© 2023 Jean Claude Romeuf
© 2023 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
John Claude Romeuf
Starting from the principle and a personal certainty that Life is the fruit of an original intention, of a planned mental thought, I cannot consider a concept in which Life would be the fruit of chance.
As far back as I can remember, the existence of God has always been obvious to me. I don’t know if it was good or bad luck, but in any case, I never doubted the reality of an Original Creator. So much so that before the age of twenty, I considered that anyone who claimed not to believe in God was a liar.
When I first held in my hands the translation of the Urantia Papers by Jacques Weiss, I immediately understood that these writings would never leave me and that they would remain my bedside book.
I should have done my research on the American text from the start, but having always been lazy about familiarizing myself with this language, my understanding of the French content could only really explode when the correction of the fascicles saw the light of day with the new single-volume version of the Urantia Book.
I drew from it the best values of my knowledge, of my philosophy and I found there new bases capable of satisfying my curiosity and of making progress, without me really being aware of it, in my spirituality.
When I arrive in the first world of houses, if I don’t want my French teacher to give me, as usual, a mark of 7/20 for this essay whose theme is “Life”, I must not stray too far from my subject.
Life is as simple as hello when you know where it comes from, when you know why you live and when you have the capacity to let yourself be guided by the star that penetrates everyone’s heart.
It delights me to live, despite all that the creatures of the human species must endure to pay the price of the experience acquired and necessary to ensure mental and spiritual progression. Because, I know that where I am going, I will live new adventures much more interesting than those that I will have lived on earth. Although my body and my mind are sometimes put to the test, there always persists deep inside me, a peace in security and an inner joy that no one can take away from me.
The insight into the future offered to me in The Urantia Book encourages me each morning to rejoice in the light of day and move forward.
Human life takes three aspects:
- Spiritual life, source of the Spirit,
- The mental or median life, source of morontia and the soul,
- Material or physical life, basis of progressive experience, fundamental foundations of the castle we are preparing to build.
When a planet has been chosen by a Creator Son and a Divine Mother, the goal of Life is to make beings appear there through evolution who are capable of searching for and finding God. The only being who can truly change his envelope, metamorphose, is Man!
Starting from almost nothing, from a few plant cells placed in a culture medium, the game that will last hundreds of millions of years, will consist initially in preparing the garden that will welcome in the future, a couple of human beings capable of making choices. The dice are in the hands of the Carriers of Life who will initially operate on “the physical level of electrochemistry” UB 65:1.3
Material or physical life differentiated itself at the dawn of planetary time:
- In plant life
- In intermediate life, neither completely plant nor completely animal
- In animal life
Creation was thought of and planned by the Original Deity, but being distributive of itself (page 2 of the introduction), the Deity allows each Being who comes from it to become Creator.
Here on Urantia the breath of life is divinely redistributed by the Divine Minister, mother of the local universe.
It is the Carriers of Life who organized the implantation of Life and programmed the development of different living organisms.
Under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Chiefs of Paradise who have the unfortunate habit of never being in a hurry because in Paradise time does not exist, they have chosen the model of life, which on Urantia, is a sodium chloride model. Before implanting Life, it was therefore necessary to wait until the waters were sufficiently salty, that is to say it was necessary to wait between three and four hundred million years after the covering of the earth’s crust by the primordial ocean, whereas with favorable physical conditions, the Life Carriers could complete the complete evolution in much less than a million years. (UB 65:8)
When the salinity level was suitable, they established life in three shallow inland seas on the planet. The reason is obvious because before animals appeared, light had to be able to allow plants to develop in order to ensure photosynthesis and the production of oxygen.
It is only from this moment that the mind made its appearance on earth. As they evolve, living beings need to increase their intelligence in order to survive in a hostile environment. Because new forms of life become possible, the mind must change accordingly. This is how need creates function!
We distinguish:
1º) The mind attributed to plants is called in The Urantia Book “unteachable mechanical mind”. Its ministry is ensured by the Master Physical Controllers. It is the mind of the most primitive creatures. The plant, even the most complex, is not conscious of its life. It is devoid of experimentation, its mind is mechanical.
The mechanical mind is not only useful to plants. It is also necessary for man in the unconscious vegetative functions of his physiology: digestion, respiration and blood circulation as well as in all other functions of the internal organs subject to the influx of the tenth pair of cranial nerves. Blinking is involuntary; a sudden surge of adrenaline for whatever reason is also involuntary.
2º) The non-mechanical teachable mind allows animals to learn through experience. It is represented by the seven adjutant mental spirits which are energy circuits distributed by the Divine Minister.
The Life Carriers have the ability to influence the surrounding environment of living organisms, without it being possible for them to influence geology. Through their coordination with the physical controllers and the adjutant mental spirits, they condition the course of bio-organic evolution.
The establishment of life in the shallow seas took place on three continents, very different from what they are today. One sea was located in North America, the other west of the Himalayan highlands and the third in Asia. They were completely isolated from each other by impassable physical barriers.
Life began in the mud and silt of warm, stagnant lagoons. It was probably necessary to first make appear the chemical elements necessary for the production of the twenty amino acids essential for the synthesis of proteins that build the organs. It was necessary for the nucleotides to be made available and to develop inside the simplest organisms (probably viruses), so that the first cells could phagocytize them (probably bacteria) and thus recover the nucleotides necessary for the development of life.
It was then that the first cells appeared because DNA could, thanks to its four nucleotides: thymine, guanine, cytosine and adenine, form a spiral chain of nucleosides that was increasingly complex and specific to each species of living being: genetics had just begun!
It was necessary that in each species there be a means of recognition, it was necessary that a dog not give birth to a cat!
Allen Nutman/Université de Wallongong
This role of transmitting information was fulfilled by messenger RNA which possesses three of the nucleotides of DNA, but in which thymine is replaced by ancestral uracil.
Thanks to the fossil record, it is now estimated that life on Earth appeared in the oceans between 3.8 and 4.3 billion years ago. More recent, the conquest of the terrestrial environment by living organisms is however much less documented. And for good reason: sedimentary rocks - rocks in which fossils are found - are mainly formed in aquatic, marine or lacustrine environments. Recently, Martin Homann, from the Géosciences Océan laboratory in Brest, and his colleagues discovered colonies of fossil bacteria in continental sedimentary rocks aged 3.2 billion years. This discovery shows that the conquest of the terrestrial environment is much older than we imagined. .
To transmit the information, a half-molecule of RNA came to stick to a half-molecule of DNA. Even today, when the DNA has received and understood the information, the half-mRNA detaches itself. It is replaced by the corresponding half-molecule of DNA which has thymine in place of the uracil. Uracil does indeed have an amine radical, but it is a base. In no way could it have been part of the twenty amino acids which enter into the synthesis of proteins.
It is therefore impossible for an RNA molecule to replace a DNA molecule in the nucleus of the cell and for it to present a danger in the transmission of information. If we could use RNA in modern medicine, these drugs would be the least dangerous possible.
So I applauded a lot when the Covid-19 RNA vaccine appeared. Very quickly, I started laughing bitterly when certain doctors, who should have redone their preparatory year for medical studies, started to cause trouble in the population by evoking the harmful effects of RNA vaccination! I do not question the honesty of their approach, but by spreading crazy and false ideas, they have generated and are responsible for a mortality rate that the world could have done without! Peace to their souls!
I suppose that the first plant cells came together in colonies to form rudimentary marine plants which gradually differentiated into more developed organisms. With the movements of the earth’s crust, most of them ended up out of the water and adapted to develop into grasses, ferns and later trees.
Plants subject to the mechanical mind were sensitive to the surrounding environment like those of today: certain flowers open their petals during the day and close them at night; the sunflower turns its back to the sun. This orientation reaction subject to an external stimulus is completely foreign to the plant which depends on what the Carriers of Life wanted for it!
Should we think that the non-mechanical teachable mind appeared by a single mutation as in the creation of the colored races within the Sangik family?
Many intermediate living beings of which the sponge is the main survivor have seen the light of day. These living beings were neither plants nor animals. Without doubt, an incredible quantity of individuals of this type had to undergo a modification of the cellular genome, so that the intelligent mind appears and spreads over very large spaces.
I do not believe that a paramecium which is an animal cell, can be considered an animal, but that it resembles the amoeba which is the very type of single-cell animal organism having perpetuated itself almost without modification since the dawn of time. (UB 65:2.4) In reacting to the tropism of light, the paramecium does not demonstrate rapid perception by the gift of a primitive reflex instinct which is characteristic of the adjutant of intuition.
Yet it was the single-celled animal organisms resembling the amoeba and its cousins that suddenly gave rise to the seven adjutant mental spirits.
When they grouped together in colonies, these primordial animal organisms that are the first animal cells, formed rudimentary multicellular animals which, without mentioning them all, were comparable to the hydra and the jellyfish. Then it was the turn of oysters, sea urchins, insects, crustaceans, earthworms to come and take on their function.
Just because you arrive first doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the most intelligent. It’s not for nothing that The Urantia Book makes a list of these primitive and inferior animals, branches of the tree of life that failed to progress. (UB 65:2.5)
It can be said without any doubt that the dominant adjutant of their intelligent mind is the spirit of intuition responsible for rapid perception and primitive reflex instincts, the faculty of orientation and the instinct of self-preservation (a crab flees towards the sea and protects itself by pinching the aggressor).
The adjutant of intuition is the only one who can establish contact with the non-teachable levels of the non-mechanical mind (UB 36:5.5). We cannot know whether, by sinking into the earth when you try to make it come out, an earthworm obeys the spirit of intuition or the mechanical mind.
The seven mental spirits forming the non-mechanical mind arrive one after the other. They can be present at the same time in different forms of life, but their qualitative intensity can vary from one species to another and even from one individual to another. Everything depends on the degree of receptivity. I explain this by taking as an example, that men do not all have the same sensitivity to the mental spirits adjuncts of adoration and wisdom.
But I would especially like to draw attention to the fact that while intuition was developing abundantly, the spirit of understanding which allows rapid judgment, was trying to infiltrate the minds of species which physically seem more elaborate (perhaps crustaceans, insects).
Everything changes when fish appear. They represent the first vertebrates and therefore have a spinal cord.
This organ will allow better nervous transmission of reflexes thanks to the nerves that connect it to the brain. Equipped with this extension of the primitive nervous system, an exceptional modification of certain fish will result in the appearance of the frog and the salamander. These three species will develop the second adjutant mental spirit: understanding, to an appreciable degree without however resulting in an obvious change in their morphology.
All life forms we have seen so far have been stationary and even regressed!
It will be the same for the reptiles in whom the spirit of courage has undoubtedly been inaugurated.
Since the Book tells us: “Following the appearance of mammals, we saw the spirit of knowledge manifest itself to an increased extent. Then the evolution of higher mammals allowed the functioning of the spirit of advice. (UB 62:6.4)”, we can therefore deduce that the birds which were engendered by the dinosaurs possessed like them the adjutant of courage. Their mind was undoubtedly sensitized by the adjutant of knowledge, but to a very weak extent.
Reptiles have not had progressive evolutionary descent within their species: crocodiles, turtles, snakes and lizards are practically the same as in prehistoric times, they have not improved.
Despite this, the large dinosaurs were essential and played a major role, because they were the precursors giving rise to birds and mammals.
It is in the family of higher mammals, from the Primates that the adjutants of adoration and wisdom appeared. But these two spirits are not part of our dissertation because they make the link between material mental life and spiritual life. They are only useful if man intends to rise to the level of morontia.
Most living beings have developed without being sensitive to the two higher mental adjuncts.
With a little curiosity and observation, we can realize that each species redoes in a short time, during its gestation period, the long evolutionary cycle of its ancestors. The dragonfly for example, lays a fertilized egg in the water which quickly takes on the appearance of a worm, then of a small carnivorous crustacean which runs between the stones while hiding. Soon the chrysalis comes out of the water to dry itself in the sun. Soon freed from its cuticle, it flies in the middle of the air which surrounds it.
In thanks to nature:
Like a flower carried by the wind, It rises towards God in a zigzag motion.