PAPER 65
THE OVERCONTROL OF EVOLUTION
65:0.1 BASIC evolutionary material life -- premind
life -- is the formulation of the Master Physical Controllers and the
life-impartation ministry of the Seven Master Spirits in conjunction with the
active ministration of the ordained Life Carriers. As a result of the
co-ordinate function of this threefold creativity there develops organismal
physical capacity for mind -- material mechanisms for intelligent reaction to
external environmental stimuli and, later on, to internal stimuli, influences
taking origin in the organismal mind itself.
65:0.2 There are, then, three distinct levels of
life production and evolution:
1. The physical-energy domain -- mind-capacity
production.
2. The mind ministry of the adjutant spirits --
impinging upon spirit capacity.
3. The spirit endowment of mortal mind --
culminating in Thought Adjuster bestowal.
65:0.3 The mechanical-nonteachable levels of
organismal environmental response are the domains of the physical controllers.
The adjutant mind-spirits activate and regulate the adaptative or
nonmechanical-teachable types of mind -- those response mechanisms of
organisms capable of learning from experience. And as the spirit adjutants
thus manipulate mind potentials, so do the Life Carriers exercise considerable
discretionary control over the environmental aspects of evolutionary processes
right up to the time of the appearance of human will -- the ability to know
God and the power of choosing to worship him.
65:0.4 It is the integrated functioning of the Life
Carriers, the physical controllers, and the spirit adjutants that conditions
the course of organic evolution on the inhabited worlds. And this is why
evolution -- on Urantia or elsewhere -- is always purposeful and never
accidental.
1. LIFE CARRIER FUNCTIONS
65:1.1 The Life Carriers are endowed with potentials
of personality metamorphosis which but few orders of creatures possess. These
Sons of the local universe are capable of functioning in three diverse phases
of being. They ordinarily perform their duties as mid-phase Sons, that being
the state of their origin. But a Life Carrier in such a stage of existence
could not possibly function in the electrochemical domains as a fabricator of
physical energies and material particles into units of living
existence.
65:1.2 Life Carriers are able to function and do
function on the following three levels:
1. The physical level of electrochemistry.
2. The usual mid-phase of quasi-morontial
existence.
3. The advanced semispiritual level.
65:1.3 When the Life Carriers make ready to engage
in life implantation, and after they have selected the sites for such an
undertaking, they summon the archangel commission of Life Carrier
transmutation. This group consists of ten orders of diverse personalities,
including the physical controllers and their associates, and is presided over
by the chief of archangels, who acts in this capacity by the mandate of
Gabriel and with the permission of the Ancients of Days. When these beings are
properly encircuited, they can effect such modifications in the Life Carriers
as will enable them immediately to function on the physical levels of
electrochemistry.
65:1.4 After the life patterns have been formulated
and the material organizations have been duly completed, the supermaterial
forces concerned in life propagation become forthwith active, and life is
existent. Whereupon the Life Carriers are immediately returned to their normal
mid-phase of personality existence, in which estate they can manipulate the
living units and maneuver the evolving organisms, even though they are shorn
of all ability to organize -- create -- new patterns of living
matter.
65:1.5 After organic evolution has run a certain
course and free will of the human type has appeared in the highest evolving
organisms, the Life Carriers must either leave the planet or take renunciation
vows; that is, they must pledge themselves to refrain from all attempts
further to influence the course of organic evolution. And when such vows are
voluntarily taken by those Life Carriers who choose to remain on the planet as
future advisers to those who shall be intrusted with the fostering of the
newly evolved will creatures, there is summoned a commission of twelve,
presided over by the chief of the Evening Stars, acting by authority of the
System Sovereign and with permission of Gabriel; and forthwith these Life
Carriers are transmuted to the third phase of personality existence -- the
semispiritual level of being. And I have functioned on Urantia in this third
phase of existence ever since the times of Andon and Fonta.
65:1.6 We look forward to a time when the universe
may be settled in light and life, to a possible fourth stage of being wherein
we shall be wholly spiritual, but it has never been revealed to us by what
technique we may attain this desirable and advanced estate.
2. THE EVOLUTIONARY PANORAMA
65:2.1 The story of man's ascent from seaweed to the
lordship of earthly creation is indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind
survival. Man's primordial ancestors were literally the slime and ooze of the
ocean bed in the sluggish and warm-water bays and lagoons of the vast shore
lines of the ancient inland seas, those very waters in which the Life Carriers
established the three independent life implantations on Urantia.
65:2.2 Very few species of the early types of marine
vegetation that participated in those epochal changes which resulted in the
animallike borderland organisms are in existence today. The sponges are the
survivors of one of these early midway types, those organisms through which
the gradual transition from the vegetable to the animal took place.
These early transition forms, while not identical with modern sponges, were
much like them; they were true borderline organisms -- neither vegetable nor
animal -- but they eventually led to the development of the true animal forms
of life.
65:2.3 The bacteria, simple vegetable organisms of a
very primitive nature, are very little changed from the early dawn of life;
they even exhibit a degree of retrogression in their parasitic behavior. Many
of the fungi also represent a retrograde movement in evolution, being plants
which have lost their chlorophyll-making ability and have become more or less
parasitic. The majority of disease-causing bacteria and their auxiliary virus
bodies really belong to this group of renegade parasitic fungi. During the
intervening ages all of the vast kingdom of plant life has evolved from
ancestors from which the bacteria have also descended.
65:2.4 The higher protozoan type of animal life soon
appeared, and appeared suddenly. And from these far-distant times the
ameba, the typical single-celled animal organism, has come on down but little
modified. He disports himself today much as he did when he was the last and
greatest achievement in life evolution. This minute creature and his protozoan
cousins are to the animal creation what bacteria are to the plant kingdom;
they represent the survival of the first early evolutionary steps in life
differentiation together with failure of subsequent
development.
65:2.5 Before long the early single-celled animal
types associated themselves in communities, first on the plan of the Volvox
and presently along the lines of the Hydra and jellyfish. Still later there
evolved the starfish, stone lilies, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, centipedes,
insects, spiders, crustaceans, and the closely related groups of earthworms
and leeches, soon followed by the mollusks -- the oyster, octopus, and snail.
Hundreds upon hundreds of species intervened and perished; mention is made
only of those which survived the long, long struggle. Such nonprogressive
specimens, together with the later appearing fish family, today represent the
stationary types of early and lower animals, branches of the tree of life
which failed to progress.
65:2.6 The stage was thus set for the appearance of
the first backboned animals, the fishes. From this fish family there sprang
two unique modifications, the frog and the salamander. And it was the frog
which began that series of progressive differentiations in animal life that
finally culminated in man himself.
65:2.7 The frog is one of the earliest of surviving
human-race ancestors, but it also failed to progress, persisting today much as
in those remote times. The frog is the only species ancestor of the early dawn
races now living on the face of the earth. The human race has no surviving
ancestry between the frog and the Eskimo.
65:2.8 The frogs gave rise to the Reptilia, a great
animal family which is virtually extinct, but which, before passing out of
existence, gave origin to the whole bird family and the numerous orders of
mammals.
65:2.9 Probably the greatest single leap of all
prehuman evolution was executed when the reptile became a bird. The bird types
of today -- eagles, ducks, pigeons, and ostriches -- all descended from the
enormous reptiles of long, long ago.
65:2.10 The kingdom of reptiles, descended from the
frog family, is today represented by four surviving divisions: two
nonprogressive, snakes and lizards, together with their cousins, alligators
and turtles; one partially progressive, the bird family, and the fourth, the
ancestors of mammals and the direct line of descent of the human species. But
though long departed, the massiveness of the passing Reptilia found echo in
the elephant and mastodon, while their peculiar forms were perpetuated in the
leaping kangaroos.
65:2.11 Only fourteen phyla have appeared on
Urantia, the fishes being the last, and no new classes have developed since
birds and mammals.
65:2.12 It was from an agile little reptilian
dinosaur of carnivorous habits but having a comparatively large brain that the
placental mammals suddenly sprang. These mammals developed rapidly and
in many different ways, not only giving rise to the common modern varieties
but also evolving into marine types, such as whales and seals, and into air
navigators like the bat family.
65:2.13 Man thus evolved from the higher mammals
derived principally from the western implantation of life in the
ancient east-west sheltered seas. The eastern and central groups
of living organisms were early progressing favorably toward the attainment of
prehuman levels of animal existence. But as the ages passed, the eastern focus
of life emplacement failed to attain a satisfactory level of intelligent
prehuman status, having suffered such repeated and irretrievable losses of its
highest types of germ plasm that it was forever shorn of the power to
rehabilitate human potentialities.
65:2.14 Since the quality of the mind capacity for
development in this eastern group was so definitely inferior to that of the
other two groups, the Life Carriers, with the consent of their superiors, so
manipulated the environment as further to circumscribe these inferior prehuman
strains of evolving life. To all outward appearances the elimination of these
inferior groups of creatures was accidental, but in reality it was altogether
purposeful.
65:2.15 Later in the evolutionary unfolding of
intelligence, the lemur ancestors of the human species were far more advanced
in North America than in other regions; and they were therefore led to migrate
from the arena of western life implantation over the Bering land bridge and
down the coast to southwestern Asia, where they continued to evolve and to
benefit by the addition of certain strains of the central life group. Man thus
evolved out of certain western and central life strains but in the central to
near-eastern regions.
65:2.16 In this way the life that was planted on
Urantia evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and began
his eventful planetary career. And this appearance of primitive man on earth
during the ice age was not just an accident; it was by design. The rigors and
climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose
of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous
survival endowment.
3. THE FOSTERING OF EVOLUTION
65:3.1 It will hardly be possible to explain to the
present-day human mind many of the queer and apparently grotesque occurrences
of early evolutionary progress. A purposeful plan was functioning throughout
all of these seemingly strange evolutions of living things, but we are not
allowed arbitrarily to interfere with the development of the life patterns
after they have once been set in operation.
65:3.2 Life Carriers may employ every possible
natural resource and may utilize any and all fortuitous circumstances which
will enhance the developmental progress of the life experiment, but we are not
permitted mechanically to intervene in, or arbitrarily to manipulate the
conduct and course of, either plant or animal evolution.
65:3.3 You have been informed that Urantia mortals
evolved by way of primitive frog development, and that this ascending strain,
carried in potential in a single frog, narrowly escaped extinction on a
certain occasion. But it should not be inferred that the evolution of mankind
would have been terminated by an accident at this juncture. At that very
moment we were observing and fostering no less than one thousand different and
remotely situated mutating strains of life which could have been directed into
various different patterns of prehuman development. This particular ancestral
frog represented our third selection, the two prior life strains having
perished in spite of all our efforts toward their conservation.
65:3.4 Even the loss of Andon and Fonta before they
had offspring, though delaying human evolution, would not have prevented it.
Subsequent to the appearance of Andon and Fonta and before the mutating human
potentials of animal life were exhausted, there evolved no less than seven
thousand favorable strains which could have achieved some sort of human type
of development. And many of these better stocks were subsequently assimilated
by the various branches of the expanding human species.
65:3.5 Long before the Material Son and Daughter,
the biologic uplifters, arrive on a planet, the human potentials of the
evolving animal species have been exhausted. This biologic status of animal
life is disclosed to the Life Carriers by the phenomenon of the third phase of
adjutant spirit mobilization, which automatically occurs concomitantly with
the exhaustion of the capacity of all animal life to give origin to the mutant
potentials of prehuman individuals.
65:3.6 Mankind on Urantia must solve its problems of
mortal development with the human stocks it has -- no more races will evolve
from prehuman sources throughout all future time. But this fact does not
preclude the possibility of the attainment of vastly higher levels of human
development through the intelligent fostering of the evolutionary potentials
still resident in the mortal races. That which we, the Life Carriers, do
toward fostering and conserving the life strains before the appearance of
human will, man must do for himself after such an event and subsequent to our
retirement from active participation in evolution. In a general way, man's
evolutionary destiny is in his own hands, and scientific intelligence must
sooner or later supersede the random functioning of uncontrolled natural
selection and chance survival.
65:3.7 And in discussing the fostering of evolution,
it would not be amiss to point out that, in the long future ahead, when you
may sometime be attached to a corps of Life Carriers, you will have abundant
and ample opportunity to offer suggestions and make any possible improvements
in the plans and technique of life management and transplantation. Be patient!
If you have good ideas, if your minds are fertile with better methods of
administration for any part of the universal domains, you are certainly going
to have an opportunity to present them to your associates and fellow
administrators in the ages to come.
4. THE URANTIA ADVENTURE
65:4.1 Do not overlook the fact that Urantia was
assigned to us as a life-experiment world. On this planet we made our sixtieth
attempt to modify and, if possible, improve the Satania adaptation of the
Nebadon life designs, and it is of record that we achieved numerous beneficial
modifications of the standard life patterns. To be specific, on Urantia we
worked out and have satisfactorily demonstrated not less than twenty-eight
features of life modification which will be of service to all Nebadon
throughout all future time.
65:4.2 But the establishment of life on no world is
ever experimental in the sense that something untried and unknown is
attempted. The evolution of life is a technique ever progressive,
differential, and variable, but never haphazard, uncontrolled, nor wholly
experimental, in the accidental sense.
65:4.3 Many features of human life afford abundant
evidence that the phenomenon of mortal existence was intelligently planned,
that organic evolution is not a mere cosmic accident. When a living cell is
injured, it possesses the ability to elaborate certain chemical substances
which are empowered so to stimulate and activate the neighboring normal cells
that they immediately begin the secretion of certain substances which
facilitate healing processes in the wound; and at the same time these normal
and uninjured cells begin to proliferate -- they actually start to work
creating new cells to replace any fellow cells which may have been destroyed
by the accident.
65:4.4 This chemical action and reaction concerned
in wound healing and cell reproduction represents the choice of the Life
Carriers of a formula embracing over one hundred thousand phases and features
of possible chemical reactions and biologic repercussions. More than half a
million specific experiments were made by the Life Carriers in their
laboratories before they finally settled upon this formula for the Urantia
life experiment.
65:4.5 When Urantia scientists know more of these
healing chemicals, they will become more efficient in the treatment of
injuries, and indirectly they will know more about controlling certain serious
diseases.
65:4.6 Since life was established on Urantia, the
Life Carriers have improved this healing technique as it has been introduced
on another Satania world, in that it affords more pain relief and exercises
better control over the proliferation capacity of the associated normal
cells.
65:4.7 There were many unique features of the
Urantia life experiment, but the two outstanding episodes were the appearance
of the Andonic race prior to the evolution of the six colored peoples and the
later simultaneous appearance of the Sangik mutants in a single family.
Urantia is the first world in Satania where the six colored races sprang from
the same human family. They ordinarily arise in diversified strains from
independent mutations within the prehuman animal stock and usually appear on
earth one at a time and successively over long periods of time, beginning with
the red man and passing on down through the colors to indigo.
65:4.8 Another outstanding variation of procedure
was the late arrival of the Planetary Prince. As a rule, the prince appears on
a planet about the time of will development; and if such a plan had been
followed, Caligastia might have come to Urantia even during the lifetimes of
Andon and Fonta instead of almost five hundred thousand years later,
simultaneously with the appearance of the six Sangik races.
65:4.9 On an ordinary inhabited world a Planetary
Prince would have been granted on the request of the Life Carriers at, or
sometime after, the appearance of Andon and Fonta. But Urantia having been
designated a life-modification planet, it was by preagreement that the
Melchizedek observers, twelve in number, were sent as advisers to the Life
Carriers and as overseers of the planet until the subsequent arrival of the
Planetary Prince. These Melchizedeks came at the time Andon and Fonta made the
decisions which enabled Thought Adjusters to indwell their mortal minds.
65:4.10 On Urantia the endeavors of the Life
Carriers to improve the Satania life patterns necessarily resulted in the
production of many apparently useless forms of transition life. But the gains
already accrued are sufficient to justify the Urantia modifications of the
standard life designs.
65:4.11 It was our intention to produce an early
manifestation of will in the evolutionary life of Urantia, and we succeeded.
Ordinarily, will does not emerge until the colored races have long been in
existence, usually first appearing among the superior types of the red man.
Your world is the only planet in Satania where the human type of will has
appeared in a precolored race.
65:4.12 But in our effort to provide for that
combination and association of inheritance factors which finally gave rise to
the mammalian ancestors of the human race, we were confronted with the
necessity of permitting hundreds and thousands of other and comparatively
useless combinations and associations of inheritance factors to take place.
Many of these seemingly strange by-products of our efforts are certain to meet
your gaze as you dig back into the planetary past, and I can well understand
how puzzling some of these things must be to the limited human viewpoint.
5. LIFE-EVOLUTION VICISSITUDES
65:5.1 It was a source of regret to the Life
Carriers that our special efforts to modify intelligent life on Urantia should
have been so handicapped by tragic perversions beyond our control: the
Caligastia betrayal and the Adamic default.
65:5.2 But throughout all of this biologic adventure
our greatest disappointment grew out of the reversion of certain primitive
plant life to the prechlorophyll levels of parasitic bacteria on such an
extensive and unexpected scale. This eventuality in plant-life evolution
caused many distressful diseases in the higher mammals, particularly in the
more vulnerable human species. When we were confronted with this perplexing
situation, we somewhat discounted the difficulties involved because we knew
that the subsequent admixture of the Adamic life plasm would so reinforce the
resisting powers of the resulting blended race as to make it practically
immune to all diseases produced by the vegetable type of organism. But our
hopes were doomed to disappointment owing to the misfortune of the Adamic
default.
65:5.3 The universe of universes, including this
small world called Urantia, is not being managed merely to meet our approval
nor just to suit our convenience, much less to gratify our whims and satisfy
our curiosity. The wise and all-powerful beings who are responsible for
universe management undoubtedly know exactly what they are about; and so it
becomes Life Carriers and behooves mortal minds to enlist in patient waiting
and hearty co-operation with the rule of wisdom, the reign of power, and the
march of progress.
65:5.4 There are, of course, certain compensations
for tribulation, such as Michael's bestowal on Urantia. But irrespective of
all such considerations, the later celestial supervisors of this planet
express complete confidence in the ultimate evolutionary triumph of the human
race and in the eventual vindication of our original plans and life patterns.
6. EVOLUTIONARY TECHNIQUES OF LIFE
65:6.1 It is impossible accurately to determine,
simultaneously, the exact location and the velocity of a moving object; any
attempt at measurement of either inevitably involves change in the other. The
same sort of a paradox confronts mortal man when he undertakes the chemical
analysis of protoplasm. The chemist can elucidate the chemistry of dead
protoplasm, but he cannot discern either the physical organization or the
dynamic performance of living protoplasm. Ever will the scientist come
nearer and nearer the secrets of life, but never will he find them and for no
other reason than that he must kill protoplasm in order to analyze it. Dead
protoplasm weighs the same as living protoplasm, but it is not the same.
65:6.2 There is original endowment of adaptation in
living things and beings. In every living plant or animal cell, in
every living organism -- material or spiritual -- there is an
insatiable craving for the attainment of ever-increasing perfection of
environmental adjustment, organismal adaptation, and augmented life
realization. These interminable efforts of all living things evidence the
existence within them of an innate striving for perfection.
65:6.3 The most important step in plant evolution
was the development of chlorophyll-making ability, and the second greatest
advance was the evolution of the spore into the complex seed. The spore is
most efficient as a reproductive agent, but it lacks the potentials of variety
and versatility inherent in the seed.
65:6.4 One of the most serviceable and complex
episodes in the evolution of the higher types of animals consisted in the
development of the ability of the iron in the circulating blood cells to
perform in the double role of oxygen carrier and carbon dioxide remover. And
this performance of the red blood cells illustrates how evolving organisms are
able to adapt their functions to varying or changing environment. The higher
animals, including man, oxygenate their tissues by the action of the iron of
the red blood cells, which carries oxygen to the living cells and just as
efficiently removes the carbon dioxide. But other metals can be made to serve
the same purpose. The cuttlefish employs copper for this function, and the sea
squirt utilizes vanadium.
65:6.5 The continuation of such biologic adjustments
is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in the higher Urantia mammals; these
attained to thirty-six in man's remote ancestors, and then began an adaptative
readjustment toward thirty-two in the dawn man and his near relatives. Now the
human species is slowly gravitating toward twenty-eight. The process of
evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this
planet.
65:6.6 But many seemingly mysterious adjustments of
living organisms are purely chemical, wholly physical. At any moment of time,
in the blood stream of any human being there exists the possibility of upward
of 15,000,000 chemical reactions between the hormone output of a dozen
ductless glands.
65:6.7 The lower forms of plant life are wholly
responsive to physical, chemical, and electrical environment. But as the scale
of life ascends, one by one the mind ministries of the seven adjutant spirits
become operative, and the mind becomes increasingly adjustive, creative,
co-ordinative, and dominative. The ability of animals to adapt themselves to
air, water, and land is not a supernatural endowment, but it is a
superphysical adjustment.
65:6.8 Physics and chemistry alone cannot explain
how a human being evolved out of the primeval protoplasm of the early seas.
The ability to learn, memory and differential response to environment, is the
endowment of mind. The laws of physics are not responsive to training; they
are immutable and unchanging. The reactions of chemistry are not modified by
education; they are uniform and dependable. Aside from the presence of the
Unqualified Absolute, electrical and chemical reactions are predictable. But
mind can profit from experience, can learn from reactive habits of behavior in
response to repetition of stimuli.
65:6.9 Preintelligent organisms react to
environmental stimuli, but those organisms which are reactive to mind ministry
can adjust and manipulate the environment itself.
65:6.10 The physical brain with its associated
nervous system possesses innate capacity for response to mind ministry just as
the developing mind of a personality possesses a certain innate capacity for
spirit receptivity and therefore contains the potentials of spiritual progress
and attainment. Intellectual, social, moral, and spiritual evolution are
dependent on the mind ministry of the seven adjutant spirits and their
superphysical associates.
7. EVOLUTIONARY MIND LEVELS
65:7.1 The seven adjutant mind-spirits are the
versatile mind ministers to the lower intelligent existences of a local
universe. This order of mind is ministered from the local universe
headquarters or from some world connected therewith, but there is influential
direction of lower-mind function from the system capitals.
65:7.2 On an evolutionary world much, very much,
depends on the work of these seven adjutants. But they are mind ministers;
they are not concerned in physical evolution, the domain of the Life Carriers.
Nevertheless, the perfect integration of these spirit endowments with the
ordained and natural procedure of the unfolding and inherent regime of the
Life Carriers is responsible for the mortal inability to discern, in the
phenomenon of mind, aught but the hand of nature and the outworking of natural
processes, albeit you are occasionally somewhat perplexed in explaining all of
everything connected with the natural reactions of mind as it is associated
with matter. And if Urantia were operating more in accordance with the
original plans, you would observe even less to arrest your attention in the
phenomenon of mind.
65:7.3 The seven adjutant spirits are more
circuitlike than entitylike, and on ordinary worlds they are encircuited with
other adjutant functionings throughout the local universe. On life-experiment
planets, however, they are relatively isolated. And on Urantia, owing to the
unique nature of the life patterns, the lower adjutants experienced far more
difficulty in contacting with the evolutionary organisms than would have been
the case in a more standardized type of life endowment.
65:7.4 Again, on an average evolutionary world the
seven adjutant spirits are far better synchronized with the advancing stages
of animal development than they were on Urantia. With but a single exception,
the adjutants experienced the greatest difficulty in contacting with the
evolving minds of Urantia organisms that they had ever had in all their
functioning throughout the universe of Nebadon. On this world there developed
many forms of border phenomena -- confusional combinations of the
mechanical-nonteachable and the nonmechanical-teachable types of organismal
response.
65:7.5 The seven adjutant spirits do not make
contact with the purely mechanical orders of organismal environmental
response. Such preintelligent responses of living organisms pertain purely to
the energy domains of the power centers, the physical controllers, and their
associates.
65:7.6 The acquisition of the potential of the
ability to learn from experience marks the beginning of the functioning
of the adjutant spirits, and they function from the lowliest minds of
primitive and invisible existences up to the highest types in the evolutionary
scale of human beings. They are the source and pattern for the otherwise more
or less mysterious behavior and incompletely understood quick reactions of
mind to the material environment. Long must these faithful and always
dependable influences carry forward their preliminary ministry before the
animal mind attains the human levels of spirit receptivity.
65:7.7 The adjutants function exclusively in the
evolution of experiencing mind up to the level of the sixth phase, the spirit
of worship. At this level there occurs that inevitable overlapping of ministry
-- the phenomenon of the higher reaching down to co-ordinate with the lower in
anticipation of subsequent attainment of advanced levels of development. And
still additional spirit ministry accompanies the action of the seventh and
last adjutant, the spirit of wisdom. Throughout the ministry of the spirit
world the individual never experiences abrupt transitions of spirit
co-operation; always are these changes gradual and reciprocal.
65:7.8 Always should the domains of the physical
(electrochemical) and the mental response to environmental stimuli be
differentiated, and in turn must they all be recognized as phenomena apart
from spiritual activities. The domains of physical, mental, and spiritual
gravity are distinct realms of cosmic reality, notwithstanding their intimate
interrelations.
8. EVOLUTION IN TIME AND SPACE
65:8.1 Time and space are indissolubly linked; there
is an innate association. The delays of time are inevitable in the presence of
certain space conditions.
65:8.2 If spending so much time in effecting the
evolutionary changes of life development occasions perplexity, I would say
that we cannot time the life processes to unfold any faster than the physical
metamorphoses of a planet will permit. We must wait upon the natural, physical
development of a planet; we have absolutely no control over geologic
evolution. If the physical conditions would allow, we could arrange for the
completed evolution of life in considerably less than one million years. But
we are all under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Rulers of Paradise, and time
is nonexistent on Paradise.
65:8.3 The individual's yardstick for time
measurement is the length of his life. All creatures are thus time
conditioned, and therefore do they regard evolution as being a long-drawn-out
process. To those of us whose life span is not limited by a temporal
existence, evolution does not seem to be such a protracted transaction. On
Paradise, where time is nonexistent, these things are all present in
the mind of Infinity and the acts of Eternity.
65:8.4 As mind evolution is dependent on, and
delayed by, the slow development of physical conditions, so is spiritual
progress dependent on mental expansion and unfailingly delayed by intellectual
retardation. But this does not mean that spiritual evolution is dependent on
education, culture, or wisdom. The soul may evolve regardless of mental
culture but not in the absence of mental capacity and desire -- the choice of
survival and the decision to achieve ever-increasing perfection -- to do the
will of the Father in heaven. Although survival may not depend on the
possession of knowledge and wisdom, progression most certainly does.
65:8.5 In the cosmic evolutionary laboratories mind
is always dominant over matter, and spirit is ever correlated with mind.
Failure of these diverse endowments to synchronize and co-ordinate may cause
time delays, but if the individual really knows God and desires to find him
and become like him, then survival is assured regardless of the handicaps of
time. Physical status may handicap mind, and mental perversity may delay
spiritual attainment, but none of these obstacles can defeat the whole-souled
choice of will.
65:8.6 When physical conditions are ripe,
sudden mental evolutions may take place; when mind status is
propitious, sudden spiritual transformations may occur; when spiritual
values receive proper recognition, then cosmic meanings become discernible,
and increasingly the personality is released from the handicaps of time and
delivered from the limitations of space.
65:8.7 Sponsored by
a Life Carrier of Nebadon resident on Urantia.
