PAPER 50
THE PLANETARY PRINCES
50:0.1 WHILE belonging to the order of Lanonandek
Sons, the Planetary Princes are so specialized in service that they are
commonly regarded as a distinct group. After their Melchizedek certification
as secondary Lanonandeks, these local universe Sons are assigned to the
reserves of their order on the constellation headquarters. From here they are
assigned to various duties by the System Sovereign and eventually commissioned
as Planetary Princes and sent forth to rule the evolving inhabited
worlds.
50:0.2 The signal for a System Sovereign to act in
the matter of assigning a ruler to a given planet is the reception of a
request from the Life Carriers for the dispatch of an administrative head to
function on this planet whereon they have established life and developed
intelligent evolutionary beings. All planets which are inhabited by
evolutionary mortal creatures have assigned to them a planetary ruler of this
order of sonship.
1. MISSION OF THE PRINCES
50:1.1 The Planetary Prince and his assistant
brethren represent the nearest personalized approach (aside from incarnation)
that the Eternal Son of Paradise can make to the lowly creatures of time and
space. True, the Creator Son touches the creatures of the realms through his
spirit, but the Planetary Prince is the last of the orders of personal Sons
extending out from Paradise to the children of men. The Infinite Spirit comes
very near in the persons of the guardians of destiny and other angelic beings;
the Universal Father lives in man by the prepersonal presence of the Mystery
Monitors; but the Planetary Prince represents the last effort of the Eternal
Son and his Sons to draw near you. On a newly inhabited world the Planetary
Prince is the sole representative of complete divinity, springing from the
Creator Son (the offspring of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son) and
the Divine Minister (the universe Daughter of the Infinite Spirit).
50:1.2 The prince of a newly inhabited world is
surrounded by a loyal corps of helpers and assistants and by large numbers of
the ministering spirits. But the directing corps of such new worlds must be of
the lower orders of the administrators of a system in order to be innately
sympathetic with, and understanding of, the planetary problems and
difficulties. And all of this effort to provide sympathetic rulership for the
evolutionary worlds entails the increased liability that these near-human
personalities may be led astray by the exaltation of their own minds over and
above the will of the Supreme Rulers.
50:1.3 Being quite alone as representatives of
divinity on the individual planets, these Sons are tested severely, and
Nebadon has suffered the misfortune of several rebellions. In the creation of
the System Sovereigns and the Planetary Princes there occurs the
personalization of a concept that has been getting farther and farther away
from the Universal Father and the Eternal Son, and there is an increasing
danger of losing the sense of proportion as to one's self-importance and a
greater likelihood of failure to keep a proper grasp of the values and
relationships of the numerous orders of divine beings and their gradations of
authority. That the Father is not personally present in the local universe
also imposes a certain test of faith and loyalty on all these Sons.
50:1.4 But not often do these world princes fail in
their missions of organizing and administering the inhabited spheres, and
their success greatly facilitates the subsequent missions of the Material
Sons, who come to engraft the higher forms of creature life on the primitive
men of the worlds. Their rule also does much to prepare the planets for the
Paradise Sons of God, who subsequently come to judge the worlds and to
inaugurate successive dispensations.
2. PLANETARY ADMINISTRATION
50:2.1 All Planetary Princes are under the universe
administrative jurisdiction of Gabriel, the chief executive of Michael, while
in immediate authority they are subject to the executive mandates of the
System Sovereigns.
50:2.2 The Planetary Princes may at any time seek
the counsel of the Melchizedeks, their former instructors and sponsors, but
they are not arbitrarily required to ask for such assistance, and if such aid
is not voluntarily requested, the Melchizedeks do not interfere with the
planetary administration. These world rulers may also avail themselves of the
advice of the four and twenty counselors, assembled from the bestowal worlds
of the system. In Satania these counselors are at present all natives of
Urantia. And there is an analogous council of seventy at the constellation
headquarters also selected from the evolutionary beings of the
realms.
50:2.3 The rule of the evolutionary planets in their
early and unsettled careers is largely autocratic. The Planetary Princes
organize their specialized groups of assistants from among their corps of
planetary aids. They usually surround themselves with a supreme council of
twelve, but this is variously chosen and diversely constituted on the
different worlds. A Planetary Prince may also have as assistants one or more
of the third order of his own group of sonship and sometimes, on certain
worlds, one of his own order, a secondary Lanonandek associate.
50:2.4 The entire staff of a world ruler consists of
personalities of the Infinite Spirit and certain types of higher evolved
beings and ascending mortals from other worlds. Such a staff averages about
one thousand, and as the planet progresses, this corps of helpers may be
increased up to one hundred thousand or more. At any time need is felt for
more helpers, the Planetary Princes have only to make request of their
brothers, the System Sovereigns, and the petition is granted
forthwith.
50:2.5 Planets vary greatly in nature and
organization and in administration, but all provide for tribunals of justice.
The judicial system of the local universe has its beginnings in the tribunals
of a Planetary Prince, which are presided over by a member of his personal
staff; the decrees of such courts reflect a highly fatherly and discretionary
attitude. All problems involving more than the regulation of the planetary
inhabitants are subject to appeal to the higher tribunals, but the affairs of
his world domain are largely adjusted in accordance with the personal
discretion of the prince.
50:2.6 The roving commissions of conciliators serve
and supplement the planetary tribunals, and both spirit and physical
controllers are subject to the findings of these conciliators. But no
arbitrary execution is ever carried out without the consent of the
Constellation Father, for the "Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of
men."
50:2.7 The controllers and transformers of planetary
assignment are also able to collaborate with angels and other orders of
celestial beings in rendering these latter personalities visible to mortal
creatures. On special occasions the seraphic helpers and even the Melchizedeks
can and do make themselves visible to the inhabitants of the evolutionary
worlds. The principal reason for bringing mortal ascenders from the system
capital as a part of the staff of the Planetary Prince is to facilitate
communication with the inhabitants of the realm.
3. THE PRINCE'S CORPOREAL STAFF
50:3.1 On going to a young world, a Planetary Prince
usually takes with him a group of volunteer ascending beings from the local
system headquarters. These ascenders accompany the prince as advisers and
helpers in the work of early race improvement. This corps of material helpers
constitutes the connecting link between the prince and the world races. The
Urantia Prince, Caligastia, had a corps of one hundred such helpers.
50:3.2 Such volunteer assistants are citizens of a
system capital, and none of them have fused with their indwelling Adjusters.
The status of the Adjusters of such volunteer servers remains as of the
residential standing on the system headquarters while these morontia
progressors temporarily revert to a former material state.
50:3.3 The Life Carriers, the architects of form,
provide such volunteers with new physical bodies, which they occupy for the
periods of their planetary sojourn. These personality forms, while exempt from
the ordinary diseases of the realms, are, like the early morontia bodies,
subject to certain accidents of a mechanical nature.
50:3.4 The prince's corporeal staff are usually
removed from the planet in connection with the next adjudication at the time
of the second Son's arrival on the sphere. Before leaving, they customarily
assign their various duties to their mutual offspring and to certain superior
native volunteers. On those worlds where these helpers of the prince have been
permitted to mate with the superior groups of the native races, such offspring
usually succeed them.
50:3.5 These assistants to the Planetary Prince
seldom mate with the world races, but they do always mate among themselves.
Two classes of beings result from these unions: the primary type of midway
creatures and certain high types of material beings who remain attached to the
prince's staff after their parents have been removed from the planet at the
time of the arrival of Adam and Eve. These children do not mate with the
mortal races except in certain emergencies and then only by direction of the
Planetary Prince. In such an event, their children -- the grandchildren of the
corporeal staff -- are in status as of the superior races of their day and
generation. All the offspring of these semimaterial assistants of the
Planetary Prince are Adjuster indwelt.
50:3.6 At the end of the prince's dispensation, when
the time comes for this "reversion staff" to be returned to the system
headquarters for the resumption of the Paradise career, these ascenders
present themselves to the Life Carriers for the purpose of yielding up their
material bodies. They enter the transition slumber and awaken delivered from
their mortal investment and clothed with morontia forms, ready for seraphic
transportation back to the system capital, where their detached Adjusters
await them. They are a whole dispensation behind their Jerusem class, but they
have gained a unique and extraordinary experience, a rare chapter in the
career of an ascending mortal.
4. THE PLANETARY HEADQUARTERS AND SCHOOLS
50:4.1 The prince's corporeal staff early organize
the planetary schools of training and culture, wherein the cream of the
evolutionary races are instructed and then sent forth to teach these better
ways to their people. These schools of the prince are located at the material
headquarters of the planet.
50:4.2 Much of the physical work connected with the
establishment of this headquarters city is performed by the corporeal staff.
Such headquarters cities, or settlements, of the early times of the Planetary
Prince are very different from what a Urantia mortal might imagine. They are,
in comparison with later ages, simple, being characterized by mineral
embellishment and by relatively advanced material construction. And all of
this stands in contrast with the Adamic regime centering around a garden
headquarters, from which their work in behalf of the races is prosecuted
during the second dispensation of the universe Sons.
50:4.3 In the headquarters settlement on your world
every human habitation was provided with abundance of land. Although the
remote tribes continued in hunting and food foraging, the students and
teachers in the Prince's schools were all agriculturists and horticulturists.
The time was about equally divided between the following pursuits:
1. Physical labor. Cultivation of the soil,
associated with home building and embellishment.
2. Social activities. Play performances and
cultural social groupings.
3. Educational application. Individual
instruction in connection with family-group teaching, supplemented by
specialized class training.
4. Vocational training. Schools of marriage
and homemaking, the schools of art and craft training, and the classes for the
training of teachers -- secular, cultural, and religious.
5. Spiritual culture. The teacher
brotherhood, the enlightenment of childhood and youth groups, and the training
of adopted native children as missionaries to their people.
50:4.4 A Planetary Prince is not visible to mortal
beings; it is a test of faith to believe the representations of the
semimaterial beings of his staff. But these schools of culture and training
are well adapted to the needs of each planet, and there soon develops a keen
and laudatory rivalry among the races of men in their efforts to gain entrance
to these various institutions of learning.
50:4.5 From such a world center of culture and
achievement there gradually radiates to all peoples an uplifting and
civilizing influence which slowly and certainly transforms the evolutionary
races. Meantime the educated and spiritualized children of the surrounding
peoples who have been adopted and trained in the prince's schools are
returning to their native groups and, to the best of their ability, are there
establishing new and potent centers of learning and culture which they carry
on according to the plan of the prince's schools.
50:4.6 On Urantia these plans for planetary progress
and cultural advancement were well under way, proceeding most satisfactorily,
when the whole enterprise was brought to a rather sudden and most inglorious
end by Caligastia's adherence to the Lucifer rebellion.
50:4.7 It was one of the most profoundly shocking
episodes of this rebellion for me to learn of the callous perfidy of one of my
own order of sonship, Caligastia, who, in deliberation and with malice
aforethought, systematically perverted the instruction and poisoned the
teaching provided in all the Urantia planetary schools in operation at that
time. The wreck of these schools was speedy and complete.
50:4.8 Many of the offspring of the ascenders of the
Prince's materialized staff remained loyal, deserting the ranks of Caligastia.
These loyalists were encouraged by the Melchizedek receivers of Urantia, and
in later times their descendants did much to uphold the planetary concepts of
truth and righteousness. The work of these loyal evangels helped to prevent
the total obliteration of spiritual truth on Urantia. These courageous souls
and their descendants kept alive some knowledge of the Father's rule and
preserved for the world races the concept of the successive planetary
dispensations of the various orders of divine Sons.
5. PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION
50:5.1 The loyal princes of the inhabited worlds are
permanently attached to the planets of their original assignment. Paradise
Sons and their dispensations may come and go, but a successful Planetary
Prince continues on as the ruler of his realm. His work is quite independent
of the missions of the higher Sons, being designed to foster the development
of planetary civilization.
50:5.2 The progress of civilization is hardly alike
on any two planets. The details of the unfoldment of mortal evolution are very
different on numerous dissimilar worlds. Notwithstanding these many
diversifications of planetary development along physical, intellectual, and
social lines, all evolutionary spheres progress in certain well-defined
directions.
50:5.3 Under the benign rule of a Planetary Prince,
augmented by the Material Sons and punctuated by the periodic missions of the
Paradise Sons, the mortal races on an average world of time and space will
successively pass through the following seven developmental epochs:
50:5.4 1. The nutrition epoch. The prehuman
creatures and the dawn races of primitive man are chiefly concerned with food
problems. These evolving beings spend their waking hours either in seeking
food or in fighting, offensively or defensively. The food quest is paramount
in the minds of these early ancestors of subsequent civilization.
50:5.5 2. The security age. Just as soon as
the primitive hunter can spare any time from the search for food, he turns
this leisure to augmenting his security. More and more attention is devoted to
the technique of war. Homes are fortified, and the clans are solidified by
mutual fear and by the inculcation of hate for foreign groups.
Self-preservation is a pursuit which always follows self-maintenance.
50:5.6 3. The material-comfort era. After
food problems have been partially solved and some degree of security has been
attained, the additional leisure is utilized to promote personal comfort.
Luxury vies with necessity in occupying the center of the stage of human
activities. Such an age is all too often characterized by tyranny,
intolerance, gluttony, and drunkenness. The weaker elements of the races
incline towards excesses and brutality. Gradually these pleasure-seeking
weaklings are subjugated by the more strong and truth-loving elements of the
advancing civilization.
50:5.7 4. The quest for knowledge and wisdom.
Food, security, pleasure, and leisure provide the foundation for the
development of culture and the spread of knowledge. The effort to execute
knowledge results in wisdom, and when a culture has learned how to profit and
improve by experience, civilization has really arrived. Food, security, and
material comfort still dominate society, but many forward-looking individuals
are hungering for knowledge and thirsting for wisdom. Every child is provided
an opportunity to learn by doing; education is the watchword of these ages.
50:5.8 5. The epoch of philosophy and
brotherhood. When mortals learn to think and begin to profit by
experience, they become philosophical -- they start out to reason within
themselves and to exercise discriminative judgment. The society of this age
becomes ethical, and the mortals of such an era are truly becoming moral
beings. Wise moral beings are capable of establishing human brotherhood on
such a progressing world. Ethical and moral beings can learn how to live in
accordance with the golden rule.
50:5.9 6. The age of spiritual striving. When
evolving mortals have passed through the physical, intellectual, and social
stages of development, sooner or later they attain those levels of personal
insight which impel them to seek for spiritual satisfactions and cosmic
understandings. Religion is completing the ascent from the emotional domains
of fear and superstition to the high levels of cosmic wisdom and personal
spiritual experience. Education aspires to the attainment of meanings, and
culture grasps at cosmic relationships and true values. Such evolving mortals
are genuinely cultured, truly educated, and exquisitely God-knowing.
50:5.10 7. The era of light and life. This is
the flowering of the successive ages of physical security, intellectual
expansion, social culture, and spiritual achievement. These human
accomplishments are now blended, associated, and co-ordinated in cosmic unity
and unselfish service. Within the limitations of finite nature and material
endowments there are no bounds set upon the possibilities of evolutionary
attainment by the advancing generations who successively live upon these
supernal and settled worlds of time and space.
50:5.11 After serving their spheres through
successive dispensations of world history and the progressing epochs of
planetary progress, the Planetary Princes are elevated to the position of
Planetary Sovereigns upon the inauguration of the era of light and
life.
6. PLANETARY CULTURE
50:6.1 The isolation of Urantia renders it
impossible to undertake the presentation of many details of the life and
environment of your Satania neighbors. In these presentations we are limited
by the planetary quarantine and by the system isolation. We must be guided by
these restrictions in all our efforts to enlighten Urantia mortals, but in so
far as is permissible, you have been instructed in the progress of an average
evolutionary world, and you are able to compare such a world's career with the
present state of Urantia.
50:6.2 The development of civilization on Urantia
has not differed so greatly from that of other worlds which have sustained the
misfortune of spiritual isolation. But when compared with the loyal worlds of
the universe, your planet seems most confused and greatly retarded in all
phases of intellectual progress and spiritual attainment.
50:6.3 Because of your planetary misfortunes,
Urantians are prevented from understanding very much about the culture of
normal worlds. But you should not envisage the evolutionary worlds, even the
most ideal, as spheres whereon life is a flowery bed of ease. The initial life
of the mortal races is always attended by struggle. Effort and decision are an
essential part of the acquirement of survival values.
50:6.4 Culture presupposes quality of mind; culture
cannot be enhanced unless mind is elevated. Superior intellect will seek a
noble culture and find some way to attain such a goal. Inferior minds will
spurn the highest culture even when presented to them ready-made. Much
depends, also, upon the successive missions of the divine Sons and upon the
extent to which enlightenment is received by the ages of their respective
dispensations.
50:6.5 You should not forget that for two hundred
thousand years all the worlds of Satania have rested under the spiritual ban
of Norlatiadek in consequence of the Lucifer rebellion. And it will require
age upon age to retrieve the resultant handicaps of sin and secession. Your
world still continues to pursue an irregular and checkered career as a result
of the double tragedy of a rebellious Planetary Prince and a defaulting
Material Son. Even the bestowal of Christ Michael on Urantia did not
immediately set aside the temporal consequences of these serious blunders in
the earlier administration of the world.
7. THE REWARDS OF ISOLATION
50:7.1 On first thought it might appear that Urantia
and its associated isolated worlds are most unfortunate in being deprived of
the beneficent presence and influence of such superhuman personalities as a
Planetary Prince and a Material Son and Daughter. But isolation of these
spheres affords their races a unique opportunity for the exercise of faith and
for the development of a peculiar quality of confidence in cosmic reliability
which is not dependent on sight or any other material consideration. It may
turn out, eventually, that mortal creatures hailing from the worlds
quarantined in consequence of rebellion are extremely fortunate. We have
discovered that such ascenders are very early intrusted with numerous special
assignments to cosmic undertakings where unquestioned faith and sublime
confidence are essential to achievement.
50:7.2 On Jerusem the ascenders from these isolated
worlds occupy a residential sector by themselves and are known as the
agondonters, meaning evolutionary will creatures who can believe
without seeing, persevere when isolated, and triumph over insuperable
difficulties even when alone. This functional grouping of the agondonters
persists throughout the ascension of the local universe and the traversal of
the superuniverse; it disappears during the sojourn in Havona but promptly
reappears upon the attainment of Paradise and definitely persists in the Corps
of the Mortal Finality. Tabamantia is an agondonter of finaliter
status, having survived from one of the quarantined spheres involved in the
first rebellion ever to take place in the universes of time and
space.
50:7.3 All through the Paradise career, reward
follows effort as the result of causes. Such rewards set off the individual
from the average, provide a differential of creature experience, and
contribute to the versatility of ultimate performances in the collective body
of the finaliters.
50:7.4 Presented by
a Secondary Lanonandek Son of the Reserve Corps.
