^48:8.5 [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]

PAPER № 49

THE INHABITED WORLDS

^49:0.1 All mortal-inhabited worlds are evolutionary in origin and nature. These spheres are the spawning ground, the evolutionary cradle, of the mortal races of time and space. Each unit of the ascendant life is a veritable training school for the stage of existence just ahead, and this is true of every stage of man’s progressive Paradise ascent; just as true of the initial mortal experience on an evolutionary planet as of the final universe headquarters school of the Melchizedeks, a school which is not attended by ascending mortals until just before their translation to the regime of the superuniverse and the attainment of first-stage spirit existence.

^49:0.2 ¶ All inhabited worlds are basically grouped for celestial administration into the local systems, and each of these local systems is limited to about 1,000 evolutionary worlds. This limitation is by the decree of the Ancients of Days, and it pertains to actual evolutionary planets whereon mortals of survival status are living. Neither worlds finally settled in light and life nor planets in the prehuman stage of life development are reckoned in this group.

^49:0.3 ¶ Satania itself is an unfinished system containing only 619 inhabited worlds. Such planets are numbered serially in accordance with their registration as inhabited worlds, as worlds inhabited by will creatures. Thus was Urantia given the number 606 of Satania, meaning the 606^th world in this local system on which the long evolutionary life process culminated in the appearance of human beings. There are 36 uninhabited planets nearing the life-endowment stage, and several are now being made ready for the Life Carriers. There are nearly 200 spheres which are evolving so as to be ready for life implantation within the next few million years.

^49:0.4 Not all planets are suited to harbour mortal life. Small ones having a high rate of axial revolution are wholly unsuited for life habitats. In several of the physical systems of Satania the planets revolving around the central sun are too large for habitation, their great mass occasioning oppressive gravity. Many of these enormous spheres have satellites, sometimes a half dozen or more, and these moons are often in size very near that of Urantia, so that they are almost ideal for habitation.

^49:0.5 The oldest inhabited world of Satania, world number 1, is Anova, one of the 44 satellites revolving around an enormous dark planet but exposed to the differential light of three neighbouring suns. Anova is in an advanced stage of progressive civilization.

1. THE PLANETARY LIFE

^49:1.1 The universes of time and space are gradual in development; the progression of life — terrestrial or celestial — is neither arbitrary nor magical. Cosmic evolution may not always be understandable (predictable), but it is strictly nonaccidental.

^49:1.2 The biologic unit of material life is the protoplasmic cell, the communal association of chemical, electrical, and other basic energies. The chemical formulas differ in each system, and the technique of living cell reproduction is slightly different in each local universe, but the Life Carriers are always the living catalysers who initiate the primordial reactions of material life; they are the instigators of the energy circuits of living matter.

^49:1.3 All the worlds of a local system disclose unmistakable physical kinship; nevertheless, each planet has its own scale of life, no two worlds being exactly alike in plant and animal endowment. These planetary variations in the system life types result from the decisions of the Life Carriers. But these beings are neither capricious nor whimsical; the universes are conducted in accordance with law and order. The laws of Nebadon are the divine mandates of Salvington, and the evolutionary order of life in Satania is in consonance with the evolutionary pattern of Nebadon.

^49:1.4 Evolution is the rule of human development, but the process itself varies greatly on different worlds. Life is sometimes initiated in one centre, sometimes in three, as it was on Urantia. On the atmospheric worlds it usually has a marine origin, but not always; much depends on the physical status of a planet. The Life Carriers have great latitude in their function of life initiation.

^49:1.5 In the development of planetary life the vegetable form always precedes the animal and is quite fully developed before the animal patterns differentiate. All animal types are developed from the basic patterns of the preceding vegetable kingdom of living things; they are not separately organized.

^49:1.6 The early stages of life evolution are not altogether in conformity with your present-day views. Mortal man is not an evolutionary accident. There is a precise system, a universal law, which determines the unfolding of the planetary life plan on the spheres of space. Time and the production of large numbers of a species are not the controlling influences. Mice reproduce much more rapidly than elephants, yet elephants evolve more rapidly than mice.

^49:1.7 The process of planetary evolution is orderly and controlled. The development of higher organisms from lower groupings of life is not accidental. Sometimes evolutionary progress is temporarily delayed by the destruction of certain favourable lines of life plasm carried in a selected species. It often requires ages upon ages to recoup the damage occasioned by the loss of a single superior strain of human heredity. These selected and superior strains of living protoplasm should be jealously and intelligently guarded when once they make their appearance. And on most of the inhabited worlds these superior potentials of life are valued much more highly than on Urantia.

2. PLANETARY PHYSICAL TYPES

^49:2.1 There is a standard and basic pattern of vegetable and animal life in each system. But the Life Carriers are oftentimes confronted with the necessity of modifying these basic patterns to conform to the varying physical conditions which confront them on numerous worlds of space. They foster a generalized system type of mortal creature, but there are seven distinct physical types as well as thousands upon thousands of minor variants of these 7 outstanding differentiations:

^49:2.2 1. Atmospheric types.

^49:2.3 2. Elemental types.

^49:2.4 3. Gravity types.

^49:2.5 4. Temperature types.

^49:2.6 5. Electric types.

^49:2.7 6. Energizing types.

^49:2.8 7. Unnamed types.

^49:2.9 ¶ The Satania system contains all of these types and numerous intermediate groups, although some are very sparingly represented.

^49:2.10 1. The atmospheric types. The physical differences of the worlds of mortal habitation are chiefly determined by the nature of the atmosphere; other influences which contribute to the planetary differentiation of life are relatively minor.

^49:2.11 The present atmospheric status of Urantia is almost ideal for the support of the breathing type of man, but the human type can be so modified that it can live on both the superatmospheric and the subatmospheric planets. Such modifications also extend to the animal life, which differs greatly on the various inhabited spheres. There is a very great modification of animal orders on both the sub- and the superatmospheric worlds.

^49:2.12 Of the atmospheric types in Satania, about 2.5% are subbreathers, about 5% superbreathers, and over 91% are mid-breathers, altogether accounting for 98.5% of the Satania worlds.