The Urantia Book

Settings

Reading
Theme
Text size
Line spacing

Typeface

Width
Alignment
Show
Listening

Kept in this browser only.

Read through

Life Carrier worlds

20 paragraphs · about 5 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under Life Carrier worlds, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

36:2.1The Mel­chiz­e­deks have the gen­eral over­sight of the fourth group of seven pri­mary spheres in the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit. These worlds of the Life Car­ri­ers are des­ig­nated as fol­lows:

36:2.21. The Life Car­rier head­quar­ters.

36:2.32. The life-plan­ning sphere.

36:2.43. The life-con­ser­va­tion sphere.

36:2.54. The sphere of life evo­lu­tion.

36:2.65. The sphere of life as­so­ci­ated with mind.

36:2.76. The sphere of mind and spirit in liv­ing be­ings.

36:2.87. The sphere of un­re­vealed life.

36:2.9Each 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.

36:2.10World 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 Ha­vona, even from Par­a­dise. And I am per­mit­ted to re­veal that the seven cen­tral em­place­ments of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its are sit­u­ated on this world of the Life Car­ri­ers.

36:2.11The 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, and in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don 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 seven super­uni­verses. 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 Uran­tia there are forty-eight units of pat­tern con­trol—trait de­ter­min­ers—in the sex cells of hu­man re­pro­duc­tion.

36:2.12The Sec­ond World is the life-de­sign­ing sphere; here all new modes of life or­ga­ni­za­tion are worked out. While the orig­i­nal life de­signs are pro­vided by the Cre­ator Son, the ac­tual out­work­ing of these plans is in­trusted 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 con­sult­ing Mel­chiz­e­deks. If the plans are a de­par­ture from pre­vi­ously ac­cepted for­mu­las, they must be passed upon, and en­dorsed by, the Cre­ator Son. The chief of Mel­chiz­e­deks of­ten rep­re­sents the Cre­ator Son in these de­lib­er­a­tions.

36:2.13Plan­e­tary 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.

36:2.14There 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.

36:2.15The 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 with the Mel­chiz­e­deks in the ef­fort to mod­ify and pos­si­bly im­prove the life de­signed for im­plan­ta­tion on the dec­i­mal plan­ets of Neb­a­don. The life now evolv­ing on Uran­tia 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 (non­ex­per­i­men­tal) worlds.

36:2.16World 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 Uran­tia there were twenty-four such cus­to­dian com­mis­sion­ers, two for each fun­da­men­tal or par­ent pat­tern of the ar­chi­tec­tural or­ga­ni­za­tion of the life ma­te­rial. On plan­ets such as yours the high­est form of life is re­pro­duced by a life-car­ry­ing bun­dle which pos­sesses twenty-four pat­tern units. (And since the in­tel­lec­tual life grows out of, and upon the foun­da­tion of, the phys­i­cal, there come into ex­is­tence the four and twenty ba­sic or­ders of psy­chic or­ga­ni­za­tion.)

36:2.17Sphere 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.

36:2.18Num­ber 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 non­teach­able 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.

36:2.19World 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 Neb­a­don in­struc­tors in pre­sent­ing the high­est lev­els of crea­ture at­tain­ment in time and space.

36:2.20The 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.