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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 66
THE PLANETARY PRINCE OF URANTIA
66:0.1
THE advent of a Lanonandek Son on an average world
signifies that will, the ability to choose the path of
eternal survival, has developed in the mind of primitive
man. But on Urantia the Planetary Prince arrived almost
half a million years after the appearance of human will.
66:0.2
About five hundred thousand years ago and concurrent
with the appearance of the six colored or Sangik races,
Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, arrived on Urantia.
There were almost one-half billion primitive human
beings on earth at the time of the Prince's arrival, and
they were well scattered over Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The Prince's headquarters, established in Mesopotamia,
was at about the center of world population.
1. PRINCE CALIGASTIA
66:1.1
Caligastia was a Lanonandek Son, number 9,344 of the
secondary order. He was experienced in the
administration of the affairs of the local universe in
general and, during later ages, with the management of
the local system of Satania in particular.
66:1.2
Prior to the reign of Lucifer in Satania, Caligastia had
been attached to the council of the Life Carrier
advisers on Jerusem. Lucifer elevated Caligastia to a
position on his personal staff, and he acceptably filled
five successive assignments of honor and trust.
66:1.3
Caligastia very early sought a commission as Planetary
Prince, but repeatedly, when his request came up for
approval in the constellation councils, it would fail to
receive the assent of the Constellation Fathers.
Caligastia seemed especially desirous of being sent as
planetary ruler to a decimal or life-modification world.
His petition had several times been disapproved before
he was finally assigned to Urantia.
66:1.4
Caligastia went forth from Jerusem to his trust of world
dominion with an enviable record of loyalty and devotion
to the welfare of the universe of his origin and
sojourn, notwithstanding a certain characteristic
restlessness coupled with a tendency to disagree with
the established order in certain minor matters.
66:1.5
I was present on Jerusem when the brilliant Caligastia
departed from the system capital. No prince of the
planets ever embarked upon a career of world rulership
with a richer preparatory experience or with better
prospects than did Caligastia on that eventful day
one-half million years ago. One thing is certain: As I
executed my assignment of putting the narrative of that
event on the broadcasts of the local universe, I never
for one moment entertained even in the slightest degree
any idea that this noble Lanonandek would so shortly
betray his sacred trust of planetary custody and so
horribly stain the fair name of his exalted order of
universe sonship. I really regarded Urantia as being
among the five or six most fortunate planets in all
Satania in that it was to have such an experienced,
brilliant, and original mind at the helm of world
affairs. I did not then comprehend that Caligastia was
insidiously falling in love with himself; I did not then
so fully understand the subtleties of personality pride.
2. THE PRINCE'S STAFF
66:2.1
The Planetary Prince of Urantia was not sent out on his
mission alone but was accompanied by the usual corps of
assistants and administrative helpers.
66:2.2
At the head of this group was Daligastia, the
associate-assistant of the Planetary Prince. Daligastia
was also a secondary Lanonandek Son, being number
319,407 of that order. He ranked as an assistant at the
time of his assignment as Caligastia's associate.
66:2.3
The planetary staff included a large number of angelic
co-operators and a host of other celestial beings
assigned to advance the interests and promote the
welfare of the human races. But from your standpoint the
most interesting group of all were the corporeal members
of the Prince's staff -- sometimes referred to as
the Caligastia
one hundred.
66:2.4
These one hundred rematerialized members of the Prince's
staff were chosen by Caligastia from over 785,000
ascendant citizens of Jerusem who volunteered for
embarkation on the Urantia adventure. Each one of the
chosen one hundred was from a different planet, and none
of them were from Urantia.
66:2.5
These Jerusemite volunteers were brought by seraphic
transport direct from the system capital to Urantia, and
upon arrival they were held enseraphimed until they
could be provided with personality forms of the dual
nature of special planetary service, literal bodies
consisting of flesh and blood but also attuned to the
life circuits of the system.
66:2.6
Sometime before the arrival of these one hundred Jerusem
citizens, the two supervising Life Carriers resident on
Urantia, having previously perfected their plans,
petitioned Jerusem and Edentia for permission to
transplant the life plasm of one hundred selected
survivors of the Andon and Fonta stock into the material
bodies to be projected for the corporeal members of the
Prince's staff. The request was granted on Jerusem and
approved on Edentia.
66:2.7
Accordingly, fifty males and fifty females of the Andon
and Fonta posterity, representing the survival of the
best strains of that unique race, were chosen by the
Life Carriers. With one or two exceptions these Andonite
contributors to the advancement of the race were
strangers to one another. They were assembled from
widely separated places by co-ordinated Thought Adjuster
direction and seraphic guidance at the threshold of the
planetary headquarters of the Prince. Here the one
hundred human subjects were given into the hands of the
highly skilled volunteer commission from Avalon, who
directed the material extraction of a portion of the
life plasm of these Andon descendants. This living
material was then transferred to the material bodies
constructed for the use of the one hundred Jerusemite
members of the Prince's staff. Meantime, these newly
arrived citizens of the system capital were held in the
sleep of seraphic transport.
66:2.8
These transactions, together with the literal creation
of special bodies for the Caligastia one hundred, gave
origin to numerous legends, many of which subsequently
became confused with the later traditions concerning the
planetary installation of Adam and Eve.
66:2.9
The entire transaction of repersonalization, from the
time of the arrival of the seraphic transports bearing
the one hundred Jerusem volunteers until they became
conscious, threefold beings of the realm, consumed
exactly ten days.
3. DALAMATIA -- THE CITY OF THE PRINCE
66:3.1
The headquarters of the Planetary Prince was situated in
the Persian Gulf region of those days, in the district
corresponding to later Mesopotamia.
66:3.2
The climate and landscape in the Mesopotamia of those
times were in every way favorable to the undertakings of
the Prince's staff and their assistants, very different
from conditions which have sometimes since prevailed. It
was necessary to have such a favoring climate as a part
of the natural environment designed to induce primitive
Urantians to make certain initial advances in culture
and civilization. The one great task of those ages was
to transform man from a hunter to a herder, with the
hope that later on he would evolve into a peace-loving,
home-abiding farmer.
66:3.3
The headquarters of the Planetary Prince on Urantia was
typical of such stations on a young and developing
sphere. The nucleus of the Prince's settlement was a
very simple but beautiful city, enclosed within a wall
forty feet high. This world center of culture was named
Dalamatia in honor of Daligastia.
66:3.4
The city was laid out in ten subdivisions with the
headquarters mansions of the ten councils of the
corporeal staff situated at the centers of these
subdivisions. Centermost in the city was the temple of
the unseen Father. The administrative headquarters of
the Prince and his associates was arranged in twelve
chambers immediately grouped about the temple itself.
66:3.5
The buildings of Dalamatia were all one story except the
council headquarters, which were two stories, and the
central temple of the Father of all, which was small but
three stories in height.
66:3.6
The city represented the best practices of those early
days in building material -- brick. Very little stone or
wood was used. Home building and village architecture
among the surrounding peoples were greatly improved by
the Dalamatian example.
66:3.7
Near the Prince's headquarters there dwelt all colors
and strata of human beings. And it was from these
near-by tribes that the first students of the Prince's
schools were recruited. Although these early schools of
Dalamatia were crude, they provided all that could be
done for the men and women of that primitive age.
66:3.8
The Prince's corporeal staff continuously gathered about
them the superior individuals of the surrounding tribes
and, after training and inspiring these students, sent
them back as teachers and leaders of their respective
peoples.
4. EARLY DAYS OF THE ONE HUNDRED
66:4.1
The arrival of the Prince's staff created a profound
impression. While it required almost a thousand years
for the news to spread abroad, those tribes near the
Mesopotamian headquarters were tremendously influenced
by the teachings and conduct of the one hundred new
sojourners on Urantia. And much of your subsequent
mythology grew out of the garbled legends of these early
days when these members of the Prince's staff were
repersonalized on Urantia as supermen.
66:4.2
The serious obstacle to the good influence of such
extraplanetary teachers is the tendency of mortals to
regard them as gods, but aside from the technique of
their appearance on earth the Caligastia one hundred --
fifty men and fifty women -- did not resort to
supernatural methods nor superhuman manipulations.
66:4.3
But the corporeal staff were nonetheless superhuman.
They began their mission on Urantia as extraordinary
threefold beings:
66:4.4
1. They were corporeal and relatively human, for they
embodied the actual life plasm of one of the human
races, the Andonic life plasm of Urantia.
66:4.5
These one hundred members of the Prince's staff were
divided equally as to sex and in accordance with their
previous mortal status. Each person of this group was
capable of becoming coparental to some new order of
physical being, but they had been carefully instructed
to resort to parenthood only under certain conditions.
It is customary for the corporeal staff of a Planetary
Prince to procreate their successors sometime prior to
retiring from special planetary service. Usually this is
at, or shortly after, the time of the arrival of the
Planetary Adam and Eve.
66:4.6
These special beings therefore had little or no idea as
to what type of material creature would be produced by
their sexual union. And they never did know; before the
time for such a step in the prosecution of their world
work the entire regime was upset by rebellion, and those
who later functioned in the parental role had been
isolated from the life currents of the system.
66:4.7
In skin color and language these materialized members of
Caligastia's staff followed the Andonic race. They
partook of food as did the mortals of the realm with
this difference: The re-created bodies of this group
were fully satisfied by a nonflesh diet. This was one of
the considerations which determined their residence in a
warm region abounding in fruits and nuts. The practice
of subsisting on a nonflesh diet dates from the times of
the Caligastia one hundred, for this custom spread near
and far to affect the eating habits of many surrounding
tribes, groups of origin in the once exclusively
meat-eating evolutionary races.
66:4.8
2. The one hundred were material but superhuman beings,
having been reconstituted on Urantia as unique men and
women of a high and special order.
66:4.9
This group, while enjoying provisional citizenship on
Jerusem, were as yet unfused with their Thought
Adjusters; and when they volunteered and were accepted
for planetary service in liaison with the descending
orders of sonship, their Adjusters were detached. But
these Jerusemites were superhuman beings -- they
possessed souls of ascendant growth. During the mortal
life in the flesh the soul is of embryonic estate; it is
born (resurrected) in the morontia life and experiences
growth through the successive morontia worlds. And the
souls of the Caligastia one hundred had thus expanded
through the progressive experiences of the seven mansion
worlds to citizenship status on Jerusem.
66:4.10
In conformity to their instructions the staff did not
engage in sexual reproduction, but they did
painstakingly study their personal constitutions, and
they carefully explored every imaginable phase of
intellectual (mind) and morontia (soul) liaison. And it
was during the thirty-third year of their sojourn in
Dalamatia, long before the wall was completed, that
number two and number seven of the Danite group
accidentally discovered a phenomenon attendant upon the
liaison of their morontia selves (supposedly nonsexual
and nonmaterial); and the result of this adventure
proved to be the first of the primary midway creatures.
This new being was wholly visible to the planetary staff
and to their celestial associates but was not visible to
the men and women of the various human tribes. Upon
authority of the Planetary Prince the entire corporeal
staff undertook the production of similar beings, and
all were successful, following the instructions of the
pioneer Danite pair. Thus did the Prince's staff
eventually bring into being the original corps of 50,000
primary midwayers.
66:4.11
These mid-type creatures were of great service in
carrying on the affairs of the world's headquarters.
They were invisible to human beings, but the primitive
sojourners at Dalamatia were taught about these unseen
semispirits, and for ages they constituted the sum total
of the spirit world to these evolving mortals.
66:4.12
3. The Caligastia one hundred were personally immortal,
or undying. There circulated through their material
forms the antidotal complements of the life currents of
the system; and had they not lost contact with the life
circuits through rebellion, they would have lived on
indefinitely until the arrival of a subsequent Son of
God, or until their sometime later release to resume the
interrupted journey to Havona and Paradise.
66:4.13
These antidotal complements of the Satania life currents
were derived from the fruit of the tree of life, a shrub
of Edentia which was sent to Urantia by the Most Highs
of Norlatiadek at the time of Caligastia's arrival. In
the days of Dalamatia this tree grew in the central
courtyard of the temple of the unseen Father, and it was
the fruit of the tree of life that enabled the material
and otherwise mortal beings of the Prince's staff to
live on indefinitely as long as they had access to it.
66:4.14
While of no value to the evolutionary races, this
supersustenance was quite sufficient to confer
continuous life upon the Caligastia one hundred and also
upon the one hundred modified Andonites who were
associated with them.
66:4.15
It should be explained in this connection that, at the
time the one hundred Andonites contributed their human
germ plasm to the members of the Prince's staff, the
Life Carriers introduced into their mortal bodies the
complement of the system circuits; and thus were they
enabled to live on concurrently with the staff, century
after century, in defiance of physical death.
66:4.16
Eventually the one hundred Andonites were made aware of
their contribution to the new forms of their superiors,
and these same one hundred children of the Andon tribes
were kept at headquarters as the personal attendants of
the Prince's corporeal staff.
5. ORGANIZATION OF THE ONE HUNDRED
66:5.1
The one hundred were organized for service in ten
autonomous councils of ten members each. When two or
more of these ten councils met in joint session, such
liaison gatherings were presided over by Daligastia.
These ten groups were constituted as follows:
66:5.2
1. The council on
food and material welfare. This group was presided
over by Ang. Food, water, clothes, and the material
advancement of the human species were fostered by this
able corps. They taught well digging, spring control,
and irrigation. They taught those from the higher
altitudes and from the north improved methods of
treating skins for use as clothing, and weaving was
later introduced by the teachers of art and science.
66:5.3
Great advances were made in methods of food storage.
Food was preserved by cooking, drying, and smoking; it
thus became the earliest property. Man was taught to
provide for the hazards of famine, which periodically
decimated the world.
66:5.4
2. The board of
animal domestication and utilization. This council
was dedicated to the task of selecting and breeding
those animals best adapted to help human beings in
bearing burdens and transporting themselves, to supply
food, and later on to be of service in the cultivation
of the soil. This able corps was directed by Bon.
66:5.5
Several types of useful animals, now extinct, were
tamed, together with some that have continued as
domesticated animals to the present day. Man had long
lived with the dog, and the blue man had already been
successful in taming the elephant. The cow was so
improved by careful breeding as to become a valuable
source of food; butter and cheese became common articles
of human diet. Men were taught to use oxen for burden
bearing, but the horse was not domesticated until a
later date. The members of this corps first taught men
to use the wheel for the facilitation of traction.
66:5.6
It was in these days that carrier pigeons were first
used, being taken on long journeys for the purpose of
sending messages or calls for help. Bon's group were
successful in training the great fandors as passenger
birds, but they became extinct more than thirty thousand
years ago.
66:5.7
3. The advisers
regarding the conquest of predatory animals. It was
not enough that early man should try to domesticate
certain animals, but he must also learn how to protect
himself from destruction by the remainder of the hostile
animal world. This group was captained by Dan.
66:5.8
The purpose of an ancient city wall was to protect
against ferocious beasts as well as to prevent surprise
attacks by hostile humans. Those living without the
walls and in the forest were dependent on tree
dwellings, stone huts, and the maintenance of night
fires. It was therefore very natural that these teachers
should devote much time to instructing their pupils in
the improvement of human dwellings. By employing
improved techniques and by the use of traps, great
progress was made in animal subjugation.
66:5.9
4. The faculty on
dissemination and conservation of knowledge. This
group organized and directed the purely educational
endeavors of those early ages. It was presided over by
Fad. The educational methods of Fad consisted in
supervision of employment accompanied by instruction in
improved methods of labor. Fad formulated the first
alphabet and introduced a writing system. This alphabet
contained twenty-five characters. For writing material
these early peoples utilized tree barks, clay tablets,
stone slabs, a form of parchment made of hammered hides,
and a crude form of paperlike material made from wasps'
nests. The Dalamatia library, destroyed soon after the
Caligastia disaffection, comprised more than two million
separate records and was known as the "house of Fad."
66:5.10
The blue man was partial to alphabet writing and made
the greatest progress along such lines. The red man
preferred pictorial writing, while the yellow races
drifted into the use of symbols for words and ideas,
much like those they now employ. But the alphabet and
much more was subsequently lost to the world during the
confusion attendant upon rebellion. The Caligastia
defection destroyed the hope of the world for a
universal language, at least for untold ages.
66:5.11
5. The commission
on industry and trade. This council was employed in
fostering industry within the tribes and in promoting
trade between the various peace groups. Its leader was
Nod. Every form of primitive manufacture was encouraged
by this corps. They contributed directly to the
elevation of standards of living by providing many new
commodities to attract the fancy of primitive men. They
greatly expanded the trade in the improved salt produced
by the council on science and art.
66:5.12
It was among these enlightened groups educated in the
Dalamatia schools that the first commercial credit was
practiced. From a central exchange of credits they
secured tokens which were accepted in lieu of the actual
objects of barter. The world did not improve upon these
business methods for hundreds of thousands of years.
66:5.13
6. The college of
revealed religion. This body was slow in
functioning. Urantia civilization was literally forged
out between the anvil of necessity and the hammers of
fear. But this group had made considerable progress in
their attempt to substitute Creator fear for creature
fear (ghost worship) before their labors were
interrupted by the later confusion attendant upon the
secession upheaval. The head of this council was Hap.
66:5.14
None of the Prince's staff would present revelation to
complicate evolution; they presented revelation only as
the climax of their exhaustion of the forces of
evolution. But Hap did yield to the desire of the
inhabitants of the city for the establishment of a form
of religious service. His group provided the Dalamatians
with the seven chants of worship and also gave them the
daily praise-phrase and eventually taught them "the
Father's prayer," which was:
66:5.15
"Father of all, whose Son we honor, look down upon us
with favor. Deliver us from the fear of all save you.
Make us a pleasure to our divine teachers and forever
put truth on our lips. Deliver us from violence and
anger; give us respect for our elders and that which
belongs to our neighbors. Give us this season green
pastures and fruitful flocks to gladden our hearts. We
pray for the hastening of the coming of the promised
uplifter, and we would do your will on this world as
others do on worlds beyond."
66:5.16
Although the Prince's staff were limited to natural
means and ordinary methods of race improvement, they
held out the promise of the Adamic gift of a new race as
the goal of subsequent evolutionary growth upon the
attainment of the height of biologic development.
66:5.17
7. The guardians
of health and life. This council was concerned with
the introduction of sanitation and the promotion of
primitive hygiene and was led by Lut.
66:5.18
Its members taught much that was lost during the
confusion of subsequent ages, never to be rediscovered
until the twentieth century. They taught mankind that
cooking, boiling and roasting, was a means of avoiding
sickness; also that such cooking greatly reduced infant
mortality and facilitated early weaning.
66:5.19
Many of the early teachings of Lut's guardians of health
persisted among the tribes of earth on down to the days
of Moses, even though they became much garbled and were
greatly changed.
66:5.20
The great obstacle in the way of promoting hygiene among
these ignorant peoples consisted in the fact that the
real causes of many diseases were too small to be seen
by the naked eye, and also because they all held fire in
superstitious regard. It required thousands of years to
persuade them to burn refuse. In the meantime they were
urged to bury their decaying rubbish. The great sanitary
advance of this epoch came from the dissemination of
knowledge regarding the health-giving and
disease-destroying properties of sunlight.
66:5.21
Before the Prince's arrival, bathing had been an
exclusively religious ceremonial. It was indeed
difficult to persuade primitive men to wash their bodies
as a health practice. Lut finally induced the religious
teachers to include cleansing with water as a part of
the purification ceremonies to be practiced in
connection with the noontime devotions, once a week, in
the worship of the Father of all.
66:5.22
These guardians of health also sought to introduce
handshaking in substitution for saliva exchange or blood
drinking as a seal of personal friendship and as a token
of group loyalty. But when out from under the compelling
pressure of the teachings of their superior leaders,
these primitive peoples were not slow in reverting to
their former health-destroying and disease-breeding
practices of ignorance and superstition.
66:5.23
8. The planetary
council on art and science. This corps did much to
improve the industrial technique of early man and to
elevate his concepts of beauty. Their leader was Mek.
66:5.24
Art and science were at a low ebb throughout the world,
but the rudiments of physics and chemistry were taught
the Dalamatians. Pottery was advanced, decorative arts
were all improved, and the ideals of human beauty were
greatly enhanced. But music made little progress until
after the arrival of the violet race.
66:5.25
These primitive men would not consent to experiment with
steam power, notwithstanding the repeated urgings of
their teachers; never could they overcome their great
fear of the explosive power of confined steam. They
were, however, finally persuaded to work with metals and
fire, although a piece of red-hot metal was a
terrorizing object to early man.
66:5.26
Mek did a great deal to advance the culture of the
Andonites and to improve the art of the blue man. A
blend of the blue man with the Andon stock produced an
artistically gifted type, and many of them became master
sculptors. They did not work in stone or marble, but
their works of clay, hardened by baking, adorned the
gardens of Dalamatia.
66:5.27
Great progress was made in the home arts, most of which
were lost in the long and dark ages of rebellion, never
to be rediscovered until modern times.
66:5.28
9. The governors
of advanced tribal relations. This was the group
intrusted with the work of bringing human society up to
the level of statehood. Their chief was Tut.
66:5.29
These leaders contributed much to bringing about
intertribal marriages. They fostered courtship and
marriage after due deliberation and full opportunity to
become acquainted. The purely military war dances were
refined and made to serve valuable social ends. Many
competitive games were introduced, but these ancient
folk were a serious people; little humor graced these
early tribes. Few of these practices survived the
subsequent disintegration of planetary insurrection.
66:5.30
Tut and his associates labored to promote group
associations of a peaceful nature, to regulate and
humanize warfare, to co-ordinate intertribal relations,
and to improve tribal governments. In the vicinity of
Dalamatia there developed a more advanced culture, and
these improved social relations were very helpful in
influencing more remote tribes. But the pattern of
civilization prevailing at the Prince's headquarters was
quite different from the barbaric society evolving
elsewhere, just as the twentieth-century society of
Capetown, South Africa, is totally unlike the crude
culture of the diminutive Bushmen to the north.
66:5.31
10. The supreme
court of tribal co-ordination and racial co-operation.
This supreme council was directed by Van and was the
court of appeals for all of the other nine special
commissions charged with the supervision of human
affairs. This council was one of wide function, being
intrusted with all matters of earthly concern which were
not specifically assigned to the other groups. This
selected corps had been approved by the Constellation
Fathers of Edentia before they were authorized to assume
the functions of the supreme court of Urantia.
6. THE PRINCE'S REIGN
66:6.1
The degree of a world's culture is measured by the
social heritage of its native beings, and the rate of
cultural expansion is wholly determined by the ability
of its inhabitants to comprehend new and advanced ideas.
66:6.2
Slavery to tradition produces stability and co-operation
by sentimentally linking the past with the present, but
it likewise stifles initiative and enslaves the creative
powers of the personality. The whole world was caught in
the stalemate of tradition-bound mores when the
Caligastia one hundred arrived and began the
proclamation of the new gospel of individual initiative
within the social groups of that day. But this
beneficent rule was so soon interrupted that the races
never have been wholly liberated from the slavery of
custom; fashion still unduly dominates Urantia.
66:6.3
The Caligastia one hundred -- graduates of the Satania
mansion worlds -- well knew the arts and culture of
Jerusem, but such knowledge is nearly valueless on a
barbaric planet populated by primitive humans. These
wise beings knew better than to undertake the
sudden
transformation, or the en masse uplifting, of the
primitive races of that day. They well understood the
slow evolution of the human species, and they wisely
refrained from any radical attempts at modifying man's
mode of life on earth.
66:6.4
Each of the ten planetary commissions set about slowly
and naturally to advance the interests intrusted to
them. Their plan consisted in attracting the best minds
of the surrounding tribes and, after training them,
sending them back to their people as emissaries of
social uplift.
66:6.5
Foreign emissaries were never sent to a race except upon
the specific request of that people. Those who labored
for the uplift and advancement of a given tribe or race
were always natives of that tribe or race. The one
hundred would not attempt to impose the habits and mores
of even a superior race upon another tribe. Always they
patiently worked to uplift and advance the time-tried
mores of each race. The simple folk of Urantia brought
their social customs to Dalamatia, not to exchange them
for new and better practices, but to have them uplifted
by contact with a higher culture and by association with
superior minds. The process was slow but very effectual.
66:6.6
The Dalamatia teachers sought to add conscious social
selection to the purely natural selection of biologic
evolution. They did not derange human society, but they
did markedly accelerate its normal and natural
evolution. Their motive was progression by evolution and
not revolution by revelation. The human race had spent
ages in acquiring the little religion and morals it had,
and these supermen knew better than to rob mankind of
these few advances by the confusion and dismay which
always result when enlightened and superior beings
undertake to uplift the backward races by overteaching
and overenlightenment.
66:6.7
When Christian missionaries go into the heart of Africa,
where sons and daughters are supposed to remain under
the control and direction of their parents throughout
the lifetime of the parents, they only bring about
confusion and the breakdown of all authority when they
seek, in a single generation, to supplant this practice
by teaching that these children should be free from all
parental restraint after they have attained the age of
twenty-one.
7. LIFE IN DALAMATIA
66:7.1
The Prince's headquarters, though exquisitely beautiful
and designed to awe the primitive men of that age, was
altogether modest. The buildings were not especially
large as it was the motive of these imported teachers to
encourage the eventual development of agriculture
through the introduction of animal husbandry. The land
provision within the city walls was sufficient to
provide for pasturage and gardening for the support of a
population of about twenty thousand.
66:7.2
The interiors of the central temple of worship and the
ten council mansions of the supervising groups of
supermen were indeed beautiful works of art. And while
the residential buildings were models of neatness and
cleanliness, everything was very simple and altogether
primitive in comparison with later-day developments. At
this headquarters of culture no methods were employed
which did not naturally belong on Urantia.
66:7.3
The Prince's corporeal staff presided over simple and
exemplary abodes which they maintained as homes designed
to inspire and favorably impress the student observers
sojourning at the world's social center and educational
headquarters.
66:7.4
The definite order of family life and the living of one
family together in one residence of comparatively
settled location date from these times of Dalamatia and
were chiefly due to the example and teachings of the one
hundred and their pupils. The home as a social unit
never became a success until the supermen and superwomen
of Dalamatia led mankind to love and plan for their
grandchildren and their grandchildren's children. Savage
man loves his child, but civilized man loves also his
grandchild.
66:7.5
The Prince's staff lived together as fathers and
mothers. True, they had no children of their own, but
the fifty pattern homes of Dalamatia never sheltered
less than five hundred adopted little ones assembled
from the superior families of the Andonic and Sangik
races; many of these children were orphans. They were
favored with the discipline and training of these
superparents; and then, after three years in the schools
of the Prince (they entered from thirteen to fifteen),
they were eligible for marriage and ready to receive
their commissions as emissaries of the Prince to the
needy tribes of their respective races.
66:7.6
Fad sponsored the Dalamatia plan of teaching that was
carried out as an industrial school in which the pupils
learned by doing, and through which they worked their
way by the daily performance of useful tasks. This plan
of education did not ignore thinking and feeling in the
development of character; but it gave first place to
manual training. The instruction was individual and
collective. The pupils were taught by both men and women
and by the two acting conjointly. One half of this group
instruction was by sexes; the other half was
coeducational. Students were taught manual dexterity as
individuals and were socialized in groups or classes.
They were trained to fraternize with younger groups,
older groups, and adults, as well as to do teamwork with
those of their own ages. They were also familiarized
with such associations as family groups, play squads,
and school classes.
66:7.7
Among the later students trained in Mesopotamia for work
with their respective races were Andonites from the
highlands of western India together with representatives
of the red men and the blue men; still later a small
number of the yellow race were also received.
66:7.8
Hap presented the early races with a moral law. This
code was known as "The Father's Way" and consisted of
the following seven commands:
66:7.9
1. You shall not fear nor serve any God but the Father
of all.
66:7.10
2. You shall not disobey the Father's Son, the world's
ruler, nor show disrespect to his superhuman associates.
66:7.11
3. You shall not speak a lie when called before the
judges of the people.
66:7.12
4. You shall not kill men, women, or children.
66:7.13
5. You shall not steal your neighbor's goods or cattle.
66:7.14
6. You shall not touch your friend's wife.
66:7.15
7. You shall not show disrespect to your parents or to
the elders of the tribe.
66:7.16
This was the law of Dalamatia for almost three hundred
thousand years. And many of the stones on which this law
was inscribed now lie beneath the waters off the shores
of Mesopotamia and Persia. It became the custom to hold
one of these commands in mind for each day of the week,
using it for salutations and mealtime thanksgiving.
66:7.17
The time measurement of these days was the lunar month,
this period being reckoned as twenty-eight days. That,
with the exception of day and night, was the only time
reckoning known to the early peoples. The seven-day week
was introduced by the Dalamatia teachers and grew out of
the fact that seven was one fourth of twenty-eight. The
significance of the number seven in the superuniverse
undoubtedly afforded them opportunity to introduce a
spiritual reminder into the common reckoning of time.
But there is no natural origin for the weekly period.
66:7.18
The country around the city was quite well settled
within a radius of one hundred miles. Immediately
surrounding the city, hundreds of graduates of the
Prince's schools engaged in animal husbandry and
otherwise carried out the instruction they had received
from his staff and their numerous human helpers. A few
engaged in agriculture and horticulture.
66:7.19
Mankind was not consigned to agricultural toil as the
penalty of supposed sin. "In the sweat of your face
shall you eat the fruit of the fields" was not a
sentence of punishment pronounced because of man's
participation in the follies of the Lucifer rebellion
under the leadership of the traitorous Caligastia. The
cultivation of the soil is inherent in the establishment
of an advancing civilization on the evolutionary worlds,
and this injunction was the center of all teaching of
the Planetary Prince and his staff throughout the three
hundred thousand years which intervened between their
arrival on Urantia and those tragic days when Caligastia
threw in his lot with the rebel Lucifer. Work with the
soil is not a curse; rather is it the highest blessing
to all who are thus permitted to enjoy the most human of
all human activities.
66:7.20
At the outbreak of the rebellion, Dalamatia had a
resident population of almost six thousand. This number
includes the regular students but does not embrace the
visitors and observers, who always numbered more than
one thousand. But you can have little or no concept of
the marvelous progress of those faraway times;
practically all of the wonderful human gains of those
days were wiped out by the horrible confusion and abject
spiritual darkness which followed the Caligastia
catastrophe of deception and sedition.
8. MISFORTUNES OF CALIGASTIA
66:8.1
In looking back over the long career of Caligastia, we
find only one outstanding feature of his conduct that
might have challenged attention; he was
ultraindividualistic. He was inclined to take sides with
almost every party of protest, and he was usually
sympathetic with those who gave mild expression to
implied criticism. We detect the early appearance of
this tendency to be restless under authority, to mildly
resent all forms of supervision. While slightly
resentful of senior counsel and somewhat restive under
superior authority, nonetheless, whenever a test had
come, he had always proved loyal to the universe rulers
and obedient to the mandates of the Constellation
Fathers. No real fault was ever found in him up to the
time of his shameful betrayal of Urantia.
66:8.2
It should be noted that both Lucifer and Caligastia had
been patiently instructed and lovingly warned respecting
their critical tendencies and the subtle development of
their pride of self and its associated exaggeration of
the feeling of self-importance. But all of these
attempts to help had been misconstrued as unwarranted
criticism and as unjustified interference with personal
liberties. Both Caligastia and Lucifer judged their
friendly advisers as being actuated by the very
reprehensible motives which were beginning to dominate
their own distorted thinking and misguided planning.
They judged their unselfish advisers by their own
evolving selfishness.
66:8.3
From the arrival of Prince Caligastia, planetary
civilization progressed in a fairly normal manner for
almost three hundred thousand years. Aside from being a
life-modification sphere and therefore subject to
numerous irregularities and unusual episodes of
evolutionary fluctuation, Urantia progressed very
satisfactorily in its planetary career up to the times
of the Lucifer rebellion and the concurrent Caligastia
betrayal. All subsequent history has been definitely
modified by this catastrophic blunder as well as by the
later failure of Adam and Eve to fulfill their planetary
mission.
66:8.4
The Prince of Urantia went into darkness at the time of
the Lucifer rebellion, thus precipitating the long
confusion of the planet. He was subsequently deprived of
sovereign authority by the co-ordinate action of the
constellation rulers and other universe authorities. He
shared the inevitable vicissitudes of isolated Urantia
down to the time of Adam's sojourn on the planet and
contributed something to the miscarriage of the plan to
uplift the mortal races through the infusion of the
lifeblood of the new violet race -- the descendants of
Adam and Eve.
66:8.5
The power of the fallen Prince to disturb human affairs
was enormously curtailed by the mortal incarnation of
Machiventa Melchizedek in the days of Abraham; and
subsequently, during the life of Michael in the flesh,
this traitorous Prince was finally shorn of all
authority on Urantia.
66:8.6
The doctrine of a personal devil on Urantia, though it
had some foundation in the planetary presence of the
traitorous and iniquitous Caligastia, was nevertheless
wholly fictitious in its teachings that such a "devil"
could influence the normal human mind against its free
and natural choosing. Even before Michael's bestowal on
Urantia, neither Caligastia nor Daligastia was ever able
to oppress mortals or to coerce any normal individual
into doing anything against the human will. The free
will of man is supreme in moral affairs; even the
indwelling Thought Adjuster refuses to compel man to
think a single thought or to perform a single act
against the choosing of man's own will.
66:8.7
And now this rebel of the realm, shorn of all power to
harm his former subjects, awaits the final adjudication,
by the Uversa Ancients of Days, of all who participated
in the Lucifer rebellion.
66:8.8
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
*
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