life

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

1:1.2The 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 must of them­selves—in their own hearts—rec­og­nize, love, and vol­un­tar­ily wor­ship him. 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 love-dom­i­nated na­ture of the Cre­ator Fa­ther.

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

1:5.16It 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 Eter­nal Son in­cludes all the spirit im­pulses of all cre­ation; 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.”

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

2:1.11Di­vin­ity and eter­nity the Fa­ther shares with large num­bers of the higher Par­a­dise be­ings, but we ques­tion whether in­fin­ity and con­se­quent uni­ver­sal pri­macy is fully shared with any save his co-or­di­nate as­so­ciates of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. 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 which in­dwells mor­tal man is a part of the in­fin­ity of the First Great Source and Cen­ter, the Fa­ther of Fa­thers.

• existence › Father has l. in himself

2:2.1Even your olden proph­ets un­der­stood the eter­nal, never-be­gin­ning, never-end­ing, cir­cu­lar na­ture of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God is lit­er­ally and eter­nally pres­ent in his uni­verse of uni­verses. 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 of uni­verses 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 in my Son.” Thus are the plans and pur­poses of the First Source and Cen­ter like him­self: eter­nal, per­fect, and for­ever change­less.

• existence › Father bestows l. through his Sons

3:0.1God is ev­ery­where pres­ent; the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther rules the cir­cle of eter­nity. But he rules in the lo­cal uni­verses in the per­sons of his Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons, even as he be­stows life through these Sons. “God has given us eter­nal life, and this life is in his Sons.” These Cre­ator Sons of God are the per­sonal ex­pres­sion of him­self in the sec­tors of time and to the chil­dren of the whirling plan­ets of the evolv­ing uni­verses of space.

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

3:1.4The 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.”

• mortal life › beset by inevitabilities

3:5.5The 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:

3:5.61. Is cour­age—strength of char­ac­ter—de­sir­able? Then must man be reared in an en­vi­ron­ment which ne­ces­si­tates grap­pling with hard­ships and re­act­ing to dis­ap­point­ments.

3:5.72. Is al­tru­ism—ser­vice of one’s fel­lows—de­sir­able? Then must life ex­pe­ri­ence pro­vide for en­coun­ter­ing sit­u­a­tions of so­cial in­equal­ity.

3:5.83. Is hope—the grandeur of trust—de­sir­a­ble? Then hu­man ex­is­tence must con­stantly be con­fronted with in­se­cu­ri­ties and re­cur­rent un­cer­tain­ties.

3:5.94. 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.

3:5.105. 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.

3:5.116. 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.

3:5.127. 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.

3:5.138. 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.

3:5.149. 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.

• mortal life › victorious l. born of faith that challenges limitations

4:4.9The 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 I can­not do this, there lives in me 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.”

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

12:7.12It is a mys­tery that God is a highly per­sonal self-con­scious be­ing with res­i­den­tial head­quar­ters, and at the same time 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. Do 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 you; for the Fa­ther is not very far from any one of you; he dwells within you, and in him do we all lit­er­ally move, ac­tu­ally live, and ver­i­ta­bly have our be­ing.

• mortal life › short and intense; day’s work, do it well

14:5.1On Uran­tia you pass through a short and in­tense test dur­ing your ini­tial life of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. On the man­sion worlds and up through your sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, and lo­cal uni­verse, you tra­verse the mor­ontia phases of as­cen­sion. On the train­ing worlds of the super­uni­verse you pass through the true spirit stages of pro­gres­sion and are pre­pared for even­tual tran­sit to Ha­vona. On the seven cir­cuits of Ha­vona your at­tain­ment is in­tel­lec­tual, spir­i­tual, and ex­pe­ri­en­tial. And there is a def­i­nite task to be achieved on each of the worlds of each of these cir­cuits.

• biological › accretion worlds in proper relation to sun best for

15:6.14The Plan­ets. These are the larger ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter which fol­low an or­bit around a sun or some other space body; they range in size from plan­etes­i­mals to enor­mous gaseous, liq­uid, or solid spheres. The cold worlds which have been built up by the as­sem­blage of float­ing space ma­te­rial, when they hap­pen to be in proper re­la­tion to a near-by sun, are the more ideal plan­ets to har­bor in­tel­li­gent in­hab­i­tants. The dead suns are not, as a rule, suited to life; they are usu­ally too far away from a liv­ing, blaz­ing sun, and fur­ther, they are al­to­gether too mas­sive; grav­ity is tremen­dous at the sur­face.

• biological › on Urantia › ideal situation for life
• biological › only 1 planet in 40 suitable for l.

15:6.15In your super­uni­verse not one cool planet in forty is hab­it­able by be­ings of your or­der. And, of course, the super­heated suns and the frigid out­ly­ing worlds are un­fit to har­bor higher life. In your so­lar sys­tem only three plan­ets are at pres­ent suited to har­bor life. Uran­tia, in size, den­sity, and lo­ca­tion, is in many re­spects ideal for hu­man habi­ta­tion.

• biological › creation of life › Master Spirits influence initiating work of Life Carriers

16:4.91. The life-ini­ti­a­tion pro­ce­dures of the lo­cal uni­verse Life Car­ri­ers.

• existence › never fails to develop cosmic mind intuitions of causation, duty, and worship

16:6.5The cos­mic mind un­fail­ingly re­sponds (rec­og­nizes re­sponse) on three lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity. These re­sponses are self-ev­i­dent to clear-rea­son­ing and deep-think­ing minds. These lev­els of re­al­ity are:

16:6.61. Cau­sa­tion—the re­al­ity do­main of the phys­i­cal senses, the sci­en­tific realms of log­i­cal uni­for­mity, the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the fac­tual and the non­fac­tual, re­flec­tive con­clu­sions based on cos­mic re­sponse. This is the math­e­mat­i­cal form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.72. Duty—the re­al­ity do­main of morals in the philo­sophic realm, the arena of rea­son, the rec­og­ni­tion of rel­a­tive right and wrong. This is the ju­di­cial form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.83. Wor­ship—the spir­i­tual do­main of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of di­vine fel­low­ship, the rec­og­ni­tion of spirit val­ues, the as­sur­ance of eter­nal sur­vival, the as­cent from the sta­tus of ser­vants of God to the joy and lib­erty of the sons of God. This is the high­est in­sight of the cos­mic mind, the rev­er­en­tial and wor­ship­ful form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.9These sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sights, these cos­mic re­sponses, are in­nate in the cos­mic mind, which en­dows all will crea­tures. The ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing never fails to de­velop these three cos­mic in­tu­itions; they are con­sti­tu­tive in the self-con­scious­ness of re­flec­tive think­ing. But it is sad to re­cord that so few per­sons on Uran­tia take de­light in cul­ti­vat­ing these qual­i­ties of coura­geous and in­de­pen­dent cos­mic think­ing.

• existence › inherent joy in

28:5.165. The Joy of Ex­is­tence. By na­ture these be­ings are re­flec­tively at­tuned to the super­aphic har­mony super­vi­sors above and to cer­tain of the ser­a­phim be­low, but it is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain just what the mem­bers of this in­ter­est­ing group re­ally do. Their prin­ci­pal ac­tiv­i­ties are di­rected to­ward pro­mot­ing re­ac­tions of joy among the var­i­ous or­ders of the an­gelic hosts and the lower will crea­tures. The Di­vine Coun­selors, to whom they are at­tached, sel­dom use them for spe­cific joy find­ing. In a more gen­eral man­ner and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors, they func­tion as joy clear­ing­houses, seek­ing to up­step the plea­sure re­ac­tions of the realms while try­ing to im­prove the hu­mor taste, to de­velop a super­hu­mor among mor­tals and an­gels. They en­deavor to demon­strate that there is in­her­ent joy in free­will ex­is­tence, in­de­pen­dent of all ex­tra­ne­ous in­flu­ences; and they are right, al­though they meet with great dif­fi­culty in in­cul­cat­ing this truth in the minds of prim­i­tive men. The higher spirit per­son­al­i­ties and the an­gels are more quickly re­spon­sive to these ed­u­ca­tional ef­forts.

• existence › process which takes place between organism and its environment

32:3.9The 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.

• biological › creation of life › Creator Son’s proclamation for projection of

34:1.1Af­ter the com­ple­tion of the phys­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion of a starry and plan­e­tary clus­ter and the es­tab­lish­ment of the en­ergy cir­cuits by the super­uni­verse power cen­ters, sub­se­quent to this pre­lim­i­nary work of cre­ation by the agen­cies of the In­fi­nite Spirit, op­er­at­ing through, and un­der the di­rec­tion of, his lo­cal uni­verse cre­ative fo­cal­iza­tion, there goes forth the procla­ma­tion of the Mi­chael Son that life is next to be pro­jected in the newly or­ga­nized uni­verse. Upon the Par­a­dise rec­og­ni­tion of this dec­la­ra­tion of in­ten­tion, there oc­curs a re­ac­tion of ap­proval in the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, fol­lowed by the dis­ap­pear­ance in the spir­i­tual shin­ing of the De­i­ties of the Mas­ter Spirit in whose super­uni­verse this new cre­ation is or­ga­niz­ing. Mean­while the other Mas­ter Spir­its draw near this cen­tral lodg­ment of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties, and sub­se­quently, when the De­ity-em­braced Mas­ter Spirit emerges to the rec­og­ni­tion of his fel­lows, there oc­curs what is known as a “pri­mary erup­tion.” This is a tremen­dous spir­i­tual flash, a phe­nom­e­non clearly dis­cern­i­ble as far away as the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse con­cerned; and si­mul­ta­ne­ously with this lit­tle-un­der­stood Trin­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion there oc­curs a marked change in the na­ture of the cre­ative spirit pres­ence and power of the In­fi­nite Spirit res­i­dent in the lo­cal uni­verse con­cerned. In re­sponse to these Par­a­dise phe­nom­ena there im­me­di­ately per­son­al­izes, in the very pres­ence of the Cre­ator Son, a new per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the In­fi­nite Spirit. This is the Di­vine Min­is­ter. The in­di­vid­u­al­ized Cre­ative Spirit helper of the Cre­ator Son has be­come his per­sonal cre­ative as­so­ciate, the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit.

• existence › ministered and maintained through Mother Spirits

34:2.4The Cre­ative Spirit is core­spon­si­ble with the Cre­ator Son in pro­duc­ing the crea­tures of the worlds and never fails the Son in all ef­forts to up­hold and con­serve these cre­ations. Life is min­is­tered and main­tained through the agency of the Cre­ative Spirit. “You send forth your Spirit, and they are cre­ated. You re­new the face of the earth.”

• biological › creation of life › life is gift of Mother Spirit

34:2.5In the cre­ation of a uni­verse of in­tel­li­gent crea­tures the Cre­ative Mother Spirit func­tions first in the sphere of uni­verse per­fec­tion, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Son in the pro­duc­tion of the Bright and Morn­ing Star. Sub­se­quently the off­spring of the Spirit in­creas­ingly ap­proach the or­der of cre­ated be­ings on the plan­ets, even as the Sons grade down­ward from the Mel­chiz­e­deks to the Ma­te­rial Sons, who ac­tu­ally con­tact with the mor­tals of the realms. In the later evo­lu­tion of mor­tal crea­tures the Life Car­rier Sons pro­vide the phys­i­cal body, fab­ri­cated out of the ex­ist­ing or­ga­nized ma­te­rial of the realm, while the Uni­verse Spirit con­tributes the “breath of life.”

• biological › appears on planets by importation or through Life Carriers

36:0.1Life does not orig­i­nate spon­ta­neously. Life is con­structed ac­cord­ing to plans for­mu­lated by the (un­re­vealed) 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 uni­verses. These car­ri­ers of life are among the most in­ter­est­ing and ver­sa­tile of the di­verse fam­ily of uni­verse Sons. They are in­trusted 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.

• biological › chromosomes › 24 pattern units; 48 human trait determiners
• existence › domain characterized by numbers 3, 7, and 12

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.

• biological › differs on each planet
• biological › planetary variations

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.

• biological › over 1,000,000 cosmic chemical formulas for

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.

• biological › chromosomes › 24 pattern units; 48 human trait determiners

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.)

• biological › evolution produces apparently useless forms
• biological › lower forms of l. often antagonistic to mortals

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.

• biological › not inherent in matter; l. springs only from l.

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.

• biological › on Urantia › implanted by Life Carriers on 3 sites 550 million years ago

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.

• biological › creation of life › life is gift of Mother Spirit
• biological › creation of life › vital spark from Mother Spirit bestowed through Life Carriers

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.

• biological › creation of life › prerogative of God; scientists can never create
• biological › not inherent in matter; l. springs only from l.

36:6.1Life is both mech­a­nis­tic and vi­tal­is­tic—ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual. Ever will Uran­tia 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.

36:6.2Things 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.

• biological › creation of life › attributes are mind, ability to reproduce
• biological › experimental l. is devoid of mind endowment and reproductive powers

36:6.3Life 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 Sal­ving­ton 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 Mother 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.

36:6.4When 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. The Sons of 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.

• biological › plants, animals do not individually survive death

36:6.5The 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.

• existence › animation of pattern-configured energy
• existence › not gravity responsive

36:6.6We 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.

• biological › creation of life › Ancients of Days involved in
• biological › creation of life › attributes are mind, ability to reproduce
• existence › flows from Father through the Son by the Spirit
• existence › Master Spirits channel l. to creation

36:6.7There are some things con­nected with the elab­o­ra­tion of life on the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets which are not al­to­gether clear to us. We fully com­pre­hend the phys­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the elec­tro­chem­i­cal for­mu­las of the Life Car­ri­ers, but we do not wholly un­der­stand the na­ture and source of the life-ac­ti­va­tion spark. We know that life flows from the Fa­ther through the Son and by the Spirit. It is more than pos­si­ble that the Mas­ter Spir­its are the sev­en­fold chan­nel of the river of life which is poured out upon all cre­ation. But we do not com­pre­hend the tech­nique whereby the super­vis­ing Mas­ter Spirit par­tic­i­pates in the ini­tial episode of life be­stowal on a new planet. The An­cients of Days, we are con­fi­dent, also have some part in this in­au­gu­ra­tion of life on a new world, but we are wholly ig­no­rant of the na­ture thereof. We do know that the Uni­verse Mother Spirit ac­tu­ally vi­tal­izes the life­less pat­terns and im­parts to such ac­ti­vated plasm the pre­rog­a­tives of or­gan­is­mal re­pro­duc­tion. We ob­serve that these three are the lev­els of God the Sev­en­fold, some­times des­ig­nated as the Su­preme Cre­ators of time and space; but oth­er­wise we know lit­tle more than Uran­tia mor­tals—sim­ply that con­cept is in­her­ent in the Fa­ther, ex­pres­sion in the Son, and life re­al­iza­tion in the Spirit.

36:6.8[In­dited by a Vo­ron­da­dek Son sta­tioned on Uran­tia as an ob­server and act­ing in this ca­pac­ity by re­quest of the Mel­chiz­e­dek Chief of the Super­vis­ing Rev­e­la­tory Corps.]

• mortal life › first link in unbroken chain through eternal ages
• mortal life › not what we learn, but the experience of living

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

• biological › inherent capacity for transmutation of energy

41:2.5Life 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.

• existence › essence is spirit

42:1.1The 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 of the Orig­i­nal Son is also the eter­nity-source of the orig­i­nal pat­tern, the Isle of Par­a­dise.

• biological › creation of life › prerogative of God; scientists can never create

42:1.4Sub­se­quent to even still greater prog­ress and fur­ther dis­cov­er­ies, af­ter Uran­tia 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.

• biological › creation of life › Life Carriers initiate

42:1.5The 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 from the De­i­ties, 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 which 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 which we call life, ma­te­rial life. The Mor­ontia Power Super­vi­sors like­wise per­form through­out the tran­si­tion realms be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual worlds. The higher spirit Cre­ators in­au­gu­rate sim­i­lar pro­cesses in di­vine forms of en­ergy, and there en­sue the higher spirit forms of in­tel­li­gent life.

• biological › 10 orders of life on architectural spheres

43:6.4The ar­chi­tec­tural worlds en­joy ten forms of life of the ma­te­rial or­der. On Uran­tia there is plant and an­i­mal life, but on such a world as Eden­tia there are ten di­vi­sions of the ma­te­rial or­ders of life. Were you to view these ten di­vi­sions of Eden­tia life, you would quickly clas­sify the first three as veg­etable and the last three as an­i­mal, but you would be ut­terly un­able to com­pre­hend the na­ture of the in­ter­ven­ing four groups of pro­lific and fas­ci­nat­ing forms of life.

• biological › 10 orders of life on architectural spheres

43:6.7Be­ing en­dowed with ten di­vi­sions of phys­i­cal life, not to men­tion the mor­ontia vari­a­tions, these ar­chi­tec­tural worlds pro­vide tremen­dous pos­si­bil­i­ties for the bi­o­logic beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the land­scape and of the ma­te­rial and the mor­ontia struc­tures. The ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans di­rect the na­tive sporna­gia in this ex­ten­sive work of botanic dec­o­ra­tion and bi­o­logic em­bel­lish­ment. Whereas your artists must re­sort to in­ert paint and life­less mar­ble to por­tray their con­cepts, the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans and the uni­v­i­ta­tia more fre­quently uti­lize liv­ing ma­te­ri­als to rep­re­sent their ideas and to cap­ture their ide­als.

• mortal life › short and intense; day’s work, do it well

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

• biological › creation of life › Life Carriers initiate

49:5.22Life is ini­ti­ated on the plan­ets by the Life Car­ri­ers, who watch over its de­vel­op­ment un­til some­time af­ter the evo­lu­tion­ary ap­pear­ance of mor­tal man. Be­fore the Life Car­ri­ers leave a planet, they duly in­stall a Plan­e­tary Prince as ruler of the realm. With this ruler there ar­rives a full quota of sub­or­di­nate aux­il­iaries and min­is­ter­ing helpers, and the first ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the liv­ing and the dead is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with his ar­rival.

• mortal life › uncertain

49:6.113. Mor­tals of the pro­ba­tion­ary-de­pen­dent or­ders of as­cen­sion. The ar­rival of an Ad­juster con­sti­tutes iden­tity in the eyes of the uni­verse, and all in­dwelt be­ings are on the roll calls of jus­tice. But tem­po­ral life on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds is un­cer­tain, and many die in youth be­fore choos­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer. Such Ad­juster-in­dwelt chil­dren and youths fol­low the par­ent of most ad­vanced spir­i­tual sta­tus, thus go­ing to the sys­tem fi­nal­i­ter world (the pro­ba­tion­ary nurs­ery) on the third day, at a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, or at the reg­u­lar mil­len­nial and dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls.

• mortal life › always attended by struggle

50:6.3Be­cause of your plan­e­tary mis­for­tunes, Uran­tians are pre­vented from un­der­stand­ing very much about the cul­ture of nor­mal worlds. But you should not en­vis­age the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, even the most ideal, as spheres whereon life is a flow­ery bed of ease. The ini­tial life of the mor­tal races is al­ways at­tended by strug­gle. Ef­fort and de­ci­sion are an es­sen­tial part of the ac­quire­ment of sur­vival val­ues.

• mortal life › refreshingly simple in light and life

55:5.6The 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.

• biological › fully resistant to short space rays

58:3.4The 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 which 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 all of this amaz­ing flood of the short space rays of uni­verse en­ergy.

58:4.1That we are called Life Car­ri­ers should not con­fuse you. We can and do carry life to the plan­ets, but we brought no life to Uran­tia. Uran­tia life is unique, orig­i­nal with the planet. This sphere is a life-mod­i­fi­ca­tion world; all life ap­pear­ing hereon was for­mu­lated by us right here on the planet; and there is no other world in all Sa­ta­nia, even in all Neb­a­don, that has a life ex­is­tence just like that of Uran­tia.

58:4.2550,000,000 years ago the Life Car­rier corps re­turned to Uran­tia. 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) down to the days of Cali­gas­tia, the Plan­e­tary Prince, 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.

58:4.3500,000,000 years ago prim­i­tive ma­rine veg­etable life was well es­tab­lished on Uran­tia. Green­land and the arc­tic land mass, 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.

58:4.4We 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 land masses.

• biological › on Urantia › transition from vegetable to animal life

58:6.1450,000,000 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 shore lines 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.

• biological › missing links in evolution never existed

58:6.2Al­though 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.

58:6.3From 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.

58:6.4The 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.

• biological › on Urantia › methods of salt disposal or conservation

58:6.5At 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.

• biological › on Urantia › thousands of species perished in Permian

59:6.2This 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.

• biological › on Urantia › implanted by Life Carriers on 3 sites 550 million years ago

62:0.1About 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.

• biological › creation of life › Master Spirits influence initiating work of Life Carriers
• biological › creation of life › premind l. formulated by Master Physical Controllers, Seven Master Spirits, and Life Carriers

65:0.1Ba­sic evo­lu­tion­ary ma­te­rial life—pre­mind life—is the for­mu­la­tion of the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers and the life-im­par­ta­tion min­istry of the Seven 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.

• biological › creation of life › life produced on 3 distinct levels of matter, mind, and spirit

65:0.2There are, then, three dis­tinct lev­els of life pro­duc­tion and evo­lu­tion:

65:0.31. The phys­i­cal-en­ergy do­main—mind-ca­pac­ity pro­duc­tion.

65:0.42. The mind min­istry of the ad­ju­tant spir­its—im­ping­ing upon spirit ca­pac­ity.

65:0.53. The spirit en­dow­ment of mor­tal mind—cul­mi­nat­ing in Thought Ad­juster be­stowal.

65:1.1The Life Car­ri­ers are en­dowed with po­ten­tials of per­son­al­ity meta­mor­pho­sis which but few or­ders of crea­tures pos­sess. These Sons of the lo­cal uni­verse are ca­pa­ble of func­tion­ing in three di­verse phases of be­ing. They or­di­nar­ily per­form their du­ties as mid-phase Sons, 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.

65:1.2Life Car­ri­ers are able to func­tion and do func­tion on the fol­low­ing three lev­els:

65:1.31. The phys­i­cal level of elec­tro­chem­istry.

65:1.42. The usual mid-phase of quasi-mor­ontial ex­is­tence.

65:1.53. The ad­vanced semispir­i­tual level.

65:1.6When 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, and is pre­sided over by the chief of arch­an­gels, who acts in this ca­pac­ity by the man­date of Ga­briel and with the per­mis­sion of the An­cients of Days. 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.

• biological › creation of life › process

65:1.7Af­ter 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.

65:1.8Af­ter 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. And when 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, there is sum­moned a com­mis­sion of twelve, pre­sided over by the chief of the Evening Stars, act­ing by au­thor­ity of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eign and with per­mis­sion of Ga­briel; and forth­with these Life Car­ri­ers are trans­muted to the third phase of per­son­al­ity ex­is­tence—the semispir­i­tual level of be­ing. And I have func­tioned on Uran­tia in this third phase of ex­is­tence ever since the times of An­don and Fonta.

65:1.9We look for­ward to a time when the uni­verse may be set­tled in light and life, to a pos­si­ble fourth stage of be­ing wherein we shall be wholly spir­i­tual, but it has never been re­vealed to us by what tech­nique we may at­tain this de­sir­able and ad­vanced es­tate.

• biological › on Urantia › implanted by Life Carriers on 3 sites 550 million years ago

65:2.1The 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 shore lines of the an­cient in­land seas, those very wa­ters in which the Life Car­ri­ers es­tab­lished the three in­de­pen­dent life im­plan­ta­tions on Uran­tia.

• biological › on Urantia › man evolved from western implantation

65:2.13Man 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.

• biological › abundant evidence of intelligent planning

65:4.3Many 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.

• biological › evolution produces apparently useless forms

65:4.10On Uran­tia the en­deav­ors of the Life Car­ri­ers to im­prove the Sa­ta­nia 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 Uran­tia mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the stan­dard life de­signs.

• biological › evolution produces apparently useless forms

65:4.12But 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 I can well un­der­stand how puz­zling some of these things must be to the lim­ited hu­man view­point.

• biological › creation of life › prerogative of God; scientists can never create

65:6.1It 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.

• existence › evidences innate striving for perfection

65:6.2There 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.

65:6.3The 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.

65:6.4One 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.

65:6.5The 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 ac­tively and adap­ta­tively in prog­ress on this planet.

65:6.6But 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.

65:6.7The 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 seven ad­ju­tant spir­its be­come op­er­a­tive, and the mind be­comes in­creas­ingly ad­jus­tive, cre­ative, co-or­di­na­tive, 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.

65:6.8Physics 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.

65:6.9Prein­tel­li­gent or­gan­isms re­act to en­vi­ron­men­tal stim­uli, but those or­gan­isms which are re­ac­tive to mind min­istry can ad­just and ma­nip­u­late the en­vi­ron­ment it­self.

65:6.10The 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.

• biological › antidotal complements of life currents for Prince’s staff in tree of life

66:4.123. The Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred were per­son­ally im­mor­tal, or undy­ing. There cir­cu­lated through their ma­te­rial forms the an­ti­do­tal com­ple­ments of the life cur­rents of the sys­tem; and had they not lost con­tact with the life cir­cuits through re­bel­lion, they would have lived on in­def­i­nitely un­til the ar­rival of a sub­se­quent Son of God, or un­til their some­time later re­lease to re­sume the in­ter­rupted jour­ney to Ha­vona and Par­a­dise.

66:4.13These an­ti­do­tal com­ple­ments of the Sa­ta­nia life cur­rents were de­rived from the fruit of the tree of life, a shrub of Eden­tia which was sent to Uran­tia by the Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek at the time of Cali­gas­tia’s ar­rival. In the days of Dala­ma­tia this tree grew in the cen­tral court­yard of the tem­ple of the un­seen Fa­ther, and it was the fruit of the tree of life that en­abled the ma­te­rial and oth­er­wise mor­tal be­ings of the Prince’s staff to live on in­def­i­nitely as long as they had ac­cess to it.

• mortal life › during periods of overpopulation, human l. cheapened

68:6.4When 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.

• mortal life › long lifespan of early descendants of Prince’s staff; Adamites

76:4.3Adam and Eve, like their breth­ren on Je­ru­sem, were en­er­gized by dual nu­tri­tion, sub­sist­ing on both food and light, sup­ple­mented by cer­tain super­phys­i­cal en­er­gies un­re­vealed on Uran­tia. Their Uran­tia off­spring did not in­herit the pa­ren­tal en­dow­ment of en­ergy in­take and light cir­cu­la­tion. They had a sin­gle cir­cu­la­tion, the hu­man type of blood sus­te­nance. They were de­signedly mor­tal though long-lived, al­beit longevity grav­i­tated to­ward the hu­man norm with each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion.

• biological › chromosomes › of Prince’s staff reorganized by life circuits

77:2.2The phys­i­cal mem­bers of the Prince’s staff had been con­sti­tuted sex crea­tures for the pur­pose of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the plan of pro­cre­at­ing off­spring em­body­ing the com­bined qual­i­ties of their spe­cial or­der united with those of the se­lected stock of the An­don tribes, and all of this was in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Adam. The Life Car­ri­ers had planned a new type of mor­tal em­brac­ing the union of the con­joint off­spring of the Prince’s staff with the first-gen­er­a­tion off­spring of Adam and Eve. They had thus pro­jected a plan en­vi­sion­ing a new or­der of plan­e­tary crea­tures whom they hoped would be­come the teacher-rulers of hu­man so­ci­ety. Such be­ings were de­signed for so­cial sov­er­eignty, not civil sov­er­eignty. But since this project al­most com­pletely mis­car­ried, we shall never know what an aris­toc­racy of be­nign lead­er­ship and match­less cul­ture Uran­tia was thus de­prived of. For when the cor­po­real staff later re­pro­duced, it was sub­se­quent to the re­bel­lion and af­ter they had been de­prived of their con­nec­tion with the life cur­rents of the sys­tem.

77:2.3The postre­bel­lion era on Uran­tia wit­nessed many un­usual hap­pen­ings. A great civ­i­liza­tion—the cul­ture of Dala­ma­tia—was go­ing to pieces. “The Nephilim (Nod­ites) were on earth in those days, and when these sons of the gods went in to the daugh­ters of men and they bore to them, their chil­dren were the ‘mighty men of old,’ the ‘men of renown.’” While hardly “sons of the gods,” the staff and their early de­scen­dants were so re­garded by the evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals of those dis­tant days; even their stature came to be mag­ni­fied by tra­di­tion. This, then, is the ori­gin of the well-nigh uni­ver­sal folk tale of the gods who came down to earth and there with the daugh­ters of men be­got an an­cient race of heroes. And all this leg­end be­came fur­ther con­fused with the race mix­tures of the later ap­pear­ing Adamites in the sec­ond gar­den.

77:2.4Since the one hun­dred cor­po­real mem­bers of the Prince’s staff car­ried germ plasm of the An­donic hu­man strains, it would nat­u­rally be ex­pected that, if they en­gaged in sex­ual re­pro­duc­tion, their progeny would al­to­gether re­sem­ble the off­spring of other An­don­ite par­ents. But when the sixty rebels of the staff, the fol­low­ers of Nod, ac­tu­ally en­gaged in sex­ual re­pro­duc­tion, their chil­dren proved to be far su­pe­rior in al­most ev­ery way to both the An­don­ite and the San­gik peo­ples. This un­ex­pected ex­cel­lence char­ac­ter­ized not only phys­i­cal and in­tel­lec­tual qual­i­ties but also spir­i­tual ca­pac­i­ties.

77:2.5These mu­tant traits ap­pear­ing in the first Nod­ite gen­er­a­tion re­sulted from cer­tain changes which had been wrought in the con­fig­u­ra­tion and in the chem­i­cal con­stituents of the in­her­i­tance fac­tors of the An­donic germ plasm. These changes were caused by the pres­ence in the bod­ies of the staff mem­bers of the pow­er­ful life-main­te­nance cir­cuits of the Sa­ta­nia sys­tem. These life cir­cuits caused the chro­mo­somes of the spe­cial­ized Uran­tia pat­tern to re­or­ga­nize more af­ter the pat­terns of the stan­dard­ized Sa­ta­nia spe­cial­iza­tion of the or­dained Neb­a­don life man­i­fes­ta­tion. The tech­nique of this germ plasm meta­mor­pho­sis by the ac­tion of the sys­tem life cur­rents is not un­like those pro­ce­dures whereby Uran­tia sci­en­tists mod­ify the germ plasm of plants and an­i­mals by the use of X rays.

• mortal life › long lifespan of early descendants of Prince’s staff; Adamites

77:2.10When ar­chae­ol­o­gists dig up the clay-tablet rec­ords of the later-day Sume­rian de­scen­dants of the Nod­ites, they dis­cover lists of Sume­rian kings run­ning back for sev­eral thou­sand years; and as these rec­ords go fur­ther back, the reigns of the in­di­vid­ual kings lengthen from around twenty-five or thirty years up to one hun­dred and fifty years and more. This length­en­ing of the reigns of these older kings sig­ni­fies that some of the early Nod­ite rulers (im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants of the Prince’s staff) did live longer than their later-day suc­ces­sors and also in­di­cates an ef­fort to stretch the dy­nas­ties back to Dala­ma­tia.

• mortal life › confusion of months and years in recording ages

77:2.11The rec­ords of such long-lived in­di­vid­u­als are also due to the con­fu­sion of months and years as time pe­ri­ods. This may also be ob­served in the Bib­li­cal ge­neal­ogy of Abra­ham and in the early rec­ords of the Chi­nese. The con­fu­sion of the twenty-eight-day month, or sea­son, with the later in­tro­duced year of more than three hun­dred and fifty days is re­spon­si­ble for the tra­di­tions of such long hu­man lives. There are rec­ords of a man who lived over nine hun­dred “years.” This pe­riod rep­re­sents not quite sev­enty years, and such lives were re­garded for ages as very long, “three­score years and ten” as such a life span was later des­ig­nated.

• mortal life › primitive Urantians struggled for existence

86:1.2The lim­ited in­tel­lec­tual hori­zon of the sav­age so con­cen­trates the at­ten­tion upon chance that luck be­comes a con­stant fac­tor in his life. Prim­i­tive Uran­tians strug­gled for ex­is­tence, not for a stan­dard of liv­ing; they lived lives of peril in which chance played an im­por­tant role. The con­stant dread of un­known and un­seen calamity hung over these sav­ages as a cloud of de­spair which ef­fec­tively ec­lipsed ev­ery plea­sure; they lived in con­stant dread of do­ing some­thing that would bring bad luck. Su­per­sti­tious sav­ages al­ways feared a run of good luck; they viewed such good for­tune as a cer­tain har­bin­ger of calamity.

• mortal life › augment fraction of l. by lowering denominator of personal demands

89:3.3Pov­erty was just a part of the rit­ual of the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh which, un­for­tu­nately, be­came in­cor­po­rated into the writ­ings and teach­ings of many re­li­gions, no­tably Chris­tian­ity. Pen­ance is the neg­a­tive form of this oft­times fool­ish rit­ual of re­nun­ci­a­tion. But all this taught the sav­age self-con­trol, and that was a worth-while ad­vance­ment in so­cial evo­lu­tion. Self-de­nial and self-con­trol were two of the great­est so­cial gains from early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Self-con­trol gave man a new phi­los­o­phy of life; it taught him the art of aug­ment­ing life’s frac­tion by low­er­ing the de­nom­i­na­tor of per­sonal de­mands in­stead of al­ways at­tempt­ing to in­crease the nu­mer­a­tor of self­ish grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

• existence › Jesus unifies l.

100:7.18Je­sus was the per­fectly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity. And to­day, as in Gal­i­lee, he con­tin­ues to unify mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence and to co-or­di­nate hu­man en­deav­ors. He uni­fies life, en­no­bles char­ac­ter, and sim­pli­fies ex­pe­ri­ence. He en­ters the hu­man mind to el­e­vate, trans­form, and trans­fig­ure it. It is lit­er­ally true: “If any man has Christ Je­sus within him, he is a new crea­ture; old things are pass­ing away; be­hold, all things are be­com­ing new.”

• mortal life › he who will save his l. shall lose it

103:5.6The at­tempt to se­cure equal good for the self and for the great­est num­ber of other selves pre­sents a prob­lem which can­not al­ways be sat­is­fac­to­rily re­solved in a time-space frame. Given an eter­nal life, such an­tag­o­nisms can be worked out, but in one short hu­man life they are in­ca­pable of so­lu­tion. Je­sus re­ferred to such a para­dox when he said: “Whoso­ever shall save his life shall lose it, but whoso­ever shall lose his life for the sake of the king­dom, shall find it.”

• mortal life › great problem is to reconcile flesh with spirit

109:5.4The great prob­lem of life is the ad­just­ment of the an­ces­tral ten­den­cies of liv­ing to the de­mands of the spir­i­tual urges ini­ti­ated by the di­vine pres­ence of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor. While in the uni­verse and super­uni­verse ca­reers no man can serve two mas­ters, in the life you now live on Uran­tia ev­ery man must per­force serve two mas­ters. He must be­come adept in the art of a con­tin­u­ous hu­man tem­po­ral com­pro­mise while he yields spir­i­tual al­le­giance to but one mas­ter; and this is why so many fal­ter and fail, grow weary and suc­cumb to the stress of the evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle.

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

111:5.2The im­i­ta­tion of God is the key to per­fec­tion; the do­ing of his will is the se­cret of sur­vival and of per­fec­tion in sur­vival.

• mortal life › our real l. begins after mortal l.

112:0.1The evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets are the spheres of hu­man ori­gin, the ini­tial worlds of the as­cend­ing mor­tal ca­reer. Uran­tia is your start­ing point; here you and your di­vine Thought Ad­juster are joined in tem­po­rary union. You have been en­dowed with a per­fect guide; there­fore, if you will sin­cerely run the race of time and gain the fi­nal goal of faith, the re­ward of the ages shall be yours; you will be eter­nally united with your in­dwelling Ad­juster. Then will be­gin your real life, the as­cend­ing life, to which your pres­ent mor­tal state is but the vestibule. Then will be­gin your ex­alted and pro­gres­sive mis­sion as fi­nal­i­ters in the eter­nity which stretches out be­fore you. And through­out all of these suc­ces­sive ages and stages of evo­lu­tion­ary growth, there is one part of you that re­mains ab­so­lutely un­al­tered, and that is per­son­al­ity—per­ma­nence in the pres­ence of change.

• existence › process which takes place between organism and its environment

112:1.13Life is re­ally a pro­cess which takes place be­tween the or­gan­ism (self­hood) and its en­vi­ron­ment. The per­son­al­ity im­parts value of iden­tity and mean­ings of con­ti­nu­ity to this or­gan­is­mal-en­vi­ron­men­tal as­so­ci­a­tion. Thus it will be rec­og­nized that the phe­nom­e­non of stim­u­lus-re­sponse is not a mere me­chan­i­cal pro­cess since the per­son­al­ity func­tions as a fac­tor in the to­tal sit­u­a­tion. It is ever true that mech­a­nisms are in­nately pas­sive; or­gan­isms, in­her­ently ac­tive.

112:1.14Phys­i­cal life is a pro­cess tak­ing place not so much within the or­gan­ism as be­tween the or­gan­ism and the en­vi­ron­ment. And ev­ery such pro­cess tends to cre­ate and es­tab­lish or­gan­is­mal pat­terns of re­ac­tion to such an en­vi­ron­ment. And all such di­rec­tive pat­terns are highly in­flu­en­tial in goal choos­ing.

• existence › unbalanced equilibrium of energies and intellect

112:2.20The ma­te­rial self, the ego-en­tity of hu­man iden­tity, is de­pen­dent dur­ing the phys­i­cal life on the con­tin­u­ing func­tion of the ma­te­rial life ve­hi­cle, on the con­tin­ued ex­is­tence of the un­bal­anced equi­lib­rium of en­er­gies and in­tel­lect which, on Uran­tia, has been given the name life. But self­hood of sur­vival value, self­hood that can tran­scend the ex­pe­ri­ence of death, is only evolved by es­tab­lish­ing a po­ten­tial trans­fer of the seat of the iden­tity of the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity from the tran­sient life ve­hi­cle—the ma­te­rial body—to the more en­dur­ing and im­mor­tal na­ture of the mor­ontia soul and on be­yond to those lev­els whereon the soul be­comes in­fused with, and even­tu­ally at­tains the sta­tus of, spirit re­al­ity. This ac­tual trans­fer from ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tion to mor­ontia iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is ef­fected by the sin­cer­ity, per­sis­tence, and stead­fast­ness of the God-seek­ing de­ci­sions of the hu­man crea­ture.

• mortal life › short and intense; day’s work, do it well

112:7.4When fu­sion with the Ad­juster has been ef­fected, there can be no fu­ture dan­ger to the eter­nal ca­reer of such a per­son­al­ity. Ce­les­tial be­ings are tested through­out a long ex­pe­ri­ence, but mor­tals pass through a rel­a­tively short and in­ten­sive test­ing on the evo­lu­tion­ary and mor­ontia worlds.

• biological › renders material-energy systems capable of self-perpetuation, self-propagation, and self-adaptation

118:7.6The be­stowal of life ren­ders ma­te­rial-en­ergy sys­tems ca­pa­ble of self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-prop­a­ga­tion, and self-adap­ta­tion. The be­stowal of per­son­al­ity im­parts to liv­ing or­gan­isms the fur­ther pre­rog­a­tives of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, self-evo­lu­tion, and self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a fu­sion spirit of De­ity.

• mortal life › Jesus lived l. in channel of its natural flowing

128:1.6The Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter now fully un­der­stood the work be­fore him, but he chose to live his hu­man life in the chan­nel of its nat­u­ral flow­ing. And in some of these mat­ters he is in­deed an ex­am­ple to his mor­tal crea­tures, even as it is re­corded: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Je­sus, who, be­ing of the na­ture of God, thought it not strange to be equal with God. But he made him­self to be of lit­tle im­port and, tak­ing upon him­self the form of a crea­ture, was born in the like­ness of man­kind. And be­ing thus fash­ioned as a man, he hum­bled him­self and be­came obe­di­ent to death, even the death of the cross.”

• mortal life › supreme experience of l. is learning to love

130:2.6Ga­nid was, by this time, be­gin­ning to learn how his tu­tor spent his leisure in this un­usual per­sonal min­istry to his fel­low men, and the young In­dian set about to find out the mo­tive for these in­ces­sant ac­tiv­i­ties. He asked, “Why do you oc­cupy your­self so con­tin­u­ously with these vis­its with strangers?” And Je­sus an­swered: “Ga­nid, no man is a stranger to one who knows God. In the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing the Fa­ther in heaven you dis­cover that all men are your broth­ers, and does it seem strange that one should en­joy the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of meet­ing a newly dis­cov­ered brother? To be­come ac­quainted with one’s broth­ers and sis­ters, to know their prob­lems and to learn to love them, is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing.”

• existence › comes into being by action of Universal Mind
• existence › value is progressability to God-consciousness

130:4.7Life is an adap­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal cos­mic cau­sa­tion to the de­mands and pos­si­bil­i­ties of uni­verse sit­u­a­tions, and it comes into be­ing by the ac­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Mind and the ac­ti­va­tion of the spirit spark of the God who is spirit. The mean­ing of life is its adapt­abil­ity; the value of life is its pro­gress­abil­ity—even to the heights of God-con­scious­ness.

• mortal life › he who will save his l. shall lose it

140:5.19Chil­dren can eas­ily be taught to func­tion as peace­mak­ers. They en­joy team ac­tiv­i­ties; they like to play to­gether. Said the Mas­ter at an­other time: “Whoso­ever will save his life shall lose it, but whoso­ever will lose his life shall find it.”

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

141:2.1The night be­fore they left Pella, Je­sus gave the apos­tles some fur­ther in­struc­tion with re­gard to the new king­dom. Said the Mas­ter: “You have been taught to look for the com­ing of the king­dom of God, and now I come an­nounc­ing that this long-looked-for king­dom is near at hand, even that it is al­ready here and in our midst. In ev­ery king­dom there must be a king seated upon his throne and de­cree­ing the laws of the realm. And so have you de­vel­oped a con­cept of the king­dom of heaven as a glo­ri­fied rule of the Jew­ish peo­ple over all the peo­ples of the earth with Mes­siah sit­ting on David’s throne and from this place of mirac­u­lous power pro­mul­gat­ing the laws of all the world. But, my chil­dren, you see not with the eye of faith, and you hear not with the un­der­stand­ing of the spirit. I de­clare that the king­dom of heaven is the re­al­iza­tion and ac­knowl­edg­ment of God’s rule within the hearts of men. True, there is a King in this king­dom, and that King is my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther. We are in­deed his loyal sub­jects, but far tran­scend­ing that fact is the trans­form­ing truth that we are his sons. In my life this truth is to be­come man­i­fest to all. Our Fa­ther also sits upon a throne, but not one made with hands. The throne of the In­fi­nite is the eter­nal dwell­ing place of the Fa­ther in the heaven of heav­ens; he fills all things and pro­claims his laws to uni­verses upon uni­verses. And the Fa­ther also rules within the hearts of his chil­dren on earth by the spirit which he has sent to live within the souls of mor­tal men.

• mortal life › believers unafraid of

156:5.20The God-con­scious mor­tal is cer­tain of sal­va­tion; he is un­afraid of life; he is hon­est and con­sis­tent. He knows how bravely to en­dure un­avoid­able suf­fer­ing; he is un­com­plain­ing when faced by in­es­cap­able hard­ship.

• mortal life › Jesus came to give us abundant l.

157:6.2Nei­ther Pe­ter nor the other apos­tles had a very ad­e­quate con­cep­tion of Je­sus’ di­vin­ity. They lit­tle re­al­ized that this was the be­gin­ning of a new epoch in their Mas­ter’s ca­reer on earth, the time when the teacher-healer was be­com­ing the newly con­ceived Mes­siah—the Son of God. From this time on a new note ap­peared in the Mas­ter’s mes­sage. Hence­forth his one ideal of liv­ing was the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther, while his one idea in teach­ing was to pre­sent to his uni­verse the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of that su­preme wis­dom which can only be com­pre­hended by liv­ing it. He came that we all might have life and have it more abun­dantly.

• mortal life › he who will save his l. shall lose it

158:7.5Af­ter they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of Je­sus’ sting­ing re­buke, and be­fore they re­sumed their jour­ney, the Mas­ter spoke fur­ther: “If any man would come af­ter me, let him dis­re­gard him­self, take up his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily, and fol­low me. For whoso­ever would save his life self­ishly, shall lose it, but whoso­ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What would a man give in ex­change for eter­nal life? Be not ashamed of me and my words in this sin­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, even as I will not be ashamed to ac­knowl­edge you when in glory I ap­pear be­fore my Fa­ther in the pres­ence of all the ce­les­tial hosts. Nev­er­the­less, many of you now stand­ing be­fore me shall not taste death till you see this king­dom of God come with power.”

• mortal life › major l. problems are earning a living, surviving

160:4.1While you have an eye sin­gle to the at­tain­ment of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, you must also make pro­vi­sion for the ne­ces­si­ties of tem­po­ral liv­ing. While the spirit is our goal, the flesh is a fact. Oc­ca­sion­ally the ne­ces­si­ties of liv­ing may fall into our hands by ac­ci­dent, but in gen­eral, we must in­tel­li­gently work for them. The two ma­jor prob­lems of life are: mak­ing a tem­po­ral liv­ing and the achieve­ment of eter­nal sur­vival. And even the prob­lem of mak­ing a liv­ing re­quires re­li­gion for its ideal so­lu­tion. These are both highly per­sonal prob­lems. True re­li­gion, in fact, does not func­tion apart from the in­di­vid­ual.

• existence › 6 essentials

160:4.2The es­sen­tials of the tem­po­ral life, as I see them, are:

160:4.31. Good phys­i­cal health.

160:4.42. Clear and clean think­ing.

160:4.53. Abil­ity and skill.

160:4.64. Wealth—the goods of life.

160:4.75. Abil­ity to with­stand de­feat.

160:4.86. Cul­ture—ed­u­ca­tion and wis­dom.

• mortal life › he who will save his l. shall lose it

160:5.10I see in the teach­ings of Je­sus, re­li­gion at its best. This gospel en­ables us to seek for the true God and to find him. But are we will­ing to pay the price of this en­trance into the king­dom of heaven? Are we will­ing to be born again? to be re­made? Are we will­ing to be sub­ject to this ter­ri­ble and test­ing pro­cess of self-de­struc­tion and soul re­con­struc­tion? Has not the Mas­ter said: “Whoso would save his life must lose it. Think not that I have come to bring peace but rather a soul strug­gle”? True, af­ter we pay the price of ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, we do ex­pe­ri­ence great peace pro­vided we con­tinue to walk in these spir­i­tual paths of con­se­crated liv­ing.

• mortal life › Jesus came to give us abundant l.

162:2.7“I bear none of you ill will. The Fa­ther loves you, and there­fore do I long for your de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of prej­u­dice and the dark­ness of tra­di­tion. I of­fer you the lib­erty of life and the joy of sal­va­tion. I pro­claim the new and liv­ing way, the de­liv­er­ance from evil and the break­ing of the bond­age of sin. I have come that you might have life, and have it eter­nally. You seek to be rid of me and my dis­qui­et­ing teach­ings. If you could only re­al­ize that I am to be with you only a lit­tle while! In just a short time I go to Him who sent me into this world. And then will many of you dili­gently seek me, but you shall not dis­cover my pres­ence, for where I am about to go you can­not come. But all who truly seek to find me shall some­time at­tain the life that leads to my Fa­ther’s pres­ence.”

• existence › in God we live and move and have our being

174:3.2Je­sus knew, and so did the peo­ple, that these Sad­ducees were not sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion be­cause it was not likely that such a case would re­ally oc­cur; and be­sides, this prac­tice of the broth­ers of a dead man seek­ing to beget chil­dren for him was prac­ti­cally a dead let­ter at this time among the Jews. Nev­er­the­less, Je­sus con­de­scended to re­ply to their mis­chievous ques­tion. He said: “You all do err in ask­ing such ques­tions be­cause you know nei­ther the Scrip­tures nor the liv­ing power of God. You know that the sons of this world can marry and are given in mar­riage, but you do not seem to un­der­stand that they who are ac­counted wor­thy to at­tain the worlds to come, through the res­ur­rec­tion of the righ­teous, nei­ther marry nor are given in mar­riage. Those who ex­pe­ri­ence the res­ur­rec­tion from the dead are more like the an­gels of heaven, and they never die. These res­ur­rected ones are eter­nally the sons of God; they are the chil­dren of light res­ur­rected into the prog­ress of eter­nal life. And even your Fa­ther Moses un­der­stood this, for, in con­nec­tion with his ex­pe­ri­ences at the burn­ing bush, he heard the Fa­ther say, ‘I am the God of Abra­ham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob.’ And so, along with Moses, do I de­clare that my Fa­ther is not the God of the dead but of the liv­ing. In him you all do live, re­pro­duce, and pos­sess your mor­tal ex­is­tence.”

• mortal life › he who will save his l. shall lose it

174:5.8“But to both Jew and gen­tile I de­clare the hour has about come when the Son of Man will be glo­ri­fied. You well know that, ex­cept a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies in good soil, it springs up again to life and bears much fruit. He who self­ishly loves his life stands in dan­ger of los­ing it; but he who is will­ing to lay down his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall en­joy a more abun­dant ex­is­tence on earth and in heaven, life eter­nal. If you will truly fol­low me, even af­ter I have gone to my Fa­ther, then shall you be­come my dis­ci­ples and the sin­cere ser­vants of your fel­low mor­tals.

• existence › Jesus is l.

180:3.7When Je­sus heard Thomas, he an­swered: “Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man goes to the Fa­ther ex­cept through me. All who find the Fa­ther, first find me. If you know me, you know the way to the Fa­ther. And you do know me, for you have lived with me and you now see me.”

• mortal life › try to live long on earth

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”

• mortal life › transcends material levels of nature

195:7.9A mech­a­nis­tic phi­los­o­phy of life and the uni­verse can­not be sci­en­tific be­cause sci­ence rec­og­nizes and deals only with ma­te­ri­als and facts. Phi­los­o­phy is in­evitably super­sci­en­tific. Man is a ma­te­rial fact of na­ture, but his life is a phe­nom­e­non which tran­scends the ma­te­rial lev­els of na­ture in that it ex­hibits the con­trol at­tri­butes of mind and the cre­ative qual­i­ties of spirit.

• mortal life › full summation of

196:3.4The full sum­ma­tion of hu­man life is the knowl­edge that man is ed­u­cated by fact, en­no­bled by wis­dom, and saved—jus­ti­fied—by re­li­gious faith.