PLANETARY LIFE

               Urantia’s evolutionary panorama

                                           

                                CEDOMIL VUGRINCIC, M.D., Ph.D.
                                                 July 2003
                                      
          PAPER 8
                                               ©
Copyright

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Time and space are indissolubly linked through an innate association, and the planet life process can unfold only as fast as the natural physical metamorphoses of a planet, i.e. its geologic evolution, will permit in time.

Because the usual human “yardstick” for time measurement is the length of individual’s life span, the evolution of the planetary life appears to evolutionary beings as an very long drawn-out process.

 

The mind evolution is dependent on, and delayed by, the slow development of physical conditions of the evolutionary life.

The spiritual progress is dependent on mental expansion of the living beings and it is unfailingly delayed by creature’s intellectual retardation. This does not mean, however, that the soul’s spiritual evolution is only dependent on education, culture or wisdom.

The soul may evolve regardless of its mental culture, but not in the absence of its mental capacity and desire to survive and to achieve ever-increasing perfection to do the will of the Father in Paradise “Heaven”.

 

Although survival may not depend upon the possession of the knowledge and wisdom, the progression of evolution most certainly does.

Mind is always dominant over matter, and the spirit is ever correlated with creatures mind. Failure of these diverse endowments to become coordinated and synchronized is the main cause of the evolutionary time delays.

However, if the individual really wants to know God the Father, and desires to find him and become like him, than the evolutionary individual’s survival is assured regardless of the handicaps of time. Temporary physical status may handicap creatures mind, and its mental temporary perversity may delay its spiritual attainment, but none of these obstacles can really defeat the soul’s inner whole-hearted choice and power of will.

 

When planetary conditions are ripe, sudden mental evolutions may take place.

When mind status evolves sufficiently, sudden spiritual transformations may occur.

When spiritual values receive proper recognition, then the cosmic meanings become discernable, and gradually the personality becomes released from the handicaps and limitations of its time and space.

 

 

 

THE COSMIC MIND

 

The Paradise Master Spirits are sub-absolute manifestation of the mind of the Infinite Spirit, the Third Source and Center, and they are the sevenfold source of cosmic mind, the intellectual potential of the Grand Universe.

On the world like Urantia, life is under the direct influence of the Creative Spirit of Nebadon, although the Master Spirits dominate the basic reactions of all creatures mind,

because they are the actual sources of the intellectual and spiritual mind potentials specialized in the local universes for function in the lives of those individuals who inhabit

the evolutionary worlds of time and space.

There exist in all planetary personality the quality of “reality response”, the cosmic mind endowment of all will creatures against a priori assumptions of human planetary science, philosophy and religion, which responds to certain phases of cosmic reality just as energy-matter responds to gravity.

 

The cosmic mind responds to three levels of universe reality, and they are:

 

1.      CAUSATION- the reality domain of physical senses. The scientific and mathematical conclusions based on cosmic discriminations.

 

  2.   DUTY- the philosophical moral reasons of relative right and wrong. This is

        judicial conclusions based on cosmic discrimination.

 

2.      WORSHIP- the spiritual, religious experience. The recognition of spirit values, the divine fellowship and eternal survival. This is the highest insight of cosmic mind and the reverence form of cosmic discrimination.

 

It is these three cosmic intuitions that give objective validity and reality to evolutionary

creature in its experience with things, meanings, and values.

 

 

THE EVOLUTION OF PLANETARY MIND

 

The evolutionary story of man’s ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is the saga of man’s continuous struggle of his mind adaptation seeking biological survival.

 

In Paper 7 it was stated that the formulation of the planetary pre-mind is the joint effort of

the Physical Controllers which work in conjunction with life-impartation ministry of the Seven Master Spirits through the adjutant mind spirits of the local universe Divine Minister, and the active ministration of the ordained planetary Life Carriers.

The result of this threefold activity is the development of organic evolution of life on planet, and the organism capacity for mind evolution with the mechanisms for intelligent reaction to external environmental stimuli, and later on,  to internal spiritual influences originating in the mind of the organism itself.

The work of these three ministrations will be examined further in the upcoming papers.

 

 

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND FORMS

 

The first protoplasmic life was originally implanted by Life Carriers in three independent places in the briny oceans waters about 550 million years ago, and all Urantia’s ancestral life has originated and evolved further from these suitable salt- water habitats.

 

Man’s primordial ancestors were literally 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.

 

Very few species of the early types of marine vegetation that participated in those epochal changes, which resulted in the animal-like borderland organisms are in the 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.

The bacteria, simple vegetable organisms of a very primitive nature, are very little changed from the early dawn of life; they have even somewhat retrogressed in their parasitic behavior.

Many of the fungi also represent a retrograde movement in evolution, being actually plants which have lost their chlorophyll-making ability and have become more 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, the entire vast kingdom of plant life has evolved from the ancestors from which the bacteria have also descended.

The higher protozoan type of animal life soon and suddenly appeared, and from these far-distant times the ameba, the typical single-cell animal organism has appeared.

 

What this minute creature and his protozoan cousins are to the animal creation that are bacteria to the plant kingdom- surviving first early evolutionary species, in a collective differentiation of planetary life, which have failed subsequently to develop further.

 

Before long the early single-cell animal types associated themselves further in communities, first on the plan of the Volvox and presently along the lines of the Hydra and the 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. Those that have survived but have not progressed represent the stationary types of early lower animals, survived branches of the tree of life which have failed to progress.

 

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.

 

It was the FROG which began that series of progressive differentiations in animal life that finally culminated in man himself.

The frog is one of the earliest of surviving human-race ancestors, but it also failed to progress, persisting today as much as in those remote times.

The frog is the only species ancestor of the early dawn races now living on the earth.

 

The frog gave rise to the Reptilians, now virtually extinct great animal family, which before passing out of the existence, gave origin to the whole bird family and the numerous orders of mammals.

Probably the greatest single leap of all pre-human evolution was executed when the reptile became a bird. The bird types of today- eagles, ducks, pigeons and ostriches, have all descended long time ago from the reptilian family.

The reptilian kingdom, which has descended from the frog family, is today represented

by four surviving divisions: two non-progressive- snakes and lizards with their cousins

alligators and turtles; one partially progressive- the bird family; and the progressive one-

ancestors of mammals  and the direct line of descent of the human species.

Reptilian massiveness of the passing reptilian family is reflected today in the elephant and mastodon, while their perpetuated peculiar forms are echoed in leaping kangaroos.

 

Only 14 phyla have appeared on Urantia, the fishes being the last, and no new classes have developed since birds and mammals.

 

It was from carnivorous reptilian dinosaur that the placental mammals suddenly sprang.

These mammals developed rapidly and in many different ways, not only as the common modern varieties but also as the marine types, such as whales and seals, and the air navigators, like the bat family.

 

MAN has evolved from the higher mammals derived principally from the western location of the life implantation in the ancient east-west sheltered seas.

The living organisms groups from the eastern and central locations were progressing in the early periods favorably toward the attainment of pre-human levels of animal existence.

However, as the ages have passed, the eastern focus of life has failed to attain an satisfactory level of intelligent pre-human status, having suffered irretrievable, repeated losses of its highest types of germ plasma that it has lost forever the ability and power for the rehabilitation and evolution of its human potentialities. Since the quality of the mind capacity for the development in the eastern group was so inferior to the other two groups,

the Life Carriers, with the consent of their supervisors, have eliminated these inferior strains of pre-human evolving life from further progression.

 

Later in the evolution of the intelligence, the lemur ancestors of the human species were far more advanced in North America than in the other regions, and they were allowed 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 has thus evolved, out of certain western and central life strains, in Asian central to near-eastern regions.

 

In this way, the life that was planted on planet Urantia, has evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and begun his eventful planetary career. 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 human being with tremendous survival endowment.

 

The appearance of the primitive man on earth during the ice age, therefore, was not an

evolutionary accident but he has evolved purposefully from the created life design.

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

The first organic unit of material life created was the protoplasmic cell which communally

associated various chemical, electrical and other basic energies.

 

This first primordial unit of material life was brought into living existence by the creative function of the Life Carriers which have generated physical electrochemical energy circuits within material particles created by Physical Controllers and further catalyzed the “spark of life” initiated by the Holly Spirit of the Divine Minister.

 

The chemical formulas used in creating the first protoplasmic cells differ for each planetary

system, and therefore the techniques of living cell reproduction are slightly different for each

local universe.

In any case the catalysts of the initial process, the Life Carriers are always there to initiate the primordial reactions of the material life as the catalytic instigators of the energy circuits of

living matter.

All the worlds of a local system disclose similar physical kinship, however, each evolutionary

planet develops its own scale of life and not two worlds are exactly alike in plant and

animal endowment.

Decisions about the type of systems variations in the planetary life are made after studies

of evolution of planetary system by these Life Carrier catalysts.

Evolutionary life is initiated often in different number of planetary localities, sometimes three

as it was on our planet of Urantia.

In the development of any planetary life the vegetable always precedes animal and develops

fully before animal patterns appear and begin to differentiate. All animal types always develop

from the basic patterns of the preceding vegetable kingdom; they are not separately organized

as we could see from the narrative of this paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCE :

 

The Urantia book, The Urantia Foundation