Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 49
THE INHABITED WORLDS
1. All mortal‑inhabited worlds are evolutionary in origin and nature. These spheres are the spawning ground, the evolutionary cradle, of the mortal races of time and space.
2. Satania itself is an unfinished system containing only 619 inhabited worlds. Such planets are numbered serially in accordance with their registration as inhabited worlds, as worlds inhabited by will creatures. Thus was Urantia, given the number 606 of Satania ...Not all planets are suited to harbor mortal life.
3. Evolution is the rule of human development, but the process itself varies greatly on different worlds ...In the development of planetary life the vegetable form always precedes the animal and is quite fully developed before the animal patterns differentiate ...The early stages of life evolution are not altogether in conformity with your present day views. Mortal man is not an evolutionary accident ...Time and the production of large numbers of a species are not the controlling influences. Mice reproduce much more rapidly than elephants, yet elephants evolve more rapidly than mice. The process of planetary evolution is orderly and controlled.
4. It often requires ages upon ages to recoup the damage occasioned by the loss of a single superior strain of human heredity. These selected and superior strains of living protoplasm should be jealously and intelligently guarded when once they make their appearance. And on most of the inhabited worlds these superior potentials of life are valued much more highly than on Urantia.
5. There is a standard and basic pattern of vegetable and animal life in each system... there are seven distinct physical types...
1. Atmospheric types.
2. Elemental types.
3. Gravity types.
4. Temperature types.
5. Electric types.
6. Energizing types.
7. Unnamed types.
6. Beings such as the Urantia races are classified as mid‑breathers; you represent the average or typical breathing order of mortal existence. If intelligent creatures should exist on a planet with an atmosphere similar to that of your near neighbor, Venus, they would belong to the superbreather group, while those inhabiting a planet with an atmosphere as thin as that if your outer neighbor, Mars, would be denominated subbreathers. If mortals should inhabit a planet devoid of air, like your moon, they would belong to the separate order of nonbreathers.
7. It is both amazing and amusing to observe the early civilization of a primitive race of human beings taking shape, in one case, in the air and treetops and, in another, midst the shallow waters of sheltered tropic basins, as well as on the bottom, sides, and shores of these marine gardens of the dawn races of such extraordinary spheres. Even on Urantia there was a long age during which primitive man preserved himself and advance his primitive civilization by living for the most part in the treetops as did his earlier arboreal ancestors.
8. The various planetary types of mortals vary in height, the average in Nebadon being a trifle under seven feet. Some of the larger worlds are peopled with beings who are only about two and one‑half feet in height. Mortal stature ranges from here on up through the average heights on the average‑sized. planets to around ten feet on the smaller inhabited spheres.
9. There are five distinct orders of beings as they are classified with reference to heat regulating mechanisms. In this scale the Urantia races are number three...the mid-temperature group.
10. There are six differing types of animal and mortal nutrition: The sub‑breathers employ the first type of nutrition, the marine dwellers the second, the mid‑breathers the third, as on Urantia. The superbreathers employ the fourth type of energy intake, while the nonbreathers utilize the fifth order of nutrition and energy. The sixth technique of energizing is limited to the midway creatures.
11. Life on the worlds of the nonbreathers is radically different from what it is on Urantia… Almost every act of living, aside from reproduction, differs, and even the methods of procreation are somewhat different ...even in survival their peoples differ, being candidates for Spirit fusion...In mind and character the nonbreathers do not differ from other mortal types. You would be more than interested in the planetary conduct of this type of mortal because such a race of beings inhabits a sphere in close proximity to Urantia.
12.There are great differences between the mortals of the different worlds, even among those belonging to the same intellectual and physical types, but all mortals of will dignity are erect animals, bipeds. There are six basic evolutionary races: three primary—red, yellow, and blue; and three secondary—orange, green, and indigo.
13. Sex equality prevails on all advanced worlds; male and female are equal in mind endowment and spiritual status. We do not regard a planet as having emerged from barbarism so long as one sex seeks to tyrannize over the other. This feature of creature experience is always greatly improved after the arrival of a Material Son and Daughter.
14. Mortals all have the same general struggles with microscopic foes in their early days, such as you now experience on Urantia, though perhaps not so extensive. The length of life varies on the different planets from twenty‑five years in the primitive worlds to near five hundred in the more advanced and older spheres.
15. Regardless of personal or physical planetary differences, the mental life of all these various orders or mortals is very similar, and their immediate careers after death are very much alike. But mortal mind without immortal spirit cannot survive. The mind of man is mortal; only the bestowed spirit is immortal. Survival is dependent on spiritualization by the ministry of the Adjuster—on the birth and evolution of the immortal soul.
16. Mortal creatures may…be studied. from numerous viewpoints, among which are the following:
1. Adjustment to planetary environment.
2. Brain‑type series.
3. Spirit‑reception series.
4. Planetary‑mortal epochs.
5. Creature‑kinship serials.
6. Adjuster‑fusion series.
7. Techniques of terrestrial escape.
17. Experimental worlds are usually ideally adapted to the typical life forms, and on these decimal planets the Life Carriers attempt to produce beneficial variations in the standard life designs. Since your world is an experimental planet, it differs markedly from its sister spheres in Satania; many forms of life have appeared on Urantia that are not found elsewhere; likewise are many common species absent from your planet.
18. All of these experimental worlds are periodically inspected by a corps of universe directors whose chief is the veteran finaliter known in Satania as Tabamantia.
19. The one physical uniformity of mortals is the brain and nervous system; nevertheless, there are three basic organizations of the brain mechanism: the one‑, the two‑, and the three‑brained types. Urantians are of the two‑brained type, somewhat more imaginative, adventurous, and philosophical than the one‑brained mortals but somewhat less spiritual, ethical, and worshipful than the three‑brained orders.
20. Spirit‑reception series...refers primarily to gland chemistry, more particularly to the organization of certain glands comparable to the pituitary bodies. The races on some worlds have one gland, on others two, as do Urantians, while on still other spheres the races have three of these unique bodies. The inherent imagination and spiritual receptivity is definitely influenced by this differential chemical endowment.
21. On a normal evolutionary world, racial progress attains its natural biologic peak during the regime of the Planetary Prince, and shortly thereafter the System Sovereign dispatches a Material Son and Daughter to that planet...When the intellectual and ethical. progress of a human race has reached the limits of evolutionary development, there comes an Avonal Son of Paradise on a magisterial mission; and later on, when the spiritual status of such a world is nearing its limit of natural attainment, the planet is visited by a Paradise bestowal Son ...As a result of the ministry of all the successive orders of divine sonship....Such worlds now become ripe for the culminating mission, the arrival of the Trinity Teacher Sons. This epoch of the Teacher Sons is the vestibule to the final planetary age—evolutionary utopia—the age of light and life.
22. Throughout the earlier ages of an inhabited world, many are called to the mansion spheres at the special and the millennial resurrections, but most survivors are repersonalized at the inauguration of a new dispensation associated with the advent of a divine Son of planetary service.
23. The individual progress of human beings is measured by their successive attainment and traversal (mastery) of the seven cosmic circles. These circles of mortal progression are levels of associated intellectual, social, spiritual, and cosmic‑insight values. Starting out in the seventh circle, mortals strive for the first, and all who have attained the third immediately have personal guardians of destiny assigned them. These mortals may be repersonalized in the morontia life independent of dispensational or other adjudications.
24. Throughout the earlier ages of an evolutionary world, few mortals go to judgment on the third day. But as the ages pass, more and more the personal guardians of destiny are assigned to the advancing mortals, and thus increasing numbers of these evolving creatures, are repersonalized on the first mansion world on the third day after natural death.
25. There are three groups of individual ascenders: The less advanced land on the initial or first mansion world. The more advanced group may take up the morontia career on any of the intermediate mansion worlds in accordance with previous planetary progression. The most advanced of these orders really begin their morontia experience on the seventh mansion world.
26. Mortals of the secondary modified orders of ascension...are not immune to natural death, but they are exempt from passing through the seven mansion worlds ...Still farther on in the planetary ages of spiritual striving, many survivors awaken on the constellation headquarters and there begin the Paradise ascent. But before any of these groups may go forward, they must journey back as instructors to the worlds they missed, gaining many experiences as teachers in those realms which they passed by as students.
27. Mortals of the primary modified order of ascension...are translated from among the living and appear immediately in the presence of the Sovereign Son on the headquarters of the local universe. These are the mortals who fuse with their Adjusters during mortal life...These fused souls go by direct Adjuster transit to the resurrection halls of the higher morontia spheres, where they receive their initial morontia investiture just as do other mortals arriving from the evolutionary worlds.
28. This primary modified order of mortal ascension may apply to individuals in any of the planetary series from the lowest to the highest stages of the Adjuster‑fusion worlds, but it more frequently functions on the older of these spheres after they have received the benefits of numerous sojourns of the divine Sons.
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think we have not guarded superior strains of protoplasm as well as other planets?
2. How do you imagine complex civilizations of air or water types of mortals would develop?
3. Do you think we will recognize the type of world mortals came from when we meet on the Mansion Worlds?
4. How will the complexity and great differences of life on evolutionary planets effect our Mansion World relationships and adjustments?
5. How do you think coming from an experimental planet will effect our Mansion World career?
6. Do you think we will receive a magisterial mission as our next supermortal ministry?
7. Why do you think our universe has more adjuster-fusion types of mortals than a near-by universe?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship