The Life Carriers

36:3.1Life does not spon­ta­neously ap­pear in the uni­verses; 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. All life of the or­der and forms known on Uran­tia arises with these Sons, though not all forms of plan­e­tary life are ex­is­tent on Uran­tia.

36:3.2The corps of Life Car­ri­ers com­mis­sioned to plant life upon a new world usu­ally con­sists of one hun­dred se­nior car­ri­ers, one hun­dred as­sis­tants, and one thou­sand 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 Uran­tia.

36:3.3When, 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.

36:3.4The 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 Uni­verse Mother Spirit who sup­plies the es­sen­tial fac­tor of the liv­ing plasm. From the Cre­ative Daugh­ter of the In­fi­nite Spirit comes that en­ergy spark which en­livens the body and presages the mind.

36:3.5In 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 which ag­i­tate, or­ga­nize, and vi­tal­ize the oth­er­wise in­ert el­e­ments of the ma­te­rial or­der of ex­is­tence.

36:3.6The Life Car­ri­ers of a plan­e­tary corps are given a cer­tain pe­riod in which to es­tab­lish life on a new world, ap­prox­i­mately one-half mil­lion years of the time of that planet. 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.

36:3.7Dur­ing 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.

36:3.8When 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.

36:3.9Upon the ar­rival of a Plan­e­tary Prince they pre­pare to leave, though two of the se­nior car­ri­ers and twelve cus­to­di­ans may vol­un­teer, by tak­ing tem­po­rary re­nun­ci­a­tion vows, to re­main in­def­i­nitely on the planet as ad­vis­ers in the mat­ter of the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment and con­ser­va­tion of the life plasm. Two such Sons and their twelve as­so­ciates are now serv­ing on Uran­tia.