|
The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
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.
*
|
.jpg)
