Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 65
THE OVERCONTROL OF EVOLUTION
1. 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.
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.
3. When the Life Carriers make ready to engage in lift implantation,... they summon the archangel commission of Life Carrier transmutation ... 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.
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.
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 ... these Life Carriers are transmuted to the third phase of personality existence‑the semispiritual level of being.
6. 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.
7. The bacteria ... exhibit a degree of retrogression in their parasitic behavior.. . 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.
8. 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 ... 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.
9. 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.
10. Probably the greatest single leap of all prehuman evolution was executed when the reptile became a bird ... .Only fourteen phyla have appeared on Urantia, the fishes being the last, and no new classes have developed since birds and mammals.
11. Man thus evolved from the higher mammals derived principally from the western implantation of life in the ancient east‑west sheltered seas... To all outward appearances the elimination of these inferior groups of creatures was accidental, but in reality it was altogether purposeful... 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. Even the loss of Andon and Fonta, before they had offspring, though delaying human evolution, would not have prevented it... there evolved no less than seven thousand favorable strains which could have achieved some sort of human type of development.
15. 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 n the mortal races.
16. 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.
17. Be patients 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.
18. 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.
19. 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 experiments were made by the Life Carriers in their laboratories before they finally settled upon this formula for the Urantia life experiment.
20. 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 ....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.
21. 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.
22. 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 modification of the standard life designs.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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... 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.
26. 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.
27. It is impossible accurately to determine, simultaneously, the exact location and the velocity of a moving object .... The same sort of a. paradox confronts mortal man when he undertakes the chemical analysis of 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.
28. There is original endowment of adaptation in living things and beings... 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.
29. The process of evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this planet.
30. 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 becomes increasingly adjustive, creative, co‑ordinate, and. dominative.
31. The seven adjutant spirits are more circuitlike than entitylike... 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 ... 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.
32. 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 ... 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.
33. 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.
34. 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.
35. 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.
36. When physical conditions are ripe, sudden mental evolutions may take place; when mind status is propitious, sudden spiritual transformations may occur; when spiritual value 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.
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think evolution was used as the method of creating human beings?
2. What types of control might Life Carriers use in manipulating living units and maneuvering evolving organisms?
3. How might it be possible to achieve vastly higher levels of human development?
4. Do you think the return of the children of Adam and Eve will be used to upstep human beings?
5. If evolution is still in progress, what changes do you think might take place in human nature?
6. What mind conditions might cause sudden spiritual transformations?
7. How do you think scientific intelligence might be used to improve the human race?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship