The Urantia Book

66. The Planetary Prince 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.]