Paper 80 – Andite Expansion in the Occident

The Urantia Book

Paper 80

Andite Expansion in the Occident

80:0.1 (889.1) ALTHOUGH the European blue man did not of himself achieve a great cultural civilization, he did supply the biologic foundation which, when its Adamized strains were blended with the later Andite invaders, produced one of the most potent stocks for the attainment of aggressive civilization ever to appear on Urantia since the times of the violet race and their Andite successors.

80:0.2 (889.2) The modern white peoples incorporate the surviving strains of the Adamic stock which became admixed with the Sangik races, some red and yellow but more especially the blue. There is a considerable percentage of the original Andonite stock in all the white races and still more of the early Nodite strains.

1. The Adamites Enter Europe

80:1.1 (889.3) Before the last Andites were driven out of the Euphrates valley, many of their brethren had entered Europe as adventurers, teachers, traders, and warriors. During the earlier days of the violet race the Mediterranean trough was protected by the Gibraltar isthmus and the Sicilian land bridge. Some of man’s very early maritime commerce was established on these inland lakes, where blue men from the north and the Saharans from the south met Nodites and Adamites from the east.

80:1.2 (889.4) In the eastern trough of the Mediterranean the Nodites had established one of their most extensive cultures and from these centers had penetrated somewhat into southern Europe but more especially into northern Africa. The broad-headed Nodite-Andonite Syrians very early introduced pottery and agriculture in connection with their settlements on the slowly rising Nile delta. They also imported sheep, goats, cattle, and other domesticated animals and brought in greatly improved methods of metalworking, Syria then being the center of that industry.

80:1.3 (889.5) For more than thirty thousand years Egypt received a steady stream of Mesopotamians, who brought along their art and culture to enrich that of the Nile valley. But the ingress of large numbers of the Sahara peoples greatly deteriorated the early civilization along the Nile so that Egypt reached its lowest cultural level some fifteen thousand years ago.

80:1.4 (889.6) But during earlier times there was little to hinder the westward migration of the Adamites. The Sahara was an open grazing land overspread by herders and agriculturists. These Saharans never engaged in manufacture, nor were they city builders. They were an indigo-black group which carried extensive strains of the extinct green and orange races. But they received a very limited amount of the violet inheritance before the upthrust of land and the shifting water-laden winds dispersed the remnants of this prosperous and peaceful civilization.

80:1.5 (890.1) Adam’s blood has been shared with most of the human races, but some secured more than others. The mixed races of India and the darker peoples of Africa were not attractive to the Adamites. They would have mixed freely with the red man had he not been far removed in the Americas, and they were kindly disposed toward the yellow man, but he was likewise difficult of access in faraway Asia. Therefore, when actuated by either adventure or altruism, or when driven out of the Euphrates valley, they very naturally chose union with the blue races of Europe.

80:1.6 (890.2) The blue men, then dominant in Europe, had no religious practices which were repulsive to the earlier migrating Adamites, and there was great sex attraction between the violet and the blue races. The best of the blue men deemed it a high honor to be permitted to mate with the Adamites. Every blue man entertained the ambition of becoming so skillful and artistic as to win the affection of some Adamite woman, and it was the highest aspiration of a superior blue woman to receive the attentions of an Adamite.

80:1.7 (890.3) Slowly these migrating sons of Eden united with the higher types of the blue race, invigorating their cultural practices while ruthlessly exterminating the lingering strains of Neanderthal stock. This technique of race blending, combined with the elimination of inferior strains, produced a dozen or more virile and progressive groups of superior blue men, one of which you have denominated the Cro-Magnons.

80:1.8 (890.4) For these and other reasons, not the least of which was more favorable paths of migration, the early waves of Mesopotamian culture made their way almost exclusively to Europe. And it was these circumstances that determined the antecedents of modern European civilization.

2. Climatic and Geologic Changes

80:2.1 (890.5) The early expansion of the violet race into Europe was cut short by certain rather sudden climatic and geologic changes. With the retreat of the northern ice fields the water-laden winds from the west shifted to the north, gradually turning the great open pasture regions of Sahara into a barren desert. This drought dispersed the smaller-statured brunets, dark-eyed but long-headed dwellers of the great Sahara plateau.

80:2.2 (890.6) The purer indigo elements moved southward to the forests of central Africa, where they have ever since remained. The more mixed groups spread out in three directions: The superior tribes to the west migrated to Spain and thence to adjacent parts of Europe, forming the nucleus of the later Mediterranean long-headed brunet races. The least progressive division to the east of the Sahara plateau migrated to Arabia and thence through northern Mesopotamia and India to faraway Ceylon. The central group moved north and east to the Nile valley and into Palestine.

80:2.3 (890.7) It is this secondary Sangik substratum that suggests a certain degree of kinship among the modern peoples scattered from the Deccan through Iran, Mesopotamia, and along both shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

80:2.4 (890.8) About the time of these climatic changes in Africa, England separated from the continent, and Denmark arose from the sea, while the isthmus of Gibraltar, protecting the western basin of the Mediterranean, gave way as the result of an earthquake, quickly raising this inland lake to the level of the Atlantic Ocean. Presently the Sicilian land bridge submerged, creating one sea of the Mediterranean and connecting it with the Atlantic Ocean. This cataclysm of nature flooded scores of human settlements and occasioned the greatest loss of life by flood in all the world’s history.

80:2.5 (891.1) This engulfment of the Mediterranean basin immediately curtailed the westward movements of the Adamites, while the great influx of Saharans led them to seek outlets for their increasing numbers to the north and east of Eden. As the descendants of Adam journeyed northward from the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, they encountered mountainous barriers and the then expanded Caspian Sea. And for many generations the Adamites hunted, herded, and tilled the soil around their settlements scattered throughout Turkestan. Slowly this magnificent people extended their territory into Europe. But now the Adamites enter Europe from the east and find the culture of the blue man thousands of years behind that of Asia since this region has been almost entirely out of touch with Mesopotamia.

3. The Cro-Magnoid Blue Man

80:3.1 (891.2) The ancient centers of the culture of the blue man were located along all the rivers of Europe, but only the Somme now flows in the same channel which it followed during preglacial times.

80:3.2 (891.3) While we speak of the blue man as pervading the European continent, there were scores of racial types. Even thirty-five thousand years ago the European blue races were already a highly blended people carrying strains of both red and yellow, while on the Atlantic coastlands and in the regions of present-day Russia they had absorbed a considerable amount of Andonite blood and to the south were in contact with the Saharan peoples. But it would be fruitless to attempt to enumerate the many racial groups.

80:3.3 (891.4) The European civilization of this early post-Adamic period was a unique blend of the vigor and art of the blue men with the creative imagination of the Adamites. The blue men were a race of great vigor, but they greatly deteriorated the cultural and spiritual status of the Adamites. It was very difficult for the latter to impress their religion upon the Cro-Magnoids because of the tendency of so many to cheat and to debauch the maidens. For ten thousand years religion in Europe was at a low ebb as compared with the developments in India and Egypt.

80:3.4 (891.5) The blue men were perfectly honest in all their dealings and were wholly free from the sexual vices of the mixed Adamites. They respected maidenhood, only practicing polygamy when war produced a shortage of males.

80:3.5 (891.6) These Cro-Magnon peoples were a brave and farseeing race. They maintained an efficient system of child culture. Both parents participated in these labors, and the services of the older children were fully utilized. Each child was carefully trained in the care of the caves, in art, and in flint making. At an early age the women were well versed in the domestic arts and in crude agriculture, while the men were skilled hunters and courageous warriors.

80:3.6 (891.7) The blue men were hunters, fishers, and food gatherers; they were expert boatbuilders. They made stone axes, cut down trees, erected log huts, partly below ground and roofed with hides. And there are peoples who still build similar huts in Siberia. The southern Cro-Magnons generally lived in caves and grottoes.

80:3.7 (892.1) It was not uncommon during the rigors of winter for their sentinels standing on night guard at cave entrances to freeze to death. They had courage, but above all they were artists; the Adamic mixture suddenly accelerated creative imagination. The height of the blue man’s art was about fifteen thousand years ago, before the days when the darker-skinned races came north from Africa through Spain.

80:3.8 (892.2) About fifteen thousand years ago the Alpine forests were spreading extensively. The European hunters were being driven to the river valleys and to the seashores by the same climatic coercion that had turned the world’s happy hunting grounds into dry and barren deserts. As the rain winds shifted to the north, the great open grazing lands of Europe became covered by forests. These great and relatively sudden climatic modifications drove the races of Europe to change from open-space hunters to herders, and in some measure to fishers and tillers of the soil.

80:3.9 (892.3) These changes, while resulting in cultural advances, produced certain biologic retrogressions. During the previous hunting era the superior tribes had intermarried with the higher types of war captives and had unvaryingly destroyed those whom they deemed inferior. But as they commenced to establish settlements and engage in agriculture and commerce, they began to save many of the mediocre captives as slaves. And it was the progeny of these slaves that subsequently so greatly deteriorated the whole Cro-Magnon type. This retrogression of culture continued until it received a fresh impetus from the east when the final and en masse invasion of the Mesopotamians swept over Europe, quickly absorbing the Cro-Magnon type and culture and initiating the civilization of the white races.

4. The Andite Invasions of Europe

80:4.1 (892.4) While the Andites poured into Europe in a steady stream, there were seven major invasions, the last arrivals coming on horseback in three great waves. Some entered Europe by way of the islands of the Aegean and up the Danube valley, but the majority of the earlier and purer strains migrated to northwestern Europe by the northern route across the grazing lands of the Volga and the Don.

80:4.2 (892.5) Between the third and fourth invasions a horde of Andonites entered Europe from the north, having come from Siberia by way of the Russian rivers and the Baltic. They were immediately assimilated by the northern Andite tribes.

80:4.3 (892.6) The earlier expansions of the purer violet race were far more pacific than were those of their later semimilitary and conquest-loving Andite descendants. The Adamites were pacific; the Nodites were belligerent. The union of these stocks, as later mingled with the Sangik races, produced the able, aggressive Andites who made actual military conquests.

80:4.4 (892.7) But the horse was the evolutionary factor which determined the dominance of the Andites in the Occident. The horse gave the dispersing Andites the hitherto nonexistent advantage of mobility, enabling the last groups of Andite cavalrymen to progress quickly around the Caspian Sea to overrun all of Europe. All previous waves of Andites had moved so slowly that they tended to disintegrate at any great distance from Mesopotamia. But these later waves moved so rapidly that they reached Europe as coherent groups, still retaining some measure of higher culture.

80:4.5 (893.1) The whole inhabited world, outside of China and the Euphrates region, had made very limited cultural progress for ten thousand years when the hard-riding Andite horsemen made their appearance in the sixth and seventh millenniums before Christ. As they moved westward across the Russian plains, absorbing the best of the blue man and exterminating the worst, they became blended into one people. These were the ancestors of the so-called Nordic races, the forefathers of the Scandinavian, German, and Anglo-Saxon peoples.

80:4.6 (893.2) It was not long before the superior blue strains had been fully absorbed by the Andites throughout all northern Europe. Only in Lapland (and to a certain extent in Brittany) did the older Andonites retain even a semblance of identity.

5. The Andite Conquest of Northern Europe

80:5.1 (893.3) The tribes of northern Europe were being continuously reinforced and upstepped by the steady stream of migrants from Mesopotamia through the Turkestan-south Russian regions, and when the last waves of Andite cavalry swept over Europe, there were already more men with Andite inheritance in that region than were to be found in all the rest of the world.

80:5.2 (893.4) For three thousand years the military headquarters of the northern Andites was in Denmark. From this central point there went forth the successive waves of conquest, which grew decreasingly Andite and increasingly white as the passing centuries witnessed the final blending of the Mesopotamian conquerors with the conquered peoples.

80:5.3 (893.5) While the blue man had been absorbed in the north and eventually succumbed to the white cavalry raiders who penetrated the south, the advancing tribes of the mixed white race met with stubborn and protracted resistance from the Cro-Magnons, but superior intelligence and ever-augmenting biologic reserves enabled them to wipe the older race out of existence.

80:5.4 (893.6) The decisive struggles between the white man and the blue man were fought out in the valley of the Somme. Here, the flower of the blue race bitterly contested the southward-moving Andites, and for over five hundred years these Cro-Magnoids successfully defended their territories before succumbing to the superior military strategy of the white invaders. Thor, the victorious commander of the armies of the north in the final battle of the Somme, became the hero of the northern white tribes and later on was revered as a god by some of them.

80:5.5 (893.7) The strongholds of the blue man which persisted longest were in southern France, but the last great military resistance was overcome along the Somme. The later conquest progressed by commercial penetration, population pressure along the rivers, and by continued intermarriage with the superiors, coupled with the ruthless extermination of the inferiors.

80:5.6 (893.8) When the tribal council of the Andite elders had adjudged an inferior captive to be unfit, he was, by elaborate ceremony, committed to the shaman priests, who escorted him to the river and administered the rites of initiation to the “happy hunting grounds” — lethal submergence. In this way the white invaders of Europe exterminated all peoples encountered who were not quickly absorbed into their own ranks, and thus did the blue man come to an end — and quickly.

80:5.7 (893.9) The Cro-Magnoid blue man constituted the biologic foundation for the modern European races, but they have survived only as absorbed by the later and virile conquerors of their homelands. The blue strain contributed many sturdy traits and much physical vigor to the white races of Europe, but the humor and imagination of the blended European peoples were derived from the Andites. This Andite-blue union, resulting in the northern white races, produced an immediate lapse of Andite civilization, a retardation of a transient nature. Eventually, the latent superiority of these northern barbarians manifested itself and culminated in present-day European civilization.

80:5.8 (894.1) By 5000 B.C. the evolving white races were dominant throughout all of northern Europe, including northern Germany, northern France, and the British Isles. Central Europe was for some time controlled by the blue man and the round-headed Andonites. The latter were mainly situated in the Danube valley and were never entirely displaced by the Andites.

6. The Andites Along the Nile

80:6.1 (894.2) From the times of the terminal Andite migrations, culture declined in the Euphrates valley, and the immediate center of civilization shifted to the valley of the Nile. Egypt became the successor of Mesopotamia as the headquarters of the most advanced group on earth.

80:6.2 (894.3) The Nile valley began to suffer from floods shortly before the Mesopotamian valleys but fared much better. This early setback was more than compensated by the continuing stream of Andite immigrants, so that the culture of Egypt, though really derived from the Euphrates region, seemed to forge ahead. But in 5000 B.C., during the flood period in Mesopotamia, there were seven distinct groups of human beings in Egypt; all of them, save one, came from Mesopotamia.

80:6.3 (894.4) When the last exodus from the Euphrates valley occurred, Egypt was fortunate in gaining so many of the most skillful artists and artisans. These Andite artisans found themselves quite at home in that they were thoroughly familiar with river life, its floods, irrigations, and dry seasons. They enjoyed the sheltered position of the Nile valley; they were there much less subject to hostile raids and attacks than along the Euphrates. And they added greatly to the metalworking skill of the Egyptians. Here they worked iron ores coming from Mount Sinai instead of from the Black Sea regions.

80:6.4 (894.5) The Egyptians very early assembled their municipal deities into an elaborate national system of gods. They developed an extensive theology and had an equally extensive but burdensome priesthood. Several different leaders sought to revive the remnants of the early religious teachings of the Sethites, but these endeavors were short-lived. The Andites built the first stone structures in Egypt. The first and most exquisite of the stone pyramids was erected by Imhotep, an Andite architectural genius, while serving as prime minister. Previous buildings had been constructed of brick, and while many stone structures had been erected in different parts of the world, this was the first in Egypt. But the art of building steadily declined from the days of this great architect.

80:6.5 (894.6) This brilliant epoch of culture was cut short by internal warfare along the Nile, and the country was soon overrun, as Mesopotamia had been, by the inferior tribes from inhospitable Arabia and by the blacks from the south. As a result, social progress steadily declined for more than five hundred years.

7. Andites of the Mediterranean Isles

80:7.1 (895.1) During the decline of culture in Mesopotamia there persisted for some time a superior civilization on the islands of the eastern Mediterranean.

80:7.2 (895.2) About 12,000 B.C. a brilliant tribe of Andites migrated to Crete. This was the only island settled so early by such a superior group, and it was almost two thousand years before the descendants of these mariners spread to the neighboring isles. This group were the narrow-headed, smaller-statured Andites who had intermarried with the Vanite division of the northern Nodites. They were all under six feet in height and had been literally driven off the mainland by their larger and inferior fellows. These emigrants to Crete were highly skilled in textiles, metals, pottery, plumbing, and the use of stone for building material. They engaged in writing and carried on as herders and agriculturists.

80:7.3 (895.3) Almost two thousand years after the settlement of Crete a group of the tall descendants of Adamson made their way over the northern islands to Greece, coming almost directly from their highland home north of Mesopotamia. These progenitors of the Greeks were led westward by Sato, a direct descendant of Adamson and Ratta.

80:7.4 (895.4) The group which finally settled in Greece consisted of three hundred and seventy-five of the selected and superior people comprising the end of the second civilization of the Adamsonites. These later sons of Adamson carried the then most valuable strains of the emerging white races. They were of a high intellectual order and, physically regarded, the most beautiful of men since the days of the first Eden.

80:7.5 (895.5) Presently Greece and the Aegean Islands region succeeded Mesopotamia and Egypt as the Occidental center of trade, art, and culture. But as it was in Egypt, so again practically all of the art and science of the Aegean world was derived from Mesopotamia except for the culture of the Adamsonite forerunners of the Greeks. All the art and genius of these latter people is a direct legacy of the posterity of Adamson, the first son of Adam and Eve, and his extraordinary second wife, a daughter descended in an unbroken line from the pure Nodite staff of Prince Caligastia. No wonder the Greeks had mythological traditions that they were directly descended from gods and superhuman beings.

80:7.6 (895.6) The Aegean region passed through five distinct cultural stages, each less spiritual than the preceding, and erelong the last glorious era of art perished beneath the weight of the rapidly multiplying mediocre descendants of the Danubian slaves who had been imported by the later generations of Greeks.

80:7.7 (895.7) It was during this age in Crete that the mother cult of the descendants of Cain attained its greatest vogue. This cult glorified Eve in the worship of the “great mother.” Images of Eve were everywhere. Thousands of public shrines were erected throughout Crete and Asia Minor. And this mother cult persisted on down to the times of Christ, becoming later incorporated in the early Christian religion under the guise of the glorification and worship of Mary the earth mother of Jesus.

80:7.8 (895.8) By about 6500 B.C. there had occurred a great decline in the spiritual heritage of the Andites. The descendants of Adam were widespreadly dispersed and had been virtually swallowed up in the older and more numerous human races. And this decadence of Andite civilization, together with the disappearance of their religious standards, left the spiritually impoverished races of the world in a deplorable condition.

80:7.9 (896.1) By 5000 B.C. the three purest strains of Adam’s descendants were in Sumeria, northern Europe, and Greece. The whole of Mesopotamia was being slowly deteriorated by the stream of mixed and darker races which filtered in from Arabia. And the coming of these inferior peoples contributed further to the scattering abroad of the biologic and cultural residue of the Andites. From all over the fertile crescent the more adventurous peoples poured westward to the islands. These migrants cultivated both grain and vegetables, and they brought domesticated animals with them.

80:7.10 (896.2) About 5000 B.C. a mighty host of progressive Mesopotamians moved out of the Euphrates valley and settled upon the island of Cyprus; this civilization was wiped out about two thousand years subsequently by the barbarian hordes from the north.

80:7.11 (896.3) Another great colony settled on the Mediterranean near the later site of Carthage. And from north Africa large numbers of Andites entered Spain and later mingled in Switzerland with their brethren who had earlier come to Italy from the Aegean Islands.

80:7.12 (896.4) When Egypt followed Mesopotamia in cultural decline, many of the more able and advanced families fled to Crete, thus greatly augmenting this already advanced civilization. And when the arrival of inferior groups from Egypt later threatened the civilization of Crete, the more cultured families moved on west to Greece.

80:7.13 (896.5) The Greeks were not only great teachers and artists, they were also the world’s greatest traders and colonizers. Before succumbing to the flood of inferiority which eventually engulfed their art and commerce, they succeeded in planting so many outposts of culture to the west that a great many of the advances in early Greek civilization persisted in the later peoples of southern Europe, and many of the mixed descendants of these Adamsonites became incorporated in the tribes of the adjacent mainlands.

8. The Danubian Andonites

80:8.1 (896.6) The Andite peoples of the Euphrates valley migrated north to Europe to mingle with the blue men and west into the Mediterranean regions to mix with the remnants of the commingled Saharans and the southern blue men. And these two branches of the white race were, and now are, widely separated by the broad-headed mountain survivors of the earlier Andonite tribes which had long inhabited these central regions.

80:8.2 (896.7) These descendants of Andon were dispersed through most of the mountainous regions of central and southeastern Europe. They were often reinforced by arrivals from Asia Minor, which region they occupied in considerable strength. The ancient Hittites stemmed directly from the Andonite stock; their pale skins and broad heads were typical of that race. This strain was carried in Abraham’s ancestry and contributed much to the characteristic facial appearance of his later Jewish descendants who, while having a culture and religion derived from the Andites, spoke a very different language. Their tongue was distinctly Andonite.

80:8.3 (897.1) The tribes that dwelt in houses erected on piles or log piers over the lakes of Italy, Switzerland, and southern Europe were the expanding fringes of the African, Aegean, and, more especially, the Danubian migrations.

80:8.4 (897.2) The Danubians were Andonites, farmers and herders who had entered Europe through the Balkan peninsula and were moving slowly northward by way of the Danube valley. They made pottery and tilled the land, preferring to live in the valleys. The most northerly settlement of the Danubians was at Liege in Belgium. These tribes deteriorated rapidly as they moved away from the center and source of their culture. The best pottery is the product of the earlier settlements.

80:8.5 (897.3) The Danubians became mother worshipers as the result of the work of the missionaries from Crete. These tribes later amalgamated with groups of Andonite sailors who came by boats from the coast of Asia Minor, and who were also mother worshipers. Much of central Europe was thus early settled by these mixed types of the broad-headed white races which practiced mother worship and the religious rite of cremating the dead, for it was the custom of the mother cultists to burn their dead in stone huts.

9. The Three White Races

80:9.1 (897.4) The racial blends in Europe toward the close of the Andite migrations became generalized into the three white races as follows:

80:9.2 (897.5) 1. The northern white race. This so-called Nordic race consisted primarily of the blue man plus the Andite but also contained a considerable amount of Andonite blood, together with smaller amounts of the red and yellow Sangik. The northern white race thus encompassed these four most desirable human stocks. But the largest inheritance was from the blue man. The typical early Nordic was long-headed, tall, and blond. But long ago this race became thoroughly mixed with all of the branches of the white peoples.

80:9.3 (897.6) The primitive culture of Europe, which was encountered by the invading Nordics, was that of the retrograding Danubians blended with the blue man. The Nordic-Danish and the Danubian-Andonite cultures met and mingled on the Rhine as is witnessed by the existence of two racial groups in Germany today.

80:9.4 (897.7) The Nordics continued the trade in amber from the Baltic coast, building up a great commerce with the broadheads of the Danube valley via the Brenner Pass. This extended contact with the Danubians led these northerners into mother worship, and for several thousands of years cremation of the dead was almost universal throughout Scandinavia. This explains why remains of the earlier white races, although buried all over Europe, are not to be found — only their ashes in stone and clay urns. These white men also built dwellings; they never lived in caves. And again this explains why there are so few evidences of the white man’s early culture, although the preceding Cro-Magnon type is well preserved where it has been securely sealed up in caves and grottoes. As it were, one day in northern Europe there is a primitive culture of the retrogressing Danubians and the blue man and the next that of a suddenly appearing and vastly superior white man.

80:9.5 (897.8) 2. The central white race. While this group includes strains of blue, yellow, and Andite, it is predominantly Andonite. These people are broad-headed, swarthy, and stocky. They are driven like a wedge between the Nordic and Mediterranean races, with the broad base resting in Asia and the apex penetrating eastern France.

80:9.6 (898.1) For almost twenty thousand years the Andonites had been pushed farther and farther to the north of central Asia by the Andites. By 3000 B.C. increasing aridity was driving these Andonites back into Turkestan. This Andonite push southward continued for over a thousand years and, splitting around the Caspian and Black seas, penetrated Europe by way of both the Balkans and the Ukraine. This invasion included the remaining groups of Adamson’s descendants and, during the latter half of the invasion period, carried with it considerable numbers of the Iranian Andites as well as many of the descendants of the Sethite priests.

80:9.7 (898.2) By 2500 B.C. the westward thrust of the Andonites reached Europe. And this overrunning of all Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and the Danube basin by the barbarians of the hills of Turkestan constituted the most serious and lasting of all cultural setbacks up to that time. These invaders definitely Andonized the character of the central European races, which have ever since remained characteristically Alpine.

80:9.8 (898.3) 3. The southern white race. This brunet Mediterranean race consisted of a blend of the Andite and the blue man, with a smaller Andonite strain than in the north. This group also absorbed a considerable amount of secondary Sangik blood through the Saharans. In later times this southern division of the white race was infused by strong Andite elements from the eastern Mediterranean.

80:9.9 (898.4) The Mediterranean coastlands did not, however, become permeated by the Andites until the times of the great nomadic invasions of 2500 B.C. Land traffic and trade were nearly suspended during these centuries when the nomads invaded the eastern Mediterranean districts. This interference with land travel brought about the great expansion of sea traffic and trade; Mediterranean sea-borne commerce was in full swing about forty-five hundred years ago. And this development of marine traffic resulted in the sudden expansion of the descendants of the Andites throughout the entire coastal territory of the Mediterranean basin.

80:9.10 (898.5) These racial mixtures laid the foundations for the southern European race, the most highly mixed of all. And since these days this race has undergone still further admixture, notably with the blue-yellow-Andite peoples of Arabia. This Mediterranean race is, in fact, so freely admixed with the surrounding peoples as to be virtually indiscernible as a separate type, but in general its members are short, long-headed, and brunet.

80:9.11 (898.6) In the north the Andites, through warfare and marriage, obliterated the blue men, but in the south they survived in greater numbers. The Basques and the Berbers represent the survival of two branches of this race, but even these peoples have been thoroughly admixed with the Saharans.

80:9.12 (898.7) This was the picture of race mixture presented in central Europe about 3000 B.C. In spite of the partial Adamic default, the higher types did blend.

80:9.13 (898.8) These were the times of the New Stone Age overlapping the oncoming Bronze Age. In Scandinavia it was the Bronze Age associated with mother worship. In southern France and Spain it was the New Stone Age associated with sun worship. This was the time of the building of the circular and roofless sun temples. The European white races were energetic builders, delighting to set up great stones as tokens to the sun, much as did their later-day descendants at Stonehenge. The vogue of sun worship indicates that this was a great period of agriculture in southern Europe.

80:9.14 (899.1) The superstitions of this comparatively recent sun-worshiping era even now persist in the folkways of Brittany. Although Christianized for over fifteen hundred years, these Bretons still retain charms of the New Stone Age for warding off the evil eye. They still keep thunderstones in the chimney as protection against lightning. The Bretons never mingled with the Scandinavian Nordics. They are survivors of the original Andonite inhabitants of western Europe, mixed with the Mediterranean stock.

80:9.15 (899.2) But it is a fallacy to presume to classify the white peoples as Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. There has been altogether too much blending to permit such a grouping. At one time there was a fairly well-defined division of the white race into such classes, but widespread intermingling has since occurred, and it is no longer possible to identify these distinctions with any clarity. Even in 3000 B.C. the ancient social groups were no more of one race than are the present inhabitants of North America.

80:9.16 (899.3) This European culture for five thousand years continued to grow and to some extent intermingle. But the barrier of language prevented the full reciprocation of the various Occidental nations. During the past century this culture has been experiencing its best opportunity for blending in the cosmopolitan population of North America; and the future of that continent will be determined by the quality of the racial factors which are permitted to enter into its present and future populations, as well as by the level of the social culture which is maintained.

80:9.17 (899.4) [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]




Paper 79 – Andite Expansion in the Orient

The Urantia Book

Paper 79

Andite Expansion in the Orient

79:0.1 (878.1) ASIA is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this continent that Andon and Fonta were born; in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture that persisted for over one-half million years. Here at this eastern focus of the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield. Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians, Nodites, Adamites, and Andites, and from these regions the potentials of modern civilization spread to the world.

1. The Andites of Turkestan

79:1.1 (878.2) For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eurasia was predominantly, though diminishingly, Andite. In the lowlands of Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to the northern lands of the yellow men. The Andite infiltration of India proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China.

79:1.2 (878.3) For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself.

79:1.3 (878.4) By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers.

79:1.4 (879.1) When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites, they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade. Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was accelerated on both land and water.

79:1.5 (879.2) But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia.

79:1.6 (879.3) Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed descendants of Adam during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races.

79:1.7 (879.4) Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central Asia nearly to the vanishing point.

79:1.8 (879.5) But even in the twentieth century after Christ there are traces of Andite blood among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the presence of the red-haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet-Mongolian types in the Tarim basin of long ago.

79:1.9 (879.6) The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of “one God in heaven.” The early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic concept in Asia.

2. The Andite Conquest of India

79:2.1 (879.7) India is the only locality where all the Urantia races were blended, the Andite invasion adding the last stock. In the highlands northwest of India the Sangik races came into existence, and without exception members of each penetrated the subcontinent of India in their early days, leaving behind them the most heterogeneous race mixture ever to exist on Urantia. Ancient India acted as a catch basin for the migrating races. The base of the peninsula was formerly somewhat narrower than now, much of the deltas of the Ganges and Indus being the work of the last fifty thousand years.

79:2.2 (879.8) The earliest race mixtures in India were a blending of the migrating red and yellow races with the aboriginal Andonites. This group was later weakened by absorbing the greater portion of the extinct eastern green peoples as well as large numbers of the orange race, was slightly improved through limited admixture with the blue man, but suffered exceedingly through assimilation of large numbers of the indigo race. But the so-called aborigines of India are hardly representative of these early people; they are rather the most inferior southern and eastern fringe, which was never fully absorbed by either the early Andites or their later appearing Aryan cousins.

79:2.3 (880.1) By 20,000 B.C. the population of western India had already become tinged with the Adamic blood, and never in the history of Urantia did any one people combine so many different races. But it was unfortunate that the secondary Sangik strains predominated, and it was a real calamity that both the blue and the red man were so largely missing from this racial melting pot of long ago; more of the primary Sangik strains would have contributed very much toward the enhancement of what might have been an even greater civilization. As it developed, the red man was destroying himself in the Americas, the blue man was disporting himself in Europe, and the early descendants of Adam (and most of the later ones) exhibited little desire to admix with the darker colored peoples, whether in India, Africa, or elsewhere.

79:2.4 (880.2) About 15,000 B.C. increasing population pressure throughout Turkestan and Iran occasioned the first really extensive Andite movement toward India. For over fifteen centuries these superior peoples poured in through the highlands of Baluchistan, spreading out over the valleys of the Indus and Ganges and slowly moving southward into the Deccan. This Andite pressure from the northwest drove many of the southern and eastern inferiors into Burma and southern China but not sufficiently to save the invaders from racial obliteration.

79:2.5 (880.3) The failure of India to achieve the hegemony of Eurasia was largely a matter of topography; population pressure from the north only crowded the majority of the people southward into the decreasing territory of the Deccan, surrounded on all sides by the sea. Had there been adjacent lands for emigration, then would the inferiors have been crowded out in all directions, and the superior stocks would have achieved a higher civilization.

79:2.6 (880.4) As it was, these earlier Andite conquerors made a desperate attempt to preserve their identity and stem the tide of racial engulfment by the establishment of rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage. Nonetheless, the Andites had become submerged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the people had been markedly improved by this absorption.

79:2.7 (880.5) Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization, but if the inferior elements of racial stocks predominate, such achievements will be short-lived. A polyglot culture can be preserved only if the superior stocks reproduce themselves in a safe margin over the inferior. Unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural civilization.

79:2.8 (880.6) Had the Andite conquerors been in numbers three times what they were, or had they driven out or destroyed the least desirable third of the mixed orange-green-indigo inhabitants, then would India have become one of the world’s leading centers of cultural civilization and undoubtedly would have attracted more of the later waves of Mesopotamians that flowed into Turkestan and thence northward to Europe.

3. Dravidian India

79:3.1 (881.1) The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native stock eventually resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier and purer Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement, which was continuously weakened as their Andite inheritance became progressively attenuated. And this is what doomed the budding civilization of India almost twelve thousand years ago. But the infusion of even this small amount of the blood of Adam produced a marked acceleration in social development. This composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on earth.

79:3.2 (881.2) Not long after conquering India, the Dravidian Andites lost their racial and cultural contact with Mesopotamia, but the later opening up of the sea lanes and the caravan routes re-established these connections; and at no time within the last ten thousand years has India ever been entirely out of touch with Mesopotamia on the west and China to the east, although the mountain barriers greatly favored western intercourse.

79:3.3 (881.3) The superior culture and religious leanings of the peoples of India date from the early times of Dravidian domination and are due, in part, to the fact that so many of the Sethite priesthood entered India, both in the earlier Andite and in the later Aryan invasions. The thread of monotheism running through the religious history of India thus stems from the teachings of the Adamites in the second garden.

79:3.4 (881.4) As early as 16,000 B.C. a company of one hundred Sethite priests entered India and very nearly achieved the religious conquest of the western half of that polyglot people. But their religion did not persist. Within five thousand years their doctrines of the Paradise Trinity had degenerated into the triune symbol of the fire god.

79:3.5 (881.5) But for more than seven thousand years, down to the end of the Andite migrations, the religious status of the inhabitants of India was far above that of the world at large. During these times India bid fair to produce the leading cultural, religious, philosophic, and commercial civilization of the world. And but for the complete submergence of the Andites by the peoples of the south, this destiny would probably have been realized.

79:3.6 (881.6) The Dravidian centers of culture were located in the river valleys, principally of the Indus and Ganges, and in the Deccan along the three great rivers flowing through the Eastern Ghats to the sea. The settlements along the seacoast of the Western Ghats owed their prominence to maritime relationships with Sumeria.

79:3.7 (881.7) The Dravidians were among the earliest peoples to build cities and to engage in an extensive export and import business, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were making regular trips to distant Mesopotamia; Dravidian shipping was pushing coastwise across the Arabian Sea to the Sumerian cities of the Persian Gulf and was venturing on the waters of the Bay of Bengal as far as the East Indies. An alphabet, together with the art of writing, was imported from Sumeria by these seafarers and merchants.

79:3.8 (881.8) These commercial relationships greatly contributed to the further diversification of a cosmopolitan culture, resulting in the early appearance of many of the refinements and even luxuries of urban life. When the later appearing Aryans entered India, they did not recognize in the Dravidians their Andite cousins submerged in the Sangik races, but they did find a well-advanced civilization. Despite biologic limitations, the Dravidians founded a superior civilization. It was well diffused throughout all India and has survived on down to modern times in the Deccan.

4. The Aryan Invasion of India

79:4.1 (882.1) The second Andite penetration of India was the Aryan invasion during a period of almost five hundred years in the middle of the third millennium before Christ. This migration marked the terminal exodus of the Andites from their homelands in Turkestan.

79:4.2 (882.2) The early Aryan centers were scattered over the northern half of India, notably in the northwest. These invaders never completed the conquest of the country and subsequently met their undoing in this neglect since their lesser numbers made them vulnerable to absorption by the Dravidians of the south, who subsequently overran the entire peninsula except the Himalayan provinces.

79:4.3 (882.3) The Aryans made very little racial impression on India except in the northern provinces. In the Deccan their influence was cultural and religious more than racial. The greater persistence of the so-called Aryan blood in northern India is not only due to their presence in these regions in greater numbers but also because they were reinforced by later conquerors, traders, and missionaries. Right on down to the first century before Christ there was a continuous infiltration of Aryan blood into the Punjab, the last influx being attendant upon the campaigns of the Hellenistic peoples.

79:4.4 (882.4) On the Gangetic plain Aryan and Dravidian eventually mingled to produce a high culture, and this center was later reinforced by contributions from the northeast, coming from China.

79:4.5 (882.5) In India many types of social organizations flourished from time to time, from the semidemocratic systems of the Aryans to despotic and monarchial forms of government. But the most characteristic feature of society was the persistence of the great social castes that were instituted by the Aryans in an effort to perpetuate racial identity. This elaborate caste system has been preserved on down to the present time.

79:4.6 (882.6) Of the four great castes, all but the first were established in the futile effort to prevent racial amalgamation of the Aryan conquerors with their inferior subjects. But the premier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brahmans of the twentieth century after Christ are the lineal cultural descendants of the priests of the second garden, albeit their teachings differ greatly from those of their illustrious predecessors.

79:4.7 (882.7) When the Aryans entered India, they brought with them their concepts of Deity as they had been preserved in the lingering traditions of the religion of the second garden. But the Brahman priests were never able to withstand the pagan momentum built up by the sudden contact with the inferior religions of the Deccan after the racial obliteration of the Aryans. Thus the vast majority of the population fell into the bondage of the enslaving superstitions of inferior religions; and so it was that India failed to produce the high civilization which had been foreshadowed in earlier times.

79:4.8 (882.8) The spiritual awakening of the sixth century before Christ did not persist in India, having died out even before the Mohammedan invasion. But someday a greater Gautama may arise to lead all India in the search for the living God, and then the world will observe the fruition of the cultural potentialities of a versatile people so long comatose under the benumbing influence of an unprogressing spiritual vision.

79:4.9 (883.1) Culture does rest on a biologic foundation, but caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan culture, for religion, true religion, is the indispensable source of that higher energy which drives men to establish a superior civilization based on human brotherhood.

5. Red Man and Yellow Man

79:5.1 (883.2) While the story of India is that of Andite conquest and eventual submergence in the older evolutionary peoples, the narrative of eastern Asia is more properly that of the primary Sangiks, particularly the red man and the yellow man. These two races largely escaped that admixture with the debased Neanderthal strain which so greatly retarded the blue man in Europe, thus preserving the superior potential of the primary Sangik type.

79:5.2 (883.3) While the early Neanderthalers were spread out over the entire breadth of Eurasia, the eastern wing was the more contaminated with debased animal strains. These subhuman types were pushed south by the fifth glacier, the same ice sheet which so long blocked Sangik migration into eastern Asia. And when the red man moved northeast around the highlands of India, he found northeastern Asia free from these subhuman types. The tribal organization of the red races was formed earlier than that of any other peoples, and they were the first to migrate from the central Asian focus of the Sangiks. The inferior Neanderthal strains were destroyed or driven off the mainland by the later migrating yellow tribes. But the red man had reigned supreme in eastern Asia for almost one hundred thousand years before the yellow tribes arrived.

79:5.3 (883.4) More than three hundred thousand years ago the main body of the yellow race entered China from the south as coastwise migrants. Each millennium they penetrated farther and farther inland, but they did not make contact with their migrating Tibetan brethren until comparatively recent times.

79:5.4 (883.5) Growing population pressure caused the northward-moving yellow race to begin to push into the hunting grounds of the red man. This encroachment, coupled with natural racial antagonism, culminated in increasing hostilities, and thus began the crucial struggle for the fertile lands of farther Asia.

79:5.5 (883.6) The story of this agelong contest between the red and yellow races is an epic of Urantia history. For over two hundred thousand years these two superior races waged bitter and unremitting warfare. In the earlier struggles the red men were generally successful, their raiding parties spreading havoc among the yellow settlements. But the yellow man was an apt pupil in the art of warfare, and he early manifested a marked ability to live peaceably with his compatriots; the Chinese were the first to learn that in union there is strength. The red tribes continued their internecine conflicts, and presently they began to suffer repeated defeats at the aggressive hands of the relentless Chinese, who continued their inexorable march northward.

79:5.6 (883.7) One hundred thousand years ago the decimated tribes of the red race were fighting with their backs to the retreating ice of the last glacier, and when the land passage to the West, over the Bering isthmus, became passable, these tribes were not slow in forsaking the inhospitable shores of the Asiatic continent. It is eighty-five thousand years since the last of the pure red men departed from Asia, but the long struggle left its genetic imprint upon the victorious yellow race. The northern Chinese peoples, together with the Andonite Siberians, assimilated much of the red stock and were in considerable measure benefited thereby.

79:5.7 (884.1) The North American Indians never came in contact with even the Andite offspring of Adam and Eve, having been dispossessed of their Asiatic homelands some fifty thousand years before the coming of Adam. During the age of Andite migrations the pure red strains were spreading out over North America as nomadic tribes, hunters who practiced agriculture to a small extent. These races and cultural groups remained almost completely isolated from the remainder of the world from their arrival in the Americas down to the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, when they were discovered by the white races of Europe. Up to that time the Eskimos were the nearest to white men the northern tribes of red men had ever seen.

79:5.8 (884.2) The red and the yellow races are the only human stocks that ever achieved a high degree of civilization apart from the influences of the Andites. The oldest Amerindian culture was the Onamonalonton center in California, but this had long since vanished by 35,000 B.C. In Mexico, Central America, and in the mountains of South America the later and more enduring civilizations were founded by a race predominantly red but containing a considerable admixture of the yellow, orange, and blue.

79:5.9 (884.3) These civilizations were evolutionary products of the Sangiks, notwithstanding that traces of Andite blood reached Peru. Excepting the Eskimos in North America and a few Polynesian Andites in South America, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere had no contact with the rest of the world until the end of the first millennium after Christ. In the original Melchizedek plan for the improvement of the Urantia races it had been stipulated that one million of the pure-line descendants of Adam should go to upstep the red men of the Americas.

6. Dawn of Chinese Civilization

79:6.1 (884.4) Sometime after driving the red man across to North America, the expanding Chinese cleared the Andonites from the river valleys of eastern Asia, pushing them north into Siberia and west into Turkestan, where they were soon to come in contact with the superior culture of the Andites.

79:6.2 (884.5) In Burma and the peninsula of Indo-China the cultures of India and China mixed and blended to produce the successive civilizations of those regions. Here the vanished green race has persisted in larger proportion than anywhere else in the world.

79:6.3 (884.6) Many different races occupied the islands of the Pacific. In general, the southern and then more extensive islands were occupied by peoples carrying a heavy percentage of green and indigo blood. The northern islands were held by Andonites and, later on, by races embracing large proportions of the yellow and red stocks. The ancestors of the Japanese people were not driven off the mainland until 12,000 B.C., when they were dislodged by a powerful southern-coastwise thrust of the northern Chinese tribes. Their final exodus was not so much due to population pressure as to the initiative of a chieftain whom they came to regard as a divine personage.

79:6.4 (885.1) Like the peoples of India and the Levant, victorious tribes of the yellow man established their earliest centers along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal settlements fared poorly in later years as the increasing floods and the shifting courses of the rivers made the lowland cities untenable.

79:6.5 (885.2) Twenty thousand years ago the ancestors of the Chinese had built up a dozen strong centers of primitive culture and learning, especially along the Yellow River and the Yangtze. And now these centers began to be reinforced by the arrival of a steady stream of superior blended peoples from Sinkiang and Tibet. The migration from Tibet to the Yangtze valley was not so extensive as in the north, neither were the Tibetan centers so advanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both movements carried a certain amount of Andite blood eastward to the river settlements.

79:6.6 (885.3) The superiority of the ancient yellow race was due to four great factors:

79:6.7 (885.4) 1. Genetic. Unlike their blue cousins in Europe, both the red and yellow races had largely escaped mixture with debased human stocks. The northern Chinese, already strengthened by small amounts of the superior red and Andonic strains, were soon to benefit by a considerable influx of Andite blood. The southern Chinese did not fare so well in this regard, and they had long suffered from absorption of the green race, while later on they were to be further weakened by the infiltration of the swarms of inferior peoples crowded out of India by the Dravidian-Andite invasion. And today in China there is a definite difference between the northern and southern races.

79:6.8 (885.5) 2. Social. The yellow race early learned the value of peace among themselves. Their internal peaceableness so contributed to population increase as to insure the spread of their civilization among many millions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C. the highest mass civilization on Urantia was in central and northern China. The yellow man was first to achieve a racial solidarity — the first to attain a large-scale cultural, social, and political civilization.

79:6.9 (885.6) The Chinese of 15,000 B.C. were aggressive militarists; they had not been weakened by an overreverence for the past, and numbering less than twelve million, they formed a compact body speaking a common language. During this age they built up a real nation, much more united and homogeneous than their political unions of historic times.

79:6.10 (885.7) 3. Spiritual. During the age of Andite migrations the Chinese were among the more spiritual peoples of earth. Long adherence to the worship of the One Truth proclaimed by Singlangton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stimulus of a progressive and advanced religion is often a decisive factor in cultural development; as India languished, so China forged ahead under the invigorating stimulus of a religion in which truth was enshrined as the supreme Deity.

79:6.11 (885.8) This worship of truth was provocative of research and fearless exploration of the laws of nature and the potentials of mankind. The Chinese of even six thousand years ago were still keen students and aggressive in their pursuit of truth.

79:6.12 (885.9) 4. Geographic. China is protected by the mountains to the west and the Pacific to the east. Only in the north is the way open to attack, and from the days of the red man to the coming of the later descendants of the Andites, the north was not occupied by any aggressive race.

79:6.13 (886.1) And but for the mountain barriers and the later decline in spiritual culture, the yellow race undoubtedly would have attracted to itself the larger part of the Andite migrations from Turkestan and unquestionably would have quickly dominated world civilization.

7. The Andites Enter China

79:7.1 (886.2) About fifteen thousand years ago the Andites, in considerable numbers, were traversing the pass of Ti Tao and spreading out over the upper valley of the Yellow River among the Chinese settlements of Kansu. Presently they penetrated eastward to Honan, where the most progressive settlements were situated. This infiltration from the west was about half Andonite and half Andite.

79:7.2 (886.3) The northern centers of culture along the Yellow River had always been more progressive than the southern settlements on the Yangtze. Within a few thousand years after the arrival of even the small numbers of these superior mortals, the settlements along the Yellow River had forged ahead of the Yangtze villages and had achieved an advanced position over their brethren in the south which has ever since been maintained.

79:7.3 (886.4) It was not that there were so many of the Andites, nor that their culture was so superior, but amalgamation with them produced a more versatile stock. The northern Chinese received just enough of the Andite strain to mildly stimulate their innately able minds but not enough to fire them with the restless, exploratory curiosity so characteristic of the northern white races. This more limited infusion of Andite inheritance was less disturbing to the innate stability of the Sangik type.

79:7.4 (886.5) The later waves of Andites brought with them certain of the cultural advances of Mesopotamia; this is especially true of the last waves of migration from the west. They greatly improved the economic and educational practices of the northern Chinese; and while their influence upon the religious culture of the yellow race was short-lived, their later descendants contributed much to a subsequent spiritual awakening. But the Andite traditions of the beauty of Eden and Dalamatia did influence Chinese traditions; early Chinese legends place “the land of the gods” in the west.

79:7.5 (886.6) The Chinese people did not begin to build cities and engage in manufacture until after 10,000 B.C., subsequent to the climatic changes in Turkestan and the arrival of the later Andite immigrants. The infusion of this new blood did not add so much to the civilization of the yellow man as it stimulated the further and rapid development of the latent tendencies of the superior Chinese stocks. From Honan to Shensi the potentials of an advanced civilization were coming to fruit. Metalworking and all the arts of manufacture date from these days.

79:7.6 (886.7) The similarities between certain of the early Chinese and Mesopotamian methods of time reckoning, astronomy, and governmental administration were due to the commercial relationships between these two remotely situated centers. Chinese merchants traveled the overland routes through Turkestan to Mesopotamia even in the days of the Sumerians. Nor was this exchange one-sided — the valley of the Euphrates benefited considerably thereby, as did the peoples of the Gangetic plain. But the climatic changes and the nomadic invasions of the third millennium before Christ greatly reduced the volume of trade passing over the caravan trails of central Asia.

8. Later Chinese Civilization

79:8.1 (887.1) While the red man suffered from too much warfare, it is not altogether amiss to say that the development of statehood among the Chinese was delayed by the thoroughness of their conquest of Asia. They had a great potential of racial solidarity, but it failed properly to develop because the continuous driving stimulus of the ever-present danger of external aggression was lacking.

79:8.2 (887.2) With the completion of the conquest of eastern Asia the ancient military state gradually disintegrated — past wars were forgotten. Of the epic struggle with the red race there persisted only the hazy tradition of an ancient contest with the archer peoples. The Chinese early turned to agricultural pursuits, which contributed further to their pacific tendencies, while a population well below the land-man ratio for agriculture still further contributed to the growing peacefulness of the country.

79:8.3 (887.3) Consciousness of past achievements (somewhat diminished in the present), the conservatism of an overwhelmingly agricultural people, and a well-developed family life equaled the birth of ancestor veneration, culminating in the custom of so honoring the men of the past as to border on worship. A very similar attitude prevailed among the white races in Europe for some five hundred years following the disruption of Greco-Roman civilization.

79:8.4 (887.4) The belief in, and worship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlangton never entirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth became overshadowed by a growing tendency to venerate that which was already established. Slowly the genius of the yellow race became diverted from the pursuit of the unknown to the preservation of the known. And this is the reason for the stagnation of what had been the world’s most rapidly progressing civilization.

79:8.5 (887.5) Between 4000 and 500 B.C. the political reunification of the yellow race was consummated, but the cultural union of the Yangtze and Yellow river centers had already been effected. This political reunification of the later tribal groups was not without conflict, but the societal opinion of war remained low; ancestor worship, increasing dialects, and no call for military action for thousands upon thousands of years had rendered this people ultrapeaceful.

79:8.6 (887.6) Despite failure to fulfill the promise of an early development of advanced statehood, the yellow race did progressively move forward in the realization of the arts of civilization, especially in the realms of agriculture and horticulture. The hydraulic problems faced by the agriculturists in Shensi and Honan demanded group co-operation for solution. Such irrigation and soil-conservation difficulties contributed in no small measure to the development of interdependence with the consequent promotion of peace among farming groups.

79:8.7 (887.7) Soon developments in writing, together with the establishment of schools, contributed to the dissemination of knowledge on a previously unequaled scale. But the cumbersome nature of the ideographic writing system placed a numerical limit upon the learned classes despite the early appearance of printing. And above all else, the process of social standardization and religio-philosophic dogmatization continued apace. The religious development of ancestor veneration became further complicated by a flood of superstitions involving nature worship, but lingering vestiges of a real concept of God remained preserved in the imperial worship of Shang-ti.

79:8.8 (888.1) The great weakness of ancestor veneration is that it promotes a backward-looking philosophy. However wise it may be to glean wisdom from the past, it is folly to regard the past as the exclusive source of truth. Truth is relative and expanding; it lives always in the present, achieving new expression in each generation of men — even in each human life.

79:8.9 (888.2) The great strength in a veneration of ancestry is the value that such an attitude places upon the family. The amazing stability and persistence of Chinese culture is a consequence of the paramount position accorded the family, for civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family; and in China the family attained a social importance, even a religious significance, approached by few other peoples.

79:8.10 (888.3) The filial devotion and family loyalty exacted by the growing cult of ancestor worship insured the building up of superior family relationships and of enduring family groups, all of which facilitated the following factors in the preservation of civilization:

79:8.11 (888.4) 1. Conservation of property and wealth.

79:8.12 (888.5) 2. Pooling of the experience of more than one generation.

79:8.13 (888.6) 3. Efficient education of children in the arts and sciences of the past.

79:8.14 (888.7) 4. Development of a strong sense of duty, the enhancement of morality, and the augmentation of ethical sensitivity.

79:8.15 (888.8) The formative period of Chinese civilization, opening with the coming of the Andites, continues on down to the great ethical, moral, and semireligious awakening of the sixth century before Christ. And Chinese tradition preserves the hazy record of the evolutionary past; the transition from mother- to father-family, the establishment of agriculture, the development of architecture, the initiation of industry — all these are successively narrated. And this story presents, with greater accuracy than any other similar account, the picture of the magnificent ascent of a superior people from the levels of barbarism. During this time they passed from a primitive agricultural society to a higher social organization embracing cities, manufacture, metalworking, commercial exchange, government, writing, mathematics, art, science, and printing.

79:8.16 (888.9) And so the ancient civilization of the yellow race has persisted down through the centuries. It is almost forty thousand years since the first important advances were made in Chinese culture, and though there have been many retrogressions, the civilization of the sons of Han comes the nearest of all to presenting an unbroken picture of continual progression right on down to the times of the twentieth century. The mechanical and religious developments of the white races have been of a high order, but they have never excelled the Chinese in family loyalty, group ethics, or personal morality.

79:8.17 (888.10) This ancient culture has contributed much to human happiness; millions of human beings have lived and died, blessed by its achievements. For centuries this great civilization has rested upon the laurels of the past, but it is even now reawakening to envision anew the transcendent goals of mortal existence, once again to take up the unremitting struggle for never-ending progress.

79:8.18 (888.11) [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]




Paper 78 – The Violet Race After the Days of Adam

The Urantia Book

Paper 78

The Violet Race After the Days of Adam

78:0.1 (868.1) THE second Eden was the cradle of civilization for almost thirty thousand years. Here in Mesopotamia the Adamic peoples held forth, sending out their progeny to the ends of the earth, and latterly, as amalgamated with the Nodite and Sangik tribes, were known as the Andites. From this region went those men and women who initiated the doings of historic times, and who have so enormously accelerated cultural progress on Urantia.

78:0.2 (868.2) This paper depicts the planetary history of the violet race, beginning soon after the default of Adam, about 35,000 B.C., and extending down through its amalgamation with the Nodite and Sangik races, about 15,000 B.C., to form the Andite peoples and on to its final disappearance from the Mesopotamian homelands, about 2000 B.C.

1. Racial and Cultural Distribution

78:1.1 (868.3) Although the minds and morals of the races were at a low level at the time of Adam’s arrival, physical evolution had gone on quite unaffected by the exigencies of the Caligastia rebellion. Adam’s contribution to the biologic status of the races, notwithstanding the partial failure of the undertaking, enormously upstepped the people of Urantia.

78:1.2 (868.4) Adam and Eve also contributed much that was of value to the social, moral, and intellectual progress of mankind; civilization was immensely quickened by the presence of their offspring. But thirty-five thousand years ago the world at large possessed little culture. Certain centers of civilization existed here and there, but most of Urantia languished in savagery. Racial and cultural distribution was as follows:

78:1.3 (868.5) 1. The violet race — Adamites and Adamsonites. The chief center of Adamite culture was in the second garden, located in the triangle of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; this was indeed the cradle of Occidental and Indian civilizations. The secondary or northern center of the violet race was the Adamsonite headquarters, situated east of the southern shore of the Caspian Sea near the Kopet mountains. From these two centers there went forth to the surrounding lands the culture and life plasm which so immediately quickened all the races.

78:1.4 (868.6) 2. Pre-Sumerians and other Nodites. There were also present in Mesopotamia, near the mouth of the rivers, remnants of the ancient culture of the days of Dalamatia. With the passing millenniums, this group became thoroughly admixed with the Adamites to the north, but they never entirely lost their Nodite traditions. Various other Nodite groups that had settled in the Levant were, in general, absorbed by the later expanding violet race.

78:1.5 (869.1) 3. The Andonites maintained five or six fairly representative settlements to the north and east of the Adamson headquarters. They were also scattered throughout Turkestan, while isolated islands of them persisted throughout Eurasia, especially in mountainous regions. These aborigines still held the northlands of the Eurasian continent, together with Iceland and Greenland, but they had long since been driven from the plains of Europe by the blue man and from the river valleys of farther Asia by the expanding yellow race.

78:1.6 (869.2) 4. The red man occupied the Americas, having been driven out of Asia over fifty thousand years before the arrival of Adam.

78:1.7 (869.3) 5. The yellow race. The Chinese peoples were well established in control of eastern Asia. Their most advanced settlements were situated to the northwest of modern China in regions bordering on Tibet.

78:1.8 (869.4) 6. The blue race. The blue men were scattered all over Europe, but their better centers of culture were situated in the then fertile valleys of the Mediterranean basin and in northwestern Europe. Neanderthal absorption had greatly retarded the culture of the blue man, but he was otherwise the most aggressive, adventurous, and exploratory of all the evolutionary peoples of Eurasia.

78:1.9 (869.5) 7. Pre-Dravidian India. The complex mixture of races in India — embracing every race on earth, but especially the green, orange, and black — maintained a culture slightly above that of the outlying regions.

78:1.10 (869.6) 8. The Sahara civilization. The superior elements of the indigo race had their most progressive settlements in what is now the great Sahara desert. This indigo-black group carried extensive strains of the submerged orange and green races.

78:1.11 (869.7) 9. The Mediterranean basin. The most highly blended race outside of India occupied what is now the Mediterranean basin. Here blue men from the north and Saharans from the south met and mingled with Nodites and Adamites from the east.

78:1.12 (869.8) This was the picture of the world prior to the beginnings of the great expansions of the violet race, about twenty-five thousand years ago. The hope of future civilization lay in the second garden between the rivers of Mesopotamia. Here in southwestern Asia there existed the potential of a great civilization, the possibility of the spread to the world of the ideas and ideals which had been salvaged from the days of Dalamatia and the times of Eden.

78:1.13 (869.9) Adam and Eve had left behind a limited but potent progeny, and the celestial observers on Urantia waited anxiously to find out how these descendants of the erring Material Son and Daughter would acquit themselves.

2. The Adamites in the Second Garden

78:2.1 (869.10) For thousands of years the sons of Adam labored along the rivers of Mesopotamia, working out their irrigation and flood-control problems to the south, perfecting their defenses to the north, and attempting to preserve their traditions of the glory of the first Eden.

78:2.2 (869.11) The heroism displayed in the leadership of the second garden constitutes one of the amazing and inspiring epics of Urantia’s history. These splendid souls never wholly lost sight of the purpose of the Adamic mission, and therefore did they valiantly fight off the influences of the surrounding and inferior tribes while they willingly sent forth their choicest sons and daughters in a steady stream as emissaries to the races of earth. Sometimes this expansion was depleting to the home culture, but always these superior peoples would rehabilitate themselves.

78:2.3 (870.1) The civilization, society, and cultural status of the Adamites were far above the general level of the evolutionary races of Urantia. Only among the old settlements of Van and Amadon and the Adamsonites was there a civilization in any way comparable. But the civilization of the second Eden was an artificial structure — it had not been evolved — and was therefore doomed to deteriorate until it reached a natural evolutionary level.

78:2.4 (870.2) Adam left a great intellectual and spiritual culture behind him, but it was not advanced in mechanical appliances since every civilization is limited by available natural resources, inherent genius, and sufficient leisure to insure inventive fruition. The civilization of the violet race was predicated on the presence of Adam and on the traditions of the first Eden. After Adam’s death and as these traditions grew dim through the passing millenniums, the cultural level of the Adamites steadily deteriorated until it reached a state of reciprocal balance with the status of the surrounding peoples and the naturally evolving cultural capacities of the violet race.

78:2.5 (870.3) But the Adamites were a real nation around 19,000 B.C., numbering four and a half million, and already they had poured forth millions of their progeny into the surrounding peoples.

3. Early Expansions of the Adamites

78:3.1 (870.4) The violet race retained the Edenic traditions of peacefulness for many millenniums, which explains their long delay in making territorial conquests. When they suffered from population pressure, instead of making war to secure more territory, they sent forth their excess inhabitants as teachers to the other races. The cultural effect of these earlier migrations was not enduring, but the absorption of the Adamite teachers, traders, and explorers was biologically invigorating to the surrounding peoples.

78:3.2 (870.5) Some of the Adamites early journeyed westward to the valley of the Nile; others penetrated eastward into Asia, but these were a minority. The mass movement of the later days was extensively northward and thence westward. It was, in the main, a gradual but unremitting northward push, the greater number making their way north and then circling westward around the Caspian Sea into Europe.

78:3.3 (870.6) About twenty-five thousand years ago many of the purer elements of the Adamites were well on their northern trek. And as they penetrated northward, they became less and less Adamic until, by the times of their occupation of Turkestan, they had become thoroughly admixed with the other races, particularly the Nodites. Very few of the pure-line violet peoples ever penetrated far into Europe or Asia.

78:3.4 (870.7) From about 30,000 to 10,000 B.C. epoch-making racial mixtures were taking place throughout southwestern Asia. The highland inhabitants of Turkestan were a virile and vigorous people. To the northwest of India much of the culture of the days of Van persisted. Still to the north of these settlements the best of the early Andonites had been preserved. And both of these superior races of culture and character were absorbed by the northward-moving Adamites. This amalgamation led to the adoption of many new ideas; it facilitated the progress of civilization and greatly advanced all phases of art, science, and social culture.

78:3.5 (871.1) As the period of the early Adamic migrations ended, about 15,000 B.C., there were already more descendants of Adam in Europe and central Asia than anywhere else in the world, even than in Mesopotamia. The European blue races had been largely infiltrated. The lands now called Russia and Turkestan were occupied throughout their southern stretches by a great reservoir of the Adamites mixed with Nodites, Andonites, and red and yellow Sangiks. Southern Europe and the Mediterranean fringe were occupied by a mixed race of Andonite and Sangik peoples — orange, green, and indigo — with a sprinkling of the Adamite stock. Asia Minor and the central-eastern European lands were held by tribes that were predominantly Andonite.

78:3.6 (871.2) A blended colored race, about this time greatly reinforced by arrivals from Mesopotamia, held forth in Egypt and prepared to take over the disappearing culture of the Euphrates valley. The black peoples were moving farther south in Africa and, like the red race, were virtually isolated.

78:3.7 (871.3) The Saharan civilization had been disrupted by drought and that of the Mediterranean basin by flood. The blue races had, as yet, failed to develop an advanced culture. The Andonites were still scattered over the Arctic and central Asian regions. The green and orange races had been exterminated as such. The indigo race was moving south in Africa, there to begin its slow but long-continued racial deterioration.

78:3.8 (871.4) The peoples of India lay stagnant, with a civilization that was unprogressing; the yellow man was consolidating his holdings in central Asia; the brown man had not yet begun his civilization on the near-by islands of the Pacific.

78:3.9 (871.5) These racial distributions, associated with extensive climatic changes, set the world stage for the inauguration of the Andite era of Urantia civilization. These early migrations extended over a period of ten thousand years, from 25,000 to 15,000 B.C. The later or Andite migrations extended from about 15,000 to 6000 B.C.

78:3.10 (871.6) It took so long for the earlier waves of Adamites to pass over Eurasia that their culture was largely lost in transit. Only the later Andites moved with sufficient speed to retain the Edenic culture at any great distance from Mesopotamia.

4. The Andites

78:4.1 (871.7) The Andite races were the primary blends of the pure-line violet race and the Nodites plus the evolutionary peoples. In general, Andites should be thought of as having a far greater percentage of Adamic blood than the modern races. In the main, the term Andite is used to designate those peoples whose racial inheritance was from one-eighth to one-sixth violet. Modern Urantians, even the northern white races, contain much less than this percentage of the blood of Adam.

78:4.2 (871.8) The earliest Andite peoples took origin in the regions adjacent to Mesopotamia more than twenty-five thousand years ago and consisted of a blend of the Adamites and Nodites. The second garden was surrounded by concentric circles of diminishing violet blood, and it was on the periphery of this racial melting pot that the Andite race was born. Later on, when the migrating Adamites and Nodites entered the then fertile regions of Turkestan, they soon blended with the superior inhabitants, and the resultant race mixture extended the Andite type northward.

78:4.3 (872.1) The Andites were the best all-round human stock to appear on Urantia since the days of the pure-line violet peoples. They embraced most of the highest types of the surviving remnants of the Adamite and Nodite races and, later, some of the best strains of the yellow, blue, and green men.

78:4.4 (872.2) These early Andites were not Aryan; they were pre-Aryan. They were not white; they were pre-white. They were neither an Occidental nor an Oriental people. But it is Andite inheritance that gives to the polyglot mixture of the so-called white races that generalized homogeneity which has been called Caucasoid.

78:4.5 (872.3) The purer strains of the violet race had retained the Adamic tradition of peace-seeking, which explains why the earlier race movements had been more in the nature of peaceful migrations. But as the Adamites united with the Nodite stocks, who were by this time a belligerent race, their Andite descendants became, for their day and age, the most skillful and sagacious militarists ever to live on Urantia. Thenceforth the movements of the Mesopotamians grew increasingly military in character and became more akin to actual conquests.

78:4.6 (872.4) These Andites were adventurous; they had roving dispositions. An increase of either Sangik or Andonite stock tended to stabilize them. But even so, their later descendants never stopped until they had circumnavigated the globe and discovered the last remote continent.

5. The Andite Migrations

78:5.1 (872.5) For twenty thousand years the culture of the second garden persisted, but it experienced a steady decline until about 15,000 B.C., when the regeneration of the Sethite priesthood and the leadership of Amosad inaugurated a brilliant era. The massive waves of civilization which later spread over Eurasia immediately followed the great renaissance of the Garden consequent upon the extensive union of the Adamites with the surrounding mixed Nodites to form the Andites.

78:5.2 (872.6) These Andites inaugurated new advances throughout Eurasia and North Africa. From Mesopotamia through Sinkiang the Andite culture was dominant, and the steady migration toward Europe was continuously offset by new arrivals from Mesopotamia. But it is hardly correct to speak of the Andites as a race in Mesopotamia proper until near the beginning of the terminal migrations of the mixed descendants of Adam. By this time even the races in the second garden had become so blended that they could no longer be considered Adamites.

78:5.3 (872.7) The civilization of Turkestan was constantly being revived and refreshed by the newcomers from Mesopotamia, especially by the later Andite cavalrymen. The so-called Aryan mother tongue was in process of formation in the highlands of Turkestan; it was a blend of the Andonic dialect of that region with the language of the Adamsonites and later Andites. Many modern languages are derived from this early speech of these central Asian tribes who conquered Europe, India, and the upper stretches of the Mesopotamian plains. This ancient language gave the Occidental tongues all of that similarity which is called Aryan.

78:5.4 (872.8) By 12,000 B.C. three quarters of the Andite stock of the world was resident in northern and eastern Europe, and when the later and final exodus from Mesopotamia took place, sixty-five per cent of these last waves of emigration entered Europe.

78:5.5 (873.1) The Andites not only migrated to Europe but to northern China and India, while many groups penetrated to the ends of the earth as missionaries, teachers, and traders. They contributed considerably to the northern groups of the Saharan Sangik peoples. But only a few teachers and traders ever penetrated farther south in Africa than the headwaters of the Nile. Later on, mixed Andites and Egyptians followed down both the east and west coasts of Africa well below the equator, but they did not reach Madagascar.

78:5.6 (873.2) These Andites were the so-called Dravidian and later Aryan conquerors of India; and their presence in central Asia greatly upstepped the ancestors of the Turanians. Many of this race journeyed to China by way of both Sinkiang and Tibet and added desirable qualities to the later Chinese stocks. From time to time small groups made their way into Japan, Formosa, the East Indies, and southern China, though very few entered southern China by the coastal route.

78:5.7 (873.3) One hundred and thirty-two of this race, embarking in a fleet of small boats from Japan, eventually reached South America and by intermarriage with the natives of the Andes established the ancestry of the later rulers of the Incas. They crossed the Pacific by easy stages, tarrying on the many islands they found along the way. The islands of the Polynesian group were both more numerous and larger then than now, and these Andite sailors, together with some who followed them, biologically modified the native groups in transit. Many flourishing centers of civilization grew up on these now submerged lands as a result of Andite penetration. Easter Island was long a religious and administrative center of one of these lost groups. But of the Andites who navigated the Pacific of long ago none but the one hundred and thirty-two ever reached the mainland of the Americas.

78:5.8 (873.4) The migratory conquests of the Andites continued on down to their final dispersions, from 8000 to 6000 B.C. As they poured out of Mesopotamia, they continuously depleted the biologic reserves of their homelands while markedly strengthening the surrounding peoples. And to every nation to which they journeyed, they contributed humor, art, adventure, music, and manufacture. They were skillful domesticators of animals and expert agriculturists. For the time being, at least, their presence usually improved the religious beliefs and moral practices of the older races. And so the culture of Mesopotamia quietly spread out over Europe, India, China, northern Africa, and the Pacific Islands.

6. The Last Andite Dispersions

78:6.1 (873.5) The last three waves of Andites poured out of Mesopotamia between 8000 and 6000 B.C. These three great waves of culture were forced out of Mesopotamia by the pressure of the hill tribes to the east and the harassment of the plainsmen of the west. The inhabitants of the Euphrates valley and adjacent territory went forth in their final exodus in several directions:

78:6.2 (873.6) Sixty-five per cent entered Europe by the Caspian Sea route to conquer and amalgamate with the newly appearing white races — the blend of the blue men and the earlier Andites.

78:6.3 (873.7) Ten per cent, including a large group of the Sethite priests, moved eastward through the Elamite highlands to the Iranian plateau and Turkestan. Many of their descendants were later driven into India with their Aryan brethren from the regions to the north.

78:6.4 (874.1) Ten per cent of the Mesopotamians turned eastward in their northern trek, entering Sinkiang, where they blended with the Andite-yellow inhabitants. The majority of the able offspring of this racial union later entered China and contributed much to the immediate improvement of the northern division of the yellow race.

78:6.5 (874.2) Ten per cent of these fleeing Andites made their way across Arabia and entered Egypt.

78:6.6 (874.3) Five per cent of the Andites, the very superior culture of the coastal district about the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates who had kept themselves free from intermarriage with the inferior neighboring tribesmen, refused to leave their homes. This group represented the survival of many superior Nodite and Adamite strains.

78:6.7 (874.4) The Andites had almost entirely evacuated this region by 6000 B.C., though their descendants, largely mixed with the surrounding Sangik races and the Andonites of Asia Minor, were there to give battle to the northern and eastern invaders at a much later date.

78:6.8 (874.5) The cultural age of the second garden was terminated by the increasing infiltration of the surrounding inferior stocks. Civilization moved westward to the Nile and the Mediterranean islands, where it continued to thrive and advance long after its fountainhead in Mesopotamia had deteriorated. And this unchecked influx of inferior peoples prepared the way for the later conquest of all Mesopotamia by the northern barbarians who drove out the residual strains of ability. Even in later years the cultured residue still resented the presence of these ignorant and uncouth invaders.

7. The Floods in Mesopotamia

78:7.1 (874.6) The river dwellers were accustomed to rivers overflowing their banks at certain seasons; these periodic floods were annual events in their lives. But new perils threatened the valley of Mesopotamia as a result of progressive geologic changes to the north.

78:7.2 (874.7) For thousands of years after the submergence of the first Eden the mountains about the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and those to the northwest and northeast of Mesopotamia continued to rise. This elevation of the highlands was greatly accelerated about 5000 B.C., and this, together with greatly increased snowfall on the northern mountains, caused unprecedented floods each spring throughout the Euphrates valley. These spring floods grew increasingly worse so that eventually the inhabitants of the river regions were driven to the eastern highlands. For almost a thousand years scores of cities were practically deserted because of these extensive deluges.

78:7.3 (874.8) Almost five thousand years later, as the Hebrew priests in Babylonian captivity sought to trace the Jewish people back to Adam, they found great difficulty in piecing the story together; and it occurred to one of them to abandon the effort, to let the whole world drown in its wickedness at the time of Noah’s flood, and thus to be in a better position to trace Abraham right back to one of the three surviving sons of Noah.

78:7.4 (875.1) The traditions of a time when water covered the whole of the earth’s surface are universal. Many races harbor the story of a world-wide flood some time during past ages. The Biblical story of Noah, the ark, and the flood is an invention of the Hebrew priesthood during the Babylonian captivity. There has never been a universal flood since life was established on Urantia. The only time the surface of the earth was completely covered by water was during those Archeozoic ages before the land had begun to appear.

78:7.5 (875.2) But Noah really lived; he was a wine maker of Aram, a river settlement near Erech. He kept a written record of the days of the river’s rise from year to year. He brought much ridicule upon himself by going up and down the river valley advocating that all houses be built of wood, boat fashion, and that the family animals be put on board each night as the flood season approached. He would go to the neighboring river settlements every year and warn them that in so many days the floods would come. Finally a year came in which the annual floods were greatly augmented by unusually heavy rainfall so that the sudden rise of the waters wiped out the entire village; only Noah and his immediate family were saved in their houseboat.

78:7.6 (875.3) These floods completed the disruption of Andite civilization. With the ending of this period of deluge, the second garden was no more. Only in the south and among the Sumerians did any trace of the former glory remain.

78:7.7 (875.4) The remnants of this, one of the oldest civilizations, are to be found in these regions of Mesopotamia and to the northeast and northwest. But still older vestiges of the days of Dalamatia exist under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the first Eden lies submerged under the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

8. The Sumerians — Last of the Andites

78:8.1 (875.5) When the last Andite dispersion broke the biologic backbone of Mesopotamian civilization, a small minority of this superior race remained in their homeland near the mouths of the rivers. These were the Sumerians, and by 6000 B.C. they had become largely Andite in extraction, though their culture was more exclusively Nodite in character, and they clung to the ancient traditions of Dalamatia. Nonetheless, these Sumerians of the coastal regions were the last of the Andites in Mesopotamia. But the races of Mesopotamia were already thoroughly blended by this late date, as is evidenced by the skull types found in the graves of this era.

78:8.2 (875.6) It was during the floodtimes that Susa so greatly prospered. The first and lower city was inundated so that the second or higher town succeeded the lower as the headquarters for the peculiar artcrafts of that day. With the later diminution of these floods, Ur became the center of the pottery industry. About seven thousand years ago Ur was on the Persian Gulf, the river deposits having since built up the land to its present limits. These settlements suffered less from the floods because of better controlling works and the widening mouths of the rivers.

78:8.3 (875.7) The peaceful grain growers of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys had long been harassed by the raids of the barbarians of Turkestan and the Iranian plateau. But now a concerted invasion of the Euphrates valley was brought about by the increasing drought of the highland pastures. And this invasion was all the more serious because these surrounding herdsmen and hunters possessed large numbers of tamed horses. It was the possession of horses which gave them a tremendous military advantage over their rich neighbors to the south. In a short time they overran all Mesopotamia, driving forth the last waves of culture which spread out over all of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa.

78:8.4 (876.1) These conquerors of Mesopotamia carried in their ranks many of the better Andite strains of the mixed northern races of Turkestan, including some of the Adamson stock. These less advanced but more vigorous tribes from the north quickly and willingly assimilated the residue of the civilization of Mesopotamia and presently developed into those mixed peoples found in the Euphrates valley at the beginning of historic annals. They quickly revived many phases of the passing civilization of Mesopotamia, adopting the arts of the valley tribes and much of the culture of the Sumerians. They even sought to build a third tower of Babel and later adopted the term as their national name.

78:8.5 (876.2) When these barbarian cavalrymen from the northeast overran the whole Euphrates valley, they did not conquer the remnants of the Andites who dwelt about the mouth of the river on the Persian Gulf. These Sumerians were able to defend themselves because of superior intelligence, better weapons, and their extensive system of military canals, which were an adjunct to their irrigation scheme of interconnecting pools. They were a united people because they had a uniform group religion. They were thus able to maintain their racial and national integrity long after their neighbors to the northwest were broken up into isolated city-states. No one of these city groups was able to overcome the united Sumerians.

78:8.6 (876.3) And the invaders from the north soon learned to trust and prize these peace-loving Sumerians as able teachers and administrators. They were greatly respected and sought after as teachers of art and industry, as directors of commerce, and as civil rulers by all peoples to the north and from Egypt in the west to India in the east.

78:8.7 (876.4) After the breakup of the early Sumerian confederation the later city-states were ruled by the apostate descendants of the Sethite priests. Only when these priests made conquests of the neighboring cities did they call themselves kings. The later city kings failed to form powerful confederations before the days of Sargon because of deity jealousy. Each city believed its municipal god to be superior to all other gods, and therefore they refused to subordinate themselves to a common leader.

78:8.8 (876.5) The end of this long period of the weak rule of the city priests was terminated by Sargon, the priest of Kish, who proclaimed himself king and started out on the conquest of the whole of Mesopotamia and adjoining lands. And for the time, this ended the city-states, priest-ruled and priest-ridden, each city having its own municipal god and its own ceremonial practices.

78:8.9 (876.6) After the breakup of this Kish confederation there ensued a long period of constant warfare between these valley cities for supremacy. And the rulership variously shifted between Sumer, Akkad, Kish, Erech, Ur, and Susa.

78:8.10 (876.7) About 2500 B.C. the Sumerians suffered severe reverses at the hands of the northern Suites and Guites. Lagash, the Sumerian capital built on flood mounds, fell. Erech held out for thirty years after the fall of Akkad. By the time of the establishment of the rule of Hammurabi the Sumerians had become absorbed into the ranks of the northern Semites, and the Mesopotamian Andites passed from the pages of history.

78:8.11 (877.1) From 2500 to 2000 B.C. the nomads were on a rampage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Nerites constituted the final eruption of the Caspian group of the Mesopotamian descendants of the blended Andonite and Andite races. What the barbarians failed to do to effect the ruination of Mesopotamia, subsequent climatic changes succeeded in accomplishing.

78:8.12 (877.2) And this is the story of the violet race after the days of Adam and of the fate of their homeland between the Tigris and Euphrates. Their ancient civilization finally fell due to the emigration of superior peoples and the immigration of their inferior neighbors. But long before the barbarian cavalrymen conquered the valley, much of the Garden culture had spread to Asia, Africa, and Europe, there to produce the ferments which have resulted in the twentieth-century civilization of Urantia.

78:8.13 (877.3) [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]




Paper 77 – The Midway Creatures

The Urantia Book

Paper 77

The Midway Creatures

77:0.1 (855.1) MOST of the inhabited worlds of Nebadon harbor one or more groups of unique beings existing on a life-functioning level about midway between those of the mortals of the realms and of the angelic orders; hence are they called midway creatures. They appear to be an accident of time, but they occur so widespreadly and are so valuable as helpers that we have all long since accepted them as one of the essential orders of our combined planetary ministry.

77:0.2 (855.2) On Urantia there function two distinct orders of midwayers: the primary or senior corps, who came into being back in the days of Dalamatia, and the secondary or younger group, whose origin dates from the times of Adam.

1. The Primary Midwayers

77:1.1 (855.3) The primary midwayers have their genesis in a unique interassociation of the material and the spiritual on Urantia. We know of the existence of similar creatures on other worlds and in other systems, but they originated by dissimilar techniques.

77:1.2 (855.4) It is well always to bear in mind that the successive bestowals of the Sons of God on an evolving planet produce marked changes in the spiritual economy of the realm and sometimes so modify the workings of the interassociation of spiritual and material agencies on a planet as to create situations indeed difficult of understanding. The status of the one hundred corporeal members of Prince Caligastia’s staff illustrates just such a unique interassociation: As ascendant morontia citizens of Jerusem they were supermaterial creatures without reproductive prerogatives. As descendant planetary ministers on Urantia they were material sex creatures capable of procreating material offspring (as some of them later did). What we cannot satisfactorily explain is how these one hundred could function in the parental role on a supermaterial level, but that is exactly what happened. A supermaterial (nonsexual) liaison of a male and a female member of the corporeal staff resulted in the appearance of the first-born of the primary midwayers.

77:1.3 (855.5) It was immediately discovered that a creature of this order, midway between the mortal and angelic levels, would be of great service in carrying on the affairs of the Prince’s headquarters, and each couple of the corporeal staff was accordingly granted permission to produce a similar being. This effort resulted in the first group of fifty midway creatures.

77:1.4 (855.6) After a year of observing the work of this unique group, the Planetary Prince authorized the reproduction of midwayers without restriction. This plan was carried out as long as the power to create continued, and the original corps of 50,000 was accordingly brought into being.

77:1.5 (856.1) A period of one-half year intervened between the production of each midwayer, and when one thousand such beings had been born to each couple, no more were ever forthcoming. And there is no explanation available as to why this power was exhausted upon the appearance of the one thousandth offspring. No amount of further experimentation ever resulted in anything but failure.

77:1.6 (856.2) These creatures constituted the intelligence corps of the Prince’s administration. They ranged far and wide, studying and observing the world races and rendering other invaluable services to the Prince and his staff in the work of influencing human society remote from the planetary headquarters.

77:1.7 (856.3) This regime continued until the tragic days of the planetary rebellion, which ensnared a little over four fifths of the primary midwayers. The loyal corps entered the service of the Melchizedek receivers, functioning under the titular leadership of Van until the days of Adam.

2. The Nodite Race

77:2.1 (856.4) While this is the narrative of the origin, nature, and function of the midway creatures of Urantia, the kinship between the two orders — primary and secondary — makes it necessary to interrupt the story of the primary midwayers at this point in order to follow out the line of descent from the rebel members of the corporeal staff of Prince Caligastia from the days of the planetary rebellion to the times of Adam. It was this line of inheritance which, in the early days of the second garden, furnished one half of the ancestry for the secondary order of midway creatures.

77:2.2 (856.5) The 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.

77:2.3 (856.6) The 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.

77:2.4 (857.1) Since 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.

77:2.5 (857.2) These 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.

77:2.6 (857.3) Thus did the Nodite peoples arise out of certain peculiar and unexpected modifications occurring in the life plasm which had been transferred from the bodies of the Andonite contributors to those of the corporeal staff members by the Avalon surgeons.

77:2.7 (857.4) It will be recalled that the one hundred Andonite germ plasm contributors were in turn made possessors of the organic complement of the tree of life so that the Satania life currents likewise invested their bodies. The forty-four modified Andonites who followed the staff into rebellion also mated among themselves and made a great contribution to the better strains of the Nodite people.

77:2.8 (857.5) These two groups, embracing 104 individuals who carried the modified Andonite germ plasm, constitute the ancestry of the Nodites, the eighth race to appear on Urantia. And this new feature of human life on Urantia represents another phase of the outworking of the original plan of utilizing this planet as a life-modification world, except that this was one of the unforeseen developments.

77:2.9 (857.6) The pure-line Nodites were a magnificent race, but they gradually mingled with the evolutionary peoples of earth, and before long great deterioration had occurred. Ten thousand years after the rebellion they had lost ground to the point where their average length of life was little more than that of the evolutionary races.

77:2.10 (857.7) When 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.

77:2.11 (857.8) The 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.

77:2.12 (858.1) The reckoning of time by the twenty-eight-day month persisted long after the days of Adam. But when the Egyptians undertook to reform the calendar, about seven thousand years ago, they did it with great accuracy, introducing the year of 365 days.

3. The Tower of Babel

77:3.1 (858.2) After the submergence of Dalamatia the Nodites moved north and east, presently founding the new city of Dilmun as their racial and cultural headquarters. And about fifty thousand years after the death of Nod, when the offspring of the Prince’s staff had become too numerous to find subsistence in the lands immediately surrounding their new city of Dilmun, and after they had reached out to intermarry with the Andonite and Sangik tribes adjoining their borders, it occurred to their leaders that something should be done to preserve their racial unity. Accordingly a council of the tribes was called, and after much deliberation the plan of Bablot, a descendant of Nod, was endorsed.

77:3.2 (858.3) Bablot proposed to erect a pretentious temple of racial glorification at the center of their then occupied territory. This temple was to have a tower the like of which the world had never seen. It was to be a monumental memorial to their passing greatness. There were many who wished to have this monument erected in Dilmun, but others contended that such a great structure should be placed a safe distance from the dangers of the sea, remembering the traditions of the engulfment of their first capital, Dalamatia.

77:3.3 (858.4) Bablot planned that the new buildings should become the nucleus of the future center of the Nodite culture and civilization. His counsel finally prevailed, and construction was started in accordance with his plans. The new city was to be named Bablot after the architect and builder of the tower. This location later became known as Bablod and eventually as Babel.

77:3.4 (858.5) But the Nodites were still somewhat divided in sentiment as to the plans and purposes of this undertaking. Neither were their leaders altogether agreed concerning either construction plans or usage of the buildings after they should be completed. After four and one-half years of work a great dispute arose about the object and motive for the erection of the tower. The contentions became so bitter that all work stopped. The food carriers spread the news of the dissension, and large numbers of the tribes began to forgather at the building site. Three differing views were propounded as to the purpose of building the tower:

77:3.5 (858.6) 1. The largest group, almost one half, desired to see the tower built as a memorial of Nodite history and racial superiority. They thought it ought to be a great and imposing structure which would challenge the admiration of all future generations.

77:3.6 (858.7) 2. The next largest faction wanted the tower designed to commemorate the Dilmun culture. They foresaw that Bablot would become a great center of commerce, art, and manufacture.

77:3.7 (859.1) 3. The smallest and minority contingent held that the erection of the tower presented an opportunity for making atonement for the folly of their progenitors in participating in the Caligastia rebellion. They maintained that the tower should be devoted to the worship of the Father of all, that the whole purpose of the new city should be to take the place of Dalamatia — to function as the cultural and religious center for the surrounding barbarians.

77:3.8 (859.2) The religious group were promptly voted down. The majority rejected the teaching that their ancestors had been guilty of rebellion; they resented such a racial stigma. Having disposed of one of the three angles to the dispute and failing to settle the other two by debate, they fell to fighting. The religionists, the noncombatants, fled to their homes in the south, while their fellows fought until well-nigh obliterated.

77:3.9 (859.3) About twelve thousand years ago a second attempt to erect the tower of Babel was made. The mixed races of the Andites (Nodites and Adamites) undertook to raise a new temple on the ruins of the first structure, but there was not sufficient support for the enterprise; it fell of its own pretentious weight. This region was long known as the land of Babel.

4. Nodite Centers of Civilization

77:4.1 (859.4) The dispersion of the Nodites was an immediate result of the internecine conflict over the tower of Babel. This internal war greatly reduced the numbers of the purer Nodites and was in many ways responsible for their failure to establish a great pre-Adamic civilization. From this time on Nodite culture declined for over one hundred and twenty thousand years until it was upstepped by Adamic infusion. But even in the times of Adam the Nodites were still an able people. Many of their mixed descendants were numbered among the Garden builders, and several of Van’s group captains were Nodites. Some of the most capable minds serving on Adam’s staff were of this race.

77:4.2 (859.5) Three out of the four great Nodite centers were established immediately following the Bablot conflict:

77:4.3 (859.6) 1. The western or Syrian Nodites. The remnants of the nationalistic or racial memorialists journeyed northward, uniting with the Andonites to found the later Nodite centers to the northwest of Mesopotamia. This was the largest group of the dispersing Nodites, and they contributed much to the later appearing Assyrian stock.

77:4.4 (859.7) 2. The eastern or Elamite Nodites. The culture and commerce advocates migrated in large numbers eastward into Elam and there united with the mixed Sangik tribes. The Elamites of thirty to forty thousand years ago had become largely Sangik in nature, although they continued to maintain a civilization superior to that of the surrounding barbarians.

77:4.5 (859.8) After the establishment of the second garden it was customary to allude to this near-by Nodite settlement as “the land of Nod”; and during the long period of relative peace between this Nodite group and the Adamites, the two races were greatly blended, for it became more and more the custom for the Sons of God (the Adamites) to intermarry with the daughters of men (the Nodites).

77:4.6 (860.1) 3. The central or pre-Sumerian Nodites. A small group at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers maintained more of their racial integrity. They persisted for thousands of years and eventually furnished the Nodite ancestry which blended with the Adamites to found the Sumerian peoples of historic times.

77:4.7 (860.2) And all this explains how the Sumerians appeared so suddenly and mysteriously on the stage of action in Mesopotamia. Investigators will never be able to trace out and follow these tribes back to the beginning of the Sumerians, who had their origin two hundred thousand years ago after the submergence of Dalamatia. Without a trace of origin elsewhere in the world, these ancient tribes suddenly loom upon the horizon of civilization with a full-grown and superior culture, embracing temples, metalwork, agriculture, animals, pottery, weaving, commercial law, civil codes, religious ceremonial, and an old system of writing. At the beginning of the historical era they had long since lost the alphabet of Dalamatia, having adopted the peculiar writing system originating in Dilmun. The Sumerian language, though virtually lost to the world, was not Semitic; it had much in common with the so-called Aryan tongues.

77:4.8 (860.3) The elaborate records left by the Sumerians describe the site of a remarkable settlement which was located on the Persian Gulf near the earlier city of Dilmun. The Egyptians called this city of ancient glory Dilmat, while the later Adamized Sumerians confused both the first and second Nodite cities with Dalamatia and called all three Dilmun. And already have archaeologists found these ancient Sumerian clay tablets which tell of this earthly paradise “where the Gods first blessed mankind with the example of civilized and cultured life.” And these tablets, descriptive of Dilmun, the paradise of men and God, are now silently resting on the dusty shelves of many museums.

77:4.9 (860.4) The Sumerians well knew of the first and second Edens but, despite extensive intermarriage with the Adamites, continued to regard the garden dwellers to the north as an alien race. Sumerian pride in the more ancient Nodite culture led them to ignore these later vistas of glory in favor of the grandeur and paradisiacal traditions of the city of Dilmun.

77:4.10 (860.5) 4. The northern Nodites and Amadonites — the Vanites. This group arose prior to the Bablot conflict. These northernmost Nodites were descendants of those who had forsaken the leadership of Nod and his successors for that of Van and Amadon.

77:4.11 (860.6) Some of the early associates of Van subsequently settled about the shores of the lake which still bears his name, and their traditions grew up about this locality. Ararat became their sacred mountain, having much the same meaning to later-day Vanites that Sinai had to the Hebrews. Ten thousand years ago the Vanite ancestors of the Assyrians taught that their moral law of seven commandments had been given to Van by the Gods upon Mount Ararat. They firmly believed that Van and his associate Amadon were taken alive from the planet while they were up on the mountain engaged in worship.

77:4.12 (860.7) Mount Ararat was the sacred mountain of northern Mesopotamia, and since much of your tradition of these ancient times was acquired in connection with the Babylonian story of the flood, it is not surprising that Mount Ararat and its region were woven into the later Jewish story of Noah and the universal flood.

77:4.13 (860.8) About 35,000 B.C. Adamson visited one of the easternmost of the old Vanite settlements to found his center of civilization.

5. Adamson and Ratta

77:5.1 (861.1) Having delineated the Nodite antecedents of the ancestry of the secondary midwayers, this narrative should now give consideration to the Adamic half of their ancestry, for the secondary midwayers are also the grandchildren of Adamson, the first-born of the violet race of Urantia.

77:5.2 (861.2) Adamson was among that group of the children of Adam and Eve who elected to remain on earth with their father and mother. Now this eldest son of Adam had often heard from Van and Amadon the story of their highland home in the north, and sometime after the establishment of the second garden he determined to go in search of this land of his youthful dreams.

77:5.3 (861.3) Adamson was 120 years old at this time and had been the father of thirty-two pure-line children of the first garden. He wanted to remain with his parents and assist them in upbuilding the second garden, but he was greatly disturbed by the loss of his mate and their children, who had all elected to go to Edentia along with those other Adamic children who chose to become wards of the Most Highs.

77:5.4 (861.4) Adamson would not desert his parents on Urantia, he was disinclined to flee from hardship or danger, but he found the associations of the second garden far from satisfying. He did much to forward the early activities of defense and construction but decided to leave for the north at the earliest opportunity. And though his departure was wholly pleasant, Adam and Eve were much grieved to lose their eldest son, to have him go out into a strange and hostile world, as they feared, never to return.

77:5.5 (861.5) A company of twenty-seven followed Adamson northward in quest of these people of his childhood fantasies. In a little over three years Adamson’s party actually found the object of their adventure, and among these people he discovered a wonderful and beautiful woman, twenty years old, who claimed to be the last pure-line descendant of the Prince’s staff. This woman, Ratta, said that her ancestors were all descendants of two of the fallen staff of the Prince. She was the last of her race, having no living brothers or sisters. She had about decided not to mate, had about made up her mind to die without issue, but she lost her heart to the majestic Adamson. And when she heard the story of Eden, how the predictions of Van and Amadon had really come to pass, and as she listened to the recital of the Garden default, she was encompassed with but a single thought — to marry this son and heir of Adam. And quickly the idea grew upon Adamson. In a little more than three months they were married.

77:5.6 (861.6) Adamson and Ratta had a family of sixty-seven children. They gave origin to a great line of the world’s leadership, but they did something more. It should be remembered that both of these beings were really superhuman. Every fourth child born to them was of a unique order. It was often invisible. Never in the world’s history had such a thing occurred. Ratta was greatly perturbed — even superstitious — but Adamson well knew of the existence of the primary midwayers, and he concluded that something similar was transpiring before his eyes. When the second strangely behaving offspring arrived, he decided to mate them, since one was male and the other female, and this is the origin of the secondary order of midwayers. Within one hundred years, before this phenomenon ceased, almost two thousand were brought into being.

77:5.7 (862.1) Adamson lived for 396 years. Many times he returned to visit his father and mother. Every seven years he and Ratta journeyed south to the second garden, and meanwhile the midwayers kept him informed regarding the welfare of his people. During Adamson’s life they did great service in upbuilding a new and independent world center for truth and righteousness.

77:5.8 (862.2) Adamson and Ratta thus had at their command this corps of marvelous helpers, who labored with them throughout their long lives to assist in the propagation of advanced truth and in the spread of higher standards of spiritual, intellectual, and physical living. And the results of this effort at world betterment never did become fully eclipsed by subsequent retrogressions.

77:5.9 (862.3) The Adamsonites maintained a high culture for almost seven thousand years from the times of Adamson and Ratta. Later on they became admixed with the neighboring Nodites and Andonites and were also included among the “mighty men of old.” And some of the advances of that age persisted to become a latent part of the cultural potential which later blossomed into European civilization.

77:5.10 (862.4) This center of civilization was situated in the region east of the southern end of the Caspian Sea, near the Kopet Dagh. A short way up in the foothills of Turkestan are the vestiges of what was onetime the Adamsonite headquarters of the violet race. In these highland sites, situated in a narrow and ancient fertile belt lying in the lower foothills of the Kopet range, there successively arose at various periods four diverse cultures respectively fostered by four different groups of Adamson’s descendants. It was the second of these groups which migrated westward to Greece and the islands of the Mediterranean. The residue of Adamson’s descendants migrated north and west to enter Europe with the blended stock of the last Andite wave coming out of Mesopotamia, and they were also numbered among the Andite-Aryan invaders of India.

6. The Secondary Midwayers

77:6.1 (862.5) While the primary midwayers had a well-nigh superhuman origin, the secondary order are the offspring of the pure Adamic stock united with a humanized descendant of ancestors common to the parentage of the senior corps.

77:6.2 (862.6) Among the children of Adamson there were just sixteen of the peculiar progenitors of the secondary midwayers. These unique children were equally divided as regards sex, and each couple was capable of producing a secondary midwayer every seventy days by a combined technique of sex and nonsex liaison. And such a phenomenon was never possible on earth before that time, nor has it ever occurred since.

77:6.3 (862.7) These sixteen children lived and died (except for their peculiarities) as mortals of the realm, but their electrically energized offspring live on and on, not being subject to the limitations of mortal flesh.

77:6.4 (862.8) Each of the eight couples eventually produced 248 midwayers, and thus did the original secondary corps — 1,984 in number — come into existence. There are eight subgroups of secondary midwayers. They are designated as A-B-C the first, second, third, and so on. And then there are D-E-F the first, second, and so on.

77:6.5 (862.9) After the default of Adam the primary midwayers returned to the service of the Melchizedek receivers, while the secondary group were attached to the Adamson center until his death. Thirty-three of these secondary midwayers, the chiefs of their organization at the death of Adamson, endeavored to swing the whole order over to the service of the Melchizedeks, thus effecting a liaison with the primary corps. But failing to accomplish this, they deserted their companions and went over in a body to the service of the planetary receivers.

77:6.6 (863.1) After the death of Adamson the remainder of the secondary midwayers became a strange, unorganized, and unattached influence on Urantia. From that time to the days of Machiventa Melchizedek they led an irregular and unorganized existence. They were partially brought under control by this Melchizedek but were still productive of much mischief up to the days of Christ Michael. And during his sojourn on earth they all made final decisions as to their future destiny, the loyal majority then enlisting under the leadership of the primary midwayers.

7. The Rebel Midwayers

77:7.1 (863.2) The majority of the primary midwayers went into sin at the time of the Lucifer rebellion. When the devastation of the planetary rebellion was reckoned up, among other losses it was discovered that of the original 50,000, 40,119 had joined the Caligastia secession.

77:7.2 (863.3) The original number of secondary midwayers was 1,984, and of these 873 failed to align themselves with the rule of Michael and were duly interned in connection with the planetary adjudication of Urantia on the day of Pentecost. No one can forecast the future of these fallen creatures.

77:7.3 (863.4) Both groups of rebel midwayers are now held in custody awaiting the final adjudication of the affairs of the system rebellion. But they did many strange things on earth prior to the inauguration of the present planetary dispensation.

77:7.4 (863.5) These disloyal midwayers were able to reveal themselves to mortal eyes under certain circumstances, and especially was this true of the associates of Beelzebub, the leader of the apostate secondary midwayers. But these unique creatures must not be confused with certain of the rebel cherubim and seraphim who also were on earth up to the time of Christ’s death and resurrection. Some of the older writers designated these rebellious midway creatures as evil spirits and demons, and the apostate seraphim as evil angels.

77:7.5 (863.6) On no world can evil spirits possess any mortal mind subsequent to the life of a Paradise bestowal Son. But before the days of Christ Michael on Urantia — before the universal coming of the Thought Adjusters and the pouring out of the Master’s spirit upon all flesh — these rebel midwayers were actually able to influence the minds of certain inferior mortals and somewhat to control their actions. This was accomplished in much the same way as the loyal midway creatures function when they serve as efficient contact guardians of the human minds of the Urantia reserve corps of destiny at those times when the Adjuster is, in effect, detached from the personality during a season of contact with superhuman intelligences.

77:7.6 (863.7) It is no mere figure of speech when the record states: “And they brought to Him all sorts of sick people, those who were possessed by devils and those who were lunatics.” Jesus knew and recognized the difference between insanity and demoniacal possession, although these states were greatly confused in the minds of those who lived in his day and generation.

77:7.7 (863.8) Even prior to Pentecost no rebel spirit could dominate a normal human mind, and since that day even the weak minds of inferior mortals are free from such possibilities. The supposed casting out of devils since the arrival of the Spirit of Truth has been a matter of confounding a belief in demoniacal possession with hysteria, insanity, and feeble-mindedness. But just because Michael’s bestowal has forever liberated all human minds on Urantia from the possibility of demoniacal possession, do not imagine that such was not a reality in former ages.

77:7.8 (864.1) The entire group of rebel midwayers is at present held prisoner by order of the Most Highs of Edentia. No more do they roam this world on mischief bent. Regardless of the presence of the Thought Adjusters, the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh forever made it impossible for disloyal spirits of any sort or description ever again to invade even the most feeble of human minds. Since the day of Pentecost there never again can be such a thing as demoniacal possession.

8. The United Midwayers

77:8.1 (864.2) At the last adjudication of this world, when Michael removed the slumbering survivors of time, the midway creatures were left behind, left to assist in the spiritual and semispiritual work on the planet. They now function as a single corps, embracing both orders and numbering 10,992. The United Midwayers of Urantia are at present governed alternately by the senior member of each order. This regime has obtained since their amalgamation into one group shortly after Pentecost.

77:8.2 (864.3) The members of the older or primary order are generally known by numerals; they are often given names such as 1-2-3 the first, 4-5-6 the first, and so on. On Urantia the Adamic midwayers are designated alphabetically in order to distinguish them from the numerical designation of the primary midwayers.

77:8.3 (864.4) Both orders are nonmaterial beings as regards nutrition and energy intake, but they partake of many human traits and are able to enjoy and follow your humor as well as your worship. When attached to mortals, they enter into the spirit of human work, rest, and play. But midwayers do not sleep, neither do they possess powers of procreation. In a certain sense the secondary group are differentiated along the lines of maleness and femaleness, often being spoken of as “he” or “she.” They often work together in such pairs.

77:8.4 (864.5) Midwayers are not men, neither are they angels, but secondary midwayers are, in nature, nearer man than angel; they are, in a way, of your races and are, therefore, very understanding and sympathetic in their contact with human beings; they are invaluable to the seraphim in their work for and with the various races of mankind, and both orders are indispensable to the seraphim who serve as personal guardians to mortals.

77:8.5 (864.6) The United Midwayers of Urantia are organized for service with the planetary seraphim in accordance with innate endowments and acquired skills, in the following groups:

77:8.6 (864.7) 1. Midway messengers. This group bear names; they are a small corps and are of great assistance on an evolutionary world in the service of quick and reliable personal communication.

77:8.7 (864.8) 2. Planetary sentinels. Midwayers are the guardians, the sentinels, of the worlds of space. They perform the important duties of observers for all the numerous phenomena and types of communication which are of import to the supernatural beings of the realm. They patrol the invisible spirit realm of the planet.

77:8.8 (865.1) 3. Contact personalities. In the contacts made with the mortal beings of the material worlds, such as with the subject through whom these communications were transmitted, the midway creatures are always employed. They are an essential factor in such liaisons of the spiritual and the material levels.

77:8.9 (865.2) 4. Progress helpers. These are the more spiritual of the midway creatures, and they are distributed as assistants to the various orders of seraphim who function in special groups on the planet.

77:8.10 (865.3) Midwayers vary greatly in their abilities to make contact with the seraphim above and with their human cousins below. It is exceedingly difficult, for instance, for the primary midwayers to make direct contact with material agencies. They are considerably nearer the angelic type of being and are therefore usually assigned to working with, and ministering to, the spiritual forces resident on the planet. They act as companions and guides for celestial visitors and student sojourners, whereas the secondary creatures are almost exclusively attached to the ministry of the material beings of the realm.

77:8.11 (865.4) The 1,111 loyal secondary midwayers are engaged in important missions on earth. As compared with their primary associates, they are decidedly material. They exist just outside the range of mortal vision and possess sufficient latitude of adaptation to make, at will, physical contact with what humans call “material things.” These unique creatures have certain definite powers over the things of time and space, not excepting the beasts of the realm.

77:8.12 (865.5) Many of the more literal phenomena ascribed to angels have been performed by the secondary midway creatures. When the early teachers of the gospel of Jesus were thrown into prison by the ignorant religious leaders of that day, an actual “angel of the Lord” “by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth.” But in the case of Peter’s deliverance after the killing of James by Herod’s order, it was a secondary midwayer who performed the work ascribed to an angel.

77:8.13 (865.6) Their chief work today is that of unperceived personal-liaison associates of those men and women who constitute the planetary reserve corps of destiny. It was the work of this secondary group, ably seconded by certain of the primary corps, that brought about the co-ordination of personalities and circumstances on Urantia which finally induced the planetary celestial supervisors to initiate those petitions that resulted in the granting of the mandates making possible the series of revelations of which this presentation is a part. But it should be made clear that the midway creatures are not involved in the sordid performances taking place under the general designation of “spiritualism.” The midwayers at present on Urantia, all of whom are of honorable standing, are not connected with the phenomena of so-called “mediumship”; and they do not, ordinarily, permit humans to witness their sometimes necessary physical activities or other contacts with the material world, as they are perceived by human senses.

9. The Permanent Citizens of Urantia

77:9.1 (865.7) Midwayers may be regarded as the first group of the permanent inhabitants to be found on the various orders of worlds throughout the universes in contrast with evolutionary ascenders like the mortal creatures and the angelic hosts. Such permanent citizens are encountered at various points in the Paradise ascent.

77:9.2 (866.1) Unlike the various orders of celestial beings who are assigned to minister on a planet, the midwayers live on an inhabited world. The seraphim come and go, but the midway creatures remain and will remain, albeit they are nonetheless ministers for being natives of the planet, and they provide the one continuing regime which harmonizes and connects the changing administrations of the seraphic hosts.

77:9.3 (866.2) As actual citizens of Urantia, the midwayers have a kinship interest in the destiny of this sphere. They are a determined association, persistently working for the progress of their native planet. Their determination is suggested by the motto of their order: “What the United Midwayers undertake, the United Midwayers do.”

77:9.4 (866.3) Although their ability to traverse the energy circuits makes planetary departure feasible to any midwayer, they have individually pledged themselves not to leave the planet prior to their sometime release by the universe authorities. Midwayers are anchored on a planet until the ages of settled light and life. With the exception of 1-2-3 the first, no loyal midway creatures have ever departed from Urantia.

77:9.5 (866.4) 1-2-3 the first, the eldest of the primary order, was released from immediate planetary duties shortly after Pentecost. This noble midwayer stood steadfast with Van and Amadon during the tragic days of the planetary rebellion, and his fearless leadership was instrumental in reducing the casualties in his order. He serves at present on Jerusem as a member of the twenty-four counselors, having already functioned as governor general of Urantia once since Pentecost.

77:9.6 (866.5) Midwayers are planet bound, but much as mortals talk with travelers from afar and thus learn about remote places on the planet, so do midwayers converse with celestial travelers to learn about the far places of the universe. So do they become conversant with this system and universe, even with Orvonton and its sister creations, and so do they prepare themselves for citizenship on the higher levels of creature existence.

77:9.7 (866.6) While the midwayers were brought into existence fully developed — experiencing no period of growth or development from immaturity — they never cease to grow in wisdom and experience. Like mortals they are evolutionary creatures, and they have a culture which is a bona fide evolutionary attainment. There are many great minds and mighty spirits among the Urantia midway corps.

77:9.8 (866.7) In the larger aspect the civilization of Urantia is the joint product of the Urantia mortals and the Urantia midwayers, and this is true despite the present differential between the two levels of culture, a differential which will not be compensated prior to the ages of light and life.

77:9.9 (866.8) The midway culture, being the product of an immortal planetary citizenry, is relatively immune to those temporal vicissitudes which beset human civilization. The generations of men forget; the corps of midwayers remembers, and that memory is the treasure house of the traditions of your inhabited world. Thus does the culture of a planet remain ever present on that planet, and in proper circumstances such treasured memories of past events are made available, even as the story of the life and teachings of Jesus has been given by the midwayers of Urantia to their cousins in the flesh.

77:9.10 (867.1) Midwayers are the skillful ministers who compensate that gap between the material and spiritual affairs of Urantia which appeared upon the death of Adam and Eve. They are likewise your elder brethren, comrades in the long struggle to attain a settled status of light and life on Urantia. The United Midwayers are a rebellion-tested corps, and they will faithfully enact their part in planetary evolution until this world attains the goal of the ages, until that distant day when in fact peace does reign on earth and in truth is there good will in the hearts of men.

77:9.11 (867.2) Because of the valuable work performed by these midwayers, we have concluded that they are a truly essential part of the spirit economy of the realms. And where rebellion has not marred a planet’s affairs, they are of still greater assistance to the seraphim.

77:9.12 (867.3) The entire organization of high spirits, angelic hosts, and midway fellows is enthusiastically devoted to the furtherance of the Paradise plan for the progressive ascension and perfection attainment of evolutionary mortals, one of the supernal businesses of the universe — the superb survival plan of bringing God down to man and then, by a sublime sort of partnership, carrying man up to God and on to eternity of service and divinity of attainment — alike for mortal and midwayer.

77:9.13 (867.4) [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]




Paper 76 – The Second Garden

The Urantia Book

Paper 76

The Second Garden

76:0.1 (847.1) WHEN Adam elected to leave the first garden to the Nodites unopposed, he and his followers could not go west, for the Edenites had no boats suitable for such a marine adventure. They could not go north; the northern Nodites were already on the march toward Eden. They feared to go south; the hills of that region were infested with hostile tribes. The only way open was to the east, and so they journeyed eastward toward the then pleasant regions between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. And many of those who were left behind later journeyed eastward to join the Adamites in their new valley home.

76:0.2 (847.2) Cain and Sansa were both born before the Adamic caravan had reached its destination between the rivers in Mesopotamia. Laotta, the mother of Sansa, perished at the birth of her daughter; Eve suffered much but survived, owing to superior strength. Eve took Sansa, the child of Laotta, to her bosom, and she was reared along with Cain. Sansa grew up to be a woman of great ability. She became the wife of Sargan, the chief of the northern blue races, and contributed to the advancement of the blue men of those times.

1. The Edenites Enter Mesopotamia

76:1.1 (847.3) It required almost a full year for the caravan of Adam to reach the Euphrates River. Finding it in flood tide, they remained camped on the plains west of the stream almost six weeks before they made their way across to the land between the rivers which was to become the second garden.

76:1.2 (847.4) When word had reached the dwellers in the land of the second garden that the king and high priest of the Garden of Eden was marching on them, they had fled in haste to the eastern mountains. Adam found all of the desired territory vacated when he arrived. And here in this new location Adam and his helpers set themselves to work to build new homes and establish a new center of culture and religion.

76:1.3 (847.5) This site was known to Adam as one of the three original selections of the committee assigned to choose possible locations for the Garden proposed by Van and Amadon. The two rivers themselves were a good natural defense in those days, and a short way north of the second garden the Euphrates and Tigris came close together so that a defense wall extending fifty-six miles could be built for the protection of the territory to the south and between the rivers.

76:1.4 (847.6) After getting settled in the new Eden, it became necessary to adopt crude methods of living; it seemed entirely true that the ground had been cursed. Nature was once again taking its course. Now were the Adamites compelled to wrest a living from unprepared soil and to cope with the realities of life in the face of the natural hostilities and incompatibilities of mortal existence. They found the first garden partially prepared for them, but the second had to be created by the labor of their own hands and in the “sweat of their faces.”

2. Cain and Abel

76:2.1 (848.1) Less than two years after Cain’s birth, Abel was born, the first child of Adam and Eve to be born in the second garden. When Abel grew up to the age of twelve years, he elected to be a herder; Cain had chosen to follow agriculture.

76:2.2 (848.2) Now, in those days it was customary to make offerings to the priesthood of the things at hand. Herders would bring of their flocks, farmers of the fruits of the fields; and in accordance with this custom, Cain and Abel likewise made periodic offerings to the priests. The two boys had many times argued about the relative merits of their vocations, and Abel was not slow to note that preference was shown for his animal sacrifices. In vain did Cain appeal to the traditions of the first Eden, to the former preference for the fruits of the fields. But this Abel would not allow, and he taunted his older brother in his discomfiture.

76:2.3 (848.3) In the days of the first Eden, Adam had indeed sought to discourage the offering of animal sacrifice so that Cain had a justifiable precedent for his contentions. It was, however, difficult to organize the religious life of the second Eden. Adam was burdened with a thousand and one details associated with the work of building, defense, and agriculture. Being much depressed spiritually, he intrusted the organization of worship and education to those of Nodite extraction who had served in these capacities in the first garden; and in even so short a time the officiating Nodite priests were reverting to the standards and rulings of pre-Adamic times.

76:2.4 (848.4) The two boys never got along well, and this matter of sacrifices further contributed to the growing hatred between them. Abel knew he was the son of both Adam and Eve and never failed to impress upon Cain that Adam was not his father. Cain was not pure violet as his father was of the Nodite race later admixed with the blue and the red man and with the aboriginal Andonic stock. And all of this, with Cain’s natural bellicose inheritance, caused him to nourish an ever-increasing hatred for his younger brother.

76:2.5 (848.5) The boys were respectively eighteen and twenty years of age when the tension between them was finally resolved, one day, when Abel’s taunts so infuriated his bellicose brother that Cain turned upon him in wrath and slew him.

76:2.6 (848.6) The observation of Abel’s conduct establishes the value of environment and education as factors in character development. Abel had an ideal inheritance, and heredity lies at the bottom of all character; but the influence of an inferior environment virtually neutralized this magnificent inheritance. Abel, especially during his younger years, was greatly influenced by his unfavorable surroundings. He would have become an entirely different person had he lived to be twenty-five or thirty; his superb inheritance would then have shown itself. While a good environment cannot contribute much toward really overcoming the character handicaps of a base heredity, a bad environment can very effectively spoil an excellent inheritance, at least during the younger years of life. Good social environment and proper education are indispensable soil and atmosphere for getting the most out of a good inheritance.

76:2.7 (849.1) The death of Abel became known to his parents when his dogs brought the flocks home without their master. To Adam and Eve, Cain was fast becoming the grim reminder of their folly, and they encouraged him in his decision to leave the garden.

76:2.8 (849.2) Cain’s life in Mesopotamia had not been exactly happy since he was in such a peculiar way symbolic of the default. It was not that his associates were unkind to him, but he had not been unaware of their subconscious resentment of his presence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neighboring tribesmen who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some remorse, led him to repent. Cain had never been indwelt by an Adjuster, had always been defiant of the family discipline and disdainful of his father’s religion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spiritual help and guidance, and when he honestly sought divine assistance, an Adjuster indwelt him. And this Adjuster, dwelling within and looking out, gave Cain a distinct advantage of superiority which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

76:2.9 (849.3) And so Cain departed for the land of Nod, east of the second Eden. He became a great leader among one group of his father’s people and did, to a certain degree, fulfill the predictions of Serapatatia, for he did promote peace between this division of the Nodites and the Adamites throughout his lifetime. Cain married Remona, his distant cousin, and their first son, Enoch, became the head of the Elamite Nodites. And for hundreds of years the Elamites and the Adamites continued to be at peace.

3. Life in Mesopotamia

76:3.1 (849.4) As time passed in the second garden, the consequences of default became increasingly apparent. Adam and Eve greatly missed their former home of beauty and tranquillity as well as their children who had been deported to Edentia. It was indeed pathetic to observe this magnificent couple reduced to the status of the common flesh of the realm; but they bore their diminished estate with grace and fortitude.

76:3.2 (849.5) Adam wisely spent most of the time training his children and their associates in civil administration, educational methods, and religious devotions. Had it not been for this foresight, pandemonium would have broken loose upon his death. As it was, the death of Adam made little difference in the conduct of the affairs of his people. But long before Adam and Eve passed away, they recognized that their children and followers had gradually learned to forget the days of their glory in Eden. And it was better for the majority of their followers that they did forget the grandeur of Eden; they were not so likely to experience undue dissatisfaction with their less fortunate environment.

76:3.3 (849.6) The civil rulers of the Adamites were derived hereditarily from the sons of the first garden. Adam’s first son, Adamson (Adam ben Adam), founded a secondary center of the violet race to the north of the second Eden. Adam’s second son, Eveson, became a masterly leader and administrator; he was the great helper of his father. Eveson lived not quite so long as Adam, and his eldest son, Jansad, became the successor of Adam as the head of the Adamite tribes.

76:3.4 (849.7) The religious rulers, or priesthood, originated with Seth, the eldest surviving son of Adam and Eve born in the second garden. He was born one hundred and twenty-nine years after Adam’s arrival on Urantia. Seth became absorbed in the work of improving the spiritual status of his father’s people, becoming the head of the new priesthood of the second garden. His son, Enos, founded the new order of worship, and his grandson, Kenan, instituted the foreign missionary service to the surrounding tribes, near and far.

76:3.5 (850.1) The Sethite priesthood was a threefold undertaking, embracing religion, health, and education. The priests of this order were trained to officiate at religious ceremonies, to serve as physicians and sanitary inspectors, and to act as teachers in the schools of the garden.

76:3.6 (850.2) Adam’s caravan had carried the seeds and bulbs of hundreds of plants and cereals of the first garden with them to the land between the rivers; they also had brought along extensive herds and some of all the domesticated animals. Because of this they possessed great advantages over the surrounding tribes. They enjoyed many of the benefits of the previous culture of the original Garden.

76:3.7 (850.3) Up to the time of leaving the first garden, Adam and his family had always subsisted on fruits, cereals, and nuts. On the way to Mesopotamia they had, for the first time, partaken of herbs and vegetables. The eating of meat was early introduced into the second garden, but Adam and Eve never partook of flesh as a part of their regular diet. Neither did Adamson nor Eveson nor the other children of the first generation of the first garden become flesh eaters.

76:3.8 (850.4) The Adamites greatly excelled the surrounding peoples in cultural achievement and intellectual development. They produced the third alphabet and otherwise laid the foundations for much that was the forerunner of modern art, science, and literature. Here in the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates they maintained the arts of writing, metalworking, pottery making, and weaving and produced a type of architecture that was not excelled in thousands of years.

76:3.9 (850.5) The home life of the violet peoples was, for their day and age, ideal. Children were subjected to courses of training in agriculture, craftsmanship, and animal husbandry or else were educated to perform the threefold duty of a Sethite: to be priest, physician, and teacher.

76:3.10 (850.6) And when thinking of the Sethite priesthood, do not confuse those high-minded and noble teachers of health and religion, those true educators, with the debased and commercial priesthoods of the later tribes and surrounding nations. Their religious concepts of Deity and the universe were advanced and more or less accurate, their health provisions were, for their time, excellent, and their methods of education have never since been surpassed.

4. The Violet Race

76:4.1 (850.7) Adam and Eve were the founders of the violet race of men, the ninth human race to appear on Urantia. Adam and his offspring had blue eyes, and the violet peoples were characterized by fair complexions and light hair color — yellow, red, and brown.

76:4.2 (850.8) Eve did not suffer pain in childbirth; neither did the early evolutionary races. Only the mixed races produced by the union of evolutionary man with the Nodites and later with the Adamites suffered the severe pangs of childbirth.

76:4.3 (851.1) Adam 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.

76:4.4 (851.2) Adam and Eve and their first generation of children did not use the flesh of animals for food. They subsisted wholly upon “the fruits of the trees.” After the first generation all of the descendants of Adam began to partake of dairy products, but many of them continued to follow a nonflesh diet. Many of the southern tribes with whom they later united were also nonflesh eaters. Later on, most of these vegetarian tribes migrated to the east and survived as now admixed in the peoples of India.

76:4.5 (851.3) Both the physical and spiritual visions of Adam and Eve were far superior to those of the present-day peoples. Their special senses were much more acute, and they were able to see the midwayers and the angelic hosts, the Melchizedeks, and the fallen Prince Caligastia, who several times came to confer with his noble successor. They retained the ability to see these celestial beings for over one hundred years after the default. These special senses were not so acutely present in their children and tended to diminish with each succeeding generation.

76:4.6 (851.4) The Adamic children were usually Adjuster indwelt since they all possessed undoubted survival capacity. These superior offspring were not so subject to fear as the children of evolution. So much of fear persists in the present-day races of Urantia because your ancestors received so little of Adam’s life plasm, owing to the early miscarriage of the plans for racial physical uplift.

76:4.7 (851.5) The body cells of the Material Sons and their progeny are far more resistant to disease than are those of the evolutionary beings indigenous to the planet. The body cells of the native races are akin to the living disease-producing microscopic and ultramicroscopic organisms of the realm. These facts explain why the Urantia peoples must do so much by way of scientific effort to withstand so many physical disorders. You would be far more disease resistant if your races carried more of the Adamic life.

76:4.8 (851.6) After becoming established in the second garden on the Euphrates, Adam elected to leave behind as much of his life plasm as possible to benefit the world after his death. Accordingly, Eve was made the head of a commission of twelve on race improvement, and before Adam died this commission had selected 1,682 of the highest type of women on Urantia, and these women were impregnated with the Adamic life plasm. Their children all grew up to maturity except 112, so that the world, in this way, was benefited by the addition of 1,570 superior men and women. Though these candidate mothers were selected from all the surrounding tribes and represented most of the races on earth, the majority were chosen from the highest strains of the Nodites, and they constituted the early beginnings of the mighty Andite race. These children were born and reared in the tribal surroundings of their respective mothers.

5. Death of Adam and Eve

76:5.1 (851.7) Not long after the establishment of the second Eden, Adam and Eve were duly informed that their repentance was acceptable, and that, while they were doomed to suffer the fate of the mortals of their world, they should certainly become eligible for admission to the ranks of the sleeping survivors of Urantia. They fully believed this gospel of resurrection and rehabilitation which the Melchizedeks so touchingly proclaimed to them. Their transgression had been an error of judgment and not the sin of conscious and deliberate rebellion.

76:5.2 (852.1) Adam and Eve did not, as citizens of Jerusem, have Thought Adjusters, nor were they Adjuster indwelt when they functioned on Urantia in the first garden. But shortly after their reduction to mortal status they became conscious of a new presence within them and awakened to the realization that human status coupled with sincere repentance had made it possible for Adjusters to indwell them. It was this knowledge of being Adjuster indwelt that greatly heartened Adam and Eve throughout the remainder of their lives; they knew that they had failed as Material Sons of Satania, but they also knew that the Paradise career was still open to them as ascending sons of the universe.

76:5.3 (852.2) Adam knew about the dispensational resurrection which occurred simultaneously with his arrival on the planet, and he believed that he and his companion would probably be repersonalized in connection with the advent of the next order of sonship. He did not know that Michael, the sovereign of this universe, was so soon to appear on Urantia; he expected that the next Son to arrive would be of the Avonal order. Even so, it was always a comfort to Adam and Eve, as well as something difficult for them to understand, to ponder the only personal message they ever received from Michael. This message, among other expressions of friendship and comfort, said: “I have given consideration to the circumstances of your default, I have remembered the desire of your hearts ever to be loyal to my Father’s will, and you will be called from the embrace of mortal slumber when I come to Urantia if the subordinate Sons of my realm do not send for you before that time.”

76:5.4 (852.3) And this was a great mystery to Adam and Eve. They could comprehend the veiled promise of a possible special resurrection in this message, and such a possibility greatly cheered them, but they could not grasp the meaning of the intimation that they might rest until the time of a resurrection associated with Michael’s personal appearance on Urantia. And so the Edenic pair always proclaimed that a Son of God would sometime come, and they communicated to their loved ones the belief, at least the longing hope, that the world of their blunders and sorrows might possibly be the realm whereon the ruler of this universe would elect to function as the Paradise bestowal Son. It seemed too good to be true, but Adam did entertain the thought that strife-torn Urantia might, after all, turn out to be the most fortunate world in the system of Satania, the envied planet of all Nebadon.

76:5.5 (852.4) Adam lived for 530 years; he died of what might be termed old age. His physical mechanism simply wore out; the process of disintegration gradually gained on the process of repair, and the inevitable end came. Eve had died nineteen years previously of a weakened heart. They were both buried in the center of the temple of divine service which had been built in accordance with their plans soon after the wall of the colony had been completed. And this was the origin of the practice of burying noted and pious men and women under the floors of the places of worship.

76:5.6 (852.5) The supermaterial government of Urantia, under the direction of the Melchizedeks, continued, but direct physical contact with the evolutionary races had been severed. From the distant days of the arrival of the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince, down through the times of Van and Amadon to the arrival of Adam and Eve, physical representatives of the universe government had been stationed on the planet. But with the Adamic default this regime, extending over a period of more than four hundred and fifty thousand years, came to an end. In the spiritual spheres, angelic helpers continued to struggle in conjunction with the Thought Adjusters, both working heroically for the salvage of the individual; but no comprehensive plan for far-reaching world welfare was promulgated to the mortals of earth until the arrival of Machiventa Melchizedek, in the times of Abraham, who, with the power, patience, and authority of a Son of God, did lay the foundations for the further uplift and spiritual rehabilitation of unfortunate Urantia.

76:5.7 (853.1) Misfortune has not, however, been the sole lot of Urantia; this planet has also been the most fortunate in the local universe of Nebadon. Urantians should count it all gain if the blunders of their ancestors and the mistakes of their early world rulers so plunged the planet into such a hopeless state of confusion, all the more confounded by evil and sin, that this very background of darkness should so appeal to Michael of Nebadon that he selected this world as the arena wherein to reveal the loving personality of the Father in heaven. It is not that Urantia needed a Creator Son to set its tangled affairs in order; it is rather that the evil and sin on Urantia afforded the Creator Son a more striking background against which to reveal the matchless love, mercy, and patience of the Paradise Father.

6. Survival of Adam and Eve

76:6.1 (853.2) Adam and Eve went to their mortal rest with strong faith in the promises made to them by the Melchizedeks that they would sometime awake from the sleep of death to resume life on the mansion worlds, worlds all so familiar to them in the days preceding their mission in the material flesh of the violet race on Urantia.

76:6.2 (853.3) They did not long rest in the oblivion of the unconscious sleep of the mortals of the realm. On the third day after Adam’s death, the second following his reverent burial, the orders of Lanaforge, sustained by the acting Most High of Edentia and concurred in by the Union of Days on Salvington, acting for Michael, were placed in Gabriel’s hands, directing the special roll call of the distinguished survivors of the Adamic default on Urantia. And in accordance with this mandate of special resurrection, number twenty-six of the Urantia series, Adam and Eve were repersonalized and reassembled in the resurrection halls of the mansion worlds of Satania together with 1,316 of their associates in the experience of the first garden. Many other loyal souls had already been translated at the time of Adam’s arrival, which was attended by a dispensational adjudication of both the sleeping survivors and of the living qualified ascenders.

76:6.3 (853.4) Adam and Eve quickly passed through the worlds of progressive ascension until they attained citizenship on Jerusem, once again to be residents of the planet of their origin but this time as members of a different order of universe personalities. They left Jerusem as permanent citizens — Sons of God; they returned as ascendant citizens — sons of man. They were immediately attached to the Urantia service on the system capital, later being assigned membership among the four and twenty counselors who constitute the present advisory-control body of Urantia.

76:6.4 (854.1) And thus ends the story of the Planetary Adam and Eve of Urantia, a story of trial, tragedy, and triumph, at least personal triumph for your well-meaning but deluded Material Son and Daughter and undoubtedly, in the end, a story of ultimate triumph for their world and its rebellion-tossed and evil-harassed inhabitants. When all is summed up, Adam and Eve made a mighty contribution to the speedy civilization and accelerated biologic progress of the human race. They left a great culture on earth, but it was not possible for such an advanced civilization to survive in the face of the early dilution and the eventual submergence of the Adamic inheritance. It is the people who make a civilization; civilization does not make the people.

76:6.5 (854.2) [Presented by Solonia, the seraphic “voice in the Garden.”]




Paper 75 – The Default of Adam and Eve

The Urantia Book

Paper 75

The Default of Adam and Eve

75:0.1 (839.1) AFTER more than one hundred years of effort on Urantia, Adam was able to see very little progress outside the Garden; the world at large did not seem to be improving much. The realization of race betterment appeared to be a long way off, and the situation seemed so desperate as to demand something for relief not embraced in the original plans. At least that is what often passed through Adam’s mind, and he so expressed himself many times to Eve. Adam and his mate were loyal, but they were isolated from their kind, and they were sorely distressed by the sorry plight of their world.

1. The Urantia Problem

75:1.1 (839.2) The Adamic mission on experimental, rebellion-seared, and isolated Urantia was a formidable undertaking. And the Material Son and Daughter early became aware of the difficulty and complexity of their planetary assignment. Nevertheless, they courageously set about the task of solving their manifold problems. But when they addressed themselves to the all-important work of eliminating the defectives and degenerates from among the human strains, they were quite dismayed. They could see no way out of the dilemma, and they could not take counsel with their superiors on either Jerusem or Edentia. Here they were, isolated and day by day confronted with some new and complicated tangle, some problem that seemed to be unsolvable.

75:1.2 (839.3) Under normal conditions the first work of a Planetary Adam and Eve would be the co-ordination and blending of the races. But on Urantia such a project seemed just about hopeless, for the races, while biologically fit, had never been purged of their retarded and defective strains.

75:1.3 (839.4) Adam and Eve found themselves on a sphere wholly unprepared for the proclamation of the brotherhood of man, a world groping about in abject spiritual darkness and cursed with confusion worse confounded by the miscarriage of the mission of the preceding administration. Mind and morals were at a low level, and instead of beginning the task of effecting religious unity, they must begin all anew the work of converting the inhabitants to the most simple forms of religious belief. Instead of finding one language ready for adoption, they were confronted by the world-wide confusion of hundreds upon hundreds of local dialects. No Adam of the planetary service was ever set down on a more difficult world; the obstacles seemed insuperable and the problems beyond creature solution.

75:1.4 (839.5) They were isolated, and the tremendous sense of loneliness which bore down upon them was all the more heightened by the early departure of the Melchizedek receivers. Only indirectly, by means of the angelic orders, could they communicate with any being off the planet. Slowly their courage weakened, their spirits drooped, and sometimes their faith almost faltered.

75:1.5 (840.1) And this is the true picture of the consternation of these two noble souls as they pondered the tasks which confronted them. They were both keenly aware of the enormous undertaking involved in the execution of their planetary assignment.

75:1.6 (840.2) Probably no Material Sons of Nebadon were ever faced with such a difficult and seemingly hopeless task as confronted Adam and Eve in the sorry plight of Urantia. But they would have sometime met with success had they been more farseeing and patient. Both of them, especially Eve, were altogether too impatient; they were not willing to settle down to the long, long endurance test. They wanted to see some immediate results, and they did, but the results thus secured proved most disastrous both to themselves and to their world.

2. Caligastia’s Plot

75:2.1 (840.3) Caligastia paid frequent visits to the Garden and held many conferences with Adam and Eve, but they were adamant to all his suggestions of compromise and short-cut adventures. They had before them enough of the results of rebellion to produce effective immunity against all such insinuating proposals. Even the young offspring of Adam were uninfluenced by the overtures of Daligastia. And of course neither Caligastia nor his associate had power to influence any individual against his will, much less to persuade the children of Adam to do wrong.

75:2.2 (840.4) It must be remembered that Caligastia was still the titular Planetary Prince of Urantia, a misguided but nevertheless high Son of the local universe. He was not finally deposed until the times of Christ Michael on Urantia.

75:2.3 (840.5) But the fallen Prince was persistent and determined. He soon gave up working on Adam and decided to try a wily flank attack on Eve. The evil one concluded that the only hope for success lay in the adroit employment of suitable persons belonging to the upper strata of the Nodite group, the descendants of his onetime corporeal-staff associates. And the plans were accordingly laid for entrapping the mother of the violet race.

75:2.4 (840.6) It was farthest from Eve’s intention ever to do anything which would militate against Adam’s plans or jeopardize their planetary trust. Knowing the tendency of woman to look upon immediate results rather than to plan farsightedly for more remote effects, the Melchizedeks, before departing, had especially enjoined Eve as to the peculiar dangers besetting their isolated position on the planet and had in particular warned her never to stray from the side of her mate, that is, to attempt no personal or secret methods of furthering their mutual undertakings. Eve had most scrupulously carried out these instructions for more than one hundred years, and it did not occur to her that any danger would attach to the increasingly private and confidential visits she was enjoying with a certain Nodite leader named Serapatatia. The whole affair developed so gradually and naturally that she was taken unawares.

75:2.5 (840.7) The Garden dwellers had been in contact with the Nodites since the early days of Eden. From these mixed descendants of the defaulting members of Caligastia’s staff they had received much valuable help and co-operation, and through them the Edenic regime was now to meet its complete undoing and final overthrow.

3. The Temptation of Eve

75:3.1 (841.1) Adam had just finished his first one hundred years on earth when Serapatatia, upon the death of his father, came to the leadership of the western or Syrian confederation of the Nodite tribes. Serapatatia was a brown-tinted man, a brilliant descendant of the onetime chief of the Dalamatia commission on health mated with one of the master female minds of the blue race of those distant days. All down through the ages this line had held authority and wielded a great influence among the western Nodite tribes.

75:3.2 (841.2) Serapatatia had made several visits to the Garden and had become deeply impressed with the righteousness of Adam’s cause. And shortly after assuming the leadership of the Syrian Nodites, he announced his intention of establishing an affiliation with the work of Adam and Eve in the Garden. The majority of his people joined him in this program, and Adam was cheered by the news that the most powerful and the most intelligent of all the neighboring tribes had swung over almost bodily to the support of the program for world improvement; it was decidedly heartening. And shortly after this great event, Serapatatia and his new staff were entertained by Adam and Eve in their own home.

75:3.3 (841.3) Serapatatia became one of the most able and efficient of all of Adam’s lieutenants. He was entirely honest and thoroughly sincere in all of his activities; he was never conscious, even later on, that he was being used as a circumstantial tool of the wily Caligastia.

75:3.4 (841.4) Presently, Serapatatia became the associate chairman of the Edenic commission on tribal relations, and many plans were laid for the more vigorous prosecution of the work of winning the remote tribes to the cause of the Garden.

75:3.5 (841.5) He held many conferences with Adam and Eve — especially with Eve — and they talked over many plans for improving their methods. One day, during a talk with Eve, it occurred to Serapatatia that it would be very helpful if, while awaiting the recruiting of large numbers of the violet race, something could be done in the meantime immediately to advance the needy waiting tribes. Serapatatia contended that, if the Nodites, as the most progressive and co-operative race, could have a leader born to them of part origin in the violet stock, it would constitute a powerful tie binding these peoples more closely to the Garden. And all of this was soberly and honestly considered to be for the good of the world since this child, to be reared and educated in the Garden, would exert a great influence for good over his father’s people.

75:3.6 (841.6) It should again be emphasized that Serapatatia was altogether honest and wholly sincere in all that he proposed. He never once suspected that he was playing into the hands of Caligastia and Daligastia. Serapatatia was entirely loyal to the plan of building up a strong reserve of the violet race before attempting the world-wide upstepping of the confused peoples of Urantia. But this would require hundreds of years to consummate, and he was impatient; he wanted to see some immediate results — something in his own lifetime. He made it clear to Eve that Adam was oftentimes discouraged by the little that had been accomplished toward uplifting the world.

75:3.7 (841.7) For more than five years these plans were secretly matured. At last they had developed to the point where Eve consented to have a secret conference with Cano, the most brilliant mind and active leader of the near-by colony of friendly Nodites. Cano was very sympathetic with the Adamic regime; in fact, he was the sincere spiritual leader of those neighboring Nodites who favored friendly relations with the Garden.

75:3.8 (842.1) The fateful meeting occurred during the twilight hours of the autumn evening, not far from the home of Adam. Eve had never before met the beautiful and enthusiastic Cano — and he was a magnificent specimen of the survival of the superior physique and outstanding intellect of his remote progenitors of the Prince’s staff. And Cano also thoroughly believed in the righteousness of the Serapatatia project. (Outside of the Garden, multiple mating was a common practice.)

75:3.9 (842.2) Influenced by flattery, enthusiasm, and great personal persuasion, Eve then and there consented to embark upon the much-discussed enterprise, to add her own little scheme of world saving to the larger and more far-reaching divine plan. Before she quite realized what was transpiring, the fatal step had been taken. It was done.

4. The Realization of Default

75:4.1 (842.3) The celestial life of the planet was astir. Adam recognized that something was wrong, and he asked Eve to come aside with him in the Garden. And now, for the first time, Adam heard the entire story of the long-nourished plan for accelerating world improvement by operating simultaneously in two directions: the prosecution of the divine plan concomitantly with the execution of the Serapatatia enterprise.

75:4.2 (842.4) And as the Material Son and Daughter thus communed in the moonlit Garden, “the voice in the Garden” reproved them for disobedience. And that voice was none other than my own announcement to the Edenic pair that they had transgressed the Garden covenant; that they had disobeyed the instructions of the Melchizedeks; that they had defaulted in the execution of their oaths of trust to the sovereign of the universe.

75:4.3 (842.5) Eve had consented to participate in the practice of good and evil. Good is the carrying out of the divine plans; sin is a deliberate transgression of the divine will; evil is the misadaptation of plans and the maladjustment of techniques resulting in universe disharmony and planetary confusion.

75:4.4 (842.6) Every time the Garden pair had partaken of the fruit of the tree of life, they had been warned by the archangel custodian to refrain from yielding to the suggestions of Caligastia to combine good and evil. They had been thus admonished: “In the day that you commingle good and evil, you shall surely become as the mortals of the realm; you shall surely die.”

75:4.5 (842.7) Eve had told Cano of this oft-repeated warning on the fateful occasion of their secret meeting, but Cano, not knowing the import or significance of such admonitions, had assured her that men and women with good motives and true intentions could do no evil; that she should surely not die but rather live anew in the person of their offspring, who would grow up to bless and stabilize the world.

75:4.6 (842.8) Even though this project of modifying the divine plan had been conceived and executed with entire sincerity and with only the highest motives concerning the welfare of the world, it constituted evil because it represented the wrong way to achieve righteous ends, because it departed from the right way, the divine plan.

75:4.7 (843.1) True, Eve had found Cano pleasant to the eyes, and she realized all that her seducer promised by way of “new and increased knowledge of human affairs and quickened understanding of human nature as supplemental to the comprehension of the Adamic nature.”

75:4.8 (843.2) I talked to the father and mother of the violet race that night in the Garden as became my duty under the sorrowful circumstances. I listened fully to the recital of all that led up to the default of Mother Eve and gave both of them advice and counsel concerning the immediate situation. Some of this advice they followed; some they disregarded. This conference appears in your records as “the Lord God calling to Adam and Eve in the Garden and asking, ‘Where are you?’” It was the practice of later generations to attribute everything unusual and extraordinary, whether natural or spiritual, directly to the personal intervention of the Gods.

5. Repercussions of Default

75:5.1 (843.3) Eve’s disillusionment was truly pathetic. Adam discerned the whole predicament and, while heartbroken and dejected, entertained only pity and sympathy for his erring mate.

75:5.2 (843.4) It was in the despair of the realization of failure that Adam, the day after Eve’s misstep, sought out Laotta, the brilliant Nodite woman who was head of the western schools of the Garden, and with premeditation committed the folly of Eve. But do not misunderstand; Adam was not beguiled; he knew exactly what he was about; he deliberately chose to share the fate of Eve. He loved his mate with a supermortal affection, and the thought of the possibility of a lonely vigil on Urantia without her was more than he could endure.

75:5.3 (843.5) When they learned what had happened to Eve, the infuriated inhabitants of the Garden became unmanageable; they declared war on the near-by Nodite settlement. They swept out through the gates of Eden and down upon these unprepared people, utterly destroying them — not a man, woman, or child was spared. And Cano, the father of Cain yet unborn, also perished.

75:5.4 (843.6) Upon the realization of what had happened, Serapatatia was overcome with consternation and beside himself with fear and remorse. The next day he drowned himself in the great river.

75:5.5 (843.7) The children of Adam sought to comfort their distracted mother while their father wandered in solitude for thirty days. At the end of that time judgment asserted itself, and Adam returned to his home and began to plan for their future course of action.

75:5.6 (843.8) The consequences of the follies of misguided parents are so often shared by their innocent children. The upright and noble sons and daughters of Adam and Eve were overwhelmed by the inexplicable sorrow of the unbelievable tragedy which had been so suddenly and so ruthlessly thrust upon them. Not in fifty years did the older of these children recover from the sorrow and sadness of those tragic days, especially the terror of that period of thirty days during which their father was absent from home while their distracted mother was in complete ignorance of his whereabouts or fate.

75:5.7 (843.9) And those same thirty days were as long years of sorrow and suffering to Eve. Never did this noble soul fully recover from the effects of that excruciating period of mental suffering and spiritual sorrow. No feature of their subsequent deprivations and material hardships ever began to compare in Eve’s memory with those terrible days and awful nights of loneliness and unbearable uncertainty. She learned of the rash act of Serapatatia and did not know whether her mate had in sorrow destroyed himself or had been removed from the world in retribution for her misstep. And when Adam returned, Eve experienced a satisfaction of joy and gratitude that never was effaced by their long and difficult life partnership of toiling service.

75:5.8 (844.1) Time passed, but Adam was not certain of the nature of their offense until seventy days after the default of Eve, when the Melchizedek receivers returned to Urantia and assumed jurisdiction over world affairs. And then he knew they had failed.

75:5.9 (844.2) But still more trouble was brewing: The news of the annihilation of the Nodite settlement near Eden was not slow in reaching the home tribes of Serapatatia to the north, and presently a great host was assembling to march on the Garden. And this was the beginning of a long and bitter warfare between the Adamites and the Nodites, for these hostilities kept up long after Adam and his followers emigrated to the second garden in the Euphrates valley. There was intense and lasting “enmity between that man and the woman, between his seed and her seed.”

6. Adam and Eve Leave the Garden

75:6.1 (844.3) When Adam learned that the Nodites were on the march, he sought the counsel of the Melchizedeks, but they refused to advise him, only telling him to do as he thought best and promising their friendly co-operation, as far as possible, in any course he might decide upon. The Melchizedeks had been forbidden to interfere with the personal plans of Adam and Eve.

75:6.2 (844.4) Adam knew that he and Eve had failed; the presence of the Melchizedek receivers told him that, though he still knew nothing of their personal status or future fate. He held an all-night conference with some twelve hundred loyal followers who pledged themselves to follow their leader, and the next day at noon these pilgrims went forth from Eden in quest of new homes. Adam had no liking for war and accordingly elected to leave the first garden to the Nodites unopposed.

75:6.3 (844.5) The Edenic caravan was halted on the third day out from the Garden by the arrival of the seraphic transports from Jerusem. And for the first time Adam and Eve were informed of what was to become of their children. While the transports stood by, those children who had arrived at the age of choice (twenty years) were given the option of remaining on Urantia with their parents or of becoming wards of the Most Highs of Norlatiadek. Two thirds chose to go to Edentia; about one third elected to remain with their parents. All children of prechoice age were taken to Edentia. No one could have beheld the sorrowful parting of this Material Son and Daughter and their children without realizing that the way of the transgressor is hard. These offspring of Adam and Eve are now on Edentia; we do not know what disposition is to be made of them.

75:6.4 (844.6) It was a sad, sad caravan that prepared to journey on. Could anything have been more tragic! To have come to a world in such high hopes, to have been so auspiciously received, and then to go forth in disgrace from Eden, only to lose more than three fourths of their children even before finding a new abiding place!

7. Degradation of Adam and Eve

75:7.1 (845.1) It was while the Edenic caravan was halted that Adam and Eve were informed of the nature of their transgressions and advised concerning their fate. Gabriel appeared to pronounce judgment. And this was the verdict: The Planetary Adam and Eve of Urantia are adjudged in default; they have violated the covenant of their trusteeship as the rulers of this inhabited world.

75:7.2 (845.2) While downcast by the sense of guilt, Adam and Eve were greatly cheered by the announcement that their judges on Salvington had absolved them from all charges of standing in “contempt of the universe government.” They had not been held guilty of rebellion.

75:7.3 (845.3) The Edenic pair were informed that they had degraded themselves to the status of the mortals of the realm; that they must henceforth conduct themselves as man and woman of Urantia, looking to the future of the world races for their future.

75:7.4 (845.4) Long before Adam and Eve left Jerusem, their instructors had fully explained to them the consequences of any vital departure from the divine plans. I had personally and repeatedly warned them, both before and after they arrived on Urantia, that reduction to the status of mortal flesh would be the certain result, the sure penalty, which would unfailingly attend default in the execution of their planetary mission. But a comprehension of the immortality status of the material order of sonship is essential to a clear understanding of the consequences attendant upon the default of Adam and Eve.

75:7.5 (845.5) 1. Adam and Eve, like their fellows on Jerusem, maintained immortal status through intellectual association with the mind-gravity circuit of the Spirit. When this vital sustenance is broken by mental disjunction, then, regardless of the spiritual level of creature existence, immortality status is lost. Mortal status followed by physical dissolution was the inevitable consequence of the intellectual default of Adam and Eve.

75:7.6 (845.6) 2. The Material Son and Daughter of Urantia, being also personalized in the similitude of the mortal flesh of this world, were further dependent on the maintenance of a dual circulatory system, the one derived from their physical natures, the other from the superenergy stored in the fruit of the tree of life. Always had the archangel custodian admonished Adam and Eve that default of trust would culminate in degradation of status, and access to this source of energy was denied them subsequent to their default.

75:7.7 (845.7) Caligastia did succeed in trapping Adam and Eve, but he did not accomplish his purpose of leading them into open rebellion against the universe government. What they had done was indeed evil, but they were never guilty of contempt for truth, neither did they knowingly enlist in rebellion against the righteous rule of the Universal Father and his Creator Son.

8. The So-Called Fall of Man

75:8.1 (845.8) Adam and Eve did fall from their high estate of material sonship down to the lowly status of mortal man. But that was not the fall of man. The human race has been uplifted despite the immediate consequences of the Adamic default. Although the divine plan of giving the violet race to the Urantia peoples miscarried, the mortal races have profited enormously from the limited contribution which Adam and his descendants made to the Urantia races.

75:8.2 (846.1) There has been no “fall of man.” The history of the human race is one of progressive evolution, and the Adamic bestowal left the world peoples greatly improved over their previous biologic condition. The more superior stocks of Urantia now contain inheritance factors derived from as many as four separate sources: Andonite, Sangik, Nodite, and Adamic.

75:8.3 (846.2) Adam should not be regarded as the cause of a curse on the human race. While he did fail in carrying forward the divine plan, while he did transgress his covenant with Deity, while he and his mate were most certainly degraded in creature status, notwithstanding all this, their contribution to the human race did much to advance civilization on Urantia.

75:8.4 (846.3) In estimating the results of the Adamic mission on your world, justice demands the recognition of the condition of the planet. Adam was confronted with a well-nigh hopeless task when, with his beautiful mate, he was transported from Jerusem to this dark and confused planet. But had they been guided by the counsel of the Melchizedeks and their associates, and had they been more patient, they would have eventually met with success. But Eve listened to the insidious propaganda of personal liberty and planetary freedom of action. She was led to experiment with the life plasm of the material order of sonship in that she allowed this life trust to become prematurely commingled with that of the then mixed order of the original design of the Life Carriers which had been previously combined with that of the reproducing beings once attached to the staff of the Planetary Prince.

75:8.5 (846.4) Never, in all your ascent to Paradise, will you gain anything by impatiently attempting to circumvent the established and divine plan by short cuts, personal inventions, or other devices for improving on the way of perfection, to perfection, and for eternal perfection.

75:8.6 (846.5) All in all, there probably never was a more disheartening miscarriage of wisdom on any planet in all Nebadon. But it is not surprising that these missteps occur in the affairs of the evolutionary universes. We are a part of a gigantic creation, and it is not strange that everything does not work in perfection; our universe was not created in perfection. Perfection is our eternal goal, not our origin.

75:8.7 (846.6) If this were a mechanistic universe, if the First Great Source and Center were only a force and not also a personality, if all creation were a vast aggregation of physical matter dominated by precise laws characterized by unvarying energy actions, then might perfection obtain, even despite the incompleteness of universe status. There would be no disagreement; there would be no friction. But in our evolving universe of relative perfection and imperfection we rejoice that disagreement and misunderstanding are possible, for thereby is evidenced the fact and the act of personality in the universe. And if our creation is an existence dominated by personality, then can you be assured of the possibilities of personality survival, advancement, and achievement; we can be confident of personality growth, experience, and adventure. What a glorious universe, in that it is personal and progressive, not merely mechanical or even passively perfect!

75:8.8 (846.7) [Presented by Solonia, the seraphic “voice in the Garden.”]




Paper 74 – Adam and Eve

The Urantia Book

Paper 74

Adam and Eve

74:0.1 (828.1) ADAM AND EVE arrived on Urantia, from the year A.D. 1934, 37,848 years ago. It was in midseason when the Garden was in the height of bloom that they arrived. At high noon and unannounced, the two seraphic transports, accompanied by the Jerusem personnel intrusted with the transportation of the biologic uplifters to Urantia, settled slowly to the surface of the revolving planet in the vicinity of the temple of the Universal Father. All the work of rematerializing the bodies of Adam and Eve was carried on within the precincts of this newly created shrine. And from the time of their arrival ten days passed before they were re-created in dual human form for presentation as the world’s new rulers. They regained consciousness simultaneously. The Material Sons and Daughters always serve together. It is the essence of their service at all times and in all places never to be separated. They are designed to work in pairs; seldom do they function alone.

1. Adam and Eve on Jerusem

74:1.1 (828.2) The Planetary Adam and Eve of Urantia were members of the senior corps of Material Sons on Jerusem, being jointly number 14,311. They belonged to the third physical series and were a little more than eight feet in height.

74:1.2 (828.3) At the time Adam was chosen to come to Urantia, he was employed, with his mate, in the trial-and-testing physical laboratories of Jerusem. For more than fifteen thousand years they had been directors of the division of experimental energy as applied to the modification of living forms. Long before this they had been teachers in the citizenship schools for new arrivals on Jerusem. And all this should be borne in mind in connection with the narration of their subsequent conduct on Urantia.

74:1.3 (828.4) When the proclamation was issued calling for volunteers for the mission of Adamic adventure on Urantia, the entire senior corps of Material Sons and Daughters volunteered. The Melchizedek examiners, with the approval of Lanaforge and the Most Highs of Edentia, finally selected the Adam and Eve who subsequently came to function as the biologic uplifters of Urantia.

74:1.4 (828.5) Adam and Eve had remained loyal to Michael during the Lucifer rebellion; nevertheless, the pair were called before the System Sovereign and his entire cabinet for examination and instruction. The details of Urantia affairs were fully presented; they were exhaustively instructed as to the plans to be pursued in accepting the responsibilities of rulership on such a strife-torn world. They were put under joint oaths of allegiance to the Most Highs of Edentia and to Michael of Salvington. And they were duly advised to regard themselves as subject to the Urantia corps of Melchizedek receivers until that governing body should see fit to relinquish rule on the world of their assignment.

74:1.5 (829.1) This Jerusem pair left behind them on the capital of Satania and elsewhere, one hundred offspring — fifty sons and fifty daughters — magnificent creatures who had escaped the pitfalls of progression, and who were all in commission as faithful stewards of universe trust at the time of their parents’ departure for Urantia. And they were all present in the beautiful temple of the Material Sons attendant upon the farewell exercises associated with the last ceremonies of the bestowal acceptance. These children accompanied their parents to the dematerialization headquarters of their order and were the last to bid them farewell and divine speed as they fell asleep in the personality lapse of consciousness which precedes the preparation for seraphic transport. The children spent some time together at the family rendezvous rejoicing that their parents were soon to become the visible heads, in reality the sole rulers, of planet 606 in the system of Satania.

74:1.6 (829.2) And thus did Adam and Eve leave Jerusem amidst the acclaim and well-wishing of its citizens. They went forth to their new responsibilities adequately equipped and fully instructed concerning every duty and danger to be encountered on Urantia.

2. Arrival of Adam and Eve

74:2.1 (829.3) Adam and Eve fell asleep on Jerusem, and when they awakened in the Father’s temple on Urantia in the presence of the mighty throng assembled to welcome them, they were face to face with two beings of whom they had heard much, Van and his faithful associate Amadon. These two heroes of the Caligastia secession were the first to welcome them in their new garden home.

74:2.2 (829.4) The tongue of Eden was an Andonic dialect as spoken by Amadon. Van and Amadon had markedly improved this language by creating a new alphabet of twenty-four letters, and they had hoped to see it become the tongue of Urantia as the Edenic culture would spread throughout the world. Adam and Eve had fully mastered this human dialect before they departed from Jerusem so that this son of Andon heard the exalted ruler of his world address him in his own tongue.

74:2.3 (829.5) And on that day there was great excitement and joy throughout Eden as the runners went in great haste to the rendezvous of the carrier pigeons assembled from near and far, shouting: “Let loose the birds; let them carry the word that the promised Son has come.” Hundreds of believer settlements had faithfully, year after year, kept up the supply of these home-reared pigeons for just such an occasion.

74:2.4 (829.6) As the news of Adam’s arrival spread abroad, thousands of the near-by tribesmen accepted the teachings of Van and Amadon, while for months and months pilgrims continued to pour into Eden to welcome Adam and Eve and to do homage to their unseen Father.

74:2.5 (829.7) Soon after their awakening, Adam and Eve were escorted to the formal reception on the great mound to the north of the temple. This natural hill had been enlarged and made ready for the installation of the world’s new rulers. Here, at noon, the Urantia reception committee welcomed this Son and Daughter of the system of Satania. Amadon was chairman of this committee, which consisted of twelve members embracing a representative of each of the six Sangik races; the acting chief of the midwayers; Annan, a loyal daughter and spokesman for the Nodites; Noah, the son of the architect and builder of the Garden and executive of his deceased father’s plans; and the two resident Life Carriers.

74:2.6 (830.1) The next act was the delivery of the charge of planetary custody to Adam and Eve by the senior Melchizedek, chief of the council of receivership on Urantia. The Material Son and Daughter took the oath of allegiance to the Most Highs of Norlatiadek and to Michael of Nebadon and were proclaimed rulers of Urantia by Van, who thereby relinquished the titular authority which for over one hundred and fifty thousand years he had held by virtue of the action of the Melchizedek receivers.

74:2.7 (830.2) And Adam and Eve were invested with kingly robes on this occasion, the time of their formal induction into world rulership. Not all of the arts of Dalamatia had been lost to the world; weaving was still practiced in the days of Eden.

74:2.8 (830.3) Then was heard the archangels’ proclamation, and the broadcast voice of Gabriel decreed the second judgment roll call of Urantia and the resurrection of the sleeping survivors of the second dispensation of grace and mercy on 606 of Satania. The dispensation of the Prince has passed; the age of Adam, the third planetary epoch, opens amidst scenes of simple grandeur; and the new rulers of Urantia start their reign under seemingly favorable conditions, notwithstanding the world-wide confusion occasioned by lack of the co-operation of their predecessor in authority on the planet.

3. Adam and Eve Learn About the Planet

74:3.1 (830.4) And now, after their formal installation, Adam and Eve became painfully aware of their planetary isolation. Silent were the familiar broadcasts, and absent were all the circuits of extraplanetary communication. Their Jerusem fellows had gone to worlds running along smoothly with a well-established Planetary Prince and an experienced staff ready to receive them and competent to co-operate with them during their early experience on such worlds. But on Urantia rebellion had changed everything. Here the Planetary Prince was very much present, and though shorn of most of his power to work evil, he was still able to make the task of Adam and Eve difficult and to some extent hazardous. It was a serious and disillusioned Son and Daughter of Jerusem who walked that night through the Garden under the shining of the full moon, discussing plans for the next day.

74:3.2 (830.5) Thus ended the first day of Adam and Eve on isolated Urantia, the confused planet of the Caligastia betrayal; and they walked and talked far into the night, their first night on earth — and it was so lonely.

74:3.3 (830.6) Adam’s second day on earth was spent in session with the planetary receivers and the advisory council. From the Melchizedeks, and their associates, Adam and Eve learned more about the details of the Caligastia rebellion and the result of that upheaval upon the world’s progress. And it was, on the whole, a disheartening story, this long recital of the mismanagement of world affairs. They learned all the facts regarding the utter collapse of the Caligastia scheme for accelerating the process of social evolution. They also arrived at a full realization of the folly of attempting to achieve planetary advancement independently of the divine plan of progression. And thus ended a sad but enlightening day — their second on Urantia.

74:3.4 (831.1) The third day was devoted to an inspection of the Garden. From the large passenger birds — the fandors — Adam and Eve looked down upon the vast stretches of the Garden while being carried through the air over this, the most beautiful spot on earth. This day of inspection ended with an enormous banquet in honor of all who had labored to create this garden of Edenic beauty and grandeur. And again, late into the night of their third day, the Son and his mate walked in the Garden and talked about the immensity of their problems.

74:3.5 (831.2) On the fourth day Adam and Eve addressed the Garden assembly. From the inaugural mount they spoke to the people concerning their plans for the rehabilitation of the world and outlined the methods whereby they would seek to redeem the social culture of Urantia from the low levels to which it had fallen as a result of sin and rebellion. This was a great day, and it closed with a feast for the council of men and women who had been selected to assume responsibilities in the new administration of world affairs. Take note! women as well as men were in this group, and that was the first time such a thing had occurred on earth since the days of Dalamatia. It was an astounding innovation to behold Eve, a woman, sharing the honors and responsibilities of world affairs with a man. And thus ended the fourth day on earth.

74:3.6 (831.3) The fifth day was occupied with the organization of the temporary government, the administration which was to function until the Melchizedek receivers should leave Urantia.

74:3.7 (831.4) The sixth day was devoted to an inspection of the numerous types of men and animals. Along the walls eastward in Eden, Adam and Eve were escorted all day, viewing the animal life of the planet and arriving at a better understanding as to what must be done to bring order out of the confusion of a world inhabited by such a variety of living creatures.

74:3.8 (831.5) It greatly surprised those who accompanied Adam on this trip to observe how fully he understood the nature and function of the thousands upon thousands of animals shown him. The instant he glanced at an animal, he would indicate its nature and behavior. Adam could give names descriptive of the origin, nature, and function of all material creatures on sight. Those who conducted him on this tour of inspection did not know that the world’s new ruler was one of the most expert anatomists of all Satania; and Eve was equally proficient. Adam amazed his associates by describing hosts of living things too small to be seen by human eyes.

74:3.9 (831.6) When the sixth day of their sojourn on earth was over, Adam and Eve rested for the first time in their new home in “the east of Eden.” The first six days of the Urantia adventure had been very busy, and they looked forward with great pleasure to an entire day of freedom from all activities.

74:3.10 (831.7) But circumstances dictated otherwise. The experience of the day just past in which Adam had so intelligently and so exhaustively discussed the animal life of Urantia, together with his masterly inaugural address and his charming manner, had so won the hearts and overcome the intellects of the Garden dwellers that they were not only wholeheartedly disposed to accept the newly arrived Son and Daughter of Jerusem as rulers, but the majority were about ready to fall down and worship them as gods.

4. The First Upheaval

74:4.1 (832.1) That night, the night following the sixth day, while Adam and Eve slumbered, strange things were transpiring in the vicinity of the Father’s temple in the central sector of Eden. There, under the rays of the mellow moon, hundreds of enthusiastic and excited men and women listened for hours to the impassioned pleas of their leaders. They meant well, but they simply could not understand the simplicity of the fraternal and democratic manner of their new rulers. And long before daybreak the new and temporary administrators of world affairs reached a virtually unanimous conclusion that Adam and his mate were altogether too modest and unassuming. They decided that Divinity had descended to earth in bodily form, that Adam and Eve were in reality gods or else so near such an estate as to be worthy of reverent worship.

74:4.2 (832.2) The amazing events of the first six days of Adam and Eve on earth were entirely too much for the unprepared minds of even the world’s best men; their heads were in a whirl; they were swept along with the proposal to bring the noble pair up to the Father’s temple at high noon in order that everyone might bow down in respectful worship and prostrate themselves in humble submission. And the Garden dwellers were really sincere in all of this.

74:4.3 (832.3) Van protested. Amadon was absent, being in charge of the guard of honor which had remained behind with Adam and Eve overnight. But Van’s protest was swept aside. He was told that he was likewise too modest, too unassuming; that he was not far from a god himself, else how had he lived so long on earth, and how had he brought about such a great event as the advent of Adam? And as the excited Edenites were about to seize him and carry him up to the mount for adoration, Van made his way out through the throng and, being able to communicate with the midwayers, sent their leader in great haste to Adam.

74:4.4 (832.4) It was near the dawn of their seventh day on earth that Adam and Eve heard the startling news of the proposal of these well-meaning but misguided mortals; and then, even while the passenger birds were swiftly winging to bring them to the temple, the midwayers, being able to do such things, transported Adam and Eve to the Father’s temple. It was early on the morning of this seventh day and from the mount of their so recent reception that Adam held forth in explanation of the orders of divine sonship and made clear to these earth minds that only the Father and those whom he designates may be worshiped. Adam made it plain that he would accept any honor and receive all respect, but worship never!

74:4.5 (832.5) It was a momentous day, and just before noon, about the time of the arrival of the seraphic messenger bearing the Jerusem acknowledgment of the installation of the world’s rulers, Adam and Eve, moving apart from the throng, pointed to the Father’s temple and said: “Go you now to the material emblem of the Father’s invisible presence and bow down in worship of him who made us all and who keeps us living. And let this act be the sincere pledge that you never will again be tempted to worship anyone but God.” They all did as Adam directed. The Material Son and Daughter stood alone on the mount with bowed heads while the people prostrated themselves about the temple.

74:4.6 (832.6) And this was the origin of the Sabbath-day tradition. Always in Eden the seventh day was devoted to the noontide assembly at the temple; long it was the custom to devote this day to self-culture. The forenoon was devoted to physical improvement, the noontime to spiritual worship, the afternoon to mind culture, while the evening was spent in social rejoicing. This was never the law in Eden, but it was the custom as long as the Adamic administration held sway on earth.

5. Adam’s Administration

74:5.1 (833.1) For almost seven years after Adam’s arrival the Melchizedek receivers remained on duty, but the time finally came when they turned the administration of world affairs over to Adam and returned to Jerusem.

74:5.2 (833.2) The farewell of the receivers occupied the whole of a day, and during the evening the individual Melchizedeks gave Adam and Eve their parting advice and best wishes. Adam had several times requested his advisers to remain on earth with him, but always were these petitions denied. The time had come when the Material Sons must assume full responsibility for the conduct of world affairs. And so, at midnight, the seraphic transports of Satania left the planet with fourteen beings for Jerusem, the translation of Van and Amadon occurring simultaneously with the departure of the twelve Melchizedeks.

74:5.3 (833.3) All went fairly well for a time on Urantia, and it appeared that Adam would, eventually, be able to develop some plan for promoting the gradual extension of the Edenic civilization. Pursuant to the advice of the Melchizedeks, he began to foster the arts of manufacture with the idea of developing trade relations with the outside world. When Eden was disrupted, there were over one hundred primitive manufacturing plants in operation, and extensive trade relations with the near-by tribes had been established.

74:5.4 (833.4) For ages Adam and Eve had been instructed in the technique of improving a world in readiness for their specialized contributions to the advancement of evolutionary civilization; but now they were face to face with pressing problems, such as the establishment of law and order in a world of savages, barbarians, and semicivilized human beings. Aside from the cream of the earth’s population, assembled in the Garden, only a few groups, here and there, were at all ready for the reception of the Adamic culture.

74:5.5 (833.5) Adam made a heroic and determined effort to establish a world government, but he met with stubborn resistance at every turn. Adam had already put in operation a system of group control throughout Eden and had federated all of these companies into the Edenic league. But trouble, serious trouble, ensued when he went outside the Garden and sought to apply these ideas to the outlying tribes. The moment Adam’s associates began to work outside the Garden, they met the direct and well-planned resistance of Caligastia and Daligastia. The fallen Prince had been deposed as world ruler, but he had not been removed from the planet. He was still present on earth and able, at least to some extent, to resist all of Adam’s plans for the rehabilitation of human society. Adam tried to warn the races against Caligastia, but the task was made very difficult because his archenemy was invisible to the eyes of mortals.

74:5.6 (833.6) Even among the Edenites there were those confused minds that leaned toward the Caligastia teaching of unbridled personal liberty; and they caused Adam no end of trouble; always were they upsetting the best-laid plans for orderly progression and substantial development. He was finally compelled to withdraw his program for immediate socialization; he fell back on Van’s method of organization, dividing the Edenites into companies of one hundred with captains over each and with lieutenants in charge of groups of ten.

74:5.7 (834.1) Adam and Eve had come to institute representative government in the place of monarchial, but they found no government worthy of the name on the face of the whole earth. For the time being Adam abandoned all effort to establish representative government, and before the collapse of the Edenic regime he succeeded in establishing almost one hundred outlying trade and social centers where strong individuals ruled in his name. Most of these centers had been organized aforetime by Van and Amadon.

74:5.8 (834.2) The sending of ambassadors from one tribe to another dates from the times of Adam. This was a great forward step in the evolution of government.

6. Home Life of Adam and Eve

74:6.1 (834.3) The Adamic family grounds embraced a little over five square miles. Immediately surrounding this homesite, provision had been made for the care of more than three hundred thousand of the pure-line offspring. But only the first unit of the projected buildings was ever constructed. Before the size of the Adamic family outgrew these early provisions, the whole Edenic plan had been disrupted and the Garden vacated.

74:6.2 (834.4) Adamson was the first-born of the violet race of Urantia, being followed by his sister and Eveson, the second son of Adam and Eve. Eve was the mother of five children before the Melchizedeks left — three sons and two daughters. The next two were twins. She bore sixty-three children, thirty-two daughters and thirty-one sons, before the default. When Adam and Eve left the Garden, their family consisted of four generations numbering 1,647 pure-line descendants. They had forty-two children after leaving the Garden besides the two offspring of joint parentage with the mortal stock of earth. And this does not include the Adamic parentage to the Nodite and evolutionary races.

74:6.3 (834.5) The Adamic children did not take milk from animals when they ceased to nurse the mother’s breast at one year of age. Eve had access to the milk of a great variety of nuts and to the juices of many fruits, and knowing full well the chemistry and energy of these foods, she suitably combined them for the nourishment of her children until the appearance of teeth.

74:6.4 (834.6) While cooking was universally employed outside of the immediate Adamic sector of Eden, there was no cooking in Adam’s household. They found their foods — fruits, nuts, and cereals — ready prepared as they ripened. They ate once a day, shortly after noontime. Adam and Eve also imbibed “light and energy” direct from certain space emanations in conjunction with the ministry of the tree of life.

74:6.5 (834.7) The bodies of Adam and Eve gave forth a shimmer of light, but they always wore clothing in conformity with the custom of their associates. Though wearing very little during the day, at eventide they donned night wraps. The origin of the traditional halo encircling the heads of supposed pious and holy men dates back to the days of Adam and Eve. Since the light emanations of their bodies were so largely obscured by clothing, only the radiating glow from their heads was discernible. The descendants of Adamson always thus portrayed their concept of individuals believed to be extraordinary in spiritual development.

74:6.6 (834.8) Adam and Eve could communicate with each other and with their immediate children over a distance of about fifty miles. This thought exchange was effected by means of the delicate gas chambers located in close proximity to their brain structures. By this mechanism they could send and receive thought oscillations. But this power was instantly suspended upon the mind’s surrender to the discord and disruption of evil.

74:6.7 (835.1) The Adamic children attended their own schools until they were sixteen, the younger being taught by the elder. The little folks changed activities every thirty minutes, the older every hour. And it was certainly a new sight on Urantia to observe these children of Adam and Eve at play, joyous and exhilarating activity just for the sheer fun of it. The play and humor of the present-day races are largely derived from the Adamic stock. The Adamites all had a great appreciation of music as well as a keen sense of humor.

74:6.8 (835.2) The average age of betrothal was eighteen, and these youths then entered upon a two years’ course of instruction in preparation for the assumption of marital responsibilities. At twenty they were eligible for marriage; and after marriage they began their lifework or entered upon special preparation therefor.

74:6.9 (835.3) The practice of some subsequent nations of permitting the royal families, supposedly descended from the gods, to marry brother to sister, dates from the traditions of the Adamic offspring — mating, as they must needs, with one another. The marriage ceremonies of the first and second generations of the Garden were always performed by Adam and Eve.

7. Life in the Garden

74:7.1 (835.4) The children of Adam, except for four years’ attendance at the western schools, lived and worked in the “east of Eden.” They were trained intellectually until they were sixteen in accordance with the methods of the Jerusem schools. From sixteen to twenty they were taught in the Urantia schools at the other end of the Garden, serving there also as teachers in the lower grades.

74:7.2 (835.5) The entire purpose of the western school system of the Garden was socialization. The forenoon periods of recess were devoted to practical horticulture and agriculture, the afternoon periods to competitive play. The evenings were employed in social intercourse and the cultivation of personal friendships. Religious and sexual training were regarded as the province of the home, the duty of parents.

74:7.3 (835.6) The teaching in these schools included instruction regarding:

74:7.4 (835.7) 1. Health and the care of the body.

74:7.5 (835.8) 2. The golden rule, the standard of social intercourse.

74:7.6 (835.9) 3. The relation of individual rights to group rights and community obligations.

74:7.7 (835.10) 4. History and culture of the various earth races.

74:7.8 (835.11) 5. Methods of advancing and improving world trade.

74:7.9 (835.12) 6. Co-ordination of conflicting duties and emotions.

74:7.10 (835.13) 7. The cultivation of play, humor, and competitive substitutes for physical fighting.

74:7.11 (835.14) The schools, in fact every activity of the Garden, were always open to visitors. Unarmed observers were freely admitted to Eden for short visits. To sojourn in the Garden a Urantian had to be “adopted.” He received instructions in the plan and purpose of the Adamic bestowal, signified his intention to adhere to this mission, and then made declaration of loyalty to the social rule of Adam and the spiritual sovereignty of the Universal Father.

74:7.12 (836.1) The laws of the Garden were based on the older codes of Dalamatia and were promulgated under seven heads:

74:7.13 (836.2) 1. The laws of health and sanitation.

74:7.14 (836.3) 2. The social regulations of the Garden.

74:7.15 (836.4) 3. The code of trade and commerce.

74:7.16 (836.5) 4. The laws of fair play and competition.

74:7.17 (836.6) 5. The laws of home life.

74:7.18 (836.7) 6. The civil codes of the golden rule.

74:7.19 (836.8) 7. The seven commands of supreme moral rule.

74:7.20 (836.9) The moral law of Eden was little different from the seven commandments of Dalamatia. But the Adamites taught many additional reasons for these commands; for instance, regarding the injunction against murder, the indwelling of the Thought Adjuster was presented as an additional reason for not destroying human life. They taught that “whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.”

74:7.21 (836.10) The public worship hour of Eden was noon; sunset was the hour of family worship. Adam did his best to discourage the use of set prayers, teaching that effective prayer must be wholly individual, that it must be the “desire of the soul”; but the Edenites continued to use the prayers and forms handed down from the times of Dalamatia. Adam also endeavored to substitute the offerings of the fruit of the land for the blood sacrifices in the religious ceremonies but had made little progress before the disruption of the Garden.

74:7.22 (836.11) Adam endeavored to teach the races sex equality. The way Eve worked by the side of her husband made a profound impression upon all dwellers in the Garden. Adam definitely taught them that the woman, equally with the man, contributes those life factors which unite to form a new being. Theretofore, mankind had presumed that all procreation resided in the “loins of the father.” They had looked upon the mother as being merely a provision for nurturing the unborn and nursing the newborn.

74:7.23 (836.12) Adam taught his contemporaries all they could comprehend, but that was not very much, comparatively speaking. Nevertheless, the more intelligent of the races of earth looked forward eagerly to the time when they would be permitted to intermarry with the superior children of the violet race. And what a different world Urantia would have become if this great plan of uplifting the races had been carried out! Even as it was, tremendous gains resulted from the small amount of the blood of this imported race which the evolutionary peoples incidentally secured.

74:7.24 (836.13) And thus did Adam work for the welfare and uplift of the world of his sojourn. But it was a difficult task to lead these mixed and mongrel peoples in the better way.

8. The Legend of Creation

74:8.1 (836.14) The story of the creation of Urantia in six days was based on the tradition that Adam and Eve had spent just six days in their initial survey of the Garden. This circumstance lent almost sacred sanction to the time period of the week, which had been originally introduced by the Dalamatians. Adam’s spending six days inspecting the Garden and formulating preliminary plans for organization was not prearranged; it was worked out from day to day. The choosing of the seventh day for worship was wholly incidental to the facts herewith narrated.

74:8.2 (837.1) The legend of the making of the world in six days was an afterthought, in fact, more than thirty thousand years afterwards. One feature of the narrative, the sudden appearance of the sun and moon, may have taken origin in the traditions of the onetime sudden emergence of the world from a dense space cloud of minute matter which had long obscured both sun and moon.

74:8.3 (837.2) The story of creating Eve out of Adam’s rib is a confused condensation of the Adamic arrival and the celestial surgery connected with the interchange of living substances associated with the coming of the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince more than four hundred and fifty thousand years previously.

74:8.4 (837.3) The majority of the world’s peoples have been influenced by the tradition that Adam and Eve had physical forms created for them upon their arrival on Urantia. The belief in man’s having been created from clay was well-nigh universal in the Eastern Hemisphere; this tradition can be traced from the Philippine Islands around the world to Africa. And many groups accepted this story of man’s clay origin by some form of special creation in the place of the earlier beliefs in progressive creation — evolution.

74:8.5 (837.4) Away from the influences of Dalamatia and Eden, mankind tended toward the belief in the gradual ascent of the human race. The fact of evolution is not a modern discovery; the ancients understood the slow and evolutionary character of human progress. The early Greeks had clear ideas of this despite their proximity to Mesopotamia. Although the various races of earth became sadly mixed up in their notions of evolution, nevertheless, many of the primitive tribes believed and taught that they were the descendants of various animals. Primitive peoples made a practice of selecting for their “totems” the animals of their supposed ancestry. Certain North American Indian tribes believed they originated from beavers and coyotes. Certain African tribes teach that they are descended from the hyena, a Malay tribe from the lemur, a New Guinea group from the parrot.

74:8.6 (837.5) The Babylonians, because of immediate contact with the remnants of the civilization of the Adamites, enlarged and embellished the story of man’s creation; they taught that he had descended directly from the gods. They held to an aristocratic origin for the race which was incompatible with even the doctrine of creation out of clay.

74:8.7 (837.6) The Old Testament account of creation dates from long after the time of Moses; he never taught the Hebrews such a distorted story. But he did present a simple and condensed narrative of creation to the Israelites, hoping thereby to augment his appeal to worship the Creator, the Universal Father, whom he called the Lord God of Israel.

74:8.8 (837.7) In his early teachings, Moses very wisely did not attempt to go back of Adam’s time, and since Moses was the supreme teacher of the Hebrews, the stories of Adam became intimately associated with those of creation. That the earlier traditions recognized pre-Adamic civilization is clearly shown by the fact that later editors, intending to eradicate all reference to human affairs before Adam’s time, neglected to remove the telltale reference to Cain’s emigration to the “land of Nod,” where he took himself a wife.

74:8.9 (838.1) The Hebrews had no written language in general usage for a long time after they reached Palestine. They learned the use of an alphabet from the neighboring Philistines, who were political refugees from the higher civilization of Crete. The Hebrews did little writing until about 900 B.C., and having no written language until such a late date, they had several different stories of creation in circulation, but after the Babylonian captivity they inclined more toward accepting a modified Mesopotamian version.

74:8.10 (838.2) Jewish tradition became crystallized about Moses, and because he endeavored to trace the lineage of Abraham back to Adam, the Jews assumed that Adam was the first of all mankind. Yahweh was the creator, and since Adam was supposed to be the first man, he must have made the world just prior to making Adam. And then the tradition of Adam’s six days got woven into the story, with the result that almost a thousand years after Moses’ sojourn on earth the tradition of creation in six days was written out and subsequently credited to him.

74:8.11 (838.3) When the Jewish priests returned to Jerusalem, they had already completed the writing of their narrative of the beginning of things. Soon they made claims that this recital was a recently discovered story of creation written by Moses. But the contemporary Hebrews of around 500 B.C. did not consider these writings to be divine revelations; they looked upon them much as later peoples regard mythological narratives.

74:8.12 (838.4) This spurious document, reputed to be the teachings of Moses, was brought to the attention of Ptolemy, the Greek king of Egypt, who had it translated into Greek by a commission of seventy scholars for his new library at Alexandria. And so this account found its place among those writings which subsequently became a part of the later collections of the “sacred scriptures” of the Hebrew and Christian religions. And through identification with these theological systems, such concepts for a long time profoundly influenced the philosophy of many Occidental peoples.

74:8.13 (838.5) The Christian teachers perpetuated the belief in the fiat creation of the human race, and all this led directly to the formation of the hypothesis of a onetime golden age of utopian bliss and the theory of the fall of man or superman which accounted for the nonutopian condition of society. These outlooks on life and man’s place in the universe were at best discouraging since they were predicated upon a belief in retrogression rather than progression, as well as implying a vengeful Deity, who had vented wrath upon the human race in retribution for the errors of certain onetime planetary administrators.

74:8.14 (838.6) The “golden age” is a myth, but Eden was a fact, and the Garden civilization was actually overthrown. Adam and Eve carried on in the Garden for one hundred and seventeen years when, through the impatience of Eve and the errors of judgment of Adam, they presumed to turn aside from the ordained way, speedily bringing disaster upon themselves and ruinous retardation upon the developmental progression of all Urantia.

74:8.15 (838.7) [Narrated by Solonia, the seraphic “voice in the Garden.”]




Paper 73 – The Garden of Eden

The Urantia Book

Paper 73

The Garden of Eden

73:0.1 (821.1) THE cultural decadence and spiritual poverty resulting from the Caligastia downfall and consequent social confusion had little effect on the physical or biologic status of the Urantia peoples. Organic evolution proceeded apace, quite regardless of the cultural and moral setback which so swiftly followed the disaffection of Caligastia and Daligastia. And there came a time in the planetary history, almost forty thousand years ago, when the Life Carriers on duty took note that, from a purely biologic standpoint, the developmental progress of the Urantia races was nearing its apex. The Melchizedek receivers, concurring in this opinion, readily agreed to join the Life Carriers in a petition to the Most Highs of Edentia asking that Urantia be inspected with a view to authorizing the dispatch of biologic uplifters, a Material Son and Daughter.

73:0.2 (821.2) This request was addressed to the Most Highs of Edentia because they had exercised direct jurisdiction over many of Urantia’s affairs ever since Caligastia’s downfall and the temporary vacation of authority on Jerusem.

73:0.3 (821.3) Tabamantia, sovereign supervisor of the series of decimal or experimental worlds, came to inspect the planet and, after his survey of racial progress, duly recommended that Urantia be granted Material Sons. In a little less than one hundred years from the time of this inspection, Adam and Eve, a Material Son and Daughter of the local system, arrived and began the difficult task of attempting to untangle the confused affairs of a planet retarded by rebellion and resting under the ban of spiritual isolation.

1. The Nodites and the Amadonites

73:1.1 (821.4) On a normal planet the arrival of the Material Son would ordinarily herald the approach of a great age of invention, material progress, and intellectual enlightenment. The post-Adamic era is the great scientific age of most worlds, but not so on Urantia. Though the planet was peopled by races physically fit, the tribes languished in the depths of savagery and moral stagnation.

73:1.2 (821.5) Ten thousand years after the rebellion practically all the gains of the Prince’s administration had been effaced; the races of the world were little better off than if this misguided Son had never come to Urantia. Only among the Nodites and the Amadonites was there persistence of the traditions of Dalamatia and the culture of the Planetary Prince.

73:1.3 (821.6) The Nodites were the descendants of the rebel members of the Prince’s staff, their name deriving from their first leader, Nod, onetime chairman of the Dalamatia commission on industry and trade. The Amadonites were the descendants of those Andonites who chose to remain loyal with Van and Amadon. “Amadonite” is more of a cultural and religious designation than a racial term; racially considered the Amadonites were essentially Andonites. “Nodite” is both a cultural and racial term, for the Nodites themselves constituted the eighth race of Urantia.

73:1.4 (822.1) There existed a traditional enmity between the Nodites and the Amadonites. This feud was constantly coming to the surface whenever the offspring of these two groups would try to engage in some common enterprise. Even later, in the affairs of Eden, it was exceedingly difficult for them to work together in peace.

73:1.5 (822.2) Shortly after the destruction of Dalamatia the followers of Nod became divided into three major groups. The central group remained in the immediate vicinity of their original home near the headwaters of the Persian Gulf. The eastern group migrated to the highland regions of Elam just east of the Euphrates valley. The western group was situated on the northeastern Syrian shores of the Mediterranean and in adjacent territory.

73:1.6 (822.3) These Nodites had freely mated with the Sangik races and had left behind an able progeny. And some of the descendants of the rebellious Dalamatians subsequently joined Van and his loyal followers in the lands north of Mesopotamia. Here, in the vicinity of Lake Van and the southern Caspian Sea region, the Nodites mingled and mixed with the Amadonites, and they were numbered among the “mighty men of old.”

73:1.7 (822.4) Prior to the arrival of Adam and Eve these groups — Nodites and Amadonites — were the most advanced and cultured races on earth.

2. Planning for the Garden

73:2.1 (822.5) For almost one hundred years prior to Tabamantia’s inspection, Van and his associates, from their highland headquarters of world ethics and culture, had been preaching the advent of a promised Son of God, a racial uplifter, a teacher of truth, and the worthy successor of the traitorous Caligastia. Though the majority of the world’s inhabitants of those days exhibited little or no interest in such a prediction, those who were in immediate contact with Van and Amadon took such teaching seriously and began to plan for the actual reception of the promised Son.

73:2.2 (822.6) Van told his nearest associates the story of the Material Sons on Jerusem; what he had known of them before ever he came to Urantia. He well knew that these Adamic Sons always lived in simple but charming garden homes and proposed, eighty-three years before the arrival of Adam and Eve, that they devote themselves to the proclamation of their advent and to the preparation of a garden home for their reception.

73:2.3 (822.7) From their highland headquarters and from sixty-one far-scattered settlements, Van and Amadon recruited a corps of over three thousand willing and enthusiastic workers who, in solemn assembly, dedicated themselves to this mission of preparing for the promised — at least expected — Son.

73:2.4 (822.8) Van divided his volunteers into one hundred companies with a captain over each and an associate who served on his personal staff as a liaison officer, keeping Amadon as his own associate. These commissions all began in earnest their preliminary work, and the committee on location for the Garden sallied forth in search of the ideal spot.

73:2.5 (822.9) Although Caligastia and Daligastia had been deprived of much of their power for evil, they did everything possible to frustrate and hamper the work of preparing the Garden. But their evil machinations were largely offset by the faithful activities of the almost ten thousand loyal midway creatures who so tirelessly labored to advance the enterprise.

3. The Garden Site

73:3.1 (823.1) The committee on location was absent for almost three years. It reported favorably concerning three possible locations: The first was an island in the Persian Gulf; the second, the river location subsequently occupied as the second garden; the third, a long narrow peninsula — almost an island — projecting westward from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

73:3.2 (823.2) The committee almost unanimously favored the third selection. This site was chosen, and two years were occupied in transferring the world’s cultural headquarters, including the tree of life, to this Mediterranean peninsula. All but a single group of the peninsula dwellers peaceably vacated when Van and his company arrived.

73:3.3 (823.3) This Mediterranean peninsula had a salubrious climate and an equable temperature; this stabilized weather was due to the encircling mountains and to the fact that this area was virtually an island in an inland sea. While it rained copiously on the surrounding highlands, it seldom rained in Eden proper. But each night, from the extensive network of artificial irrigation channels, a “mist would go up” to refresh the vegetation of the Garden.

73:3.4 (823.4) The coast line of this land mass was considerably elevated, and the neck connecting with the mainland was only twenty-seven miles wide at the narrowest point. The great river that watered the Garden came down from the higher lands of the peninsula and flowed east through the peninsular neck to the mainland and thence across the lowlands of Mesopotamia to the sea beyond. It was fed by four tributaries which took origin in the coastal hills of the Edenic peninsula, and these are the “four heads” of the river which “went out of Eden,” and which later became confused with the branches of the rivers surrounding the second garden.

73:3.5 (823.5) The mountains surrounding the Garden abounded in precious stones and metals, though these received very little attention. The dominant idea was to be the glorification of horticulture and the exaltation of agriculture.

73:3.6 (823.6) The site chosen for the Garden was probably the most beautiful spot of its kind in all the world, and the climate was then ideal. Nowhere else was there a location which could have lent itself so perfectly to becoming such a paradise of botanic expression. In this rendezvous the cream of the civilization of Urantia was forgathering. Without and beyond, the world lay in darkness, ignorance, and savagery. Eden was the one bright spot on Urantia; it was naturally a dream of loveliness, and it soon became a poem of exquisite and perfected landscape glory.

4. Establishing the Garden

73:4.1 (823.7) When Material Sons, the biologic uplifters, begin their sojourn on an evolutionary world, their place of abode is often called the Garden of Eden because it is characterized by the floral beauty and the botanic grandeur of Edentia, the constellation capital. Van well knew of these customs and accordingly provided that the entire peninsula be given over to the Garden. Pasturage and animal husbandry were projected for the adjoining mainland. Of animal life, only the birds and the various domesticated species were to be found in the park. Van’s instructions were that Eden was to be a garden, and only a garden. No animals were ever slaughtered within its precincts. All flesh eaten by the Garden workers throughout all the years of construction was brought in from the herds maintained under guard on the mainland.

73:4.2 (824.1) The first task was the building of the brick wall across the neck of the peninsula. This once completed, the real work of landscape beautification and home building could proceed unhindered.

73:4.3 (824.2) A zoological garden was created by building a smaller wall just outside the main wall; the intervening space, occupied by all manner of wild beasts, served as an additional defense against hostile attacks. This menagerie was organized in twelve grand divisions, and walled paths led between these groups to the twelve gates of the Garden, the river and its adjacent pastures occupying the central area.

73:4.4 (824.3) In the preparation of the Garden only volunteer laborers were employed; no hirelings were ever used. They cultivated the Garden and tended their herds for support; contributions of food were also received from near-by believers. And this great enterprise was carried through to completion in spite of the difficulties attendant upon the confused status of the world during these troublous times.

73:4.5 (824.4) But it was a cause for great disappointment when Van, not knowing how soon the expected Son and Daughter might come, suggested that the younger generation also be trained in the work of carrying on the enterprise in case their arrival should be delayed. This seemed like an admission of lack of faith on Van’s part and made considerable trouble, caused many desertions; but Van went forward with his plan of preparedness, meantime filling the places of the deserters with younger volunteers.

5. The Garden Home

73:5.1 (824.5) At the center of the Edenic peninsula was the exquisite stone temple of the Universal Father, the sacred shrine of the Garden. To the north the administrative headquarters was established; to the south were built the homes for the workers and their families; to the west was provided the allotment of ground for the proposed schools of the educational system of the expected Son, while in the “east of Eden” were built the domiciles intended for the promised Son and his immediate offspring. The architectural plans for Eden provided homes and abundant land for one million human beings.

73:5.2 (824.6) At the time of Adam’s arrival, though the Garden was only one-fourth finished, it had thousands of miles of irrigation ditches and more than twelve thousand miles of paved paths and roads. There were a trifle over five thousand brick buildings in the various sectors, and the trees and plants were almost beyond number. Seven was the largest number of houses composing any one cluster in the park. And though the structures of the Garden were simple, they were most artistic. The roads and paths were well built, and the landscaping was exquisite.

73:5.3 (824.7) The sanitary arrangements of the Garden were far in advance of anything that had been attempted theretofore on Urantia. The drinking water of Eden was kept wholesome by the strict observance of the sanitary regulations designed to conserve its purity. During these early times much trouble came about from neglect of these rules, but Van gradually impressed upon his associates the importance of allowing nothing to fall into the water supply of the Garden.

73:5.4 (825.1) Before the later establishment of a sewage-disposal system the Edenites practiced the scrupulous burial of all waste or decomposing material. Amadon’s inspectors made their rounds each day in search for possible causes of sickness. Urantians did not again awaken to the importance of the prevention of human diseases until the later times of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Before the disruption of the Adamic regime a covered brick-conduit disposal system had been constructed which ran beneath the walls and emptied into the river of Eden almost a mile beyond the outer or lesser wall of the Garden.

73:5.5 (825.2) By the time of Adam’s arrival most of the plants of that section of the world were growing in Eden. Already had many of the fruits, cereals, and nuts been greatly improved. Many modern vegetables and cereals were first cultivated here, but scores of varieties of food plants were subsequently lost to the world.

73:5.6 (825.3) About five per cent of the Garden was under high artificial cultivation, fifteen per cent partially cultivated, the remainder being left in a more or less natural state pending the arrival of Adam, it being thought best to finish the park in accordance with his ideas.

73:5.7 (825.4) And so was the Garden of Eden made ready for the reception of the promised Adam and his consort. And this Garden would have done honor to a world under perfected administration and normal control. Adam and Eve were well pleased with the general plan of Eden, though they made many changes in the furnishings of their own personal dwelling.

73:5.8 (825.5) Although the work of embellishment was hardly finished at the time of Adam’s arrival, the place was already a gem of botanic beauty; and during the early days of his sojourn in Eden the whole Garden took on new form and assumed new proportions of beauty and grandeur. Never before this time nor after has Urantia harbored such a beautiful and replete exhibition of horticulture and agriculture.

6. The Tree of Life

73:6.1 (825.6) In the center of the Garden temple Van planted the long-guarded tree of life, whose leaves were for the “healing of the nations,” and whose fruit had so long sustained him on earth. Van well knew that Adam and Eve would also be dependent on this gift of Edentia for their life maintenance after they once appeared on Urantia in material form.

73:6.2 (825.7) The Material Sons on the system capitals do not require the tree of life for sustenance. Only in the planetary repersonalization are they dependent on this adjunct to physical immortality.

73:6.3 (825.8) The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” may be a figure of speech, a symbolic designation covering a multitude of human experiences, but the “tree of life” was not a myth; it was real and for a long time was present on Urantia. When the Most Highs of Edentia approved the commission of Caligastia as Planetary Prince of Urantia and those of the one hundred Jerusem citizens as his administrative staff, they sent to the planet, by the Melchizedeks, a shrub of Edentia, and this plant grew to be the tree of life on Urantia. This form of nonintelligent life is native to the constellation headquarters spheres, being also found on the headquarters worlds of the local and superuniverses as well as on the Havona spheres, but not on the system capitals.

73:6.4 (826.1) This superplant stored up certain space-energies which were antidotal to the age-producing elements of animal existence. The fruit of the tree of life was like a superchemical storage battery, mysteriously releasing the life-extension force of the universe when eaten. This form of sustenance was wholly useless to the ordinary evolutionary beings on Urantia, but specifically it was serviceable to the one hundred materialized members of Caligastia’s staff and to the one hundred modified Andonites who had contributed of their life plasm to the Prince’s staff, and who, in return, were made possessors of that complement of life which made it possible for them to utilize the fruit of the tree of life for an indefinite extension of their otherwise mortal existence.

73:6.5 (826.2) During the days of the Prince’s rule the tree was growing from the earth in the central and circular courtyard of the Father’s temple. Upon the outbreak of the rebellion it was regrown from the central core by Van and his associates in their temporary camp. This Edentia shrub was subsequently taken to their highland retreat, where it served both Van and Amadon for more than one hundred and fifty thousand years.

73:6.6 (826.3) When Van and his associates made ready the Garden for Adam and Eve, they transplanted the Edentia tree to the Garden of Eden, where, once again, it grew in a central, circular courtyard of another temple to the Father. And Adam and Eve periodically partook of its fruit for the maintenance of their dual form of physical life.

73:6.7 (826.4) When the plans of the Material Son went astray, Adam and his family were not permitted to carry the core of the tree away from the Garden. When the Nodites invaded Eden, they were told that they would become as “gods if they partook of the fruit of the tree.” Much to their surprise they found it unguarded. They ate freely of the fruit for years, but it did nothing for them; they were all material mortals of the realm; they lacked that endowment which acted as a complement to the fruit of the tree. They became enraged at their inability to benefit from the tree of life, and in connection with one of their internal wars, the temple and the tree were both destroyed by fire; only the stone wall stood until the Garden was subsequently submerged. This was the second temple of the Father to perish.

73:6.8 (826.5) And now must all flesh on Urantia take the natural course of life and death. Adam, Eve, their children, and their children’s children, together with their associates, all perished in the course of time, thus becoming subject to the ascension scheme of the local universe wherein mansion world resurrection follows material death.

7. The Fate of Eden

73:7.1 (826.6) After the first garden was vacated by Adam, it was occupied variously by the Nodites, Cutites, and the Suntites. It later became the dwelling place of the northern Nodites who opposed co-operation with the Adamites. The peninsula had been overrun by these lower-grade Nodites for almost four thousand years after Adam left the Garden when, in connection with the violent activity of the surrounding volcanoes and the submergence of the Sicilian land bridge to Africa, the eastern floor of the Mediterranean Sea sank, carrying down beneath the waters the whole of the Edenic peninsula. Concomitant with this vast submergence the coast line of the eastern Mediterranean was greatly elevated. And this was the end of the most beautiful natural creation that Urantia has ever harbored. The sinking was not sudden, several hundred years being required completely to submerge the entire peninsula.

73:7.2 (827.1) We cannot regard this disappearance of the Garden as being in any way a result of the miscarriage of the divine plans or as a result of the mistakes of Adam and Eve. We do not regard the submergence of Eden as anything but a natural occurrence, but it does seem to us that the sinking of the Garden was timed to occur at just about the date of the accumulation of the reserves of the violet race for undertaking the work of rehabilitating the world peoples.

73:7.3 (827.2) The Melchizedeks counseled Adam not to initiate the program of racial uplift and blending until his own family had numbered one-half million. It was never intended that the Garden should be the permanent home of the Adamites. They were to become emissaries of a new life to all the world; they were to mobilize for unselfish bestowal upon the needy races of earth.

73:7.4 (827.3) The instructions given Adam by the Melchizedeks implied that he was to establish racial, continental, and divisional headquarters to be in charge of his immediate sons and daughters, while he and Eve were to divide their time between these various world capitals as advisers and co-ordinators of the world-wide ministry of biologic uplift, intellectual advancement, and moral rehabilitation.

73:7.5 (827.4) [Presented by Solonia, the seraphic “voice in the Garden.”]




Paper 72 – Government on a Neighboring Planet

The Urantia Book

Paper 72

Government on a Neighboring Planet

72:0.1 (808.1) BY PERMISSION of Lanaforge and with the approval of the Most Highs of Edentia, I am authorized to narrate something of the social, moral, and political life of the most advanced human race living on a not far-distant planet belonging to the Satania system.

72:0.2 (808.2) Of all the Satania worlds which became isolated because of participation in the Lucifer rebellion, this planet has experienced a history most like that of Urantia. The similarity of the two spheres undoubtedly explains why permission to make this extraordinary presentation was granted, for it is most unusual for the system rulers to consent to the narration on one planet of the affairs of another.

72:0.3 (808.3) This planet, like Urantia, was led astray by the disloyalty of its Planetary Prince in connection with the Lucifer rebellion. It received a Material Son shortly after Adam came to Urantia, and this Son also defaulted, leaving the sphere isolated, since a Magisterial Son has never been bestowed upon its mortal races.

1. The Continental Nation

72:1.1 (808.4) Notwithstanding all these planetary handicaps a very superior civilization is evolving on an isolated continent about the size of Australia. This nation numbers about 140 million. Its people are a mixed race, predominantly blue and yellow, having a slightly greater proportion of violet than the so-called white race of Urantia. These different races are not yet fully blended, but they fraternize and socialize very acceptably. The average length of life on this continent is now ninety years, fifteen per cent higher than that of any other people on the planet.

72:1.2 (808.5) The industrial mechanism of this nation enjoys a certain great advantage derived from the unique topography of the continent. The high mountains, on which heavy rains fall eight months in the year, are situated at the very center of the country. This natural arrangement favors the utilization of water power and greatly facilitates the irrigation of the more arid western quarter of the continent.

72:1.3 (808.6) These people are self-sustaining, that is, they can live indefinitely without importing anything from the surrounding nations. Their natural resources are replete, and by scientific techniques they have learned how to compensate for their deficiencies in the essentials of life. They enjoy a brisk domestic commerce but have little foreign trade owing to the universal hostility of their less progressive neighbors.

72:1.4 (808.7) This continental nation, in general, followed the evolutionary trend of the planet: The development from the tribal stage to the appearance of strong rulers and kings occupied thousands of years. The unconditional monarchs were succeeded by many different orders of government — abortive republics, communal states, and dictators came and went in endless profusion. This growth continued until about five hundred years ago when, during a politically fermenting period, one of the nation’s powerful dictator-triumvirs had a change of heart. He volunteered to abdicate upon condition that one of the other rulers, the baser of the remaining two, also vacate his dictatorship. Thus was the sovereignty of the continent placed in the hands of one ruler. The unified state progressed under strong monarchial rule for over one hundred years, during which there evolved a masterful charter of liberty.

72:1.5 (809.1) The subsequent transition from monarchy to a representative form of government was gradual, the kings remaining as mere social or sentimental figureheads, finally disappearing when the male line of descent ran out. The present republic has now been in existence just two hundred years, during which time there has been a continuous progression toward the governmental techniques about to be narrated, the last developments in industrial and political realms having been made within the past decade.

2. Political Organization

72:2.1 (809.2) This continental nation now has a representative government with a centrally located national capital. The central government consists of a strong federation of one hundred comparatively free states. These states elect their governors and legislators for ten years, and none are eligible for re-election. State judges are appointed for life by the governors and confirmed by their legislatures, which consist of one representative for each one hundred thousand citizens.

72:2.2 (809.3) There are five different types of metropolitan government, depending on the size of the city, but no city is permitted to have more than one million inhabitants. On the whole, these municipal governing schemes are very simple, direct, and economical. The few offices of city administration are keenly sought by the highest types of citizens.

72:2.3 (809.4) The federal government embraces three co-ordinate divisions: executive, legislative, and judicial. The federal chief executive is elected every six years by universal territorial suffrage. He is not eligible for re-election except upon the petition of at least seventy-five state legislatures concurred in by the respective state governors, and then but for one term. He is advised by a supercabinet composed of all living ex-chief executives.

72:2.4 (809.5) The legislative division embraces three houses:

72:2.5 (809.6) 1. The upper house is elected by industrial, professional, agricultural, and other groups of workers, balloting in accordance with economic function.

72:2.6 (809.7) 2. The lower house is elected by certain organizations of society embracing the social, political, and philosophic groups not included in industry or the professions. All citizens in good standing participate in the election of both classes of representatives, but they are differently grouped, depending on whether the election pertains to the upper or lower house.

72:2.7 (809.8) 3. The third house — the elder statesmen — embraces the veterans of civic service and includes many distinguished persons nominated by the chief executive, by the regional (subfederal) executives, by the chief of the supreme tribunal, and by the presiding officers of either of the other legislative houses. This group is limited to one hundred, and its members are elected by the majority action of the elder statesmen themselves. Membership is for life, and when vacancies occur, the person receiving the largest ballot among the list of nominees is thereby duly elected. The scope of this body is purely advisory, but it is a mighty regulator of public opinion and exerts a powerful influence upon all branches of the government.

72:2.8 (810.1) Very much of the federal administrative work is carried on by the ten regional (subfederal) authorities, each consisting of the association of ten states. These regional divisions are wholly executive and administrative, having neither legislative nor judicial functions. The ten regional executives are the personal appointees of the federal chief executive, and their term of office is concurrent with his — six years. The federal supreme tribunal approves the appointment of these ten regional executives, and while they may not be reappointed, the retiring executive automatically becomes the associate and adviser of his successor. Otherwise, these regional chiefs choose their own cabinets of administrative officials.

72:2.9 (810.2) This nation is adjudicated by two major court systems — the law courts and the socioeconomic courts. The law courts function on the following three levels:

72:2.10 (810.3) 1. Minor courts of municipal and local jurisdiction, whose decisions may be appealed to the high state tribunals.

72:2.11 (810.4) 2. State supreme courts, whose decisions are final in all matters not involving the federal government or jeopardy of citizenship rights and liberties. The regional executives are empowered to bring any case at once to the bar of the federal supreme court.

72:2.12 (810.5) 3. Federal supreme court — the high tribunal for the adjudication of national contentions and the appellate cases coming up from the state courts. This supreme tribunal consists of twelve men over forty and under seventy-five years of age who have served two or more years on some state tribunal, and who have been appointed to this high position by the chief executive with the majority approval of the supercabinet and the third house of the legislative assembly. All decisions of this supreme judicial body are by at least a two-thirds vote.

72:2.13 (810.6) The socioeconomic courts function in the following three divisions:

72:2.14 (810.7) 1. Parental courts, associated with the legislative and executive divisions of the home and social system.

72:2.15 (810.8) 2. Educational courts — the juridical bodies connected with the state and regional school systems and associated with the executive and legislative branches of the educational administrative mechanism.

72:2.16 (810.9) 3. Industrial courts — the jurisdictional tribunals vested with full authority for the settlement of all economic misunderstandings.

72:2.17 (810.10) The federal supreme court does not pass upon socioeconomic cases except upon the three-quarters vote of the third legislative branch of the national government, the house of elder statesmen. Otherwise, all decisions of the parental, educational, and industrial high courts are final.

3. The Home Life

72:3.1 (811.1) On this continent it is against the law for two families to live under the same roof. And since group dwellings have been outlawed, most of the tenement type of buildings have been demolished. But the unmarried still live in clubs, hotels, and other group dwellings. The smallest homesite permitted must provide fifty thousand square feet of land. All land and other property used for home purposes are free from taxation up to ten times the minimum homesite allotment.

72:3.2 (811.2) The home life of this people has greatly improved during the last century. Attendance of parents, both fathers and mothers, at the parental schools of child culture is compulsory. Even the agriculturists who reside in small country settlements carry on this work by correspondence, going to the near-by centers for oral instruction once in ten days — every two weeks, for they maintain a five-day week.

72:3.3 (811.3) The average number of children in each family is five, and they are under the full control of their parents or, in case of the demise of one or both, under that of the guardians designated by the parental courts. It is considered a great honor for any family to be awarded the guardianship of a full orphan. Competitive examinations are held among parents, and the orphan is awarded to the home of those displaying the best parental qualifications.

72:3.4 (811.4) These people regard the home as the basic institution of their civilization. It is expected that the most valuable part of a child’s education and character training will be secured from his parents and at home, and fathers devote almost as much attention to child culture as do mothers.

72:3.5 (811.5) All sex instruction is administered in the home by parents or by legal guardians. Moral instruction is offered by teachers during the rest periods in the school shops, but not so with religious training, which is deemed to be the exclusive privilege of parents, religion being looked upon as an integral part of home life. Purely religious instruction is given publicly only in the temples of philosophy, no such exclusively religious institutions as the Urantia churches having developed among this people. In their philosophy, religion is the striving to know God and to manifest love for one’s fellows through service for them, but this is not typical of the religious status of the other nations on this planet. Religion is so entirely a family matter among these people that there are no public places devoted exclusively to religious assembly. Politically, church and state, as Urantians are wont to say, are entirely separate, but there is a strange overlapping of religion and philosophy.

72:3.6 (811.6) Until twenty years ago the spiritual teachers (comparable to Urantia pastors), who visit each family periodically to examine the children to ascertain if they have been properly instructed by their parents, were under governmental supervision. These spiritual advisers and examiners are now under the direction of the newly created Foundation of Spiritual Progress, an institution supported by voluntary contributions. Possibly this institution may not further evolve until after the arrival of a Paradise Magisterial Son.

72:3.7 (811.7) Children remain legally subject to their parents until they are fifteen, when the first initiation into civic responsibility is held. Thereafter, every five years for five successive periods similar public exercises are held for such age groups at which their obligations to parents are lessened, while new civic and social responsibilities to the state are assumed. Suffrage is conferred at twenty, the right to marry without parental consent is not bestowed until twenty-five, and children must leave home on reaching the age of thirty.

72:3.8 (812.1) Marriage and divorce laws are uniform throughout the nation. Marriage before twenty — the age of civil enfranchisement — is not permitted. Permission to marry is only granted after one year’s notice of intention, and after both bride and groom present certificates showing that they have been duly instructed in the parental schools regarding the responsibilities of married life.

72:3.9 (812.2) Divorce regulations are somewhat lax, but decrees of separation, issued by the parental courts, may not be had until one year after application therefor has been recorded, and the year on this planet is considerably longer than on Urantia. Notwithstanding their easy divorce laws, the present rate of divorces is only one tenth that of the civilized races of Urantia.

4. The Educational System

72:4.1 (812.3) The educational system of this nation is compulsory and coeducational in the precollege schools that the student attends from the ages of five to eighteen. These schools are vastly different from those of Urantia. There are no classrooms, only one study is pursued at a time, and after the first three years all pupils become assistant teachers, instructing those below them. Books are used only to secure information that will assist in solving the problems arising in the school shops and on the school farms. Much of the furniture used on the continent and the many mechanical contrivances — this is a great age of invention and mechanization — are produced in these shops. Adjacent to each shop is a working library where the student may consult the necessary reference books. Agriculture and horticulture are also taught throughout the entire educational period on the extensive farms adjoining every local school.

72:4.2 (812.4) The feeble-minded are trained only in agriculture and animal husbandry, and are committed for life to special custodial colonies where they are segregated by sex to prevent parenthood, which is denied all subnormals. These restrictive measures have been in operation for seventy-five years; the commitment decrees are handed down by the parental courts.

72:4.3 (812.5) Everyone takes one month’s vacation each year. The precollege schools are conducted for nine months out of the year of ten, the vacation being spent with parents or friends in travel. This travel is a part of the adult-education program and is continued throughout a lifetime, the funds for meeting such expenses being accumulated by the same methods as those employed in old-age insurance.

72:4.4 (812.6) One quarter of the school time is devoted to play — competitive athletics — the pupils progressing in these contests from the local, through the state and regional, and on to the national trials of skill and prowess. Likewise, the oratorical and musical contests, as well as those in science and philosophy, occupy the attention of students from the lower social divisions on up to the contests for national honors.

72:4.5 (812.7) The school government is a replica of the national government with its three correlated branches, the teaching staff functioning as the third or advisory legislative division. The chief object of education on this continent is to make every pupil a self-supporting citizen.

72:4.6 (813.1) Every child graduating from the precollege school system at eighteen is a skilled artisan. Then begins the study of books and the pursuit of special knowledge, either in the adult schools or in the colleges. When a brilliant student completes his work ahead of schedule, he is granted an award of time and means wherewith he may execute some pet project of his own devising. The entire educational system is designed to adequately train the individual.

5. Industrial Organization

72:5.1 (813.2) The industrial situation among this people is far from their ideals; capital and labor still have their troubles, but both are becoming adjusted to the plan of sincere co-operation. On this unique continent the workers are increasingly becoming shareholders in all industrial concerns; every intelligent laborer is slowly becoming a small capitalist.

72:5.2 (813.3) Social antagonisms are lessening, and good will is growing apace. No grave economic problems have arisen out of the abolition of slavery (over one hundred years ago) since this adjustment was effected gradually by the liberation of two per cent each year. Those slaves who satisfactorily passed mental, moral, and physical tests were granted citizenship; many of these superior slaves were war captives or children of such captives. Some fifty years ago they deported the last of their inferior slaves, and still more recently they are addressing themselves to the task of reducing the numbers of their degenerate and vicious classes.

72:5.3 (813.4) These people have recently developed new techniques for the adjustment of industrial misunderstandings and for the correction of economic abuses which are marked improvements over their older methods of settling such problems. Violence has been outlawed as a procedure in adjusting either personal or industrial differences. Wages, profits, and other economic problems are not rigidly regulated, but they are in general controlled by the industrial legislatures, while all disputes arising out of industry are passed upon by the industrial courts.

72:5.4 (813.5) The industrial courts are only thirty years old but are functioning very satisfactorily. The most recent development provides that hereafter the industrial courts shall recognize legal compensation as falling in three divisions:

72:5.5 (813.6) 1. Legal rates of interest on invested capital.

72:5.6 (813.7) 2. Reasonable salary for skill employed in industrial operations.

72:5.7 (813.8) 3. Fair and equitable wages for labor.

72:5.8 (813.9) These shall first be met in accordance with contract, or in the face of decreased earnings they shall share proportionally in transient reduction. And thereafter all earnings in excess of these fixed charges shall be regarded as dividends and shall be prorated to all three divisions: capital, skill, and labor.

72:5.9 (813.10) Every ten years the regional executives adjust and decree the lawful hours of daily gainful toil. Industry now operates on a five-day week, working four and playing one. These people labor six hours each working day and, like students, nine months in the year of ten. Vacation is usually spent in travel, and new methods of transportation having been so recently developed, the whole nation is travel bent. The climate favors travel about eight months in the year, and they are making the most of their opportunities.

72:5.10 (813.11) Two hundred years ago the profit motive was wholly dominant in industry, but today it is being rapidly displaced by other and higher driving forces. Competition is keen on this continent, but much of it has been transferred from industry to play, skill, scientific achievement, and intellectual attainment. It is most active in social service and governmental loyalty. Among this people public service is rapidly becoming the chief goal of ambition. The richest man on the continent works six hours a day in the office of his machine shop and then hastens over to the local branch of the school of statesmanship, where he seeks to qualify for public service.

72:5.11 (814.1) Labor is becoming more honorable on this continent, and all able-bodied citizens over eighteen work either at home and on farms, at some recognized industry, on the public works where the temporarily unemployed are absorbed, or else in the corps of compulsory laborers in the mines.

72:5.12 (814.2) These people are also beginning to foster a new form of social disgust — disgust for both idleness and unearned wealth. Slowly but certainly they are conquering their machines. Once they, too, struggled for political liberty and subsequently for economic freedom. Now are they entering upon the enjoyment of both while in addition they are beginning to appreciate their well-earned leisure, which can be devoted to increased self-realization.

6. Old-Age Insurance

72:6.1 (814.3) This nation is making a determined effort to replace the self-respect-destroying type of charity by dignified government-insurance guarantees of security in old age. This nation provides every child an education and every man a job; therefore can it successfully carry out such an insurance scheme for the protection of the infirm and aged.

72:6.2 (814.4) Among this people all persons must retire from gainful pursuit at sixty-five unless they secure a permit from the state labor commissioner which will entitle them to remain at work until the age of seventy. This age limit does not apply to government servants or philosophers. The physically disabled or permanently crippled can be placed on the retired list at any age by court order countersigned by the pension commissioner of the regional government.

72:6.3 (814.5) The funds for old-age pensions are derived from four sources:

72:6.4 (814.6) 1. One day’s earnings each month are requisitioned by the federal government for this purpose, and in this country everybody works.

72:6.5 (814.7) 2. Bequests — many wealthy citizens leave funds for this purpose.

72:6.6 (814.8) 3. The earnings of compulsory labor in the state mines. After the conscript workers support themselves and set aside their own retirement contributions, all excess profits on their labor are turned over to this pension fund.

72:6.7 (814.9) 4. The income from natural resources. All natural wealth on the continent is held as a social trust by the federal government, and the income therefrom is utilized for social purposes, such as disease prevention, education of geniuses, and expenses of especially promising individuals in the statesmanship schools. One half of the income from natural resources goes to the old-age pension fund.

72:6.8 (814.10) Although state and regional actuarial foundations supply many forms of protective insurance, old-age pensions are solely administered by the federal government through the ten regional departments.

72:6.9 (814.11) These government funds have long been honestly administered. Next to treason and murder, the heaviest penalties meted out by the courts are attached to betrayal of public trust. Social and political disloyalty are now looked upon as being the most heinous of all crimes.

7. Taxation

72:7.1 (815.1) The federal government is paternalistic only in the administration of old-age pensions and in the fostering of genius and creative originality; the state governments are slightly more concerned with the individual citizen, while the local governments are much more paternalistic or socialistic. The city (or some subdivision thereof) concerns itself with such matters as health, sanitation, building regulations, beautification, water supply, lighting, heating, recreation, music, and communication.

72:7.2 (815.2) In all industry first attention is paid to health; certain phases of physical well-being are regarded as industrial and community prerogatives, but individual and family health problems are matters of personal concern only. In medicine, as in all other purely personal matters, it is increasingly the plan of government to refrain from interfering.

72:7.3 (815.3) Cities have no taxing power, neither can they go in debt. They receive per capita allowances from the state treasury and must supplement such revenue from the earnings of their socialistic enterprises and by licensing various commercial activities.

72:7.4 (815.4) The rapid-transit facilities, which make it practical greatly to extend the city boundaries, are under municipal control. The city fire departments are supported by the fire-prevention and insurance foundations, and all buildings, in city or country, are fireproof — have been for over seventy-five years.

72:7.5 (815.5) There are no municipally appointed peace officers; the police forces are maintained by the state governments. This department is recruited almost entirely from the unmarried men between twenty-five and fifty. Most of the states assess a rather heavy bachelor tax, which is remitted to all men joining the state police. In the average state the police force is now only one tenth as large as it was fifty years ago.

72:7.6 (815.6) There is little or no uniformity among the taxation schemes of the one hundred comparatively free and sovereign states as economic and other conditions vary greatly in different sections of the continent. Every state has ten basic constitutional provisions which cannot be modified except by consent of the federal supreme court, and one of these articles prevents levying a tax of more than one per cent on the value of any property in any one year, homesites, whether in city or country, being exempted.

72:7.7 (815.7) The federal government cannot go in debt, and a three-fourths referendum is required before any state can borrow except for purposes of war. Since the federal government cannot incur debt, in the event of war the National Council of Defense is empowered to assess the states for money, as well as for men and materials, as it may be required. But no debt may run for more than twenty-five years.

72:7.8 (815.8) Income to support the federal government is derived from the following five sources:

72:7.9 (815.9) 1. Import duties. All imports are subject to a tariff designed to protect the standard of living on this continent, which is far above that of any other nation on the planet. These tariffs are set by the highest industrial court after both houses of the industrial congress have ratified the recommendations of the chief executive of economic affairs, who is the joint appointee of these two legislative bodies. The upper industrial house is elected by labor, the lower by capital.

72:7.10 (816.1) 2. Royalties. The federal government encourages invention and original creations in the ten regional laboratories, assisting all types of geniuses — artists, authors, and scientists — and protecting their patents. In return the government takes one half the profits realized from all such inventions and creations, whether pertaining to machines, books, artistry, plants, or animals.

72:7.11 (816.2) 3. Inheritance tax. The federal government levies a graduated inheritance tax ranging from one to fifty per cent, depending on the size of an estate as well as on other conditions.

72:7.12 (816.3) 4. Military equipment. The government earns a considerable sum from the leasing of military and naval equipment for commercial and recreational usages.

72:7.13 (816.4) 5. Natural resources. The income from natural resources, when not fully required for the specific purposes designated in the charter of federal statehood, is turned into the national treasury.

72:7.14 (816.5) Federal appropriations, except war funds assessed by the National Council of Defense, are originated in the upper legislative house, concurred in by the lower house, approved by the chief executive, and finally validated by the federal budget commission of one hundred. The members of this commission are nominated by the state governors and elected by the state legislatures to serve for twenty-four years, one quarter being elected every six years. Every six years this body, by a three-fourths ballot, chooses one of its number as chief, and he thereby becomes director-controller of the federal treasury.

8. The Special Colleges

72:8.1 (816.6) In addition to the basic compulsory education program extending from the ages of five to eighteen, special schools are maintained as follows:

72:8.2 (816.7) 1. Statesmanship schools. These schools are of three classes: national, regional, and state. The public offices of the nation are grouped in four divisions. The first division of public trust pertains principally to the national administration, and all officeholders of this group must be graduates of both regional and national schools of statesmanship. Individuals may accept political, elective, or appointive office in the second division upon graduating from any one of the ten regional schools of statesmanship; their trusts concern responsibilities in the regional administration and the state governments. Division three includes state responsibilities, and such officials are only required to have state degrees of statesmanship. The fourth and last division of officeholders are not required to hold statesmanship degrees, such offices being wholly appointive. They represent minor positions of assistantship, secretaryships, and technical trusts which are discharged by the various learned professions functioning in governmental administrative capacities.

72:8.3 (816.8) Judges of the minor and state courts hold degrees from the state schools of statesmanship. Judges of the jurisdictional tribunals of social, educational, and industrial matters hold degrees from the regional schools. Judges of the federal supreme court must hold degrees from all these schools of statesmanship.

72:8.4 (817.1) 2. Schools of philosophy. These schools are affiliated with the temples of philosophy and are more or less associated with religion as a public function.

72:8.5 (817.2) 3. Institutions of science. These technical schools are co-ordinated with industry rather than with the educational system and are administered under fifteen divisions.

72:8.6 (817.3) 4. Professional training schools. These special institutions provide the technical training for the various learned professions, twelve in number.

72:8.7 (817.4) 5. Military and naval schools. Near the national headquarters and at the twenty-five coastal military centers are maintained those institutions devoted to the military training of volunteer citizens from eighteen to thirty years of age. Parental consent is required before twenty-five in order to gain entrance to these schools.

9. The Plan of Universal Suffrage

72:9.1 (817.5) Although candidates for all public offices are restricted to graduates of the state, regional, or federal schools of statesmanship, the progressive leaders of this nation discovered a serious weakness in their plan of universal suffrage and about fifty years ago made constitutional provision for a modified scheme of voting which embraces the following features:

72:9.2 (817.6) 1. Every man and woman of twenty years and over has one vote. Upon attaining this age, all citizens must accept membership in two voting groups: They will join the first in accordance with their economic function — industrial, professional, agricultural, or trade; they will enter the second group according to their political, philosophic, and social inclinations. All workers thus belong to some economic franchise group, and these guilds, like the noneconomic associations, are regulated much as is the national government with its threefold division of powers. Registration in these groups cannot be changed for twelve years.

72:9.3 (817.7) 2. Upon nomination by the state governors or by the regional executives and by the mandate of the regional supreme councils, individuals who have rendered great service to society, or who have demonstrated extraordinary wisdom in government service, may have additional votes conferred upon them not oftener than every five years and not to exceed nine such superfranchises. The maximum suffrage of any multiple voter is ten. Scientists, inventors, teachers, philosophers, and spiritual leaders are also thus recognized and honored with augmented political power. These advanced civic privileges are conferred by the state and regional supreme councils much as degrees are bestowed by the special colleges, and the recipients are proud to attach the symbols of such civic recognition, along with their other degrees, to their lists of personal achievements.

72:9.4 (817.8) 3. All individuals sentenced to compulsory labor in the mines and all governmental servants supported by tax funds are, for the periods of such services, disenfranchised. This does not apply to aged persons who may be retired on pensions at sixty-five.

72:9.5 (817.9) 4. There are five brackets of suffrage reflecting the average yearly taxes paid for each half-decade period. Heavy taxpayers are permitted extra votes up to five. This grant is independent of all other recognition, but in no case can any person cast over ten ballots.

72:9.6 (818.1) 5. At the time this franchise plan was adopted, the territorial method of voting was abandoned in favor of the economic or functional system. All citizens now vote as members of industrial, social, or professional groups, regardless of their residence. Thus the electorate consists of solidified, unified, and intelligent groups who elect only their best members to positions of governmental trust and responsibility. There is one exception to this scheme of functional or group suffrage: The election of a federal chief executive every six years is by nation-wide ballot, and no citizen casts over one vote.

72:9.7 (818.2) Thus, except in the election of the chief executive, suffrage is exercised by economic, professional, intellectual, and social groupings of the citizenry. The ideal state is organic, and every free and intelligent group of citizens represents a vital and functioning organ within the larger governmental organism.

72:9.8 (818.3) The schools of statesmanship have power to start proceedings in the state courts looking toward the disenfranchisement of any defective, idle, indifferent, or criminal individual. These people recognize that, when fifty per cent of a nation is inferior or defective and possesses the ballot, such a nation is doomed. They believe the dominance of mediocrity spells the downfall of any nation. Voting is compulsory, heavy fines being assessed against all who fail to cast their ballots.

10. Dealing with Crime

72:10.1 (818.4) The methods of this people in dealing with crime, insanity, and degeneracy, while in some ways pleasing, will, no doubt, in others prove shocking to most Urantians. Ordinary criminals and the defectives are placed, by sexes, in different agricultural colonies and are more than self-supporting. The more serious habitual criminals and the incurably insane are sentenced to death in the lethal gas chambers by the courts. Numerous crimes aside from murder, including betrayal of governmental trust, also carry the death penalty, and the visitation of justice is sure and swift.

72:10.2 (818.5) These people are passing out of the negative into the positive era of law. Recently they have gone so far as to attempt the prevention of crime by sentencing those who are believed to be potential murderers and major criminals to life service in the detention colonies. If such convicts subsequently demonstrate that they have become more normal, they may be either paroled or pardoned. The homicide rate on this continent is only one per cent of that among the other nations.

72:10.3 (818.6) Efforts to prevent the breeding of criminals and defectives were begun over one hundred years ago and have already yielded gratifying results. There are no prisons or hospitals for the insane. For one reason, there are only about ten per cent as many of these groups as are found on Urantia.

11. Military Preparedness

72:11.1 (818.7) Graduates of the federal military schools may be commissioned as “guardians of civilization” in seven ranks, in accordance with ability and experience, by the president of the National Council of Defense. This council consists of twenty-five members, nominated by the highest parental, educational, and industrial tribunals, confirmed by the federal supreme court, and presided over ex officio by the chief of staff of co-ordinated military affairs. Such members serve until they are seventy years of age.

72:11.2 (819.1) The courses pursued by such commissioned officers are four years in length and are invariably correlated with the mastery of some trade or profession. Military training is never given without this associated industrial, scientific, or professional schooling. When military training is finished, the individual has, during his four years’ course, received one half of the education imparted in any of the special schools where the courses are likewise four years in length. In this way the creation of a professional military class is avoided by providing this opportunity for a large number of men to support themselves while securing the first half of a technical or professional training.

72:11.3 (819.2) Military service during peacetime is purely voluntary, and the enlistments in all branches of the service are for four years, during which every man pursues some special line of study in addition to the mastery of military tactics. Training in music is one of the chief pursuits of the central military schools and of the twenty-five training camps distributed about the periphery of the continent. During periods of industrial slackness many thousands of unemployed are automatically utilized in upbuilding the military defenses of the continent on land and sea and in the air.

72:11.4 (819.3) Although these people maintain a powerful war establishment as a defense against invasion by the surrounding hostile peoples, it may be recorded to their credit that they have not in over one hundred years employed these military resources in an offensive war. They have become civilized to that point where they can vigorously defend civilization without yielding to the temptation to utilize their war powers in aggression. There have been no civil wars since the establishment of the united continental state, but during the last two centuries these people have been called upon to wage nine fierce defensive conflicts, three of which were against mighty confederations of world powers. Although this nation maintains adequate defense against attack by hostile neighbors, it pays far more attention to the training of statesmen, scientists, and philosophers.

72:11.5 (819.4) When at peace with the world, all mobile defense mechanisms are quite fully employed in trade, commerce, and recreation. When war is declared, the entire nation is mobilized. Throughout the period of hostilities military pay obtains in all industries, and the chiefs of all military departments become members of the chief executive’s cabinet.

12. The Other Nations

72:12.1 (819.5) Although the society and government of this unique people are in many respects superior to those of the Urantia nations, it should be stated that on the other continents (there are eleven on this planet) the governments are decidedly inferior to the more advanced nations of Urantia.

72:12.2 (819.6) Just now this superior government is planning to establish ambassadorial relations with the inferior peoples, and for the first time a great religious leader has arisen who advocates the sending of missionaries to these surrounding nations. We fear they are about to make the mistake that so many others have made when they have endeavored to force a superior culture and religion upon other races. What a wonderful thing could be done on this world if this continental nation of advanced culture would only go out and bring to itself the best of the neighboring peoples and then, after educating them, send them back as emissaries of culture to their benighted brethren! Of course, if a Magisterial Son should soon come to this advanced nation, great things could quickly happen on this world.

72:12.3 (820.1) This recital of the affairs of a neighboring planet is made by special permission with the intent of advancing civilization and augmenting governmental evolution on Urantia. Much more could be narrated that would no doubt interest and intrigue Urantians, but this disclosure covers the limits of our permissive mandate.

72:12.4 (820.2) Urantians should, however, take note that their sister sphere in the Satania family has benefited by neither magisterial nor bestowal missions of the Paradise Sons. Neither are the various peoples of Urantia set off from each other by such disparity of culture as separates the continental nation from its planetary fellows.

72:12.5 (820.3) The pouring out of the Spirit of Truth provides the spiritual foundation for the realization of great achievements in the interests of the human race of the bestowal world. Urantia is therefore far better prepared for the more immediate realization of a planetary government with its laws, mechanisms, symbols, conventions, and language — all of which could contribute so mightily to the establishment of world-wide peace under law and could lead to the sometime dawning of a real age of spiritual striving; and such an age is the planetary threshold to the utopian ages of light and life.

72:12.6 (820.4) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]




Paper 71 – Development of the State

The Urantia Book

Paper 71

Development of the State

71:0.1 (800.1) THE state is a useful evolution of civilization; it represents society’s net gain from the ravages and sufferings of war. Even statecraft is merely the accumulated technique for adjusting the competitive contest of force between the struggling tribes and nations.

71:0.2 (800.2) The modern state is the institution which survived in the long struggle for group power. Superior power eventually prevailed, and it produced a creature of fact — the state — together with the moral myth of the absolute obligation of the citizen to live and die for the state. But the state is not of divine genesis; it was not even produced by volitionally intelligent human action; it is purely an evolutionary institution and was wholly automatic in origin.

1. The Embryonic State

71:1.1 (800.3) The state is a territorial social regulative organization, and the strongest, most efficient, and enduring state is composed of a single nation whose people have a common language, mores, and institutions.

71:1.2 (800.4) The early states were small and were all the result of conquest. They did not originate in voluntary associations. Many were founded by conquering nomads, who would swoop down on peaceful herders or settled agriculturists to overpower and enslave them. Such states, resulting from conquest, were, perforce, stratified; classes were inevitable, and class struggles have ever been selective.

71:1.3 (800.5) The northern tribes of the American red men never attained real statehood. They never progressed beyond a loose confederation of tribes, a very primitive form of state. Their nearest approach was the Iroquois federation, but this group of six nations never quite functioned as a state and failed to survive because of the absence of certain essentials to modern national life, such as:

71:1.4 (800.6) 1. Acquirement and inheritance of private property.

71:1.5 (800.7) 2. Cities plus agriculture and industry.

71:1.6 (800.8) 3. Helpful domestic animals.

71:1.7 (800.9) 4. Practical family organization. These red men clung to the mother-family and nephew inheritance.

71:1.8 (800.10) 5. Definite territory.

71:1.9 (800.11) 6. A strong executive head.

71:1.10 (800.12) 7. Enslavement of captives — they either adopted or massacred them.

71:1.11 (800.13) 8. Decisive conquests.

71:1.12 (800.14) The red men were too democratic; they had a good government, but it failed. Eventually they would have evolved a state had they not prematurely encountered the more advanced civilization of the white man, who was pursuing the governmental methods of the Greeks and the Romans.

71:1.13 (801.1) The successful Roman state was based on:

71:1.14 (801.2) 1. The father-family.

71:1.15 (801.3) 2. Agriculture and the domestication of animals.

71:1.16 (801.4) 3. Condensation of population — cities.

71:1.17 (801.5) 4. Private property and land.

71:1.18 (801.6) 5. Slavery — classes of citizenship.

71:1.19 (801.7) 6. Conquest and reorganization of weak and backward peoples.

71:1.20 (801.8) 7. Definite territory with roads.

71:1.21 (801.9) 8. Personal and strong rulers.

71:1.22 (801.10) The great weakness in Roman civilization, and a factor in the ultimate collapse of the empire, was the supposed liberal and advanced provision for the emancipation of the boy at twenty-one and the unconditional release of the girl so that she was at liberty to marry a man of her own choosing or to go abroad in the land to become immoral. The harm to society consisted not in these reforms themselves but rather in the sudden and extensive manner of their adoption. The collapse of Rome indicates what may be expected when a state undergoes too rapid extension associated with internal degeneration.

71:1.23 (801.11) The embryonic state was made possible by the decline of the blood bond in favor of the territorial, and such tribal federations were usually firmly cemented by conquest. While a sovereignty that transcends all minor struggles and group differences is the characteristic of the true state, still, many classes and castes persist in the later state organizations as remnants of the clans and tribes of former days. The later and larger territorial states had a long and bitter struggle with these smaller consanguineous clan groups, the tribal government proving a valuable transition from family to state authority. During later times many clans grew out of trades and other industrial associations.

71:1.24 (801.12) Failure of state integration results in retrogression to prestate conditions of governmental techniques, such as the feudalism of the European Middle Ages. During these dark ages the territorial state collapsed, and there was a reversion to the small castle groups, the reappearance of the clan and tribal stages of development. Similar semistates even now exist in Asia and Africa, but not all of them are evolutionary reversions; many are the embryonic nucleuses of states of the future.

2. The Evolution of Representative Government

71:2.1 (801.13) Democracy, while an ideal, is a product of civilization, not of evolution. Go slowly! select carefully! for the dangers of democracy are:

71:2.2 (801.14) 1. Glorification of mediocrity.

71:2.3 (801.15) 2. Choice of base and ignorant rulers.

71:2.4 (801.16) 3. Failure to recognize the basic facts of social evolution.

71:2.5 (801.17) 4. Danger of universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities.

71:2.6 (801.18) 5. Slavery to public opinion; the majority is not always right.

71:2.7 (802.1) Public opinion, common opinion, has always delayed society; nevertheless, it is valuable, for, while retarding social evolution, it does preserve civilization. Education of public opinion is the only safe and true method of accelerating civilization; force is only a temporary expedient, and cultural growth will increasingly accelerate as bullets give way to ballots. Public opinion, the mores, is the basic and elemental energy in social evolution and state development, but to be of state value it must be nonviolent in expression.

71:2.8 (802.2) The measure of the advance of society is directly determined by the degree to which public opinion can control personal behavior and state regulation through nonviolent expression. The really civilized government had arrived when public opinion was clothed with the powers of personal franchise. Popular elections may not always decide things rightly, but they represent the right way even to do a wrong thing. Evolution does not at once produce superlative perfection but rather comparative and advancing practical adjustment.

71:2.9 (802.3) There are ten steps, or stages, to the evolution of a practical and efficient form of representative government, and these are:

71:2.10 (802.4) 1. Freedom of the person. Slavery, serfdom, and all forms of human bondage must disappear.

71:2.11 (802.5) 2. Freedom of the mind. Unless a free people are educated — taught to think intelligently and plan wisely — freedom usually does more harm than good.

71:2.12 (802.6) 3. The reign of law. Liberty can be enjoyed only when the will and whims of human rulers are replaced by legislative enactments in accordance with accepted fundamental law.

71:2.13 (802.7) 4. Freedom of speech. Representative government is unthinkable without freedom of all forms of expression for human aspirations and opinions.

71:2.14 (802.8) 5. Security of property. No government can long endure if it fails to provide for the right to enjoy personal property in some form. Man craves the right to use, control, bestow, sell, lease, and bequeath his personal property.

71:2.15 (802.9) 6. The right of petition. Representative government assumes the right of citizens to be heard. The privilege of petition is inherent in free citizenship.

71:2.16 (802.10) 7. The right to rule. It is not enough to be heard; the power of petition must progress to the actual management of the government.

71:2.17 (802.11) 8. Universal suffrage. Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate. The character of such a government will ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. As civilization progresses, suffrage, while remaining universal for both sexes, will be effectively modified, regrouped, and otherwise differentiated.

71:2.18 (802.12) 9. Control of public servants. No civil government will be serviceable and effective unless the citizenry possess and use wise techniques of guiding and controlling officeholders and public servants.

71:2.19 (802.13) 10. Intelligent and trained representation. The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.

3. The Ideals of Statehood

71:3.1 (803.1) The political or administrative form of a government is of little consequence provided it affords the essentials of civil progress — liberty, security, education, and social co-ordination. It is not what a state is but what it does that determines the course of social evolution. And after all, no state can transcend the moral values of its citizenry as exemplified in their chosen leaders. Ignorance and selfishness will insure the downfall of even the highest type of government.

71:3.2 (803.2) Much as it is to be regretted, national egotism has been essential to social survival. The chosen people doctrine has been a prime factor in tribal welding and nation building right on down to modern times. But no state can attain ideal levels of functioning until every form of intolerance is mastered; it is everlastingly inimical to human progress. And intolerance is best combated by the co-ordination of science, commerce, play, and religion.

71:3.3 (803.3) The ideal state functions under the impulse of three mighty and co-ordinated drives:

71:3.4 (803.4) 1. Love loyalty derived from the realization of human brotherhood.

71:3.5 (803.5) 2. Intelligent patriotism based on wise ideals.

71:3.6 (803.6) 3. Cosmic insight interpreted in terms of planetary facts, needs, and goals.

71:3.7 (803.7) The laws of the ideal state are few in number, and they have passed out of the negativistic taboo age into the era of the positive progress of individual liberty consequent upon enhanced self-control. The exalted state not only compels its citizens to work but also entices them into profitable and uplifting utilization of the increasing leisure which results from toil liberation by the advancing machine age. Leisure must produce as well as consume.

71:3.8 (803.8) No society has progressed very far when it permits idleness or tolerates poverty. But poverty and dependence can never be eliminated if the defective and degenerate stocks are freely supported and permitted to reproduce without restraint.

71:3.9 (803.9) A moral society should aim to preserve the self-respect of its citizenry and afford every normal individual adequate opportunity for self-realization. Such a plan of social achievement would yield a cultural society of the highest order. Social evolution should be encouraged by governmental supervision which exercises a minimum of regulative control. That state is best which co-ordinates most while governing least.

71:3.10 (803.10) The ideals of statehood must be attained by evolution, by the slow growth of civic consciousness, the recognition of the obligation and privilege of social service. At first men assume the burdens of government as a duty, following the end of the administration of political spoilsmen, but later on they seek such ministry as a privilege, as the greatest honor. The status of any level of civilization is faithfully portrayed by the caliber of its citizens who volunteer to accept the responsibilities of statehood.

71:3.11 (803.11) In a real commonwealth the business of governing cities and provinces is conducted by experts and is managed just as are all other forms of economic and commercial associations of people.

71:3.12 (803.12) In advanced states, political service is esteemed as the highest devotion of the citizenry. The greatest ambition of the wisest and noblest of citizens is to gain civil recognition, to be elected or appointed to some position of governmental trust, and such governments confer their highest honors of recognition for service upon their civil and social servants. Honors are next bestowed in the order named upon philosophers, educators, scientists, industrialists, and militarists. Parents are duly rewarded by the excellency of their children, and purely religious leaders, being ambassadors of a spiritual kingdom, receive their real rewards in another world.

4. Progressive Civilization

71:4.1 (804.1) Economics, society, and government must evolve if they are to remain. Static conditions on an evolutionary world are indicative of decay; only those institutions which move forward with the evolutionary stream persist.

71:4.2 (804.2) The progressive program of an expanding civilization embraces:

71:4.3 (804.3) 1. Preservation of individual liberties.

71:4.4 (804.4) 2. Protection of the home.

71:4.5 (804.5) 3. Promotion of economic security.

71:4.6 (804.6) 4. Prevention of disease.

71:4.7 (804.7) 5. Compulsory education.

71:4.8 (804.8) 6. Compulsory employment.

71:4.9 (804.9) 7. Profitable utilization of leisure.

71:4.10 (804.10) 8. Care of the unfortunate.

71:4.11 (804.11) 9. Race improvement.

71:4.12 (804.12) 10. Promotion of science and art.

71:4.13 (804.13) 11. Promotion of philosophy — wisdom.

71:4.14 (804.14) 12. Augmentation of cosmic insight — spirituality.

71:4.15 (804.15) And this progress in the arts of civilization leads directly to the realization of the highest human and divine goals of mortal endeavor — the social achievement of the brotherhood of man and the personal status of God-consciousness, which becomes revealed in the supreme desire of every individual to do the will of the Father in heaven.

71:4.16 (804.16) The appearance of genuine brotherhood signifies that a social order has arrived in which all men delight in bearing one another’s burdens; they actually desire to practice the golden rule. But such an ideal society cannot be realized when either the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take unfair and unholy advantage of those who are chiefly actuated by devotion to the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. In such a situation only one course is practical: The “golden rulers” may establish a progressive society in which they live according to their ideals while maintaining an adequate defense against their benighted fellows who might seek either to exploit their pacific predilections or to destroy their advancing civilization.

71:4.17 (804.17) Idealism can never survive on an evolving planet if the idealists in each generation permit themselves to be exterminated by the baser orders of humanity. And here is the great test of idealism: Can an advanced society maintain that military preparedness which renders it secure from all attack by its war-loving neighbors without yielding to the temptation to employ this military strength in offensive operations against other peoples for purposes of selfish gain or national aggrandizement? National survival demands preparedness, and religious idealism alone can prevent the prostitution of preparedness into aggression. Only love, brotherhood, can prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.

5. The Evolution of Competition

71:5.1 (805.1) Competition is essential to social progress, but competition, unregulated, breeds violence. In current society, competition is slowly displacing war in that it determines the individual’s place in industry, as well as decreeing the survival of the industries themselves. (Murder and war differ in their status before the mores, murder having been outlawed since the early days of society, while war has never yet been outlawed by mankind as a whole.)

71:5.2 (805.2) The ideal state undertakes to regulate social conduct only enough to take violence out of individual competition and to prevent unfairness in personal initiative. Here is a great problem in statehood: How can you guarantee peace and quiet in industry, pay the taxes to support state power, and at the same time prevent taxation from handicapping industry and keep the state from becoming parasitical or tyrannical?

71:5.3 (805.3) Throughout the earlier ages of any world, competition is essential to progressive civilization. As the evolution of man progresses, co-operation becomes increasingly effective. In advanced civilizations co-operation is more efficient than competition. Early man is stimulated by competition. Early evolution is characterized by the survival of the biologically fit, but later civilizations are the better promoted by intelligent co-operation, understanding fraternity, and spiritual brotherhood.

71:5.4 (805.4) True, competition in industry is exceedingly wasteful and highly ineffective, but no attempt to eliminate this economic lost motion should be countenanced if such adjustments entail even the slightest abrogation of any of the basic liberties of the individual.

6. The Profit Motive

71:6.1 (805.5) Present-day profit-motivated economics is doomed unless profit motives can be augmented by service motives. Ruthless competition based on narrow-minded self-interest is ultimately destructive of even those things which it seeks to maintain. Exclusive and self-serving profit motivation is incompatible with Christian ideals — much more incompatible with the teachings of Jesus.

71:6.2 (805.6) In economics, profit motivation is to service motivation what fear is to love in religion. But the profit motive must not be suddenly destroyed or removed; it keeps many otherwise slothful mortals hard at work. It is not necessary, however, that this social energy arouser be forever selfish in its objectives.

71:6.3 (805.7) The profit motive of economic activities is altogether base and wholly unworthy of an advanced order of society; nevertheless, it is an indispensable factor throughout the earlier phases of civilization. Profit motivation must not be taken away from men until they have firmly possessed themselves of superior types of nonprofit motives for economic striving and social serving — the transcendent urges of superlative wisdom, intriguing brotherhood, and excellency of spiritual attainment.

7. Education

71:7.1 (806.1) The enduring state is founded on culture, dominated by ideals, and motivated by service. The purpose of education should be acquirement of skill, pursuit of wisdom, realization of selfhood, and attainment of spiritual values.

71:7.2 (806.2) In the ideal state, education continues throughout life, and philosophy sometime becomes the chief pursuit of its citizens. The citizens of such a commonwealth pursue wisdom as an enhancement of insight into the significance of human relations, the meanings of reality, the nobility of values, the goals of living, and the glories of cosmic destiny.

71:7.3 (806.3) Urantians should get a vision of a new and higher cultural society. Education will jump to new levels of value with the passing of the purely profit-motivated system of economics. Education has too long been localistic, militaristic, ego exalting, and success seeking; it must eventually become world-wide, idealistic, self-realizing, and cosmic grasping.

71:7.4 (806.4) Education recently passed from the control of the clergy to that of lawyers and businessmen. Eventually it must be given over to the philosophers and the scientists. Teachers must be free beings, real leaders, to the end that philosophy, the search for wisdom, may become the chief educational pursuit.

71:7.5 (806.5) Education is the business of living; it must continue throughout a lifetime so that mankind may gradually experience the ascending levels of mortal wisdom, which are:

71:7.6 (806.6) 1. The knowledge of things.

71:7.7 (806.7) 2. The realization of meanings.

71:7.8 (806.8) 3. The appreciation of values.

71:7.9 (806.9) 4. The nobility of work — duty.

71:7.10 (806.10) 5. The motivation of goals — morality.

71:7.11 (806.11) 6. The love of service — character.

71:7.12 (806.12) 7. Cosmic insight — spiritual discernment.

71:7.13 (806.13) And then, by means of these achievements, many will ascend to the mortal ultimate of mind attainment, God-consciousness.

8. The Character of Statehood

71:8.1 (806.14) The only sacred feature of any human government is the division of statehood into the three domains of executive, legislative, and judicial functions. The universe is administered in accordance with such a plan of segregation of functions and authority. Aside from this divine concept of effective social regulation or civil government, it matters little what form of state a people may elect to have provided the citizenry is ever progressing toward the goal of augmented self-control and increased social service. The intellectual keenness, economic wisdom, social cleverness, and moral stamina of a people are all faithfully reflected in statehood.

71:8.2 (806.15) The evolution of statehood entails progress from level to level, as follows:

71:8.3 (806.16) 1. The creation of a threefold government of executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

71:8.4 (806.17) 2. The freedom of social, political, and religious activities.

71:8.5 (807.1) 3. The abolition of all forms of slavery and human bondage.

71:8.6 (807.2) 4. The ability of the citizenry to control the levying of taxes.

71:8.7 (807.3) 5. The establishment of universal education — learning extended from the cradle to the grave.

71:8.8 (807.4) 6. The proper adjustment between local and national governments.

71:8.9 (807.5) 7. The fostering of science and the conquest of disease.

71:8.10 (807.6) 8. The due recognition of sex equality and the co-ordinated functioning of men and women in the home, school, and church, with specialized service of women in industry and government.

71:8.11 (807.7) 9. The elimination of toiling slavery by machine invention and the subsequent mastery of the machine age.

71:8.12 (807.8) 10. The conquest of dialects — the triumph of a universal language.

71:8.13 (807.9) 11. The ending of war — international adjudication of national and racial differences by continental courts of nations presided over by a supreme planetary tribunal automatically recruited from the periodically retiring heads of the continental courts. The continental courts are authoritative; the world court is advisory — moral.

71:8.14 (807.10) 12. The world-wide vogue of the pursuit of wisdom — the exaltation of philosophy. The evolution of a world religion, which will presage the entrance of the planet upon the earlier phases of settlement in light and life.

71:8.15 (807.11) These are the prerequisites of progressive government and the earmarks of ideal statehood. Urantia is far from the realization of these exalted ideals, but the civilized races have made a beginning — mankind is on the march toward higher evolutionary destinies.

71:8.16 (807.12) [Sponsored by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]




Paper 70 – The Evolution of Human Government

The Urantia Book

Paper 70

The Evolution of Human Government

70:0.1 (783.1) NO SOONER had man partially solved the problem of making a living than he was confronted with the task of regulating human contacts. The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.

70:0.2 (783.2) On an evolutionary world, antagonisms are natural; peace is secured only by some sort of social regulative system. Social regulation is inseparable from social organization; association implies some controlling authority. Government compels the co-ordination of the antagonisms of the tribes, clans, families, and individuals.

70:0.3 (783.3) Government is an unconscious development; it evolves by trial and error. It does have survival value; therefore it becomes traditional. Anarchy augmented misery; therefore government, comparative law and order, slowly emerged or is emerging. The coercive demands of the struggle for existence literally drove the human race along the progressive road to civilization.

1. The Genesis of War

70:1.1 (783.4) War is the natural state and heritage of evolving man; peace is the social yardstick measuring civilization’s advancement. Before the partial socialization of the advancing races man was exceedingly individualistic, extremely suspicious, and unbelievably quarrelsome. Violence is the law of nature, hostility the automatic reaction of the children of nature, while war is but these same activities carried on collectively. And wherever and whenever the fabric of civilization becomes stressed by the complications of society’s advancement, there is always an immediate and ruinous reversion to these early methods of violent adjustment of the irritations of human interassociations.

70:1.2 (783.5) War is an animalistic reaction to misunderstandings and irritations; peace attends upon the civilized solution of all such problems and difficulties. The Sangik races, together with the later deteriorated Adamites and Nodites, were all belligerent. The Andonites were early taught the golden rule, and, even today, their Eskimo descendants live very much by that code; custom is strong among them, and they are fairly free from violent antagonisms.

70:1.3 (783.6) Andon taught his children to settle disputes by each beating a tree with a stick, meanwhile cursing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the victor. The later Andonites used to settle disputes by holding a public show at which the disputants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the audience decided the winner by its applause.

70:1.4 (783.7) But there could be no such phenomenon as war until society had evolved sufficiently far to actually experience periods of peace and to sanction warlike practices. The very concept of war implies some degree of organization.

70:1.5 (784.1) With the emergence of social groupings, individual irritations began to be submerged in the group feelings, and this promoted intratribal tranquillity but at the expense of intertribal peace. Peace was thus first enjoyed by the in-group, or tribe, who always disliked and hated the out-group, foreigners. Early man regarded it a virtue to shed alien blood.

70:1.6 (784.2) But even this did not work at first. When the early chiefs would try to iron out misunderstandings, they often found it necessary, at least once a year, to permit the tribal stone fights. The clan would divide up into two groups and engage in an all-day battle. And this for no other reason than just the fun of it; they really enjoyed fighting.

70:1.7 (784.3) Warfare persists because man is human, evolved from an animal, and all animals are bellicose. Among the early causes of war were:

70:1.8 (784.4) 1. Hunger, which led to food raids. Scarcity of land has always brought on war, and during these struggles the early peace tribes were practically exterminated.

70:1.9 (784.5) 2. Woman scarcity — an attempt to relieve a shortage of domestic help. Woman stealing has always caused war.

70:1.10 (784.6) 3. Vanity — the desire to exhibit tribal prowess. Superior groups would fight to impose their mode of life upon inferior peoples.

70:1.11 (784.7) 4. Slaves — need of recruits for the labor ranks.

70:1.12 (784.8) 5. Revenge was the motive for war when one tribe believed that a neighboring tribe had caused the death of a fellow tribesman. Mourning was continued until a head was brought home. The war for vengeance was in good standing right on down to comparatively modern times.

70:1.13 (784.9) 6. Recreation — war was looked upon as recreation by the young men of these early times. If no good and sufficient pretext for war arose, when peace became oppressive, neighboring tribes were accustomed to go out in semifriendly combat to engage in a foray as a holiday, to enjoy a sham battle.

70:1.14 (784.10) 7. Religion — the desire to make converts to the cult. The primitive religions all sanctioned war. Only in recent times has religion begun to frown upon war. The early priesthoods were, unfortunately, usually allied with the military power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the attempt to separate church and state.

70:1.15 (784.11) Always these olden tribes made war at the bidding of their gods, at the behest of their chiefs or medicine men. The Hebrews believed in such a “God of battles”; and the narrative of their raid on the Midianites is a typical recital of the atrocious cruelty of the ancient tribal wars; this assault, with its slaughter of all the males and the later killing of all male children and all women who were not virgins, would have done honor to the mores of a tribal chieftain of two hundred thousand years ago. And all this was executed in the “name of the Lord God of Israel.”

70:1.16 (784.12) This is a narrative of the evolution of society — the natural outworking of the problems of the races — man working out his own destiny on earth. Such atrocities are not instigated by Deity, notwithstanding the tendency of man to place the responsibility on his gods.

70:1.17 (784.13) Military mercy has been slow in coming to mankind. Even when a woman, Deborah, ruled the Hebrews, the same wholesale cruelty persisted. Her general in his victory over the gentiles caused “all the host to fall upon the sword; there was not one left.”

70:1.18 (785.1) Very early in the history of the race, poisoned weapons were used. All sorts of mutilations were practiced. Saul did not hesitate to require one hundred Philistine foreskins as the dowry David should pay for his daughter Michal.

70:1.19 (785.2) Early wars were fought between tribes as a whole, but in later times, when two individuals in different tribes had a dispute, instead of both tribes fighting, the two disputants engaged in a duel. It also became a custom for two armies to stake all on the outcome of a contest between a representative chosen from each side, as in the instance of David and Goliath.

70:1.20 (785.3) The first refinement of war was the taking of prisoners. Next, women were exempted from hostilities, and then came the recognition of noncombatants. Military castes and standing armies soon developed to keep pace with the increasing complexity of combat. Such warriors were early prohibited from associating with women, and women long ago ceased to fight, though they have always fed and nursed the soldiers and urged them on to battle.

70:1.21 (785.4) The practice of declaring war represented great progress. Such declarations of intention to fight betokened the arrival of a sense of fairness, and this was followed by the gradual development of the rules of “civilized” warfare. Very early it became the custom not to fight near religious sites and, still later, not to fight on certain holy days. Next came the general recognition of the right of asylum; political fugitives received protection.

70:1.22 (785.5) Thus did warfare gradually evolve from the primitive man hunt to the somewhat more orderly system of the later-day “civilized” nations. But only slowly does the social attitude of amity displace that of enmity.

2. The Social Value of War

70:2.1 (785.6) In past ages a fierce war would institute social changes and facilitate the adoption of new ideas such as would not have occurred naturally in ten thousand years. The terrible price paid for these certain war advantages was that society was temporarily thrown back into savagery; civilized reason had to abdicate. War is strong medicine, very costly and most dangerous; while often curative of certain social disorders, it sometimes kills the patient, destroys the society.

70:2.2 (785.7) The constant necessity for national defense creates many new and advanced social adjustments. Society, today, enjoys the benefit of a long list of useful innovations which were at first wholly military and is even indebted to war for the dance, one of the early forms of which was a military drill.

70:2.3 (785.8) War has had a social value to past civilizations because it:

70:2.4 (785.9) 1. Imposed discipline, enforced co-operation.

70:2.5 (785.10) 2. Put a premium on fortitude and courage.

70:2.6 (785.11) 3. Fostered and solidified nationalism.

70:2.7 (785.12) 4. Destroyed weak and unfit peoples.

70:2.8 (785.13) 5. Dissolved the illusion of primitive equality and selectively stratified society.

70:2.9 (785.14) War has had a certain evolutionary and selective value, but like slavery, it must sometime be abandoned as civilization slowly advances. Olden wars promoted travel and cultural intercourse; these ends are now better served by modern methods of transport and communication. Olden wars strengthened nations, but modern struggles disrupt civilized culture. Ancient warfare resulted in the decimation of inferior peoples; the net result of modern conflict is the selective destruction of the best human stocks. Early wars promoted organization and efficiency, but these have now become the aims of modern industry. During past ages war was a social ferment which pushed civilization forward; this result is now better attained by ambition and invention. Ancient warfare supported the concept of a God of battles, but modern man has been told that God is love. War has served many valuable purposes in the past, it has been an indispensable scaffolding in the building of civilization, but it is rapidly becoming culturally bankrupt — incapable of producing dividends of social gain in any way commensurate with the terrible losses attendant upon its invocation.

70:2.10 (786.1) At one time physicians believed in bloodletting as a cure for many diseases, but they have since discovered better remedies for most of these disorders. And so must the international bloodletting of war certainly give place to the discovery of better methods for curing the ills of nations.

70:2.11 (786.2) The nations of Urantia have already entered upon the gigantic struggle between nationalistic militarism and industrialism, and in many ways this conflict is analogous to the agelong struggle between the herder-hunter and the farmer. But if industrialism is to triumph over militarism, it must avoid the dangers which beset it. The perils of budding industry on Urantia are:

70:2.12 (786.3) 1. The strong drift toward materialism, spiritual blindness.

70:2.13 (786.4) 2. The worship of wealth-power, value distortion.

70:2.14 (786.5) 3. The vices of luxury, cultural immaturity.

70:2.15 (786.6) 4. The increasing dangers of indolence, service insensitivity.

70:2.16 (786.7) 5. The growth of undesirable racial softness, biologic deterioration.

70:2.17 (786.8) 6. The threat of standardized industrial slavery, personality stagnation. Labor is ennobling but drudgery is benumbing.

70:2.18 (786.9) Militarism is autocratic and cruel — savage. It promotes social organization among the conquerors but disintegrates the vanquished. Industrialism is more civilized and should be so carried on as to promote initiative and to encourage individualism. Society should in every way possible foster originality.

70:2.19 (786.10) Do not make the mistake of glorifying war; rather discern what it has done for society so that you may the more accurately visualize what its substitutes must provide in order to continue the advancement of civilization. And if such adequate substitutes are not provided, then you may be sure that war will long continue.

70:2.20 (786.11) Man will never accept peace as a normal mode of living until he has been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that peace is best for his material welfare, and until society has wisely provided peaceful substitutes for the gratification of that inherent tendency periodically to let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species.

70:2.21 (786.12) But even in passing, war should be honored as the school of experience which compelled a race of arrogant individualists to submit themselves to highly concentrated authority — a chief executive. Old-fashioned war did select the innately great men for leadership, but modern war no longer does this. To discover leaders society must now turn to the conquests of peace: industry, science, and social achievement.

3. Early Human Associations

70:3.1 (787.1) In the most primitive society the horde is everything; even children are its common property. The evolving family displaced the horde in child rearing, while the emerging clans and tribes took its place as the social unit.

70:3.2 (787.2) Sex hunger and mother love establish the family. But real government does not appear until superfamily groups have begun to form. In the prefamily days of the horde, leadership was provided by informally chosen individuals. The African Bushmen have never progressed beyond this primitive stage; they do not have chiefs in the horde.

70:3.3 (787.3) Families became united by blood ties in clans, aggregations of kinsmen; and these subsequently evolved into tribes, territorial communities. Warfare and external pressure forced the tribal organization upon the kinship clans, but it was commerce and trade that held these early and primitive groups together with some degree of internal peace.

70:3.4 (787.4) The peace of Urantia will be promoted far more by international trade organizations than by all the sentimental sophistry of visionary peace planning. Trade relations have been facilitated by development of language and by improved methods of communication as well as by better transportation.

70:3.5 (787.5) The absence of a common language has always impeded the growth of peace groups, but money has become the universal language of modern trade. Modern society is largely held together by the industrial market. The gain motive is a mighty civilizer when augmented by the desire to serve.

70:3.6 (787.6) In the early ages each tribe was surrounded by concentric circles of increasing fear and suspicion; hence it was once the custom to kill all strangers, later on, to enslave them. The old idea of friendship meant adoption into the clan; and clan membership was believed to survive death — one of the earliest concepts of eternal life.

70:3.7 (787.7) The ceremony of adoption consisted in drinking each other’s blood. In some groups saliva was exchanged in the place of blood drinking, this being the ancient origin of the practice of social kissing. And all ceremonies of association, whether marriage or adoption, were always terminated by feasting.

70:3.8 (787.8) In later times, blood diluted with red wine was used, and eventually wine alone was drunk to seal the adoption ceremony, which was signified in the touching of the wine cups and consummated by the swallowing of the beverage. The Hebrews employed a modified form of this adoption ceremony. Their Arab ancestors made use of the oath taken while the hand of the candidate rested upon the generative organ of the tribal native. The Hebrews treated adopted aliens kindly and fraternally. “The stranger that dwells with you shall be as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself.”

70:3.9 (787.9) “Guest friendship” was a relation of temporary hospitality. When visiting guests departed, a dish would be broken in half, one piece being given the departing friend so that it would serve as a suitable introduction for a third party who might arrive on a later visit. It was customary for guests to pay their way by telling tales of their travels and adventures. The storytellers of olden times became so popular that the mores eventually forbade their functioning during either the hunting or harvest seasons.

70:3.10 (788.1) The first treaties of peace were the “blood bonds.” The peace ambassadors of two warring tribes would meet, pay their respects, and then proceed to prick the skin until it bled; whereupon they would suck each other’s blood and declare peace.

70:3.11 (788.2) The earliest peace missions consisted of delegations of men bringing their choice maidens for the sex gratification of their onetime enemies, the sex appetite being utilized in combating the war urge. The tribe so honored would pay a return visit, with its offering of maidens; whereupon peace would be firmly established. And soon intermarriages between the families of the chiefs were sanctioned.

4. Clans and Tribes

70:4.1 (788.3) The first peace group was the family, then the clan, the tribe, and later on the nation, which eventually became the modern territorial state. The fact that the present-day peace groups have long since expanded beyond blood ties to embrace nations is most encouraging, despite the fact that Urantia nations are still spending vast sums on war preparations.

70:4.2 (788.4) The clans were blood-tie groups within the tribe, and they owed their existence to certain common interests, such as:

70:4.3 (788.5) 1. Tracing origin back to a common ancestor.

70:4.4 (788.6) 2. Allegiance to a common religious totem.

70:4.5 (788.7) 3. Speaking the same dialect.

70:4.6 (788.8) 4. Sharing a common dwelling place.

70:4.7 (788.9) 5. Fearing the same enemies.

70:4.8 (788.10) 6. Having had a common military experience.

70:4.9 (788.11) The clan headmen were always subordinate to the tribal chief, the early tribal governments being a loose confederation of clans. The native Australians never developed a tribal form of government.

70:4.10 (788.12) The clan peace chiefs usually ruled through the mother line; the tribal war chiefs established the father line. The courts of the tribal chiefs and early kings consisted of the headmen of the clans, whom it was customary to invite into the king’s presence several times a year. This enabled him to watch them and the better secure their co-operation. The clans served a valuable purpose in local self-government, but they greatly delayed the growth of large and strong nations.

5. The Beginnings of Government

70:5.1 (788.13) Every human institution had a beginning, and civil government is a product of progressive evolution just as much as are marriage, industry, and religion. From the early clans and primitive tribes there gradually developed the successive orders of human government which have come and gone right on down to those forms of social and civil regulation that characterize the second third of the twentieth century.

70:5.2 (788.14) With the gradual emergence of the family units the foundations of government were established in the clan organization, the grouping of consanguineous families. The first real governmental body was the council of the elders.This regulative group was composed of old men who had distinguished themselves in some efficient manner. Wisdom and experience were early appreciated even by barbaric man, and there ensued a long age of the domination of the elders. This reign of the oligarchy of age gradually grew into the patriarchal idea.

70:5.3 (789.1) In the early council of the elders there resided the potential of all governmental functions: executive, legislative, and judicial. When the council interpreted the current mores, it was a court; when establishing new modes of social usage, it was a legislature; to the extent that such decrees and enactments were enforced, it was the executive. The chairman of the council was one of the forerunners of the later tribal chief.

70:5.4 (789.2) Some tribes had female councils, and from time to time many tribes had women rulers. Certain tribes of the red man preserved the teaching of Onamonalonton in following the unanimous rule of the “council of seven.”

70:5.5 (789.3) It has been hard for mankind to learn that neither peace nor war can be run by a debating society. The primitive “palavers” were seldom useful. The race early learned that an army commanded by a group of clan heads had no chance against a strong one-man army. War has always been a kingmaker.

70:5.6 (789.4) At first the war chiefs were chosen only for military service, and they would relinquish some of their authority during peacetimes, when their duties were of a more social nature. But gradually they began to encroach upon the peace intervals, tending to continue to rule from one war on through to the next. They often saw to it that one war was not too long in following another. These early war lords were not fond of peace.

70:5.7 (789.5) In later times some chiefs were chosen for other than military service, being selected because of unusual physique or outstanding personal abilities. The red men often had two sets of chiefs — the sachems, or peace chiefs, and the hereditary war chiefs. The peace rulers were also judges and teachers.

70:5.8 (789.6) Some early communities were ruled by medicine men, who often acted as chiefs. One man would act as priest, physician, and chief executive. Quite often the early royal insignias had originally been the symbols or emblems of priestly dress.

70:5.9 (789.7) And it was by these steps that the executive branch of government gradually came into existence. The clan and tribal councils continued in an advisory capacity and as forerunners of the later appearing legislative and judicial branches. In Africa, today, all these forms of primitive government are in actual existence among the various tribes.

6. Monarchial Government

70:6.1 (789.8) Effective state rule only came with the arrival of a chief with full executive authority. Man found that effective government could be had only by conferring power on a personality, not by endowing an idea.

70:6.2 (789.9) Rulership grew out of the idea of family authority or wealth. When a patriarchal kinglet became a real king, he was sometimes called “father of his people.” Later on, kings were thought to have sprung from heroes. And still further on, rulership became hereditary, due to belief in the divine origin of kings.

70:6.3 (789.10) Hereditary kingship avoided the anarchy which had previously wrought such havoc between the death of a king and the election of a successor. The family had a biologic head; the clan, a selected natural leader; the tribe and later state had no natural leader, and this was an additional reason for making the chief-kings hereditary. The idea of royal families and aristocracy was also based on the mores of “name ownership” in the clans.

70:6.4 (790.1) The succession of kings was eventually regarded as supernatural, the royal blood being thought to extend back to the times of the materialized staff of Prince Caligastia. Thus kings became fetish personalities and were inordinately feared, a special form of speech being adopted for court usage. Even in recent times it was believed that the touch of kings would cure disease, and some Urantia peoples still regard their rulers as having had a divine origin.

70:6.5 (790.2) The early fetish king was often kept in seclusion; he was regarded as too sacred to be viewed except on feast days and holy days. Ordinarily a representative was chosen to impersonate him, and this is the origin of prime ministers. The first cabinet officer was a food administrator; others shortly followed. Rulers soon appointed representatives to be in charge of commerce and religion; and the development of a cabinet was a direct step toward depersonalization of executive authority. These assistants of the early kings became the accepted nobility, and the king’s wife gradually rose to the dignity of queen as women came to be held in higher esteem.

70:6.6 (790.3) Unscrupulous rulers gained great power by the discovery of poison. Early court magic was diabolical; the king’s enemies soon died. But even the most despotic tyrant was subject to some restrictions; he was at least restrained by the ever-present fear of assassination. The medicine men, witch doctors, and priests have always been a powerful check on the kings. Subsequently, the landowners, the aristocracy, exerted a restraining influence. And ever and anon the clans and tribes would simply rise up and overthrow their despots and tyrants. Deposed rulers, when sentenced to death, were often given the option of committing suicide, which gave origin to the ancient social vogue of suicide in certain circumstances.

7. Primitive Clubs and Secret Societies

70:7.1 (790.4) Blood kinship determined the first social groups; association enlarged the kinship clan. Intermarriage was the next step in group enlargement, and the resultant complex tribe was the first true political body. The next advance in social development was the evolution of religious cults and the political clubs. These first appeared as secret societies and originally were wholly religious; subsequently they became regulative. At first they were men’s clubs; later women’s groups appeared. Presently they became divided into two classes: sociopolitical and religio-mystical.

70:7.2 (790.5) There were many reasons for the secrecy of these societies, such as:

70:7.3 (790.6) 1. Fear of incurring the displeasure of the rulers because of the violation of some taboo.

70:7.4 (790.7) 2. In order to practice minority religious rites.

70:7.5 (790.8) 3. For the purpose of preserving valuable “spirit” or trade secrets.

70:7.6 (790.9) 4. For the enjoyment of some special charm or magic.

70:7.7 (790.10) The very secrecy of these societies conferred on all members the power of mystery over the rest of the tribe. Secrecy also appeals to vanity; the initiates were the social aristocracy of their day. After initiation the boys hunted with the men; whereas before they had gathered vegetables with the women. And it was the supreme humiliation, a tribal disgrace, to fail to pass the puberty tests and thus be compelled to remain outside the men’s abode with the women and children, to be considered effeminate. Besides, noninitiates were not allowed to marry.

70:7.8 (791.1) Primitive people very early taught their adolescent youths sex control. It became the custom to take boys away from parents from puberty to marriage, their education and training being intrusted to the men’s secret societies. And one of the chief functions of these clubs was to keep control of adolescent young men, thus preventing illegitimate children.

70:7.9 (791.2) Commercialized prostitution began when these men’s clubs paid money for the use of women from other tribes. But the earlier groups were remarkably free from sex laxity.

70:7.10 (791.3) The puberty initiation ceremony usually extended over a period of five years. Much self-torture and painful cutting entered into these ceremonies. Circumcision was first practiced as a rite of initiation into one of these secret fraternities. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the puberty initiation; the tattoo originated as such a badge of membership. Such torture, together with much privation, was designed to harden these youths, to impress them with the reality of life and its inevitable hardships. This purpose is better accomplished by the later appearing athletic games and physical contests.

70:7.11 (791.4) But the secret societies did aim at the improvement of adolescent morals; one of the chief purposes of the puberty ceremonies was to impress upon the boy that he must leave other men’s wives alone.

70:7.12 (791.5) Following these years of rigorous discipline and training and just before marriage, the young men were usually released for a short period of leisure and freedom, after which they returned to marry and to submit to lifelong subjection to the tribal taboos. And this ancient custom has continued down to modern times as the foolish notion of “sowing wild oats.”

70:7.13 (791.6) Many later tribes sanctioned the formation of women’s secret clubs, the purpose of which was to prepare adolescent girls for wifehood and motherhood. After initiation girls were eligible for marriage and were permitted to attend the “bride show,” the coming-out party of those days. Women’s orders pledged against marriage early came into existence.

70:7.14 (791.7) Presently nonsecret clubs made their appearance when groups of unmarried men and groups of unattached women formed their separate organizations. These associations were really the first schools. And while men’s and women’s clubs were often given to persecuting each other, some advanced tribes, after contact with the Dalamatia teachers, experimented with coeducation, having boarding schools for both sexes.

70:7.15 (791.8) Secret societies contributed to the building up of social castes chiefly by the mysterious character of their initiations. The members of these societies first wore masks to frighten the curious away from their mourning rites — ancestor worship. Later this ritual developed into a pseudo seance at which ghosts were reputed to have appeared. The ancient societies of the “new birth” used signs and employed a special secret language; they also forswore certain foods and drinks. They acted as night police and otherwise functioned in a wide range of social activities.

70:7.16 (792.1) All secret associations imposed an oath, enjoined confidence, and taught the keeping of secrets. These orders awed and controlled the mobs; they also acted as vigilance societies, thus practicing lynch law. They were the first spies when the tribes were at war and the first secret police during times of peace. Best of all they kept unscrupulous kings on the anxious seat. To offset them, the kings fostered their own secret police.

70:7.17 (792.2) These societies gave rise to the first political parties. The first party government was “the strong” vs. “the weak.” In ancient times a change of administration only followed civil war, abundant proof that the weak had become strong.

70:7.18 (792.3) These clubs were employed by merchants to collect debts and by rulers to collect taxes. Taxation has been a long struggle, one of the earliest forms being the tithe, one tenth of the hunt or spoils. Taxes were originally levied to keep up the king’s house, but it was found that they were easier to collect when disguised as an offering for the support of the temple service.

70:7.19 (792.4) By and by these secret associations grew into the first charitable organizations and later evolved into the earlier religious societies — the forerunners of churches. Finally some of these societies became intertribal, the first international fraternities.

8. Social Classes

70:8.1 (792.5) The mental and physical inequality of human beings insures that social classes will appear. The only worlds without social strata are the most primitive and the most advanced. A dawning civilization has not yet begun the differentiation of social levels, while a world settled in light and life has largely effaced these divisions of mankind, which are so characteristic of all intermediate evolutionary stages.

70:8.2 (792.6) As society emerged from savagery to barbarism, its human components tended to become grouped in classes for the following general reasons:

70:8.3 (792.7) 1. Natural — contact, kinship, and marriage; the first social distinctions were based on sex, age, and blood — kinship to the chief.

70:8.4 (792.8) 2. Personal — the recognition of ability, endurance, skill, and fortitude; soon followed by the recognition of language mastery, knowledge, and general intelligence.

70:8.5 (792.9) 3. Chance — war and emigration resulted in the separating of human groups. Class evolution was powerfully influenced by conquest, the relation of the victor to the vanquished, while slavery brought about the first general division of society into free and bond.

70:8.6 (792.10) 4. Economic — rich and poor. Wealth and the possession of slaves was a genetic basis for one class of society.

70:8.7 (792.11) 5. Geographic — classes arose consequent upon urban or rural settlement. City and country have respectively contributed to the differentiation of the herder-agriculturist and the trader-industrialist, with their divergent viewpoints and reactions.

70:8.8 (792.12) 6. Social — classes have gradually formed according to popular estimate of the social worth of different groups. Among the earliest divisions of this sort were the demarcations between priest-teachers, ruler-warriors, capitalist-traders, common laborers, and slaves. The slave could never become a capitalist, though sometimes the wage earner could elect to join the capitalistic ranks.

70:8.9 (793.1) 7. Vocational — as vocations multiplied, they tended to establish castes and guilds. Workers divided into three groups: the professional classes, including the medicine men, then the skilled workers, followed by the unskilled laborers.

70:8.10 (793.2) 8. Religious — the early cult clubs produced their own classes within the clans and tribes, and the piety and mysticism of the priests have long perpetuated them as a separate social group.

70:8.11 (793.3) 9. Racial — the presence of two or more races within a given nation or territorial unit usually produces color castes. The original caste system of India was based on color, as was that of early Egypt.

70:8.12 (793.4) 10. Age — youth and maturity. Among the tribes the boy remained under the watchcare of his father as long as the father lived, while the girl was left in the care of her mother until married.

70:8.13 (793.5) Flexible and shifting social classes are indispensable to an evolving civilization, but when class becomes caste, when social levels petrify, the enhancement of social stability is purchased by diminishment of personal initiative. Social caste solves the problem of finding one’s place in industry, but it also sharply curtails individual development and virtually prevents social co-operation.

70:8.14 (793.6) Classes in society, having naturally formed, will persist until man gradually achieves their evolutionary obliteration through intelligent manipulation of the biologic, intellectual, and spiritual resources of a progressing civilization, such as:

70:8.15 (793.7) 1. Biologic renovation of the racial stocks — the selective elimination of inferior human strains. This will tend to eradicate many mortal inequalities.

70:8.16 (793.8) 2. Educational training of the increased brain power which will arise out of such biologic improvement.

70:8.17 (793.9) 3. Religious quickening of the feelings of mortal kinship and brotherhood.

70:8.18 (793.10) But these measures can bear their true fruits only in the distant millenniums of the future, although much social improvement will immediately result from the intelligent, wise, and patient manipulation of these acceleration factors of cultural progress. Religion is the mighty lever that lifts civilization from chaos, but it is powerless apart from the fulcrum of sound and normal mind resting securely on sound and normal heredity.

9. Human Rights

70:9.1 (793.11) Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society’s prime gift to man is security.

70:9.2 (793.12) Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are:

70:9.3 (793.13) 1. Assurance of food supply.

70:9.4 (793.14) 2. Military defense — security through preparedness.

70:9.5 (793.15) 3. Internal peace preservation — prevention of personal violence and social disorder.

70:9.6 (794.1) 4. Sex control — marriage, the family institution.

70:9.7 (794.2) 5. Property — the right to own.

70:9.8 (794.3) 6. Fostering of individual and group competition.

70:9.9 (794.4) 7. Provision for educating and training youth.

70:9.10 (794.5) 8. Promotion of trade and commerce — industrial development.

70:9.11 (794.6) 9. Improvement of labor conditions and rewards.

70:9.12 (794.7) 10. The guarantee of the freedom of religious practices to the end that all of these other social activities may be exalted by becoming spiritually motivated.

70:9.13 (794.8) When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called natural rights. But human rights are not really natural; they are entirely social. They are relative and ever changing, being no more than the rules of the game — recognized adjustments of relations governing the ever-changing phenomena of human competition.

70:9.14 (794.9) What may be regarded as right in one age may not be so regarded in another. The survival of large numbers of defectives and degenerates is not because they have any natural right thus to encumber twentieth-century civilization, but simply because the society of the age, the mores, thus decrees.

70:9.15 (794.10) Few human rights were recognized in the European Middle Ages; then every man belonged to someone else, and rights were only privileges or favors granted by state or church. And the revolt from this error was equally erroneous in that it led to the belief that all men are born equal.

70:9.16 (794.11) The weak and the inferior have always contended for equal rights; they have always insisted that the state compel the strong and superior to supply their wants and otherwise make good those deficiencies which all too often are the natural result of their own indifference and indolence.

70:9.17 (794.12) But this equality ideal is the child of civilization; it is not found in nature. Even culture itself demonstrates conclusively the inherent inequality of men by their very unequal capacity therefor. The sudden and nonevolutionary realization of supposed natural equality would quickly throw civilized man back to the crude usages of primitive ages. Society cannot offer equal rights to all, but it can promise to administer the varying rights of each with fairness and equity. It is the business and duty of society to provide the child of nature with a fair and peaceful opportunity to pursue self-maintenance, participate in self-perpetuation, while at the same time enjoying some measure of self-gratification, the sum of all three constituting human happiness.

10. Evolution of Justice

70:10.1 (794.13) Natural justice is a man-made theory; it is not a reality. In nature, justice is purely theoretic, wholly a fiction. Nature provides but one kind of justice — inevitable conformity of results to causes.

70:10.2 (794.14) Justice, as conceived by man, means getting one’s rights and has, therefore, been a matter of progressive evolution. The concept of justice may well be constitutive in a spirit-endowed mind, but it does not spring full-fledgedly into existence on the worlds of space.

70:10.3 (794.15) Primitive man assigned all phenomena to a person. In case of death the savage asked, not what killed him, but who? Accidental murder was not therefore recognized, and in the punishment of crime the motive of the criminal was wholly disregarded; judgment was rendered in accordance with the injury done.

70:10.4 (795.1) In the earliest primitive society public opinion operated directly; officers of law were not needed. There was no privacy in primitive life. A man’s neighbors were responsible for his conduct; therefore their right to pry into his personal affairs. Society was regulated on the theory that the group membership should have an interest in, and some degree of control over, the behavior of each individual.

70:10.5 (795.2) It was very early believed that ghosts administered justice through the medicine men and priests; this constituted these orders the first crime detectors and officers of the law. Their early methods of detecting crime consisted in conducting ordeals of poison, fire, and pain. These savage ordeals were nothing more than crude techniques of arbitration; they did not necessarily settle a dispute justly. For example: When poison was administered, if the accused vomited, he was innocent.

70:10.6 (795.3) The Old Testament records one of these ordeals, a marital guilt test: If a man suspected his wife of being untrue to him, he took her to the priest and stated his suspicions, after which the priest would prepare a concoction consisting of holy water and sweepings from the temple floor. After due ceremony, including threatening curses, the accused wife was made to drink the nasty potion. If she was guilty, “the water that causes the curse shall enter into her and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be accursed among her people.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symptoms of physical illness, she was acquitted of the charges made by her jealous husband.

70:10.7 (795.4) These atrocious methods of crime detection were practiced by almost all the evolving tribes at one time or another. Dueling is a modern survival of the trial by ordeal.

70:10.8 (795.5) It is not to be wondered that the Hebrews and other semicivilized tribes practiced such primitive techniques of justice administration three thousand years ago, but it is most amazing that thinking men would subsequently retain such a relic of barbarism within the pages of a collection of sacred writings. Reflective thinking should make it clear that no divine being ever gave mortal man such unfair instructions regarding the detection and adjudication of suspected marital unfaithfulness.

70:10.9 (795.6) Society early adopted the paying-back attitude of retaliation: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolving tribes all recognized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance became the aim of primitive life, but religion has since greatly modified these early tribal practices. The teachers of revealed religion have always proclaimed, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Vengeance killing in early times was not altogether unlike present-day murders under the pretense of the unwritten law.

70:10.10 (795.7) Suicide was a common mode of retaliation. If one were unable to avenge himself in life, he died entertaining the belief that, as a ghost, he could return and visit wrath upon his enemy. And since this belief was very general, the threat of suicide on an enemy’s doorstep was usually sufficient to bring him to terms. Primitive man did not hold life very dear; suicide over trifles was common, but the teachings of the Dalamatians greatly lessened this custom, while in more recent times leisure, comforts, religion, and philosophy have united to make life sweeter and more desirable. Hunger strikes are, however, a modern analogue of this old-time method of retaliation.

70:10.11 (796.1) One of the earliest formulations of advanced tribal law had to do with the taking over of the blood feud as a tribal affair. But strange to relate, even then a man could kill his wife without punishment provided he had fully paid for her. The Eskimos of today, however, still leave the penalty for a crime, even for murder, to be decreed and administered by the family wronged.

70:10.12 (796.2) Another advance was the imposition of fines for taboo violations, the provision of penalties. These fines constituted the first public revenue. The practice of paying “blood money” also came into vogue as a substitute for blood vengeance. Such damages were usually paid in women or cattle; it was a long time before actual fines, monetary compensation, were assessed as punishment for crime. And since the idea of punishment was essentially compensation, everything, including human life, eventually came to have a price which could be paid as damages. The Hebrews were the first to abolish the practice of paying blood money. Moses taught that they should “take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, who is guilty of death; he shall surely be put to death.”

70:10.13 (796.3) Justice was thus first meted out by the family, then by the clan, and later on by the tribe. The administration of true justice dates from the taking of revenge from private and kin groups and lodging it in the hands of the social group, the state.

70:10.14 (796.4) Punishment by burning alive was once a common practice. It was recognized by many ancient rulers, including Hammurabi and Moses, the latter directing that many crimes, particularly those of a grave sex nature, should be punished by burning at the stake. If “the daughter of a priest” or other leading citizen turned to public prostitution, it was the Hebrew custom to “burn her with fire.”

70:10.15 (796.5) Treason — the “selling out” or betrayal of one’s tribal associates — was the first capital crime. Cattle stealing was universally punished by summary death, and even recently horse stealing has been similarly punished. But as time passed, it was learned that the severity of the punishment was not so valuable a deterrent to crime as was its certainty and swiftness.

70:10.16 (796.6) When society fails to punish crimes, group resentment usually asserts itself as lynch law; the provision of sanctuary was a means of escaping this sudden group anger. Lynching and dueling represent the unwillingness of the individual to surrender private redress to the state.

11. Laws and Courts

70:11.1 (796.7) It is just as difficult to draw sharp distinctions between mores and laws as to indicate exactly when, at the dawning, night is succeeded by day. Mores are laws and police regulations in the making. When long established, the undefined mores tend to crystallize into precise laws, concrete regulations, and well-defined social conventions.

70:11.2 (796.8) Law is always at first negative and prohibitive; in advancing civilizations it becomes increasingly positive and directive. Early society operated negatively, granting the individual the right to live by imposing upon all others the command, “you shall not kill.” Every grant of rights or liberty to the individual involves curtailment of the liberties of all others, and this is effected by the taboo, primitive law. The whole idea of the taboo is inherently negative, for primitive society was wholly negative in its organization, and the early administration of justice consisted in the enforcement of the taboos. But originally these laws applied only to fellow tribesmen, as is illustrated by the later-day Hebrews, who had a different code of ethics for dealing with the gentiles.

70:11.3 (797.1) The oath originated in the days of Dalamatia in an effort to render testimony more truthful. Such oaths consisted in pronouncing a curse upon oneself. Formerly no individual would testify against his native group.

70:11.4 (797.2) Crime was an assault upon the tribal mores, sin was the transgression of those taboos which enjoyed ghost sanction, and there was long confusion due to the failure to segregate crime and sin.

70:11.5 (797.3) Self-interest established the taboo on killing, society sanctified it as traditional mores, while religion consecrated the custom as moral law, and thus did all three conspire in rendering human life more safe and sacred. Society could not have held together during early times had not rights had the sanction of religion; superstition was the moral and social police force of the long evolutionary ages. The ancients all claimed that their olden laws, the taboos, had been given to their ancestors by the gods.

70:11.6 (797.4) Law is a codified record of long human experience, public opinion crystallized and legalized. The mores were the raw material of accumulated experience out of which later ruling minds formulated the written laws. The ancient judge had no laws. When he handed down a decision, he simply said, “It is the custom.”

70:11.7 (797.5) Reference to precedent in court decisions represents the effort of judges to adapt written laws to the changing conditions of society. This provides for progressive adaptation to altering social conditions combined with the impressiveness of traditional continuity.

70:11.8 (797.6) Property disputes were handled in many ways, such as:

70:11.9 (797.7) 1. By destroying the disputed property.

70:11.10 (797.8) 2. By force — the contestants fought it out.

70:11.11 (797.9) 3. By arbitration — a third party decided.

70:11.12 (797.10) 4. By appeal to the elders — later to the courts.

70:11.13 (797.11) The first courts were regulated fistic encounters; the judges were merely umpires or referees. They saw to it that the fight was carried on according to approved rules. On entering a court combat, each party made a deposit with the judge to pay the costs and fine after one had been defeated by the other. “Might was still right.” Later on, verbal arguments were substituted for physical blows.

70:11.14 (797.12) The whole idea of primitive justice was not so much to be fair as to dispose of the contest and thus prevent public disorder and private violence. But primitive man did not so much resent what would now be regarded as an injustice; it was taken for granted that those who had power would use it selfishly. Nevertheless, the status of any civilization may be very accurately determined by the thoroughness and equity of its courts and by the integrity of its judges.

12. Allocation of Civil Authority

70:12.1 (797.13) The great struggle in the evolution of government has concerned the concentration of power. The universe administrators have learned from experience that the evolutionary peoples on the inhabited worlds are best regulated by the representative type of civil government when there is maintained proper balance of power between the well-co-ordinated executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

70:12.2 (798.1) While primitive authority was based on strength, physical power, the ideal government is the representative system wherein leadership is based on ability, but in the days of barbarism there was entirely too much war to permit representative government to function effectively. In the long struggle between division of authority and unity of command, the dictator won. The early and diffuse powers of the primitive council of elders were gradually concentrated in the person of the absolute monarch. After the arrival of real kings the groups of elders persisted as quasi-legislative-judicial advisory bodies; later on, legislatures of co-ordinate status made their appearance, and eventually supreme courts of adjudication were established separate from the legislatures.

70:12.3 (798.2) The king was the executor of the mores, the original or unwritten law. Later he enforced the legislative enactments, the crystallization of public opinion. A popular assembly as an expression of public opinion, though slow in appearing, marked a great social advance.

70:12.4 (798.3) The early kings were greatly restricted by the mores — by tradition or public opinion. In recent times some Urantia nations have codified these mores into documentary bases for government.

70:12.5 (798.4) Urantia mortals are entitled to liberty; they should create their systems of government; they should adopt their constitutions or other charters of civil authority and administrative procedure. And having done this, they should select their most competent and worthy fellows as chief executives. For representatives in the legislative branch they should elect only those who are qualified intellectually and morally to fulfill such sacred responsibilities. As judges of their high and supreme tribunals only those who are endowed with natural ability and who have been made wise by replete experience should be chosen.

70:12.6 (798.5) If men would maintain their freedom, they must, after having chosen their charter of liberty, provide for its wise, intelligent, and fearless interpretation to the end that there may be prevented:

70:12.7 (798.6) 1. Usurpation of unwarranted power by either the executive or legislative branches.

70:12.8 (798.7) 2. Machinations of ignorant and superstitious agitators.

70:12.9 (798.8) 3. Retardation of scientific progress.

70:12.10 (798.9) 4. Stalemate of the dominance of mediocrity.

70:12.11 (798.10) 5. Domination by vicious minorities.

70:12.12 (798.11) 6. Control by ambitious and clever would-be dictators.

70:12.13 (798.12) 7. Disastrous disruption of panics.

70:12.14 (798.13) 8. Exploitation by the unscrupulous.

70:12.15 (798.14) 9. Taxation enslavement of the citizenry by the state.

70:12.16 (798.15) 10. Failure of social and economic fairness.

70:12.17 (798.16) 11. Union of church and state.

70:12.18 (798.17) 12. Loss of personal liberty.

70:12.19 (798.18) These are the purposes and aims of constitutional tribunals acting as governors upon the engines of representative government on an evolutionary world.

70:12.20 (799.1) Mankind’s struggle to perfect government on Urantia has to do with perfecting channels of administration, with adapting them to ever-changing current needs, with improving power distribution within government, and then with selecting such administrative leaders as are truly wise. While there is a divine and ideal form of government, such cannot be revealed but must be slowly and laboriously discovered by the men and women of each planet throughout the universes of time and space.

70:12.21 (799.2) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]




Paper 69 – Primitive Human Institutions

The Urantia Book

Paper 69

Primitive Human Institutions

69:0.1 (772.1) EMOTIONALLY, man transcends his animal ancestors in his ability to appreciate humor, art, and religion. Socially, man exhibits his superiority in that he is a toolmaker, a communicator, and an institution builder.

69:0.2 (772.2) When human beings long maintain social groups, such aggregations always result in the creation of certain activity trends which culminate in institutionalization. Most of man’s institutions have proved to be laborsaving while at the same time contributing something to the enhancement of group security.

69:0.3 (772.3) Civilized man takes great pride in the character, stability, and continuity of his established institutions, but all human institutions are merely the accumulated mores of the past as they have been conserved by taboos and dignified by religion. Such legacies become traditions, and traditions ultimately metamorphose into conventions.

1. Basic Human Institutions

69:1.1 (772.4) All human institutions minister to some social need, past or present, notwithstanding that their overdevelopment unfailingly detracts from the worth-whileness of the individual in that personality is overshadowed and initiative is diminished. Man should control his institutions rather than permit himself to be dominated by these creations of advancing civilization.

69:1.2 (772.5) Human institutions are of three general classes:

69:1.3 (772.6) 1. The institutions of self-maintenance. These institutions embrace those practices growing out of food hunger and its associated instincts of self-preservation. They include industry, property, war for gain, and all the regulative machinery of society. Sooner or later the fear instinct fosters the establishment of these institutions of survival by means of taboo, convention, and religious sanction. But fear, ignorance, and superstition have played a prominent part in the early origin and subsequent development of all human institutions.

69:1.4 (772.7) 2. The institutions of self-perpetuation. These are the establishments of society growing out of sex hunger, maternal instinct, and the higher tender emotions of the races. They embrace the social safeguards of the home and the school, of family life, education, ethics, and religion. They include marriage customs, war for defense, and home building.

69:1.5 (772.8) 3. The institutions of self-gratification. These are the practices growing out of vanity proclivities and pride emotions; and they embrace customs in dress and personal adornment, social usages, war for glory, dancing, amusement, games, and other phases of sensual gratification. But civilization has never evolved distinctive institutions of self-gratification.

69:1.6 (773.1) These three groups of social practices are intimately interrelated and minutely interdependent the one upon the other. On Urantia they represent a complex organization which functions as a single social mechanism.

2. The Dawn of Industry

69:2.1 (773.2) Primitive industry slowly grew up as an insurance against the terrors of famine. Early in his existence man began to draw lessons from some of the animals that, during a harvest of plenty, store up food against the days of scarcity.

69:2.2 (773.3) Before the dawn of early frugality and primitive industry the lot of the average tribe was one of destitution and real suffering. Early man had to compete with the whole animal world for his food. Competition-gravity ever pulls man down toward the beast level; poverty is his natural and tyrannical estate. Wealth is not a natural gift; it results from labor, knowledge, and organization.

69:2.3 (773.4) Primitive man was not slow to recognize the advantages of association. Association led to organization, and the first result of organization was division of labor, with its immediate saving of time and materials. These specializations of labor arose by adaptation to pressure — pursuing the paths of lessened resistance. Primitive savages never did any real work cheerfully or willingly. With them conformity was due to the coercion of necessity.

69:2.4 (773.5) Primitive man disliked hard work, and he would not hurry unless confronted by grave danger. The time element in labor, the idea of doing a given task within a certain time limit, is entirely a modern notion. The ancients were never rushed. It was the double demands of the intense struggle for existence and of the ever-advancing standards of living that drove the naturally inactive races of early man into avenues of industry.

69:2.5 (773.6) Labor, the efforts of design, distinguishes man from the beast, whose exertions are largely instinctive. The necessity for labor is man’s paramount blessing. The Prince’s staff all worked; they did much to ennoble physical labor on Urantia. Adam was a gardener; the God of the Hebrews labored — he was the creator and upholder of all things. The Hebrews were the first tribe to put a supreme premium on industry; they were the first people to decree that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But many of the religions of the world reverted to the early ideal of idleness. Jupiter was a reveler, and Buddha became a reflective devotee of leisure.

69:2.6 (773.7) The Sangik tribes were fairly industrious when residing away from the tropics. But there was a long, long struggle between the lazy devotees of magic and the apostles of work — those who exercised foresight.

69:2.7 (773.8) The first human foresight was directed toward the preservation of fire, water, and food. But primitive man was a natural-born gambler; he always wanted to get something for nothing, and all too often during these early times the success which accrued from patient practice was attributed to charms. Magic was slow to give way before foresight, self-denial, and industry.

3. The Specialization of Labor

69:3.1 (773.9) The divisions of labor in primitive society were determined first by natural, and then by social, circumstances. The early order of specialization in labor was:

69:3.2 (774.1) 1. Specialization based on sex. Woman’s work was derived from the selective presence of the child; women naturally love babies more than men do. Thus woman became the routine worker, while man became the hunter and fighter, engaging in accentuated periods of work and rest.

69:3.3 (774.2) All down through the ages the taboos have operated to keep woman strictly in her own field. Man has most selfishly chosen the more agreeable work, leaving the routine drudgery to woman. Man has always been ashamed to do woman’s work, but woman has never shown any reluctance to doing man’s work. But strange to record, both men and women have always worked together in building and furnishing the home.

69:3.4 (774.3) 2. Modification consequent upon age and disease. These differences determined the next division of labor. The old men and cripples were early set to work making tools and weapons. They were later assigned to building irrigation works.

69:3.5 (774.4) 3. Differentiation based on religion. The medicine men were the first human beings to be exempted from physical toil; they were the pioneer professional class. The smiths were a small group who competed with the medicine men as magicians. Their skill in working with metals made the people afraid of them. The “white smiths” and the “black smiths” gave origin to the early beliefs in white and black magic. And this belief later became involved in the superstition of good and bad ghosts, good and bad spirits.

69:3.6 (774.5) Smiths were the first nonreligious group to enjoy special privileges. They were regarded as neutrals during war, and this extra leisure led to their becoming, as a class, the politicians of primitive society. But through gross abuse of these privileges the smiths became universally hated, and the medicine men lost no time in fostering hatred for their competitors. In this first contest between science and religion, religion (superstition) won. After being driven out of the villages, the smiths maintained the first inns, public lodginghouses, on the outskirts of the settlements.

69:3.7 (774.6) 4. Master and slave. The next differentiation of labor grew out of the relations of the conqueror to the conquered, and that meant the beginning of human slavery.

69:3.8 (774.7) 5. Differentiation based on diverse physical and mental endowments. Further divisions of labor were favored by the inherent differences in men; all human beings are not born equal.

69:3.9 (774.8) The early specialists in industry were the flint flakers and stone masons; next came the smiths. Subsequently group specialization developed; whole families and clans dedicated themselves to certain sorts of labor. The origin of one of the earliest castes of priests, apart from the tribal medicine men, was due to the superstitious exaltation of a family of expert swordmakers.

69:3.10 (774.9) The first group specialists in industry were rock salt exporters and potters. Women made the plain pottery and men the fancy. Among some tribes sewing and weaving were done by women, in others by the men.

69:3.11 (774.10) The early traders were women; they were employed as spies, carrying on commerce as a side line. Presently trade expanded, the women acting as intermediaries — jobbers. Then came the merchant class, charging a commission, profit, for their services. Growth of group barter developed into commerce; and following the exchange of commodities came the exchange of skilled labor.

4. The Beginnings of Trade

69:4.1 (775.1) Just as marriage by contract followed marriage by capture, so trade by barter followed seizure by raids. But a long period of piracy intervened between the early practices of silent barter and the later trade by modern exchange methods.

69:4.2 (775.2) The first barter was conducted by armed traders who would leave their goods on a neutral spot. Women held the first markets; they were the earliest traders, and this was because they were the burden bearers; the men were warriors. Very early the trading counter was developed, a wall wide enough to prevent the traders reaching each other with weapons.

69:4.3 (775.3) A fetish was used to stand guard over the deposits of goods for silent barter. Such market places were secure against theft; nothing would be removed except by barter or purchase; with a fetish on guard the goods were always safe. The early traders were scrupulously honest within their own tribes but regarded it as all right to cheat distant strangers. Even the early Hebrews recognized a separate code of ethics in their dealings with the gentiles.

69:4.4 (775.4) For ages silent barter continued before men would meet, unarmed, on the sacred market place. These same market squares became the first places of sanctuary and in some countries were later known as “cities of refuge.” Any fugitive reaching the market place was safe and secure against attack.

69:4.5 (775.5) The first weights were grains of wheat and other cereals. The first medium of exchange was a fish or a goat. Later the cow became a unit of barter.

69:4.6 (775.6) Modern writing originated in the early trade records; the first literature of man was a trade-promotion document, a salt advertisement. Many of the earlier wars were fought over natural deposits, such as flint, salt, and metals. The first formal tribal treaty concerned the intertribalizing of a salt deposit. These treaty spots afforded opportunity for friendly and peaceful interchange of ideas and the intermingling of various tribes.

69:4.7 (775.7) Writing progressed up through the stages of the “message stick,” knotted cords, picture writing, hieroglyphics, and wampum belts, to the early symbolic alphabets. Message sending evolved from the primitive smoke signal up through runners, animal riders, railroads, and airplanes, as well as telegraph, telephone, and wireless communication.

69:4.8 (775.8) New ideas and better methods were carried around the inhabited world by the ancient traders. Commerce, linked with adventure, led to exploration and discovery. And all of these gave birth to transportation. Commerce has been the great civilizer through promoting the cross-fertilization of culture.

5. The Beginnings of Capital

69:5.1 (775.9) Capital is labor applied as a renunciation of the present in favor of the future. Savings represent a form of maintenance and survival insurance. Food hoarding developed self-control and created the first problems of capital and labor. The man who had food, provided he could protect it from robbers, had a distinct advantage over the man who had no food.

69:5.2 (775.10) The early banker was the valorous man of the tribe. He held the group treasures on deposit, while the entire clan would defend his hut in event of attack. Thus the accumulation of individual capital and group wealth immediately led to military organization. At first such precautions were designed to defend property against foreign raiders, but later on it became the custom to keep the military organization in practice by inaugurating raids on the property and wealth of neighboring tribes.

69:5.3 (776.1) The basic urges which led to the accumulation of capital were:

69:5.4 (776.2) 1. Hunger — associated with foresight. Food saving and preservation meant power and comfort for those who possessed sufficient foresight thus to provide for future needs. Food storage was adequate insurance against famine and disaster. And the entire body of primitive mores was really designed to help man subordinate the present to the future.

69:5.5 (776.3) 2. Love of family — desire to provide for their wants. Capital represents the saving of property in spite of the pressure of the wants of today in order to insure against the demands of the future. A part of this future need may have to do with one’s posterity.

69:5.6 (776.4) 3. Vanity — longing to display one’s property accumulations. Extra clothing was one of the first badges of distinction. Collection vanity early appealed to the pride of man.

69:5.7 (776.5) 4. Position — eagerness to buy social and political prestige. There early sprang up a commercialized nobility, admission to which depended on the performance of some special service to royalty or was granted frankly for the payment of money.

69:5.8 (776.6) 5. Power — the craving to be master. Treasure lending was carried on as a means of enslavement, one hundred per cent a year being the loan rate of these ancient times. The moneylenders made themselves kings by creating a standing army of debtors. Bond servants were among the earliest form of property to be accumulated, and in olden days debt slavery extended even to the control of the body after death.

69:5.9 (776.7) 6. Fear of the ghosts of the dead — priest fees for protection. Men early began to give death presents to the priests with a view to having their property used to facilitate their progress through the next life. The priesthoods thus became very rich; they were chief among ancient capitalists.

69:5.10 (776.8) 7. Sex urge — the desire to buy one or more wives. Man’s first form of trading was woman exchange; it long preceded horse trading. But never did the barter in sex slaves advance society; such traffic was and is a racial disgrace, for at one and the same time it hindered the development of family life and polluted the biologic fitness of superior peoples.

69:5.11 (776.9) 8. Numerous forms of self-gratification. Some sought wealth because it conferred power; others toiled for property because it meant ease. Early man (and some later-day ones) tended to squander his resources on luxury. Intoxicants and drugs intrigued the primitive races.

69:5.12 (776.10) As civilization developed, men acquired new incentives for saving; new wants were rapidly added to the original food hunger. Poverty became so abhorred that only the rich were supposed to go direct to heaven when they died. Property became so highly valued that to give a pretentious feast would wipe a dishonor from one’s name.

69:5.13 (777.1) Accumulations of wealth early became the badge of social distinction. Individuals in certain tribes would accumulate property for years just to create an impression by burning it up on some holiday or by freely distributing it to fellow tribesmen. This made them great men. Even modern peoples revel in the lavish distribution of Christmas gifts, while rich men endow great institutions of philanthropy and learning. Man’s technique varies, but his disposition remains quite unchanged.

69:5.14 (777.2) But it is only fair to record that many an ancient rich man distributed much of his fortune because of the fear of being killed by those who coveted his treasures. Wealthy men commonly sacrificed scores of slaves to show disdain for wealth.

69:5.15 (777.3) Though capital has tended to liberate man, it has greatly complicated his social and industrial organization. The abuse of capital by unfair capitalists does not destroy the fact that it is the basis of modern industrial society. Through capital and invention the present generation enjoys a higher degree of freedom than any that ever preceded it on earth. This is placed on record as a fact and not in justification of the many misuses of capital by thoughtless and selfish custodians.

6. Fire in Relation to Civilization

69:6.1 (777.4) Primitive society with its four divisions — industrial, regulative, religious, and military — rose through the instrumentality of fire, animals, slaves, and property.

69:6.2 (777.5) Fire building, by a single bound, forever separated man from animal; it is the basic human invention, or discovery. Fire enabled man to stay on the ground at night as all animals are afraid of it. Fire encouraged eventide social intercourse; it not only protected against cold and wild beasts but was also employed as security against ghosts. It was at first used more for light than heat; many backward tribes refuse to sleep unless a flame burns all night.

69:6.3 (777.6) Fire was a great civilizer, providing man with his first means of being altruistic without loss by enabling him to give live coals to a neighbor without depriving himself. The household fire, which was attended by the mother or eldest daughter, was the first educator, requiring watchfulness and dependability. The early home was not a building but the family gathered about the fire, the family hearth. When a son founded a new home, he carried a firebrand from the family hearth.

69:6.4 (777.7) Though Andon, the discoverer of fire, avoided treating it as an object of worship, many of his descendants regarded the flame as a fetish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the sanitary benefits of fire because they would not burn refuse. Primitive man feared fire and always sought to keep it in good humor, hence the sprinkling of incense. Under no circumstances would the ancients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass between anyone and a burning fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in striking fire were held sacred by early mankind.

69:6.5 (777.8) It was a sin to extinguish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was allowed to burn. The fires of the temples and shrines were sacred and were never permitted to go out except that it was the custom to kindle new flames annually or after some calamity. Women were selected as priests because they were custodians of the home fires.

69:6.6 (778.1) The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the observations of fire caused by lightning. These ideas of supernatural origin led directly to fire worship, and fire worship led to the custom of “passing through fire,” a practice carried on up to the times of Moses. And there still persists the idea of passing through fire after death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still persists in the symbolism of the Parsees.

69:6.7 (778.2) Fire led to cooking, and “raw eaters” became a term of derision. And cooking lessened the expenditure of vital energy necessary for the digestion of food and so left early man some strength for social culture, while animal husbandry, by reducing the effort necessary to secure food, provided time for social activities.

69:6.8 (778.3) It should be remembered that fire opened the doors to metalwork and led to the subsequent discovery of steam power and the present-day uses of electricity.

7. The Utilization of Animals

69:7.1 (778.4) To start with, the entire animal world was man’s enemy; human beings had to learn to protect themselves from the beasts. First, man ate the animals but later learned to domesticate and make them serve him.

69:7.2 (778.5) The domestication of animals came about accidentally. The savage would hunt herds much as the American Indians hunted the bison. By surrounding the herd they could keep control of the animals, thus being able to kill them as they were required for food. Later, corrals were constructed, and entire herds would be captured.

69:7.3 (778.6) It was easy to tame some animals, but like the elephant, many of them would not reproduce in captivity. Still further on it was discovered that certain species of animals would submit to man’s presence, and that they would reproduce in captivity. The domestication of animals was thus promoted by selective breeding, an art which has made great progress since the days of Dalamatia.

69:7.4 (778.7) The dog was the first animal to be domesticated, and the difficult experience of taming it began when a certain dog, after following a hunter around all day, actually went home with him. For ages dogs were used for food, hunting, transportation, and companionship. At first dogs only howled, but later on they learned to bark. The dog’s keen sense of smell led to the notion it could see spirits, and thus arose the dog-fetish cults. The employment of watchdogs made it first possible for the whole clan to sleep at night. It then became the custom to employ watchdogs to protect the home against spirits as well as material enemies. When the dog barked, man or beast approached, but when the dog howled, spirits were near. Even now many still believe that a dog’s howling at night betokens death.

69:7.5 (778.8) When man was a hunter, he was fairly kind to woman, but after the domestication of animals, coupled with the Caligastia confusion, many tribes shamefully treated their women. They treated them altogether too much as they treated their animals. Man’s brutal treatment of woman constitutes one of the darkest chapters of human history.

8. Slavery as a Factor in Civilization

69:8.1 (778.9) Primitive man never hesitated to enslave his fellows. Woman was the first slave, a family slave. Pastoral man enslaved woman as his inferior sex partner. This sort of sex slavery grew directly out of man’s decreased dependence upon woman.

69:8.2 (779.1) Not long ago enslavement was the lot of those military captives who refused to accept the conqueror’s religion. In earlier times captives were either eaten, tortured to death, set to fighting each other, sacrificed to spirits, or enslaved. Slavery was a great advancement over massacre and cannibalism.

69:8.3 (779.2) Enslavement was a forward step in the merciful treatment of war captives. The ambush of Ai, with the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children, only the king being saved to gratify the conqueror’s vanity, is a faithful picture of the barbaric slaughter practiced by even supposedly civilized peoples. The raid upon Og, the king of Bashan, was equally brutal and effective. The Hebrews “utterly destroyed” their enemies, taking all their property as spoils. They put all cities under tribute on pain of the “destruction of all males.” But many of the contemporary tribes, those having less tribal egotism, had long since begun to practice the adoption of superior captives.

69:8.4 (779.3) The hunter, like the American red man, did not enslave. He either adopted or killed his captives. Slavery was not prevalent among the pastoral peoples, for they needed few laborers. In war the herders made a practice of killing all men captives and taking as slaves only the women and children. The Mosaic code contained specific directions for making wives of these women captives. If not satisfactory, they could be sent away, but the Hebrews were not allowed to sell such rejected consorts as slaves — that was at least one advance in civilization. Though the social standards of the Hebrews were crude, they were far above those of the surrounding tribes.

69:8.5 (779.4) The herders were the first capitalists; their herds represented capital, and they lived on the interest — the natural increase. And they were disinclined to trust this wealth to the keeping of either slaves or women. But later on they took male prisoners and forced them to cultivate the soil. This is the early origin of serfdom — man attached to the land. The Africans could easily be taught to till the soil; hence they became the great slave race.

69:8.6 (779.5) Slavery was an indispensable link in the chain of human civilization. It was the bridge over which society passed from chaos and indolence to order and civilized activities; it compelled backward and lazy peoples to work and thus provide wealth and leisure for the social advancement of their superiors.

69:8.7 (779.6) The institution of slavery compelled man to invent the regulative mechanism of primitive society; it gave origin to the beginnings of government. Slavery demands strong regulation and during the European Middle Ages virtually disappeared because the feudal lords could not control the slaves. The backward tribes of ancient times, like the native Australians of today, never had slaves.

69:8.8 (779.7) True, slavery was oppressive, but it was in the schools of oppression that man learned industry. Eventually the slaves shared the blessings of a higher society which they had so unwillingly helped create. Slavery creates an organization of culture and social achievement but soon insidiously attacks society internally as the gravest of all destructive social maladies.

69:8.9 (779.8) Modern mechanical invention rendered the slave obsolete. Slavery, like polygamy, is passing because it does not pay. But it has always proved disastrous suddenly to liberate great numbers of slaves; less trouble ensues when they are gradually emancipated.

69:8.10 (780.1) Today, men are not social slaves, but thousands allow ambition to enslave them to debt. Involuntary slavery has given way to a new and improved form of modified industrial servitude.

69:8.11 (780.2) While the ideal of society is universal freedom, idleness should never be tolerated. All able-bodied persons should be compelled to do at least a self-sustaining amount of work.

69:8.12 (780.3) Modern society is in reverse. Slavery has nearly disappeared; domesticated animals are passing. Civilization is reaching back to fire — the inorganic world — for power. Man came up from savagery by way of fire, animals, and slavery; today he reaches back, discarding the help of slaves and the assistance of animals, while he seeks to wrest new secrets and sources of wealth and power from the elemental storehouse of nature.

9. Private Property

69:9.1 (780.4) While primitive society was virtually communal, primitive man did not adhere to the modern doctrines of communism. The communism of these early times was not a mere theory or social doctrine; it was a simple and practical automatic adjustment. Communism prevented pauperism and want; begging and prostitution were almost unknown among these ancient tribes.

69:9.2 (780.5) Primitive communism did not especially level men down, nor did it exalt mediocrity, but it did put a premium on inactivity and idleness, and it did stifle industry and destroy ambition. Communism was indispensable scaffolding in the growth of primitive society, but it gave way to the evolution of a higher social order because it ran counter to four strong human proclivities:

69:9.3 (780.6) 1. The family. Man not only craves to accumulate property; he desires to bequeath his capital goods to his progeny. But in early communal society a man’s capital was either immediately consumed or distributed among the group at his death. There was no inheritance of property — the inheritance tax was one hundred per cent. The later capital-accumulation and property-inheritance mores were a distinct social advance. And this is true notwithstanding the subsequent gross abuses attendant upon the misuse of capital.

69:9.4 (780.7) 2. Religious tendencies. Primitive man also wanted to save up property as a nucleus for starting life in the next existence. This motive explains why it was so long the custom to bury a man’s personal belongings with him. The ancients believed that only the rich survived death with any immediate pleasure and dignity. The teachers of revealed religion, more especially the Christian teachers, were the first to proclaim that the poor could have salvation on equal terms with the rich.

69:9.5 (780.8) 3. The desire for liberty and leisure. In the earlier days of social evolution the apportionment of individual earnings among the group was virtually a form of slavery; the worker was made slave to the idler. This was the suicidal weakness of communism: The improvident habitually lived off the thrifty. Even in modern times the improvident depend on the state (thrifty taxpayers) to take care of them. Those who have no capital still expect those who have to feed them.

69:9.6 (780.9) 4. The urge for security and power. Communism was finally destroyed by the deceptive practices of progressive and successful individuals who resorted to diverse subterfuges in an effort to escape enslavement to the shiftless idlers of their tribes. But at first all hoarding was secret; primitive insecurity prevented the outward accumulation of capital. And even at a later time it was most dangerous to amass too much wealth; the king would be sure to trump up some charge for confiscating a rich man’s property, and when a wealthy man died, the funeral was held up until the family donated a large sum to public welfare or to the king, an inheritance tax.

69:9.7 (781.1) In earliest times women were the property of the community, and the mother dominated the family. The early chiefs owned all the land and were proprietors of all the women; marriage required the consent of the tribal ruler. With the passing of communism, women were held individually, and the father gradually assumed domestic control. Thus the home had its beginning, and the prevailing polygamous customs were gradually displaced by monogamy. (Polygamy is the survival of the female-slavery element in marriage. Monogamy is the slave-free ideal of the matchless association of one man and one woman in the exquisite enterprise of home building, offspring rearing, mutual culture, and self-improvement.)

69:9.8 (781.2) At first, all property, including tools and weapons, was the common possession of the tribe. Private property first consisted of all things personally touched. If a stranger drank from a cup, the cup was henceforth his. Next, any place where blood was shed became the property of the injured person or group.

69:9.9 (781.3) Private property was thus originally respected because it was supposed to be charged with some part of the owner’s personality. Property honesty rested safely on this type of superstition; no police were needed to guard personal belongings. There was no stealing within the group, though men did not hesitate to appropriate the goods of other tribes. Property relations did not end with death; early, personal effects were burned, then buried with the dead, and later, inherited by the surviving family or by the tribe.

69:9.10 (781.4) The ornamental type of personal effects originated in the wearing of charms. Vanity plus ghost fear led early man to resist all attempts to relieve him of his favorite charms, such property being valued above necessities.

69:9.11 (781.5) Sleeping space was one of man’s earliest properties. Later, homesites were assigned by the tribal chiefs, who held all real estate in trust for the group. Presently a fire site conferred ownership; and still later, a well constituted title to the adjacent land.

69:9.12 (781.6) Water holes and wells were among the first private possessions. The whole fetish practice was utilized to guard water holes, wells, trees, crops, and honey. Following the loss of faith in the fetish, laws were evolved to protect private belongings. But game laws, the right to hunt, long preceded land laws. The American red man never understood private ownership of land; he could not comprehend the white man’s view.

69:9.13 (781.7) Private property was early marked by family insignia, and this is the early origin of family crests. Real estate could also be put under the watchcare of spirits. The priests would “consecrate” a piece of land, and it would then rest under the protection of the magic taboos erected thereon. Owners thereof were said to have a “priest’s title.” The Hebrews had great respect for these family landmarks: “Cursed be he who removes his neighbor’s landmark.” These stone markers bore the priest’s initials. Even trees, when initialed, became private property.

69:9.14 (782.1) In early days only the crops were private, but successive crops conferred title; agriculture was thus the genesis of the private ownership of land. Individuals were first given only a life tenureship; at death land reverted to the tribe. The very first land titles granted by tribes to individuals were graves — family burying grounds. In later times land belonged to those who fenced it. But the cities always reserved certain lands for public pasturage and for use in case of siege; these “commons” represent the survival of the earlier form of collective ownership.

69:9.15 (782.2) Eventually the state assigned property to the individual, reserving the right of taxation. Having made secure their titles, landlords could collect rents, and land became a source of income — capital. Finally land became truly negotiable, with sales, transfers, mortgages, and foreclosures.

69:9.16 (782.3) Private ownership brought increased liberty and enhanced stability; but private ownership of land was given social sanction only after communal control and direction had failed, and it was soon followed by a succession of slaves, serfs, and landless classes. But improved machinery is gradually setting men free from slavish toil.

69:9.17 (782.4) The right to property is not absolute; it is purely social. But all government, law, order, civil rights, social liberties, conventions, peace, and happiness, as they are enjoyed by modern peoples, have grown up around the private ownership of property.

69:9.18 (782.5) The present social order is not necessarily right — not divine or sacred — but mankind will do well to move slowly in making changes. That which you have is vastly better than any system known to your ancestors. Make certain that when you change the social order you change for the better. Do not be persuaded to experiment with the discarded formulas of your forefathers. Go forward, not backward! Let evolution proceed! Do not take a backward step.

69:9.19 (782.6) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]




Paper 68 – The Dawn of Civilization

The Urantia Book

Paper 68

The Dawn of Civilization

68:0.1 (763.1) THIS is the beginning of the narrative of the long, long forward struggle of the human species from a status that was little better than an animal existence, through the intervening ages, and down to the later times when a real, though imperfect, civilization had evolved among the higher races of mankind.

68:0.2 (763.2) Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment of culture, while each succeeding generation of youth must receive anew its education. The superior qualities of civilization — scientific, philosophic, and religious — are not transmitted from one generation to another by direct inheritance. These cultural achievements are preserved only by the enlightened conservation of social inheritance.

68:0.3 (763.3) Social evolution of the co-operative order was initiated by the Dalamatia teachers, and for three hundred thousand years mankind was nurtured in the idea of group activities. The blue man most of all profited by these early social teachings, the red man to some extent, and the black man least of all. In more recent times the yellow race and the white race have presented the most advanced social development on Urantia.

1. Protective Socialization

68:1.1 (763.4) When brought closely together, men often learn to like one another, but primitive man was not naturally overflowing with the spirit of brotherly feeling and the desire for social contact with his fellows. Rather did the early races learn by sad experience that “in union there is strength”; and it is this lack of natural brotherly attraction that now stands in the way of immediate realization of the brotherhood of man on Urantia.

68:1.2 (763.5) Association early became the price of survival. The lone man was helpless unless he bore a tribal mark which testified that he belonged to a group which would certainly avenge any assault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fatal to go abroad alone without some mark of group association. Civilization has become man’s insurance against violent death, while the premiums are paid by submission to society’s numerous law demands.

68:1.3 (763.6) Primitive society was thus founded on the reciprocity of necessity and on the enhanced safety of association. And human society has evolved in agelong cycles as a result of this isolation fear and by means of reluctant co-operation.

68:1.4 (763.7) Primitive human beings early learned that groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their individual units. One hundred men united and working in unison can move a great stone; a score of well-trained guardians of the peace can restrain an angry mob. And so society was born, not of mere association of numbers, but rather as a result of the organization of intelligent co-operators. But co-operation is not a natural trait of man; he learns to co-operate first through fear and then later because he discovers it is most beneficial in meeting the difficulties of time and guarding against the supposed perils of eternity.

68:1.5 (764.1) The peoples who thus early organized themselves into a primitive society became more successful in their attacks on nature as well as in defense against their fellows; they possessed greater survival possibilities; hence has civilization steadily progressed on Urantia, notwithstanding its many setbacks. And it is only because of the enhancement of survival value in association that man’s many blunders have thus far failed to stop or destroy human civilization.

68:1.6 (764.2) That contemporary cultural society is a rather recent phenomenon is well shown by the present-day survival of such primitive social conditions as characterize the Australian natives and the Bushmen and Pygmies of Africa. Among these backward peoples may be observed something of the early group hostility, personal suspicion, and other highly antisocial traits which were so characteristic of all primitive races. These miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the natural individualistic tendency of man cannot successfully compete with the more potent and powerful organizations and associations of social progression. These backward and suspicious antisocial races that speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles illustrate what a world you might now be living in but for the combined teaching of the corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince and the later labors of the Adamic group of racial uplifters.

68:1.7 (764.3) The modern phrase, “back to nature,” is a delusion of ignorance, a belief in the reality of the onetime fictitious “golden age.” The only basis for the legend of the golden age is the historic fact of Dalamatia and Eden. But these improved societies were far from the realization of utopian dreams.

2. Factors in Social Progression

68:2.1 (764.4) Civilized society is the result of man’s early efforts to overcome his dislike of isolation. But this does not necessarily signify mutual affection, and the present turbulent state of certain primitive groups well illustrates what the early tribes came up through. But though the individuals of a civilization may collide with each other and struggle against one another, and though civilization itself may appear to be an inconsistent mass of striving and struggling, it does evidence earnest striving, not the deadly monotony of stagnation.

68:2.2 (764.5) While the level of intelligence has contributed considerably to the rate of cultural progress, society is essentially designed to lessen the risk element in the individual’s mode of living, and it has progressed just as fast as it has succeeded in lessening pain and increasing the pleasure element in life. Thus does the whole social body push on slowly toward the goal of destiny — extinction or survival — depending on whether that goal is self-maintenance or self-gratification. Self-maintenance originates society, while excessive self-gratification destroys civilization.

68:2.3 (764.6) Society is concerned with self-perpetuation, self-maintenance, and self-gratification, but human self-realization is worthy of becoming the immediate goal of many cultural groups.

68:2.4 (765.1) The herd instinct in natural man is hardly sufficient to account for the development of such a social organization as now exists on Urantia. Though this innate gregarious propensity lies at the bottom of human society, much of man’s sociability is an acquirement. Two great influences which contributed to the early association of human beings were food hunger and sex love; these instinctive urges man shares with the animal world. Two other emotions which drove human beings together and held them together were vanity and fear, more particularly ghost fear.

68:2.5 (765.2) History is but the record of man’s agelong food struggle. Primitive man only thought when he was hungry;food saving was his first self-denial, self-discipline. With the growth of society, food hunger ceased to be the only incentive for mutual association. Numerous other sorts of hunger, the realization of various needs, all led to the closer association of mankind. But today society is top-heavy with the overgrowth of supposed human needs. Occidental civilization of the twentieth century groans wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the inordinate multiplication of human desires and longings. Modern society is enduring the strain of one of its most dangerous phases of far-flung interassociation and highly complicated interdependence.

68:2.6 (765.3) Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were continuous in their social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and spasmodic. The sex urge alone did not impel primitive men and women to assume the heavy burdens of home maintenance. The early home was founded upon the sex restlessness of the male when deprived of frequent gratification and upon that devoted mother love of the human female, which in measure she shares with the females of all the higher animals. The presence of a helpless baby determined the early differentiation of male and female activities; the woman had to maintain a settled residence where she could cultivate the soil. And from earliest times, where woman was has always been regarded as the home.

68:2.7 (765.4) Woman thus early became indispensable to the evolving social scheme, not so much because of the fleeting sex passion as in consequence of food requirement; she was an essential partner in self-maintenance. She was a food provider, a beast of burden, and a companion who would stand great abuse without violent resentment, and in addition to all of these desirable traits, she was an ever-present means of sex gratification.

68:2.8 (765.5) Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family. The family was the first successful peace group, the man and woman learning how to adjust their antagonisms while at the same time teaching the pursuits of peace to their children.

68:2.9 (765.6) The function of marriage in evolution is the insurance of race survival, not merely the realization of personal happiness; self-maintenance and self-perpetuation are the real objects of the home. Self-gratification is incidental and not essential except as an incentive insuring sex association. Nature demands survival, but the arts of civilization continue to increase the pleasures of marriage and the satisfactions of family life.

68:2.10 (765.7) If vanity be enlarged to cover pride, ambition, and honor, then we may discern not only how these propensities contribute to the formation of human associations, but how they also hold men together, since such emotions are futile without an audience to parade before. Soon vanity associated with itself other emotions and impulses which required a social arena wherein they might exhibit and gratify themselves. This group of emotions gave origin to the early beginnings of all art, ceremonial, and all forms of sportive games and contests.

68:2.11 (766.1) Vanity contributed mightily to the birth of society; but at the time of these revelations the devious strivings of a vainglorious generation threaten to swamp and submerge the whole complicated structure of a highly specialized civilization. Pleasure-want has long since superseded hunger-want; the legitimate social aims of self-maintenance are rapidly translating themselves into base and threatening forms of self-gratification. Self-maintenance builds society; unbridled self-gratification unfailingly destroys civilization.

3. Socializing Influence of Ghost Fear

68:3.1 (766.2) Primitive desires produced the original society, but ghost fear held it together and imparted an extrahuman aspect to its existence. Common fear was physiological in origin: fear of physical pain, unsatisfied hunger, or some earthly calamity; but ghost fear was a new and sublime sort of terror.

68:3.2 (766.3) Probably the greatest single factor in the evolution of human society was the ghost dream. Although most dreams greatly perturbed the primitive mind, the ghost dream actually terrorized early men, driving these superstitious dreamers into each other’s arms in willing and earnest association for mutual protection against the vague and unseen imaginary dangers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the earliest appearing differences between the animal and human types of mind. Animals do not visualize survival after death.

68:3.3 (766.4) Except for this ghost factor, all society was founded on fundamental needs and basic biologic urges. But ghost fear introduced a new factor in civilization, a fear which reaches out and away from the elemental needs of the individual, and which rises far above even the struggles to maintain the group. The dread of the departed spirits of the dead brought to light a new and amazing form of fear, an appalling and powerful terror, which contributed to whipping the loose social orders of early ages into the more thoroughly disciplined and better controlled primitive groups of ancient times. This senseless superstition, some of which still persists, prepared the minds of men, through superstitious fear of the unreal and the supernatural, for the later discovery of “the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom.” The baseless fears of evolution are designed to be supplanted by the awe for Deity inspired by revelation. The early cult of ghost fear became a powerful social bond, and ever since that far-distant day mankind has been striving more or less for the attainment of spirituality.

68:3.4 (766.5) Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost fear held them together. But these emotions alone, without the influence of peace-promoting revelations, are unable to endure the strain of the suspicions and irritations of human interassociations. Without help from superhuman sources the strain of society breaks down upon reaching certain limits, and these very influences of social mobilization — hunger, love, vanity, and fear — conspire to plunge mankind into war and bloodshed.

68:3.5 (766.6) The peace tendency of the human race is not a natural endowment; it is derived from the teachings of revealed religion, from the accumulated experience of the progressive races, but more especially from the teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

4. Evolution of the Mores

68:4.1 (767.1) All modern social institutions arise from the evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions — mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble origin.

68:4.2 (767.2) It must be borne in mind that the mores originated in an effort to adjust group living to the conditions of mass existence; the mores were man’s first social institution. And all of these tribal reactions grew out of the effort to avoid pain and humiliation while at the same time seeking to enjoy pleasure and power. The origin of folkways, like the origin of languages, is always unconscious and unintentional and therefore always shrouded in mystery.

68:4.3 (767.3) Ghost fear drove primitive man to envision the supernatural and thus securely laid the foundations for those powerful social influences of ethics and religion which in turn preserved inviolate the mores and customs of society from generation to generation. The one thing which early established and crystallized the mores was the belief that the dead were jealous of the ways by which they had lived and died; therefore would they visit dire punishment upon those living mortals who dared to treat with careless disdain the rules of living which they had honored when in the flesh. All this is best illustrated by the present reverence of the yellow race for their ancestors. Later developing primitive religion greatly reinforced ghost fear in stabilizing the mores, but advancing civilization has increasingly liberated mankind from the bondage of fear and the slavery of superstition.

68:4.4 (767.4) Prior to the liberating and liberalizing instruction of the Dalamatia teachers, ancient man was held a helpless victim of the ritual of the mores; the primitive savage was hedged about by an endless ceremonial. Everything he did from the time of awakening in the morning to the moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just so — in accordance with the folkways of the tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of usage; his life contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original. There was no natural progress toward a higher mental, moral, or social existence.

68:4.5 (767.5) Early man was mightily gripped by custom; the savage was a veritable slave to usage; but there have arisen ever and anon those variations from type who have dared to inaugurate new ways of thinking and improved methods of living. Nevertheless, the inertia of primitive man constitutes the biologic safety brake against precipitation too suddenly into the ruinous maladjustment of a too rapidly advancing civilization.

68:4.6 (767.6) But these customs are not an unmitigated evil; their evolution should continue. It is nearly fatal to the continuance of civilization to undertake their wholesale modification by radical revolution. Custom has been the thread of continuity which has held civilization together. The path of human history is strewn with the remnants of discarded customs and obsolete social practices; but no civilization has endured which abandoned its mores except for the adoption of better and more fit customs.

68:4.7 (767.7) The survival of a society depends chiefly on the progressive evolution of its mores. The process of custom evolution grows out of the desire for experimentation; new ideas are put forward — competition ensues. A progressing civilization embraces the progressive idea and endures; time and circumstance finally select the fitter group for survival. But this does not mean that each separate and isolated change in the composition of human society has been for the better. No! indeed no! for there have been many, many retrogressions in the long forward struggle of Urantia civilization.

5. Land Techniques — Maintenance Arts

68:5.1 (768.1) Land is the stage of society; men are the actors. And man must ever adjust his performances to conform to the land situation. The evolution of the mores is always dependent on the land-man ratio. This is true notwithstanding the difficulty of its discernment. Man’s land technique, or maintenance arts, plus his standards of living, equal the sum total of the folkways, the mores. And the sum of man’s adjustment to the life demands equals his cultural civilization.

68:5.2 (768.2) The earliest human cultures arose along the rivers of the Eastern Hemisphere, and there were four great steps in the forward march of civilization. They were:

68:5.3 (768.3) 1. The collection stage. Food coercion, hunger, led to the first form of industrial organization, the primitive food-gathering lines. Sometimes such a line of hunger march would be ten miles long as it passed over the land gleaning food. This was the primitive nomadic stage of culture and is the mode of life now followed by the African Bushmen.

68:5.4 (768.4) 2. The hunting stage. The invention of weapon tools enabled man to become a hunter and thus to gain considerable freedom from food slavery. A thoughtful Andonite who had severely bruised his fist in a serious combat rediscovered the idea of using a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made independent discoveries of this sort, and these various forms of hammers represented one of the great forward steps in human civilization. Today some Australian natives have progressed little beyond this stage.

68:5.5 (768.5) The blue men became expert hunters and trappers; by fencing the rivers they caught fish in great numbers, drying the surplus for winter use. Many forms of ingenious snares and traps were employed in catching game, but the more primitive races did not hunt the larger animals.

68:5.6 (768.6) 3. The pastoral stage. This phase of civilization was made possible by the domestication of animals. The Arabs and the natives of Africa are among the more recent pastoral peoples.

68:5.7 (768.7) Pastoral living afforded further relief from food slavery; man learned to live on the interest of his capital, the increase in his flocks; and this provided more leisure for culture and progress.

68:5.8 (768.8) Prepastoral society was one of sex co-operation, but the spread of animal husbandry reduced women to the depths of social slavery. In earlier times it was man’s duty to secure the animal food, woman’s business to provide the vegetable edibles. Therefore, when man entered the pastoral era of his existence, woman’s dignity fell greatly. She must still toil to produce the vegetable necessities of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to provide an abundance of animal food. Man thus became relatively independent of woman; throughout the entire pastoral age woman’s status steadily declined. By the close of this era she had become scarcely more than a human animal, consigned to work and to bear human offspring, much as the animals of the herd were expected to labor and bring forth young. The men of the pastoral ages had great love for their cattle; all the more pity they could not have developed a deeper affection for their wives.

68:5.9 (769.1) 4. The agricultural stage. This era was brought about by the domestication of plants, and it represents the highest type of material civilization. Both Caligastia and Adam endeavored to teach horticulture and agriculture. Adam and Eve were gardeners, not shepherds, and gardening was an advanced culture in those days. The growing of plants exerts an ennobling influence on all races of mankind.

68:5.10 (769.2) Agriculture more than quadrupled the land-man ratio of the world. It may be combined with the pastoral pursuits of the former cultural stage. When the three stages overlap, men hunt and women till the soil.

68:5.11 (769.3) There has always been friction between the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were militant, warlike; the agriculturist is a more peace-loving type. Association with animals suggests struggle and force; association with plants instills patience, quiet, and peace. Agriculture and industrialism are the activities of peace. But the weakness of both, as world social activities, is that they lack excitement and adventure.

68:5.12 (769.4) Human society has evolved from the hunting stage through that of the herders to the territorial stage of agriculture. And each stage of this progressive civilization was accompanied by less and less of nomadism; more and more man began to live at home.

68:5.13 (769.5) And now is industry supplementing agriculture, with consequently increased urbanization and multiplication of nonagricultural groups of citizenship classes. But an industrial era cannot hope to survive if its leaders fail to recognize that even the highest social developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural basis.

6. Evolution of Culture

68:6.1 (769.6) Man is a creature of the soil, a child of nature; no matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land, in the last reckoning he is certain to fail. “Dust you are and to dust shall you return” is literally true of all mankind. The basic struggle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land. The first social associations of primitive human beings were for the purpose of winning these land struggles. The land-man ratio underlies all social civilization.

68:6.2 (769.7) Man’s intelligence, by means of the arts and sciences, increased the land yield; at the same time the natural increase in offspring was somewhat brought under control, and thus was provided the sustenance and leisure to build a cultural civilization.

68:6.3 (769.8) Human society is controlled by a law which decrees that the population must vary directly in accordance with the land arts and inversely with a given standard of living. Throughout these early ages, even more than at present, the law of supply and demand as concerned men and land determined the estimated value of both. During the times of plentiful land — unoccupied territory — the need for men was great, and therefore the value of human life was much enhanced; hence the loss of life was more horrifying. During periods of land scarcity and associated overpopulation, human life became comparatively cheapened so that war, famine, and pestilence were regarded with less concern.

68:6.4 (770.1) When the land yield is reduced or the population is increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the very worst traits of human nature are brought to the surface. The improvement of the land yield, the extension of the mechanical arts, and the reduction of population all tend to foster the development of the better side of human nature.

68:6.5 (770.2) Frontier society develops the unskilled side of humanity; the fine arts and true scientific progress, together with spiritual culture, have all thrived best in the larger centers of life when supported by an agricultural and industrial population slightly under the land-man ratio. Cities always multiply the power of their inhabitants for either good or evil.

68:6.6 (770.3) The size of the family has always been influenced by the standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller the family, up to the point of established status or gradual extinction.

68:6.7 (770.4) All down through the ages the standards of living have determined the quality of a surviving population in contrast with mere quantity. Local class standards of living give origin to new social castes, new mores. When standards of living become too complicated or too highly luxurious, they speedily become suicidal. Caste is the direct result of the high social pressure of keen competition produced by dense populations.

68:6.8 (770.5) The early races often resorted to practices designed to restrict population; all primitive tribes killed deformed and sickly children. Girl babies were frequently killed before the times of wife purchase. Children were sometimes strangled at birth, but the favorite method was exposure. The father of twins usually insisted that one be killed since multiple births were believed to be caused either by magic or by infidelity. As a rule, however, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh universal, they were never a part of the Andonite mores; these peoples always regarded twins as omens of good luck.

68:6.9 (770.6) Many races learned the technique of abortion, and this practice became very common after the establishment of the taboo on childbirth among the unmarried. It was long the custom for a maiden to kill her offspring, but among more civilized groups these illegitimate children became the wards of the girl’s mother. Many primitive clans were virtually exterminated by the practice of both abortion and infanticide. But regardless of the dictates of the mores, very few children were ever destroyed after having once been suckled — maternal affection is too strong.

68:6.10 (770.7) Even in the twentieth century there persist remnants of these primitive population controls. There is a tribe in Australia whose mothers refuse to rear more than two or three children. Not long since, one cannibalistic tribe ate every fifth child born. In Madagascar some tribes still destroy all children born on certain unlucky days, resulting in the death of about twenty-five per cent of all babies.

68:6.11 (770.8) From a world standpoint, overpopulation has never been a serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and science increasingly controls human diseases, it may become a serious problem in the near future. At such a time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The subnormal man should be kept under society’s control; no more should be produced than are required to administer the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind.

68:6.12 (771.1) [Presented by a Melchizedek sometime stationed on Urantia.]




Paper 67 – The Planetary Rebellion

The Urantia Book

Paper 67

The Planetary Rebellion

67:0.1 (754.1) THE problems associated with human existence on Urantia are impossible of understanding without a knowledge of certain great epochs of the past, notably the occurrence and consequences of the planetary rebellion. Although this upheaval did not seriously interfere with the progress of organic evolution, it did markedly modify the course of social evolution and of spiritual development. The entire superphysical history of the planet was profoundly influenced by this devastating calamity.

1. The Caligastia Betrayal

67:1.1 (754.2) For three hundred thousand years Caligastia had been in charge of Urantia when Satan, Lucifer’s assistant, made one of his periodic inspection calls. And when Satan arrived on the planet, his appearance in no way resembled your caricatures of his nefarious majesty. He was, and still is, a Lanonandek Son of great brilliance. “And no marvel, for Satan himself is a brilliant creature of light.”

67:1.2 (754.3) In the course of this inspection Satan informed Caligastia of Lucifer’s then proposed “Declaration of Liberty,” and as we now know, the Prince agreed to betray the planet upon the announcement of the rebellion. The loyal universe personalities look with peculiar disdain upon Prince Caligastia because of this premeditated betrayal of trust. The Creator Son voiced this contempt when he said: “You are like your leader, Lucifer, and you have sinfully perpetuated his iniquity. He was a falsifier from the beginning of his self-exaltation because he abode not in the truth.”

67:1.3 (754.4) In all the administrative work of a local universe no high trust is deemed more sacred than that reposed in a Planetary Prince who assumes responsibility for the welfare and guidance of the evolving mortals on a newly inhabited world. And of all forms of evil, none are more destructive of personality status than betrayal of trust and disloyalty to one’s confiding friends. In committing this deliberate sin, Caligastia so completely distorted his personality that his mind has never since been able fully to regain its equilibrium.

67:1.4 (754.5) There are many ways of looking at sin, but from the universe philosophic viewpoint sin is the attitude of a personality who is knowingly resisting cosmic reality. Error might be regarded as a misconception or distortion of reality. Evil is a partial realization of, or maladjustment to, universe realities. But sin is a purposeful resistance to divine reality — a conscious choosing to oppose spiritual progress — while iniquity consists in an open and persistent defiance of recognized reality and signifies such a degree of personality disintegration as to border on cosmic insanity.

67:1.5 (755.1) Error suggests lack of intellectual keenness; evil, deficiency of wisdom; sin, abject spiritual poverty; but iniquity is indicative of vanishing personality control.

67:1.6 (755.2) And when sin has so many times been chosen and so often been repeated, it may become habitual. Habitual sinners can easily become iniquitous, become wholehearted rebels against the universe and all of its divine realities. While all manner of sins may be forgiven, we doubt whether the established iniquiter would ever sincerely experience sorrow for his misdeeds or accept forgiveness for his sins.

2. The Outbreak of Rebellion

67:2.1 (755.3) Shortly after Satan’s inspection and when the planetary administration was on the eve of the realization of great things on Urantia, one day, midwinter of the northern continents, Caligastia held a prolonged conference with his associate, Daligastia, after which the latter called the ten councils of Urantia in session extraordinary. This assembly was opened with the statement that Prince Caligastia was about to proclaim himself absolute sovereign of Urantia and demanded that all administrative groups abdicate by resigning all of their functions and powers into the hands of Daligastia as trustee, pending the reorganization of the planetary government and the subsequent redistribution of these offices of administrative authority.

67:2.2 (755.4) The presentation of this astounding demand was followed by the masterly appeal of Van, chairman of the supreme council of co-ordination. This distinguished administrator and able jurist branded the proposed course of Caligastia as an act bordering on planetary rebellion and appealed to his conferees to abstain from all participation until an appeal could be taken to Lucifer, the System Sovereign of Satania; and he won the support of the entire staff. Accordingly, appeal was taken to Jerusem, and forthwith came back the orders designating Caligastia as supreme sovereign on Urantia and commanding absolute and unquestioning allegiance to his mandates. And it was in reply to this amazing message that the noble Van made his memorable address of seven hours’ length in which he formally drew his indictment of Daligastia, Caligastia, and Lucifer as standing in contempt of the sovereignty of the universe of Nebadon; and he appealed to the Most Highs of Edentia for support and confirmation.

67:2.3 (755.5) Meantime the system circuits had been severed; Urantia was isolated. Every group of celestial life on the planet found itself suddenly and without warning isolated, utterly cut off from all outside counsel and advice.

67:2.4 (755.6) Daligastia formally proclaimed Caligastia “God of Urantia and supreme over all.” With this proclamation before them, the issues were clearly drawn; and each group drew off by itself and began deliberations, discussions destined eventually to determine the fate of every superhuman personality on the planet.

67:2.5 (755.7) Seraphim and cherubim and other celestial beings were involved in the decisions of this bitter struggle, this long and sinful conflict. Many superhuman groups that chanced to be on Urantia at the time of its isolation were detained here and, like the seraphim and their associates, were compelled to choose between sin and righteousness — between the ways of Lucifer and the will of the unseen Father.

67:2.6 (756.1) For more than seven years this struggle continued. Not until every personality concerned had made a final decision, would or did the authorities of Edentia interfere or intervene. Not until then did Van and his loyal associates receive vindication and release from their prolonged anxiety and intolerable suspense.

3. The Seven Crucial Years

67:3.1 (756.2) The outbreak of rebellion on Jerusem, the capital of Satania, was broadcast by the Melchizedek council. The emergency Melchizedeks were immediately dispatched to Jerusem, and Gabriel volunteered to act as the representative of the Creator Son, whose authority had been challenged. With this broadcast of the fact of rebellion in Satania the system was isolated, quarantined, from her sister systems. There was “war in heaven,” the headquarters of Satania, and it spread to every planet in the local system.

67:3.2 (756.3) On Urantia forty members of the corporeal staff of one hundred (including Van) refused to join the insurrection. Many of the staff’s human assistants (modified and otherwise) were also brave and noble defenders of Michael and his universe government. There was a terrible loss of personalities among seraphim and cherubim. Almost one half of the administrator and transition seraphim assigned to the planet joined their leader and Daligastia in support of the cause of Lucifer. Forty thousand one hundred and nineteen of the primary midway creatures joined hands with Caligastia, but the remainder of these beings remained true to their trust.

67:3.3 (756.4) The traitorous Prince marshaled the disloyal midway creatures and other groups of rebel personalities and organized them to execute his bidding, while Van assembled the loyal midwayers and other faithful groups and began the great battle for the salvation of the planetary staff and other marooned celestial personalities.

67:3.4 (756.5) During the times of this struggle the loyalists dwelt in an unwalled and poorly protected settlement a few miles to the east of Dalamatia, but their dwellings were guarded day and night by the alert and ever-watchful loyal midway creatures, and they had possession of the priceless tree of life.

67:3.5 (756.6) Upon the outbreak of rebellion, loyal cherubim and seraphim, with the aid of three faithful midwayers, assumed the custody of the tree of life and permitted only the forty loyalists of the staff and their associated modified mortals to partake of the fruit and leaves of this energy plant. There were fifty-six of these modified Andonite associates of the staff, sixteen of the Andonite attendants of the disloyal staff refusing to go into rebellion with their masters.

67:3.6 (756.7) Throughout the seven crucial years of the Caligastia rebellion, Van was wholly devoted to the work of ministry to his loyal army of men, midwayers, and angels. The spiritual insight and moral steadfastness which enabled Van to maintain such an unshakable attitude of loyalty to the universe government was the product of clear thinking, wise reasoning, logical judgment, sincere motivation, unselfish purpose, intelligent loyalty, experiential memory, disciplined character, and the unquestioning dedication of his personality to the doing of the will of the Father in Paradise.

67:3.7 (756.8) This seven years of waiting was a time of heart searching and soul discipline. Such crises in the affairs of a universe demonstrate the tremendous influence of mind as a factor in spiritual choosing. Education, training, and experience are factors in most of the vital decisions of all evolutionary moral creatures. But it is entirely possible for the indwelling spirit to make direct contact with the decision-determining powers of the human personality so as to empower the fully consecrated will of the creature to perform amazing acts of loyal devotion to the will and the way of the Father in Paradise. And this is just what occurred in the experience of Amadon, the modified human associate of Van.

67:3.8 (757.1) Amadon is the outstanding human hero of the Lucifer rebellion. This male descendant of Andon and Fonta was one of the one hundred who contributed life plasm to the Prince’s staff, and ever since that event he had been attached to Van as his associate and human assistant. Amadon elected to stand with his chief throughout the long and trying struggle. And it was an inspiring sight to behold this child of the evolutionary races standing unmoved by the sophistries of Daligastia while throughout the seven-year struggle he and his loyal associates resisted with unyielding fortitude all of the deceptive teachings of the brilliant Caligastia.

67:3.9 (757.2) Caligastia, with a maximum of intelligence and a vast experience in universe affairs, went astray — embraced sin. Amadon, with a minimum of intelligence and utterly devoid of universe experience, remained steadfast in the service of the universe and in loyalty to his associate. Van utilized both mind and spirit in a magnificent and effective combination of intellectual determination and spiritual insight, thereby achieving an experiential level of personality realization of the highest attainable order. Mind and spirit, when fully united, are potential for the creation of superhuman values, even morontia realities.

67:3.10 (757.3) There is no end to the recital of the stirring events of these tragic days. But at last the final decision of the last personality was made, and then, but only then, did a Most High of Edentia arrive with the emergency Melchizedeks to seize authority on Urantia. The Caligastia panoramic reign-records on Jerusem were obliterated, and the probationary era of planetary rehabilitation was inaugurated.

4. The Caligastia One Hundred After Rebellion

67:4.1 (757.4) When the final roll was called, the corporeal members of the Prince’s staff were found to have aligned themselves as follows: Van and his entire court of co-ordination had remained loyal. Ang and three members of the food council had survived. The board of animal husbandry were all swept into rebellion as were all of the animal-conquest advisers. Fad and five members of the educational faculty were saved. Nod and all of the commission on industry and trade joined Caligastia. Hap and the entire college of revealed religion remained loyal with Van and his noble band. Lut and the whole board of health were lost. The council of art and science remained loyal in its entirety, but Tut and the commission on tribal government all went astray. Thus were forty out of the one hundred saved, later to be transferred to Jerusem, where they resumed their Paradise journey.

67:4.2 (757.5) The sixty members of the planetary staff who went into rebellion chose Nod as their leader. They worked wholeheartedly for the rebel Prince but soon discovered that they were deprived of the sustenance of the system life circuits. They awakened to the fact that they had been degraded to the status of mortal beings. They were indeed superhuman but, at the same time, material and mortal. In an effort to increase their numbers, Daligastia ordered immediate resort to sexual reproduction, knowing full well that the original sixty and their forty-four modified Andonite associates were doomed to suffer extinction by death, sooner or later. After the fall of Dalamatia the disloyal staff migrated to the north and the east. Their descendants were long known as the Nodites, and their dwelling place as “the land of Nod.”

67:4.3 (758.1) The presence of these extraordinary supermen and superwomen, stranded by rebellion and presently mating with the sons and daughters of earth, easily gave origin to those traditional stories of the gods coming down to mate with mortals. And thus originated the thousand and one legends of a mythical nature, but founded on the facts of the postrebellion days, which later found a place in the folk tales and traditions of the various peoples whose ancestors had participated in these contacts with the Nodites and their descendants.

67:4.4 (758.2) The staff rebels, deprived of spiritual sustenance, eventually died a natural death. And much of the subsequent idolatry of the human races grew out of the desire to perpetuate the memory of these highly honored beings of the days of Caligastia.

67:4.5 (758.3) When the staff of one hundred came to Urantia, they were temporarily detached from their Thought Adjusters. Immediately upon the arrival of the Melchizedek receivers the loyal personalities (except Van) were returned to Jerusem and were reunited with their waiting Adjusters. We know not the fate of the sixty staff rebels; their Adjusters still tarry on Jerusem. Matters will undoubtedly rest as they now are until the entire Lucifer rebellion is finally adjudicated and the fate of all participants decreed.

67:4.6 (758.4) It was very difficult for such beings as angels and midwayers to conceive of brilliant and trusted rulers like Caligastia and Daligastia going astray — committing traitorous sin. Those beings who fell into sin — they did not deliberately or premeditatedly enter upon rebellion — were misled by their superiors, deceived by their trusted leaders. It was likewise easy to win the support of the primitive-minded evolutionary mortals.

67:4.7 (758.5) The vast majority of all human and superhuman beings who were victims of the Lucifer rebellion on Jerusem and the various misled planets have long since heartily repented of their folly; and we truly believe that all such sincere penitents will in some manner be rehabilitated and restored to some phase of universe service when the Ancients of Days finally complete the adjudication of the affairs of the Satania rebellion, which they have so recently begun.

5. Immediate Results of Rebellion

67:5.1 (758.6) Great confusion reigned in Dalamatia and thereabout for almost fifty years after the instigation of rebellion. The complete and radical reorganization of the whole world was attempted; revolution displaced evolution as the policy of cultural advancement and racial improvement. Among the superior and partially trained sojourners in and near Dalamatia there appeared a sudden advancement in cultural status, but when these new and radical methods were attempted on the outlying peoples, indescribable confusion and racial pandemonium was the immediate result. Liberty was quickly translated into license by the half-evolved primitive men of those days.

67:5.2 (758.7) Very soon after the rebellion the entire staff of sedition were engaged in energetic defense of the city against the hordes of semisavages who besieged its walls as a result of the doctrines of liberty which had been prematurely taught them. And years before the beautiful headquarters went down beneath the southern waves, the misled and mistaught tribes of the Dalamatia hinterland had already swept down in semisavage assault on the splendid city, driving the secession staff and their associates northward.

67:5.3 (759.1) The Caligastia scheme for the immediate reconstruction of human society in accordance with his ideas of individual freedom and group liberties, proved a swift and more or less complete failure. Society quickly sank back to its old biologic level, and the forward struggle began all over, starting not very far in advance of where it was at the beginning of the Caligastia regime, this upheaval having left the world in confusion worse confounded.

67:5.4 (759.2) One hundred and sixty-two years after the rebellion a tidal wave swept up over Dalamatia, and the planetary headquarters sank beneath the waters of the sea, and this land did not again emerge until almost every vestige of the noble culture of those splendid ages had been obliterated.

67:5.5 (759.3) When the first capital of the world was engulfed, it harbored only the lowest types of the Sangik races of Urantia, renegades who had already converted the Father’s temple into a shrine dedicated to Nog, the false god of light and fire.

6. Van — The Steadfast

67:6.1 (759.4) The followers of Van early withdrew to the highlands west of India, where they were exempt from attacks by the confused races of the lowlands, and from which place of retirement they planned for the rehabilitation of the world as their early Badonite predecessors had once all unwittingly worked for the welfare of mankind just before the days of the birth of the Sangik tribes.

67:6.2 (759.5) Before the arrival of the Melchizedek receivers, Van placed the administration of human affairs in the hands of ten commissions of four each, groups identical with those of the Prince’s regime. The senior resident Life Carriers assumed temporary leadership of this council of forty, which functioned throughout the seven years of waiting. Similar groups of Amadonites assumed these responsibilities when the thirty-nine loyal staff members returned to Jerusem.

67:6.3 (759.6) These Amadonites were derived from the group of 144 loyal Andonites to which Amadon belonged, and who have become known by his name. This group comprised thirty-nine men and one hundred and five women. Fifty-six of this number were of immortality status, and all (except Amadon) were translated along with the loyal members of the staff. The remainder of this noble band continued on earth to the end of their mortal days under the leadership of Van and Amadon. They were the biologic leaven which multiplied and continued to furnish leadership for the world down through the long dark ages of the postrebellion era.

67:6.4 (759.7) Van was left on Urantia until the time of Adam, remaining as titular head of all superhuman personalities functioning on the planet. He and Amadon were sustained by the technique of the tree of life in conjunction with the specialized life ministry of the Melchizedeks for over one hundred and fifty thousand years.

67:6.5 (759.8) The affairs of Urantia were for a long time administered by a council of planetary receivers, twelve Melchizedeks, confirmed by the mandate of the senior constellation ruler, the Most High Father of Norlatiadek. Associated with the Melchizedek receivers was an advisory council consisting of: one of the loyal aids of the fallen Prince, the two resident Life Carriers, a Trinitized Son in apprenticeship training, a volunteer Teacher Son, a Brilliant Evening Star of Avalon (periodically), the chiefs of seraphim and cherubim, advisers from two neighboring planets, the director general of subordinate angelic life, and Van, the commander in chief of the midway creatures. And thus was Urantia governed and administered until the arrival of Adam. It is not strange that the courageous and loyal Van was assigned a place on the council of planetary receivers which for so long administered the affairs of Urantia.

67:6.6 (760.1) The twelve Melchizedek receivers of Urantia did heroic work. They preserved the remnants of civilization, and their planetary policies were faithfully executed by Van. Within one thousand years after the rebellion he had more than three hundred and fifty advanced groups scattered abroad in the world. These outposts of civilization consisted largely of the descendants of the loyal Andonites slightly admixed with the Sangik races, particularly the blue men, and with the Nodites.

67:6.7 (760.2) Notwithstanding the terrible setback of rebellion there were many good strains of biologic promise on earth. Under the supervision of the Melchizedek receivers, Van and Amadon continued the work of fostering the natural evolution of the human race, carrying forward the physical evolution of man until it reached that culminating attainment which warranted the dispatch of a Material Son and Daughter to Urantia.

67:6.8 (760.3) Van and Amadon remained on earth until shortly after the arrival of Adam and Eve. Some years thereafter they were translated to Jerusem, where Van was reunited with his waiting Adjuster. Van now serves in behalf of Urantia while awaiting the order to go forward on the long, long trail to Paradise perfection and the unrevealed destiny of the assembling Corps of Mortal Finality.

67:6.9 (760.4) It should be recorded that, when Van appealed to the Most Highs of Edentia after Lucifer had sustained Caligastia on Urantia, the Constellation Fathers dispatched an immediate decision sustaining Van on every point of his contention. This verdict failed to reach him because the planetary circuits of communication were severed while it was in transit. Only recently was this actual ruling discovered lodged in the possession of a relay energy transmitter where it had been marooned ever since the isolation of Urantia. Without this discovery, made as the result of the investigations of the Urantia midwayers, the release of this decision would have awaited the restoration of Urantia to the constellation circuits. And this apparent accident of interplanetary communication was possible because energy transmitters can receive and transmit intelligence, but they cannot initiate communication.

67:6.10 (760.5) The technical status of Van on the legal records of Satania was not actually and finally settled until this ruling of the Edentia Fathers was recorded on Jerusem.

7. Remote Repercussions of Sin

67:7.1 (760.6) The personal (centripetal) consequences of the creature’s willful and persistent rejection of light are both inevitable and individual and are of concern only to Deity and to that personal creature. Such a soul-destroying harvest of iniquity is the inner reaping of the iniquitous will creature.

67:7.2 (761.1) But not so with the external repercussions of sin: The impersonal (centrifugal) consequences of embraced sin are both inevitable and collective, being of concern to every creature functioning within the affect-range of such events.

67:7.3 (761.2) By fifty thousand years after the collapse of the planetary administration, earthly affairs were so disorganized and retarded that the human race had gained very little over the general evolutionary status existing at the time of Caligastia’s arrival three hundred and fifty thousand years previously. In certain respects progress had been made; in other directions much ground had been lost.

67:7.4 (761.3) Sin is never purely local in its effects. The administrative sectors of the universes are organismal; the plight of one personality must to a certain extent be shared by all. Sin, being an attitude of the person toward reality, is destined to exhibit its inherent negativistic harvest upon any and all related levels of universe values. But the full consequences of erroneous thinking, evil-doing, or sinful planning are experienced only on the level of actual performance. The transgression of universe law may be fatal in the physical realm without seriously involving the mind or impairing the spiritual experience. Sin is fraught with fatal consequences to personality survival only when it is the attitude of the whole being, when it stands for the choosing of the mind and the willing of the soul.

67:7.5 (761.4) Evil and sin visit their consequences in material and social realms and may sometimes even retard spiritual progress on certain levels of universe reality, but never does the sin of any being rob another of the realization of the divine right of personality survival. Eternal survival can be jeopardized only by the decisions of the mind and the choice of the soul of the individual himself.

67:7.6 (761.5) Sin on Urantia did very little to delay biologic evolution, but it did operate to deprive the mortal races of the full benefit of the Adamic inheritance. Sin enormously retards intellectual development, moral growth, social progress, and mass spiritual attainment. But it does not prevent the highest spiritual achievement by any individual who chooses to know God and sincerely do his divine will.

67:7.7 (761.6) Caligastia rebelled, Adam and Eve did default, but no mortal subsequently born on Urantia has suffered in his personal spiritual experience because of these blunders. Every mortal born on Urantia since Caligastia’s rebellion has been in some manner time-penalized, but the future welfare of such souls has never been in the least eternity-jeopardized. No person is ever made to suffer vital spiritual deprivation because of the sin of another. Sin is wholly personal as to moral guilt or spiritual consequences, notwithstanding its far-flung repercussions in administrative, intellectual, and social domains.

67:7.8 (761.7) While we cannot fathom the wisdom that permits such catastrophes, we can always discern the beneficial outworking of these local disturbances as they are reflected out upon the universe at large.

8. The Human Hero of the Rebellion

67:8.1 (761.8) The Lucifer rebellion was withstood by many courageous beings on the various worlds of Satania; but the records of Salvington portray Amadon as the outstanding character of the entire system in his glorious rejection of the flood tides of sedition and in his unswerving devotion to Van — they stood together unmoved in their loyalty to the supremacy of the invisible Father and his Son Michael.

67:8.2 (762.1) At the time of these momentous transactions I was stationed on Edentia, and I am still conscious of the exhilaration I experienced as I perused the Salvington broadcasts which told from day to day of the unbelievable steadfastness, the transcendent devotion, and the exquisite loyalty of this onetime semisavage springing from the experimental and original stock of the Andonic race.

67:8.3 (762.2) From Edentia up through Salvington and even on to Uversa, for seven long years the first inquiry of all subordinate celestial life regarding the Satania rebellion, ever and always, was: “What of Amadon of Urantia, does he still stand unmoved?”

67:8.4 (762.3) If the Lucifer rebellion has handicapped the local system and its fallen worlds, if the loss of this Son and his misled associates has temporarily hampered the progress of the constellation of Norlatiadek, then weigh the effect of the far-flung presentation of the inspiring performance of this one child of nature and his determined band of 143 comrades in standing steadfast for the higher concepts of universe management and administration in the face of such tremendous and adverse pressure exerted by his disloyal superiors. And let me assure you, this has already done more good in the universe of Nebadon and the superuniverse of Orvonton than can ever be outweighed by the sum total of all the evil and sorrow of the Lucifer rebellion.

67:8.5 (762.4) And all this is a beautifully touching and superbly magnificent illumination of the wisdom of the Father’s universal plan for mobilizing the Corps of Mortal Finality on Paradise and for recruiting this vast group of mysterious servants of the future largely from the common clay of the mortals of ascending progression — just such mortals as the impregnable Amadon.

67:8.6 (762.5) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]




Paper 66 – The Planetary Prince of Urantia

The Urantia Book

Paper 66

The Planetary Prince of Urantia

66:0.1 (741.1) THE advent of a Lanonandek Son on an average world signifies that will, the ability to choose the path of eternal survival, has developed in the mind of primitive man. But on Urantia the Planetary Prince arrived almost half a million years after the appearance of human will.

66:0.2 (741.2) About five hundred thousand years ago and concurrent with the appearance of the six colored or Sangik races, Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, arrived on Urantia. There were almost one-half billion primitive human beings on earth at the time of the Prince’s arrival, and they were well scattered over Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Prince’s headquarters, established in Mesopotamia, was at about the center of world population.

1. Prince Caligastia

66:1.1 (741.3) Caligastia was a Lanonandek Son, number 9,344 of the secondary order. He was experienced in the administration of the affairs of the local universe in general and, during later ages, with the management of the local system of Satania in particular.

66:1.2 (741.4) Prior to the reign of Lucifer in Satania, Caligastia had been attached to the council of the Life Carrier advisers on Jerusem. Lucifer elevated Caligastia to a position on his personal staff, and he acceptably filled five successive assignments of honor and trust.

66:1.3 (741.5) Caligastia very early sought a commission as Planetary Prince, but repeatedly, when his request came up for approval in the constellation councils, it would fail to receive the assent of the Constellation Fathers. Caligastia seemed especially desirous of being sent as planetary ruler to a decimal or life-modification world. His petition had several times been disapproved before he was finally assigned to Urantia.

66:1.4 (741.6) Caligastia went forth from Jerusem to his trust of world dominion with an enviable record of loyalty and devotion to the welfare of the universe of his origin and sojourn, notwithstanding a certain characteristic restlessness coupled with a tendency to disagree with the established order in certain minor matters.

66:1.5 (741.7) I was present on Jerusem when the brilliant Caligastia departed from the system capital. No prince of the planets ever embarked upon a career of world rulership with a richer preparatory experience or with better prospects than did Caligastia on that eventful day one-half million years ago. One thing is certain: As I executed my assignment of putting the narrative of that event on the broadcasts of the local universe, I never for one moment entertained even in the slightest degree any idea that this noble Lanonandek would so shortly betray his sacred trust of planetary custody and so horribly stain the fair name of his exalted order of universe sonship. I really regarded Urantia as being among the five or six most fortunate planets in all Satania in that it was to have such an experienced, brilliant, and original mind at the helm of world affairs. I did not then comprehend that Caligastia was insidiously falling in love with himself; I did not then so fully understand the subtleties of personality pride.

2. The Prince’s Staff

66:2.1 (742.1) The Planetary Prince of Urantia was not sent out on his mission alone but was accompanied by the usual corps of assistants and administrative helpers.

66:2.2 (742.2) At the head of this group was Daligastia, the associate-assistant of the Planetary Prince. Daligastia was also a secondary Lanonandek Son, being number 319,407 of that order. He ranked as an assistant at the time of his assignment as Caligastia’s associate.

66:2.3 (742.3) The planetary staff included a large number of angelic co-operators and a host of other celestial beings assigned to advance the interests and promote the welfare of the human races. But from your standpoint the most interesting group of all were the corporeal members of the Prince’s staff — sometimes referred to as the Caligastia one hundred.

66:2.4 (742.4) These one hundred rematerialized members of the Prince’s staff were chosen by Caligastia from over 785,000 ascendant citizens of Jerusem who volunteered for embarkation on the Urantia adventure. Each one of the chosen one hundred was from a different planet, and none of them were from Urantia.

66:2.5 (742.5) These Jerusemite volunteers were brought by seraphic transport direct from the system capital to Urantia, and upon arrival they were held enseraphimed until they could be provided with personality forms of the dual nature of special planetary service, literal bodies consisting of flesh and blood but also attuned to the life circuits of the system.

66:2.6 (742.6) Sometime before the arrival of these one hundred Jerusem citizens, the two supervising Life Carriers resident on Urantia, having previously perfected their plans, petitioned Jerusem and Edentia for permission to transplant the life plasm of one hundred selected survivors of the Andon and Fonta stock into the material bodies to be projected for the corporeal members of the Prince’s staff. The request was granted on Jerusem and approved on Edentia.

66:2.7 (742.7) Accordingly, fifty males and fifty females of the Andon and Fonta posterity, representing the survival of the best strains of that unique race, were chosen by the Life Carriers. With one or two exceptions these Andonite contributors to the advancement of the race were strangers to one another. They were assembled from widely separated places by co-ordinated Thought Adjuster direction and seraphic guidance at the threshold of the planetary headquarters of the Prince. Here the one hundred human subjects were given into the hands of the highly skilled volunteer commission from Avalon, who directed the material extraction of a portion of the life plasm of these Andon descendants. This living material was then transferred to the material bodies constructed for the use of the one hundred Jerusemite members of the Prince’s staff. Meantime, these newly arrived citizens of the system capital were held in the sleep of seraphic transport.

66:2.8 (742.8) These transactions, together with the literal creation of special bodies for the Caligastia one hundred, gave origin to numerous legends, many of which subsequently became confused with the later traditions concerning the planetary installation of Adam and Eve.

66:2.9 (743.1) The entire transaction of repersonalization, from the time of the arrival of the seraphic transports bearing the one hundred Jerusem volunteers until they became conscious, threefold beings of the realm, consumed exactly ten days.

3. Dalamatia — The City of the Prince

66:3.1 (743.2) The headquarters of the Planetary Prince was situated in the Persian Gulf region of those days, in the district corresponding to later Mesopotamia.

66:3.2 (743.3) The climate and landscape in the Mesopotamia of those times were in every way favorable to the undertakings of the Prince’s staff and their assistants, very different from conditions which have sometimes since prevailed. It was necessary to have such a favoring climate as a part of the natural environment designed to induce primitive Urantians to make certain initial advances in culture and civilization. The one great task of those ages was to transform man from a hunter to a herder, with the hope that later on he would evolve into a peace-loving, home-abiding farmer.

66:3.3 (743.4) The headquarters of the Planetary Prince on Urantia was typical of such stations on a young and developing sphere. The nucleus of the Prince’s settlement was a very simple but beautiful city, enclosed within a wall forty feet high. This world center of culture was named Dalamatia in honor of Daligastia.

66:3.4 (743.5) The city was laid out in ten subdivisions with the headquarters mansions of the ten councils of the corporeal staff situated at the centers of these subdivisions. Centermost in the city was the temple of the unseen Father. The administrative headquarters of the Prince and his associates was arranged in twelve chambers immediately grouped about the temple itself.

66:3.5 (743.6) The buildings of Dalamatia were all one story except the council headquarters, which were two stories, and the central temple of the Father of all, which was small but three stories in height.

66:3.6 (743.7) The city represented the best practices of those early days in building material — brick. Very little stone or wood was used. Home building and village architecture among the surrounding peoples were greatly improved by the Dalamatian example.

66:3.7 (743.8) Near the Prince’s headquarters there dwelt all colors and strata of human beings. And it was from these near-by tribes that the first students of the Prince’s schools were recruited. Although these early schools of Dalamatia were crude, they provided all that could be done for the men and women of that primitive age.

66:3.8 (743.9) The Prince’s corporeal staff continuously gathered about them the superior individuals of the surrounding tribes and, after training and inspiring these students, sent them back as teachers and leaders of their respective peoples.

4. Early Days of the One Hundred

66:4.1 (743.10) The arrival of the Prince’s staff created a profound impression. While it required almost a thousand years for the news to spread abroad, those tribes near the Mesopotamian headquarters were tremendously influenced by the teachings and conduct of the one hundred new sojourners on Urantia. And much of your subsequent mythology grew out of the garbled legends of these early days when these members of the Prince’s staff were repersonalized on Urantia as supermen.

66:4.2 (744.1) The serious obstacle to the good influence of such extraplanetary teachers is the tendency of mortals to regard them as gods, but aside from the technique of their appearance on earth the Caligastia one hundred — fifty men and fifty women — did not resort to supernatural methods nor superhuman manipulations.

66:4.3 (744.2) But the corporeal staff were nonetheless superhuman. They began their mission on Urantia as extraordinary threefold beings:

66:4.4 (744.3) 1. They were corporeal and relatively human, for they embodied the actual life plasm of one of the human races, the Andonic life plasm of Urantia.

66:4.5 (744.4) These one hundred members of the Prince’s staff were divided equally as to sex and in accordance with their previous mortal status. Each person of this group was capable of becoming coparental to some new order of physical being, but they had been carefully instructed to resort to parenthood only under certain conditions. It is customary for the corporeal staff of a Planetary Prince to procreate their successors sometime prior to retiring from special planetary service. Usually this is at, or shortly after, the time of the arrival of the Planetary Adam and Eve.

66:4.6 (744.5) These special beings therefore had little or no idea as to what type of material creature would be produced by their sexual union. And they never did know; before the time for such a step in the prosecution of their world work the entire regime was upset by rebellion, and those who later functioned in the parental role had been isolated from the life currents of the system.

66:4.7 (744.6) In skin color and language these materialized members of Caligastia’s staff followed the Andonic race. They partook of food as did the mortals of the realm with this difference: The re-created bodies of this group were fully satisfied by a nonflesh diet. This was one of the considerations which determined their residence in a warm region abounding in fruits and nuts. The practice of subsisting on a nonflesh diet dates from the times of the Caligastia one hundred, for this custom spread near and far to affect the eating habits of many surrounding tribes, groups of origin in the once exclusively meat-eating evolutionary races.

66:4.8 (744.7) 2. The one hundred were material but superhuman beings, having been reconstituted on Urantia as unique men and women of a high and special order.

66:4.9 (744.8) This group, while enjoying provisional citizenship on Jerusem, were as yet unfused with their Thought Adjusters; and when they volunteered and were accepted for planetary service in liaison with the descending orders of sonship, their Adjusters were detached. But these Jerusemites were superhuman beings — they possessed souls of ascendant growth. During the mortal life in the flesh the soul is of embryonic estate; it is born (resurrected) in the morontia life and experiences growth through the successive morontia worlds. And the souls of the Caligastia one hundred had thus expanded through the progressive experiences of the seven mansion worlds to citizenship status on Jerusem.

66:4.10 (744.9) In conformity to their instructions the staff did not engage in sexual reproduction, but they did painstakingly study their personal constitutions, and they carefully explored every imaginable phase of intellectual (mind) and morontia (soul) liaison. And it was during the thirty-third year of their sojourn in Dalamatia, long before the wall was completed, that number two and number seven of the Danite group accidentally discovered a phenomenon attendant upon the liaison of their morontia selves (supposedly nonsexual and nonmaterial); and the result of this adventure proved to be the first of the primary midway creatures. This new being was wholly visible to the planetary staff and to their celestial associates but was not visible to the men and women of the various human tribes. Upon authority of the Planetary Prince the entire corporeal staff undertook the production of similar beings, and all were successful, following the instructions of the pioneer Danite pair. Thus did the Prince’s staff eventually bring into being the original corps of 50,000 primary midwayers.

66:4.11 (745.1) These mid-type creatures were of great service in carrying on the affairs of the world’s headquarters. They were invisible to human beings, but the primitive sojourners at Dalamatia were taught about these unseen semispirits, and for ages they constituted the sum total of the spirit world to these evolving mortals.

66:4.12 (745.2) 3. 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.

66:4.13 (745.3) These 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.

66:4.14 (745.4) While of no value to the evolutionary races, this supersustenance was quite sufficient to confer continuous life upon the Caligastia one hundred and also upon the one hundred modified Andonites who were associated with them.

66:4.15 (745.5) It should be explained in this connection that, at the time the one hundred Andonites contributed their human germ plasm to the members of the Prince’s staff, the Life Carriers introduced into their mortal bodies the complement of the system circuits; and thus were they enabled to live on concurrently with the staff, century after century, in defiance of physical death.

66:4.16 (745.6) Eventually the one hundred Andonites were made aware of their contribution to the new forms of their superiors, and these same one hundred children of the Andon tribes were kept at headquarters as the personal attendants of the Prince’s corporeal staff.

5. Organization of the One Hundred

66:5.1 (745.7) The one hundred were organized for service in ten autonomous councils of ten members each. When two or more of these ten councils met in joint session, such liaison gatherings were presided over by Daligastia. These ten groups were constituted as follows:

66:5.2 (745.8) 1. The council on food and material welfare. This group was presided over by Ang. Food, water, clothes, and the material advancement of the human species were fostered by this able corps. They taught well digging, spring control, and irrigation. They taught those from the higher altitudes and from the north improved methods of treating skins for use as clothing, and weaving was later introduced by the teachers of art and science.

66:5.3 (746.1) Great advances were made in methods of food storage. Food was preserved by cooking, drying, and smoking; it thus became the earliest property. Man was taught to provide for the hazards of famine, which periodically decimated the world.

66:5.4 (746.2) 2. The board of animal domestication and utilization. This council was dedicated to the task of selecting and breeding those animals best adapted to help human beings in bearing burdens and transporting themselves, to supply food, and later on to be of service in the cultivation of the soil. This able corps was directed by Bon.

66:5.5 (746.3) Several types of useful animals, now extinct, were tamed, together with some that have continued as domesticated animals to the present day. Man had long lived with the dog, and the blue man had already been successful in taming the elephant. The cow was so improved by careful breeding as to become a valuable source of food; butter and cheese became common articles of human diet. Men were taught to use oxen for burden bearing, but the horse was not domesticated until a later date. The members of this corps first taught men to use the wheel for the facilitation of traction.

66:5.6 (746.4) It was in these days that carrier pigeons were first used, being taken on long journeys for the purpose of sending messages or calls for help. Bon’s group were successful in training the great fandors as passenger birds, but they became extinct more than thirty thousand years ago.

66:5.7 (746.5) 3. The advisers regarding the conquest of predatory animals. It was not enough that early man should try to domesticate certain animals, but he must also learn how to protect himself from destruction by the remainder of the hostile animal world. This group was captained by Dan.

66:5.8 (746.6) The purpose of an ancient city wall was to protect against ferocious beasts as well as to prevent surprise attacks by hostile humans. Those living without the walls and in the forest were dependent on tree dwellings, stone huts, and the maintenance of night fires. It was therefore very natural that these teachers should devote much time to instructing their pupils in the improvement of human dwellings. By employing improved techniques and by the use of traps, great progress was made in animal subjugation.

66:5.9 (746.7) 4. The faculty on dissemination and conservation of knowledge. This group organized and directed the purely educational endeavors of those early ages. It was presided over by Fad. The educational methods of Fad consisted in supervision of employment accompanied by instruction in improved methods of labor. Fad formulated the first alphabet and introduced a writing system. This alphabet contained twenty-five characters. For writing material these early peoples utilized tree barks, clay tablets, stone slabs, a form of parchment made of hammered hides, and a crude form of paperlike material made from wasps’ nests. The Dalamatia library, destroyed soon after the Caligastia disaffection, comprised more than two million separate records and was known as the “house of Fad.”

66:5.10 (746.8) The blue man was partial to alphabet writing and made the greatest progress along such lines. The red man preferred pictorial writing, while the yellow races drifted into the use of symbols for words and ideas, much like those they now employ. But the alphabet and much more was subsequently lost to the world during the confusion attendant upon rebellion. The Caligastia defection destroyed the hope of the world for a universal language, at least for untold ages.

66:5.11 (747.1) 5. The commission on industry and trade. This council was employed in fostering industry within the tribes and in promoting trade between the various peace groups. Its leader was Nod. Every form of primitive manufacture was encouraged by this corps. They contributed directly to the elevation of standards of living by providing many new commodities to attract the fancy of primitive men. They greatly expanded the trade in the improved salt produced by the council on science and art.

66:5.12 (747.2) It was among these enlightened groups educated in the Dalamatia schools that the first commercial credit was practiced. From a central exchange of credits they secured tokens which were accepted in lieu of the actual objects of barter. The world did not improve upon these business methods for hundreds of thousands of years.

66:5.13 (747.3) 6. The college of revealed religion. This body was slow in functioning. Urantia civilization was literally forged out between the anvil of necessity and the hammers of fear. But this group had made considerable progress in their attempt to substitute Creator fear for creature fear (ghost worship) before their labors were interrupted by the later confusion attendant upon the secession upheaval. The head of this council was Hap.

66:5.14 (747.4) None of the Prince’s staff would present revelation to complicate evolution; they presented revelation only as the climax of their exhaustion of the forces of evolution. But Hap did yield to the desire of the inhabitants of the city for the establishment of a form of religious service. His group provided the Dalamatians with the seven chants of worship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and eventually taught them “the Father’s prayer,” which was:

66:5.15 (747.5) “Father of all, whose Son we honor, look down upon us with favor. Deliver us from the fear of all save you. Make us a pleasure to our divine teachers and forever put truth on our lips. Deliver us from violence and anger; give us respect for our elders and that which belongs to our neighbors. Give us this season green pastures and fruitful flocks to gladden our hearts. We pray for the hastening of the coming of the promised uplifter, and we would do your will on this world as others do on worlds beyond.”

66:5.16 (747.6) Although the Prince’s staff were limited to natural means and ordinary methods of race improvement, they held out the promise of the Adamic gift of a new race as the goal of subsequent evolutionary growth upon the attainment of the height of biologic development.

66:5.17 (747.7) 7. The guardians of health and life. This council was concerned with the introduction of sanitation and the promotion of primitive hygiene and was led by Lut.

66:5.18 (747.8) Its members taught much that was lost during the confusion of subsequent ages, never to be rediscovered until the twentieth century. They taught mankind that cooking, boiling and roasting, was a means of avoiding sickness; also that such cooking greatly reduced infant mortality and facilitated early weaning.

66:5.19 (747.9) Many of the early teachings of Lut’s guardians of health persisted among the tribes of earth on down to the days of Moses, even though they became much garbled and were greatly changed.

66:5.20 (748.1) The great obstacle in the way of promoting hygiene among these ignorant peoples consisted in the fact that the real causes of many diseases were too small to be seen by the naked eye, and also because they all held fire in superstitious regard. It required thousands of years to persuade them to burn refuse. In the meantime they were urged to bury their decaying rubbish. The great sanitary advance of this epoch came from the dissemination of knowledge regarding the health-giving and disease-destroying properties of sunlight.

66:5.21 (748.2) Before the Prince’s arrival, bathing had been an exclusively religious ceremonial. It was indeed difficult to persuade primitive men to wash their bodies as a health practice. Lut finally induced the religious teachers to include cleansing with water as a part of the purification ceremonies to be practiced in connection with the noontime devotions, once a week, in the worship of the Father of all.

66:5.22 (748.3) These guardians of health also sought to introduce handshaking in substitution for saliva exchange or blood drinking as a seal of personal friendship and as a token of group loyalty. But when out from under the compelling pressure of the teachings of their superior leaders, these primitive peoples were not slow in reverting to their former health-destroying and disease-breeding practices of ignorance and superstition.

66:5.23 (748.4) 8. The planetary council on art and science. This corps did much to improve the industrial technique of early man and to elevate his concepts of beauty. Their leader was Mek.

66:5.24 (748.5) Art and science were at a low ebb throughout the world, but the rudiments of physics and chemistry were taught the Dalamatians. Pottery was advanced, decorative arts were all improved, and the ideals of human beauty were greatly enhanced. But music made little progress until after the arrival of the violet race.

66:5.25 (748.6) These primitive men would not consent to experiment with steam power, notwithstanding the repeated urgings of their teachers; never could they overcome their great fear of the explosive power of confined steam. They were, however, finally persuaded to work with metals and fire, although a piece of red-hot metal was a terrorizing object to early man.

66:5.26 (748.7) Mek did a great deal to advance the culture of the Andonites and to improve the art of the blue man. A blend of the blue man with the Andon stock produced an artistically gifted type, and many of them became master sculptors. They did not work in stone or marble, but their works of clay, hardened by baking, adorned the gardens of Dalamatia.

66:5.27 (748.8) Great progress was made in the home arts, most of which were lost in the long and dark ages of rebellion, never to be rediscovered until modern times.

66:5.28 (748.9) 9. The governors of advanced tribal relations. This was the group intrusted with the work of bringing human society up to the level of statehood. Their chief was Tut.

66:5.29 (748.10) These leaders contributed much to bringing about intertribal marriages. They fostered courtship and marriage after due deliberation and full opportunity to become acquainted. The purely military war dances were refined and made to serve valuable social ends. Many competitive games were introduced, but these ancient folk were a serious people; little humor graced these early tribes. Few of these practices survived the subsequent disintegration of planetary insurrection.

66:5.30 (749.1) Tut and his associates labored to promote group associations of a peaceful nature, to regulate and humanize warfare, to co-ordinate intertribal relations, and to improve tribal governments. In the vicinity of Dalamatia there developed a more advanced culture, and these improved social relations were very helpful in influencing more remote tribes. But the pattern of civilization prevailing at the Prince’s headquarters was quite different from the barbaric society evolving elsewhere, just as the twentieth-century society of Capetown, South Africa, is totally unlike the crude culture of the diminutive Bushmen to the north.

66:5.31 (749.2) 10. The supreme court of tribal co-ordination and racial co-operation. This supreme council was directed by Van and was the court of appeals for all of the other nine special commissions charged with the supervision of human affairs. This council was one of wide function, being intrusted with all matters of earthly concern which were not specifically assigned to the other groups. This selected corps had been approved by the Constellation Fathers of Edentia before they were authorized to assume the functions of the supreme court of Urantia.

6. The Prince’s Reign

66:6.1 (749.3) The degree of a world’s culture is measured by the social heritage of its native beings, and the rate of cultural expansion is wholly determined by the ability of its inhabitants to comprehend new and advanced ideas.

66:6.2 (749.4) Slavery to tradition produces stability and co-operation by sentimentally linking the past with the present, but it likewise stifles initiative and enslaves the creative powers of the personality. The whole world was caught in the stalemate of tradition-bound mores when the Caligastia one hundred arrived and began the proclamation of the new gospel of individual initiative within the social groups of that day. But this beneficent rule was so soon interrupted that the races never have been wholly liberated from the slavery of custom; fashion still unduly dominates Urantia.

66:6.3 (749.5) The Caligastia one hundred — graduates of the Satania mansion worlds — well knew the arts and culture of Jerusem, but such knowledge is nearly valueless on a barbaric planet populated by primitive humans. These wise beings knew better than to undertake the sudden transformation, or the en masse uplifting, of the primitive races of that day. They well understood the slow evolution of the human species, and they wisely refrained from any radical attempts at modifying man’s mode of life on earth.

66:6.4 (749.6) Each of the ten planetary commissions set about slowly and naturally to advance the interests intrusted to them. Their plan consisted in attracting the best minds of the surrounding tribes and, after training them, sending them back to their people as emissaries of social uplift.

66:6.5 (749.7) Foreign emissaries were never sent to a race except upon the specific request of that people. Those who labored for the uplift and advancement of a given tribe or race were always natives of that tribe or race. The one hundred would not attempt to impose the habits and mores of even a superior race upon another tribe. Always they patiently worked to uplift and advance the time-tried mores of each race. The simple folk of Urantia brought their social customs to Dalamatia, not to exchange them for new and better practices, but to have them uplifted by contact with a higher culture and by association with superior minds. The process was slow but very effectual.

66:6.6 (750.1) The Dalamatia teachers sought to add conscious social selection to the purely natural selection of biologic evolution. They did not derange human society, but they did markedly accelerate its normal and natural evolution. Their motive was progression by evolution and not revolution by revelation. The human race had spent ages in acquiring the little religion and morals it had, and these supermen knew better than to rob mankind of these few advances by the confusion and dismay which always result when enlightened and superior beings undertake to uplift the backward races by overteaching and overenlightenment.

66:6.7 (750.2) When Christian missionaries go into the heart of Africa, where sons and daughters are supposed to remain under the control and direction of their parents throughout the lifetime of the parents, they only bring about confusion and the breakdown of all authority when they seek, in a single generation, to supplant this practice by teaching that these children should be free from all parental restraint after they have attained the age of twenty-one.

7. Life in Dalamatia

66:7.1 (750.3) The Prince’s headquarters, though exquisitely beautiful and designed to awe the primitive men of that age, was altogether modest. The buildings were not especially large as it was the motive of these imported teachers to encourage the eventual development of agriculture through the introduction of animal husbandry. The land provision within the city walls was sufficient to provide for pasturage and gardening for the support of a population of about twenty thousand.

66:7.2 (750.4) The interiors of the central temple of worship and the ten council mansions of the supervising groups of supermen were indeed beautiful works of art. And while the residential buildings were models of neatness and cleanliness, everything was very simple and altogether primitive in comparison with later-day developments. At this headquarters of culture no methods were employed which did not naturally belong on Urantia.

66:7.3 (750.5) The Prince’s corporeal staff presided over simple and exemplary abodes which they maintained as homes designed to inspire and favorably impress the student observers sojourning at the world’s social center and educational headquarters.

66:7.4 (750.6) The definite order of family life and the living of one family together in one residence of comparatively settled location date from these times of Dalamatia and were chiefly due to the example and teachings of the one hundred and their pupils. The home as a social unit never became a success until the supermen and superwomen of Dalamatia led mankind to love and plan for their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s children. Savage man loves his child, but civilized man loves also his grandchild.

66:7.5 (750.7) The Prince’s staff lived together as fathers and mothers. True, they had no children of their own, but the fifty pattern homes of Dalamatia never sheltered less than five hundred adopted little ones assembled from the superior families of the Andonic and Sangik races; many of these children were orphans. They were favored with the discipline and training of these superparents; and then, after three years in the schools of the Prince (they entered from thirteen to fifteen), they were eligible for marriage and ready to receive their commissions as emissaries of the Prince to the needy tribes of their respective races.

66:7.6 (751.1) Fad sponsored the Dalamatia plan of teaching that was carried out as an industrial school in which the pupils learned by doing, and through which they worked their way by the daily performance of useful tasks. This plan of education did not ignore thinking and feeling in the development of character; but it gave first place to manual training. The instruction was individual and collective. The pupils were taught by both men and women and by the two acting conjointly. One half of this group instruction was by sexes; the other half was coeducational. Students were taught manual dexterity as individuals and were socialized in groups or classes. They were trained to fraternize with younger groups, older groups, and adults, as well as to do teamwork with those of their own ages. They were also familiarized with such associations as family groups, play squads, and school classes.

66:7.7 (751.2) Among the later students trained in Mesopotamia for work with their respective races were Andonites from the highlands of western India together with representatives of the red men and the blue men; still later a small number of the yellow race were also received.

66:7.8 (751.3) Hap presented the early races with a moral law. This code was known as “The Father’s Way” and consisted of the following seven commands:

66:7.9 (751.4) 1. You shall not fear nor serve any God but the Father of all.

66:7.10 (751.5) 2. You shall not disobey the Father’s Son, the world’s ruler, nor show disrespect to his superhuman associates.

66:7.11 (751.6) 3. You shall not speak a lie when called before the judges of the people.

66:7.12 (751.7) 4. You shall not kill men, women, or children.

66:7.13 (751.8) 5. You shall not steal your neighbor’s goods or cattle.

66:7.14 (751.9) 6. You shall not touch your friend’s wife.

66:7.15 (751.10) 7. You shall not show disrespect to your parents or to the elders of the tribe.

66:7.16 (751.11) This was the law of Dalamatia for almost three hundred thousand years. And many of the stones on which this law was inscribed now lie beneath the waters off the shores of Mesopotamia and Persia. It became the custom to hold one of these commands in mind for each day of the week, using it for salutations and mealtime thanksgiving.

66:7.17 (751.12) The time measurement of these days was the lunar month, this period being reckoned as twenty-eight days. That, with the exception of day and night, was the only time reckoning known to the early peoples. The seven-day week was introduced by the Dalamatia teachers and grew out of the fact that seven was one fourth of twenty-eight. The significance of the number seven in the superuniverse undoubtedly afforded them opportunity to introduce a spiritual reminder into the common reckoning of time. But there is no natural origin for the weekly period.

66:7.18 (751.13) The country around the city was quite well settled within a radius of one hundred miles. Immediately surrounding the city, hundreds of graduates of the Prince’s schools engaged in animal husbandry and otherwise carried out the instruction they had received from his staff and their numerous human helpers. A few engaged in agriculture and horticulture.

66:7.19 (751.14) Mankind was not consigned to agricultural toil as the penalty of supposed sin. “In the sweat of your face shall you eat the fruit of the fields” was not a sentence of punishment pronounced because of man’s participation in the follies of the Lucifer rebellion under the leadership of the traitorous Caligastia. The cultivation of the soil is inherent in the establishment of an advancing civilization on the evolutionary worlds, and this injunction was the center of all teaching of the Planetary Prince and his staff throughout the three hundred thousand years which intervened between their arrival on Urantia and those tragic days when Caligastia threw in his lot with the rebel Lucifer. Work with the soil is not a curse; rather is it the highest blessing to all who are thus permitted to enjoy the most human of all human activities.

66:7.20 (752.1) At the outbreak of the rebellion, Dalamatia had a resident population of almost six thousand. This number includes the regular students but does not embrace the visitors and observers, who always numbered more than one thousand. But you can have little or no concept of the marvelous progress of those faraway times; practically all of the wonderful human gains of those days were wiped out by the horrible confusion and abject spiritual darkness which followed the Caligastia catastrophe of deception and sedition.

8. Misfortunes of Caligastia

66:8.1 (752.2) In looking back over the long career of Caligastia, we find only one outstanding feature of his conduct that might have challenged attention; he was ultraindividualistic. He was inclined to take sides with almost every party of protest, and he was usually sympathetic with those who gave mild expression to implied criticism. We detect the early appearance of this tendency to be restless under authority, to mildly resent all forms of supervision. While slightly resentful of senior counsel and somewhat restive under superior authority, nonetheless, whenever a test had come, he had always proved loyal to the universe rulers and obedient to the mandates of the Constellation Fathers. No real fault was ever found in him up to the time of his shameful betrayal of Urantia.

66:8.2 (752.3) It should be noted that both Lucifer and Caligastia had been patiently instructed and lovingly warned respecting their critical tendencies and the subtle development of their pride of self and its associated exaggeration of the feeling of self-importance. But all of these attempts to help had been misconstrued as unwarranted criticism and as unjustified interference with personal liberties. Both Caligastia and Lucifer judged their friendly advisers as being actuated by the very reprehensible motives which were beginning to dominate their own distorted thinking and misguided planning. They judged their unselfish advisers by their own evolving selfishness.

66:8.3 (752.4) From the arrival of Prince Caligastia, planetary civilization progressed in a fairly normal manner for almost three hundred thousand years. Aside from being a life-modification sphere and therefore subject to numerous irregularities and unusual episodes of evolutionary fluctuation, Urantia progressed very satisfactorily in its planetary career up to the times of the Lucifer rebellion and the concurrent Caligastia betrayal. All subsequent history has been definitely modified by this catastrophic blunder as well as by the later failure of Adam and Eve to fulfill their planetary mission.

66:8.4 (752.5) The Prince of Urantia went into darkness at the time of the Lucifer rebellion, thus precipitating the long confusion of the planet. He was subsequently deprived of sovereign authority by the co-ordinate action of the constellation rulers and other universe authorities. He shared the inevitable vicissitudes of isolated Urantia down to the time of Adam’s sojourn on the planet and contributed something to the miscarriage of the plan to uplift the mortal races through the infusion of the lifeblood of the new violet race — the descendants of Adam and Eve.

66:8.5 (753.1) The power of the fallen Prince to disturb human affairs was enormously curtailed by the mortal incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek in the days of Abraham; and subsequently, during the life of Michael in the flesh, this traitorous Prince was finally shorn of all authority on Urantia.

66:8.6 (753.2) The doctrine of a personal devil on Urantia, though it had some foundation in the planetary presence of the traitorous and iniquitous Caligastia, was nevertheless wholly fictitious in its teachings that such a “devil” could influence the normal human mind against its free and natural choosing. Even before Michael’s bestowal on Urantia, neither Caligastia nor Daligastia was ever able to oppress mortals or to coerce any normal individual into doing anything against the human will. The free will of man is supreme in moral affairs; even the indwelling Thought Adjuster refuses to compel man to think a single thought or to perform a single act against the choosing of man’s own will.

66:8.7 (753.3) And now this rebel of the realm, shorn of all power to harm his former subjects, awaits the final adjudication, by the Uversa Ancients of Days, of all who participated in the Lucifer rebellion.

66:8.8 (753.4) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]