Paper 65 Overview: The Overcontrol of Evolution

Paper 65 delineates the intentional and coordinated oversight of evolutionary processes on Urantia, emphasizing that evolution proceeds according to intelligent design rather than random chance. It details how three primary agencies, the Life Carriers, physical controllers, and adjutant spirits, work in concert to direct biological development from primitive matter through increasingly complex organisms to the emergence of will creatures. This threefold ministry enables the progression from physical mechanisms capable of environmental response to teachable mind circuits and ultimately to spiritually receptive personalities.

The paper further examines the distinctive features of Urantia's evolutionary history, including the early appearance of human will in the Andonic race, the simultaneous emergence of the six colored races, and the planet's designation as a life-modification sphere where the Life Carriers successfully implemented twenty-eight beneficial adaptations to the standard Nebadon life patterns. Despite significant setbacks, notably the Caligastia rebellion and Adamic default, which impeded the original plans for human development, the Life Carriers express confidence in the inevitable evolutionary triumph of the human race. The revelation concludes by examining the relationship between evolutionary progress and the constraints of time and space, asserting that while physical, mental, and spiritual development proceed at varying rates determined by cosmic conditions, the attainment of survival values depends ultimately on individual choice and desire for perfection.

Basic evolutionary material life, premind life, is the formulation of the Master Physical Controllers and the life-impartation ministry of the Seven Master Spirits in conjunction with the active ministration of the ordained Life Carriers. As a result of the co-ordinate function of this threefold creativity, there develops organismal physical capacity for mind—material mechanisms for intelligent reaction to external environmental stimuli and, later on, to internal stimuli, influences taking origin in the organismal mind itself.

There are, then, three distinct levels of life production and evolution: the physical-energy domain that produces mind-capacity, the mind ministry of the adjutant spirits impinging upon spirit capacity, and the spirit endowment of mortal mind culminating in Thought Adjuster bestowal. The mechanical-nonteachable levels of organismal environmental response are the domains of the physical controllers, while the adjutant mind-spirits activate and regulate the adaptative or nonmechanical-teachable types of mind, those response mechanisms capable of learning from experience. The Life Carriers exercise considerable discretionary control over environmental aspects of evolutionary processes until the appearance of human will, defined as the ability to know God and choose to worship him. This integrated functioning of Life Carriers, physical controllers, and spirit adjutants conditions the course of organic evolution on inhabited worlds, ensuring that evolution is always purposeful and never accidental.

The Life Carriers possess extraordinary potentials of personality metamorphosis that few orders of celestial beings share. They can function in three diverse phases: the physical level of electrochemistry, their usual mid-phase of quasi-morontial existence, and an advanced semispiritual level. This versatility enables them to perform various specialized functions throughout the evolutionary process of a planet, adapting their form to match the requirements of each developmental stage.

When preparing for life implantation, Life Carriers summon an archangel commission consisting of ten orders of diverse personalities, including physical controllers. After proper encircuiting, these beings can modify the Life Carriers to function immediately on physical levels of electrochemistry. Once life patterns are formulated and material organizations completed, supermaterial forces activate life propagation, and the Life Carriers return to their normal mid-phase existence where they can manipulate living units but cannot create new patterns of living matter.

When free will of human type appears in the highest evolving organisms, Life Carriers must either leave the planet or take renunciation vows to refrain from further influencing organic evolution. Those who choose to remain as advisors undergo transmutation to the third phase of personality existence: the semispiritual level. The author reveals having functioned on Urantia in this third phase since the times of Andon and Fonta, while anticipating a possible fourth stage of wholly spiritual existence that has not yet been revealed to them.

The ascent of humanity from primitive marine life to terrestrial dominance represents an extraordinary saga of biological struggle and mental survival. The primordial ancestors of human beings originated literally from the slime and ooze of ancient ocean beds, where the Life Carriers established three independent life implantations on Urantia. These early marine environments hosted the critical transitions from vegetable to animal-like borderland organisms, exemplified by sponges, which served as intermediaries in this evolutionary progression.

The evolutionary pathway traversed numerous developmental stages, from bacteria and fungi through single-celled protozoan animals like the amoeba, then to community organisms such as the Volvox and jellyfish, followed by increasingly complex invertebrates. The appearance of the first backboned animals, fish, marked a crucial milestone, from which emerged amphibians, particularly the frog, that initiated the differentiations ultimately culminating in human beings. The reptilian descendants of amphibians gave rise to birds and mammals, with the human race evolving from higher mammals derived from the western implantation of life. These ancestors migrated from North America across the Bering land bridge to southwestern Asia, where they continued to evolve and benefit from certain central life strains. The emergence of primitive humans during the ice age was deliberately timed, as the rigors of glacial conditions fostered the production of a hardy human type with tremendous survival endowment.

The seemingly strange occurrences in early evolutionary progress followed a purposeful plan, though many aspects would appear grotesque or incomprehensible to modern human observers. The Life Carriers operate under specific constraints: they may employ every possible natural resource and utilize fortuitous circumstances to enhance developmental progress, but they are prohibited from mechanical intervention or arbitrary manipulation of plant or animal evolution once life patterns are established.

The Life Carriers maintained multiple contingency plans to ensure evolutionary progression would continue even if primary developmental pathways failed. For instance, when a critical ancestral frog that carried potential human developmental genes nearly faced extinction, the Life Carriers were simultaneously fostering a thousand different mutating strains of life that could have been directed toward pre-human development. Similarly, even had Andon and Fonta perished before producing offspring, evolution would have proceeded through one of seven thousand favorable strains capable of achieving human-type development.

The exhaustion of human potentials in animal life is signaled by the third phase of adjutant spirit mobilization, which occurs automatically when animal life can no longer give origin to mutant potentials of pre-human individuals. Following this marker, mankind must solve its developmental problems with existing human stocks, as no new races will evolve from pre-human sources. The intelligent fostering of evolutionary potentials now rests with humanity itself, as scientific intelligence must eventually supersede uncontrolled natural selection and chance survival.

Urantia was designated as a life-experiment world where the Life Carriers made their sixtieth attempt to modify and improve the Satania adaptation of Nebadon life designs. This endeavor resulted in twenty-eight beneficial modifications that will serve throughout Nebadon in all future time. However, the establishment of life on any world is never experimental in the sense of attempting untried patterns; evolution follows a progressive, differential, and variable technique that is never haphazard or uncontrolled in the accidental sense.

Numerous features of human existence demonstrate intelligent planning rather than cosmic accident. A prime example is cellular healing, where injured cells elaborate chemical substances that stimulate neighboring cells to secrete healing agents while simultaneously proliferating to replace damaged cells. This chemical action in wound healing represents one formula selected from over one hundred thousand possible chemical reactions and biological repercussions, tested through more than half a million specific experiments before implementation on Urantia.

The Urantia life experiment featured several unique characteristics, most notably the appearance of the Andonic race prior to the evolution of the six colored races, and the simultaneous emergence of the Sangik mutants in a single family rather than appearing sequentially over extended periods. Another variation was the delayed arrival of the Planetary Prince, who typically appears around the time of will development, but on Urantia arrived five hundred thousand years after Andon and Fonta, coinciding with the emergence of the six Sangik races.

The Life Carriers express profound regret that their efforts to modify intelligent life on Urantia were significantly handicapped by tragic circumstances beyond their control—specifically the Caligastia betrayal and the Adamic default. Their greatest disappointment stemmed from the unexpected reversion of certain primitive plant life to pre-chlorophyll levels of parasitic bacteria, which caused numerous diseases in higher mammals, particularly humans. The Life Carriers had anticipated that the subsequent admixture of Adamic life plasm would reinforce the resisting powers of the blended race against these vegetable-type organisms, but this hope was thwarted by the Adamic default.

Despite these significant setbacks, the Life Carriers recognize that the universe operates according to divine wisdom rather than to satisfy their convenience or curiosity. They acknowledge that the wise and powerful beings responsible for universe management understand their purposes perfectly, and it behooves both Life Carriers and mortal minds to practice patient cooperation with the rule of wisdom and the march of progress. They find consolation in certain compensations for these tribulations, such as Michael's bestowal on Urantia. Moreover, later celestial supervisors express complete confidence in the ultimate evolutionary triumph of the human race and the eventual vindication of the original plans and life patterns established for the planet.

Scientists confront a fundamental paradox when studying life processes: the impossibility of simultaneously determining both the exact location and velocity of a moving object. Similarly, they face an insurmountable challenge in analyzing protoplasm, as they must kill living material to study it, thereby altering its essential nature. Dead protoplasm maintains identical weight to its living counterpart but lacks the distinctive qualities that characterize life. Living organisms possess an inherent drive toward perfection, constantly striving to improve environmental adjustment, adaptation, and life realization.

The evolutionary trajectory of life demonstrates remarkable adaptations across species. In plants, the development of chlorophyll-making ability represented a crucial advancement, followed by the evolution from spores to complex seeds. Animals developed sophisticated mechanisms like the iron-based oxygen transport system in red blood cells, which efficiently carries oxygen to tissues while removing carbon dioxide. Some species employ alternative elements for this function. For example, cuttlefish use copper while sea squirts utilize vanadium.

Human dentition exemplifies ongoing evolution, having reduced from thirty-six teeth in remote ancestors to thirty-two in early humans, with a continuing trend toward twenty-eight. While many adaptations appear purely physical or chemical, the ascending scale of life reveals increasing influence of mind, which becomes progressively adjustive, creative, coordinative, and dominant, demonstrating that physics and chemistry alone cannot explain how human beings evolved from primeval protoplasm.

The seven adjutant mind-spirits function as versatile ministers to lower intelligent existences throughout the local universe, operating from the universe headquarters or connected worlds, with influential direction emanating from system capitals. These mind-spirits are crucial to evolutionary development on inhabited worlds, though they focus exclusively on mind evolution rather than physical development, which remains the domain of the Life Carriers.

The adjutants operate more as circuit-like entities than distinct personalities and experienced unusual difficulty contacting evolutionary organisms on Urantia due to the planet's unique life patterns. They do not interact with purely mechanical responses in organisms, which belong to the physical controllers, but begin functioning when living beings demonstrate the capacity to learn from experience. They operate progressively from the lowest minds to the highest human types, preparing organisms for spiritual receptivity.

Their ministry extends through six phases culminating in the spirit of worship, where overlapping occurs as higher spiritual influences coordinate with the lower in anticipation of advanced development. The seventh adjutant, the spirit of wisdom, completes this sequence. This spiritual assistance unfolds through gradual and reciprocal changes rather than abrupt transitions, creating distinct realms of physical, mental, and spiritual gravity that remain intimately interrelated despite their fundamental differences.

Time and space exist in an indissoluble relationship, with certain temporal delays becoming inevitable due to specific spatial conditions. The Life Carriers cannot accelerate evolutionary processes beyond the physical constraints of planetary development, making it necessary to align life advancement with geologic evolution. If physical conditions were more favorable, complete life evolution could occur in less than one million years rather than the extended periods typically required for full development.

Perspective on temporal progression varies dramatically depending on the observer's lifespan. To beings with limited temporal existence, evolution appears as an extraordinarily protracted process, whereas to those not constrained by finite lifespans, the same developments seem less extended. On Paradise, where time is nonexistent, evolutionary processes exist in the eternal present within the mind of Infinity. Mental evolution depends on physical development, while spiritual progress depends on mental expansion and is invariably delayed by intellectual limitations. However, spiritual evolution does not necessarily require education, culture, or wisdom.

The soul can evolve regardless of mental sophistication, provided there exists the capacity and desire to achieve increasing perfection and follow divine will. In cosmic evolutionary laboratories, mind dominates matter while spirit correlates with mind, but these endowments must synchronize for optimal development. When physical conditions are suitable, sudden mental evolutions can occur; when mental status is propitious, spiritual transformations become possible; and when spiritual values receive proper recognition, cosmic meanings become discernible, increasingly liberating the personality from temporal constraints and spatial limitations.