger ceased to be the only incentive for mutual association. Numerous other sorts of hunger, the realization of various needs, all led to the closer association of mankind. But today society is top-heavy with the overgrowth of supposed human needs. Occidental civilization of the twentieth-first century groans wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the inordinate multiplication of human desires and longings. Modern society is enduring the strain of one of its most dangerous phases of far-flung interassociation and highly complicated interdependence.

P765:3, 68:2.6 Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were continuous in their social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and spasmodic. The sex urge alone did not impel primitive men and women to assume the heavy burdens of home maintenance. The early home was founded upon the sex restlessness of the male when deprived of frequent gratification and upon that devoted mother love of the human female, which in measure she shares with the females of all the higher animals. The presence of a helpless baby determined the early differentiation of male and female activities; the woman had to maintain a settled residence where she could cultivate the soil. And from earliest times, where woman was has always been regarded as the home.

P765:4, 68:2.7 Woman thus early became indispensable to the evolving social scheme, not so much because of the fleeting sex passion as in consequence of _food requirement;_ she was an essential partner in self-maintenance. She was a food provider, a beast of burden, and a companion who would stand great abuse without violent resentment, and in addition to all of these desirable traits, she was an ever-present means of sex gratification.

P765:5, 68:2.8 Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family. The family was the first successful peace group, the man and woman learning how to adjust their antagonisms while at the same time teaching the pursuits of peace to their children.

P765:6, 68:2.9 The function of marriage in evolution is the insurance of race survival, not merely the realization of personal happiness; self-maintenance and self-perpetuation are the real objects of the home. Self-gratification is incidental and not essential except as an incentive insuring sex association. Nature demands survival, but the arts of civilization continue to increase the pleasures of marriage and the satisfactions of family life.

P765:7, 68:2.10 If vanity be enlarged to cover pride, ambition, and honor, then we may discern not only how these propensities contribute to the formation of human associations, but how they also hold men together, since such emotions are futile without an audience to parade before. Soon vanity associated with itself other emotions and impulses which required a social arena wherein they might exhibit and gratify themselves. This group of emotions gave origin to the early beginnings of all art, ceremonial, and all forms of sportive games and contests.

P766:1, 68:2.11 Vanity contributed mightily to the birth of society; but at the time of these revelations the devious strivings of a vainglorious generation threaten to swamp and submerge the whole complicated structure of a highly specialized civilization. Pleasure-want has long since superseded hunger-want; the legitimate social aims of self-maintenance are rapidly translating themselves into base and threatening forms of self-gratification. Self-maintenance builds society; unbridled self-gratification unfailingly destroys civilization.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 30: Section 3.  
Evolution Of The Mores

P767:1, 68:4.1 All modern social institutions arise from the evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions -- mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble origin.

P767:2, 68:4.2 It must be borne in mind that the mores originated in an effort to adjust group living to the conditions of mass existence; the mores were man's first social institution. And all of these tribal reactions grew out of the effort to avoid pain and humiliation while at the same time seeking to enjoy pleasure and power. The origin of folkways, like the origin of languages, is always unconscious and unintentional and therefore always shrouded in mystery.

P767:3, 68:4.3 Ghost fear drove primitive man to envision the supernatural and thus securely laid the foundations for those powerful social influences of ethics and religion which in turn preserved inviolate the mores and customs of society from generation to generation. The one thing which early established and crystallized the mores was the belief that the dead were jealous of the ways by which they had lived and died; therefore would they visit dire punishment upon those living mortals who dared to treat with careless disdain the rules of living which they had honored when in the flesh. Later developing primitive religion greatly reinforced ghost fear in stabilizing the mores, but advancing civilization has increasingly liberated mankind from the bondage of fear and the slavery of superstition.

P767:4, 68:4.4 Prior to the liberating and liberalizing instruction of the Dalamatia teachers, ancient man was held a helpless victim of the ritual of the mores; the primitive savage was hedged about by an endless ceremonial. Everything he did from the time of awakening in the morning to the moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just so -- in accordance with the folkways of the tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of usage; his life contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original. There was no natural progress toward a higher mental, moral, or social existence.

P767:5, 68:4.5 Early man was mightily gripped by custom; the savage was a veritable slave to usage; but there have arisen ever and anon those variations from type who have dared to inaugurate new ways of thinking and improved methods of living. Nevertheless, the inertia of primitive man constitutes the biologic safety brake against precipitation too suddenly into the ruinous maladjustment of a too rapidly advancing civilization.

P767:6, 68:4.6 But these customs are not an unmitigated evil; their evolution should continue. It is nearly fatal to the continuance of civilization to undertake their wholesale modification by radical revolution. Custom has been the thread of continuity which has held civilization together. The path of human history is strewn with the remnants of discarded customs and obsolete social practices; but no civilization has endured which abandoned its mores except for the adoption of better and more fit customs.

P767:7, 68:4.7 The survival of a society depends chiefly on the progressive evolution of its mores. The process of custom evolution grows out of the desire for experimentation; new ideas are put forward -- competition ensues. A progressing civilization embraces the progressive idea and endures; time and circumstance finally select the fitter group for survival. But this does not mean that each separate and isolated change in the composition of human society has been for the better. No! indeed no! for there have been many, many retrogressions in the long forward struggle of Earth civilization.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 30: Section 4.  
Land Techniques -- Maintenance Arts

P768:1, 68:5.1 Land is the stage of society; men are the actors. And man must ever adjust his performances to conform to the land situation. The evolution of the mores is always dependent on the land-man ratio. This is true notwithstanding the difficulty of its discernment. Man's land technique, or maintenance arts, plus his standards of living, equal the sum total of the folkways, the mores. And the sum of man's adjustment to the life demands equals his cultural civilization.

P768:2, 68:5.2 The earliest human cultures arose along the rivers of the Eastern Hemisphere, and there were four great steps in the forward march of civilization. They were:

P768:3, 68:5.3 1. _The collection stage._ Food coercion, hunger, led to the first form of industrial organization, the primitive food-gathering lines. Sometimes such a line of hunger march would be ten miles long as it passed over the land gleaning food. This was the primitive nomadic stage of culture and is the mode of life now followed by the African Bushmen.

P768:4, 68:5.4 2. _The hunting stage._ The invention of weapon tools enabled man to become a hunter and thus to gain considerable freedom from food slavery. A thoughtful Andonite who had severely bruised his fist in a serious combat rediscovered the idea of using a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made independent discoveries of this sort, and these various forms of hammers represented one of the great forward steps in human civilization.

P768:5, 68:5.5 The blue men became expert hunters and trappers; by fencing the rivers they caught fish in great numbers, drying the surplus for winter use. Many forms of ingenious snares and traps were employed in catching game, but the more primitive races did not hunt the larger animals.

P768:6, 68:5.6 3. _The pastoral stage._ This phase of civilization was made possible by the domestication of animals. The Arabs and the natives of Africa are among the more recent pastoral peoples.

P768:7, 68:5.7 Pastoral living afforded further relief from food slavery; man learned to live on the interest of his capital, the increase in his flocks; and this provided more leisure for culture and progress.

P768:8, 68:5.8 Pre-pastoral society was one of sex co-operation, but the spread of animal husbandry reduced women to the depths of social slavery. In earlier times it was man's duty to secure the animal food, woman's business to provide the vegetable edibles. Therefore, when man entered the pastoral era of his existence, woman's dignity fell greatly. She toiled to produce the vegetable necessities of life, whereas the man needed only go to his herds to provide an abundance of animal food. Man thus became relatively independent of woman; throughout the entire pastoral age woman's status steadily declined. By the close of this era she had become scarcely more than a human animal, consigned to work and to bear human offspring, much as the animals of the herd were expected to labor and bring forth young. The men of the pastoral ages had great love for their cattle; all the more pity they could not have developed a deeper affection for their wives.

P769:1, 68:5.9 4. _The agricultural stage._ This era was brought about by the domestication of plants, and it represents the highest type of material civilization. Gardening was an advanced culture in those days. The growing of plants exerts an ennobling influence on all races of mankind.

P769:2, 68:5.10 Agriculture more than quadrupled the land-man ratio of the world. It may be combined with the pastoral pursuits of the former cultural stage. When the three stages overlap, men hunt and women till the soil.

P769:3, 68:5.11 There has always been friction between the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were militant, warlike; the agriculturist is a more peace-loving type. Association with animals suggests struggle and force; association with plants instills patience, quiet, and peace. Agriculture and industrialism are the activities of peace. But the weakness of both, as world social activities, is that they lack excitement and adventure.

P769:4, 68:5.12 Human society has evolved from the hunting stage through that of the herders to the territorial stage of agriculture. And each stage of this progressive civilization was accompanied by less and less of nomadism; more and more man began to live at home.

P769:5, 68:5.13 And now is industry supplementing agriculture, with consequently increased urbanization and multiplication of nonagricultural groups of citizenship classes. But an industrial era cannot hope to survive if its leaders fail to recognize that even the highest social developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural basis.

Part III. The History Of Earth

Chapter 30: Section 5.  
Evolution Of Culture

P769:6, 68:6.1 Man is a creature of the soil, a child of nature; no matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land, in the last reckoning he is certain to fail. "Dust you are and to dust shall you return" is literally true of all mankind. The basic struggle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land. The first social associations of primitive human beings were for the purpose of winning these land struggles. The land-man ratio underlies all social civilization.

P769:7, 68:6.2 Man's intelligence, by means of the arts and sciences, increased the land yield; at the same time the natural increase in offspring was somewhat brought under control, and thus was provided the sustenance and leisure to build a cultural civilization.

P769:8, 68:6.3 Human society is controlled by a law which decrees that the population must vary directly in accordance with the land arts and inversely with a given standard of living. Throughout these early ages, even more than at present, the law of supply and demand as concerned men and land determined the estimated value of both. During the times of plentiful land -- unoccupied territory -- the need for men was great, and therefore the value of human life was much enhanced; hence the loss of life was more horrifying. During periods of land scarcity and associated overpopulation, human life became comparatively cheapened so that war, famine, and pestilence were regarded with less concern.

P770:1, 68:6.4 When the land yield is reduced or the population is increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the very worst traits of human nature are brought to the surface. The improvement of the land yield, the extension of the mechanical arts, and the reduction of population all tend to foster the development of the better side of human nature.

P770:2, 68:6.5 Frontier society develops the unskilled side of humanity; the fine arts and true scientific progress, together with spiritual culture, have all thrived best in the larger centers of life when supported by an agricultural and industrial population slightly under the land-man ratio. Cities always multiply the power of their inhabitants for either good or evil.

P770:3, 68:6.6 The size of the family has always been influenced by the standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller the family, up to the point of established status or gradual extinction.

P770:4, 68:6.7 All down through the ages the standards of living have determined the quality of a surviving population in contrast with mere quantity. Local class standards of living give origin to new social castes, new mores. When standards of living become too complicated or too highly luxurious, they speedily become suicidal. Caste is the direct result of the high social pressure of keen competition produced by dense populations.

P770:5, 68:6.8 The early races often resorted to practices designed to restrict population; all primitive tribes killed deformed and sickly children. Girl babies were frequently killed before the times of wife purchase. Children were sometimes strangled at birth, but the favorite method was exposure. The father of twins usually insisted that one be killed since multiple births were believed to be caused either by magic or by infidelity. As a rule, however, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh universal, they were never a part of the Andonite mores; these peoples always regarded twins as omens of good luck.

P770:6, 68:6.9 Many races learned the technique of abortion, and this practice became very common after the establishment of the taboo on childbirth among the unmarried. It was long the custom for a maiden to kill her offspring, but among more civilized groups these illegitimate children became the wards of the girl's mother. Many primitive clans were virtually exterminated by the practice of both abortion and infanticide. But regardless of the dictates of the mores, very few children were ever destroyed after having once been suckled -- maternal affection is too strong.

P770:7, 68:6.10 Even in the twentieth century there were remnants of these primitive population controls. There was a tribe in Australia whose mothers refuse to rear more than two or three children. Not long since, one cannibalistic tribe ate every fifth child born. In Madagascar some tribes destroyed all children born on certain unlucky days, resulting in the death of about twenty-five per cent of all babies.

P770:8, 68:6.11 From a world standpoint, overpopulation has never been a serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and science increasingly controls human diseases, it may become a serious problem in the near future. At such a time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The subnormal man should be kept under society's control; no more should be produced than are required to administer the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31  
Primitive Human Institutions

P772:1, 69:0.1 Emotionally, man transcends his animal ancestors in his ability to appreciate humor, art, and religion. Socially, man exhibits his superiority in that he is a toolmaker, a communicator, and an institution builder.

P772:2, 69:0.2 When human beings long maintain social groups, such aggregations always result in the creation of certain activity trends which culminate in institutionalization. Most of man's institutions have proved to be laborsaving while at the same time contributing something to the enhancement of group security.

P772:3, 69:0.3 Civilized man takes great pride in the character, stability, and continuity of his established institutions, but all human institutions are merely the accumulated mores of the past as they have been conserved by taboos and dignified by religion. Such legacies become traditions, and traditions ultimately metamorphose into conventions.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31: Section 1.  
Basic Human Institutions

P772:4, 69:1.1 All human institutions minister to some social need, past or present, notwithstanding that their overdevelopment unfailingly detracts from the worth-whileness of the individual in that personality is overshadowed and initiative is diminished. Man should control his institutions rather than permit himself to be dominated by these creations of advancing civilization.

P772:5, 69:1.2 Human institutions are of three general classes:

P772:6, 69:1.3 1. _The institutions of self-maintenance._ These institutions embrace those practices growing out of food hunger and its associated instincts of self-preservation. They include industry, property, war for gain, and all the regulative machinery of society. Sooner or later the fear instinct fosters the establishment of these institutions of survival by means of taboo, convention, and religious sanction. But fear, ignorance, and superstition have played a prominent part in the early origin and subsequent development of all human institutions.

P772:7, 69:1.4 2. _The institutions of self-perpetuation._ These are the establishments of society growing out of sex hunger, maternal instinct, and the higher tender emotions of the races. They embrace the social safeguards of the home and the school, of family life, education, ethics, and religion. They include marriage customs, war for defense, and home building.

P772:8, 69:1.5 3. _The institutions of self-gratification._ These are the practices growing out of vanity proclivities and pride emotions; and they embrace customs in dress and personal adornment, social usages, war for glory, dancing, amusement, games, and other phases of sensual gratification. But civilization has never evolved distinctive institutions of self-gratification.

P773:1, 69:1.6 These three groups of social practices are intimately interrelated and minutely interdependent the one upon the other. On Earth they represent a complex organization which functions as a single social mechanism.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 31: Section 2.  
The Dawn Of Industry

P773:2, 69:2.1 Primitive industry slowly grew up as an insurance against the terrors of famine. Early in his existence man began to draw lessons from some of the animals that, during a harvest of plenty, store up food against the days of scarcity.

P773:3, 69:2.2 Before the dawn of early frugality and primitive industry the lot of the average tribe was one of destitution and real suffering. Early man had to compete with the whole animal world for his food. Competition-gravity ever pulls man down toward the beast level; poverty is his natural and tyrannical estate. Wealth is not a natural gift; it results from labor, knowledge, and organization.

P773:4, 69:2.3 Primitive man was not slow to recognize the advantages of association. Association led to organization, and the first result of organization was division of labor, with its immediate saving of time and materials. These specializations of labor arose by adaptation to pressure -- pursuing the paths of lessened resistance. Primitive savages never did any real work cheerfully or willingly. With them conformity was due to the coercion of necessity.

P773:5, 69:2.4 Primitive man disliked hard work, and he would not hurry unless confronted by grave danger. The time element in labor, the idea of doing a given task within a certain time limit, is entirely a modern notion. The ancients were seldom rushed. It was the double demands of the intense struggle for existence and of the ever-advancing standards of living that drove the naturally inactive races of early man into avenues of industry.

P773:6, 69:2.5 Labor, the efforts of design, distinguishes man from the beast, whose exertions are largely instinctive. The necessity for labor is man's paramount blessing. The Hebrews were the first tribe to put a supreme premium on industry; they were the first people to decree that "he who does not work shall not eat."

P773:7, 69:2.6 The Sangik tribes were fairly industrious when residing away from the tropics. But there was a long, long struggle between the lazy devotees of magic and the apostles of work -- those who exercised foresight.

P773:8, 69:2.7 The first human foresight was directed toward the preservation of fire, water, and food. But primitive man was a natural-born gambler; he always wanted to get something for nothing, and all too often during these early times the success which accrued from patient practice was attributed to charms. Magic was slow to give way before foresight, self-denial, and industry.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 31: Section 3.  
The Specialization Of Labor

P773:9, 69:3.1 The divisions of labor in primitive society were determined first by natural, and then by social, circumstances. The early order of specialization in labor was:

P774:1, 69:3.2 1. _Specialization based on sex._ Woman's work was derived from the selective presence of the child; women naturally love babies more than men do. Thus woman became the routine worker, while man became the hunter and fighter, engaging in accentuated periods of work and rest.

P774:2, 69:3.3 All down through the ages the taboos have operated to keep woman strictly in her own field. Man has most selfishly chosen the more agreeable work, leaving the routine drudgery to woman. Man has always been ashamed to do woman's work, but woman has never shown any reluctance to doing man's work. But strange to record, both men and women have always worked together in building and furnishing the home.

P774:3, 69:3.4 2. _Modification consequent upon age and disease._ These differences determined the next division of labor. The old men and the handicapped were early set to work making tools and weapons. They were later assigned to building irrigation works.

P774:4, 69:3.5 3. _Differentiation based on religion._ The medicine men were the first human beings to be exempted from physical toil; they were the pioneer professional class. The smiths were a small group who competed with the medicine men as magicians. Their skill in working with metals made the people afraid of them. The "white smiths" and the "black smiths" gave origin to the early beliefs in white and black magic. And this belief later became involved in the superstition of good and bad ghosts, good and bad spirits.

P774:5, 69:3.6 Smiths were the first nonreligious group to enjoy special privileges. They were regarded as neutrals during war, and this extra leisure led to their becoming, as a class, the politicians of primitive society. But through gross abuse of these privileges the smiths became universally hated, and the medicine men lost no time in fostering hatred for their competitors. In this first contest between science and religion, religion (superstition) won. After being driven out of the villages, the smiths maintained the first inns, public lodging-houses, on the outskirts of the settlements.

P774:6, 69:3.7 4. _Master and slave._ The next differentiation of labor grew out of the relations of the conqueror to the conquered, and that meant the beginning of human slavery.

P774:7, 69:3.8 5. _Differentiation based on diverse physical and mental endowments._ Further divisions of labor were favored by the inherent differences in men; all human beings are not born equal.

P774:8, 69:3.9  The early specialists in industry were the flint flakers and stone masons; next came the smiths. Subsequently group specialization developed; whole families and clans dedicated themselves to certain sorts of labor. The origin of one of the earliest castes of priests, apart from the tribal medicine men, was due to the superstitious exaltation of a family of expert sword-makers.

P774:9, 69:3.10 The first group specialists in industry were rock salt exporters and potters. Women made the plain pottery and men the fancy. Among some tribes sewing and weaving were done by women, in others by the men.

P774:10, 69:3.11 The early traders were women; they were employed as spies, carrying on commerce as a side line. Trade expanded, the women acting as intermediaries -- jobbers. Then came the merchant class, charging a commission, profit, for their services. Growth of group barter developed into commerce; and following the exchange of commodities came the exchange of skilled labor.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31: Section 4.  
The Beginnings Of Trade

P775:1, 69:4.1 Just as marriage by contract followed marriage by capture, so trade by barter followed seizure by raids. But a long period of piracy intervened between the early practices of silent barter and the later trade by modern exchange methods.

P775:2, 69:4.2 The first barter was conducted by armed traders who would leave their goods on a neutral spot. Women held the first markets; they were the earliest traders, and this was because they were the burden bearers; the men were warriors. Very early the trading counter was developed, a wall wide enough to prevent the traders reaching each other with weapons.

P775:3, 69:4.3 A fetish was used to stand guard over the deposits of goods for silent barter. Such market places were secure against theft; nothing would be removed except by barter or purchase; with a fetish on guard the goods were always safe. The early traders were scrupulously honest within their own tribes but regarded it as all right to cheat distant strangers. Even the early Hebrews recognized a separate code of ethics in their dealings with the gentiles.

P775:4, 69:4.4 For ages silent barter continued before men would meet, unarmed, on the sacred market place. These same market squares became the first places of sanctuary and in some countries were later known as "cities of refuge." Any fugitive reaching the market place was safe and secure against attack.

P775:5, 69:4.5 The first weights were grains of wheat and other cereals. The first medium of exchange was a fish or a goat. Later the cow became a unit of barter.

P775:6, 69:4.6 Modern writing originated in the early trade records; the first literature of man was a trade-promotion document, a salt advertisement. Many of the earlier wars were fought over natural deposits, such as flint, salt, and metals. The first formal tribal treaty concerned the inter-tribalizing of a salt deposit. These treaty spots afforded opportunity for friendly and peaceful interchange of ideas and the intermingling of various tribes.

P775:7, 69:4.7 Writing progressed up through the stages of the "message stick," knotted cords, picture writing, hieroglyphics, and wampum belts, to the early symbolic alphabets. Message sending evolved from the primitive smoke signal up through runners, animal riders, railroads, and airplanes, as well as telegraph, telephone, and wireless communication.

P775:8, 69:4.8 New ideas and better methods were carried around the inhabited world by the ancient traders. Commerce, linked with adventure, led to exploration and discovery. And all of these gave birth to transportation. Commerce has been the great civilizer through promoting the cross-fertilization of culture.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 31: Section 5.  
The Beginnings Of Capital

P775:9, 69:5.1 Capital is labor applied as a renunciation of the present in favor of the future. Savings represent a form of maintenance and survival insurance. Food hoarding developed self-control and created the first problems of capital and labor. The man who had food, provided he could protect it from robbers, had a distinct advantage over the man who had no food.

P775:10, 69:5.2 The early banker was the valorous man of the tribe. He held the group treasures on deposit, while the entire clan would defend his hut in event of attack. Thus the accumulation of individual capital and group wealth immediately led to military organization. At first such precautions were designed to defend property against foreign raiders, but later on it became the custom to keep the military organization in practice by inaugurating raids on the property and wealth of neighboring tribes.

P776:1, 69:5.3 The basic urges which led to the accumulation of capital were:

P776:2, 69:5.4 1. _Hunger -- associated with foresight._ Food saving and preservation meant power and comfort for those who possessed sufficient _foresight_ thus to provide for future needs. Food storage was adequate insurance against famine and disaster. And the entire body of primitive mores was really designed to help man subordinate the present to the future.

P776:3, 69:5.5 2. _Love of family_ \-- desire to provide for their wants. Capital represents the saving of property in spite of the pressure of the wants of today in order to insure against the demands of the future. A part of this future need may have to do with one's posterity.

P776:4, 69:5.6 3. _Vanity_ \-- longing to display one's property accumulations. Extra clothing was one of the first badges of distinction. Collection vanity early appealed to the pride of man.

P776:5, 69:5.7 4. _Position_ \-- eagerness to buy social and political prestige. There early sprang up a commercialized nobility, admission to which depended on the performance of some special service to royalty or was granted frankly for the payment of money.

P776:6, 69:5.8 5. _Power_ \-- the craving to be master. Treasure lending was carried on as a means of enslavement, one hundred per cent a year being the loan rate of these ancient times. The moneylenders made themselves kings by creating a standing army of debtors. Bond servants were among the earliest form of property to be accumulated, and in olden days debt slavery extended even to the control of the body after death.

P776:7, 69:5.9 6. _Fear of the ghosts of the dead_ \-- priest fees for protection. Men early began to give death presents to the priests with a view to having their property used to facilitate their progress through the next life. The priesthoods thus became very rich; they were chief among ancient capitalists.

P776:8, 69:5.10 7. _Sex urge_ \-- the desire to buy one or more wives. Man's first form of trading was woman exchange; it long preceded horse trading. But never did the barter in sex slaves advance society; such traffic was and is a racial disgrace, for at one and the same time it hindered the development of family life and polluted the biologic fitness of superior peoples.

P776:9, 69:5.11 8. _Numerous forms of self-gratification._ Some sought wealth because it conferred power; others toiled for property because it meant ease. Early man (and some later-day ones) tended to squander his resources on luxury. Intoxicants and drugs intrigued the primitive races.

P776:10, 69:5.12 As civilization developed, men acquired new incentives for saving; new wants were rapidly added to the original food hunger. Poverty became so abhorred that only the rich were supposed to go direct to heaven when they died. Property became so highly valued that to give a pretentious feast would wipe a dishonor from one's name.

P777:1, 69:5.13 Accumulations of wealth early became the badge of social distinction. Individuals in certain tribes would accumulate property for years just to create an impression by burning it up on some holiday or by freely distributing it to fellow tribesmen. This made them great men. Even modern peoples revel in the lavish distribution of Christmas gifts, while rich men endow great institutions of philanthropy and learning. Man's technique varies, but his disposition remains quite unchanged.

P777:2, 69:5.14 But it is only fair to record that many an ancient rich man distributed much of his fortune because of the fear of being killed by those who coveted his treasures. Wealthy men commonly sacrificed scores of slaves to show disdain for wealth.

P777:3, 69:5.15 Though capital has tended to liberate man, it has greatly complicated his social and industrial organization. The abuse of capital by unfair capitalists does not destroy the fact that it is the basis of modern industrial society. Through capital and invention the present generation enjoys a higher degree of freedom than any that ever preceded it on earth. This is placed on record as a fact and not in justification of the many misuses of capital by thoughtless and selfish custodians.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31: Section 6.  
Fire In Relation To Civilization

P777:4, 69:6.1 Primitive society with its four divisions -- industrial, regulative, religious, and military -- rose through the instrumentality of fire, animals, slaves, and property.

P777:5, 69:6.2 Fire building, by a single bound, forever separated man from animal; it is the basic human invention, or discovery. Fire enabled man to stay on the ground at night as all animals are afraid of it. Fire encouraged eventide social intercourse; it not only protected against cold and wild beasts but was also employed as security against ghosts. It was at first used more for light than heat; many backward tribes refuse to sleep unless a flame burns all night.

P777:6, 69:6.3 Fire was a great civilizer, providing man with his first means of being altruistic without loss by enabling him to give live coals to a neighbor without depriving himself. The household fire, which was attended by the mother or eldest daughter, was the first educator, requiring watchfulness and dependability. The early home was not a building but the family gathered about the fire, the family hearth. When a son founded a new home, he carried a firebrand from the family hearth.

P777:7, 69:6.4 Though Andon, the discoverer of fire, avoided treating it as an object of worship, many of his descendants regarded the flame as a fetish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the sanitary benefits of fire because they would not burn refuse. Primitive man feared fire and always sought to keep it in good humor, hence the sprinkling of incense. Under no circumstances would the ancients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass between anyone and a burning fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in striking fire were held sacred by early mankind.

P777:8, 69:6.5 It was a sin to extinguish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was allowed to burn. The fires of the temples and shrines were sacred and were never permitted to go out except that it was the custom to kindle new flames annually or after some calamity. Women were selected as priests because they were custodians of the home fires.

P778:1, 69:6.6 The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the observations of fire caused by lightning. These ideas of supernatural origin led directly to fire worship, and fire worship led to the custom of "passing through fire," a practice carried on up to the times of Moses. And there still persists the idea of passing through fire after death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still persists in the symbolism of the Parsees.

P778:2, 69:6.7 Fire led to cooking, and "raw eaters" became a term of derision. And cooking lessened the expenditure of vital energy necessary for the digestion of food and so left early man some strength for social culture, while animal husbandry, by reducing the effort necessary to secure food, provided time for social activities.

P778:3, 69:6.8 It should be remembered that fire opened the doors to metalwork and led to the subsequent discovery of steam power and the present-day uses of electricity.
Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31: Section 7.  
The Utilization Of Animals

P778:4, 69:7.1 To start with, the entire animal world was man's enemy; human beings had to learn to protect themselves from the beasts. First, man ate the animals but later learned to domesticate and make them serve him.

P778:5, 69:7.2 The domestication of animals came about accidentally. The savage would hunt herds much as the American Indians hunted the bison. By surrounding the herd they could keep control of the animals, thus being able to kill them as they were required for food. Later, corrals were constructed, and entire herds would be captured.

P778:6, 69:7.3 It was easy to tame some animals, but like the elephant, many of them would not reproduce in captivity. Still further on it was discovered that certain species of animals would submit to man's presence, and that they would reproduce in captivity. The domestication of animals was thus promoted by selective breeding, an art which had made great progress.

P778:7, 69:7.4 The dog was the first animal to be domesticated, and the difficult experience of taming it began when a certain dog, after following a hunter around all day, actually went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunting, transportation, and companionship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. The dog's keen sense of smell led to the notion it could see spirits, and thus arose the dog-fetish cults. The employment of watchdogs made it first possible for the whole clan to sleep at night. It then became the custom to employ watchdogs to protect the home against spirits as well as material enemies. When the dog barked, man or beast approached, but when the dog howled, spirits were near. Even now many still believe that a dog's howling at night betokens death.

P778:8, 69:7.5 When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but after the domestication of animals, many tribes shamefully treated their women. They treated them altogether too much as they treated their animals. Man's brutal treatment of woman constitutes one of the darkest chapters of human history.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31: Section 8.  
Slavery As A Factor In Civilization

P778:9, 69:8.1 Primitive man never hesitated to enslave his fellows. Woman was the first slave, a family slave. Pastoral man enslaved woman as his inferior sex partner. This sort of sex slavery grew directly out of man's decreased dependence upon woman.

P779:1, 69:8.2 Not long ago enslavement was the lot of those military captives who refused to accept the conqueror's religion. In earlier times captives were either eaten, tortured to death, set to fighting each other, sacrificed to spirits, or enslaved. Slavery was a great advancement over massacre and cannibalism

P779:2, 69:8.3 Enslavement was a forward step in the merciful treatment of war captives. The ambush of Ai, with the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children, only the king being saved to gratify the conqueror's vanity, is a faithful picture of the barbaric slaughter practiced by even supposedly civilized peoples. The raid upon Og, the king of Bashan, was equally brutal and effective. The Hebrews "utterly destroyed" their enemies, taking all their property as spoils. They put all cities under tribute on pain of the "destruction of all males." But many of the contemporary tribes, those having less tribal egotism, had long since begun to practice the adoption of superior captives.

P779:3, 69:8.4 The hunter, like the American red man, did not enslave. He either adopted or killed his captives. Slavery was not prevalent among the pastoral peoples, for they needed few laborers. In war the herders made a practice of killing all men captives and taking as slaves only the women and children. The Mosaic code contained specific directions for making wives of these women captives. If not satisfactory, they could be sent away, but the Hebrews were not allowed to sell such rejected consorts as slaves -- that was at least one advance in civilization. Though the social standards of the Hebrews were crude, they were far above those of the surrounding tribes.

P779:4, 69:8.5 The herders were the first capitalists; their herds represented capital, and they lived on the interest -- the natural increase. And they were disinclined to trust this wealth to the keeping of either slaves or women. But later on they took male prisoners and forced them to cultivate the soil. This is the early origin of serfdom -- man attached to the land. The Africans could easily be taught to till the soil; hence they became the great slave race.

P779:5, 69:8.6 Slavery was an indispensable link in the chain of human civilization. It was the bridge over which society passed from chaos and indolence to order and civilized activities; it compelled backward and lazy peoples to work and thus provide wealth and leisure for the social advancement of their superiors.

P779:6, 69:8.7 The institution of slavery compelled man to invent the regulative mechanism of primitive society; it gave origin to the beginnings of government. Slavery demands strong regulation and during the European Middle Ages virtually disappeared because the feudal lords could not control the slaves. The backward tribes of ancient times, like the native Australians of today, never had slaves.

P779:7, 69:8.8 True, slavery was oppressive, but it was in the schools of oppression that man learned industry. Eventually the slaves shared the blessings of a higher society which they had so unwillingly helped create. Slavery creates an organization of culture and social achievement but soon insidiously attacks society internally as the gravest of all destructive social maladies.

P779:8, 69:8.9 Modern mechanical invention rendered the slave obsolete. Slavery, like polygamy, was passing because it did not pay. But it has always proved disastrous suddenly to liberate great numbers of slaves; less trouble ensues when they are gradually emancipated.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 31: Section 9.  
Private Property

P780:4, 69:9.1 While primitive society was virtually communal, primitive man did not adhere to the modern doctrines of communism. The communism of these early times was not a mere theory or social doctrine; it was a simple and practical automatic adjustment. Communism prevented pauperism and want; begging and prostitution were almost unknown among these ancient tribes.

P780:5, 69:9.2 Primitive communism did not especially level men down, nor did it exalt mediocrity, but it did put a premium on inactivity and idleness, and it did stifle industry and destroy ambition. Communism was indispensable scaffolding in the growth of primitive society, but it gave way to the evolution of a higher social order because it ran counter to four strong human proclivities:

P780:6, 69:9.3 1. _The family._ Man not only craves to accumulate property; he desires to bequeath his capital goods to his progeny. But in early communal society a man's capital was either immediately consumed or distributed among the group at his death. There was no inheritance of property -- the inheritance tax was one hundred per cent. The later capital-accumulation and property-inheritance mores were a distinct social advance. And this is true notwithstanding the subsequent gross abuses attendant upon the misuse of capital.

P780:7, 69:9.4 2. _Religious tendencies._ Primitive man also wanted to save up property as a nucleus for starting life in the next existence. This motive explains why it was so long the custom to bury a man's personal belongings with him. The ancients believed that only the rich survived death with any immediate pleasure and dignity. The teachers of revealed religion, more especially the Christian teachers, were the first to proclaim that the poor could have salvation on equal terms with the rich.

P780:8, 69:9.5 3. _The desire for liberty and leisure._ In the earlier days of social evolution the apportionment of individual earnings among the group was virtually a form of slavery; the worker was made slave to the idler. This was the suicidal weakness of communism: The improvident habitually lived off the thrifty. Even in modern times the improvident depend on the state (thrifty taxpayers) to take care of them. Those who have no capital still expect those who have to feed them.

P780:9, 69:9.6 4. _The urge for security and power._ Communism was finally destroyed by the deceptive practices of progressive and successful individuals who resorted to diverse subterfuges in an effort to escape enslavement to the shiftless idlers of their tribes. But at first all hoarding was secret; primitive insecurity prevented the outward accumulation of capital. And even at a later time it was most dangerous to amass too much wealth; the king would be sure to trump up some charge for confiscating a rich man's property, and when a wealthy man died, the funeral was held up until the family donated a large sum to public welfare or to the king, an inheritance tax.

P781:1, 69:9.7 In earliest times women were the property of the community, and the mother dominated the family. The early chiefs owned all the land and were proprietors of all the women; marriage required the consent of the tribal ruler. With the passing of communism, women were held individually, and the father gradually assumed domestic control. Thus the home had its beginning, and the prevailing polygamous customs were gradually displaced by monogamy. (Polygamy is the survival of the female-slavery element in marriage. Monogamy is the slave-free ideal of the matchless association of one man and one woman in the exquisite enterprise of home building, offspring rearing, mutual culture, and self-improvement.)

P781:2, 69:9.8 At first, all property, including tools and weapons, was the common possession of the tribe. Private property first consisted of all things personally touched. If a stranger drank from a cup, the cup was henceforth his. Next, any place where blood was shed became the property of the injured person or group.

P781:3, 69:9.9 Private property was thus originally respected because it was supposed to be charged with some part of the owner's personality. Property honesty rested safely on this type of superstition; no police were needed to guard personal belongings. There was no stealing within the group, though men did not hesitate to appropriate the goods of other tribes. Property relations did not end with death; early, personal effects were burned, then buried with the dead, and later, inherited by the surviving family or by the tribe.

P781:4, 69:9.10 The ornamental type of personal effects originated in the wearing of charms. Vanity plus ghost fear led early man to resist all attempts to relieve him of his favorite charms, such property being valued above necessities.

P781:5, 69:9.11 Sleeping space was one of man's earliest properties. Later, homesites were assigned by the tribal chiefs, who held all real estate in trust for the group. Presently a fire site conferred ownership; and still later, a well constituted title to the adjacent land.

P781:6, 69:9.12 Water holes and wells were among the first private possessions. The whole fetish practice was utilized to guard water holes, wells, trees, crops, and honey. Following the loss of faith in the fetish, laws were evolved to protect private belongings. But game laws, the right to hunt, long preceded land laws. The American red man never understood private ownership of land; he could not comprehend the white man's view.

P781:7, 69:9.13 Private property was early marked by family insignia, and this is the early origin of family crests. Real estate could also be put under the watch-care of spirits. The priests would "consecrate" a piece of land, and it would then rest under the protection of the magic taboos erected thereon. Owners thereof were said to have a "priest's title." The Hebrews had great respect for these family landmarks: "Cursed be he who removes his neighbor's landmark." These stone markers bore the priest's initials. Even trees, when initialed, became private property.

P782:1, 69:9.14 In early days only the crops were private, but successive crops conferred title; agriculture was thus the genesis of the private ownership of land. Individuals were first given only a life tenure-ship; at death land reverted to the tribe. The very first land titles granted by tribes to individuals were graves -- family burying grounds. In later times land belonged to those who fenced it. But the cities always reserved certain lands for public pasturage and for use in case of siege; these " commons" represent the survival of the earlier form of collective ownership.

P782:2, 69:9.15 Eventually the state assigned property to the individual, reserving the right of taxation. Having made secure their titles, landlords could collect rents, and land became a source of income -- capital. Finally land became truly negotiable, with sales, transfers, mortgages, and foreclosures.

P782:3, 69:9.16 Private ownership brought increased liberty and enhanced stability; but private ownership of land was given social sanction only after communal control and direction had failed, and it was soon followed by a succession of slaves, serfs, and landless classes. But improved machinery is gradually setting men free from slavish toil.

P782:4, 69:9.17 The right to property is not absolute; it is purely social. But all government, law, order, civil rights, social liberties, conventions, peace, and happiness, as they are enjoyed by modern peoples, have grown up around the private ownership of property.

P782:5, 69:9.18 The present social order is not necessarily right -- not divine or sacred -- but mankind will do well to move slowly in making changes. That which you have is vastly better than any system known to your ancestors. Make certain that when you change the social order you change for the better. Do not be persuaded to experiment with the discarded formulas of your forefathers. Go forward, not backward! Let evolution proceed! Do not take a backward step.

P780:1, 69:8.10 Today, men are not social slaves, but thousands allow ambition to enslave them to debt. Involuntary slavery has given way to a new and improved form of modified industrial servitude.

P780:2, 69:8.11 While the ideal of society is universal freedom, idleness should never be tolerated. All able-bodied persons should be compelled to do at least a self-sustaining amount of work.

P780:3, 69:8.12 Modern society is in reverse. Slavery has nearly disappeared; domesticated animals are passing. Civilization is reaching back to fire -- the inorganic world -- for power. Man came up from savagery by way of fire, animals, and slavery; today he reaches back, discarding the help of slaves and the assistance of animals, while he seeks to wrest new secrets and sources of wealth and power from the elemental storehouse of nature.

Part III. The History Of earth  
Chapter 32  
The Evolution Of Human Government

P783:1, 70:0.1 No sooner had man partially solved the problem of making a living than he was confronted with the task of regulating human contacts. The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.

P783:2, 70:0.2 On an evolutionary world, antagonisms are natural; peace is secured only by some sort of social regulative system. Social regulation is inseparable from social organization; association implies some controlling authority. Government compels the co-ordination of the antagonisms of the tribes, clans, families, and individuals.

P783:3, 70:0.3 Government is an unconscious development; it evolves by trial and error. It does have survival value; therefore it becomes traditional. Anarchy augmented misery; therefore government, comparative law and order, slowly emerged or is emerging. The coercive demands of the struggle for existence literally drove the human race along the progressive road to civilization.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 1.  
The Genesis Of War

P783:4, 70:1.1 War is the natural state and heritage of evolving man; peace is the social yardstick measuring civilization's advancement. Before the partial socialization of the advancing races man was exceedingly individualistic, extremely suspicious, and unbelievably quarrelsome. Violence is the law of nature, hostility the automatic reaction of the children of nature, while war is but these same activities carried on collectively. And wherever and whenever the fabric of civilization becomes stressed by the complications of society's advancement, there is always an immediate and ruinous reversion to these early methods of violent adjustment of the irritations of human inter-associations.

P783:5, 70:1.2 War is an animalistic reaction to misunderstandings and irritations; peace attends upon the civilized solution of all such problems and difficulties. The Andonites were early taught the golden rule, and, even today, their Eskimo descendants live very much by that code; custom is strong among them, and they are fairly free from violent antagonisms.

P783:6, 70:1.3 Andon taught his children to settle disputes by each beating a tree with a stick, meanwhile cursing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the victor. The later Andonites used to settle disputes by holding a public show at which the disputants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the audience decided the winner by its applause.

P783:7, 70:1.4 But there could be no such phenomenon as war until society had evolved sufficiently far to actually experience periods of peace and to sanction warlike practices. The very concept of war implies some degree of organization.

P784:1, 70:1.5 With the emergence of social groupings, individual irritations began to be submerged in the group feelings, and this promoted intra-tribal tranquility but at the expense of intertribal peace. Peace was thus first enjoyed by the in-group, or tribe, who always disliked and hated the out-group, foreigners. Early man regarded it a virtue to shed alien blood.

P784:2, 70:1.6 But even this did not work at first. When the early chiefs would try to iron out misunderstandings, they often found it necessary, at least once a year, to permit the tribal stone fights. The clan would divide up into two groups and engage in an all-day battle. And this for no other reason than just the fun of it; they really enjoyed fighting.

P784:3, 70:1.7 Warfare persists because man is human, evolved from an animal, and all animals are bellicose. Among the early causes of war were:

P784:4, 70:1.8 1. _Hunger,_ which led to food raids. Scarcity of land has always brought on war, and during these struggles the early peace tribes were practically exterminated.

P784:5, 70:1.9 2. _Woman scarcity_ \-- an attempt to relieve a shortage of domestic help. Woman stealing has always caused war.

P784:6, 70:1.10 3. _Vanity_ \-- the desire to exhibit tribal prowess. Superior groups would fight to impose their mode of life upon inferior peoples.

P784:7, 70:1.11 4. _Slaves_ \-- need of recruits for the labor ranks.

P784:8, 70:1.12 5. _Revenge_ was the motive for war when one tribe believed that a neighboring tribe had caused the death of a fellow tribesman. Mourning was continued until a head was brought home. The war for vengeance was in good standing right on down to comparatively modern times.

P784:9, 70:1.13 6. _Recreation_ \-- war was looked upon as recreation by the young men of these early times. If no good and sufficient pretext for war arose, when peace became oppressive, neighboring tribes were accustomed to go out in semi-friendly combat to engage in a foray as a holiday, to enjoy a sham battle.

P784:10, 70:1.14 7. _Religion_ \-- the desire to make converts to the cult. The primitive religions all sanctioned war. Only in recent times has religion begun to frown upon war. The early priesthoods were, unfortunately, usually allied with the military power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the attempt to separate church and state.

P784:11, 70:1.15 Always these olden tribes made war at the bidding of their gods, at the behest of their chiefs or medicine men. The Hebrews believed in such a "God of battles"; and the narrative of their raid on the Midianites is a typical recital of the atrocious cruelty of the ancient tribal wars; this assault, with its slaughter of all the males and the later killing of all male children and all women who were not virgins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chieftain of two hundred thousand years ago. And all this was executed in the "name of the Lord God of Israel."

P784:12, 70:1.16 This is a narrative of the evolution of society -- the natural outworking of the problems of the races -- man working out his own destiny on earth. Such atrocities are not instigated by Deity, notwithstanding the tendency of man to place the responsibility on his gods.

P784:13, 70:1.17 Military mercy has been slow in coming to mankind. Even when a woman, Deborah, ruled the Hebrews, the same wholesale cruelty persisted. Her general in his victory over the gentiles caused "all the host to fall upon the sword; there was not one left."

P785:1, 70:1.18 Very early in the history of the race, poisoned weapons were used. All sorts of mutilations were practiced. Saul did not hesitate to require one hundred Philistine foreskins as the dowry David should pay for his daughter Michal.

P785:2, 70:1.19 Early wars were fought between tribes as a whole, but in later times, when two individuals in different tribes had a dispute, instead of both tribes fighting, the two disputants engaged in a duel. It also became a custom for two armies to stake all on the outcome of a contest between a representative chosen from each side, as in the instance of David and Goliath.

P785:3, 70:1.20 The first refinement of war was the taking of prisoners. Next, women were exempted from hostilities, and then came the recognition of noncombatants. Military castes and standing armies soon developed to keep pace with the increasing complexity of combat. Such warriors were early prohibited from associating with women, and women long ago ceased to fight, though they have always fed and nursed the soldiers and urged them on to battle.

P785:4, 70:1.21 The practice of declaring war represented great progress. Such declarations of intention to fight betokened the arrival of a sense of fairness, and this was followed by the gradual development of the rules of "civilized" warfare. Very early it became the custom not to fight near religious sites and, still later, not to fight on certain holy days. Next came the general recognition of the right of asylum; political fugitives received protection.

P785:5, 70:1.22 Thus did warfare gradually evolve from the primitive man hunt to the somewhat more orderly system of the later-day "civilized" nations. But only slowly does the social attitude of amity displace that of enmity.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 2.  
The Social Value Of War

P785:6, 70:2.1 In past ages a fierce war would institute social changes and facilitate the adoption of new ideas such as would not have occurred naturally in ten thousand years. The terrible price paid for these certain war advantages was that society was temporarily thrown back into savagery; civilized reason had to abdicate. War is strong medicine, very costly and most dangerous; while often curative of certain social disorders, it sometimes kills the patient, destroys the society.

P785:7, 70:2.2 The constant necessity for national defense creates many new and advanced social adjustments. Society, today, enjoys the benefit of a long list of useful innovations which were at first wholly military and is even indebted to war for the dance, one of the early forms of which was a military drill.

P785:8, 70:2.3 War has had a social value to past civilizations because it:

  1. Imposed discipline, enforced co-operation.

  2. Put a premium on fortitude and courage.

  3. Fostered and solidified nationalism.

  4. Destroyed weak and unfit peoples.

  5. Dissolved the illusion of primitive equality and selectively stratified society.

P785:14, 70:2.4 War has had a certain evolutionary and selective value, but like slavery, it must sometime be abandoned as civilization slowly advances. Olden wars promoted travel and cultural intercourse; these ends are now better served by modern methods of transport and communication. Olden wars strengthened nations, but modern struggles disrupt civilized culture. Ancient warfare resulted in the decimation of inferior peoples; the net result of modern conflict is the selective destruction of the best human stocks. Early wars promoted organization and efficiency, but these have now become the aims of modern industry. During past ages war was a social ferment which pushed civilization forward; this result is now better attained by ambition and invention. Ancient warfare supported the concept of a God of battles, but modern man has been told that God is love. War has served many valuable purposes in the past, it has been an indispensable scaffolding in the building of civilization, but it is rapidly becoming culturally bankrupt -- incapable of producing dividends of social gain in any way commensurate with the terrible losses attendant upon its invocation.

P786:1, 70:2.5 At one time physicians believed in bloodletting as a cure for many diseases, but they have since discovered better remedies for most of these disorders. And so must the international bloodletting of war certainly give place to the discovery of better methods for curing the ills of nations.

P786:2, 70:2.6 The nations of Earth have already entered upon the gigantic struggle between nationalistic militarism and industrialism, and in many ways this conflict is analogous to the agelong struggle between the herder-hunter and the farmer. But if industrialism is to triumph over militarism, it must avoid the dangers which beset it. The perils of budding industry on Earth are:

P786:3, 70:2.7 1. The strong drift toward materialism, spiritual blindness.

P786:4, 70:2.8 2. The worship of wealth-power, value distortion.

P786:5, 70:2.9 3. The vices of luxury, cultural immaturity.

P786:6, 70:2.10 4. The increasing dangers of indolence, service insensitivity.

P786:7, 70:2.11 5. The growth of undesirable racial softness, biologic deterioration.

P786:8, 70:2.12 6. The threat of standardized industrial slavery, personality stagnation. Labor is ennobling but drudgery is benumbing.

P786:9, 70:2.13 Militarism is autocratic and cruel -- savage. It promotes social organization among the conquerors but disintegrates the vanquished. Industrialism is more civilized and should be so carried on as to promote initiative and to encourage individualism. Society should in every way possible foster originality.

P786:10, 70:2.14 Do not make the mistake of glorifying war; rather discern what it has done for society so that you may the more accurately visualize what its substitutes must provide in order to continue the advancement of civilization. And if such adequate substitutes are not provided, then you may be sure that war will long continue.

P786:11, 70:2.15 Man will never accept peace as a normal mode of living until he has been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that peace is best for his material welfare, and until society has wisely provided peaceful substitutes for the gratification of that inherent tendency periodically to let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species.

P786:12, 70:2.16 But even in passing, war should be honored as the school of experience which compelled a race of arrogant individualists to submit themselves to highly concentrated authority -- a chief executive. Old-fashioned war did select the innately great men for leadership, but modern war no longer does this. To discover leaders society must now turn to the conquests of peace: industry, science, and social achievement.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 3.  
Early Human Associations

P787:1, 70:3.1 In the most primitive society the _horde_ is everything; even children are its common property. The evolving family displaced the horde in child rearing, while the emerging clans and tribes took its place as the social unit.

P787:2, 70:3.2 Sex hunger and mother love establish the family. But real government does not appear until super-family groups have begun to form. In the pre-family days of the horde, leadership was provided by informally chosen individuals.

P787:3, 70:3.3 Families became united by blood ties in clans, aggregations of kinsmen; and these subsequently evolved into tribes, territorial communities. Warfare and external pressure forced the tribal organization upon the kinship clans, but it was commerce and trade that held these early and primitive groups together with some degree of internal peace.

P787:4, 70:3.4 The peace of Earth will be promoted far more by international trade organizations than by all the sentimental sophistry of visionary peace planning. Trade relations have been facilitated by development of language and by improved methods of communication as well as by better transportation.

P787:5, 70:3.5 The absence of a common language has always impeded the growth of peace groups, but money has become the universal language of modern trade. Modern society is largely held together by the industrial market. The gain motive is a mighty civilizer when augmented by the desire to serve.

P787:6, 70:3.6 In the early ages each tribe was surrounded by concentric circles of increasing fear and suspicion; hence it was once the custom to kill all strangers, later on, to enslave them. The old idea of friendship meant adoption into the clan; and clan membership was believed to survive death -- one of the earliest concepts of eternal life.

P787:7, 70:3.7 The ceremony of adoption consisted in drinking each other's blood. In some groups saliva was exchanged in the place of blood drinking, this being the ancient origin of the practice of social kissing. And all ceremonies of association, whether marriage or adoption, were always terminated by feasting.

P787:8, 70:3.8 In later times, blood diluted with red wine was used, and eventually wine alone was drunk to seal the adoption ceremony, which was signified in the touching of the wine cups and consummated by the swallowing of the beverage. The Hebrews employed a modified form of this adoption ceremony. Their Arab ancestors made use of the oath taken while the hand of the candidate rested upon the generative organ of the tribal native. The Hebrews treated adopted aliens kindly and fraternally. "The stranger that dwells with you shall be as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself."

P787:9, 70:3.9 "Guest friendship" was a relation of temporary hospitality. When visiting guests departed, a dish would be broken in half, one piece being given the departing friend so that it would serve as a suitable introduction for a third party who might arrive on a later visit. It was customary for guests to pay their way by telling tales of their travels and adventures. The storytellers of olden times became so popular that the mores eventually forbade their functioning during either the hunting or harvest seasons.

P788:1, 70:3.10 The first treaties of peace were the "blood bonds." The peace ambassadors of two warring tribes would meet, pay their respects, and then proceed to prick the skin until it bled; whereupon they would suck each other's blood and declare peace.

P788:2, 70:3.11 The earliest peace missions consisted of delegations of men bringing their choice maidens for the sex gratification of their onetime enemies, the sex appetite being utilized in combating the war urge. The tribe so honored would pay a return visit, with its offering of maidens; whereupon peace would be firmly established. And soon intermarriages between the families of the chiefs were sanctioned.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 4.  
Clans And Tribes

P788:3, 70:4.1 The first peace group was the family, then the clan, the tribe, and later on the nation, which eventually became the modern territorial state. The fact that the present-day peace groups have long since expanded beyond blood ties to embrace nations is most encouraging, despite the fact that Earth nations are still spending vast sums on war.  
P788:4, 70:4.2 The clans were blood-tie groups within the tribe, and they owed their existence to certain common interests, such as:

  1. Tracing origin back to a common ancestor.

  2. Allegiance to a common religious totem.

  3. Speaking the same dialect.

  4. Sharing a common dwelling place.

  5. Fearing the same enemies.

  6. Having had a common military experience.

P788:11, 70:4.3 The clan headmen were always subordinate to the tribal chief, the early tribal governments being a loose confederation of clans.

P788:12, 70:4.4 The clan peace chiefs usually ruled through the mother line; the tribal war chiefs established the father line. The courts of the tribal chiefs and early kings consisted of the headmen of the clans, whom it was customary to invite into the king's presence several times a year. This enabled him to watch them and the better secure their co-operation. The clans served a valuable purpose in local self-government, but they greatly delayed the growth of large and strong nations.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 5.  
The Beginnings Of Government

P788:13, 70:5.1 Every human institution had a beginning, and civil government is a product of progressive evolution just as much as are marriage, industry, and religion. From the early clans and primitive tribes there gradually developed the successive orders of human government which have come and gone right on down to those forms of social and civil regulation that characterize the second third of the twentieth century.

P788:14, 70:5.2 With the gradual emergence of the family units the foundations of government were established in the clan organization, the grouping of consanguineous families. The first real governmental body was the _council of the elders._ This regulative group was composed of old men who had distinguished themselves in some efficient manner. Wisdom and experience were early appreciated even by barbaric man, and there ensued a long age of the domination of the elders. This reign of the oligarchy of age gradually grew into the patriarchal idea.

P789:1, 70:5.3 In the early council of the elders there resided the potential of all governmental functions: executive, legislative, and judicial. When the council interpreted the current mores, it was a court; when establishing new modes of social usage, it was a legislature; to the extent that such decrees and enactments were enforced, it was the executive. The chairman of the council was one of the forerunners of the later tribal chief.

P789:2, 70:5.4 Some tribes had female councils, and from time to time many tribes had women rulers. Certain tribes of the red man preserved the teaching of Onamonalonton in following the unanimous rule of the "council of seven."

P789:3, 70:5.5 It has been hard for mankind to learn that neither peace nor war can be run by a debating society. The primitive " palavers" were seldom useful. The race early learned that an army commanded by a group of clan heads had no chance against a strong one-man army. War has always been a kingmaker.

P789:4, 70:5.6 At first the war chiefs were chosen only for military service, and they would relinquish some of their authority during peacetimes, when their duties were of a more social nature. But gradually they began to encroach upon the peace intervals, tending to continue to rule from one war on through to the next. They often saw to it that one war was not too long in following another. These early war lords were not fond of peace.

P789:5, 70:5.7 In later times some chiefs were chosen for other than military service, being selected because of unusual physique or outstanding personal abilities. The red men often had two sets of chiefs -- the sachems, or peace chiefs, and the hereditary war chiefs. The peace rulers were also judges and teachers.

P789:6, 70:5.8 Some early communities were ruled by medicine men, who often acted as chiefs. One man would act as priest, physician, and chief executive. Quite often the early royal insignias had originally been the symbols or emblems of priestly dress.

P789:7, 70:5.9 And it was by these steps that the executive branch of government gradually came into existence. The clan and tribal councils continued in an advisory capacity and as forerunners of the later appearing legislative and judicial branches.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 6.  
Monarchial Government

P789:8, 70:6.1 Effective state rule only came with the arrival of a chief with full executive authority. Man found that effective government could be had only by conferring power on a personality, not by endowing an idea.

P789:9, 70:6.2 Rulership grew out of the idea of family authority or wealth. When a patriarchal kinglet became a real king, he was sometimes called "father of his people." Later on, kings were thought to have sprung from heroes. And still further on, rulership became hereditary, due to belief in the divine origin of kings.

P789:10, 70:6.3 Hereditary kingship avoided the anarchy which had previously wrought such havoc between the death of a king and the election of a successor. The family had a biologic head; the clan, a selected natural leader; the tribe and later state had no natural leader, and this was an additional reason for making the chief-kings hereditary. The idea of royal families and aristocracy was also based on the mores of "name ownership" in the clans.

P790:2, 70:6.5 The early fetish king was often kept in seclusion; he was regarded as too sacred to be viewed except on feast days and holy days. Ordinarily a representative was chosen to impersonate him, and this is the origin of prime ministers. The first cabinet officer was a food administrator; others shortly followed. Rulers soon appointed representatives to be in charge of commerce and religion; and the development of a cabinet was a direct step toward depersonalization of executive authority. These assistants of the early kings became the accepted nobility, and the king's wife gradually rose to the dignity of queen as women came to be held in higher esteem.

P790:3, 70:6.6 Unscrupulous rulers gained great power by the discovery of poison. Early court magic was diabolical; the king's enemies soon died. But even the most despotic tyrant was subject to some restrictions; he was at least restrained by the ever-present fear of assassination. The medicine men, witch doctors, and priests have always been a powerful check on the kings. Subsequently, the landowners, the aristocracy, exerted a restraining influence. And ever and anon the clans and tribes would simply rise up and overthrow their despots and tyrants. Deposed rulers, when sentenced to death, were often given the option of committing suicide, which gave origin to the ancient social vogue of suicide in certain circumstances.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 7.  
Primitive Clubs And Secret Societies

P790:4, 70:7.1 Blood kinship determined the first social groups; association enlarged the kinship clan. Intermarriage was the next step in group enlargement, and the resultant complex tribe was the first true political body. The next advance in social development was the evolution of religious cults and the political clubs. These first appeared as secret societies and originally were wholly religious; subsequently they became regulative. At first they were men's clubs; later women's groups appeared. Some became divided into two classes: sociopolitical and religio-mystical.

P790:5, 70:7.2 There were many reasons for the secrecy of these societies, such as:

  1. Fear of incurring the displeasure of the rulers because of the violation of some taboo.

  2. In order to practice minority religious rites.

  3. For the purpose of preserving valuable "spirit" or trade secrets.

  4. For the enjoyment of some special charm or magic.

P790:10, 70:7.3 The very secrecy of these societies conferred on all members the power of mystery over the rest of the tribe. Secrecy also appeals to vanity; the initiates were the social aristocracy of their day. After initiation the boys hunted with the men; whereas before they had gathered vegetables with the women. And it was the supreme humiliation, a tribal disgrace, to fail to pass the puberty tests and thus be compelled to remain outside the men's abode with the women and children, to be considered effeminate. Besides, non-initiates were not allowed to marry.

P791:1, 70:7.4 Primitive people very early taught their adolescent youths sex control. It became the custom to take boys away from parents from puberty to marriage, their education and training being intrusted to the men's secret societies. And one of the chief functions of these clubs was to keep control of adolescent young men, thus preventing illegitimate children.

P791:2, 70:7.5 Commercialized prostitution began when these men's clubs paid money for the use of women from other tribes. But the earlier groups were remarkably free from sex laxity.

P791:3, 70:7.6 The puberty initiation ceremony usually extended over a period of five years. Much self-torture and painful cutting entered into these ceremonies. Circumcision was first practiced as a rite of initiation into one of these secret fraternities. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the puberty initiation; the tattoo originated as such a badge of membership. Such torture, together with much privation, was designed to harden these youths, to impress them with the reality of life and its inevitable hardships. This purpose is better accomplished by the later appearing athletic games and physical contests.

P791:4, 70:7.7 But the secret societies did aim at the improvement of adolescent morals; one of the chief purposes of the puberty ceremonies was to impress upon the boy that he must leave other men's wives alone.

P791:5, 70:7.8 Following these years of rigorous discipline and training and just before marriage, the young men were usually released for a short period of leisure and freedom, after which they returned to marry and to submit to lifelong subjection to the tribal taboos. It was the foolish notion of "sowing wild oats."

P791:6, 70:7.9 Many later tribes sanctioned the formation of women's secret clubs, the purpose of which was to prepare adolescent girls for wifehood and motherhood. After initiation girls were eligible for marriage and were permitted to attend the "bride show," the coming-out party of those days. Women's orders pledged against marriage early came into existence.

P791:7, 70:7.10 Non-secret clubs made their appearance when groups of unmarried men and groups of unattached women formed their separate organizations. These associations were really the first schools. And while men's and women's clubs were often given to persecuting each other, some advanced tribes experimented with coeducation, having boarding schools for both sexes.

P791:8, 70:7.11 Secret societies contributed to the building up of social castes chiefly by the mysterious character of their initiations. The members of these societies first wore masks to frighten the curious away from their mourning rites -- ancestor worship. Later this ritual developed into a pseudo séance at which ghosts were reputed to have appeared. The ancient societies of the "new birth" used signs and employed a special secret language; they also forswore certain foods and drinks. They acted as night police and otherwise functioned in a wide range of social activities.

P792:1, 70:7.12 All secret associations imposed an oath, enjoined confidence, and taught the keeping of secrets. These orders awed and controlled the mobs; they also acted as vigilance societies, thus practicing lynch law. They were the first spies when the tribes were at war and the first secret police during times of peace. Best of all they kept unscrupulous kings on the anxious seat. To offset them, the kings fostered their own secret police.

P792:2, 70:7.13 These societies gave rise to the first political parties. The first party government was "the strong" _vs._ " the weak." In ancient times a change of administration only followed civil war, abundant proof that the weak had become strong.

P792:3, 70:7.14 These clubs were employed by merchants to collect debts and by rulers to collect taxes. Taxation has been a long struggle, one of the earliest forms being the tithe, one tenth of the hunt or spoils. Taxes were originally levied to keep up the king's house, but it was found that they were easier to collect when disguised as an offering for the support of the temple service.

P792:4, 70:7.15 By and by these secret associations grew into the first charitable organizations and later evolved into the earlier religious societies -- the forerunners of churches. Finally some of these societies became intertribal, the first international fraternities.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 8.  
Social Classes

P792:5, 70:8.1 The mental and physical inequality of human beings insures that social classes will appear. The only worlds without social strata are the most primitive and the most advanced. A dawning civilization has not yet begun the differentiation of social levels, while a world settled in light and life has largely effaced these divisions of mankind, which are so characteristic of all intermediate evolutionary stages.

P792:6, 70:8.2 As society emerged from savagery to barbarism, its human components tended to become grouped in classes for the following general reasons:

P792:7, 70:8.3 1. _Natural_ \-- contact, kinship, and marriage; the first social distinctions were based on sex, age, and blood -- kinship to the chief.

P792:8, 70:8.4 2. _Personal_ \-- the recognition of ability, endurance, skill, and fortitude; soon followed by the recognition of language mastery, knowledge, and general intelligence.

P792:9, 70:8.5 3. _Chance_ \-- war and emigration resulted in the separating of human groups. Class evolution was powerfully influenced by conquest, the relation of the victor to the vanquished, while slavery brought about the first general division of society into free and bond.

P792:10, 70:8.6 4. _Economic_ \-- rich and poor. Wealth and the possession of slaves was a genetic basis for one class of society.

P792:11, 70:8.7 5. _Geographic_ \-- classes arose consequent upon urban or rural settlement. City and country have respectively contributed to the differentiation of the herder-agriculturist and the trader-industrialist, with their divergent viewpoints and reactions.

P792:12, 70:8.8 6. _Social_ \-- classes have gradually formed according to popular estimate of the social worth of different groups. Among the earliest divisions of this sort were the demarcations between priest-teachers, ruler-warriors, capitalist-traders, common laborers, and slaves. The slave could never become a capitalist, though sometimes the wage earner could elect to join the capitalistic ranks.

P793:1, 70:8.9 7. _Vocational_ \-- as vocations multiplied, they tended to establish castes and guilds. Workers divided into three groups: the professional classes, including the medicine men, then the skilled workers, followed by the unskilled laborers.

P793:2, 70:8.10 8. _Religious_ \-- the early cult clubs produced their own classes within the clans and tribes, and the piety and mysticism of the priests have long perpetuated them as a separate social group.

P793:3, 70:8.11 9. _Racial_ \-- the presence of two or more races within a given nation or territorial unit usually produces color castes. The original caste system of India was based on color, as was that of early Egypt.

P793:4, 70:8.12 10. _Age_ \-- youth and maturity. Among the tribes the boy remained under the watch-care of his father as long as the father lived, while the girl was left in the care of her mother until married.

P793:5, 70:8.13 Flexible and shifting social classes are indispensable to an evolving civilization, but when _class_ becomes _caste,_ when social levels petrify, the enhancement of social stability is purchased by diminishment of personal initiative. Social caste solves the problem of finding one's place in industry, but it also sharply curtails individual development and virtually prevents social co-operation.

P793:6, 70:8.14 Classes in society, having naturally formed, will persist until man gradually achieves their evolutionary obliteration through intelligent manipulation of the biologic, intellectual, and spiritual resources of a progressing civilization, such as:

P793:7, 70:8.15 1. Biologic renovation of the racial stocks -- the selective elimination of inferior human strains. This will tend to eradicate many mortal inequalities.

P793:8, 70:8.16 2. Educational training of the increased brain power which will arise out of such biologic improvement.

P793:9, 70:8.17 3. Religious quickening of the feelings of mortal kinship and brotherhood.

P793:10, 70:8.18 But these measures can bear their true fruits only in the distant millenniums of the future, although much social improvement will immediately result from the intelligent, wise, and _patient_ manipulation of these acceleration factors of cultural progress. Religion is the mighty lever that lifts civilization from chaos, but it is powerless apart from the fulcrum of sound and normal mind resting securely on sound and normal heredity.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 9.  
Human Rights

P793:11, 70:9.1 Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society's prime gift to man is security.

P793:12, 70:9.2 Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are:

  1. Assurance of food supply.

  2. Military defense -- security through preparedness.

  3. Internal peace preservation -- prevention of personal violence and social disorder.

  4. Sex control -- marriage, the family institution.

  5. Property -- the right to own.

  6. Fostering of individual and group competition.

  7. Provision for educating and training youth.

  8. Promotion of trade and commerce -- industrial development.

  9. Improvement of labor conditions and rewards.

  10. The guarantee of the freedom of religious practices to the end that all of these other social activities may be exalted by becoming spiritually motivated.

P794:8, 70:9.3 When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called _natural rights._ But human rights are not really natural; they are entirely social. They are relative and ever changing, being no more than the rules of the game -- recognized adjustments of relations governing the ever-changing phenomena of human competition.

P794:9, 70:9.4 What may be regarded as right in one age may not be so regarded in another. The survival of large numbers of defectives and degenerates is not because they have any natural right thus to encumber twenty-first-century civilization, but simply because the society of the age, the mores, thus decrees.

P794:10, 70:9.5 Few human rights were recognized in the European Middle Ages; then every man belonged to someone else, and rights were only privileges or favors granted by state or church. And the revolt from this error was equally erroneous in that it led to the belief that all men are born equal.

P794:11, 70:9.6 The weak and the inferior have always contended for equal rights; they have always insisted that the state compel the strong and superior to supply their wants and otherwise make good those deficiencies which all too often are the natural result of their own indifference and indolence.

P794:12, 70:9.7 But this equality ideal is the child of civilization; it is not found in nature. Even culture itself demonstrates conclusively the inherent inequality of men by their very unequal capacity therefore. The sudden and non-evolutionary realization of supposed natural equality would quickly throw civilized man back to the crude usages of primitive ages. Society cannot offer equal rights to all, but it can promise to administer the varying rights of each with fairness and equity. It is the business and duty of society to provide the child of nature with a fair and peaceful opportunity to pursue self-maintenance, participate in self-perpetuation, while at the same time enjoying some measure of self-gratification, the sum of all three constituting human happiness.

The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 10  
Evolution Of Justice

P794:6, 70:10.1 Natural justice is a man-made theory; it is not a reality. In nature, justice is purely theoretic, wholly a fiction. Nature provides but one kind of justice -- inevitable conformity of results to causes.

P794:7, 70:10.2 Justice, as conceived by man, means getting one's rights and has, therefore, been a matter of progressive evolution. The concept of justice may well be constitutive in a spirit-endowed mind, but it does not spring full-fledged into existence on the worlds of space.

P794:8, 70:10.3 Primitive man assigned all phenomena to a person. In case of death the savage asked, not _what_ killed him, but _who?_ Accidental murder was not therefore recognized, and in the punishment of crime the motive of the criminal was wholly disregarded; judgment was rendered in accordance with the injury done.

P795:1, 70:10.4 In the earliest primitive society public opinion operated directly; officers of law were not needed. There was no privacy in primitive life. A man's neighbors were responsible for his conduct; therefore their right to pry into his personal affairs. Society was regulated on the theory that the group membership should have an interest in, and some degree of control over, the behavior of each individual.

P795:2, 70:10.5 It was very early believed that ghosts administered justice through the medicine men and priests; this constituted these orders the first crime detectors and officers of the law. Their early methods of detecting crime consisted in conducting ordeals of poison, fire, and pain. These savage ordeals were nothing more than crude techniques of arbitration; they did not necessarily settle a dispute justly. For example: When poison was administered, if the accused vomited, he was innocent.

P795:3, 70:10.6 The Old Testament records one of these ordeals, a marital guilt test: If a man suspected his wife of being untrue to him, he took her to the priest and stated his suspicions, after which the priest would prepare a concoction consisting of holy water and sweepings from the temple floor. After due ceremony, including threatening curses, the accused wife was made to drink the nasty potion. If she was guilty, "the water that causes the curse shall enter into her and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be accursed among her people." If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symptoms of physical illness, she was acquitted of the charges made by her jealous husband.

P795:4, 70:10.7 These atrocious methods of crime detection were practiced by almost all the evolving tribes at one time or another. Dueling is a modern survival of the trial by ordeal.

P795:5, 70:10.8 It is not to be wondered that the Hebrews and other semi-civilized tribes practiced such primitive techniques of justice administration three thousand years ago, but it is most amazing that thinking men would subsequently retain such a relic of barbarism within the pages of a collection of sacred writings. Reflective thinking should make it clear that no divine being ever gave mortal man such unfair instructions regarding the detection and adjudication of suspected marital unfaithfulness.

P795:6, 70:10.9 Society early adopted the paying-back attitude of retaliation: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolving tribes all recognized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance became the aim of primitive life, but religion has since greatly modified these early tribal practices.

P795:7, 70:10.10 Suicide was a common mode of retaliation. If one were unable to avenge himself in life, he died entertaining the belief that, as a ghost, he could return and visit wrath upon his enemy. And since this belief was very general, the threat of suicide on an enemy's doorstep was usually sufficient to bring him to terms. Primitive man did not hold life very dear; suicide over trifles was common, but the teachings of the Dalamatians greatly lessened this custom, while in more recent times leisure, comforts, religion, and philosophy have united to make life sweeter and more desirable.

P796:1, 70:10.11 One of the earliest formulations of advanced tribal law had to do with the taking over of the blood feud as a tribal affair. But strange to relate, even then a man could kill his wife without punishment provided he had fully paid for her. The Eskimos left and Muslims left the penalty for a crime, even for murder, to be decreed and administered by the family wronged.

P796:2, 70:10.12 Another advance was the imposition of fines for taboo violations, the provision of penalties. These fines constituted the first public revenue. The practice of paying "blood money" also came into vogue as a substitute for blood vengeance. Such damages were usually paid in women or cattle; it was a long time before actual fines, monetary compensation, were assessed as punishment for crime. And since the idea of punishment was essentially compensation, everything, including human life, eventually came to have a price which could be paid as damages. The Hebrews were the first to abolish the practice of paying blood money. Moses taught that they should "take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death; he shall surely be put to death."

P796:3, 70:10.13 Justice was thus first meted out by the family, then by the clan, and later on by the tribe. The administration of true justice dates from the taking of revenge from private and kin groups and lodging it in the hands of the social group, the state.

P796:4, 70:10.14 Punishment by burning alive was once a common practice. It was recognized by many ancient rulers, including Hammurabi and Moses, the latter directing that many crimes, particularly those of a grave sex nature, should be punished by burning at the stake. If "the daughter of a priest" or other leading citizen turned to public prostitution, it was the Hebrew custom to "burn her with fire."

P796:5, 70:10.15 Treason -- the "selling out" or betrayal of one's tribal associates -- was the first capital crime. Cattle stealing was universally punished by summary death, and even recently horse stealing has been similarly punished. But as time passed, it was learned that the severity of the punishment was not so valuable a deterrent to crime as was its certainty and swiftness.

P796:6, 70:10.16 When society fails to punish crimes, group resentment usually asserts itself as lynch law; the provision of sanctuary was a means of escaping this sudden group anger. Lynching and dueling represent the unwillingness of the individual to surrender private redress to the state.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 11.  
Laws And Courts

P796:7, 70:11.1 It is just as difficult to draw sharp distinctions between mores and laws as to indicate exactly when, at the dawning, night is succeeded by day. Mores are laws and police regulations in the making. When long established, the undefined mores tend to crystallize into precise laws, concrete regulations, and well-defined social conventions.

P796:8, 70:11.2 Law is always at first negative and prohibitive; in advancing civilizations it becomes increasingly positive and directive. Early society operated negatively, granting the individual the right to live by imposing upon all others the command, "you shall not kill." Every grant of rights or liberty to the individual involves curtailment of the liberties of all others, and this is effected by the taboo, primitive law. The whole idea of the taboo is inherently negative, for primitive society was wholly negative in its organization, and the early administration of justice consisted in the enforcement of the taboos. But originally these laws applied only to fellow tribesmen, as is illustrated by the later-day Hebrews, who had a different code of ethics for dealing with the gentiles.

P797:1, 70:11.3 The oath originated in the days of Dalamatia in an effort to render testimony more truthful. Such oaths consisted in pronouncing a curse upon oneself. Formerly no individual would testify against his native group.

P797:2, 70:11.4 Crime was an assault upon the tribal mores, sin was the transgression of those taboos which enjoyed ghost sanction, and there was long confusion due to the failure to segregate crime and sin.

P797:3, 70:11.5 Self-interest established the taboo on killing, society sanctified it as traditional mores, while religion consecrated the custom as moral law, and thus did all three conspire in rendering human life more safe and sacred. Society could not have held together during early times had not rights had the sanction of religion; superstition was the moral and social police force of the long evolutionary ages. The ancients all claimed that their olden laws, the taboos, had been given to their ancestors by the gods.

P797:4, 70:11.6 Law is a codified record of long human experience, public opinion crystallized and legalized. The mores were the raw material of accumulated experience out of which later ruling minds formulated the written laws. The ancient judge had no laws. When he handed down a decision, he simply said, "It is the custom."

P797:5, 70:11.7 Reference to precedent in court decisions represents the effort of judges to adapt written laws to the changing conditions of society. This provides for progressive adaptation to altering social conditions combined with the impressiveness of traditional continuity.

P797:6, 70:11.8 Property disputes were handled in many ways, such as:

  1. By destroying the disputed property.

  2. By force -- the contestants fought it out.

  3. By arbitration -- a third party decided.

  4. By appeal to the elders -- later to the courts.

P797:11, 70:11.9 The first courts were regulated fistic encounters; the judges were merely umpires or referees. They saw to it that the fight was carried on according to approved rules. On entering a court combat, each party made a deposit with the judge to pay the costs and fine after one had been defeated by the other. "Might was still right." Later on, verbal arguments were substituted for physical blows.

P797:12, 70:11.10 The whole idea of primitive justice was not so much to be fair as to dispose of the contest and thus prevent public disorder and private violence. But primitive man did not so much resent what would now be regarded as an injustice; it was taken for granted that those who had power would use it selfishly. Nevertheless, the status of any civilization may be very accurately determined by the thoroughness and equity of its courts and by the integrity of its judges.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 32: Section 12.  
Allocation Of Civil Authority

P797:13, 70:12.1 The great struggle in the evolution of government has concerned the concentration of power. The universe administrators have learned from experience that the evolutionary peoples on the inhabited worlds are best regulated by the representative type of civil government when there is maintained proper balance of power between the well-coordinated executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

P798:1, 70:12.2 While primitive authority was based on strength, physical power, the ideal government is the representative system wherein leadership is based on ability, but in the days of barbarism there was entirely too much war to permit representative government to function effectively. In the long struggle between division of authority and unity of command, the dictator won. The early and diffuse powers of the primitive council of elders were gradually concentrated in the person of the absolute monarch. After the arrival of real kings the groups of elders persisted as quasi-legislative-judicial advisory bodies; later on, legislatures of co-ordinate status made their appearance, and eventually supreme courts of adjudication were established separate from the legislatures.

P798:2, 70:12.3 The king was the executor of the mores, the original or unwritten law. Later he enforced the legislative enactments, the crystallization of public opinion. A popular assembly as an expression of public opinion, though slow in appearing, marked a great social advance.

P798:3, 70:12.4 The early kings were greatly restricted by the mores -- by tradition or public opinion. In recent times some Earth nations have codified these mores into documentary bases for government.

P798:4, 70:12.5 Earth mortals are entitled to liberty; they should create their systems of government; they should adopt their constitutions or other charters of civil authority and administrative procedure. And having done this, they should select their most competent and worthy fellows as chief executives. For representatives in the legislative branch they should elect only those who are qualified intellectually and morally to fulfill such sacred responsibilities. As judges of their high and supreme tribunals only those who are endowed with natural ability and who have been made wise by replete experience should be chosen.

P798:5, 70:12.6 If men would maintain their freedom, they must, after having chosen their charter of liberty, provide for its wise, intelligent, and fearless interpretation to the end that there may be prevented:

  1. Usurpation of unwarranted power by either the executive or legislative branches.

  2. Machinations of ignorant and superstitious agitators.

  3. Retardation of scientific progress.

  4. Stalemate of the dominance of mediocrity.

  5. Domination by vicious minorities.

  6. Control by ambitious and clever would-be dictators.

  7. Disastrous disruption of panics.

  8. Exploitation by the unscrupulous.

  9. Taxation enslavement of the citizenry by the state.

  10. Failure of social and economic fairness.

  11. Union of church and state.

  12. Loss of personal liberty.

P798:18, 70:12.7 These are the purposes and aims of constitutional tribunals acting as governors upon the engines of representative government on an evolutionary world.

P799:1, 70:12.8 Mankind's struggle to perfect government on Earth has to do with perfecting channels of administration, with adapting them to ever-changing current needs, with improving power distribution within government, and then with selecting such administrative leaders as are truly wise. While there is a divine and ideal form of government, such cannot be revealed but must be slowly and laboriously discovered by the men and women throughout the universe of time and space.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33  
Development Of The State

P800:1, 71:0.1 The state is a useful evolution of civilization; it represents society's net gain from the ravages and sufferings of war. Even statecraft is merely the accumulated technique for adjusting the competitive contest of force between the struggling tribes and nations.

P800:2, 71:0.2 The modern state is the institution which survived in the long struggle for group power. Superior power eventually prevailed, and it produced a creature of fact -- the state -- together with the moral myth of the absolute obligation of the citizen to live and die for the state. But the state is not of divine genesis; it was not even produced by volitionally intelligent human action; it is purely an evolutionary institution and was wholly automatic in origin.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 1.  
The Embryonic State

P800:3, 71:1.1 The state is a territorial social regulative organization, and the strongest, most efficient, and enduring state is composed of a single nation whose people have a common language, mores, and institutions.

P800:4, 71:1.2 The early states were small and were all the result of conquest. They did not originate in voluntary associations. Many were founded by conquering nomads, who would swoop down on peaceful herders or settled agriculturists to overpower and enslave them. Such states, resulting from conquest, were, perforce, stratified; classes were inevitable, and class struggles have ever been selective.

P800:5, 71:1.3 The northern tribes of the American red men never attained real statehood. They never progressed beyond a loose confederation of tribes, a very primitive form of state. Their nearest approach was the Iroquois federation, but this group of six nations never quite functioned as a state and failed to survive because of the absence of the essentials to modern national life.

P800:14, 71:1.12 The red men eventually would have evolved a state had they not prematurely encountered the more advanced civilization of the white man.

P801:11, 71:1.15 The embryonic state was made possible by the decline of the blood bond in favor of the territorial, and such tribal federations were usually firmly cemented by conquest. While a sovereignty that transcends all minor struggles and group differences is the characteristic of the true state, still, many classes and castes persist in the later state organizations as remnants of the clans and tribes of former days. The later and larger territorial states had a long and bitter struggle with these smaller consanguineous clan groups, the tribal government proving a valuable transition from family to state authority. During later times many clans grew out of trades and other industrial associations.

P801:12, 71:1.16 Failure of state integration results in retrogression to pre-state conditions of governmental techniques, such as the feudalism of the European Middle Ages. During these dark ages the territorial state collapsed, and there was a reversion to the small castle groups, the reappearance of the clan and tribal stages of development.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 2.  
The Evolution Of Representative Government

P802:1, 71:2.2 Public opinion, common opinion, has always delayed society; nevertheless, it is valuable, for, while retarding social evolution, it does preserve civilization. Education of public opinion is the only safe and true method of accelerating civilization; force is only a temporary expedient, and cultural growth will increasingly accelerate as bullets give way to ballots. Public opinion, the mores, is the basic and elemental energy in social evolution and state development, but to be of state value it must be nonviolent in expression.

P802:2, 71:2.3 The measure of the advance of society is directly determined by the degree to which public opinion can control personal behavior and state regulation through nonviolent expression. The really civilized government had arrived when public opinion was clothed with the powers of personal franchise. Popular elections may not always decide things rightly, but they represent the right way even to do a wrong thing. Evolution does not at once produce superlative perfection but rather comparative and advancing practical adjustment.

P802:3, 71:2.4 There are ten steps, or stages, to the evolution of a practical and efficient form of representative government, and these are:

P802:4, 71:2.5 1. _Freedom of the person._ Slavery, serfdom, and all forms of human bondage must disappear.

P802:5, 71:2.6 2. _Freedom of the mind._ Unless a free people are educated -- taught to think intelligently and plan wisely -- freedom usually does more harm than good.

P802:6, 71:2.7 3. _The reign of law._ Liberty can be enjoyed only when the will and whims of human rulers are replaced by legislative enactments in accordance with accepted fundamental law.

P802:7, 71:2.8 4. _Freedom of speech._ Representative government is unthinkable without freedom of all forms of expression for human aspirations and opinions.

P802:8, 71:2.9 5. _Security of property._ No government can long endure if it fails to provide for the right to enjoy personal property in some form. Man craves the right to use, control, bestow, sell, lease, and bequeath his personal property.

P802:9, 71:2.10 6. _The right of petition._ Representative government assumes the right of citizens to be heard. The privilege of petition is inherent in free citizenship.

P802:10, 71:2.11 7. _The right to rule._ It is not enough to be heard; the power of petition must progress to the actual management of the government.

P802:11, 71:2.12 8. _Universal suffrage._ Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate. The character of such a government will ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. As civilization progresses, suffrage, while remaining universal for both sexes, will be effectively modified, regrouped, and otherwise differentiated.

P802:12, 71:2.13 9. _Control of public servants._ No civil government will be serviceable and effective unless the citizenry possess and use wise techniques of guiding and controlling officeholders and public servants.

P802:13, 71:2.14 10. _Intelligent and trained representation._ The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 3.  
The Ideals Of Statehood

P803:1, 71:3.1 The political or administrative form of a government is of little consequence provided it affords the essentials of civil progress -- liberty, security, education, and social co-ordination. It is not what a state is but what it does that determines the course of social evolution. And after all, no state can transcend the moral values of its citizenry as exemplified in their chosen leaders. Ignorance and selfishness will insure the downfall of even the highest type of government.

P803:2, 71:3.2 Much as it is to be regretted, national egotism has been essential to social survival. The chosen people doctrine has been a prime factor in tribal welding and nation building right on down to modern times. But no state can attain ideal levels of functioning until every form of intolerance is mastered; it is everlastingly inimical to human progress. And intolerance is best combated by the co-ordination of science, commerce, play, and religion.

P803:3, 71:3.3 The ideal state functions under the impulse of three mighty and coordinated drives:

  1. Love loyalty derived from the realization of human brotherhood.

  2. Intelligent patriotism based on wise ideals.

  3. Cosmic insight interpreted in terms of planetary facts, needs, and goals.

P803:7, 71:3.4 The laws of the ideal state are few in number, and they have passed out of the negativistic taboo age into the era of the positive progress of individual liberty consequent upon enhanced self-control. The exalted state not only compels its citizens to work but also entices them into profitable and uplifting utilization of the increasing leisure which results from toil liberation by the advancing machine age. Leisure must produce as well as consume.

P803:8, 71:3.5 No society has progressed very far when it permits idleness or tolerates poverty. But poverty and dependence can never be eliminated if the defective and degenerate stocks are freely supported and permitted to reproduce without restraint.

P803:9, 71:3.6 A moral society should aim to preserve the self-respect of its citizenry and afford every normal individual adequate opportunity for self-realization. Such a plan of social achievement would yield a cultural society of the highest order. Social evolution should be encouraged by governmental supervision which exercises a minimum of regulative control. That state is best which co-ordinates most while governing least.

P803:10, 71:3.7 The ideals of statehood must be attained by evolution, by the slow growth of civic consciousness, the recognition of the obligation and privilege of social service. At first men assume the burdens of government as a duty, following the end of the administration of political spoils-men, but later on they seek such ministry as a privilege, as the greatest honor. The status of any level of civilization is faithfully portrayed by the caliber of its citizens who volunteer to accept the responsibilities of statehood.

P803:11, 71:3.8 In a real commonwealth the business of governing cities and provinces is conducted by experts and is managed just as are all other forms of economic and commercial associations of people.

P803:12, 71:3.9 In advanced states, political service is esteemed as the highest devotion of the citizenry. The greatest ambition of the wisest and noblest of citizens is to gain civil recognition, to be elected or appointed to some position of governmental trust, and such governments confer their highest honors of recognition for service upon their civil and social servants. Honors are next bestowed in the order named upon philosophers, educators, scientists, industrialists, and militarists. Parents are duly rewarded by the excellence of their children, and purely religious leaders, being ambassadors of a spiritual realm, receive their real rewards in another world.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 4.  
Progressive Civilization

P804:1, 71:4.1 Economics, society, and government must evolve if they are to remain. Static conditions on an evolutionary world are indicative of decay; only those institutions that move forward with the evolutionary stream persist.

P804:2, 71:4.2 The progressive program of an expanding civilization embraces:

  1. Preservation of individual liberties.

  2. Protection of the home.

  3. Promotion of economic security.

  4. Prevention of disease.

  5. Compulsory education.

  6. Equality in employment.

  7. Profitable utilization of leisure.

  8. Care of the unfortunate.

  9. Race improvement.

  10. Promotion of science and art.

  11. Promotion of philosophy -- wisdom.

  12. Allowing freedom of cosmic insight -- spirituality.

P804:15, 71:4.3 And this progress in the arts of civilization leads directly to the realization of the highest human and divine goals of mortal endeavor -- the social achievement of the brotherhood of man.

P804:16, 71:4.4 The appearance of genuine brotherhood signifies that a social order has arrived in which all men delight in bearing one another's burdens; they actually desire to practice the golden rule. But such an ideal society cannot be realized when either the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take unfair and unholy advantage of those who are chiefly actuated by devotion to the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. In such a situation only one course is practical: The "golden rulers" may establish a progressive society in which they live according to their ideals while maintaining an adequate defense against their benighted fellows who might seek either to exploit their pacific predilections or to destroy their advancing civilization.

P804:17, 71:4.5 Idealism can never survive on an evolving planet if the idealists in each generation permit themselves to be exterminated by the baser orders of humanity. And here is the great test of idealism: Can an advanced society maintain that military preparedness which renders it secure from all attack by its war-loving neighbors without yielding to the temptation to employ this military strength in offensive operations against other peoples for purposes of selfish gain or national aggrandizement? Only love, brotherhood, can prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33 Section 5.  
The Evolution Of Competition

P805:1, 71:5.1 Competition is essential to social progress, but competition, unregulated, breeds violence. In current society, competition is slowly displacing war in that it determines the individual's place in industry, as well as decreeing the survival of the industries themselves. (Murder and war differ in their status before the mores, murder having been outlawed since the early days of society, while war has never yet been outlawed by mankind as a whole.)

P805:2, 71:5.2 The ideal state undertakes to regulate social conduct only enough to take violence out of individual competition and to prevent unfairness in personal initiative. Here is a great problem in statehood: How can you guarantee peace and quiet in industry, pay the taxes to support state power, and at the same time prevent taxation from handicapping industry and keep the state from becoming parasitical or tyrannical?

P805:3, 71:5.3 Throughout the earlier ages of any world, competition is essential to progressive civilization. As the evolution of man progresses, co-operation becomes increasingly effective. In advanced civilizations co-operation is more efficient than competition. Early man is stimulated by competition. Early evolution is characterized by the survival of the biologically fit, but later civilizations are the better promoted by intelligent co-operation, understanding fraternity, and spiritual brotherhood.

P805:4, 71:5.4 True, competition in industry is exceedingly wasteful and highly ineffective, but no attempt to eliminate this economic lost motion should be countenanced if such adjustments entail even the slightest abrogation of any of the basic liberties of the individual.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 6.  
The Profit Motive

P805:5, 71:6.1 Present-day profit-motivated economics is doomed unless profit motives can be augmented by service motives. Ruthless competition based on narrow-minded self-interest is ultimately destructive of even those things which it seeks to maintain.

P805:6, 71:6.2 In economics, profit motivation is to service motivation what fear is to love in religion. But the profit motive must not be suddenly destroyed or removed; it keeps many otherwise slothful mortals hard at work. It is not necessary, however, that this social energy arouser be forever selfish in its objectives.

P805:7, 71:6.3 The profit motive of economic activities is altogether base and wholly unworthy of an advanced order of society; nevertheless, it is an indispensable factor throughout the earlier phases of civilization. Profit motivation must not be taken away from men until they have firmly possessed themselves of superior types of nonprofit motives for economic striving and social serving -- the transcendent urges of superlative wisdom, intriguing brotherhood, and excellence.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 7.  
Education

P806:1, 71:7.1 The enduring state is founded on culture, dominated by ideals, and motivated by service. The purpose of education should be acquirement of skill, pursuit of wisdom, realization of selfhood, and freedom for the attainment of spiritual values.

P806:2, 71:7.2  In the ideal state, education continues throughout life, and philosophy sometime becomes the chief pursuit of its citizens. The citizens of such a commonwealth pursue wisdom as an enhancement of insight into the significance of human relations, the meanings of reality, the nobility of values, the goals of living, and the glories of cosmic destiny.

P806:3, 71:7.3 Earthlings should get a vision of a new and higher cultural society. Education will jump to new levels of value with the passing of the purely profit-motivated system of economics. Education has too long been localistic, militaristic, ego exalting, and success seeking; it must eventually become world-wide, idealistic, self-realizing, and cosmic grasping.

P806:4, 71:7.4 Education has passed from the control of the clergy to that of lawyers and businessmen. Eventually it must be given over to the philosophers and the scientists. Teachers must be free beings, real leaders, to the end that philosophy, the search for wisdom, may become the chief educational pursuit.

P806:5, 71:7.5 Education is the business of living; it must continue throughout a lifetime so that mankind may gradually experience the ascending levels of mortal wisdom, which are:

  1. The knowledge of things.

  2. The realization of meanings.

  3. The appreciation of values.

  4. The nobility of work -- duty.

  5. The motivation of goals -- morality.

  6. The love of service -- character.

  7. Cosmic insight -- spiritual discernment.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 33: Section 8.  
The Character Of Statehood

P806:14, 71:8.1 The only sacred feature of any human government is the division of statehood into the three domains of executive, legislative, and judicial functions. The universe is administered in accordance with such a plan of segregation of functions and authority. Aside from this divine concept of effective social regulation or civil government, it matters little what form of state a people may elect to have provided the citizenry is ever progressing toward the goal of augmented self-control and increased social service. The intellectual keenness, economic wisdom, social cleverness, and moral stamina of a people are all faithfully reflected in statehood.

P806:15, 71:8.2 The evolution of statehood entails progress from level to level, as follows:

P806:16, 71:8.3 1. The creation of a threefold government of executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

P806:17, 71:8.4 2. The freedom of social, political, and religious activities.

P807:1, 71:8.5 3. The abolition of all forms of slavery and human bondage.

P807:2, 71:8.6 4. The ability of the citizenry to control the levying of taxes.

P807:3, 71:8.7 5. The establishment of universal education -- learning extended from the cradle to the grave.

P807:4, 71:8.8 6. The proper adjustment between local and national governments.

P807:5, 71:8.9 7. The fostering of science and the conquest of disease.

P807:6, 71:8.10 8. The due recognition of sex equality and the co-ordinated functioning of men and women in the home, school, and church, with specialized service of women in industry and government.

P807:7, 71:8.11 9. The elimination of toiling slavery by machine invention and the subsequent mastery of the machine age.

P807:8, 71:8.12 10. The conquest of dialects -- the triumph of a universal language.

P807:9, 71:8.13 11. The ending of war -- international adjudication of national and racial differences by continental courts of nations presided over by a supreme planetary tribunal automatically recruited from the periodically retiring heads of the continental courts. The continental courts are authoritative; the world court is advisory -- moral.

P807:10, 71:8.14 12. The world-wide vogue of the pursuit of wisdom -- the exaltation of philosophy. The evolution of religious equality and religious rationality.

P807:11, 71:8.15 These are the prerequisites of progressive government and the earmarks of ideal statehood. Earth is far from the realization of these exalted ideals, but the civilized races have made a beginning -- mankind is on the march toward higher evolutionary destinies.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34  
The Legend Of Creation \-- Noah's Flood

Andite Expansion In The Orient

P837:3, 74:8.4 The belief in man's having been created from clay was well-nigh universal in the Eastern Hemisphere; this tradition can be traced from the Philippine Islands around the world to Africa. And many groups accepted this story of man's clay origin by some form of special creation in the place of the earlier beliefs in progressive creation -- evolution. The majority of the world's peoples have been influenced by the tradition that Adam and Eve (Andon & Eva) had physical forms created for them upon their arrival on Earth.

P836:14, 74:8.1 The story of the creation of the universe and Earth in six days was based on the tradition that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their initial survey of the Garden. This circumstance lent almost sacred sanction to the time period of the week. The choosing of the seventh day for worship was wholly incidental to the facts herewith narrated.

P837:1, 74:8.2 The legend of the making of the world in six days was an afterthought, in fact, more than thirty thousand years afterwards. One feature of the narrative, the sudden appearance of the sun and moon, may have taken origin in the traditions of the onetime sudden emergence of the world from a dense space cloud of minute matter which had long obscured both sun and moon.

P837:2, 74:8.3 The story of creating Eve out of Adam's rib is a confused condensation of the Adamic arrival and the celestial surgery connected with the interchange of living substances associated with the coming of the corporeal staff more than four hundred and fifty thousand years previously.

P837:4, 74:8.5 Away from the influences of Dalamatia and Eden, mankind tended toward the belief in the gradual ascent of the human race. The fact of evolution is not a modern discovery; the ancients understood the slow and evolutionary character of human progress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this despite their proximity to Mesopotamia. Although the various races of earth became sadly mixed up in their notions of evolution, nevertheless, many of the primitive tribes believed and taught that they were the descendants of various animals. Primitive peoples made a practice of selecting for their "totems" the animals of their supposed ancestry. Certain North American Indian tribes believed they originated from beavers and coyotes. Certain African tribes teach that they are descended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the parrot.

P837:5, 74:8.6 The Babylonians, because of immediate contact with the remnants of the civilization of the Adamites, enlarged and embellished the story of man's creation; they taught that he had descended directly from the gods. They held to an aristocratic origin for the race which was incompatible with even the doctrine of creation out of clay.

P837:6, 74:8.7 The Old Testament account of creation dates from long after the time of Moses; he never taught the Hebrews such a story. But he did present a simple and condensed narrative of creation to the Israelites, hoping thereby to augment his appeal to worship the Creator, the Universal Father, whom he called the Lord God of Israel.

P837:7, 74:8.8 In his early teachings, Moses very wisely did not attempt to go back of Adam's time, and since Moses was the supreme teacher of the Hebrews, the stories of Adam became intimately associated with those of creation.

P838:1, 74:8.9 The Hebrews had no written language in general usage for a long time after they reached Palestine. They learned the use of an alphabet from the neighboring Philistines, who were political refugees from the higher civilization of Crete. The Hebrews did little writing until about 900 B.C., and having no written language until such a late date, they had several different stories of creation in circulation, but after the Babylonian captivity they inclined more toward accepting a modified Mesopotamian version.

P838:2, 74:8.10 Jewish tradition became crystallized about Moses, and because he endeavored to trace the lineage of Abraham back to Adam, the Jews assumed that Adam was the first of all mankind. Yahweh was the creator, and since Adam was supposed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to making Adam. And then the tradition of Adam's six days got woven into the story, with the result that almost a thousand years after Moses' sojourn on earth the tradition of creation in six days was written out and subsequently credited to him.

P838:3, 74:8.11 When the Jewish priests returned to Jerusalem, they had already completed the writing of their narrative of the beginning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a recently discovered story of creation written by Moses. But the contemporary Hebrews of around 500 B.C. did not consider these writings to be divine revelations; they looked upon them much as later peoples regard mythological narratives.

P838:4, 74:8.12 This spurious document, reputed to be the teachings of Moses, was brought to the attention of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it translated into Greek by a commission of seventy scholars for his new library at Alexandria. And so this account found its place among those writings which subsequently became a part of the later collections of the "sacred scriptures" of the Hebrew and Christian religions. And through identification with these theological systems, such concepts for a long time profoundly influenced the philosophy of many Occidental peoples.

P838:5, 74:8.13 The Christian teachers perpetuated the belief in the fiat creation of the human race, and all this led directly to the formation of the hypothesis of a onetime golden age of utopian bliss and the theory of the fall of man or which accounted for the non-utopian condition of society. These outlooks on life and man's place in the universe were at best discouraging since they were predicated upon a belief in retrogression rather than progression, as well as implying a vengeful Deity, who had vented wrath upon the human race in retribution for the errors of certain onetime planetary administrators.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 1.  
Story Of Noah's Flood

P874:6, 78:7.1 The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.

P874:7, 78:7.2 The mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.

P874:8, 78:7.3 Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah's flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.

P875:1, 78:7.4 The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth's surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Earth. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.

P875:2, 78:7.5 But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river's rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.

P875:4, 78:7.7 The remnants of this, one of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these regions of Mesopotamia and to the northeast and northwest. But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 2.  
The Sumerians -- The Andites

P875:5, 78:8.1 When the last Andite dispersion broke the biologic backbone of Mesopotamian civilization, a small minority of this superior race remained in their homeland near the mouths of the rivers. These were the Sumerians, and by 6000 B.C. they had become largely Andite in extraction, though their culture was more exclusively Nodite in character, and they clung to the ancient traditions of Dalamatia. Nonetheless, these Sumerians of the coastal regions were the last of the Andites in Mesopotamia. But the races of Mesopotamia were already thoroughly blended by this late date, as is evidenced by the skull types found in the graves of this era.

P875:6, 78:8.2 It was during the flood-times that Susa so greatly prospered. The first and lower city was inundated so that the second or higher town succeeded the lower as the headquarters for the peculiar art-crafts of that day. With the later diminution of these floods, Ur became the center of the pottery industry. About seven thousand years ago Ur was on the Persian Gulf, the river deposits having since built up the land to its present limits. These settlements suffered less from the floods because of better controlling works and the widening mouths of the rivers.

P875:7, 78:8.3 The peaceful grain growers of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys had long been harassed by the raids of the barbarians of Turkestan and the Iranian plateau. But now a concerted invasion of the Euphrates valley was brought about by the increasing drought of the highland pastures. And this invasion was all the more serious because these surrounding herdsmen and hunters possessed large numbers of tamed horses. It was the possession of horses which gave them a tremendous military advantage over their rich neighbors to the south. In a short time they overran all Mesopotamia, driving forth the last waves of culture which spread out over all of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa.

P876:1, 78:8.4 These conquerors of Mesopotamia carried in their ranks many of the better Andite strains of the mixed northern races of Turkestan, including some of the Adamson stock. These less advanced but more vigorous tribes from the north quickly and willingly assimilated the residue of the civilization of Mesopotamia and presently developed into those mixed peoples found in the Euphrates valley at the beginning of historic annals. They quickly revived many phases of the passing civilization of Mesopotamia, adopting the arts of the valley tribes and much of the culture of the Sumerians. They even sought to build a third tower of Babel and later adopted the term as their national name.

P876:2, 78:8.5 When these barbarian cavalrymen from the northeast overran the whole Euphrates valley, they did not conquer the remnants of the Andites who dwelt about the mouth of the river on the Persian Gulf. These Sumerians were able to defend themselves because of superior intelligence, better weapons, and their extensive system of military canals, which were an adjunct to their irrigation scheme of interconnecting pools. They were a united people because they had a uniform group religion. They were thus able to maintain their racial and national integrity long after their neighbors to the northwest were broken up into isolated city-states. No one of these city groups was able to overcome the united Sumerians.

P876:3, 78:8.6 And the invaders from the north soon learned to trust and prize these peace-loving Sumerians as able teachers and administrators. They were greatly respected and sought after as teachers of art and industry, as directors of commerce, and as civil rulers by all peoples to the north and from Egypt in the west to India in the east.

P876:4, 78:8.7 After the breakup of the early Sumerian confederation the later city-states were ruled by the apostate descendants of the Sethite priests. Only when these priests made conquests of the neighboring cities did they call themselves kings. The later city kings failed to form powerful confederations before the days of Sargon because of deity jealousy. Each city believed its municipal god to be superior to all other gods, and therefore they refused to subordinate themselves to a common leader.

P876:5, 78:8.8 The end of this long period of the weak rule of the city priests was terminated by Sargon, the priest of Kish, who proclaimed himself king and started out on the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia and adjoining lands. And for the time, this ended the city-states, priest-ruled and priest-ridden, each city having its own municipal god and its own ceremonial practices.

P876:6, 78:8.9 After the breakup of this Kish confederation there ensued a long period of constant warfare between these valley cities for supremacy. And the rulership variously shifted between Sumer, Akkad, Kish, Erech, Ur, and Susa.

P877:1, 78:8.10 About 2500 B.C. the Sumerians suffered severe reverses at the hands of the northern Suites and Guites. Lagash, the Sumerian capital built on flood mounds, fell. Erech held out for thirty years after the fall of Akkad. By the time of the establishment of the rule of Hammurabi the Sumerians had become absorbed into the ranks of the northern Semites, and the Mesopotamian Andites passed from the pages of history.

P877:2, 78:8.11 From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the nomads were on a rampage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Nerites constituted the final eruption of the Caspian group of the Mesopotamian descendants of the blended Andonite and Andite races. What the barbarians failed to do to effect the ruination of Mesopotamia, subsequent climatic changes succeeded in accomplishing.

P877:3, 78:8.12 And this is the story of the violet race and of the fate of their homeland between the Tigris and Euphrates. Their ancient civilization finally fell due to the emigration of superior peoples and the immigration of their inferior neighbors. But long before the barbarian cavalrymen conquered the valley, much of that culture had spread to Asia, Africa, and Europe, there to produce the ferments which have resulted in the twenty-first--century civilization of Earth.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 3.  
Andite Expansion In The Orient

P878:1, 79:0.1 Asia is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this continent that Andon and Eva were born; in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture that persisted for over one-half million years. Here at this eastern focus of the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield. Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians, Nodites and Andites, and from these regions the potentials of modern civilization spread to the world.

P878:2, 79:1.1 For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eurasia was predominantly, though diminishingly, Andite. In the lowlands of Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to the northern lands of the yellow men. The Andite infiltration of India proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China.

P878:3, 79:1.2 For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself.

P878:4, 79:1.3 By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers.

P879:1, 79:1.4 When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites, they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade. Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was accelerated on both land and water.

P879:2, 79:1.5 But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia.

P879:3, 79:1.6 Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed descendants during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races.

P879:4, 79:1.7 Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central Asia nearly to the vanishing point.

P879:5, 79:1.8 But even in the twenty-first-century there are traces of Andite blood among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the presence of the red- haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet- Mongolian types in the Tarim basin of long ago.

P879:6, 79:1.9 The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of "one God in heaven." The early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic concept in Asia.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 4.  
The Andite Conquest Of India

P879:7, 79:2.1 India is the only locality where all the Earth races were blended, the Andite invasion adding the last stock. In the highlands northwest of India the Sangik races came into existence, and without exception members of each penetrated the subcontinent of India in their early days, leaving behind them the most heterogeneous race mixture ever to exist on Earth. Ancient India acted as a catch basin for the migrating races. The base of the peninsula was formerly somewhat narrower than now, much of the deltas of the Ganges and Indus being the work of the last fifty thousand years.

P879:8, 79:2.2 The earliest race mixtures in India were a blending of the migrating red and yellow races with the aboriginal Andonites. This group was later weakened by absorbing the greater portion of the extinct eastern green peoples as well as large numbers of the orange race, was slightly improved through limited admixture with the blue man, but suffered exceedingly through assimilation of large numbers of the indigo race.

P880:1, 79:2.3 By 20,000 B.C. the population of western India had already mixed with the other races and never in the history of Earth did any one people combine so many different races. But the secondary Sangik strains predominated, and it was a real calamity that both the blue and the red man were so largely missing from this racial melting pot of long ago; more of the primary Sangik strains would have contributed very much toward the enhancement of what might have been an even greater civilization. As it developed, the red man was destroying himself in the Americas, the blue man was disporting himself in Europe, and the early descendants of Andon (and most of the later ones) exhibited little desire to admix with the darker colored peoples, whether in India, Africa, or elsewhere.

P880:2, 79:2.4 About 15,000 B.C. increasing population pressure throughout Turkestan and Iran occasioned the first really extensive Andite movement toward India. For over fifteen centuries these peoples poured in through the highlands of Baluchistan, spreading out over the valleys of the Indus and Ganges and slowly moving southward into the Deccan. This Andite pressure from the northwest drove many of the southern and eastern peoples into Burma and southern China but not sufficiently to save the invaders from racial obliteration.

P880:3, 79:2.5 The failure of India to achieve the hegemony of Eurasia was largely a matter of topography; population pressure from the north only crowded the majority of the people southward into the decreasing territory of the Deccan, surrounded on all sides by the sea.

P880:4, 79:2.6 As it was, these earlier Andite conquerors made a desperate attempt to preserve their identity and stem the tide of racial engulfment by the establishment of rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage. Nonetheless, the Andites had become submerged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the people had been markedly improved by this absorption.

P880:5, 79:2.7 Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 5.  
Dravidian India

P881:1, 79:3.1 The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native people eventually resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement and this composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on earth.

P881:2, 79:3.2 Not long after conquering India, the Dravidian Andites lost their racial and cultural contact with Mesopotamia, but the later opening up of the sea lanes and the caravan routes re-established these connections; and at no time within the last ten thousand years has India ever been entirely out of touch with Mesopotamia on the west and China to the east, although the mountain barriers greatly favored western intercourse.

P881:3, 79:3.3 The culture and religious leanings of the peoples of India date from the early times of Dravidian domination and are due, in part, to the fact that so many of the Sethite priesthood entered India, both in the earlier Andite and in the later Aryan invasions.

P881:4, 79:3.4 As early as 16,000 B.C. a company of one hundred Sethite priests entered India and very nearly achieved the religious conquest of the western half of that polyglot people. But their religion did not persist.

P881:5, 79:3.5  But for more than seven thousand years, down to the end of the Andite migrations, the religious status of the inhabitants of India was far above that of the world at large. During these times India bid fair to produce the leading cultural, religious, philosophic, and commercial civilization of the world. And but for the complete submergence of the Andites by the peoples of the south, this destiny would probably have been realized.

P881:6, 79:3.6 The Dravidian centers of culture were located in the river valleys, principally of the Indus and Ganges, and in the Deccan along the three great rivers flowing through the Eastern Ghats to the sea. The settlements along the seacoast of the Western Ghats owed their prominence to maritime relationships with Sumeria.

P881:7, 79:3.7 The Dravidians were among the earliest peoples to build cities and to engage in an extensive export and import business, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were making regular trips to distant Mesopotamia; Dravidian shipping was pushing coastwise across the Arabian Sea to the Sumerian cities of the Persian Gulf and was venturing on the waters of the Bay of Bengal as far as the East Indies. An alphabet, together with the art of writing, was imported from Sumeria by these seafarers and merchants.

P881:8, 79:3.8 These commercial relationships greatly contributed to the further diversification of a cosmopolitan culture, resulting in the early appearance of many of the refinements and even luxuries of urban life. When the later appearing Aryans entered India, they did not recognize in the Dravidians their Andite cousins submerged in the Sangik races, but they did find a well-advanced civilization. Despite biologic limitations, the Dravidians founded a superior civilization. It was well diffused throughout all India and has survived on down to modern times.

The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 6.  
Red Man And Yellow Man

P883:2, 79:5.1 While the story of India is that of Andite conquest and eventual submergence in the older evolutionary peoples, the narrative of eastern Asia is more properly that of the primary Sangik, particularly the red man and the yellow man. These two races largely escaped that admixture with the debased Neanderthal strain which so greatly retarded the blue man in Europe, thus preserving the superior potential of the primary Sangik type.

P883:3, 79:5.2 While the early Neanderthalers were spread out over the entire breadth of Eurasia, the eastern wing was the more contaminated with debased animal strains. These subhuman types were pushed south by the fifth glacier, the same ice sheet which so long blocked Sangik migration into eastern Asia. And when the red man moved northeast around the highlands of India, he found northeastern Asia free from these subhuman types. The tribal organization of the red races was formed earlier than that of any other peoples, and they were the first to migrate from the central Asian focus of the Sangik. The inferior Neanderthal strains were destroyed or driven off the mainland by the later migrating yellow tribes. But the red man had reigned supreme in eastern Asia for almost one hundred thousand years before the yellow tribes arrived.

P883:4, 79:5.3 More than three hundred thousand years ago the main body of the yellow race entered China from the south as coastwise migrants. Each millennium they penetrated farther and farther inland, but they did not make contact with their migrating Tibetan brethren until comparatively recent times.

P883:5, 79:5.4 Growing population pressure caused the northward-moving yellow race to begin to push into the hunting grounds of the red man. This encroachment, coupled with natural racial antagonism, culminated in increasing hostilities, and thus began the crucial struggle for the fertile lands of farther Asia.

P883:6, 79:5.5 The story of this age long contest between the red and yellow races is an epic of Earth history. For over two hundred thousand years these two superior races waged bitter and unremitting warfare. In the earlier struggles the red men were generally successful, their raiding parties spreading havoc among the yellow settlements. But the yellow man was an apt pupil in the art of warfare, and he early manifested a marked ability to live peaceably with his compatriots; the Chinese were the first to learn that in union there is strength. The red tribes continued their internecine conflicts, and presently they began to suffer repeated defeats at the aggressive hands of the relentless Chinese, who continued their inexorable march northward.

P883:7, 79:5.6  One hundred thousand years ago the decimated tribes of the red race were fighting with their backs to the retreating ice of the last glacier, and when the land passage to the west, over the Bering isthmus, became passable, these tribes were not slow in forsaking the inhospitable shores of the Asiatic continent. It is eighty-five thousand years since the last of the pure red men departed from Asia, but the long struggle left its genetic imprint upon the victorious yellow race. The northern Chinese peoples, together with the Andonite Siberians, assimilated much of the red stock and were in considerable measure benefited thereby.

P884:1, 79:5.7 The North American Indians never came in contact with even the Andite offspring, having been dispossessed of their Asiatic homelands some fifty thousand years ago. During the age of Andite migrations the pure red strains were spreading out over North America as nomadic tribes, hunters who practiced agriculture to a small extent. These races and cultural groups remained almost completely isolated from the remainder of the world from their arrival in the Americas down to the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, when the white races of Europe discovered them. Up to that time the Eskimos were the nearest to white men the northern tribes of red men had ever seen.

P884:2, 79:5.8 The red and the yellow races are the only humans that ever achieved a high degree of civilization apart from the influences of the Andites. The oldest Amerindian culture was the Onamonalonton Center in California, but this had long since vanished by 35,000 B.C. In Mexico, Central America, and in the mountains of South America the later and more enduring civilizations were founded by a race predominantly red but containing a considerable admixture of the yellow, orange, and blue.

P884:3, 79:5.9 These civilizations were evolutionary products of the Sangik, notwithstanding that traces of Andite blood reached Peru. Excepting the Eskimos in North America and a few Polynesian Andites in South America, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere had no contact with the rest of the world

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 7.  
Dawn Of Chinese Civilization

P884:4, 79:6.1 Sometime after driving the red man across to North America, the expanding Chinese cleared the Andonites from the river valleys of eastern Asia, pushing them north into Siberia and west into Turkestan, where they were soon to come in contact with the superior culture of the Andites.

P884:5, 79:6.2 In Burma and the peninsula of Indo-China the cultures of India and China mixed and blended to produce the successive civilizations of those regions. Here the vanished green race has persisted in larger proportion than anywhere else in the world.

P884:6, 79:6.3 Many different races occupied the islands of the Pacific. In general, peoples carrying a heavy percentage of green and indigo blood occupied the southern and then more extensive islands. The northern islands were held by Andonites and, later on, by races embracing large proportions of the yellow and red stocks. The ancestors of the Japanese people were not driven off the mainland until 12,000 B.C., when they were dislodged by a powerful southern-coastwise thrust of the northern Chinese tribes. Their final exodus was not so much due to population pressure as to the initiative of a chieftain whom they came to regard as a divine personage.

P885:1, 79:6.4 Like the peoples of India and the Levant, victorious tribes of the yellow man established their earliest centers along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal settlements fared poorly in later years as the increasing floods and the shifting courses of the rivers made the lowland cities untenable.

P885:2, 79:6.5 Twenty thousand years ago the ancestors of the Chinese had built up a dozen strong centers of primitive culture and learning, especially along the Yellow River and the Yangtze. And now these centers began to be reinforced by the arrival of a steady stream of superior blended peoples from Sinkiang and Tibet. The migration from Tibet to the Yangtze valley was not so extensive as in the north, neither were the Tibetan centers so advanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both movements carried a certain amount of Andite blood eastward to the river settlements.

P885:3, 79:6.6 The superiority of the ancient yellow race was due to four great factors:

P885:4, 79:6.7 1. _Genetic._ The northern Chinese, already strengthened by small amounts of the red and Andonic strains, were soon to benefit by a considerable influx of Andite blood.

P885:5, 79:6.8 2. _Social._ The yellow race early learned the value of peace among themselves. Their internal peaceableness so contributed to population increase as to insure the spread of their civilization among many millions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C. the highest mass of civilization was in central and northern China. The yellow man was first to achieve a racial solidarity -- the first to attain a large-scale cultural, social, and political civilization.

P885:6, 79:6.9 The Chinese of 15,000 B.C. were aggressive militarists; they had not been weakened by an over-reverence for the past, and numbering less than twelve million, they formed a compact body speaking a common language. During this age they built up a real nation, much more united and homogeneous than their political unions of historic times.

P885:7, 79:6.10 3. _Spiritual._ During the age of Andite migrations the Chinese were among the more spiritual peoples of earth. Long adherence to the worship of the One Truth proclaimed by Singlangton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stimulus of a progressive and advanced religion is often a decisive factor in cultural development; as India languished, so China forged ahead under the invigorating stimulus of a religion in which truth was enshrined as the supreme Deity.

P885:8, 79:6.11 This worship of truth was provocative of research and fearless exploration of the laws of nature and the potentials of mankind. The Chinese of even six thousand years ago were still keen students and aggressive in their pursuit of truth.

P885:9, 79:6.12 4. _Geographic._ The mountains to the west and the Pacific to the east protect China. Only in the north is the way open to attack, and from the days of the red man to the coming of the later descendants of the Andites, the north was not occupied by any aggressive race.

P886:1, 79:6.13 And but for the mountain barriers, the yellow race undoubtedly would have attracted to itself the larger part of the Andite migrations from Turkestan and unquestionably would have quickly dominated world civilization.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 8.  
The Andites Enter China

P886:2, 79:7.1 About fifteen thousand years ago the Andites, in considerable numbers, were traversing the pass of Ti Tao and spreading out over the upper valley of the Yellow River among the Chinese settlements of Kansu. Presently they penetrated eastward to Honan, where the most progressive settlements were situated. This infiltration from the west was about half Andonite and half Andite.

P886:3, 79:7.2 The northern centers of culture along the Yellow River had always been more progressive than the southern settlements on the Yangtze. Within a few thousand years after the arrival of even the small numbers of these superior mortals, the settlements along the Yellow River had forged ahead of the Yangtze villages and had achieved an advanced position over their brethren in the south.

P886:4, 79:7.3 It was not that there were so many of the Andites, nor that their culture was so superior, but amalgamation with them produced a more versatile stock. The northern Chinese received just enough of the Andite strain to mildly stimulate their innately able minds but not enough to fire them with the restless, exploratory curiosity so characteristic of the northern white races. This more limited infusion of Andite inheritance was less disturbing to the innate stability of the Sangik type.

P886:5, 79:7.4 The later waves of Andites brought with them certain of the cultural advances of Mesopotamia; this is especially true of the last waves of migration from the west. They greatly improved the economic and educational practices of the northern Chinese; and while their influence upon the religious culture of the yellow race was short-lived, their later descendants contributed much to a subsequent spiritual awakening. But the Andite traditions of the beauty of Eden and Dalamatia did influence Chinese traditions; early Chinese legends place "the land of the gods" in the west.

P886:6, 79:7.5 The Chinese people did not begin to build cities and engage in manufacture until after 10,000 B.C., subsequent to the climatic changes in Turkestan and the arrival of the later Andite immigrants. The infusion of this new blood did not add so much to the civilization of the yellow man as it stimulated the further and rapid development of the latent tendencies of the superior Chinese stocks. From Honan to Shensi the potentials of an advanced civilization were coming to fruit. Metalworking and all the arts of manufacture date from these days.

P886:7, 79:7.6 The similarities between certain of the early Chinese and Mesopotamian methods of time reckoning, astronomy, and governmental administration were due to the commercial relationships between these two remotely situated centers. Chinese merchants traveled the overland routes through Turkestan to Mesopotamia even in the days of the Sumerians. Nor was this exchange one-sided -- the valley of the Euphrates benefited considerably thereby, as did the peoples of the Gangetic plain. But the climatic changes and the nomadic invasions of the third millennium B.C. greatly reduced the volume of trade passing over the caravan trails of central Asia.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 34: Section 9.  
Later Chinese Civilization

P887:1, 79:8.1 While the red man suffered from too much warfare, it is not altogether amiss to say that the development of statehood among the Chinese was delayed by the thoroughness of their conquest of Asia. They had a great potential of racial solidarity, but it failed properly to develop because the continuous driving stimulus of the ever-present danger of external aggression was lacking.

P887:2, 79:8.2 With the completion of the conquest of eastern Asia the ancient military state gradually disintegrated -- past wars were forgotten. Of the epic struggle with the red race there persisted only the hazy tradition of an ancient contest with the archer peoples. The Chinese early turned to agricultural pursuits, which contributed further to their pacific tendencies, while a population well below the land-man ratio for agriculture still further contributed to the growing peacefulness of the country.

P887:3, 79:8.3  Consciousness of past achievements, the conservatism of an overwhelmingly agricultural people, and a well-developed family life equaled the birth of ancestor veneration, culminating in the custom of so honoring the men of the past as to border on worship. A very similar attitude prevailed among the white races in Europe for some five hundred years following the disruption of Greco-Roman civilization.

P887:4, 79:8.4 The belief in, and worship of, the "One Truth" as taught by Singlangton never entirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth became overshadowed by a growing tendency to venerate that which was already established.

P887:5, 79:8.5 Between 4000 and 500 B.C. the political reunification of the yellow race was consummated, but the cultural union of the Yangtze and Yellow river centers had already been effected. This political reunification of the later tribal groups was not without conflict, but the societal opinion of war remained low; ancestor worship, increasing dialects, and no call for military action for thousands upon thousands of years had rendered this people ultra-peaceful.

P887:6, 79:8.6 Despite failure to fulfill the promise of an early development of advanced statehood, the yellow race did progressively move forward in the realization of the arts of civilization, especially in the realms of agriculture and horticulture. The hydraulic problems faced by the agriculturists in Shensi and Honan demanded group co-operation for solution. Such irrigation and soil-conservation difficulties contributed in no small measure to the development of interdependence with the consequent promotion of peace among farming groups.

P887:7, 79:8.7 Soon developments in writing, together with the establishment of schools, contributed to the dissemination of knowledge on a previously unequaled scale. But the cumbersome nature of the ideographic writing system placed a numerical limit upon the learned classes despite the early appearance of printing. And above all else, the process of social standardization and religio-philosophic dogmatization continued apace. The religious development of ancestor veneration also involved nature worship, but lingering vestiges of a real concept of God remained preserved in the imperial worship of Shang-ti.

P888:1, 79:8.9 The great strength in a veneration of ancestry is the value that such an attitude places upon the family. The amazing stability and persistence of Chinese culture is a consequence of the paramount position accorded the family, for civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family; and in China the family attained a social importance, even a religious significance, approached by few other peoples.

P888:2, 79:8.10 The filial devotion and family loyalty exacted by the growing cult of ancestor worship insured the building up of superior family relationships and of enduring family groups, all of which facilitated the following factors in the preservation of civilization:

  1. Conservation of property and wealth.

  2. Pooling of the experience of more than one generation.

  3. Efficient education of children in the arts and sciences of the past.

  4. Development of a strong sense of duty, the enhancement of morality, and the augmentation of ethical sensitivity.

P888:8, 79:8.11 The formative period of Chinese civilization, opening with the coming of the Andites, continues on down to the great ethical, moral, and semi-religious awakening of the sixth century B.C. And Chinese tradition preserves the hazy record of the evolutionary past; the transition from mother- to father-family, the establishment of agriculture, the development of architecture, the initiation of industry -- all these are successively narrated. And this story presents, with greater accuracy than any other similar account, the picture of the magnificent ascent of a superior people from the levels of barbarism. During this time they passed from a primitive agricultural society to a higher social organization embracing cities, manufacture, metalworking, commercial exchange, government, writing, mathematics, art, science, and printing.

P888:9, 79:8.12 And so the ancient civilization of the yellow race has persisted down through the centuries. It is almost forty thousand years since the first important advances were made in Chinese culture, and though there have been many retrogressions, the civilization of the sons of Han comes the nearest of all to presenting an unbroken picture of continual progression right on down to the times of the twentieth century. The mechanical and religious developments of the white races have been of a high order, but they have never excelled the Chinese in family loyalty, group ethics, or personal morality.

P888:10, 79:8.13 This ancient culture has contributed much to human happiness; millions of human beings have lived and died, blessed by its achievements. For centuries this great civilization has rested upon the laurels of the past, but it is even now reawakening to envision anew the transcendent goals of mortal existence, once again to take up the unremitting struggle for never-ending progress.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35  
Various Religious Teachings

P1027:1, 94:0.1 The early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of Africa and Eurasia, ever preaching Machiventa Melchizedek's gospel of man's faith and trust in the one universal God as the only price of obtaining divine favor. Melchizedek's ("King of peace"- Shem, the son of Noah) covenant with Abraham was the pattern for all the early propaganda that went out from Salem and other centers. Earth has never had more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern Hemisphere. These missionaries were recruited from many peoples and races, and they largely spread their teachings through the medium of native converts. They established training centers in different parts of the world where they taught the natives the Salem religion and then commissioned these pupils to function as teachers among their own people.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 1.  
The Salem Teachings In Vedic India

P1027:2, 94:1.1 In the days of Melchizedek, India was a cosmopolitan country which had recently come under the political and religious dominance of the Aryan-Andite invaders from the north and west. At this time only the northern and western portions of the peninsula had been extensively permeated by the Aryans. These Vedic newcomers had brought along with them their many tribal deities. Their religious forms of worship followed closely the ceremonial practices of their earlier Andite forebears in that the father still functioned as a priest and the mother as a priestess, and the family hearth was still utilized as an altar.

P1027:3, 94:1.2 The Vedic cult was then in process of growth and metamorphosis under the direction of the Brahman caste of teacher-priests, who were gradually assuming control over the expanding ritual of worship. The amalgamation of the onetime thirty-three Aryan deities was well under way when the Salem missionaries penetrated the north of India.

P1027:4, 94:1.3 The polytheism of these Aryans represented a degeneration of their earlier monotheism occasioned by their separation into tribal units, each tribe having its venerated god. This devolution of the original monotheism and trinitarianism of Andite Mesopotamia was in process of re-synthesis in the early centuries of the second millennium before Christ. The many gods were organized into a pantheon under the triune leadership of Dyaus pitar, the lord of heaven; Indra, the tempestuous lord of the atmosphere; and Agni, the three-headed fire god, lord of the earth and the vestigial symbol of an earlier Trinity concept.

P1027:5, 94:1.4 Definite henotheistic developments were paving the way for an evolved monotheism. Agni, the most ancient deity, was often exalted as the father-head of the entire pantheon. The deity-father principle, sometimes called Prajapati, sometimes termed Brahma, was submerged in the theological battle that the Brahman priests later fought with the Salem teachers. _The Brahman_ was conceived as the energy-divinity principle activating the entire Vedic pantheon.

P1028:1, 94:1.5 The Salem missionaries preached the one God of Melchizedek, the Most High of heaven. This portrayal was not altogether disharmonious with the emerging concept of the Father-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doctrine was non-ritualistic and hence ran directly counter to the dogmas, traditions, and teachings of the Brahman priesthood. Never would the Brahman priests accept the Salem teaching of salvation through faith, favor with God apart from ritualistic observances and sacrificial ceremonials.

P1028:2, 94:1.6 The rejection of the Melchizedek gospel of trust in God and salvation through faith marked a vital turning point for India. The Salem missionaries had contributed much to the loss of faith in all the ancient Vedic gods, but the leaders, the priests of Vedism, refused to accept the Melchizedek teaching of one God and one simple faith.

P1028:3, 94:1.7 The Brahmans culled the sacred writings of their day in an effort to combat the Salem teachers, and this compilation, as later revised, has come on down to modern times as the Rig-Veda, one of the most ancient of sacred books. The second, third, and fourth Vedas followed as the Brahmans sought to crystallize, formalize, and fix their rituals of worship and sacrifice upon the peoples of those days. Taken at their best, these writings are the equal of any other body of similar character in beauty of concept and truth of discernment. But as this superior religion became contaminated with the thousands upon thousands of superstitions, cults, and rituals of southern India, it progressively metamorphosed into the most variegated system of theology ever developed by mortal man.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 2.  
Brahmanism

P1028:4, 94:2.1 As the Salem missionaries penetrated southward into the Dravidian Deccan, they encountered an increasing caste system, the scheme of the Aryans to prevent loss of racial identity in the face of a rising tide of the secondary Sangik peoples. Since the Brahman priest caste was the very essence of this system, this social order greatly retarded the progress of the Salem teachers. This caste system failed to save the Aryan race, but it did succeed in perpetuating the Brahmans, who, in turn, have maintained their religious hegemony in India to the present time.

P1028:5, 94:2.2 And now, with the weakening of Vedism the cult of the Aryans became subject to increasing inroads from the Deccan. In a desperate effort to stem the tide of racial extinction and religious obliteration, the Brahman caste sought to exalt themselves above all else. They taught that the sacrifice to deity in itself was all-efficacious, that it was all-compelling in its potency. They proclaimed that, of the two essential divine principles of the universe, one was Brahman the deity, and the other was the Brahman priesthood. Among no other peoples did the priests presume to exalt themselves above even their gods, to relegate to themselves the honors due their gods. But they went so absurdly far with these presumptuous claims that the whole precarious system collapsed before the debasing cults which poured in from the surrounding and less advanced civilizations. The vast Vedic priesthood itself floundered and sank beneath the black flood of inertia and pessimism which their own selfish and unwise presumption had brought upon all India.

P1029:1, 94:2.3 The undue concentration on self led certainly to a fear of the non-evolutionary perpetuation of self in an endless round of successive incarnations as man, beast, or weeds. This belief in the weary and monotonous round of repeated transmigrations robbed struggling mortals of their long-cherished hope of finding that deliverance and spiritual advancement in death which had been a part of the earlier Vedic faith.

P1029:2, 94:2.4 This philosophical teaching was soon followed by the invention of the doctrine of the eternal escape from self by submergence in the universal rest and peace of absolute union with Brahman, the oversoul of all creation. Mortal desire and human ambition were effectually ravished and virtually destroyed. For more than two thousand years the better minds of India have sought to escape from all desire.

P1029:4, 94:2.6 These were the times of the compilation of the later scriptures of the Hindu faith, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Having rejected the teachings of personal religion through the personal faith experience with the one God, the Brahmanic priesthood experienced a violent reaction against these beliefs; there was a definite effort to seek and to find _true reality._ The Brahmans set out to de-anthropomorphize the Indian concept of deity, but in so doing they stumbled into the grievous error of depersonalizing the concept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spiritual ideal of the Paradise Father, but with a distant and metaphysical idea of an all-encompassing Absolute.

P1029:6, 94:2.8 It was during the times of the writing of the Upanishads that Buddhism arose in India. But despite its successes of a thousand years, it could not compete with later Hinduism; despite a higher morality, its early portrayal of God was even less well-defined than was that of Hinduism, which provided for lesser and personal deities. Buddhism finally gave way in northern India before the onslaught of a militant Islam with its clear-cut concept of Allah as the supreme God of the universe.

Part III. The History Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 3.  
Brahmanic Philosophy

P1030:1, 94:3.1 While the highest phase of Brahmanism was hardly a religion, it was truly one of the most noble reaches of the mortal mind into the domains of philosophy and metaphysics. Having started out to discover final reality, the Indian mind did not stop until it had speculated about almost every phase of theology excepting the essential dual concept of religion: the existence of the Universal Father of all universe creatures and the fact of the ascending experience in the universe of these very creatures as they seek to attain the eternal Father, who has commanded them to be perfect, even as he is perfect.

P1030:2, 94:3.2 In the concept of Brahman the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of some all-pervading Absolute, for this postulate was at one and the same time identified as creative energy and cosmic reaction. Brahman was conceived to be beyond all definition, capable of being comprehended only by the successive negation of all finite qualities. It was definitely a belief in an absolute, even an infinite, being, but this concept was largely devoid of personality attributes and was therefore not experiencible by individual religionists.

P1030:3, 94:3.3 Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity. Had the philosophers of those days been able to make the next advance in deity conception, had they been able to conceive of the Brahman as associative and creative, as a personality approachable by created and evolving beings, then might such a teaching have become the most advanced portraiture of since it would have encompassed the first five levels of total deity function and might possibly have envisioned the remaining two.

P1030:4, 94:3.4 In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close to the truth of the Supreme Being, but they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana.

P1030:5, 94:3.5 The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme; but this postulate never provided for the co-ordinate personal attainment of Deity by the individual religionist, only for the ultimate engulfment of all personality by the Universal Oversoul.

P1030:6, 94:3.6 The philosophy of Brahmanism also came very near to the realization of the indwelling of the Thought Adjusters. The teaching that the soul is the indwelling of the Brahman would have paved the way for an advanced religion had not this concept been completely vitiated by the belief that there is no human individuality apart from this indwelling of the Universal One.

P1030:7, 94:3.7 In the doctrine of the merging of the self-soul with the Oversoul, the theologians of India failed to provide for the survival of something human, something new and unique, something born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. The teaching of the soul's return to the Brahman is closely parallel to the truth of the Adjuster's return to the bosom of the Universal Father, but there is something distinct from the Adjuster which also survives, the morontial counterpart of mortal personality. And this vital concept was absent from Brahmanic philosophy.

P1031:1, 94:3.8 Brahmanic philosophy has approximated many of the facts of the universe and has approached numerous cosmic truths, but it has all too often fallen victim to the error of failing to differentiate between the several levels of reality, such as absolute, transcendental, and finite. It has failed to take into account that what may be finite-illusory on the absolute level may be absolutely real on the finite level. And it has also taken no cognizance of the essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on all levels from the evolutionary creature's limited experience with God.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 4.  
The Hindu Religion

P1031:2, 94:4.1 With the passing of the centuries in India, the populace returned in measure to the ancient rituals of the Vedas as they had been modified by the teachings of the Melchizedek missionaries and crystallized by the later Brahman priesthood. This, the oldest and most cosmopolitan of the world's religions, has undergone further changes in response to Buddhism and Jainism and to the later appearing influences of Mohammedanism and Christianity. But by the time the teachings of Jesus arrived, they had already become so Occidentalized as to be a "white man's religion," hence strange and foreign to the Hindu mind.

P1031:3, 94:4.2 Hindu theology, at present, depicts four descending levels of deity and divinity:

P1031:4, 94:4.3 1. _The Brahman,_ the Absolute, the Infinite One, the IT IS.

P1031:5, 94:4.4 2. _The Trimurti,_ the supreme trinity of Hinduism. In this association _Brahma,_ the first member, is conceived as being self-created out of the Brahman \-- infinity. Were it not for close identification with the pantheistic Infinite One, Brahma could constitute the foundation for a concept of the Universal Father. Brahma is also identified with fate.

P1031:6, 94:4.5 The worship of the second and third members, Siva and Vishnu, arose in the first millennium after Christ. _Siva_ is lord of life and death, god of fertility, and master of destruction. _Vishnu_ is extremely popular due to the belief that he periodically incarnates in human form. In this way, Vishnu becomes real and living in the imaginations of the Indians. Siva and Vishnu are each regarded by some as supreme over all.

P1031:7, 94:4.6 3. _Vedic and post-Vedic deities._ Many of the ancient gods of the Aryans, such as Agni, Indra, Soma, have persisted as secondary to the three members of the Trimurti. Numerous additional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic India, and these have also been incorporated into the Hindu pantheon.

P1031:8, 94:4.7 4. _The demigods:_ supermen, semi-gods, heroes, demons, ghosts, evil spirits, sprites, monsters, goblins, and saints of the later-day cults.

P1031:9, 94:4.8 While Hinduism has long failed to vivify the Indian people, at the same time it has usually been a tolerant religion. Its great strength lies in the fact that it has proved to be the most adaptive, amorphic religion. It is capable of almost unlimited change and possesses an unusual range of flexible adjustment from the high and semi-monotheistic speculations of the intellectual Brahman.

P1032:1, 94:4.9 Hinduism has survived because it is essentially an integral part of the basic social fabric of India. It has no great hierarchy which can be disturbed or destroyed; it is interwoven into the life pattern of the people. It has an adaptability to changing conditions that excels, and it displays a tolerant attitude of adoption toward many other religions, Gautama Buddha and even Jesus himself being claimed as incarnations of Vishnu.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 5.  
The Struggle For Truth In China

P1032:3, 94:5.1 As the Salem missionaries passed through Asia, spreading the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith, they absorbed much of the philosophy and religious thought of the various countries traversed. But the teachers commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors did not default in their trust; they did penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, and it was in the middle of the second millennium B.C., that they arrived in China. At See Fuch, for more than one hundred years, the Salemites maintained their headquarters, there training Chinese teachers who taught throughout all the domains of the yellow race.

P1032:4, 94:5.2 It was in direct consequence of this teaching that the earliest form of Taoism arose in China, a vastly different religion than the one which bears that name today. Early or proto-Taoism was a compound of the following factors:

P1032:5, 94:5.3 1. The lingering teachings of Singlangton, which persisted in the concept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlangton the Chinese people became virtually monotheistic; they concentrated their worship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the universe ruler. And the yellow race never fully lost this early concept of Deity, although in subsequent centuries many subordinate gods and spirits insidiously crept into their religion.

P1032:6, 94:5.4 2. The Salem religion of a Most High Creator Deity who would bestow his favor upon mankind in response to man's faith. But it is all too true that, by the time the Melchizedek missionaries had penetrated to the lands of the yellow race, their original message had become considerably changed from the simple doctrines of Salem in the days of Machiventa.

P1032:7, 94:5.5 3. The Brahman-Absolute concept of the Indian philosophers, coupled with the desire to escape all evil. Perhaps the greatest extraneous influence in the eastward spread of the Salem religion was exerted by the Indian teachers of the Vedic faith, who injected their conception of the Brahman -- the Absolute -- into the salvationistic thought of the Salemites.

P1033:1, 94:5.6 This composite belief spread through the lands of the yellow and brown races as an underlying influence in religio-philosophic thought. In Japan this proto-Taoism was known as Shinto, and in this country, far distant from Salem of Palestine, the peoples learned of the incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek, who dwelt upon earth that the name of God might not be forgotten by mankind.

P1033:2, 94:5.7 In China all of these beliefs were later confused and compounded with the ever-growing ancestor worship. But never since the time of Singlangton have the Chinese fallen into helpless slavery to priest-craft. The yellow race was the first to emerge from barbaric bondage into orderly civilization because it was the first to achieve some measure of freedom from the abject fear of the gods, not even fearing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them.

P1033:3, 94:5.8 But the Salemites did not labor in vain. It was upon the foundations of their gospel that the great philosophers of sixth-century China built their teachings. The moral atmosphere and the spiritual sentiments of the times of Lao-tse and Confucius grew up out of the teachings of the Salem missionaries of an earlier age.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 6.  
Lao-Tse And Confucius

P1033:5, 94:6.2 About six hundred years B.C., a unique century of spiritual progress was characterized by great religious, moral, and philosophic teachers all over the civilized world. In China, the two outstanding teachers were Lao-tse and Confucius.

P1033:6, 94:6.3  _Lao-tse_ built directly upon the concepts of the Salem traditions when he declared Tao to be the One First Cause of all creation. Lao was a man of great spiritual vision. He taught that man's eternal destiny was "everlasting union with Tao, Supreme God and Universal King." His comprehension of ultimate causation was most discerning, for he wrote: "Unity arises out of the Absolute Tao, and from Unity there appears cosmic Duality, and from such Duality, Trinity springs forth into existence, and Trinity is the primal source of all reality." "All reality is ever in balance between the potentials and the actuals of the cosmos, and these are eternally harmonized by the spirit of divinity."

P1033:7, 94:6.4 Lao-tse also made one of the earliest presentations of the doctrine of returning good for evil: "Goodness begets goodness, but to the one who is truly good, evil also begets goodness."

P1033:8, 94:6.5 He taught the return of the creature to the Creator and pictured life as the emergence of a personality from the cosmic potentials, while death was like the returning home of this creature personality. His concept of true faith was unusual, and he too likened it to the "attitude of a little child."

P1034:1, 94:6.6 His understanding of the eternal purpose of God was clear, for he said: "The Absolute Deity does not strive but is always victorious; he does not coerce mankind but always stands ready to respond to their true desires; the will of God is eternal in patience and eternal in the inevitability of its expression." And of the true religionist he said, in expressing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive: "The good man seeks not to retain truth for himself but rather attempts to bestow these riches upon his fellows, for that is the realization of truth. The will of the Absolute God always benefits, never destroys; the purpose of the true believer is always to act but never to coerce."

P1034:2, 94:6.7 Lao's teaching of nonresistance and the distinction which he made between _action_ and _coercion_ became later changed into the beliefs of "seeing, doing, and thinking nothing." But Lao never taught such error, albeit his presentation of nonresistance has been a factor in the further development of the pacific predilections of the Chinese peoples.

P1034:4, 94:6.9 _Confucius_ (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger contemporary of Lao in sixth-century China. Confucius based his doctrines upon the moral traditions of the long history of the yellow race, and he was also somewhat influenced by the lingering traditions of the Salem missionaries. His chief work consisted in the compilation of the wise sayings of ancient philosophers. He was a rejected teacher during his lifetime, but his writings and teachings have ever since exerted a great influence in China and Japan. Confucius set a new pace for the shamans in that he put morality in the place of magic. But he built too well; he made a new fetish out of _order_ and established a respect for ancestral conduct that is still venerated by the Chinese at the time of this writing.

P1034:5, 94:6.10 The Confucian preachment of morality was predicated on the theory that the earthly way is the distorted shadow of the heavenly way; that the true pattern of temporal civilization is the mirror reflection of the eternal order of heaven. The potential God concept in Confucianism was almost completely subordinated to the emphasis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pattern of the cosmos.

P1034:6, 94:6.11 The teachings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Orient, but the writings of Confucius have ever since constituted the basis of the moral fabric of the culture of almost a third of all of the people on Earth. These Confucian precepts, while perpetuating the best of the past, were somewhat inimical to the very Chinese spirit of investigation that had produced those achievements which were so venerated. The influence of these doctrines was unsuccessfully combated both by the imperial efforts of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti and by the teachings of Mo Ti, who proclaimed a brotherhood founded not on ethical duty but on the love of God. He sought to rekindle the ancient quest for new truth, but his teachings failed before the vigorous opposition of the disciples of Confucius.

P1034:7, 94:6.12 Like many other spiritual and moral teachers, both Confucius and Lao-tse were eventually deified by their followers in those ages of China which intervened between the decline of the Taoist faith and the coming of the Buddhist missionaries from India.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 7.  
Gautama Siddhartha

P1035:1, 94:7.1 Contemporary with Lao-tse and Confucius in China, another great teacher of truth arose in India. Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century B.C. in the north Indian province of Nepal. His followers later made it appear that he was the son of a fabulously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir apparent to the throne of a chieftain who ruled over a small and secluded mountain valley in the southern Himalayas.

P1035:2, 94:7.2 Gautama formulated those theories which grew into the philosophy of Buddhism after six years of the futile practice of Yoga. Siddhartha made a determined fight against the growing caste system. There was a lofty sincerity and a unique unselfishness about this young prophet prince that greatly appealed to the men of those days. He detracted from the practice of seeking individual salvation through physical affliction and personal pain. And he exhorted his followers to carry his gospel to all the world.

P1035:3, 94:7.3 The teachings of Gautama made a noble effort to deliver men from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great universe.

P1035:4, 94:7.4 Gautama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the instruction of the hermit Godad, he might have aroused all India by the inspiration of the revival of the Salem gospel of salvation by faith. Godad was descended through a family that had never lost the traditions of the Melchizedek missionaries.

P1035:5, 94:7.5 At Benares Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem missionaries about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on salvation through faith -- simple belief. He so declared himself before his followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to proclaim to the people of India "the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice."

P1035:6, 94:7.6 Gautama's wife believed her husband's gospel and was the founder of an order of nuns. His son became his successor and greatly extended the belief; he grasped the new idea of salvation through faith but in his later years wavered regarding the Salem gospel of divine favor through faith alone, and in his old age his dying words were, "Work out your own salvation."

P1036:1, 94:7.7 When proclaimed at its best, Gautama's gospel of universal salvation, free from sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priests, was a revolutionary and amazing doctrine for its time. And it came surprisingly near to being a revival of the Salem gospel. It brought succor to millions of despairing souls.

P1036:2, 94:7.8 Siddhartha taught far more truth than has survived in the modern religions bearing his name.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 8.  
The Buddhist Faith

P1036:3, 94:8.1 To become a Buddhist, one made public profession of the faith by reciting the Refuge: "I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood."

P1036:4, 94:8.2 Buddhism took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama's followers called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman claims for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began to call him _the enlightened one,_ the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha.

P1036:5, 94:8.3 The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths:

  1. The noble truths of suffering.

  2. The origins of suffering.

  3. The destruction of suffering.

  4. The way to the destruction of suffering.

P1036:10, 94:8.4 Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama's intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much that love of one's fellows should be shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the realities of the eternal future.

P1036:11, 94:8.5 The moral commandments of Gautama's preachment were five in number:

P1036:12, 94:8.6 1. You shall not kill.

P1036:13, 94:8.7 2. You shall not steal.

P1036:14, 94:8.8 3. You shall not be unchaste.

P1036:15, 94:8.9 4. You shall not lie.

P1036:16, 94:8.10 5. You shall not drink intoxicating liquors.

P1036:17, 94:8.11 There were several additional or secondary commandments, whose observance was optional with believers.

P1036:18, 94:8.12 Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality; his philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He never clearly defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana. The fact that it could theoretically be experienced during mortal existence would indicate that it was not viewed as a state of complete annihilation. It implied a condition of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to the material world had been broken; there was freedom from the desires of mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing incarnation.

P1037:1, 94:8.13 According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of India, endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human striving for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers overlooked the fact that the highest happiness is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic pursuit of worthy goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in cosmic self-realization.

P1037:2, 94:8.14 The great truth of Siddhartha's teaching was his proclamation of a universe of absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever invented by mortal man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively removed all grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of ghosts or demons.

P1037:3, 94:8.15 The Buddhist brotherhood was, for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social; indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 9.  
The Spread Of Buddhism

P1037:4, 94:9.1 Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers. Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped.

P1037:5, 94:9.2 The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama's gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be.

P1038:1, 94:9.3 Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism almost withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized.

P1038:2, 94:9.4 In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha persisted in Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine.

P1038:3, 94:9.5 Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama's followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the "Great Road" to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or "Lesser Road." And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan.

P1038:4, 94:9.6 Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 10.  
Religion In Tibet

P1038:5, 94:10.1 In Tibet may be found the strangest association of the Melchizedek teachings combined with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. When the Buddhist missionaries entered Tibet, they encountered a state of primitive savagery very similar to that which the early Christian missionaries found among the northern tribes of Europe.

P1038:6, 94:10.2 The Tibetans would not wholly give up their ancient magic and charms. Examination of the religious ceremonials of present-day Tibetan rituals reveals an overgrown brotherhood of priests with shaven heads who practice an elaborate ritual embracing bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries, images, charms, pictures, holy water, gorgeous vestments, and elaborate choirs. They have rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, mystic rites and special fasts. Their hierarchy embraces monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to angels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They practice confessions and believe in purgatory. Their monasteries are extensive and their cathedrals magnificent. They keep up an endless repetition of sacred rituals and believe that such ceremonials bestow salvation. Prayers are fastened to a wheel, and with its turning they believe the petitions become efficacious. Among no other people of modern times can be found the observance of so much from so many religions.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 11.  
Buddhist Philosophy

P1038:8, 94:11.1 Buddhism entered China in the first millennium A.D., and it fitted well into the religious customs of the yellow race. In ancestor worship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Buddhism soon amalgamated with the lingering ritualistic practices of Taoism. This new synthetic religion with its temples of worship and definite religious ceremonial soon became generally accepted by the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan.

P1039:2, 94:11.3 Some of the followers taught that Sakyamuni Buddha's spirit returned periodically to earth as a living Buddha, thus opening the way for an indefinite perpetuation of Buddha images, temples, rituals, and impostor "living Buddhas."

P1039:3, 94:11.4 The great advance made in Buddhist philosophy consisted in its comprehension of the relativity of all truth. Through the mechanism of this hypothesis Buddhists have been able to reconcile and correlate the divergences within their own religious scriptures as well as the differences between their own and many others. It was taught that the small truth was for little minds, the large truth for great minds.

P1039:4, 94:11.5 This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men; that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this inner divinity. And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by any religion.

P1039:5, 94:11.6 But a great limitation in the original gospel of Siddhartha, as it was interpreted by his followers, was that it attempted the complete liberation of the human self from all the limitations of the mortal nature by the technique of isolating the self from objective reality. True cosmic self-realization results from identification with cosmic reality and with the finite cosmos of energy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and conditioned by time.

P1039:6, 94:11.7 Through more than two thousand years, many of the best minds of Asia have concentrated upon the problem of ascertaining absolute truth and the truth of the Absolute.

P1039:7, 94:11.8 The evolution of a high concept of the Absolute was achieved through many channels of thought and by devious paths of reasoning. The upward ascent of this doctrine of infinity was not so clearly defined as was the evolution of the God concept in Hebrew theology. Nevertheless, there were certain broad levels which the minds of the Buddhists reached, tarried upon, and passed through on their way to the envisioning of the Primal Source of universes:

P1039:8, 94:11.9 1. _The Gautama legend._ At the base of the concept was the historic fact of the life and teachings of Siddhartha, the prophet prince of India. This legend grew in myth as it traveled through the centuries and across the broad lands of Asia until it surpassed the status of the idea of Gautama as the enlightened one and began to take on additional attributes.

P1040:1, 94:11.10 2. _The many Buddhas._ It was reasoned that, if Gautama had come to the peoples of India, then, in the remote past and in the remote future, the races of mankind must have been, and undoubtedly would be, blessed with other teachers of truth. This gave rise to the teaching that there were many Buddhas, an unlimited and infinite number, even that anyone could aspire to become one -- to attain the divinity of a Buddha.

P1040:2, 94:11.11 3. _The Absolute Buddha._ Accordingly it began to be taught that all Buddhas were but the manifestation of some higher essence, some Eternal One of infinite and unqualified existence, some Absolute Source of all reality. From here on, the Deity concept of Buddhism, in its highest form, becomes divorced from the human person of Gautama Siddhartha and casts off from the anthropomorphic limitations which have held it in leash. This final conception of the Buddha Eternal can well be identified as the Absolute, sometimes even as the infinite I AM.

P1040:3, 94:11.12 While this idea of Absolute Deity never found great popular favor with the peoples of Asia, it did enable the intellectuals of these lands to unify their philosophy and to harmonize their cosmology. The concept of the Buddha Absolute is at times quasi-personal, at times wholly impersonal -- even an infinite creative force. Such concepts, though helpful to philosophy, are not vital to religious development.

P1040:4, 94:11.13 At times the Absolute was even thought of as contained within the infinite I AM.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 12.  
The God Concept Of Buddhism

P1040:6, 94:12.2 Gradually the concept of God, as contrasted with the Absolute, began to appear in Buddhism. Its sources are back in the early days of this differentiation of the followers of the Lesser Road and the Greater Road. It was among the latter division of Buddhism that the dual conception of God and the Absolute finally matured. Step by step, century by century, the God concept had evolved until, with the teachings of Ryonin, Honen Shonin, and Shinran in Japan, this concept finally came to fruit in the belief in Amida Buddha.

P1041:1, 94:12.3 Among these believers it is taught that the soul, upon experiencing death, may elect to enjoy a sojourn in Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, the ultimate of existence. It is proclaimed that this new salvation is attained by faith in the divine mercies and loving care of Amida, God of the Paradise in the west. In their philosophy, the Amidists hold to an Infinite Reality which is beyond all finite mortal comprehension; in their religion, they cling to faith in the all-merciful Amida, who so loves the world that he will not suffer one mortal who calls on his name in true faith and with a pure heart to fail in the attainment of the supernal happiness of Paradise.

P1041:2, 94:12.4 The great strength of Buddhism is that its adherents are free to choose truth from all religions; such freedom of choice has seldom characterized a faith. In this respect the Shin sect of Japan has become one of the most progressive religious groups in the world; it has revived the ancient missionary spirit of Gautama's followers and has begun to send teachers to other peoples. This willingness to appropriate truth from any and all sources is indeed a commendable tendency.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 13.  
The Islam Religion

(Wikipedia)

Islam (Arabic: al-'Islam) is a monotheistic religion based upon the Qur'an, a scripture which Muslims believe was sent by Allah through the prophet Muhammad. Followers of Islam, known as Muslims, believe Muhammad to have been God's final prophet. As a result, most of them see the actions and teachings of Muhammad as related in the Sunnah and Hadith as indispensable tools for interpreting the Qur'an.

Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam is an Abrahamic religion. There are estimated to be 1.4 billion adherents, making Islam the second-largest religion in the world. Islamicization, the process of the conversion of societies to Islam, originally closely followed the rapid growth of the Arab Empire in the first centuries after Muhammad's death. Muslim dynasties were soon established in North Africa, the Middle East and Iran and the conversion of the population was a protracted process. Although the expansion of Muslim empires eventually slowed, conversion to Islam continued in other ways. Muslim countries dominated trade in the Indian Ocean and the Sahara and it was through trade, Sufi preachers, and interaction with locals that Islam grew in areas such as the Sahel and the East Indies.

Today, Muslims may be found throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. The majority of Muslims are not Arabs; only 20 percent of Muslims originate from Arab countries. Islam is the second largest religion in the United Kingdom, and many other European countries, including France, which has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

Muslims believe that God revealed a message to humanity through Muhammad (c. 570–July 6, 632) via the angel Gabriel.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Muhammad is considered to have been God's final prophet, based on the Qur'anic phrase "Seal of the Prophets" and sayings of Muhammad himself. Muslims assert that their holy book, the Qur'an, is flawless, immutable, and the final revelation of God to humanity, and that its teachings will be valid until the day of the Resurrection.

Muslims hold that Islam is part of the same belief system advocated by all the messengers sent by God to humanity since Adam. The Qur'an, used by all sects of the Muslim faith, codifies the direct words of God. Islamic texts depict Judaism and Christianity as prophetic successor traditions to the teachings of Abraham. The Qur'an calls Jews and Christians "people of the Book," and distinguishes them from "polytheists."

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 35: Section 14.  
The Baha'i Faith

(Wikipedia)

The Baha'i Faith is a religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th century Persia. Baha'i number around 6 million in more than 200 countries around the world.

According to Baha'i teachings, religious history is seen as an evolving educational process for mankind, through God's messengers, which are termed Manifestations of God. Bahá'u'lláh is seen as the most recent, pivotal, but not final of these individuals. He claimed to be the expected redeemer and teacher prophesied in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions, and that his mission was to establish a firm basis for unity throughout the world, and inaugurate an age of peace and justice, which Baha'i expect will inevitably arise.

Baha'i notions of progressive religious revelation result in their accepting the validity of most of the worlds' religions, whose founders and central figures are seen as Manifestations of God. These include, but are not limited to Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, and Buddha. Baha'i also believe that other religious figures, such as Adam, Noah, and Hud) historically existed and were prophets of God. Religious history is interpreted as a series of dispensations, where each _manifestation_ brings a somewhat broader and more advanced revelation, suited for the time and place in which it was expressed.[5] Specific religious social teachings (e.g. the direction of prayer, or dietary restrictions) may be revoked by a subsequent manifestation so that a more appropriate requirement for the time and place may be established. Conversely, certain general principles (e.g. neighbourliness, or charity) are seen to be universal and consistent. Bahá'ís do not believe that this process of progressive revelation will end. They do, however, believe that it is cyclical. Bahá'ís do not expect a new manifestation of god to appear prior to 1000 years after Bahá'u'lláh's revelation.

Baha'i beliefs are sometimes described as syncretic combinations of earlier religions' beliefs. Bahá'ís, however, assert that their religion is a distinct tradition with its own scriptures, teachings, laws, and history.[5] Its cultural and religious debt to the Shi'a Islamic matrix in which it was founded is seen as analogous to the Jewish socio-religious context in which Christianity was established. Bahá'ís describe their faith as an independent world religion, differing from the other traditions only in its relative newness and in the appropriateness of Bahá'u'lláh's teachings to the modern context. Bahá'u'lláh is believed to fulfill the messianic expectations of these precursor faiths.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36

The Melchizedek Teachings In The Levant

P1042:1, 95:0.1 As India gave rise to many of the religions and philosophies of eastern Asia, so the Levant was the homeland of the faiths of the Occidental world. The Salem missionaries spread out all over southwestern Asia, through Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran, and Arabia, everywhere proclaiming the news of the gospel of Machiventa Melchizedek. In some of these lands their teachings bore fruit; in others they met with varying success. Sometimes their failures were due to lack of wisdom, sometimes to circumstances beyond their control.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 1.  
The Salem Religion In Mesopotamia

P1042:2, 95:1.1 By 2000 B.C. the religions of Mesopotamia had just about lost the teachings of the Sethites and were largely under the influence of the primitive beliefs of two groups of invaders, the Bedouin Semites who had filtered in from the western desert and the barbarian horsemen who had come down from the north.

P1042:3, 95:1.2 But the custom of the early Andonite peoples in honoring the seventh day of the week never completely disappeared in Mesopotamia. Only, during the Melchizedek era, the seventh day was regarded as the worst of bad luck. It was taboo-ridden; it was unlawful to go on a journey, cook food, or make a fire on the evil seventh day. The Jews carried back to Palestine many of the Mesopotamian taboos which they had found resting on the Babylonian observance of the seventh day, the Shabattum.

P1042:4, 95:1.3  Although the Salem teachers did much to refine and uplift the religions of Mesopotamia, they did not succeed in bringing the various peoples to the permanent recognition of one God. Such teaching gained the ascendancy for more than one hundred and fifty years and then gradually gave way to the belief in a multiplicity of deities.

P1042:5, 95:1.4 The Salem teachers greatly reduced the number of the gods of Mesopotamia, at one time bringing the chief deities down to seven: Bel, Shamash, Nabu, Anu, Ea, Marduk, and Sin. At the height of the new teaching they exalted three of these gods to supremacy over all others, the Babylonian triad: Bel, Ea, and Anu, the gods of earth, sea, and sky. Still other triads grew up in different localities, all reminiscent of the trinity teachings of the Andites and the Sumerians and based on the belief of the Salemites in Melchizedek's insignia of the three circles.

P1042:6, 95:1.5 Never did the Salem teachers fully overcome the popularity of Ishtar, the mother of gods and the spirit of sex fertility. They did much to refine the worship of this goddess, but the Babylonians and their neighbors had never completely outgrown their disguised forms of sex worship. It had become a universal practice throughout Mesopotamia for all women to submit, at least once in early life, to the embrace of strangers; this was thought to be a devotion required by Ishtar, and it was believed that fertility was largely dependent on this sex sacrifice.

P1043:1, 95:1.6 The early progress of the Melchizedek teaching was highly gratifying until Nabodad, the leader of the school at Kish, decided to make a concerted attack upon the prevalent practices of temple harlotry. But the Salem missionaries failed in their effort to bring about this social reform, and in the wreck of this failure all their more important spiritual and philosophic teachings went down in defeat.

P1043:2, 95:1.7 This defeat of the Salem gospel was immediately followed by a great increase in the cult of Ishtar, a ritual which had already invaded Palestine as Ashtoreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the northern tribes as Astarte. And it was in connection with this revival of the worship of Ishtar that the Babylonian priests turned anew to stargazing; astrology experienced its last great Mesopotamian revival, fortunetelling became the vogue, and for centuries the priesthood increasingly deteriorated.

P1043:3, 95:1.8 Melchizedek had told his followers to teach about the one God, the Father and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of divine favor through faith alone. But it has often been the error of the teachers of new truth to attempt too much, to attempt to supplant slow evolution by sudden revolution. The Melchizedek missionaries in Mesopotamia raised a moral standard too high for the people; they attempted too much, and their noble cause went down in defeat. They had been commissioned to preach a definite gospel, to proclaim the truth of the reality of the Universal Father, but they became entangled in the apparently worthy cause of reforming the mores, and thus was their great mission sidetracked and virtually lost in frustration and oblivion.

P1043:4, 95:1.9 In one generation the Salem headquarters at Kish came to an end, and the propaganda of the belief in one God virtually ceased throughout Mesopotamia. But remnants of the Salem schools persisted. Small bands scattered here and there continued their belief in the one Creator and fought against the idolatry and immorality of the Mesopotamian priests.

P1043:5, 95:1.10 It was the Salem missionaries of the period following the rejection of their teaching who wrote many of the Old Testament Psalms, inscribing them on stone, where later-day Hebrew priests found them during the captivity and subsequently incorporated them among the collection of hymns ascribed to Jewish authorship. These beautiful psalms from Babylon were not written in the temples of Bel-Marduk; they were the work of the descendants of the earlier Salem missionaries, and they are a striking contrast to the magical conglomerations of the Babylonian priests. The Book of Job is a fairly good reflection of the teachings of the Salem school at Kish and throughout Mesopotamia.

P1043:6, 95:1.11 Much of the Mesopotamian religious culture found its way into Hebrew literature and liturgy by way of Egypt through the work of Amenemope and Ikhnaton. The Egyptians remarkably preserved the teachings of social obligation derived from the earlier Andite Mesopotamians and so largely lost by the later Babylonians who occupied the Euphrates valley.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 2.  
Early Egyptian Religion

P1043:7, 95:2.1 The original Melchizedek teachings really took their deepest root in Egypt, from where they subsequently spread to Europe. The evolutionary religion of the Nile valley was periodically augmented by the arrival of superior strains of Nodite, Andonite, and later Andite peoples of the Euphrates valley. From time to time, many of the Egyptian civil administrators were Sumerians. As India in these days harbored the highest mixture of the world races, so Egypt fostered the most thoroughly blended type of religious philosophy, and from the Nile valley it spread to many parts of the world. The Jews received much of their idea of the creation of the world from the Babylonians, but they derived the concept of divine Providence from the Egyptians.

P1044:1, 95:2.2 It was political and moral, rather than philosophic or religious, tendencies that rendered Egypt more favorable to the Salem teaching than Mesopotamia. Each tribal leader in Egypt, after fighting his way to the throne, sought to perpetuate his dynasty by proclaiming his tribal god the original deity and creator of all other gods. In this way the Egyptians gradually got used to the idea of a super-god, a steppingstone to the later doctrine of a universal creator Deity. The idea of monotheism wavered back and forth in Egypt for many centuries, the belief in one God always gaining ground but never quite dominating the evolving concepts of polytheism.

P1044:2, 95:2.3  For ages the Egyptian peoples had been given to the worship of nature gods; more particularly did each of the two-score separate tribes have a special group god, one worshiping the bull, another the lion, a third the ram, and so on. Still earlier they had been totem tribes, very much like the Amerinds.

P1044:3, 95:2.4 In time the Egyptians observed that dead bodies placed in brickless graves were preserved -- embalmed -- by the action of the soda-impregnated sand, while those buried in brick vaults decayed. These observations led to those experiments which resulted in the later practice of embalming the dead. The Egyptians believed that preservation of the body facilitated one's passage through the future life. That the individual might properly be identified in the distant future after the decay of the body, they placed a burial statue in the tomb along with the corpse, carving a likeness on the coffin. The making of these burial statues led to great improvement in Egyptian art.

P1044:4, 95:2.5 For centuries the Egyptians placed their faith in tombs as the safeguard of the body and of consequent pleasurable survival after death. The later evolution of magical practices, while burdensome to life from the cradle to the grave, most effectually delivered them from the religion of the tombs. The priests would inscribe the coffins with charm texts which were believed to be protection against a "man's having his heart taken away from him in the nether world." Presently a diverse assortment of these magical texts was collected and preserved as The Book of the Dead. But in the Nile valley magical ritual early became involved with the realms of conscience and character to a degree not often attained by the rituals of those days. And subsequently these ethical and moral ideals, rather than elaborate tombs, were depended upon for salvation.

P1044:5, 95:2.6 The superstitions of these times are well illustrated by the general belief in the efficacy of spittle as a healing agent, an idea which had its origin in Egypt and spread therefrom to Arabia and Mesopotamia. In the legendary battle of Horus with Set the young god lost his eye, but after Set was vanquished, this eye was restored by the wise god Thoth, who spat upon the wound and healed it.

P1044:6, 95:2.7 The Egyptians long believed that the stars twinkling in the night sky represented the survival of the souls of the worthy dead; other survivors they thought were absorbed into the sun. During a certain period, solar veneration became a species of ancestor worship. The sloping entrance passage of the great pyramid pointed directly toward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerging from the tomb, could go straight to the stationary and established constellations of the fixed stars, the supposed abode of the kings.

P1045:1, 95:2.8 When the oblique rays of the sun were observed penetrating earthward through an aperture in the clouds, it was believed that they betokened the letting down of a celestial stairway whereon the king and other righteous souls might ascend. "King Pepi has put down his radiance as a stairway under his feet whereon to ascend to his mother."

P1045:2, 95:2.9 When Melchizedek appeared in the flesh, the Egyptians had a religion far above that of the surrounding peoples. They believed that a disembodied soul, if properly armed with magic formulas, could evade the intervening evil spirits and make its way to the judgment hall of Osiris, where, if innocent of "murder, robbery, falsehood, adultery, theft, and selfishness," it would be admitted to the realms of bliss. If this soul were weighed in the balances and found wanting, it would be consigned to hell, to the Devouress. And this was, relatively, an advanced concept of a future life in comparison with the beliefs of many surrounding peoples.

P1045:3, 95:2.10 The concept of judgment in the hereafter for the sins of one's life in the flesh on earth was carried over into Hebrew theology from Egypt. The word judgment appears only once in the entire Book of Hebrew Psalms, and that particular psalm was written by an Egyptian.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 3.  
Evolution Of Moral Concepts

P1045:4, 95:3.1 Although the culture and religion of Egypt were chiefly derived from Andite Mesopotamia and largely transmitted to subsequent civilizations through the Hebrews and Greeks, much, very much, of the social and ethical idealism of the Egyptians arose in the valley of the Nile as a purely evolutionary development. Notwithstanding the importation of much truth and culture of Andite origin, there evolved in Egypt more of moral culture as a purely human development than appeared by similar natural techniques in any other circumscribed area.

P1045:5, 95:3.2 Moral evolution is not wholly dependent on revelation. High moral concepts can be derived from man's own experience. Man can even evolve spiritual values and derive cosmic insight from his personal experiential living because a divine spirit indwells him. Such natural evolutions of conscience and character were also augmented by the periodic arrival of teachers of truth, as later on from Melchizedek's headquarters at Salem.

P1045:6, 95:3.3 Thousands of years before the Salem gospel penetrated to Egypt, its moral leaders taught justice, fairness, and the avoidance of avarice. Three thousand years before the Hebrew scriptures were written, the motto of the Egyptians was: "Established is the man whose standard is righteousness; who walks according to its way." They taught gentleness, moderation, and discretion. The message of one of the great teachers of this epoch was: "Do right and deal justly with all." The Egyptian triad of this age was Truth-Justice-Righteousness. Of all the purely human religions, none ever surpassed the social ideals and the moral grandeur of this onetime humanism of the Nile valley.

P1045:7, 95:3.4 In the soil of these evolving ethical ideas and moral ideals the surviving doctrines of the Salem religion flourished. The concepts of good and evil found ready response in the hearts of a people who believed that "Life is given to the peaceful and death to the guilty." "The peaceful is he who does what is loved; the guilty is he who does what is hated." For centuries the inhabitants of the Nile valley had lived by these emerging ethical and social standards before they ever entertained the later concepts of right and wrong -- good and bad.

P1046:1, 95:3.5 Egypt was intellectual and moral but not overly spiritual. In six thousand years only four great prophets arose among the Egyptians. Amenemope they followed for a season; Okhban they murdered; Ikhnaton they accepted but halfheartedly for one short generation; Moses they rejected. Again was it political rather than religious circumstances that made it easy for Abraham and, later on, for Joseph to exert great influence throughout Egypt in behalf of the Salem teachings of one God. But when the Salem missionaries first entered Egypt, they encountered this highly ethical culture of evolution blended with the modified moral standards of Mesopotamian immigrants. These early Nile valley teachers were the first to proclaim conscience as the mandate of God, the voice of Deity.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 4.  
The Teachings Of Amenemope

P1046:2, 95:4.1 In due time there grew up in Egypt a teacher called by many the "son of man" and by others Amenemope. This seer exalted conscience to its highest pinnacle of arbitrament between right and wrong, taught punishment for sin, and proclaimed salvation through calling upon the solar deity.

P1046:3, 95:4.2 Amenemope taught that riches and fortune were the gift of God, and this concept thoroughly colored the later appearing Hebrew philosophy. This noble teacher believed that God-consciousness was the determining factor in all conduct; that every moment should be lived in the realization of the presence of, and responsibility to, God. The teachings of this sage were subsequently translated into Hebrew and became the sacred book of that people long before the Old Testament was reduced to writing. The chief preachment of this good man had to do with instructing his son in uprightness and honesty in governmental positions of trust, and these noble sentiments of long ago would do honor to any modern statesman.

P1046:4, 95:4.3 This wise man of the Nile taught that "riches take themselves wings and fly away" -- that all things earthly are evanescent. His great prayer was to be "saved from fear." He exhorted all to turn away from "the words of men" to "the acts of God." In substance he taught: Man proposes but God disposes. His teachings, translated into Hebrew, determined the philosophy of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. Translated into Greek, they gave color to all subsequent Hellenic religious philosophy. The later Alexandrian philosopher, Philo, possessed a copy of the Book of Wisdom.

P1046:5, 95:4.4 Amenemope functioned to conserve the ethics of evolution and the morals of revelation and in his writings passed them on both to the Hebrews and to the Greeks. He was not the greatest of the religious teachers of this age, but he was the most influential in that he colored the subsequent thought of two vital links in the growth of Occidental civilization -- the Hebrews, among whom evolved the acme of Occidental religious faith, and the Greeks, who developed pure philosophic thought to its greatest European heights.

P1046:6, 95:4.5 In the Book of Hebrew Proverbs, chapters fifteen, seventeen, twenty, and chapter twenty-two, verse seventeen, to chapter twenty-four, verse twenty-two, are taken almost verbatim from Amenemope's Book of Wisdom. The first psalm of the Hebrew Book of Psalms was written by Amenemope and is the heart of the teachings of Ikhnaton.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 5.  
The Remarkable Ikhnaton

P1047:1, 95:5.1 The teachings of Amenemope were slowly losing their hold on the Egyptian mind when, through the influence of an Egyptian Salemite physician, a woman of the royal family espoused the Melchizedek teachings. This woman prevailed upon her son, Ikhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to accept these doctrines of One God.

P1047:2, 95:5.2 Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing spiritual depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon, the One God, in Egypt, thus maintaining the philosophic monotheistic channel which was vital to the religious background of the coming of a _Savior_. And it was in recognition of this exploit, among other reasons, that the child Jesus was taken to Egypt, where some of the spiritual successors of Ikhnaton saw him and to some extent understood certain phases of his divine mission on Earth.

P1047:3, 95:5.3 Moses, the greatest Messenger between Melchizedek and Jesus, was the joint gift to the world of the Hebrew race and the Egyptian royal family; and had Ikhnaton possessed the versatility and ability of Moses, had he manifested a political genius to match his surprising religious leadership, then would Egypt have become the great monotheistic nation of that age; and if this had happened, it is barely possible that Jesus might have lived the greater portion of his mortal life in Egypt.

P1047:4, 95:5.4 Never in all history did any king so methodically proceed to swing a whole nation from polytheism to monotheism as did this extraordinary Ikhnaton. With the most amazing determination this young ruler broke with the past, changed his name, abandoned his capital, built an entirely new city, and created a new art and literature for a whole people. But he went too fast; he built too much, more than could stand when he had gone. Again, he failed to provide for the material stability and prosperity of his people, all of which reacted unfavorably against his religious teachings when the subsequent floods of adversity and oppression swept over the Egyptians.

P1047:5, 95:5.5 Had this man of amazingly clear vision and extraordinary singleness of purpose had the political sagacity of Moses, he would have changed the whole history of the evolution of religion and the revelation of truth in the Occidental world. During his lifetime he was able to curb the activities of the priests, whom he generally discredited, but they maintained their cults in secret and sprang into action as soon as the young king passed from power; and they were not slow to connect all of Egypt's subsequent troubles with the establishment of monotheism during his reign.

P1047:6, 95:5.6 Very wisely Ikhnaton sought to establish monotheism under the guise of the sun-god. This decision to approach the worship of the Universal Father by absorbing all gods into the worship of the sun was due to the counsel of the Salemite physician. Ikhnaton took the generalized doctrines of the then existent Aton faith regarding the fatherhood and motherhood of Deity and created a religion which recognized an intimate worshipful relation between man and God.

P1048:1, 95:5.7 Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of Aton and supreme Father of all. This young teacher-king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled "The One God," a book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.

P1048:2, 95:5.8 The supreme word of Ikhnaton's religion in daily life was "righteousness," and he rapidly expanded the concept of right doing to embrace international as well as national ethics. This was a generation of amazing personal piety and was characterized by a genuine aspiration among the more intelligent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days social position or wealth gave no Egyptian any advantage in the eyes of the law. The family life of Egypt did much to preserve and augment moral culture and was the inspiration of the later superb family life of the Jews in Palestine.

P1048:3, 95:5.9 The fatal weakness of Ikhnaton's gospel was its greatest truth, the teaching that Aton was not only the creator of Egypt but also of the "whole world, man and beasts, and all the foreign lands, even Syria and Kush, besides this land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs." These concepts of Deity were high and exalted, but they were not nationalistic. Such sentiments of internationality in religion failed to augment the morale of the Egyptian army on the battlefield, while they provided effective weapons for the priests to use against the young king and his new religion. He had a Deity concept far above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced to serve the purposes of a nation builder.

P1048:4, 95:5.10 Though the monotheistic ideal suffered with the passing of Ikhnaton, the idea of one God persisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in-law of Ikhnaton went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his name to Tutankhamen. The capital returned to Thebes, and the priests waxed fat upon the land, eventually gaining possession of one seventh of all Egypt; and presently one of this same order of priests made bold to seize the crown.

P1048:5, 95:5.11  But the priests could not fully overcome the monotheistic wave. Increasingly they were compelled to combine and hyphenate their gods; more and more the family of gods contracted. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disk of the heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world.

P1048:6, 95:5.12 The weakness of Ikhnaton's doctrine lay in the fact that he proposed such an advanced religion that only the educated Egyptians could fully comprehend his teachings. The rank and file of the agricultural laborers never really grasped his gospel and were, therefore, ready to return with the priests to the old-time worship of Isis and her consort Osiris, who was supposed to have been miraculously resurrected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of darkness and evil.

P1049:1, 95:5.13 The teaching of immortality for all men was too advanced for the Egyptians. Only kings and the rich were promised a resurrection; therefore did they so carefully embalm and preserve their bodies in tombs against the day of judgment. But the democracy of salvation and resurrection as taught by Ikhnaton eventually prevailed, even to the extent that the Egyptians later believed in the survival of dumb animals.

P1049:2, 95:5.14 Although the effort of this Egyptian ruler to impose the worship of one God upon his people appeared to fail, it should be recorded that the repercussions of his work persisted for centuries both in Palestine and Greece, and that Egypt thus became the agent for transmitting the combined evolutionary culture of the Nile and the revelatory religion of the Euphrates to all of the subsequent peoples of the Occident.

P1049:3, 95:5.15 The glory of this great era of moral development and spiritual growth in the Nile valley was rapidly passing at about the time the national life of the Hebrews was beginning, and consequent upon their sojourn in Egypt these Bedouins carried away much of these teachings and perpetuated many of Ikhnaton's doctrines in their racial religion.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 6.  
The Salem Doctrines In Iran

P1049:4, 95:6.1 From Palestine some of the Melchizedek missionaries passed on through Mesopotamia and to the great Iranian plateau. For more than five hundred years the Salem teachers made headway in Iran, and the whole nation was swinging to the Melchizedek religion when a change of rulers precipitated a bitter persecution which practically ended the monotheistic teachings of the Salem cult. The doctrine of the Abrahamic covenant was virtually extinct in Persia when, in that great century of moral renaissance, the sixth century B.C, Zoroaster appeared to revive the smoldering embers of the Salem gospel.

P1049:5, 95:6.2 This founder of a new religion was a virile and adventurous youth, who, on his first pilgrimage to Ur in Mesopotamia, had learned of the traditions of the Caligastia rebellion -- along with many other traditions -- all of which had made a strong appeal to his religious nature. Accordingly, as the result of a dream while in Ur, he settled upon a program of returning to his northern home to undertake the remodeling of the religion of his people. He had imbibed the Hebraic idea of a God of justice, the Mosaic concept of divinity. The idea of a supreme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as devils, consigned them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mesopotamia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Master Spirits as the tradition lingered in Ur, and, accordingly, he created a galaxy of seven supreme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These subordinate gods he associated with the idealization of Right Law, Good Thought, Noble Government, Holy Character, Health, and Immortality.

P1049:6, 95:6.3 And this new religion was one of action -- work -- not prayers and rituals. Its God was a being of supreme wisdom and the patron of civilization; it was a militant religious philosophy which dared to battle with evil, inaction, and backwardness.

P1049:7, 95:6.4 Zoroaster did not teach the worship of fire but sought to utilize the flame as a symbol of the pure and wise Spirit of universal and supreme dominance. (All too true, his later followers did both reverence and worship this symbolic fire.) Finally, upon the conversion of an Iranian prince, this new religion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster heroically died in battle for that which he believed was the "truth of the Lord of light."

P1050:1, 95:6.5 Zoroastrianism is the only creed that perpetuates the Dalamatian and Edenic teachings about the Seven Master Spirits. Original Zoroastrianism was not a pure dualism; though the early teachings did picture evil as a time co-ordinate of goodness, it was definitely eternity-submerged in the ultimate reality of the good. Only in later times did the belief gain credence that good and evil contended on equal terms.

P1050:2, 95:6.6 The Jewish traditions of heaven and hell and the doctrine of devils as recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, while founded on the lingering traditions of Lucifer and Caligastia, were principally derived from the Zoroastrians during the times when the Jews were under the political and cultural dominance of the Persians. Zoroaster, like the Egyptians, taught the "day of judgment," but he connected this event with the end of the world.

P1050:3, 95:6.7 Even the religion which succeeded Zoroastrianism in Persia was markedly influenced by it. When the Iranian priests sought to overthrow the teachings of Zoroaster, they resurrected the ancient worship of Mithra. And Mithraism spread throughout the Levant and Mediterranean regions, being for some time a contemporary of both Judaism and Christianity. The teachings of Zoroaster thus came successively to impress three great religions: Judaism and Christianity and, through them, Mohammedanism.

P1050:5, 95:6.9 This great man was one of that unique group that sprang up in the sixth century B.C., to keep the light of Salem from being fully and finally extinguished as it so dimly burned to show man in his darkened world the path of light leading to everlasting life.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 36: Section 7.  
The Salem Teachings In Arabia

P1050:6, 95:7.1 The Melchizedek teachings of the one God became established in the Arabian desert at a comparatively recent date. As in Greece, so in Arabia the Salem missionaries failed because of their misunderstanding of Machiventa's instructions regarding over-organization. But they were not thus hindered by their interpretation of his admonition against all efforts to extend the gospel through military force or civil compulsion.

P1050:7, 95:7.2 Not even in China or Rome did the Melchizedek teachings fail more completely than in this desert region so very near Salem itself. Long after the majority of the peoples of the Orient and Occident had become respectively Buddhist and Christian, the desert of Arabia continued as it had for thousands of years. Each tribe worshiped its olden fetish, and many individual families had their own household gods. Long the struggle continued between Babylonian Ishtar, Hebrew Yahweh, Iranian Ahura, and Christian Father and Son Jesus. Never was one concept able fully to displace the others.

P1051:1, 95:7.3 Here and there throughout Arabia were families and clans that held on to the hazy idea of the one God. Such groups treasured the traditions of Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, and Zoroaster.

P1051:2, 95:7.4 Despite the fact that the great Levantine monotheisms failed to take root in Arabia, this desert land was capable of producing a faith which, though less demanding in its social requirements, was nonetheless monotheistic.

P1051:3, 95:7.5 There was only one factor of a tribal, racial, or national nature about the primitive and unorganized beliefs of the desert, and that was the peculiar and general respect which almost all Arabian tribes were willing to pay to a certain temple stone at Mecca. This point of common contact and reverence subsequently led to the establishment of the Islamic religion. What Yahweh, the volcano spirit, was to the Jewish Semites, the Kaaba stone became to their Arabic cousins.

P1051:4, 95:7.6 The strength of Islam has been its clear-cut and well-defined presentation of Allah as the one and only Deity; its weakness, the association of military force with its promulgation. But it has steadfastly held to its presentation of the One Universal Deity of all, "who knows the invisible and the visible. He is the merciful and the compassionate." "Truly God is plenteous in goodness to all men." "And when I am sick, it is he who heals me." "For whenever as many as three speak together, God is present as a fourth," for is he not "the first and the last, also the seen and the hidden".

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 37  
Yahweh -- God Of The Hebrews

P1052:1, 96:0.1 In conceiving of Deity, man first includes all gods, then subordinates all foreign gods to his tribal deity, and finally excludes all but the one God of final and supreme value. The Jews synthesized all gods into their more sublime concept of the Lord God of Israel. The Hindus likewise combined their multifarious deities into the "one spirituality of the gods" portrayed in the Rig-Veda, while the Mesopotamians reduced their gods to the more centralized concept of Bel-Marduk. These ideas of monotheism matured all over the world not long after the appearance of Machiventa Melchizedek at Salem in Palestine. But the Melchizedek concept of Deity was unlike that of the evolutionary philosophy of inclusion, subordination, and exclusion; it was based exclusively on _creative power_ and very soon influenced the highest deity concepts of Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt.

P1052:2, 96:0.2 The Salem religion was revered as a tradition by the Kenites and several other Canaanite tribes.

P1052:3, 96:0.3 The Salem religion persisted among the Kenites in Palestine as their creed, and this religion as it was later adopted by the Hebrews was influenced, first, by Egyptian moral teachings; later, by Babylonian theological thought; and lastly, by Iranian conceptions of good and evil. Factually the Hebrew religion is predicated upon the covenant between Abraham and Machiventa Melchizedek, evolutionally it is the outgrowth of many unique situational circumstances, but culturally it has borrowed freely from the religion, morality, and philosophy of the entire Levant. It is through the Hebrew religion that much of the morality and religious thought of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Iran was transmitted to the Occidental peoples.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 37: Section 1.  
Deity Concepts Among The Semites

P1052:4, 96:1.1 The early Semites regarded everything as being indwelt by a spirit. There were spirits of the animal and vegetable worlds; annual spirits, the lord of progeny; spirits of fire, water, and air; a veritable pantheon of spirits to be feared and worshiped. And the teaching of Melchizedek regarding a Universal Creator never fully destroyed the belief in these subordinate spirits or nature gods.

P1052:5, 96:1.2 The progress of the Hebrews from polytheism through henotheism to monotheism was not an unbroken and continuous conceptual development. They experienced many retrogressions in the evolution of their Deity concepts, while during any one epoch there existed varying ideas of God among different groups of Semite believers. From time to time numerous terms were applied to their concepts of God, and in order to prevent confusion these various Deity titles will be defined as they pertain to the evolution of Jewish theology:

P1053:1, 96:1.3 1. _Yahweh_ was the god of the southern Palestinian tribes, who associated this concept of deity with Mount Horeb, the Sinai volcano. Yahweh was merely one of the hundreds and thousands of nature gods which held the attention and claimed the worship of the Semitic tribes and peoples.

P1053:2, 96:1.4 2. _El Elyon._ For centuries after Melchizedek's sojourn at Salem his doctrine of Deity persisted in various versions but was generally connoted by the term El Elyon, the Most High God of heaven. Many Semites, including the immediate descendants of Abraham, at various times worshiped both Yahweh and El Elyon.

P1053:3, 96:1.5 3. _El Shaddai._ It is difficult to explain what El Shaddai stood for. This idea of God was a composite derived from the teachings of Amenemope's Book of Wisdom modified by Ikhnaton's doctrine of Aton and further influenced by Melchizedek's teachings embodied in the concept of El Elyon. But as the concept of El Shaddai permeated the Hebrew mind, it became thoroughly colored with the Yahweh beliefs of the desert.

P1053:4, 96:1.6 One of the dominant ideas of the religion of this era was the Egyptian concept of divine Providence, the teaching that material prosperity was a reward for serving El Shaddai.

P1053:5, 96:1.7 4. _El._ Amid all this confusion of terminology and haziness of concept, many devout believers sincerely endeavored to worship all of these evolving ideas of divinity, and there grew up the practice of referring to this composite Deity as El. And this term included still other of the Bedouin nature gods.

P1053:6, 96:1.8 5. _Elohim._ In Kish and Ur there long persisted Sumerian-Chaldean groups who taught a three-in-one God concept founded on the traditions of the days of Adam and Melchizedek. This doctrine was carried to Egypt, where this Trinity was worshiped under the name of Elohim, or in the singular as Eloah. The philosophic circles of Egypt and later Alexandrian teachers of Hebraic extraction taught this unity of pluralistic Gods, and many of Moses' advisers at the time of the exodus believed in this Trinity. But the concept of the trinitarian Elohim never became a real part of Hebrew theology until after they had come under the political influence of the Babylonians.

P1053:7, 96:1.9 6. _Sundry names._ The Semites disliked to speak the name of their Deity, and they therefore resorted to numerous appellations from time to time, such as: The Spirit of God, The Lord, The Angel of the Lord, The Almighty, The Holy One, The Most High, Adonai, The Ancient of Days, The Lord God of Israel, The Creator of Heaven and Earth, Kyrios, Jah, The Lord of Hosts, and The Father in Heaven.

P1053:8, 96:1.10 _Jehovah_ is a term which in recent times has been employed to designate the completed concept of Yahweh which finally evolved in the long Hebrew experience. But the name Jehovah did not come into use until fifteen hundred years after the times of Jesus.

P1054:1, 96:1.11 Up to about 2000 B.C., Mount Sinai was intermittently active as a volcano, occasional eruptions occurring as late as the time of the sojourn of the Israelites in this region. The fire and smoke, together with the thunderous detonations associated with the eruptions of this volcanic mountain, all impressed and awed the Bedouins of the surrounding regions and caused them greatly to fear Yahweh. This spirit of Mount Horeb later became the god of the Hebrew Semites, and they eventually believed him to be supreme over all other gods.

P1054:2, 96:1.12 The Canaanites had long revered Yahweh, and although many of the Kenites believed more or less in El Elyon, the super-god of the Salem religion, a majority of the Canaanites held loosely to the worship of the old tribal deities. They were hardly willing to abandon their national deities in favor of an international, not to say an interplanetary, God. They were not universal-deity minded, and therefore these tribes continued to worship their tribal deities, including Yahweh and the silver and golden calves which symbolized the Bedouin herders' concept of the spirit of the Sinai volcano.

P1054:3, 96:1.13 The Syrians, while worshiping their gods, also believed in Yahweh of the Hebrews, for their prophets said to the Syrian king: "Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them on the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they."

P1054:4, 96:1.14 As man advances in culture, the lesser gods are subordinated to a supreme deity; the great Jove persists only as an exclamation. The monotheists keep their subordinate gods as spirits, demons, fates, Nereids, fairies, brownies, dwarfs, banshees, and the evil eye. The Hebrews passed through henotheism and long believed in the existence of gods other than Yahweh, but they increasingly held that these foreign deities were subordinate to Yahweh. They conceded the actuality of Chemosh, god of the Amorites, but maintained that he was subordinate to Yahweh.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 37: Section 2.  
The Semitic Peoples

P1054:6, 96:2.1 The Semites of the East were well-organized and well-led horsemen who invaded the eastern regions of the fertile crescent and there united with the Babylonians. The Chaldeans near Ur were among the most advanced of the eastern Semites. The Phoenicians were a superior and well-organized group of mixed Semites who held the western section of Palestine, along the Mediterranean coast. Racially the Semites were among the most blended of peoples, containing hereditary factors from almost all of the nine world races.

P1054:7, 96:2.2 Again and again the Arabian Semites fought their way into the northern Promised Land, the land that "flowed with milk and honey," but just as often were they ejected by the better-organized and more highly civilized northern Semites and Hittites. Later, during an unusually severe famine, these roving Bedouins entered Egypt in large numbers as contract laborers on the Egyptian public works, only to find themselves undergoing the bitter experience of enslavement at the hard daily toil of the common and downtrodden laborers of the Nile valley.

P1055:1, 96:2.3 It was only after the days of Machiventa Melchizedek and Abraham that certain tribes of Semites, because of their peculiar religious beliefs, were called the children of Israel and later on Hebrews, Jews, and the "chosen people." Abraham was not the racial father of all the Hebrews; he was not even the progenitor of all the Bedouin Semites who were held captive in Egypt. True, his offspring, coming up out of Egypt, did form the nucleus of the later Jewish people, but the vast majority of the men and women who became incorporated into the clans of Israel had never sojourned in Egypt. They were merely fellow nomads who chose to follow the leadership of Moses as the children of Abraham and their Semite associates from Egypt journeyed through northern Arabia.

P1055:2, 96:2.4 The Melchizedek teaching concerning El Elyon, the Most High, and the covenant of divine favor through faith, had been largely forgotten by the time of the Egyptian enslavement of the Semite peoples who were shortly to form the Hebrew nation. But throughout this period of captivity these Arabian nomads maintained a lingering traditional belief in Yahweh as their racial deity.

P1055:3, 96:2.5 Yahweh was worshiped by more than one hundred separate Arabian tribes, and except for the tinge of the El Elyon concept of Melchizedek which persisted among the more educated classes of Egypt, including the mixed Hebrew and Egyptian stocks, the religion of the rank and file of the Hebrew captive slaves was a modified version of the old Yahweh ritual of magic and sacrifice.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
PAPER 96: Section 3.  
The Matchless Moses

P1055:4, 96:3.1 The beginning of the evolution of the Hebraic concepts and ideals of a Supreme Creator dates from the departure of the Semites from Egypt under that great leader, teacher, and organizer, Moses. His mother was of the royal family of Egypt; his father was a Semitic liaison officer between the government and the Bedouin captives. Moses thus possessed qualities derived from superior racial sources; his ancestry was so highly blended that it is impossible to classify him in any one racial group. Had he not been of this mixed type, he would never have displayed that unusual versatility and adaptability which enabled him to manage the diversified horde which eventually became associated with those Bedouin Semites who fled from Egypt to the Arabian desert under his leadership.

P1055:5, 96:3.2 Despite the enticements of the culture of the Nile kingdom, Moses elected to cast his lot with the people of his father. At the time this great organizer was formulating his plans for the eventual freeing of his father's people, the Bedouin captives hardly had a religion worthy of the name; they were virtually without a true concept of God and without hope in the world.

P1055:6, 96:3.3 No leader ever undertook to reform and uplift a more forlorn, downcast, dejected, and ignorant group of human beings. But these slaves carried latent possibilities of development in their hereditary strains, and there were a sufficient number of educated leaders who had been coached by Moses in preparation for the day of revolt and the strike for liberty to constitute a corps of efficient organizers. These superior men had been employed as native overseers of their people; they had received some education because of Moses' influence with the Egyptian rulers.

P1056:1, 96:3.4  Moses endeavored to negotiate diplomatically for the freedom of his fellow Semites. He and his brother entered into a compact with the king of Egypt whereby they were granted permission peaceably to leave the valley of the Nile for the Arabian desert. They were to receive a modest payment of money and goods in token of their long service in Egypt. The Hebrews for their part entered into an agreement to maintain friendly relations with the Pharaohs and not to join in any alliance against Egypt. But the king later saw fit to repudiate this treaty, giving as his reason the excuse that his spies had discovered disloyalty among the Bedouin slaves. He claimed they sought freedom for the purpose of going into the desert to organize the nomads against Egypt.

P1056:2, 96:3.5 But Moses was not discouraged; he bided his time, and in less than a year, when the Egyptian military forces were fully occupied in resisting the simultaneous onslaughts of a strong Libyan thrust from the south and a Greek naval invasion from the north, this intrepid organizer led his compatriots out of Egypt in a spectacular night flight. This dash for liberty was carefully planned and skillfully executed. And they were successful, notwithstanding that they were hotly pursued by Pharaoh and a small body of Egyptians, who all fell before the fugitives' defense, yielding much booty, all of which was augmented by the loot of the advancing host of escaping slaves as they marched on toward their ancestral desert home.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 37: Section 4.  
The Proclamation Of Yahweh

P1056:3, 96:4.1 The evolution and elevation of the Mosaic teaching has influenced almost one half of all the world, and still does even in the twenty-first century. While Moses comprehended the more advanced Egyptian religious philosophy, the Bedouin slaves knew little about such teachings, but they had never entirely forgotten the god of Mount Horeb, whom their ancestors had called Yahweh.

P1056:4, 96:4.2 Moses had heard of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek from both his father and his mother, their commonness of religious belief being the explanation for the unusual union between a woman of royal blood and a man from a captive race. Moses' father-in-law was a Kenite worshiper of El Elyon, but the emancipator's parents were believers in El Shaddai. Moses thus was educated an El Shaddaist; through the influence of his father-in-law he became an El Elyonist; and by the time of the Hebrew encampment about Mount Sinai after the flight from Egypt, he had formulated a new and enlarged concept of Deity (derived from all his former beliefs), which he wisely decided to proclaim to his people as an expanded concept of their olden tribal god, Yahweh.

P1056:5, 96:4.3 Moses had endeavored to teach these Bedouins the idea of El Elyon, but before leaving Egypt, he had become convinced they would never fully comprehend this doctrine. Therefore he deliberately determined upon the compromise adoption of their tribal god of the desert as the one and only god of his followers. Moses did not specifically teach that other peoples and nations might not have other gods, but he did resolutely maintain that Yahweh was over and above all, especially to the Hebrews. But always was he plagued by the awkward predicament of trying to present his new and higher idea of Deity to these ignorant slaves under the guise of the ancient term Yahweh, which had always been symbolized by the golden calf of the Bedouin tribes.

P1056:6, 96:4.4 The fact that Yahweh was the god of the fleeing Hebrews explains why they tarried so long before the holy mountain of Sinai, and why they there received the Ten Commandments which Moses promulgated in the name of Yahweh, the god of Horeb. During this lengthy sojourn before Sinai the religious ceremonials of the newly evolving Hebrew worship were further perfected.

P1057:1, 96:4.5 It does not appear that Moses would ever have succeeded in the establishment of his somewhat advanced ceremonial worship and in keeping his followers intact for a quarter of a century had it not been for the violent eruption of Horeb during the third week of their worshipful sojourn at its base. "The mountain of Yahweh was consumed in fire, and the smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly." In view of this cataclysm it is not surprising that Moses could impress upon his brethren the teaching that their God was "mighty, terrible, a devouring fire, fearful, and all-powerful."

P1057:2, 96:4.6  Moses proclaimed that Yahweh was the Lord God of Israel, who had singled out the Hebrews as his chosen people; he was building a new nation, and he wisely nationalized his religious teachings, telling his followers that Yahweh was a hard taskmaster, a "jealous God." But nonetheless he sought to enlarge their concept of divinity when he taught them that Yahweh was the "God of the spirits of all flesh," and when he said, "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Moses taught that Yahweh was a covenant-keeping God; that he "will not forsake you, neither destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers because the Lord loves you and will not forget the oath by which he swore to your fathers."

P1057:3, 96:4.7 Moses made a heroic effort to uplift Yahweh to the dignity of a supreme Deity when he presented him as the "God of truth and without iniquity, just and right in all his ways." And yet, despite this exalted teaching, the limited understanding of his followers made it necessary to speak of God as being in man's image, as being subject to fits of anger, wrath, and severity, even that he was vengeful and easily influenced by man's conduct.

P1057:4, 96:4.8 Under the teachings of Moses this tribal nature god, Yahweh, became the Lord God of Israel, who followed them through the wilderness and even into exile, where he presently was conceived of as the God of all peoples. The later captivity that enslaved the Jews in Babylon finally liberated the evolving concept of Yahweh to assume the monotheistic role of the God of all nations.

P1057:5, 96:4.9 The most unique and amazing feature of the religious history of the Hebrews concerns this continuous evolution of the concept of Deity from the primitive god of Mount Horeb up through the teachings of their successive spiritual leaders to the high level of development depicted in the Deity doctrines of the Isaiahs, who proclaimed that magnificent concept of the loving and merciful Creator Father.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 37: Section 5.  
The Teachings Of Moses

P1057:6, 96:5.1 Moses was an extraordinary combination of military leader, social organizer, and religious teacher. He was the most important individual world teacher and leader between the times of Machiventa and Jesus. Moses attempted to introduce many reforms in Israel of which there is no record. In the space of one man's life he led the polyglot horde of so-called Hebrews out of slavery and uncivilized roaming while he laid the foundation for the subsequent birth of a nation and the perpetuation of a race.

P1057:7, 96:5.2 There is so little on record of the great work of Moses because the Hebrews had no written language at the time of the exodus. The record of the times and doings of Moses was derived from the traditions extant more than one thousand years after the death of the great leader.  
P1058:1, 96:5.3 Many of the advances which Moses made over and above the religion of the Egyptians and the surrounding Levantine tribes were due to the Kenite traditions of the time of Melchizedek. Without the teaching of Machiventa to Abraham and his contemporaries, the Hebrews would have come out of Egypt in hopeless darkness. Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro, gathered up the residue of the traditions of the days of Melchizedek, and these teachings, joined to the learning of the Egyptians, guided Moses in the creation of the improved religion and ritual of the Israelites. Moses was an organizer; he selected the best in the religion and mores of Egypt and Palestine and, associating these practices with the traditions of the Melchizedek teachings, organized the Hebrew ceremonial system of worship.

P1058:2, 96:5.4 Moses was a believer in Providence; he had become thoroughly tainted with the doctrines of Egypt concerning the supernatural control of the Nile and the other elements of nature. He had a great vision of God, but he was thoroughly sincere when he taught the Hebrews that, if they would obey God, "He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will multiply the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land -- the corn, wine, oil, and your flocks. You shall be prospered above all people, and the Lord your God will take away from you all sickness and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt upon you." He even said: "Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth." "You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you."

P1058:3, 96:5.5 But it was truly pitiful to watch this great mind of Moses trying to adapt his sublime concept of El Elyon, the Most High, to the comprehension of the ignorant and illiterate Hebrews. To his assembled leaders he thundered, "The Lord your God is one God; there is none beside him"; while to the mixed multitude he declared, "Who is like your God among all the gods?" Moses made a brave and partly successful stand against fetishes and idolatry, declaring, "You saw no similitude on the day that your God spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire." He also forbade the making of images of any sort.

P1058:4, 96:5.6 Moses feared to proclaim the mercy of Yahweh, preferring to awe his people with the fear of the justice of God, saying: "The Lord your God is God of Gods, and Lord of Lords, a great God, a mighty and terrible God, who regards not man." Again he sought to control the turbulent clans when he declared that "your God kills when you disobey him; he heals and gives life when you obey him." But Moses taught these tribes that they would become the chosen people of God only on condition that they "kept all his commandments and obeyed all his statutes."

P1058:5, 96:5.7 Little of the mercy of God was taught the Hebrews during these early times. They learned of God as "the Almighty; the Lord is a man of war, God of battles, glorious in power, who dashes in pieces his enemies." "The Lord your God walks in the midst of the camp to deliver you." The Israelites thought of their God as one who loved them, but who also "hardened Pharaoh's heart" and "cursed their enemies."

P1058:6, 96:5.8 While Moses presented fleeting glimpses of a universal and beneficent Deity to the children of Israel, on the whole, their day-by-day concept of Yahweh was that of a God but little better than the tribal gods of the surrounding peoples. Their concept of God was primitive, crude, and anthropomorphic; when Moses passed on, these Bedouin tribes quickly reverted to the semi-barbaric ideas of their olden gods of Horeb and the desert. The enlarged and more sublime vision of God which Moses every now and then presented to his leaders was soon lost to view, while most of the people turned to the worship of their fetish golden calves, the Palestinian herdsman's symbol of Yahweh.

P1059:1, 96:5.9 When Moses turned over the command of the Hebrews to Joshua, he had already gathered up thousands of the collateral descendants of Abraham, Nahor, Lot, and other of the related tribes and had whipped them into a self-sustaining and partially self-regulating nation of pastoral warriors.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 37: Section 6.  
The God Concept After Moses' Death

P1059:2, 96:6.1 Upon the death of Moses his lofty concept of Yahweh rapidly deteriorated. Joshua and the leaders of Israel continued to harbor the Mosaic traditions of the all-wise, beneficent, and almighty God, but the common people rapidly reverted to the older desert idea of Yahweh. And this backward drift of the concept of Deity continued increasingly under the successive rule of the various tribal sheiks, the so-called Judges.

P1059:3, 96:6.2 The spell of the extraordinary personality of Moses had kept alive in the hearts of his followers the inspiration of an increasingly enlarged concept of God; but when they once reached the fertile lands of Palestine, they quickly evolved from nomadic herders into settled and somewhat sedate farmers. And this evolution of life practices and change of religious viewpoint demanded a more or less complete change in the character of their conception of the nature of their God, Yahweh. During the times of the beginning of the transmutation of the austere, crude, exacting, and thunderous desert god of Sinai into the later appearing concept of a God of love, justice, and mercy, the Hebrews almost lost sight of Moses' lofty teachings. They came near losing all concept of monotheism; they nearly lost their opportunity of becoming the people who would serve as a vital link in the spiritual evolution of Earth, the group who would conserve the Melchizedek teaching of one God.

P1059:4, 96:6.3 Desperately Joshua sought to hold the concept of a supreme Yahweh in the minds of the tribesmen, causing it to be proclaimed: "As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will not fail you nor forsake you." Joshua found it necessary to preach a stern gospel to his disbelieving people, people all too willing to believe their old and native religion but unwilling to go forward in the religion of faith and righteousness. The burden of Joshua's teaching became: "Yahweh is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins." The highest concept of this age pictured Yahweh as a "God of power, judgment, and justice."

P1059:5, 96:6.4 But even in this dark age, every now and then a solitary teacher would arise proclaiming the Mosaic concept of divinity: "You children of wickedness cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God." "Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his Maker?" "Can you by searching find out God? Can you find out the Almighty to perfection? Behold, God is great and we know him not. Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out."

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 37: Section 7.  
Psalms And The Book Of Job

P1060:1, 96:7.1 Under the leadership of their sheiks and priests the Hebrews became loosely established in Palestine. But they soon drifted back into the benighted beliefs of the desert and became contaminated with the less advanced Canaanite religious practices. They became idolatrous and licentious, and their idea of Deity fell far below the Egyptian and Mesopotamian concepts of God that were maintained by certain surviving Salem groups, and which are recorded in some of the Psalms and in the so-called Book of Job.

P1060:2, 96:7.2 The Psalms are the work of a score or more of authors; many were written by Egyptian and Mesopotamian teachers. During these times when the Levant worshiped nature gods, there were still a goodly number who believed in the supremacy of El Elyon, the Most High.

P1060:3, 96:7.3 No collection of religious writings gives expression to such a wealth of devotion and inspirational ideas of God as the Book of Psalms. And it would be very helpful if, in the perusal of this wonderful collection of worshipful literature, consideration could be given to the source and chronology of each separate hymn of praise and adoration, bearing in mind that no other single collection covers such a great range of time. This Book of Psalms is the record of the varying concepts of God entertained by the believers of the Salem religion throughout the Levant and embraces the entire period from Amenemope to Isaiah. In the Psalms God is depicted in all phases of conception, from the crude idea of a tribal deity to the vastly expanded ideal of the later Hebrews, wherein Yahweh is pictured as a loving ruler and merciful Father.

P1060:4, 96:7.4 And when thus regarded, this group of Psalms constitutes the most valuable and helpful assortment of devotional sentiments ever assembled by man up to the times of the twentieth century. The worshipful spirit of this collection of hymns transcends that of all other sacred books of the world.

P1060:5, 96:7.5 The variegated picture of Deity presented in the Book of Job was the product of more than a score of Mesopotamian religious teachers extending over a period of almost three hundred years. And when you read the lofty concept of divinity found in this compilation of Mesopotamian beliefs, you will recognize that it was in the neighborhood of Ur of Chaldea that the idea of a real God was best preserved during the dark days in Palestine.

P1060:6, 96:7.6 In Palestine the wisdom and all- pervasiveness of God was often grasped but seldom his love and mercy. The Yahweh of these times "sends evil spirits to dominate the souls of his enemies"; he prospers his own and obedient children, while he curses and visits dire judgments upon all others. "He disappoints the devices of the crafty; he takes the wise in their own deceit."

P1060:7, 96:7.7 Only at Ur did a voice arise to cry out the mercy of God, saying: "He shall pray to God and shall find favor with him and shall see his face with joy, for God will give to man divine righteousness." Thus from Ur there is preached salvation, divine favor, by faith: "He is gracious to the repentant and says, `Deliver him from going down in the pit, for I have found a ransom.' If any say, `I have sinned and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not,' God will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and he shall see the light." Not since the times of Melchizedek had the Levantine world heard such a ringing and cheering message of human salvation as this extraordinary teaching of Elihu, the prophet of Ur and priest of the Salem believers, that is, the remnant of the onetime Melchizedek colony in Mesopotamia.

P1061:1, 96:7.8 And thus did the remnants of the Salem missionaries in Mesopotamia maintain the light of truth during the period of the disorganization of the Hebrew peoples until the appearance of the first of that long line of the teachers of Israel who never stopped as they built, concept upon concept, until they had achieved the realization of the ideal of the Universal and Creator Father of all, the acme of the evolution of the Yahweh concept.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38  
Evolution Of The God Concept Among The Hebrews

P1062:1, 97:0.1 The spiritual leaders of the Hebrews did what no others before them had ever succeeded in doing \-- they de-anthropomorphized their God concept without converting it into an abstraction of Deity comprehensible only to philosophers. Even common people were able to regard the matured concept of Yahweh as a Father, if not of the individual, at least of the race.

P1062:2, 97:0.2 The concept of the personality of God, while clearly taught at Salem in the days of Melchizedek, was vague and hazy at the time of the flight from Egypt and only gradually evolved in the Hebraic mind from generation to generation in response to the teaching of the spiritual leaders. The perception of Yahweh's personality was much more continuous in its progressive evolution than was that of many other of the Deity attributes. From Moses to Malachi there occurred an almost unbroken ideational growth of the personality of God in the Hebrew mind, and this concept was eventually heightened and glorified by the teachings of Jesus about the Father in heaven.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 38: Section 1.  
Samuel -- First Of The Hebrew Prophets

P1062:3, 97:1.1 Hostile pressure of the surrounding peoples in Palestine soon taught the Hebrew sheiks they could not hope to survive unless they confederated their tribal organizations into a centralized government. And this centralization of administrative authority afforded a better opportunity for Samuel to function as a teacher and reformer.

P1062:4, 97:1.2 Samuel sprang from a long line of the Salem teachers who had persisted in maintaining the truths of Melchizedek as a part of their worship forms. This teacher was a virile and resolute man. Only his great devotion, coupled with his extraordinary determination, enabled him to withstand the almost universal opposition which he encountered when he started out to turn all Israel back to the worship of the supreme Yahweh of Mosaic times. And even then he was only partially successful; he won back to the service of the higher concept of Yahweh only the more intelligent half of the Hebrews; the other half continued in the worship of the tribal gods of the country and in the baser conception of Yahweh.

P1062:5, 97:1.3 Samuel was a rough-and-ready type of man, a practical reformer who could go out in one day with his associates and overthrow a score of Baal sites. The progress he made was by sheer force of compulsion; he did little preaching, less teaching, but he did act. One day he was mocking the priest of Baal; the next, chopping in pieces a captive king. He devotedly believed in the one God, and he had a clear concept of that one God as creator of heaven and earth: "The pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he has set the world upon them."

P1063:1, 97:1.4 But the great contribution which Samuel made to the development of the concept of Deity was his ringing pronouncement that Yahweh was _changeless,_ forever the same embodiment of unerring perfection and divinity. In these times Yahweh was conceived to be a fitful God of jealous whims, always regretting that he had done thus and so; but now, for the first time since the Hebrews sallied forth from Egypt, they heard these startling words, "The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent, for he is not a man, that he should repent." Stability in dealing with Divinity was proclaimed. Samuel reiterated the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham and declared that the Lord God of Israel was the source of all truth, stability, and constancy. Always had the Hebrews looked upon their God as a man, a superman, an exalted spirit of unknown origin; but now they heard the onetime spirit of Horeb exalted as an unchanging God of creator perfection. Samuel was aiding the evolving God concept to ascend to heights above the changing state of men's minds and the vicissitudes of mortal existence. Under his teaching, the God of the Hebrews was beginning the ascent from an idea on the order of the tribal gods to the ideal of an all-powerful and changeless Creator and _Supervisor_ of all creation.

P1063:2, 97:1.5 And he preached anew the story of God's sincerity, his covenant-keeping reliability. Said Samuel: "The Lord will not forsake his people." "He has made with us an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure." And so, throughout all Palestine there sounded the call back to the worship of the supreme Yahweh. Ever this energetic teacher proclaimed, "You are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, neither is there any God beside you."

P1063:3, 97:1.6 Theretofore the Hebrews had regarded the favor of Yahweh mainly in terms of material prosperity. It was a great shock to Israel, and almost cost Samuel his life, when he dared to proclaim: "The Lord enriches and impoverishes; he debases and exalts. He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts up the beggars to set them among princes to make them inherit the throne of glory." Not since Moses had such comforting promises for the humble and the less fortunate been proclaimed, and thousands of despairing among the poor began to take hope that they could improve their spiritual status.

P1063:4, 97:1.7 But Samuel did not progress very far beyond the concept of a tribal god. He proclaimed a Yahweh who made all men but was occupied chiefly with the Hebrews, his chosen people. Even so, as in the days of Moses, once more the God concept portrayed a Deity who is holy and upright. "There is none as holy as the Lord. Who can be compared to this holy Lord God?"

P1063:5, 97:1.8 As the years passed, the grizzled old leader progressed in the understanding of God, for he declared: "The Lord is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by him. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, showing mercy to the merciful, and with the upright man he will also be upright." Even here is the dawn of mercy, albeit it is limited to those who are merciful. Later he went one step further when, in their adversity, he exhorted his people: "Let us fall now into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are great." "There is no restraint upon the Lord to save many or few."

P1063:6, 97:1.9 And this gradual development of the concept of the character of Yahweh continued under the ministry of Samuel's successors. They attempted to present Yahweh as a covenant-keeping God but hardly maintained the pace set by Samuel; they failed to develop the idea of the mercy of God as Samuel had later conceived it. There was a steady drift back toward the recognition of other gods, despite the maintenance that Yahweh was above all. "Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all."

P1064:1, 97:1.10 The keynote of this era was divine power; the prophets of this age preached a religion designed to foster the king upon the Hebrew throne. "Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. In your hand is power and might, and you are able to make great and to give strength to all." And this was the status of the God concept during the time of Samuel and his immediate successors.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 2.  
Elijah And Elisha

P1064:2, 97:2.1 In the tenth century B.C. the Hebrew nation became divided into two kingdoms. In both of these political divisions many truth teachers endeavored to stem the reactionary tide of spiritual decadence that had set in, and which continued disastrously after the war of separation. But these efforts to advance the Hebraic religion did not prosper until that determined and fearless warrior for righteousness, Elijah, began his teaching. Elijah restored to the northern kingdom a concept of God comparable with that held in the days of Samuel. Elijah had little opportunity to present an advanced concept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been before him, overthrowing the altars of Baal and demolishing the idols of false gods. And he carried forward his reforms in the face of the opposition of an idolatrous monarch; his task was even more gigantic and difficult than that which Samuel had faced.

P1064:3, 97:2.2 When Elijah was called away, Elisha, his faithful associate, took up his work and, with the invaluable assistance of the little-known Micaiah, kept the light of truth alive in Palestine.

P1064:4, 97:2.3 But these were not times of progress in the concept of Deity. Not yet had the Hebrews ascended even to the Mosaic ideal. The era of Elijah and Elisha closed with the better classes returning to the worship of the supreme Yahweh and witnessed the restoration of the idea of the Universal Creator to about that place where Samuel had left it.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 3.  
Yahweh And Baal

P1064:5, 97:3.1 The long-drawn-out controversy between the believers in Yahweh and the followers of Baal was a socioeconomic clash of ideologies rather than a difference in religious beliefs.

P1064:6, 97:3.2 The inhabitants of Palestine differed in their attitude toward private ownership of land. The southern or wandering Arabian tribes (the Yahwehites) looked upon land as an inalienable -- as a gift of Deity to the clan. They held that land could not be sold or mortgaged. "Yahweh spoke, saying, `The land shall not be sold, for the land is mine.'"

P1064:7, 97:3.3 The northern and more settled Canaanites (the Baalites) freely bought, sold, and mortgaged their lands. The word Baal means owner. The Baal cult was founded on two major doctrines: First, the validation of property exchange, contracts, and covenants -- the right to buy and sell land. Second, Baal was supposed to send rain -- he was a god of fertility of the soil. Good crops depended on the favor of Baal. The cult was largely concerned with _land,_ its ownership and fertility.

P1065:1, 97:3.4 In general, the Baalites owned houses, lands, and slaves. They were the aristocratic landlords and lived in the cities. Each Baal had a sacred place, a priesthood, and the "holy women," the ritual prostitutes.

P1065:2, 97:3.5 Out of this basic difference in the regard for land, there evolved the bitter antagonisms of social, economic, moral, and religious attitudes exhibited by the Canaanites and the Hebrews. This socioeconomic controversy did not become a definite religious issue until the times of Elijah. From the days of this aggressive prophet the issue was fought out on more strictly religious lines -- Yahweh _vs._ Baal -- and it ended in the triumph of Yahweh and the subsequent drive toward monotheism.

P1065:3, 97:3.6 Elijah shifted the Yahweh-Baal controversy from the land issue to the religious aspect of Hebrew and Canaanite ideologies. When Ahab murdered the Naboths in the intrigue to get possession of their land, Elijah made a moral issue out of the olden land mores and launched his vigorous campaign against the Baalites. This was also a fight of the country folk against domination by the cities. It was chiefly under Elijah that Yahweh became Elohim. The prophet began as an agrarian reformer and ended up by exalting Deity. Baals were many, Yahweh was _one_ \-- monotheism won over polytheism.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 4.  
Amos And Hosea

P1065:4, 97:4.1 A great step in the transition of the tribal god -- the god who had so long been served with sacrifices and ceremonies, the Yahweh of the earlier Hebrews -- to a God who would punish crime and immorality among even his own people, was taken by Amos, who appeared from among the southern hills to denounce the criminality, drunkenness, oppression, and immorality of the northern tribes. Not since the times of Moses had such ringing truths been proclaimed in Palestine.

P1065:5, 97:4.2 Amos was not merely a restorer or reformer; he was a discoverer of new concepts of Deity. He proclaimed much about God that had been announced by his predecessors and courageously attacked the belief in a Divine Being who would countenance sin among his so-called chosen people. For the first time since the days of Melchizedek the ears of man heard the denunciation of the double standard of national justice and morality. For the first time in their history Hebrew ears heard that their own God, Yahweh, would no more tolerate crime and sin in their lives than he would among any other people. Amos envisioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Elijah, but he also saw a God who thought no differently of the Hebrews than of any other nation when it came to the punishment of wrongdoing. This was a direct attack on the egoistic doctrine of the "chosen people," and many Hebrews of those days bitterly resented it.

P1065:6, 97:4.3 Said Amos: "He who formed the mountains and created the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morning and makes the day dark as night." And in denouncing his half-religious, timeserving, and sometimes immoral fellows, he sought to portray the inexorable justice of an unchanging Yahweh when he said of the evildoers: "Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down." "And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I direct the sword of justice, and it shall slay them." Amos further startled his hearers when, pointing a reproving and accusing finger at them, he declared in the name of Yahweh: "Surely I will never forget any of your works." "And I will sift the house of Israel among all nations as wheat is sifted in a sieve."

P1066:1, 97:4.4 Amos proclaimed Yahweh the "God of all nations" and warned the Israelites that ritual must not take the place of righteousness. And before this courageous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doctrine of the supreme Yahweh; he had insured the further evolution of the Melchizedek revelation.

P1066:2, 97:4.5 Hosea followed Amos and his doctrine of a universal God of justice by the resurrection of the Mosaic concept of a God of love. Hosea preached forgiveness through repentance, not by sacrifice. He proclaimed a gospel of loving-kindness and divine mercy, saying: "I will betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and judgment and in loving-kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness." "I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away."

P1066:3, 97:4.6 Hosea faithfully continued the moral warnings of Amos, saying of God, "It is my desire that I chastise them." But the Israelites regarded it as cruelty bordering on treason when he said: "I will say to those who were not my people, `you are my people'; and they will say, `you are our God.'" He continued to preach repentance and forgiveness, saying, "I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away." Always Hosea proclaimed hope and forgiveness. The burden of his message ever was: "I will have mercy upon my people. They shall know no God but me, for there is no savior beside me."

P1066:4, 97:4.7 Amos quickened the national conscience of the Hebrews to the recognition that Yahweh would not condone crime and sin among them because they were supposedly the chosen people, while Hosea struck the opening notes in the later merciful chords of divine compassion and loving-kindness which were so exquisitely sung by Isaiah and his associates.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 5.  
The First Isaiah

P1066:5, 97:5.1 These were the times when some were proclaiming threatenings of punishment against personal sins and national crime among the northern clans while others predicted calamity in retribution for the transgressions of the southern kingdom. It was in the wake of this arousal of conscience and consciousness in the Hebrew nations that the first Isaiah made his appearance.

P1066:6, 97:5.2 Isaiah went on to preach the eternal nature of God, his infinite wisdom, his unchanging perfection of reliability. He represented the God of Israel as saying: "Judgment also will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet." "The Lord will give you rest from your sorrow and from your fear and from the hard bondage wherein man has been made to serve." "And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, `this is the way, walk in it.'" "Behold God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my song." "`Come now and let us reason together,' says the Lord, `though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like the crimson, they shall be as wool.'"

P1066:7, 97:5.3 Speaking to the fear-ridden and soul-hungry Hebrews, this prophet said: "Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you." "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and has covered me with his robe of righteousness." "In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them."

P1067:1, 97:5.4 This Isaiah was followed by Micah and Obadiah, who confirmed and embellished his soul-satisfying gospel. And these two brave messengers boldly denounced the priest-ridden ritual of the Hebrews and fearlessly attacked the whole sacrificial system.

P1067:2, 97:5.5 Micah denounced "the rulers who judge for reward and the priests who teach for hire and the prophets who divine for money." He taught of a day of freedom from superstition and priestcraft, saying: "But every man shall sit under his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all people will live, each one according to his understanding of God."

P1067:3, 97:5.6  Ever the burden of Micah's message was: "Shall I come before God with burnt offerings? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown me, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?" And it was a great age; these were indeed stirring times when mortal man heard, and some even believed, such emancipating messages more than two and a half millenniums ago. And but for the stubborn resistance of the priests, these teachers would have overthrown the whole bloody ceremonial of the Hebrew ritual of worship.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 6.  
Jeremiah The Fearless

P1067:4, 97:6.1 While several teachers continued to expound the gospel of Isaiah, it remained for Jeremiah to take the next bold step in the internationalization of Yahweh, God of the Hebrews.

P1067:5, 97:6.2 Jeremiah fearlessly declared that Yahweh was not on the side of the Hebrews in their military struggles with other nations. He asserted that Yahweh was God of all the earth, of all nations and of all peoples. Jeremiah's teaching was the crescendo of the rising wave of the internationalization of the God of Israel; finally and forever did this intrepid preacher proclaim that Yahweh was God of all nations, and that there was no Osiris for the Egyptians, Bel for the Babylonians, Ashur for the Assyrians, or Dagon for the Philistines. And thus did the religion of the Hebrews share in that renaissance of monotheism throughout the world at about and following this time; at last the concept of Yahweh had ascended to a Deity level of planetary and even cosmic dignity. But many of Jeremiah's associates found it difficult to conceive of Yahweh apart from the Hebrew nation.

P1067:6, 97:6.3 Jeremiah also preached of the just and loving God described by Isaiah, declaring: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you." "For he does not afflict willingly the children of men."

P1067:7, 97:6.4 Said this fearless prophet: "Righteous is our Lord, great in counsel and mighty in work. His eyes are open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give every one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings." But it was considered blasphemous treason when, during the siege of Jerusalem, he said: "And now have I given these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant." And when Jeremiah counseled the surrender of the city, the priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a dismal dungeon.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 7.  
The Second Isaiah

P1068:1, 97:7.1 The destruction of the Hebrew nation and their captivity in Mesopotamia would have proved of great benefit to their expanding theology had it not been for the determined action of their priesthood. Their nation had fallen before the armies of Babylon, and their nationalistic Yahweh had suffered from the international preachments of the spiritual leaders. It was resentment of the loss of their national god that led the Jewish priests to go to such lengths in the invention of fables and the multiplication of miraculous appearing events in Hebrew history in an effort to restore the Jews as the chosen people of even the new and expanded idea of an internationalized God of all nations.

P1068:2, 97:7.2 During the captivity the Jews were much influenced by Babylonian traditions and legends, although it should be noted that they unfailingly improved the moral tone and spiritual significance of the Chaldean stories which they adopted, notwithstanding that they invariably distorted these legends to reflect honor and glory upon the ancestry and history of Israel.

P1068:3, 97:7.3 These Hebrew priests and scribes had a single idea in their minds, and that was the rehabilitation of the Jewish nation, the glorification of Hebrew traditions, and the exaltation of their racial history. If there is resentment of the fact that these priests have fastened their erroneous ideas upon such a large part of the Occidental world, it should be remembered that they did not intentionally do this; they did not claim to be writing by inspiration; they made no profession to be writing a sacred book. They were merely preparing a textbook designed to bolster up the dwindling courage of their fellows in captivity. They were definitely aiming at improving the national spirit and morale of their compatriots. It remained for later-day men to assemble these and other writings into a guide book of supposedly infallible teachings.

P1068:4, 97:7.4 The Jewish priesthood made liberal use of these writings subsequent to the captivity, but they were greatly hindered in their influence over their fellow captives by the presence of a young and indomitable prophet, Isaiah the second, who was a full convert to the elder Isaiah's God of justice, love, righteousness, and mercy. He also believed with Jeremiah that Yahweh had become the God of all nations. He preached these theories of the nature of God with such telling effect that he made converts equally among the Jews and their captors. And this young preacher left on record his teachings, which the hostile and unforgiving priests sought to divorce from all association with him, although sheer respect for their beauty and grandeur led to their incorporation among the writings of the earlier Isaiah. And thus may be found the writings of this second Isaiah in the book of that name, embracing chapters forty to fifty-five inclusive.

P1068:5, 97:7.5 No prophet or religious teacher from Machiventa to the time of Jesus attained the high concept of God that Isaiah the second proclaimed during these days of the captivity. It was no small, anthropomorphic, man-made God that this spiritual leader proclaimed. "Behold he takes up the isles as a very little thing." "And as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."

P1069:1, 97:7.6 At last Machiventa Melchizedek beheld human teachers proclaiming a real God to mortal man. Like Isaiah the first, this leader preached a God of universal creation and upholding. "I have made the earth and put man upon it. I have created it not in vain; I formed it to be inhabited." "I am the first and the last; there is no God beside me." Speaking for the Lord God of Israel, this new prophet said: "The heavens may vanish and the earth wax old, but my righteousness shall endure forever and my salvation from generation to generation." "Fear you not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God." "There is no God beside me -- a just God and a Savior."

P1069:2, 97:7.7 And it comforted the Jewish captives, as it has thousands upon thousands ever since, to hear such words as: "Thus says the Lord, `I have created you, I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine.'" "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you since you are precious in my sight." "Can a woman forget her suckling child that she should not have compassion on her son? Yes, she may forget, yet will I not forget my children, for behold I have graven them upon the palms of my hands; I have even covered them with the shadow of my hands." "Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon."

P1069:3, 97:7.8 Listen again to the gospel of this new revelation of the God of Salem: "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom. He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might he increases strength. Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

P1069:4, 97:7.9 This Isaiah conducted a far-flung propaganda of the gospel of the enlarging concept of a supreme Yahweh. He vied with Moses in the eloquence with which he portrayed the Lord God of Israel as the Universal Creator. He was poetic in his portrayal of the infinite attributes of the Universal Father. No more beautiful pronouncements about the heavenly Father have ever been made. Like the Psalms, the writings of Isaiah are among the most sublime and true presentations of the spiritual concept of God ever to greet the ears of mortal man. Listen to his portrayal of Deity: "I am the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity." "I am the first and the last, and beside me there is no other God." "And the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear." And it was a new doctrine in Jewry when this benign but commanding prophet persisted in the preachment of divine constancy, God's faithfulness. He declared that "God would not forget, would not forsake."

P1069:5, 97:7.10 This daring teacher proclaimed that man was very closely related to God, saying: "Every one who is called by my name I have created for my glory, and they shall show forth my praise. I, even I, am he who blots out their transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember their sins."  
P1069:6, 97:7.11 Hear this great Hebrew demolish the concept of a national God while in glory he proclaims the divinity of the Universal Father, of whom he says, "The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool." And Isaiah's God was none the less holy, majestic, just, and unsearchable. The concept of the angry, vengeful, and jealous Yahweh of the desert Bedouins has almost vanished. A new concept of the supreme and universal Yahweh has appeared in the mind of mortal man, never to be lost to human view. The realization of divine justice has begun the destruction of primitive magic and biologic fear. At last, man is introduced to a universe of law and order and to a universal God of dependable and final attributes.

P1070:1, 97:7.12 And this preacher of a supernal God never ceased to proclaim this _God of love._ "I dwell in the high and holy place, also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit." And still further words of comfort did this great teacher speak to his contemporaries: "And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters fail not. And if the enemy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a defense against him." And once again did the fear-destroying gospel of Melchizedek and the trust-breeding religion of Salem shine forth for the blessing of mankind.

P1070:2, 97:7.13 The farseeing and courageous Isaiah effectively eclipsed the nationalistic Yahweh by his sublime portraiture of the majesty and universal omnipotence of the supreme Yahweh, God of love, ruler of the universe, and affectionate Father of all mankind. Ever since those eventful days the highest God concept in the Occident has embraced universal justice, divine mercy, and eternal righteousness. In superb language and with matchless grace this great teacher portrayed the all-powerful Creator as the all-loving Father.

P1070:3, 97:7.14 This prophet of the captivity preached to his people and to those of many nations as they listened by the river in Babylon. And this second Isaiah did much to counteract the many wrong and racially egoistic concepts of the mission of the promised Messiah. But in this effort he was not wholly successful. Had the priests not dedicated themselves to the work of building up a misconceived nationalism, the teachings of the two Isaiahs would have prepared the way for the recognition and reception of the promised Messiah.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 8.  
Sacred And Profane History

P1070:4, 97:8.1 The custom of looking upon the record of the experiences of the Hebrews as sacred history and upon the transactions of the rest of the world as profane history is responsible for much of the confusion existing in the human mind as to the interpretation of history. And this difficulty arises because there is no secular history of the Jews. After the priests of the Babylonian exile had prepared their new record of God's supposedly miraculous dealings with the Hebrews, the sacred history of Israel as portrayed in the Old Testament, they carefully and completely destroyed the existing records of Hebrew affairs -- such books as "The Doings of the Kings of Israel" and "The Doings of the Kings of Judah," together with several other more or less accurate records of Hebrew history.

P1070:5, 97:8.2 In order to understand how the devastating pressure and the inescapable coercion of secular history so terrorized the captive and alien-ruled Jews that they attempted the complete rewriting and recasting of their history, we should briefly survey the record of their perplexing national experience. It must be remembered that the Jews failed to evolve an adequate non-theological philosophy of life. They struggled with their original and Egyptian concept of divine rewards for righteousness coupled with dire punishments for sin. The drama of Job was something of a protest against this erroneous philosophy. The frank pessimism of Ecclesiastes was a worldly wise reaction to these overoptimistic beliefs in Providence.

P1071:1, 97:8.3 But five hundred years of the overlordship of alien rulers was too much for even the patient and long-suffering Jews. The prophets and priests began to cry: "How long, O Lord, how long?" As the honest Jew searched the Scriptures, his confusion became worse confounded. An olden seer promised that God would protect and deliver his "chosen people." Amos had threatened that God would abandon Israel unless they re-established their standards of national righteousness. The scribe of Deuteronomy had portrayed the Great Choice -- as between the good and the evil, the blessing and the curse. Isaiah the first had preached a beneficent king-deliverer. Jeremiah had proclaimed an era of inner righteousness -- the covenant written on the tablets of the heart. The second Isaiah talked about salvation by sacrifice and redemption. Ezekiel proclaimed deliverance through the service of devotion, and Ezra promised prosperity by adherence to the law. But in spite of all this they lingered on in bondage, and deliverance was deferred. Then Daniel presented the drama of the impending "crisis" -- the smiting of the great image and the immediate establishment of the everlasting reign of righteousness, the Messianic kingdom.

P1071:3, 97:8.5 All modern religions have seriously blundered in the attempt to put a miraculous interpretation on certain epochs of human history. It is a mistake to regard theological dogmas and religious superstition as a supernatural sedimentation appearing by miraculous action in this stream of human history. The fact that the "Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men" does not convert secular history into so-called sacred history.

P1071:4, 97:8.6 New Testament authors and later Christian writers further complicated the distortion of Hebrew history by their well-meant attempts to transcendentalize the Jewish prophets. Thus has Hebrew history been disastrously exploited by both Jewish and Christian writers. Secular Hebrew history has been thoroughly dogmatized.

Part III. The History Of Urantia  
Chapter 38: Section 9.

Hebrew History

P1071:6, 97:9.1 There never were twelve tribes of the Israelites -- only three or four tribes settled in Palestine. The Hebrew nation came into being as the result of the union of the so-called Israelites and the Canaanites. "And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites. And they took their daughters to be their wives and gave their daughters to the sons of the Canaanites." The Hebrews never drove the Canaanites out of Palestine, notwithstanding that the priests' record of these things unhesitatingly declared that they did.

P1071:7, 97:9.2 The Israelites consciousness took origin in the hill country of Ephraim; the later Jewish consciousness originated in the southern clan of Judah. The Jews (Judahites) always sought to defame and blacken the record of the northern Israelites (Ephraimites).

P1072:1, 97:9.3 Pretentious Hebrew history begins with Saul's rallying the northern clans to withstand an attack by the Ammonites upon their fellow tribesmen -- the Gileadites -- east of the Jordan. With an army of a little more than three thousand he defeated the enemy, and it was this exploit that led the hill tribes to make him king. When the exiled priests rewrote this story, they raised Saul's army to 330,000 and added "Judah" to the list of tribes participating in the battle.

P1072:2, 97:9.4 Immediately following the defeat of the Ammonites, Saul was made king by popular election by his troops. No priest or prophet participated in this affair. But the priests later on put it in the record that Saul was crowned king by the prophet Samuel in accordance with divine directions. This they did in order to establish a "divine line of descent" for David's Judahite kingship.

P1072:3, 97:9.5 The greatest of all distortions of Jewish history had to do with David. After Saul's victory over the Ammonites (which he ascribed to Yahweh) the Philistines became alarmed and began attacks on the northern clans. David and Saul never could agree. David with six hundred men entered into a Philistine alliance and marched up the coast to Esdraelon. At Gath the Philistines ordered David off the field; they feared he might go over to Saul. David retired; the Philistines attacked and defeated Saul. They could not have done this had David been loyal to Israel. David's army was a polyglot assortment of malcontents, being for the most part made up of social misfits and fugitives from justice.

P1072:4, 97:9.6 Saul's tragic defeat at Gilboa by the Philistines brought Yahweh to a low point among the gods in the eyes of the surrounding Canaanites. Ordinarily, Saul's defeat would have been ascribed to apostasy from Yahweh, but this time the Judahite editors attributed it to ritual errors. They required the tradition of Saul and Samuel as a background for the kingship of David.

P1072:5, 97:9.7 David with his small army made his headquarters at the non-Hebrew city of Hebron. Presently his compatriots proclaimed him king of the new kingdom of Judah. Judah was made up mostly of non-Hebrew elements -- Kenites, Calebites, Jebusites, and other Canaanites. They were nomads -- herders -- and so were devoted to the Hebrew idea of land ownership. They held the ideologies of the desert clans.

P1072:6, 97:9.8 The difference between sacred and profane history is well illustrated by the two differing stories concerning making David king as they are found in the Old Testament. A part of the secular story of how his immediate followers (his army) made him king was inadvertently left in the record by the priests who subsequently prepared the lengthy and prosaic account of the sacred history wherein is depicted how the prophet Samuel, by divine direction, selected David from among his brethren and proceeded formally and by elaborate and solemn ceremonies to anoint him king over the Hebrews and then to proclaim him Saul's successor.

P1072:7, 97:9.9 So many times did the priests, after preparing their fictitious narratives of God's miraculous dealings with Israel, fail fully to delete the plain and matter-of-fact statements which already rested in the records.

P1072:8, 97:9.10 David sought to build himself up politically by first marrying Saul's daughter, then the widow of Nabal the rich Edomite, and then the daughter of Talmai, the king of Geshur. He took six wives from the women of Jebus, not to mention Bathsheba, the wife of the Hittite.

P1073:1, 97:9.11 And it was by such methods and out of such people that David built up the fiction of a divine kingdom of Judah as the successor of the heritage and traditions of the vanishing northern kingdom of Ephraimite Israel. David's cosmopolitan tribe of Judah was more gentile than Jewish; nevertheless the oppressed elders of Ephraim came down and "anointed him king of Israel." After a military threat, David then made a compact with the Jebusites and established his capital of the united kingdom at Jebus (Jerusalem), which was a strong-walled city midway between Judah and Israel. The Philistines were aroused and soon attacked David. After a fierce battle they were defeated, and once more Yahweh was established as "The Lord God of Hosts."

P1073:2, 97:9.12 But Yahweh must, perforce, share some of this glory with the Canaanite gods, for the bulk of David's army was non-Hebrew. And so there appears in your record (overlooked by the Judahite editors) this telltale statement: "Yahweh has broken my enemies before me. Therefore he called the name of the place Baal-Perazim." And they did this because eighty per cent of David's soldiers were Baalites.

P1073:3, 97:9.13 David explained Saul's defeat at Gilboa by pointing out that Saul had attacked a Canaanite city, Gibeon, whose people had a peace treaty with the Ephraimites. Because of this, Yahweh forsook him. Even in Saul's time David had defended the Canaanite city of Keilah against the Philistines, and then he located his capital in a Canaanite city. In keeping with the policy of compromise with the Canaanites, David turned seven of Saul's descendants over to the Gibeonites to be hanged.

P1073:4, 97:9.14 After the defeat of the Philistines, David gained possession of the "ark of Yahweh," brought it to Jerusalem, and made the worship of Yahweh official for his kingdom. He next laid heavy tribute on the neighboring tribes -- the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and Syrians.

P1073:5, 97:9.15 David's political machine began to get personal possession of land in the north in violation of the Hebrew mores and presently gained control of the caravan tariffs formerly collected by the Philistines. And then came the murder of Uriah. All judicial appeals were adjudicated at Jerusalem; no longer could "the elders" mete out justice. No wonder rebellion broke out. Today, Absalom might be called a demagogue; his mother was a Canaanite. There were a half dozen contenders for the throne besides the son of Bathsheba -- Solomon.

P1073:6, 97:9.16 After David's death Solomon purged the political machine of all northern influences but continued all of the tyranny and taxation of his father's regime. Solomon bankrupted the nation by his lavish court and by his elaborate building program: There was the house of Lebanon, the palace of Pharaoh's daughter, the temple of Yahweh, the king's palace, and the restoration of the walls of many cities. Solomon created a vast Hebrew navy, operated by Syrian sailors and trading with all the world. His harem numbered almost one thousand.

P1073:7, 97:9.17 By this time Yahweh's temple at Shiloh was discredited, and all the worship of the nation was centered at Jebus in the gorgeous royal chapel. The northern kingdom returned more to the worship of Elohim. They enjoyed the favor of the Pharaohs, who later enslaved Judah, putting the southern kingdom under tribute.

P1073:8, 97:9.18 There were ups and downs -- wars between Israel and Judah. After four years of civil war and three dynasties, Israel fell under the rule of city despots who began to trade in land. Even King Omri attempted to buy Shemer's estate. But the end drew on apace when Shalmaneser III decided to control the Mediterranean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gathered ten other groups and resisted at Karkar; the battle was a draw. The Assyrian was stopped but the allies were decimated. This great fight is not even mentioned in the Old Testament.

P1074:1, 97:9.19 New trouble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoenician wife forged Ahab's name to papers directing that Naboth's land be confiscated on the charge that he had blasphemed the names of "Elohim and the king." He and his sons were promptly executed. The vigorous Elijah appeared on the scene denouncing Ahab for the murder of the Naboths. Thus Elijah, one of the greatest of the prophets, began his teaching as a defender of the old land mores as against the land-selling attitude of the Baalim, against the attempt of the cities to dominate the country. But the reform did not succeed until the country landlord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chieftain Jehonadab to destroy the prophets (real estate agents) of Baal at Samaria.

P1074:2, 97:9.20 New life appeared as Jehoash and his son Jeroboam delivered Israel from its enemies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gangster-nobility whose depredations rivaled those of the Davidic dynasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The attempt to suppress freedom of speech led Elijah, Amos, and Hosea to begin their secret writing, and this was the real beginning of the Jewish and Christian Bibles.

P1074:3, 97:9.21 But the northern kingdom did not vanish from history until the king of Israel conspired with the king of Egypt and refused to pay further tribute to Assyria. Then began the three years' siege followed by the total dispersion of the northern kingdom. Ephraim (Israel) thus vanished. Judah -- the Jews, the "remnant of Israel" -- had begun the concentration of land in the hands of the few, as Isaiah said, "Adding house to house and field to field." Presently there was in Jerusalem a temple of Baal alongside the temple of Yahweh. This reign of terror was ended by a monotheistic revolt led by the boy king Joash, who crusaded for Yahweh for thirty-five years.

P1074:4, 97:9.22 The next king, Amaziah, had trouble with the revolting tax-paying Edomites and their neighbors. After a signal victory he turned to attack his northern neighbors and was just as signally defeated. Then the rural folk revolted; they assassinated the king and put his sixteen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah, called Uzziah by Isaiah. After Uzziah, things went from bad to worse, and Judah existed for a hundred years by paying tribute to the kings of Assyria. Isaiah the first told them that Jerusalem, being the city of Yahweh, would never fall. But Jeremiah did not hesitate to proclaim its downfall.

P1074:5, 97:9.23  The real undoing of Judah was effected by a corrupt and rich ring of politicians operating under the rule of a boy king, Manasseh. The changing economy favored the return of the worship of Baal, whose private land dealings were against the ideology of Yahweh. The fall of Assyria and the ascendancy of Egypt brought deliverance to Judah for a time, and the country folk took over. Under Josiah they destroyed the Jerusalem ring of corrupt politicians.

P1074:6, 97:9.24 But this era came to a tragic end when Josiah presumed to go out to intercept Necho's mighty army as it moved up the coast from Egypt for the aid of Assyria against Babylon. He was wiped out, and Judah went under tribute to Egypt. The Baal political party returned to power in Jerusalem, and thus began the _real_ Egyptian bondage. Then ensued a period in which the Baalim politicians controlled both the courts and the priesthood. Baal worship was an economic and social system dealing with property rights as well as having to do with soil fertility.

P1075:1, 97:9.25 With the overthrow of Necho by Nebuchadnezzar, Judah fell under the rule of Babylon and was given ten years of grace, but soon rebelled. When Nebuchadnezzar came against them, the Judahites started social reforms, such as releasing slaves, to influence Yahweh. When the Babylonian army temporarily withdrew, the Hebrews rejoiced that their magic of reform had delivered them. It was during this period that Jeremiah told them of the impending doom, and presently Nebuchadnezzar returned.

P1075:2, 97:9.26 And so the end of Judah came suddenly. The city was destroyed, and the people were carried away into Babylon. The Yahweh-Baal struggle ended with the captivity. And the captivity shocked the remnant of Israel into monotheism.

P1075:3, 97:9.27 In Babylon the Jews arrived at the conclusion that they could not exist as a small group in Palestine, having their own peculiar social and economic customs, and that, if their ideologies were to prevail, they must convert the gentiles. Thus originated their new concept of destiny -- the idea that the Jews must become the chosen servants of Yahweh. The Jewish religion of the Old Testament really evolved in Babylon during the captivity.

P1075:4, 97:9.28 The doctrine of immortality also took form at Babylon. The Jews had thought that the idea of the future life detracted from the emphasis of their gospel of social justice. Now for the first time theology displaced sociology and economics. Religion was taking shape as a system of human thought and conducts more and more to be separated from politics, sociology, and economics.

The History Of Earth  
Chapter 38: Section 10.  
The Hebrew Religion

P1075:6, 97:10.1 Their leaders had taught the Israelites that they were a chosen people, not for special indulgence and monopoly of divine favor, but for the special service of carrying the truth of the one God over all to every nation. And they had promised the Jews that, if they would fulfill this destiny, they would become the spiritual leaders of all peoples, and that the coming Messiah would reign over them and all the world as the Prince of Peace.

P1075:7, 97:10.2 When the Jews had been freed by the Persians, they returned to Palestine only to fall into bondage to their own priest-ridden code of laws, sacrifices, and rituals. And as the Hebrew clans rejected the wonderful story of God presented in the farewell oration of Moses for the rituals of sacrifice and penance, so did these remnants of the Hebrew nation reject the magnificent concept of the second Isaiah for the rules, regulations, and rituals of their growing priesthood.

P1075:8, 97:10.3 National egotism, false faith in a misconceived promised Messiah, and the increasing bondage and tyranny of the priesthood forever silenced the voices of the spiritual leaders (excepting Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, and Malachi). The Jews never lost the concept of the Universal Father; even to this century they have continued to follow this Deity conception.

P1076:1, 97:10.4 From Moses on there extended an unbroken line of faithful teachers who passed the monotheistic torch of light from one generation to another while they unceasingly rebuked unscrupulous rulers, denounced commercializing priests, and ever exhorted the people to adhere to the worship of the supreme Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel.

P1076:2, 97:10.5 The Hebrew religion of sincere belief in the one and universal God continues to live in their hearts. And this religion survives because it has effectively functioned to conserve the highest values of its followers. The Jewish religion did preserve the ideals of its people. The supreme Yahweh, as compared with other concepts of Deity, was clear-cut, vivid, personal, and moral.

P1076:3, 97:10.6 The Jews loved justice, wisdom, truth, and righteousness as have few peoples, and they contributed to the intellectual comprehension and to the spiritual understanding of these divine qualities. Hebrew theology expanded and it played an important part in the development of two other world religions, Christianity and Mohammedanism.

P1076:4, 97:10.7 The Jewish religion persisted also because of its institutions. It is difficult for religion to survive as the private practice of isolated individuals. This has ever been the error of the religious leaders: Seeing the evils of institutionalized religion, they seek to destroy the technique of group functioning. In place of destroying all ritual, they would do better to reform it. In this respect Ezekiel was wiser than his contemporaries; though he joined with them in insisting on personal moral responsibility, he also set about to establish the faithful observance of a superior and purified ritual.

P1076:5, 97:10.8 And thus the successive teachers of Israel accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of religion ever to be effected on Earth: the gradual but continuous transformation to the exalted and supernal concept of the supreme Yahweh; God, the creator of all things and the loving and merciful Father of all mankind. And this Hebraic concept of God was the highest human visualization of the Universal Father.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39  
Religious Teachings In The Occident

P1077:1, 98:0.1 The Melchizedek teachings entered Europe along many routes, but chiefly they came by way of Egypt and were embodied in Occidental philosophy. The ideals of the Western world were basically Socratic, and its later religious philosophy became that of Jesus as it was modified and compromised through contact with evolving Occidental philosophy and religion, all of which culminated in the Christian church.

P1077:2, 98:0.2 For a long time in Europe the Salem missionaries carried on their activities, becoming gradually absorbed into many of the cults and ritual groups which periodically arose. Among those who maintained the Salem teachings in the purest form must be mentioned the Cynics. These preachers of faith and trust in God were still functioning in Roman Europe in the first century A.D., being later incorporated into the newly forming Christian religion.

P1077:3, 98:0.3 Much of the Salem doctrine was spread in Europe by the Jewish mercenary soldiers who fought in so many of the Occidental military struggles. In ancient times the Jews were famed as much for military valor as for their theological curiosity.

P1077:4, 98:0.4 The basic doctrines of Greek philosophy, Jewish and Christian theology were fundamentally repercussions of the earlier Melchizedek teachings.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 1.  
The Salem Religion Among The Greeks

P1077:5, 98:1.1 The Salem missionaries might have built up a great religious structure among the Greeks had it not been for their strict interpretation of their oath of ordination, a pledge imposed by Machiventa which forbade the organization of exclusive congregations for worship, and which exacted the promise of each teacher never to function as a priest, never to receive fees for religious service, only food, clothing, and shelter. When the Melchizedek teachers penetrated to pre-Hellenic Greece, they found a people who still fostered the traditions of Adamson and the days of the Andites, but these teachings had become greatly adulterated with the notions and beliefs of the hordes of inferior slaves that had been brought to the Greek shores in increasing numbers. This adulteration produced a reversion to a crude animism with bloody rites, the lower classes even making ceremonial out of the execution of condemned criminals.

P1077:6, 98:1.2 The early influence of the Salem teachers was nearly destroyed by the so-called Aryan invasion from southern Europe and the East. These Hellenic invaders brought along with them anthropomorphic God concepts similar to those which their Aryan fellows had carried to India. This importation inaugurated the evolution of the Greek family of gods and goddesses. This new religion was partly based on the cults of the incoming Hellenic barbarians, but it also shared in the myths of the older inhabitants of Greece.

P1078:1, 98:1.3 The Hellenic Greeks found the Mediterranean world largely dominated by the mother cult, and they imposed upon these peoples their man-god, Dyaus-Zeus, who had already become head of the whole Greek pantheon of subordinate gods. And the Greeks would have eventually achieved a true monotheism in the concept of Zeus except for their retention of the overcontrol of Fate. A God of final value must, himself, be the arbiter of fate and the creator of destiny.

P1078:2, 98:1.4 As a consequence of these factors in religious evolution, there presently developed the popular belief in the happy-go-lucky gods of Mount Olympus, gods more human than divine, and gods which the intelligent Greeks never did regard very seriously. They neither greatly loved nor greatly feared these divinities of their own creation. They had a patriotic and racial feeling for Zeus and his family of half men and half gods, but they hardly reverenced or worshiped them.

P1078:3, 98:1.5 The Hellenes became so impregnated with the anti-priestcraft doctrines of the earlier Salem teachers that no priesthood of any importance ever arose in Greece. Even the making of images to the gods became more of a work in art than a matter of worship.  
P1078:4, 98:1.6 The Olympian gods illustrate man's typical anthropomorphism. But the Greek mythology was more aesthetic than ethic. The Greek religion was helpful in that it portrayed a universe governed by a deity group. But Greek morals, ethics, and philosophy presently advanced far beyond the god concept, and this imbalance between intellectual and spiritual growth was as hazardous to Greece as it had proved to be in India.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 2.  
Greek Philosophic Thought

P1078:5, 98:2.1 A lightly regarded and superficial religion cannot endure, especially when it has no priesthood to foster its forms and to fill the hearts of the devotees with fear and awe. The Olympian religion did not promise salvation, nor did it quench the spiritual thirst of its believers; therefore was it doomed to perish. Within a millennium of its inception it had nearly vanished, and the Greeks were without a national religion, the gods of Olympus having lost their hold upon the better minds.

P1078:6, 98:2.2 This was the situation when, during the sixth century B.C., the Orient and the Levant experienced a revival of spiritual consciousness and a new awakening to the recognition of monotheism. But the West did not share in this new development; neither Europe nor northern Africa extensively participated in this religious renaissance. The Greeks, however, did engage in a magnificent intellectual advancement. They had begun to master fear and no longer sought religion as an antidote therefore, but they did not perceive that true religion is the cure for soul hunger, spiritual disquiet, and moral despair. They sought for the solace of the soul in deep thinking -- philosophy and metaphysics. They turned from the contemplation of self-preservation -- salvation -- to self-realization and self-understanding.

P1078:7, 98:2.3 By rigorous thought the Greeks attempted to attain that consciousness of security which would serve as a substitute for the belief in survival, but they utterly failed. Only the more intelligent among the higher classes of the Hellenic peoples could grasp this new teaching; the rank and file of the progeny of the slaves of former generations had no capacity for the reception of this new substitute for religion.

P1079:1, 98:2.4 The philosophers disdained all forms of worship, notwithstanding that they practically all held loosely to the background of a belief in the Salem doctrine of "the Intelligence of the universe," "the idea of God," and "the Great Source." In so far as the Greek philosophers gave recognition to the divine and the superfinite, they were frankly monotheistic; they gave scant recognition to the whole galaxy of Olympian gods and goddesses.

P1079:2, 98:2.5 The Greek poets of the fifth and sixth centuries, notably Pindar, attempted the reformation of Greek religion. They elevated its ideals, but they were more artists than religionists.

P1079:3, 98:2.6 Xenophanes taught one God, but his deity concept was too pantheistic to be a personal Father to mortal man. Anaxagoras was a mechanist except that he did recognize a First Cause, an Initial Mind. Socrates and his successors, Plato and Aristotle, taught that virtue is knowledge; goodness, health of the soul; that it is better to suffer injustice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to return evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their cardinal virtues were: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.

P1079:4, 98:2.7 The evolution of religious philosophy among the Hellenic and Hebrew peoples affords a contrastive illustration of the function of the church as an institution in the shaping of cultural progress. In Palestine, human thought was so priest-controlled and scripture-directed that philosophy and aesthetics were entirely submerged in religion and morality. In Greece, the almost complete absence of priests and "sacred scriptures" left the human mind free and unfettered, resulting in a startling development in depth of thought. But religion as a personal experience failed to keep pace with the intellectual probing into the nature and reality of the cosmos.

P1079:5, 98:2.8 In Greece, believing was subordinated to thinking; in Palestine, thinking was held subject to believing.

P1079:6, 98:2.9 In Palestine, religious dogma became so crystallized as to jeopardize further growth; in Greece, human thought became so abstract that the concept of God resolved itself into a misty vapor of pantheistic speculation not at all unlike the impersonal Infinity of the Brahman philosophers.

P1079:7, 98:2.10 But the average men of these times could not grasp, nor were they much interested in, the Greek philosophy of self-realization and an abstract Deity; they rather craved promises of salvation, coupled with a personal God who could hear their prayers. They exiled the philosophers, persecuted the remnants of the Salem cult, both doctrines having become much blended, and made ready for that terrible orgiastic plunge into the follies of the mystery cults which were then overspreading the Mediterranean lands. The Eleusinian mysteries grew up within the Olympian pantheon, a Greek version of the worship of fertility; Dionysus nature worship flourished; the best of the cults was the Orphic brotherhood, whose moral preachments and promises of salvation made a great appeal to many.

P1080:1, 98:2.11 Most Greece became involved in these new methods of attaining salvation, these emotional and fiery ceremonials. Few nation ever attained such heights of artistic philosophy in so short a time; few created such an advanced system of ethics practically without Deity and entirely devoid of the promise of human salvation.

P1080:2, 98:2.12 Religions have long endured without philosophical support, but few philosophies, as such, have long persisted without some identification with religion. Philosophy is to religion as conception is to action. But the ideal human estate is that in which philosophy, religion, and science are welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 3.  
The Melchizedek Teachings In Rome

P1080:3, 98:3.1 Having grown out of the earlier religious forms of worship of the family gods into the tribal reverence for Mars, the god of war, it was natural that the later religion of the Latins was more of a political observance than were the intellectual systems of the Greeks and Brahmans or the more spiritual religions of several other peoples.

P1080:4, 98:3.2 In the great monotheistic renaissance of Melchizedek's gospel during the sixth century B.C., few of the Salem missionaries penetrated Italy, and those who did were unable to overcome the influence of the rapidly spreading Etruscan priesthood with its new galaxy of gods and temples, all of which became organized into the Roman state religion. This religion of the Latin tribes was not trivial and venal like that of the Greeks, neither was it austere and tyrannical like that of the Hebrews; it consisted for the most part in the observance of mere forms, vows, and taboos.

P1080:5, 98:3.3 Roman religion was greatly influenced by extensive cultural importations from Greece. Eventually most of the Olympian gods were transplanted and incorporated into the Latin pantheon. The Greeks long worshiped the fire of the family hearth -- Hestia was the virgin goddess of the hearth; Vesta was the Roman goddess of the home. Zeus became Jupiter; Aphrodite, Venus; and so on down through the many Olympian deities.

P1080:6, 98:3.4 The religious initiation of Roman youths was the occasion of their solemn consecration to the service of the state. Oaths and admissions to citizenship were in reality religious ceremonies. The Latin peoples maintained temples, altars, and shrines and, in a crisis, would consult the oracles. They preserved the bones of heroes and later on those of the Christian saints.

P1080:7, 98:3.5 This formal and unemotional form of pseudo-religious patriotism was doomed to collapse, even as the highly intellectual and artistic worship of the Greeks had gone down before the fervid and deeply emotional worship of the mystery cults. The mystery religion of the Mother of God sect had its headquarters in those days, on the exact site of the present church of St. Peter's in Rome.

P1080:8, 98:3.6 The emerging Roman state conquered politically but was in turn conquered by the cults, rituals, mysteries, and god concepts of Egypt, Greece, and the Levant. These imported cults continued to flourish throughout the Roman state up to the time of Augustus, who, purely for political and civic reasons, made a heroic and somewhat successful effort to destroy the mysteries and revive the older political religion.

P1081:1, 98:3.7 One of the priests of the state religion told Augustus of the earlier attempts of the Salem teachers to spread the doctrine of one God, a final Deity presiding over all supernatural beings; and this idea took such a firm hold on the emperor that he built many temples, stocked them well with beautiful images, reorganized the state priesthood, re-established the state religion, appointed himself acting high priest of all, and as emperor did not hesitate to proclaim himself the supreme god.

P1081:2, 98:3.8 This new religion of Augustus worship flourished and was observed throughout the empire during his lifetime except in Palestine, the home of the Jews. And this era of the human gods continued until the official Roman cult had a roster of more than two-score self-elevated human deities, all claiming miraculous births and other superhuman attributes.

P1081:3, 98:3.9 The last stand of the dwindling band of Salem believers was made by an earnest group of preachers, the Cynics, who exhorted the Romans to abandon their religious rituals and return to a form of worship embodying Melchizedek's gospel as it had been modified through contact with the philosophy of the Greeks. But the people at large rejected the Cynics; they preferred to plunge into the rituals of the mysteries, which not only offered hopes of personal salvation but also gratified the desire for diversion, excitement, and entertainment.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 4.  
Mithraism And Christianity

P1083:1, 98:6.1 Prior to the coming of the mystery cults and Christianity, personal religion hardly developed as an independent institution in the civilized lands of North Africa and Europe; it was more of a family, city-state, political, and imperial affair. The Hellenic Greeks never evolved a centralized worship system; the ritual was local; they had no priesthood and no "sacred book." Much as the Romans, their religious institutions lacked a powerful driving agency for the preservation of higher moral and spiritual values. While it is true that the institutionalization of religion has usually detracted from its spiritual quality, it is also a fact that no religion has thus far succeeded in surviving without the aid of institutional organization of some degree, greater or lesser.

P1083:2, 98:6.2 Occidental religion thus languished until the days of the Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics, but most important of all, until the times of the great contest between Mithraism and Paul's new religion of Christianity.

P1083:3, 98:6.3 During the third A.D.,, Mithraic and Christian churches were very similar both in appearance and in the character of their ritual. A majority of such places of worship were underground, and both contained altars whose backgrounds variously depicted the sufferings of the savior who had brought salvation to a sin-cursed human race.

P1083:4, 98:6.4 Always had it been the practice of Mithraic worshipers, on entering the temple, to dip their fingers in holy water. And since in some districts there were those who at one time belonged to both religions, they introduced this custom into the majority of the Christian churches in the vicinity of Rome. Both religions employed baptism and partook of the sacrament of bread and wine. The one great difference between Mithraism and Christianity, aside from the characters of Mithras and Jesus, was that the one encouraged militarism while the other was ultra-pacific. Mithraism's tolerance for other religions (except later Christianity) led to its final undoing. But the deciding factor in the struggle between the two was the admission of women into the full fellowship of the Christian faith.

P1083:5, 98:6.5 In the end the nominal Christian faith dominated the Occident. Greek philosophy supplied the concepts of ethical value; Mithraism, the ritual of worship observance; and Christianity, as such, the technique for the conservation of moral and social values.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 5.  
The Christian Religion

P1084:1, 98:7.2 It is not the province of this paper to deal with the origin and dissemination of the Christian religion. Suffice it to say that it is built around the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity was spread throughout the Levant and Occident by the followers of this Galilean, and their missionary zeal equaled that of their illustrious predecessors, the Sethites and Salemites, as well as that of their earnest Asiatic contemporaries, the Buddhist teachers.

P1084:2, 98:7.3 The Christian religion arose through the compounding of the following teachings, influences, beliefs, cults, and personal individual attitudes:

P1084:3, 98:7.4 1. The Melchizedek teachings, which are a basic factor in all the religions of Occident and Orient that have arisen in the last four thousand years.

P1084:4, 98:7.5 2. The Hebraic system of morality, ethics, theology, and belief in both Providence and the supreme Yahweh.

P1084:5, 98:7.6 3. The Zoroastrian conception of the struggle between cosmic good and evil, which had already left its imprint on both Judaism and Mithraism. Through prolonged contact attendant upon the struggles between Mithraism and Christianity, the doctrines of the Iranian prophet became a potent factor in determining the theological and philosophic cast and structure of the dogmas, tenets, and cosmology of the Hellenized and Latinized versions of the teachings of Jesus.

P1084:6, 98:7.7 4. The mystery cults, especially Mithraism but also the worship of the Great Mother in the Phrygian cult. Even the legends of the birth of Jesus became tainted with the Roman version of the miraculous birth of the Iranian savior-hero, Mithras, whose advent on earth was supposed to have been witnessed by only a handful of gift-bearing shepherds who had been informed of this impending event by angels.

P1084:7, 98:7.8 5. The historic fact of the human life of Joshua ben Joseph, who was given the titles, _Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, Son of God_ by Christians

P1084:8, 98:7.9 6. The personal viewpoint of Paul of Tarsus. And it should be recorded that Mithraism was the dominant religion of Tarsus during his adolescence. Paul little dreamed that his well-intentioned letters to his converts would someday be regarded by still later Christians as the "word of God." Such well-meaning teachers must not be held accountable for the use made of their writings by later-day successors.

P1084:9, 98:7.10 7. The philosophic thought of the Hellenistic peoples, from Alexandria and Antioch through Greece to Syracuse and Rome. The philosophy of the Greeks was more in harmony with Paul's version of Christianity than with any other current religious system and became an important factor in the success of Christianity in the Occident. Greek philosophy, coupled with Paul's theology, still forms the basis of European ethics.

P1084:10, 98:7.11 As the original teachings of Jesus penetrated the Occident, they became Occidentalized, and as they became Occidentalized, they began to lose their potentially universal appeal to all races and kinds of men. Christianity, today, has become a religion well adapted to the social, economic, and political mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the religion of Jesus, although it still valiantly portrays a beautiful religion about Jesus to such individuals as sincerely seek to follow in the way of its teaching. It has glorified Jesus as the Christ, the Messianic anointed one from God, but has largely forgotten his personal gospel: the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men.

P1085:1, 98:7.12 The God concept was and is existent in the hearts of men and women, the same God concept that still flames anew in the living spiritual experience of the manifold children of the Universal Father as they live their intriguing temporal lives on the whirling planets of space.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 6.  
Influence Of The Greeks

P2071:1, 195:1.1 The Hellenization of Christianity started in earnest on that eventful day when the Apostle Paul stood before the council of the Areopagus in Athens and told the Athenians about "the Unknown God." There, under the shadow of the Acropolis, this Roman citizen proclaimed to these Greeks his version of the new religion which had taken origin in the Jewish land of Galilee. And there was something strangely alike in Greek philosophy and many of the teachings of Jesus. They had a common goal -- both aimed at the _emergence of the individual._ The Greek, at social and political emergence; Jesus, at moral and spiritual emergence. The Greek taught intellectual liberalism leading to political freedom; Jesus taught spiritual liberalism leading to religious liberty. These two ideas put together constituted a new and mighty charter for human freedom; they presaged man's social, political, and spiritual liberty.

P2071:2, 195:1.2 Christianity came into existence and triumphed over all contending religions primarily because of two things:

P2071:3, 195:1.3 1. The Greek mind was willing to borrow new and good ideas even from the Jews.

P2071:4, 195:1.4 2. Paul and his successors were willing but shrewd and sagacious compromisers; they were keen theological traders.

P2071:5, 195:1.5 At the time Paul stood up in Athens preaching "Christ and Him Crucified," the Greeks were spiritually hungry; they were inquiring, interested, and actually looking for spiritual truth. Never forget that at first the Romans fought Christianity, while the Greeks embraced it, and that it was the Greeks who literally forced the Romans subsequently to accept this new religion, as then modified, as a part of Greek culture.

P2071:6, 195:1.6 The Greek revered beauty, the Jew holiness, but both peoples loved truth. For centuries the Greek had seriously thought and earnestly debated about all human problems -- social, economic, political, and philosophic -- except religion. Few Greeks had paid much attention to religion; they did not take even their own religion very seriously. For centuries the Jews had neglected these other fields of thought while they devoted their minds to religion. They took their religion very seriously, too seriously. As illuminated by the content of Jesus' message, the united product of the centuries of the thought of these two peoples now became the driving power of a new order of human society and, to a certain extent, of a new order of human religious belief and practice.

P2071:7, 195:1.7 The influence of Greek culture had already penetrated the lands of the western Mediterranean when Alexander spread Hellenistic civilization over the near-Eastern world. The Greeks did very well with their religion and their politics as long as they lived in small city-states, but when the Macedonian king dared to expand Greece into an empire, stretching from the Adriatic to the Indus, trouble began. The art and philosophy of Greece were fully equal to the task of imperial expansion, but not so with Greek political administration or religion. After the city-states of Greece had expanded into empire, their rather parochial gods seemed a little queer. The Greeks were really searching for _one God,_ a greater and better God, when the Christianized version of the older Jewish religion came to them.

P2072:1, 195:1.8 The Hellenistic Empire, as such, could not endure. Its cultural sway continued on, but it endured only after securing from the West the Roman political genius for empire administration and after obtaining from the East a religion whose one God possessed empire dignity.

P2072:2, 195:1.9 In the first century A.D., Hellenistic culture had already attained its highest levels; its retrogression had begun; learning was advancing but genius was declining. It was at this very time that the ideas and ideals of Jesus, which were partially embodied in Christianity, became a part of the salvage of Greek culture and learning.

P2072:3, 195:1.10 Alexander had charged on the East with the cultural gift of the civilization of Greece; Paul assaulted the West with the Christian version of the gospel of Jesus. And wherever the Greek culture prevailed throughout the West, there Hellenized Christianity took root.

P2072:4, 195:1.11 The Eastern version of the message of Jesus, notwithstanding that it remained more true to his teachings, continued to follow the uncompromising attitude of Abner. It never progressed as did the Hellenized version and was eventually lost in the Islamic movement.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 7.  
The Roman Influence

P2072:5, 195:2.1 The Romans bodily took over Greek culture, putting representative government in the place of government by lot. And presently this change favored Christianity in that Rome brought into the whole Western world a new tolerance for strange languages, peoples, and even religions.

P2072:6, 195:2.2 Much of the early persecution of Christians in Rome was due solely to their unfortunate use of the term "kingdom" in their preaching. The Romans were tolerant of any and all religions but very resentful of anything that savored of political rivalry. And so, when these early persecutions, due so largely to misunderstanding, died out, the field for religious propaganda was wide open. The Roman was interested in political administration; he cared little for either art or religion, but he was unusually tolerant of both.

P2072:7, 195:2.3 Oriental law was stern and arbitrary; Greek law was fluid and artistic; Roman law was dignified and respect-breeding. Roman education bred an unheard-of and stolid loyalty. The early Romans were politically devoted and sublimely consecrated individuals. They were honest, zealous, and dedicated to their ideals, but without a religion worthy of the name. Small wonder that their Greek teachers were able to persuade them to accept Paul's Christianity.

P2072:8, 195:2.4 And these Romans were a great people. They could govern the Occident because they did govern themselves. Such unparalleled honesty, devotion, and stalwart self-control was ideal soil for the reception and growth of Christianity.

P2072:9, 195:2.5 It was easy for these Greco-Romans to become just as spiritually devoted to an institutional church as they were politically devoted to the state. The Romans fought the church only when they feared it as a competitor of the state. Rome, having little national philosophy or native culture, took over Greek culture for its own and boldly adopted Christ as its moral philosophy. Christianity became the moral culture of Rome but hardly its religion in the sense of being the individual experience in spiritual growth of those who embraced the new religion in such a wholesale manner. True, indeed, many individuals did penetrate beneath the surface of all this state religion and found for the nourishment of their souls the real values of the hidden meanings held within the latent truths of Hellenized and paganized Christianity.

P2073:1, 195:2.6 The Stoic and his sturdy appeal to "nature and conscience" had only the better prepared all Rome to receive Christ, at least in an intellectual sense. The Roman was by nature and training a lawyer; he revered even the laws of nature. And now, in Christianity, he discerned in the laws of nature the laws of God. A people that could produce Cicero and Vergil were ripe for Paul's Hellenized Christianity.

P2073:2, 195:2.7 And so did these Romanized Greeks force both Jews and Christians to philosophize their religion, to co-ordinate its ideas and systematize its ideals, to adapt religious practices to the existing current of life. And all this was enormously helped by translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek and by the later recording of the New Testament in the Greek tongue.

P2073:3, 195:2.8 The Greeks, in contrast with the Jews and many other peoples, had long provisionally believed in immortality, some sort of survival after death, and since this was the very heart of Jesus' teaching, it was certain that Christianity would make a strong appeal to them.

P2073:4, 195:2.9 A succession of Greek-cultural and Roman-political victories had consolidated the Mediterranean lands into one empire, with one language and one culture, and had made the Western world ready for one God. Judaism provided this God, but Judaism was not acceptable as a religion to these Romanized Greeks. Philo helped some to mitigate their objections, but Christianity revealed to them an even better concept of one God, and they embraced it readily.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 8.  
Under The Roman Empire

P2073:5, 195:3.1 After the consolidation of Roman political rule and after the dissemination of Christianity, the Christians found themselves with one God, a great religious concept, but without empire. The Greco-Romans found themselves with a great empire but without a God to serve as the suitable religious concept for empire worship and spiritual unification. The Christians accepted the empire; the empire adopted Christianity. The Roman provided a unity of political rule; the Greek, a unity of culture and learning; Christianity, a unity of religious thought and practice.

P2073:6, 195:3.2 Rome overcame the tradition of nationalism by imperial universalism and for the first time in history made it possible for different races and nations at least nominally to accept one religion.

P2073:7, 195:3.3 Christianity came into favor in Rome at a time when there was great contention between the vigorous teachings of the Stoics and the salvation promises of the mystery cults. Christianity came with refreshing comfort and liberating power to a spiritually hungry people whose language had no word for "unselfishness."

P2073:8, 195:3.4 That which gave greatest power to Christianity was the way its believers lived lives of service and even the way they died for their faith during the earlier times of drastic persecution.

P2073:9, 195:3.5 The teaching regarding Jesus' love for children soon put an end to the widespread practice of exposing children to death when they were not wanted, particularly girl babies.

P2074:1, 195:3.6 The early plan of Christian worship was largely taken over from the Jewish synagogue, modified by the Mithraic ritual; later on, much pagan pageantry was added. The backbone of the early Christian church consisted of Christianized Greek proselytes to Judaism.

P2074:2, 195:3.7 The second century A.D. was the best time in all the world's history for a good religion to make progress in the Western world. During the first century Christianity had prepared itself, by struggle and compromise, to take root and rapidly spread. Christianity adopted the emperor; later, he adopted Christianity. This was a great age for the spread of a new religion. There was religious liberty; travel was universal and thought was untrammeled.

P2074:3, 195:3.8 The spiritual impetus of nominally accepting Hellenized Christianity came to Rome too late to prevent the well-started moral decline or to compensate for the already well-established and increasing racial deterioration. This new religion was a cultural necessity for imperial Rome, and it is exceedingly unfortunate that it did not become a means of spiritual salvation in a larger sense.

P2074:4, 195:3.9 Even a good religion could not save a great empire from the sure results of lack of individual participation in the affairs of government, from overmuch paternalism, over-taxation and gross collection abuses, unbalanced trade with the Levant which drained away the gold, amusement madness, Roman standardization, the degradation of woman, slavery and race decadence, physical plagues, and a state church which became institutionalized nearly to the point of spiritual barrenness.

P2074:5, 195:3.10  Conditions, however, were not so bad at Alexandria. The early schools continued to hold much of Jesus' teachings free from compromise. Pantaenus taught Clement and then went on to follow Nathaniel in proclaiming Christ in India. While some of the ideals of Jesus were sacrificed in the building of Christianity, it should in all fairness be recorded that, by the end of the second century, practically all the great minds of the Greco-Roman world had become Christian. The triumph was approaching completion.

P2074:6, 195:3.11 And this Roman Empire lasted sufficiently long to insure the survival of Christianity even after the empire collapsed. But we have often conjectured what would have happened in Rome and in the world if it had been the gospel of the kingdom which had been accepted in the place of Greek Christianity.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 9.  
The European Dark Ages

P2074:7, 195:4.1 The church, being an adjunct to society and the ally of politics, was doomed to share in the intellectual and spiritual decline of the so-called European "dark ages." During this time, religion became more and more monasticized, asceticized, and legalized. In a spiritual sense, Christianity was hibernating. Throughout this period there existed, alongside this slumbering and secularized religion, a continuous stream of mysticism, a fantastic spiritual experience bordering on unreality and philosophically akin to pantheism.

P2074:8, 195:4.2 During these dark and despairing centuries, religion became virtually second-handed again. The individual was almost lost before the overshadowing authority, tradition, and dictation of the church. A new spiritual menace arose in the creation of a galaxy of "saints" who were assumed to have special influence at the divine courts, and who, therefore, if effectively appealed to, would be able to intercede in man's behalf before the Gods.

P2075:1, 195:4.3 But Christianity was sufficiently socialized and paganized that, while it was impotent to stay the oncoming dark ages, it was the better prepared to survive this long period of moral darkness and spiritual stagnation. And it did persist on through the long night of Western civilization and was still functioning as a moral influence in the world when the renaissance dawned. The rehabilitation of Christianity, following the passing of the dark ages, resulted in bringing into existence numerous sects of the Christian teachings, beliefs suited to special intellectual, emotional, and spiritual types of human personality. And many of these special Christian groups, or religious families, still persist at the time of the making of this presentation.

P2075:2, 195:4.4 Christianity exhibits a history of having originated out of the unintended transformation of the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus. It further presents the history of having experienced Hellenization, paganization, secularization, institutionalization, intellectual deterioration, spiritual decadence, moral hibernation, threatened extinction, later rejuvenation, fragmentation, and more recent relative rehabilitation. Such a pedigree is indicative of inherent vitality and the possession of vast recuperative resources. And this same Christianity is now present in the civilized world of Occidental peoples and stands face to face with a struggle for existence which is even more ominous than those eventful crises which have characterized its past battles for dominance.

P2075:3, 195:4.5 Religion is now confronted by the challenge of a new age of scientific minds and materialistic tendencies. In this gigantic struggle between the secular and the spiritual, which will eventually triumph?

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 39: Section 10.  
The Modern Problem

P2075:4, 195:5.1 The twenty-first century has brought new problems for all religions to solve. The higher a civilization climbs, the more necessitous becomes the duty to "seek first the realities of heaven" in all of man's efforts to stabilize society and facilitate the solution of its material problems.

P2075:5, 195:5.2 Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth seeker aright only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening art.

P2075:6, 195:5.3 Religion is the revelation to man of his divine and eternal destiny. Religion is a purely personal and spiritual experience and must forever be distinguished from man's other high forms of thought, such as:

P2075:7, 195:5.4 1. Man's logical attitude toward the things of material reality.

P2075:8, 195:5.5 2. Man's aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.

P2075:9, 195:5.6 3. Man's ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.

P2075:10, 195:5.7 4. Even man's sense of human morality is not, in and of itself, religious.

P2075:11, 195:5.8 Religion is designed to find those values in the universe which call forth faith, trust, and assurance; religion culminates in worship. Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through genuine religious experience.

P2075:12, 195:5.9 A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity.

P2076:1, 195:5.10 Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify all the latent adventure surging within the soul in one short life in the flesh. Be patient! be not tempted to indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid adventure. Harness your energies and bridle your passions; be calm while you await the majestic unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and thrilling discovery.

P2076:2, 195:5.11 In confusion over man's origin, do not lose sight of your eternal destiny.

P2076:3, 195:5.12 As you view the world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil.

P2076:4, 195:5.13 When there is so much good truth to publish and proclaim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just because it appears to be a fact? The beauties of the spiritual values of truth are more pleasurable and uplifting than is the phenomenon of evil.

P2076:5, 195:5.14 We find God through the leadings of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true guide to real insight.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40  
Faith And Belief

P1114:5, 101:8.1 Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living. The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith. A state of mind attains to faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living. Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more.

P1114:6, 101:8.2 Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. Theological beliefs can be suggested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist.

P1114:7, 101:8.3 Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer upon its devotees assumed knowledge. Faith is a traitor when it fosters betrayal of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty to supreme values and divine ideals. Faith never shuns the problem-solving duty of mortal living. Living faith does not foster bigotry, persecution, or intolerance.

P1115:1, 101:8.4 Faith does not shackle the creative imagination, neither does it maintain an unreasoning prejudice toward the discoveries of scientific investigation. Faith vitalizes religion and constrains the religionist heroically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is according to knowledge, and its strivings are the preludes to sublime peace.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 1.  
Religion And Morality

P1115:2, 101:9.1 No professed revelation of religion could be regarded as authentic if it failed to recognize the duty demands of ethical obligation which had been created and fostered by preceding evolutionary religion. Revelation unfailingly enlarges the ethical horizon of evolved religion while it simultaneously and unfailingly expands the moral obligations of all prior revelations.

P1115:3, 101:9.2 When you presume to sit in critical judgment on the primitive religion of man (or on the religion of primitive man), you should remember to judge such savages and to evaluate their religious experience in accordance with their enlightenment and status of conscience. Do not make the mistake of judging another's religion by your own standards of knowledge and truth.

P1115:4, 101:9.3 True religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which compellingly admonishes man that it would be wrong for him not to believe in those morontial realities which constitute his highest ethical and moral concepts, his highest interpretation of life's greatest values and the universe's deepest realities. And such a religion is simply the experience of yielding intellectual loyalty to the highest dictates of spiritual consciousness.

P1115:5, 101:9.4 The search for beauty is a part of religion only in so far as it is ethical and to the extent that it enriches the concept of the moral. Art is only religious when it becomes diffused with purpose which has been derived from high spiritual motivation.

P1115:6, 101:9.5 The enlightened spiritual consciousness of civilized man is not concerned so much with some specific intellectual belief or with any one particular mode of living as with discovering the truth of living, the good and right technique of reacting to the ever-recurring situations of mortal existence. Moral consciousness is just a name applied to the human recognition and awareness of those ethical and emerging morontial values which duty demands that man shall abide by in the day-by-day control and guidance of conduct.

P1115:7, 101:9.6 Though recognizing that religion is imperfect, there are at least two practical manifestations of its nature and function:

P1115:8, 101:9.7 1. The spiritual urge and philosophic pressure of religion tend to cause man to project his estimation of moral values directly outward into the affairs of his fellows -- the ethical reaction of religion.

P1115:9, 101:9.8 2. Religion creates for the human mind a spiritualized consciousness of divine reality based on, and by faith derived from, antecedent concepts of moral values and co-ordinated with superimposed concepts of spiritual values. Religion thereby becomes a censor of mortal affairs, a form of glorified moral trust and confidence in reality, the enhanced realities of time and the more enduring realities of eternity.

P1116:1, 101:9.9 Faith becomes the connection between moral consciousness and the spiritual concept of enduring reality. Religion becomes the avenue of man's escape from the material limitations of the temporal and natural world to the supernal realities of the eternal and spiritual world by and through the technique of salvation, the progressive morontia transformation.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 2.  
Religion As Man's Liberator

P1116:2, 101:10.1 Intelligent man knows that he is a child of nature, a part of the material universe; he likewise discerns no survival of individual personality in the motions and tensions of the mathematical level of the energy universe. Nor can man ever discern spiritual reality through the examination of physical causes and effects.

P1116:3, 101:10.2 A human being is also aware that he is a part of the ideational cosmos, but though concept may endure beyond a mortal life span, there is nothing inherent in concept which indicates the personal survival of the conceiving personality. Nor will the exhaustion of the possibilities of logic and reason ever reveal to the logician or to the reasoner the eternal truth of the survival of personality.

P1116:4, 101:10.3 The material level of law provides for causality continuity, the unending response of effect to antecedent action; the mind level suggests the perpetuation of ideational continuity, the unceasing flow of conceptual potentiality from pre-existent conceptions. But neither of these levels of the universe discloses to the inquiring mortal an avenue of escape from partiality of status and from the intolerable suspense of being a transient reality in the universe, a temporal personality doomed to be extinguished upon the exhaustion of the limited life energies.

P1116:5, 101:10.4 It is only through the morontial avenue leading to spiritual insight that man can ever break the fetters inherent in his mortal status in the universe. Energy and mind do lead back to Paradise and Deity, but neither the energy endowment nor the mind endowment of man proceeds directly from such Paradise Deity. Only in the spiritual sense is man a child of God. And this is true because it is only in the spiritual sense that man is at present endowed and indwelt by the Paradise Father. Mankind can never discover divinity except through the avenue of religious experience and by the exercise of true faith. The faith acceptance of the truth of God enables man to escape from the circumscribed confines of material limitations and affords him a rational hope of achieving safe conduct from the material realm, whereon is death, to the spiritual realm, wherein is life eternal.

P1116:6, 101:10.5 The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man's concepts of ideality are endowed with reality.

P1116:7, 101:10.6 Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodness of religious experience. But it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of the material world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment.

P1117:1, 101:10.7 Religion effectually cures man's sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a child of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe.

P1117:2, 101:10.8 When you experience such a transformation of faith, you are no longer a slavish part of the mathematical cosmos but rather a liberated volitional son of the Universal Father. No longer is such a liberated son fighting alone against the inexorable doom of the termination of temporal existence; no longer does he combat all nature, with the odds hopelessly against him; no longer is he staggered by the paralyzing fear that, perchance, he has put his trust in a hopeless phantasm or pinned his faith to a fanciful error.

P1117:3, 101:10.9 Now, rather, are the children of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of reality's triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated children of God have certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from God's viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 3.  
Assurance Of Faith

P1118:4, 102:1.1 The work of the Thought Adjuster constitutes the explanation of the translation of man's primitive and evolutionary sense of duty into that higher and more certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation. There must be perfection hunger in man's heart to insure capacity for comprehending the faith paths to supreme attainment. If any man chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is literally true, "Human things must be known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known." But honest doubts and sincere questionings are not sin; such attitudes merely spell delay in the progressive journey toward perfection attainment. Childlike trust secures man's entrance into the kingdom of heavenly ascent, but progress is wholly dependent on the vigorous exercise of the robust and confident faith of the full-grown man.

P1119:1, 102:1.2 The reason of science is based on the observable facts of time; the faith of religion argues from the spirit program of eternity. What knowledge and reason cannot do for us, true wisdom admonishes us to allow faith to accomplish through religious insight and spiritual transformation.

P1119:2, 102:1.3 Owing to the isolation of rebellion, the revelation of truth on Earth has all too often been mixed up with the statements of partial and transient cosmologies. Truth remains unchanged from generation to generation, but the associated teachings about the physical world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eternal truth should not be slighted because it chances to be found in company with obsolete ideas regarding the material world. The more of science you know, the less sure you can be; the more of religion you _have,_ the more certain you are.

P1119:3, 102:1.4 The certainties of science proceed entirely from the intellect; the certitudes of religion spring from the very foundations of the _entire personality._ Science appeals to the understanding of the mind; religion appeals to the loyalty and devotion of the body, mind, and spirit, even to the whole personality.

P1119:4, 102:1.5 God is so all real and absolute that no material sign of proof or no demonstration of so-called miracle may be offered in testimony of his reality. Always will we know him because we trust him, and our belief in him is wholly based on our personal participation in the divine manifestations of his infinite reality.

P1119:5, 102:1.6 The indwelling Thought Adjuster unfailingly arouses in man's soul a true and searching hunger for perfection together with a far-reaching curiosity which can be adequately satisfied only by communion with God, the divine source of that Adjuster. The hungry soul of man refuses to be satisfied with anything less than the personal realization of the living God. Whatever more God may be than a high and perfect moral personality, he cannot, in our hungry and finite concept, be anything less.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 4.  
Religion And Reality

P1119:6, 102:2.1 Observing minds and discriminating souls know religion when they find it in the lives of their fellows. Religion requires no definition; we all know its social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual fruits. And this all grows out of the fact that religion is the property of the human race; it is not a child of culture. True, one's perception of religion is still human and therefore subject to the bondage of ignorance, the slavery of superstition, the deceptions of sophistication, and the delusions of false philosophy.

P1119:7, 102:2.2 One of the characteristic peculiarities of genuine religious assurance is that, notwithstanding the absoluteness of its affirmations and the staunchness of its attitude, the spirit of its expression is so poised and tempered that it never conveys the slightest impression of self-assertion or egoistic exaltation. The wisdom of religious experience is something of a paradox in that it is both humanly original and Adjuster derivative. Religious force is not the product of the individual's personal prerogatives but rather the outworking of that sublime partnership of man and the everlasting source of all wisdom. Thus do the words and acts of true and undefiled religion become compellingly authoritative for all enlightened mortals.

P1119:8, 102:2.3 It is difficult to identify and analyze the factors of a religious experience, but it is not difficult to observe that such religious practitioners live and carry on as if already in the presence of the Eternal. Believers react to this temporal life as if immortality already were within their grasp. In the lives of such mortals there is a valid originality and a spontaneity of expression that forever segregate them from those of their fellows who have imbibed only the wisdom of the world. Religionists seem to live in effective emancipation from harrying haste and the painful stress of the vicissitudes inherent in the temporal currents of time; they exhibit a stabilization of personality and a tranquility of character not explained by the laws of physiology, psychology, and sociology.

P1120:1, 102:2.4 Time is an invariable element in the attainment of knowledge; religion makes its endowments immediately available, albeit there is the important factor of growth in grace, definite advancement in all phases of religious experience. Knowledge is an eternal quest; always are you learning, but never are you able to arrive at the full knowledge of absolute truth. In knowledge alone there can never be absolute certainty, only increasing probability of approximation; but the religious soul of spiritual illumination _knows,_ and knows _now._ And yet this profound and positive certitude does not lead such a sound-minded religionist to take any less interest in the ups and downs of the progress of human wisdom, which is bound up on its material end with the developments of slow-moving science.

P1120:2, 102:2.5 Even the discoveries of science are not truly _real_ in the consciousness of human experience until they are unraveled and correlated, until their relevant facts actually become _meaning_ through encircuitment in the thought streams of mind. Mortal man views even his physical environment from the mind level, from the perspective of its psychological registry. It is not, therefore, strange that man should place a highly unified interpretation upon the universe and then seek to identify this energy unity of his science with the spirit unity of his religious experience. Mind is unity; mortal consciousness lives on the mind level and perceives the universal realities through the eyes of the mind endowment. The mind perspective will not yield the existential unity of the source of reality, the First Source and Center, but it can and sometime will portray to man the experiential synthesis of energy, mind, and spirit in and as the Supreme Being. But mind can never succeed in this unification of the diversity of reality unless such mind is firmly aware of material things, intellectual meanings, and spiritual values; only in the harmony of the functional reality is there unity, and only in unity is there the personality satisfaction of the realization of cosmic constancy and consistency.

P1120:3, 102:2.6 Unity is best found in human experience through philosophy. And while the body of philosophic thought must ever be founded on material facts, the soul and energy of true philosophic dynamics is mortal spiritual insight.

P1120:4, 102:2.7 Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men often seek to escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But true religion is alive. Intellectual crystallization of religious concepts is the equivalent of spiritual death. You cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when religion once becomes reduced only to an _idea,_ it is no longer religion; it has become merely a species of human philosophy.

P1121:1, 102:2.8 Again, there are other types of unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would use the sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the irritating demands of living. When certain vacillating and timid mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is evolutionary man's supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and "endure as seeing Him who is invisible." Mysticism, however, is often something of a retreat from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish the more robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human society and commerce. True religion must _act._ Conduct will be the result of religion when man actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly to possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere thinking or un-acting feeling.

P1121:2, 102:2.9 We are not blind to the fact that religion often acts unwisely, even irreligiously, but it _acts._ Aberrations of religious conviction have led to bloody persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is dynamic!

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 6.  
Knowledge, Wisdom, And Insight

P1121:3, 102:3.1 Intellectual deficiency or educational poverty unavoidably handicaps higher religious attainment because such an impoverished environment of the spiritual nature robs religion of its chief channel of philosophic contact with the world of scientific knowledge. The intellectual factors of religion are important, but their overdevelopment is likewise sometimes very handicapping and embarrassing. Religion must continually labor under a paradoxical necessity: the necessity of making effective use of thought while at the same time discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking.

P1121:4, 102:3.2 Religious speculation is inevitable but always detrimental; speculation invariably falsifies its object. Speculation tends to translate religion into something material or humanistic, and thus, while directly interfering with the clarity of logical thought, it indirectly causes religion to appear as a function of the temporal world, the very world with which it should everlastingly stand in contrast. Therefore will religion always be characterized by paradoxes, the paradoxes resulting from the absence of the experiential connection between the material and the spiritual levels of the universe -- morontia mota, the super-philosophic sensitivity for truth discernment and unity perception.

P1121:5, 102:3.3 Material feelings, human emotions, lead directly to material actions, selfish acts. Religious insights, spiritual motivations, lead directly to religious actions, unselfish acts of social service and altruistic benevolence.

P1121:6, 102:3.4 Religious desire is the hunger quest for divine reality. Religious experience is the realization of the consciousness of having found God. And when a human being does find God, there is experienced within the soul of that being such an indescribable restlessness of triumph in discovery that he is impelled to seek loving service-contact with his less illuminated fellows, not to disclose that he has found God, but rather to allow the overflow of the welling-up of eternal goodness within his own soul to refresh and ennoble his fellows. Real religion leads to increased social service.

P1122:1, 102:3.5 Science, knowledge, leads to _fact_ consciousness; religion, experience, leads to _value_ consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to _co-ordinate_ consciousness; revelation (the substitute for morontia mota) leads to the consciousness of _true reality;_ while the co-ordination of the consciousness of fact, value, and true reality constitutes awareness of personality reality, maximum of being, together with the belief in the possibility of the survival of that very personality.

P1122:2, 102:3.6 Knowledge leads to placing men, to originating social strata and castes. Religion leads to serving men, thus creating ethics and altruism. Wisdom leads to the higher and better fellowship of both ideas and one's fellows. Revelation liberates men and starts them out on the eternal adventure.

P1122:3, 102:3.7 Science sorts men; religion loves men, even as yourself; wisdom does justice to differing men; but revelation glorifies man and discloses his capacity for partnership with God.

P1122:4, 102:3.8 Science vainly strives to create the brotherhood of culture; religion brings into being the brotherhood of the spirit. Philosophy strives for the brotherhood of wisdom; revelation portrays the eternal brotherhood.

P1122:5, 102:3.9 Knowledge yields pride in the fact of personality; wisdom is the consciousness of the meaning of personality; religion is the experience of cognizance of the value of personality; revelation is the assurance of personality survival.

P1122:6, 102:3.10 Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos. Religion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the entire cosmos. Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments of science with the spiritual-insight concept of the whole. Wherein philosophy fails in this attempt, revelation succeeds, affirming that the cosmic circle is universal, eternal, absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of the Infinite I AM is therefore endless, limitless, and all-inclusive -- timeless, spaceless, and unqualified.

P1122:7, 102:3.11 Philosophy presents the _idea_ of an Absolute; religion envisions God as a loving _spiritual personality._ Revelation affirms the _unity_ of the fact of Deity, the idea of the Absolute, and the spiritual personality of God and, further, presents this concept as our Father -- the universal fact of existence, the eternal idea of mind, and the infinite spirit of life.

P1122:8, 102:3.12 The pursuit of knowledge constitutes science; the search for wisdom is philosophy; the love for God is religion; the hunger for truth _is_ a revelation. But it is the indwelling Thought Adjuster that attaches the feeling of reality to man's spiritual insight into the cosmos.

P1122:9, 102:3.13 In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion, the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is a vast difference between the evolutionary will-to-believe and the product of enlightened reason, religious insight, and revelation -- the _will that believes_.

P1122:10, 102:3.14 In evolution, religion often leads to man's creating his concepts of God; revelation exhibits the phenomenon of God's evolving man himself. Evolution tends to make God manlike; revelation tends to make man Godlike.

P1122:11, 102:3.15 Science is only satisfied with first causes, religion with supreme personality, and philosophy with unity. Revelation affirms that all are good. The _eternal real_ is the good of the universe and not the time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual experience of all personalities, always is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 6.  
The Fact Of Experience

P1123:1, 102:4.1 Because of the presence in your minds of the Thought Adjuster, it is no more of a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman. Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the consciousness of other-mindness. The technique whereby you can accept another's idea as yours is the same whereby you may "let the mind which was in Jesus be also in you."

P1123:2, 102:4.2 What is human experience? It is simply any interplay between an active and questioning self and any other active and external reality. The mass of experience is determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of the reality of the external. The motion of experience equals the force of expectant imagination plus the keenness of the sensory discovery of the external qualities of contacted reality. The fact of experience is found in self-consciousness plus other-existences -- other- thingness, other-mindness, and other- spiritness.

P1123:3, 102:4.3 Man very early becomes conscious that he is not alone in the world or the universe. There develops a natural spontaneous self-consciousness of other-mindness in the environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality -- source, nature, and destiny -- of _other-mindness._ But such a knowledge of God is ever and always a reality of personal experience. If God were not a personality, he could not become a living part of the real religious experience of a human personality.

P1123:4, 102:4.4 The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Father. Man's pre-spirit progression in the universe consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man's soul.

P1123:5, 102:4.5 Prayer is indeed a part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern religions, much to the neglect of the more essential communion of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and broadened by worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship illuminates destiny.

P1123:6, 102:4.6 Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man's cosmos.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 7.  
The Certainty Of Religious Faith

P1124:3, 102:6.1 The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love. The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none.

P1124:4, 102:6.2 The gods of primitive men may have been no more than shadows of themselves; the living God is the divine light whose interruptions constitute the creation shadows of all space.

P1124:5, 102:6.3 The religionist of philosophic attainment has faith in a personal God of personal salvation, something more than a reality, a value, a level of achievement, an exalted process, a transmutation, the ultimate of time-space, an idealization, the personalization of energy, the entity of gravity, a human projection, the idealization of self, nature's upthrust, the inclination to goodness, the forward impulse of evolution, or a sublime hypothesis. The religionist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of religion and the wellspring of superior civilization.

P1124:6, 102:6.4 Faith transforms the philosophic God of probability into the saving God of certainty in the personal religious experience. Skepticism may challenge the theories of theology, but confidence in the dependability of personal experience affirms the truth of that belief which has grown into faith.

P1124:7, 102:6.5 Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through personal experience. In much that pertains to life, probability must be reckoned with, but when contacting with cosmic reality, certainty may be experienced when such meanings and values are approached by living faith. The God-knowing soul dares to say, "I know," even when the unbeliever who denies such certitude because it is not wholly supported by intellectual logic questions this knowledge of God. To every such doubter the believer only replies, "How do you know that I do not know?"

P1125:1, 102:6.6 Though reason can always question faith, faith can always supplement both reason and logic. Reason creates the probability which faith can transform into a moral certainty, even a spiritual experience. God is the first truth and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him, while all facts exist relative to him. God is absolute truth. As truth one may know God, but to understand -- to explain -- God, one must explore the fact of the universe of universes. The vast gulf between the experience of the truth of God and ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Reason alone cannot achieve harmony between infinite truth and universal fact.

P1125:2, 102:6.7 Belief may not be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living. The positive always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error, experience over theory, spiritual realities over the isolated facts of time and space. The convincing evidence of this spiritual certainty consists in the social fruits of the spirit which such believers, faithers, yield as a result of this genuine spiritual experience. Said Jesus: "If you love your fellows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my disciples."

P1125:3, 102:6.8 To science God is a possibility, to psychology a desirability, to philosophy a probability, to religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience. Reason demands that a philosophy, which cannot find the God of probability, should be very respectful of that religious faith which can and does find the God of certitude. Neither should science discount religious experience on grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that man's intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go, finally taking origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling.

P1125:4, 102:6.9 The facts of evolution must not be arrayed against the truth of the reality of the certainty of the spiritual experience of the religious living of the God-knowing mortal. Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic that tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact. Scientific materialism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring universe phenomenon, in refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency demands the recognition of the activities of a purposive Creator.

P1125:5, 102:6.10 Organic evolution is a fact; purposive or progressive evolution is a truth which makes consistent the otherwise contradictory phenomena of the ever-ascending achievements of evolution. The higher any scientist progresses in his chosen science, the more will he abandon the theories of materialistic fact in favor of the cosmic truth of the dominance of the Supreme Mind. Materialism cheapens human life; the gospel of Jesus tremendously enhances and supremely exalts every mortal. Mortal existence must be visualized as consisting in the intriguing and fascinating experience of the realization of the reality of the meeting of the human upreach and the divine and saving downreach.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 8.  
The Certitude Of The Divine

P1126:1, 102:7.1 The Universal Father, being self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he actually lives in every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God unless you know him; being a child of God is the only experience that makes fatherhood certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing change. A changing universe is a dependent universe; such a creation cannot be either final or absolute. A finite universe is wholly dependent on the Ultimate and the Absolute. The universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other effect. The cause is absolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless; the effect, time-space and transcendental but ever changing, always growing.

P1126:2, 102:7.2 God is the one and only self-caused fact in the universe. He is the secret of the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by absolutely unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The fact of God, the divine law, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.

P1126:3, 102:7.3 Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, and confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

P1126:4, 102:7.4 True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.

P1126:5, 102:7.5 The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.

P1126:6, 102:7.6 The God-knowing individual is not one who is blind to the difficulties or unmindful of the obstacles which stand in the way of finding God in the maze of superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies of modern times. He has encountered all these deterrents and triumphed over them, surmounted them by living faith, and attained the highlands of spiritual experience in spite of them. But it is true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and cleverness of those who assemble objections and magnify difficulties about believing in God. It requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise objections. But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions and solve these difficulties; faith certainty is the greatest technique for dealing with all such superficial contentions.

P1127:1, 102:7.7 If science, philosophy, or sociology dares to become dogmatic in contending with the prophets of true religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such unwarranted dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of personal spiritual experience, "I know what I have experienced because I am a child of I AM." If the personal experience of a believer is to be challenged by dogma, then this faith-born child of the experiencible Father may reply with that unchallengeable dogma, the statement of his actual bond with the Universal Father.

P1127:2, 102:7.8 Only an unqualified reality, an absolute, could dare consistently to be dogmatic. Those who assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of truth, and the Infinite of love.

P1127:3, 102:7.9 If the nonreligious approaches to cosmic reality presume to challenge the certainty of faith on the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit experiencer can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousness of the scientist or the philosopher.

P1127:4, 102:7.10 Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 40: Section 9.  
The Evidences Of Religion

P1127:5, 102:8.1 The highest evidence of the reality and efficacy of religion consists in the _fact of human experience;_ namely, that man, naturally fearful and suspicious, innately endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation and craving survival after death, is willing fully to trust the deepest interests of his present and future to the keeping and direction of that power and person designated by his faith as God. That is the one central truth of all religion. As to what that power or person requires of man in return for this watchcare and final salvation, no two religions agree; in fact, they all more or less disagree.

P1127:6, 102:8.2 Regarding the status of any religion in the evolutionary scale, it may best be judged by its moral judgments and its ethical standards. The higher the type of any religion, the more it encourages and is encouraged by a constantly improving social morality and ethical culture. We cannot judge religion by the status of its accompanying civilization; we had better estimate the real nature of a civilization by the purity and nobility of its religion. Many of the world's most notable religious teachers have been virtually unlettered. The wisdom of the world is not necessary to an exercise of saving faith in eternal realities.

P1127:7, 102:8.3 The difference in the religions of various ages is wholly dependent on the difference in man's comprehension of reality and on his differing recognition of moral values, ethical relationships, and spirit realities.

P1127:8, 102:8.4  Ethics is the eternal social or racial mirror which faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable progress of internal spiritual and religious developments. Man has always thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deepest ideas and highest ideals. Even historic religion has always created its God conceptions out of its highest recognized values. Every intelligent creature gives the name of God to the best and highest thing he knows.

P1128:1, 102:8.5 Religion, when reduced to terms of reason and intellectual expression, has always dared to criticize civilization and evolutionary progress as judged by its own standards of ethical culture and moral progress.

P1128:2, 102:8.6 While personal religion precedes the evolution of human morals, it is regretfully recorded that institutional religion has invariably lagged behind the slowly changing mores of the human races. Organized religion has proved to be conservatively tardy. The prophets have usually led the people in religious development; the theologians have usually held them back. Religion, being a matter of inner or personal experience, can never develop very far in advance of the intellectual evolution of the races.

P1128:3, 102:8.7 But religion is never enhanced by an appeal to the so-called miraculous. The quest for miracles is a harking back to the primitive religions of magic. True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. The lives of Jesus and other Messengers of God, are perfect examples of such personal experiences: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding him to the full satisfaction of his soul during one short life in the flesh.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41  
The Reality Of Religious Experiences

P1129:1, 103:0.1 All of man's truly religious reactions are sponsored by the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are censored by the adjutant of wisdom. Man's first supermind endowment is that of personality encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; and long the universal bestowal of the Adjusters, this influence functions to enlarge man's viewpoint of ethics, religion, and spirituality. The liberated Spirit of Truth makes mighty contributions to the enlargement of the human capacity to perceive religious truths. As evolution advances on an inhabited world, the Thought Adjusters increasingly participate in the development of the higher types of human religious insight. The Thought Adjuster is the cosmic window through which the finite creature may faith-glimpse the certainties and divinities of limitless Deity, the Universal Father.

P1129:2, 103:0.2 The religious tendencies of the human races are innate; they are universally manifested and have an apparently natural origin; primitive religions are always evolutionary in their genesis. As natural religious experience continues to progress, periodic revelations of truth punctuate the otherwise slow-moving course of planetary evolution.

P1129:3, 103:0.3 On Earth, today, there are four kinds of religion:

  1. Natural or evolutionary religion.

  2. Supernatural or revelatory religion.

  3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.

  4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically thought-out theological doctrines and reason-created religions.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 1.  
Philosophy Of Religion

P1129:8, 103:1.1 The unity of religious experience among a social or racial group derives from the identical nature of the God fragment indwelling the individual. It is this divine in man that gives origin to his unselfish interest in the welfare of other men. But since personality is unique -- no two mortals being alike -- it inevitably follows that no two human beings can similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the spirit of divinity which lives within their minds. A group of mortals can experience spiritual unity, but they can never attain philosophic uniformity. And this diversity of the interpretation of religious thought and experience is shown by the fact that twentieth-century theologians and philosophers have formulated upward of five hundred different definitions of religion. In reality, every human being defines religion in the terms of his own experiential interpretation of the divine impulses emanating from the God spirit that indwells him, and therefore must such an interpretation be unique and wholly different from the religious philosophy of all other human beings.

P1130:1, 103:1.2 When one mortal is in full agreement with the religious philosophy of a fellow mortal, that phenomenon indicates that these two beings have had a similar _religious experience_ touching the matters concerned in their similarity of philosophic religious interpretation.

P1130:2, 103:1.3 While your religion is a matter of personal experience, it is most important that you should be exposed to the knowledge of a vast number of other religious experiences (the diverse interpretations of other and diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your religious life from becoming egocentric -- circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.

P1130:3, 103:1.4 Rationalism is wrong when it assumes that religion is at first a primitive belief in something which is then followed by the pursuit of values. Religion is primarily a pursuit of values, and then there formulates a system of interpretative beliefs. It is much easier for men to agree on religious values -- goals -- than on beliefs -- interpretations. And this explains how religion can agree on values and goals while exhibiting the confusing phenomenon of maintaining a belief in hundreds of conflicting beliefs -- creeds. This also explains why a given person can maintain his religious experience in the face of giving up or changing many of his religious beliefs. Religion persists in spite of revolutionary changes in religious beliefs. Theology does not produce religion; it is religion that produces theological philosophy.

P1130:4, 103:1.5 That religionists have believed so much that was false does not invalidate religion because religion is founded on the recognition of values and is validated by the faith of personal religious experience. Religion, then, is based on experience and religious thought; theology, the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to interpret that experience. Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.

P1130:5, 103:1.6 The realization of the recognition of spiritual values is an experience which is super-ideational. There is no word in any human language which can be employed to designate this "sense," "feeling," "intuition," or "experience" which we have elected to call God-consciousness. The spirit of God that dwells in man is not personal -- the Adjuster is prepersonal -- but this Monitor presents a value, exudes a flavor of divinity, which is personal in the highest and infinite sense. If God were not at least personal, he could not be conscious, and if not conscious, then would he be infrahuman.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 2.  
Religion And The Individual

P1130:6, 103:2.1 Many spiritual births are accompanied by much anguish of spirit and marked psychological perturbations. Other spiritual births are a natural and normal growth of the recognition of supreme values with an enhancement of spiritual experience, albeit no religious development occurs without conscious effort and positive and individual determinations. Religion is never a passive experience, a negative attitude. What is termed the "birth of religion" is not directly associated with so-called conversion experiences which usually characterize religious episodes occurring later in life as a result of mental conflict, emotional repression, and temperamental upheavals.

P1131:1, 103:2.2 But those persons who were so reared by their parents that they grew up in the consciousness of being children of a loving heavenly Father, should not look askance at their fellow mortals who could only attain such consciousness of fellowship with God through a psychological crisis, an emotional upheaval.

P1131:2, 103:2.3 The evolutionary soil in the mind of man in which the seed of revealed religion germinates is the moral nature that so early gives origin to a social consciousness. The first promptings of a child's moral nature have not to do with sex, guilt, or personal pride, but rather with impulses of justice, fairness, and urges to kindness -- helpful ministry to one's fellows. And when such early moral awakenings are nurtured, there occurs a gradual development of the religious life which is comparatively free from conflicts, upheavals, and crises.

P1131:3, 103:2.4 Every human being very early experiences something of a conflict between his self-seeking and his altruistic impulses, and many times the first experience of God-consciousness may be attained as the result of seeking for superhuman help in the task of resolving such moral conflicts.

P1131:4, 103:2.5 The psychology of a child is naturally positive, not negative. So many mortals are negative because they were so trained. When it is said that the child is positive, reference is made to his moral impulses, those powers of mind whose emergence signals the arrival of the Thought Adjuster.

P1131:5, 103:2.6 In the absence of wrong teaching, the mind of the normal child moves positively, in the emergence of religious consciousness, toward moral righteousness and social ministry, rather than negatively, away from sin and guilt. There may or may not be conflict in the development of religious experience, but there are always present the inevitable decisions, effort, and function of the human will.

P1131:6, 103:2.7 Moral choosing is usually accompanied by more or less moral conflict. And this very first conflict in the child mind is between the urges of egoism and the impulses of altruism. The Thought Adjuster does not disregard the personality values of the egoistic motive but does operate to place a slight preference upon the altruistic impulse as leading to the goal of human happiness and to the joys of the kingdom of heaven.

P1131:7, 103:2.8 When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive religious experience. No animal can make such a choice; such a decision is both human and religious. It embraces the fact of God-consciousness and exhibits the impulse of social service, the basis of the brotherhood of man. When mind chooses a right moral judgment by an act of the free will, such a decision constitutes a religious experience.

P1131:8, 103:2.9 But before a child has developed sufficiently to acquire moral capacity and therefore to be able to choose altruistic service, he has already developed a strong and well-unified egoistic nature. And it is this factual situation that gives rise to the theory of the struggle between the "higher" and the "lower" natures, between the "old man of sin" and the "new nature" of grace. Very early in life the normal child begins to learn that it is "more blessed to give than to receive."

P1131:9, 103:2.10 Man tends to identify the urge to be self-serving with his ego -- himself. In contrast he is inclined to identify the will to be altruistic with some influence outside himself -- God. And indeed is such a judgment right, for all such non-self desires do actually have their origin in the leadings of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, and this Adjuster is a fragment of God. The impulse of the spirit Monitor is realized in human consciousness as the urge to be altruistic, fellow-creature minded. At least this is the early and fundamental experience of the child mind. When the growing child fails of personality unification, the altruistic drive may become so overdeveloped as to work serious injury to the welfare of the self. A misguided conscience can become responsible for much conflict, worry, sorrow, and no end of human unhappiness.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 3.  
Religion And The Human Race

P1132:1, 103:3.1 While the belief in spirits, dreams, and diverse other superstitions all played a part in the evolutionary origin of primitive religions, you should not overlook the influence of the clan or tribal spirit of solidarity. In the group relationship there was presented the exact social situation which provided the challenge to the egoistic-altruistic conflict in the moral nature of the early human mind. In spite of their belief in spirits, primitive Australians focused their religion upon the clan. In time, such religious concepts tend to personalize, first, as animals, and later, as a superman or as a God. Even such races as the African Bushmen, who were not even totemic in their beliefs, had a recognition of the difference between the self-interest and the group-interest, a primitive distinction between the values of the secular and the sacred. But the social group is not the source of religious experience. Regardless of the influence of all these primitive contributions to man's early religion, the fact remains that the true religious impulse has its origin in genuine spirit presences activating the will to be unselfish.

P1132:2, 103:3.2 Later religion is foreshadowed in the primitive belief in natural wonders and mysteries, the impersonal mana. But sooner or later the evolving religion requires that the individual should make some personal sacrifice for the good of his social group, should do something to make other people happier and better. Ultimately, religion is destined to become the service of God and of man.

P1132:3, 103:3.3 Religion is designed to change man's environment, but much of the religion found among mortals today has become helpless to do this. Environment has all too often mastered religion.

P1132:4, 103:3.4 Remember that in the religion of all ages the experience which is paramount is the feeling regarding moral values and social meanings, not the thinking regarding theological dogmas or philosophic theories. Religion evolves favorably as the element of magic is replaced by the concept of morals.

P1132:5, 103:3.5 Man evolved through the superstitions of mana, magic, nature worship, spirit fear, and animal worship to the various ceremonials whereby the religious attitude of the individual became the group reactions of the clan. And then these ceremonies became focalized and crystallized into tribal beliefs, and eventually these fears and faiths became personalized into gods. But in all of this religious evolution the moral element was never wholly absent. The impulse of the God within man was always potent. And these powerful influences -- one human and the other divine -- insured the survival of religion throughout the vicissitudes of the ages and that notwithstanding it was so often threatened with extinction by a thousand subversive tendencies and hostile antagonisms.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 4.  
Nature Of The Soul

P1217:5, 111:2.1 Throughout the mind functions of cosmic intelligence, the totality of mind is dominant over the parts of intellectual function. Mind, in its essence, is functional unity; therefore does mind never fail to manifest this constitutive unity, even when hampered and hindered by the unwise actions and choices of a misguided self. And this unity of mind invariably seeks for spirit co-ordination on all levels of its association with selves of will dignity and ascension prerogatives.

P1217:6, 111:2.2 The material mind of mortal man is the cosmic loom that carries the morontia fabrics on which the indwelling Thought Adjuster threads the spirit patterns of a universe character of enduring values and divine meanings -- a surviving soul of ultimate destiny and unending career, a potential finaliter.

P1218:1, 111:2.3 The human personality is identified with mind and spirit held together in functional relationship by life in a material body. This functioning relationship of such mind and spirit does not result in some combination of the qualities or attributes of mind and spirit but rather in an entirely new, original, and unique universe value of potentially eternal endurance, the _soul._

P1218:2, 111:2.4 There are three and not two factors in the evolutionary creation of such an immortal soul. These three antecedents of the morontia human soul are:

P1218:3, 111:2.5 1. _The human mind_ and all cosmic influences antecedent thereto and impinging thereon.

P1218:4, 111:2.6 2. _The divine spirit_ indwelling this human mind and all potentials inherent in such a fragment of absolute spirituality together with all associated spiritual influences and factors in human life.

P1218:5, 111:2.7 3. _The relationship between material mind and divine spirit,_ which connotes a value and carries a meaning not found in either of the contributing factors to such an association. The reality of this unique relationship is neither material nor spiritual but morontial. It is the soul.

P1218:6, 111:2.8 The mid-mind is really a morontia phenomenon since it exists in the realm between the material and the spiritual. The potential of such a morontia evolution is inherent in the two universal urges of mind: the impulse of the finite mind of the creature to know God and attain the divinity of the Creator, and the impulse of the infinite mind of the Creator to know man and attain the _experience_ of the creature.

P1218:7, 111:2.9 This supernal transaction of evolving the immortal soul is made possible because the mortal mind is first personal and second is in contact with superanimal realities; it possesses a supermaterial endowment of cosmic ministry which insures the evolution of a moral nature capable of making moral decisions, thereby effecting a bona fide creative contact with the associated spiritual ministries and with the indwelling Thought Adjuster.

P1218:8, 111:2.10 The inevitable result of such a contactual spiritualization of the human mind is the gradual birth of a soul, the joint offspring of an adjutant mind dominated by a human will that craves to know God, working in liaison with the spiritual forces of the universe which are under the overcontrol of an actual fragment of the very God of all creation -- the Mystery Monitor. And thus does the material and mortal reality of the self transcend the temporal limitations of the physical-life machine and attain a new expression and a new identification in the evolving vehicle for selfhood continuity, the morontia and immortal soul.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 5.  
The Evolving Soul

P1218:9, 111:3.1 The mistakes of mortal mind and the errors of human conduct may markedly delay the evolution of the soul, although they cannot inhibit such a morontia phenomenon when once it has been initiated by the indwelling Adjuster with the consent of the creature will. But at any time prior to mortal death this same material and human will is empowered to rescind such a choice and to reject survival. Even after survival the ascending mortal still retains this prerogative of choosing to reject eternal life; at any time before fusion with the Adjuster the evolving and ascending creature can choose to forsake the will of the Paradise Father. Fusion with the Adjuster signalizes the fact that the ascending mortal has eternally and unreservedly chosen to be with the Father.

P1219:1, 111:3.2 During the life in the flesh the evolving soul is enabled to reinforce the supermaterial decisions of the mortal mind. The soul, being supermaterial, does not of itself function on the material level of human experience. Neither can this sub-spiritual soul, without the collaboration of some spirit of Deity function above the morontia level. Neither does the soul make final decisions until death or translation divorces it from material association with the mortal mind except when and as this material mind delegates such authority freely and willingly to such a morontia soul of associated function. During life the mortal will, the personality power of decision-choice, is resident in the material mind circuits; as terrestrial mortal growth proceeds, this self, with its priceless powers of choice, becomes increasingly identified with the emerging morontia-soul entity; after death and following the mansion world resurrection, the human personality is completely identified with the morontia self. The soul is thus the embryo of the future morontia vehicle of personality identity.

P1219:2, 111:3.3 This immortal soul is at first wholly morontia in nature, but it possesses such a capacity for development that it invariably ascends to the true spirit levels of fusion value with the spirits of Deity, usually with the same spirit of the Universal Father that initiated such a creative phenomenon in the creature mind.

P1219:3, 111:3.4 Both the human mind and the divine Adjuster are conscious of the presence and differential nature of the evolving soul -- the Adjuster fully, the mind partially. The soul becomes increasingly conscious of both the mind and the Adjuster as associated identities, proportional to its own evolutionary growth. The soul partakes of the qualities of both the human mind and the divine spirit but persistently evolves toward augmentation of spirit control and divine dominance through the fostering of a mind function whose meanings seek to co-ordinate with true spirit value.

P1219:4, 111:3.5 The mortal career, the soul's evolution, is not so much a probation as an education. Faith in the survival of supreme values is the core of religion; genuine religious experience consists in the union of supreme values and cosmic meanings as a realization of universal reality.

P1219:5, 111:3.6 Mind knows quantity, reality, meanings. But quality -- values -- is _felt._ That which feels is the mutual creation of mind, which knows, and the associated spirit, which reality-izes.

P1219:6, 111:3.7 In so far as man's evolving morontia soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible. If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. But it is forever true: What you begin in time you will assuredly finish in eternity \-- if it is worth finishing.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 6.  
The Inner Life

P1219:7, 111:4.1 Recognition is the intellectual process of fitting the sensory impressions received from the external world into the memory patterns of the individual. Understanding connotes that these recognized sensory impressions and their associated memory patterns have become integrated or organized into a dynamic network of principles.

P1220:1, 111:4.2 Meanings are derived from a combination of recognition and understanding. Meanings are nonexistent in a wholly sensory or material world. Meanings and values are only perceived in the inner or super material spheres of human experience.

P1220:2, 111:4.3 The advances of true civilization are all born in this inner world of mankind. It is only the inner life that is truly creative. Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of the sensory or outer world.

P1220:3, 111:4.4 The inner and the outer worlds have a different set of values. Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology.

P1220:4, 111:4.5 Only in the higher levels of the super-conscious mind as it impinges upon the spirit realm of human experience can you find those higher concepts in association with effective master patterns which will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring civilization. Personality is inherently creative, but it thus functions only in the inner life of the individual.

P1220:5, 111:4.6 Snow crystals are always hexagonal in form, but no two are ever alike. Children conform to types, but no two are exactly alike, even in the case of twins. Personality follows types but is always unique.

P1220:6, 111:4.7 Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself. A solitary life is fatal to happiness. Even families and nations will enjoy life more if they share it with others.

P1220:7, 111:4.8 You cannot completely control the external world -- environment. It is the creativity of the inner world that is most subject to your direction because there your personality is so largely liberated from the fetters of the laws of antecedent causation. There is associated with personality a limited sovereignty of will.

P1220:8, 111:4.9 Since this inner life of man is truly creative, there rests upon each person the responsibility of choosing as to whether this creativity shall be spontaneous and wholly haphazard or controlled, directed, and constructive. How can a creative imagination produce worthy children when the stage whereon it functions is already preoccupied by prejudice, hate, fears, resentments, revenge, and bigotries?

P1220:9, 111:4.10 Ideas may take origin in the stimuli of the outer world, but ideals are born only in the creative realms of the inner world. Today the nations of the world are directed by men who have a superabundance of ideas, but they are poverty-stricken in ideals. That is the explanation of poverty, divorce, war, and racial hatreds.

P1220:10, 111:4.11 This is the problem: If freewill man is endowed with the powers of creativity in the inner man, then must we recognize that freewill creativity embraces the potential of freewill destructivity. And when creativity is turned to destructivity, you are face to face with the devastation of evil and sin -- oppression, war, and destruction. Evil is a partiality of creativity which tends toward disintegration and eventual destruction. All conflict is evil in that it inhibits the creative function of the inner life -- it is a species of civil war in the personality.

P1221:1, 111:4.12 Inner creativity contributes to ennoblement of character through personality integration and selfhood unification. It is forever true: The past is unchangeable; only the future can be changed by the ministry of the present creativity of the inner self.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 7.  
The Consecration Of Choice

P1221:2, 111:5.1 Doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God -- with the very God who has made such a creature life of inner meaning-value possible. Sharing is Godlike -- divine. God shares all with the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the divine Sons and spirit Daughters of the universes.

P1221:3, 111:5.2 The imitation of God is the key to perfection; the doing of his will is the secret of survival and of perfection in survival.

P1221:4, 111:5.3 Mortals live in God, and so God has willed to live in mortals. As men trust themselves to him, so has he -- and first -- trusted a part of himself to be with men; has consented to live in men and to indwell men subject to the human will.

P1221:5, 111:5.4 Peace in this life, survival in death, perfection in the next life, service in eternity -- all these are achieved (in spirit) _now_ when the creature personality consents -- chooses -- to subject the creature will to the Father's will. And already has the Father chosen to make a fragment of himself subject to the will of the creature personality.

P1221:6, 111:5.5 Such a creature choice is not a surrender of will. It is a consecration of will, an expansion of will, a glorification of will, a perfecting of will; and such choosing raises the creature will from the level of temporal significance to that higher estate wherein the personality of the creature son communes with the personality of the spirit Father.

P1221:7, 111:5.6 This choosing of the Father's will is the spiritual finding of the spirit Father by mortal man, even though an age must pass before the creature son may actually stand in the factual presence of God on Paradise. This choosing does not so much consist in the negation of creature will -- "Not my will but yours be done" -- as it consists in the creature's positive affirmation: "It is _my_ will that _your_ will be done." And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choosing child find inner union (fusion) with the indwelling God fragment, while this same perfecting son will find supreme personality satisfaction in the worship communion of the personality of man and the personality of his Maker, two personalities whose creative attributes have eternally joined in self-willed mutuality of expression -- the birth of another eternal partnership of the will of man and the will of God.

Part III. The History Of Earth  
Chapter 41: Section 8.  
The Human Paradox

P1221:8, 111:6.1 Many of the temporal troubles of mortal man grow out of his twofold relation to the cosmos. Man is a part of nature -- he exists in nature -- and yet he is able to transcend nature. Man is finite, but he is indwelt by a spark of infinity. Such a dual situation not only provides the potential for evil but also engenders many social and moral situations fraught with much uncertainty and not a little anxiety.

P1222:1, 111:6.2 The courage required to effect the conquest of nature and to transcend one's self is a courage that might succumb to the temptations of self-pride. The mortal who can transcend self might yield to the temptation to deify his own self-consciousness. The mortal dilemma consists in the double fact that man is in bondage to nature while at the same time he possesses a unique liberty -- freedom of spiritual choice and action. On material levels man finds himself subservient to nature, while on spiritual levels he is triumphant over nature and over all things temporal and finite.

P1222:3, 111:6.4 The spirit can dominate mind; so mind can control energy. But mind can control energy only through its own intelligent manipulation of the metamorphic potentials inherent in the mathematical level of the causes and effects of the physical domains. Our mind does not inherently control energy; that is a Deity prerogative. But our mind can and does manipulate energy just in so far as it has become master of the energy secrets of the physical universe.

P1222:4, 111:6.5 When man wishes to modify physical reality, be it himself or his environment, he succeeds to the extent that he has discovered the ways and means of controlling matter and directing energy. Unaided mind is impotent to influence anything material save its own physical mechanism, with which it is inescapably linked. But through the intelligent use of the body mechanism, mind can create other mechanisms, even energy relationships and living relationships, by the utilization of which this mind can increasingly control and even dominate its physical level in the universe.

P1222:5, 111:6.6 Science is the source of facts, and mind cannot operate without facts. They are the building blocks in the construction of wisdom which are cemented together by life experience. Man can find the love of God without facts, and man can discover the laws of God without love, but man can never begin to appreciate the infinite symmetry, the supernal harmony, the exquisite repleteness of the all-inclusive nature of God until he has found divine law and divine love and has experientially unified these in his own evolving cosmic philosophy.

P1222:6, 111:6.7 The expansion of material knowledge permits a greater intellectual appreciation of the meanings of ideas and the values of ideals. A human being can find truth in his inner experience, but he needs a clear knowledge of facts to apply his personal discovery of truth to the ruthlessly practical demands of everyday life.

P1222:7, 111:6.8 It is only natural that mortal man should be harassed by feelings of insecurity as he views himself inextricably bound to nature while he possesses spiritual powers wholly transcendent to all things temporal and finite. Only religious confidence -- living faith -- can sustain man amid such difficult and perplexing problems.

P1234:1, 112:5.12 There is something real, something of human evolution that survives death. This is the soul, and it survives the death of both the physical body and the material mind. A person of human and divine parentage constitutes the surviving element of terrestrial origin; it is the morontia self, the immortal soul.

P1235:3, 112:5.21 When you awaken, you will be so changed, the spiritual transformation will be so great that you would at first have difficulty in connecting the new morontia consciousness with the reviving memory of your previous identity. Notwithstanding the continuity of personal selfhood, much of the mortal life would at first seem to be a vague and hazy dream. But time will clarify many mortal associations.

P1235:5, 112:6.1 Just as a butterfly emerges from the caterpillar stage, so will the true personalities of human beings emerge in Heaven, for the first time revealed apart from their onetime enshroudment in the material flesh.

P1236:1, 112:6.3 To a certain extent, the appearance of the material body-form is responsive to the character of the personality identity; the physical body does, to a limited degree, reflect something of the inherent nature of the personality. Still more so does the spiritual form. In the physical life, mortals may be outwardly beautiful though inwardly unlovely; in the spiritual life the personality form will vary directly in accordance with the nature of the inner person. On the spiritual level, outward form and inner nature begin to approximate complete identification, and the ultimate perfection.

P1235:4, 112:5.22 You will recall those memories and experiences which you were a part of and all of the pleasant experiences of your life on Earth. All worthwhile experiences survive in the eternal consciousness. But much of your unpleasant past life and its memories, having neither spiritual meaning nor morontia value, will perish with the material brain; much of material experience will pass away as onetime scaffolding which, having bridged you over to the spiritual level, no longer serves a purpose in the universe. But personality and the relationships between personalities are never scaffolding; mortal memory of personality relationships has cosmic value and will persist. In Heaven you will know and be known, and more, you will remember, and be remembered by, your onetime associates in your short but intriguing life on Earth.

May God bless your journey here on earth.

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