PAPER 66
- THE PLANETARY PRINCE OF URANTIA
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These
transactions, together with the literal creation of
special bodies for the Caligastia one hundred, gave
origin to numerous legends, many of which
subsequently
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became confused
with the later traditions concerning the planetary
installation of Adam and Eve.
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
The headquarters
of the Planetary Prince was situated in the Persian
Gulf region of those days, in the district
corresponding to later Mesopotamia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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days when these
members of the Prince's staff were repersonalized on
Urantia as supermen.
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.
But the corporeal
staff were nonetheless superhuman. They began their
mission on Urantia as extraordinary threefold
beings:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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);
Page 745
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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
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improved methods
of treating skins for use as clothing, and weaving
was later introduced by the teachers of art and
science.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
Page 747
during the
confusion attendant upon rebellion. The Caligastia
defection destroyed the hope of the world for a
universal language, at least for untold ages.
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.
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.
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.
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:
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Page 748
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Page 749
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Page 750
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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:
1. You shall not
fear nor serve any God but the Father of all.
2. You shall not
disobey the Father's Son, the world's ruler, nor
show disrespect to his superhuman associates.
3. You shall not
speak a lie when called before the judges of the
people.
4. You shall not
kill men, women, or children.
5. You shall not
steal your neighbor's goods or cattle.
6. You shall not
touch your friend's wife.
7. You shall not
show disrespect to your parents or to the elders of
the tribe.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
[Presented by a
Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
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