© 2023 Jean Lapierre
© 2023 Urantia Association of Quebec
Jean Lapierre
Bromont
¶ Introduction
The subject that is treated in this document is very delicate and many would have preferred that it not be the subject of the revelations of the Urantia Book. The revelators must have asked themselves this question but decided to include this subject which was very controversial for us at the time we received it. If they did it it was surely because it was very important and that it concerned our plan of ascension and growth.
Let us not forget that truth for us is relative because it is conditioned by space and time. What appears shocking to us today was not shocking a few thousand years ago and may not be shocking in any future but for other reasons. We live in a time where certain behaviors that we adopt may be considered naive and candor (angelism) by future generations.
¶ Evolution in the Grand Universe
The principle of evolution is the driving force behind the growth of finite reality in the Grand Universe. This evolutionary growth affects matter, mind and spirit.
These universes of time and space are all evolutionary. The creative plan of the Paradise Michaels always proceeds along the path of gradual evolvement and progressive development of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures and capacities of the manifold creatures who inhabit the varied orders of spheres comprising such a local universe. (UB 32:0.2)
Except in the central universe, perfection is a progressive attainment. In the central creation we have a pattern of perfection, but all other realms must attain that perfection by the methods established for the advancement of those particular worlds or universes. And an almost infinite variety characterizes the plans of the Creator Sons for organizing, evolving, disciplining, and settling their respective local universes. (UB 32:3.3)
Excepting perfect beings of Deity origin, all will creatures in the superuniverses are of evolutionary nature, beginning in lowly estate and climbing ever upward, in reality inward. Even highly spiritual personalities continue to ascend the scale of life by progressive translations from life to life and from sphere to sphere. And in the case of those who entertain the Mystery Monitors, there is indeed no limit to the possible heights of their spiritual ascent and universe attainment. (UB 32:3.8)
The fact of animal evolutionary origin does not attach stigma to any personality in the sight of the universe as that is the exclusive method of producing one of the two basic types of finite intelligent will creatures. When the heights of perfection and eternity are attained, all the more honor to those who began at the bottom and joyfully climbed the ladder of life, round by round, and who, when they do reach the heights of glory, will have gained a personal experience which embodies an actual knowledge of every phase of life from the bottom to the top. (UB 32:3.10)
So we know that man is subject to the evolutionary process. But how should he evolve physically, mentally and spiritually? This question is the subject of this presentation and we will answer it by drawing only the answers from The Urantia Book. We must put aside our prejudices and our beliefs but it is easy to imagine that the body, which houses the mind and the spirit, must evolve too, not only the mind and the spiritual side. Let us just think of this: if man could not evolve to become perfect on his planet, this planet could never anchor itself in the final stages of light and life.
¶ The Andonite race
If we quickly scan the excerpts from the Urantia Book relating to the evolution of Andonite humans from their very beginning to the origin of the colored races (all spanning approximately 500,000 years), we see their epic struggle first not to mix with the primates, from which they originated, and then with some of them who unfortunately mixed with them. It was therefore important not to weaken or degenerate the Andonite race. Moreover, the first wise decision that the first Andonite couple made was to go north to get away from the primates.
Imagine our joy one day—the twins were about ten years old—when the spirit of worship made its first contact with the mind of the female twin and shortly thereafter with the male. We knew that something closely akin to human mind was approaching culmination; and when, about a year later, they finally resolved, as a result of meditative thought and purposeful decision, to flee from home and journey north, then did the spirit of wisdom begin to function on Urantia and in these two now recognized human minds. (UB 62:6.5)
“To the Life Carriers on Urantia—Greetings! We transmit assurance of great pleasure on Salvington, Edentia, and Jerusem in honor of the registration on the headquarters of Nebadon of the signal of the existence on Urantia of mind of will dignity. The purposeful decision of the twins to flee northward and segregate their offspring from their inferior ancestors has been noted. This is the first decision of mind—the human type of mind—on Urantia and automatically establishes the circuit of communication over which this initial message of acknowledgment is transmitting.” (UB 62:7.3)
¶ Colored races
Around the same time Caligastia arrived on our planet the six colored races appeared.
And now, among these highland Badonites there was a new and strange occurrence. A man and woman living in the northeastern part of the then inhabited highland region began suddenly to produce a family of unusually intelligent children. This was the Sangik family, the ancestors of all of the six colored races of Urantia. (UB 64:5.2)
These Sangik children, nineteen in number, were not only intelligent above their fellows, but their skins manifested a unique tendency to turn various colors upon exposure to sunlight. Among these nineteen children were five red, two orange, four yellow, two green, four blue, and two indigo. (UB 64:5.3)
On an average evolutionary planet the six evolutionary races of color appear one by one; the red man is the first to evolve, and for ages he roams the world before the succeeding colored races make their appearance. The simultaneous emergence of all six races on Urantia, and in one family, was most unusual.
The appearance of the earlier Andonites on Urantia was also something new in Satania. On no other world in the local system has such a race of will creatures evolved in advance of the evolutionary races of color. (UB 64:6.1-2)
Here is a general comment made by a Lanonandeck Son:
The race of dominance during the early ages of the inhabited worlds is the red man, who ordinarily is the first to attain human levels of development. But while the red man is the senior race of the planets, the succeeding colored peoples begin to make their appearances very early in the age of mortal emergence.
The earlier races are somewhat superior to the later; the red man stands far above the indigo—black—race. The Life Carriers impart the full bestowal of the living energies to the initial or red race, and each succeeding evolutionary manifestation of a distinct group of mortals represents variation at the expense of the original endowment.
On those worlds having all six evolutionary races the superior peoples are the first, third, and fifth races—the red, the yellow, and the blue. (UB 51:4.1-3)
The evolutionary races thus alternate in their aptitude for intellectual growth and spiritual development, with the second, fourth and sixth being somewhat less well endowed.
Here, we might be touched or even shocked by the vocabulary used by the Son Lanonandeck in revealing these facts to us. He uses the words: superior peoples, less well endowed, etc. Perhaps we shouldn’t! Is this a human emotion that belongs to us at this stage of our evolution that will eventually disappear? I believe so because if we examine other excerpts that do not touch on races but still concern us:
The one physical uniformity of mortals is the brain and nervous system; nevertheless, there are three basic organizations of the brain mechanism: the one-, the two-, and the three-brained types. Urantians are of the two-brained type, somewhat more imaginative, adventurous, and philosophical than the one-brained mortals but somewhat less spiritual, ethical, and worshipful than the three-brained orders. (UB 49:5.13)
While the terrestrial attainments of the one-brained races are slightly limited in comparison with the two-brained orders, the older planets of the three-brained group exhibit civilizations that would astound Urantians, and which would somewhat shame yours by comparison. In mechanical development and material civilization, even in intellectual progress, the two-brained mortal worlds are able to equal the three-brained spheres. But in the higher control of mind and development of intellectual and spiritual reciprocation, you are somewhat inferior. (UB 49:5.15)
Here, even though the terms limited and higher are used by a Melchizedek Son, we can say that we do not feel emotionally affected or insulted. However, I think it is quite comparable. I think that the Lanonandeck Son who revealed these facts to us concerning the races simply wanted to inform us, that is to say to mention to us that some go further up the evolutionary ladder and that this is necessary and useful, otherwise the Life Carriers would not do it. I must say, however, that the vocabulary chosen could have been different and it would have arrived at a result that was just as informative but less disturbing.
¶ The improvement of ethnicities
So if all these races exist (or at least in ancestral lines, in more or less significant proportions), what can they be used for? A Life Bearer tells us:
There are many good and sufficient reasons for the plan of evolving either three or six colored races on the worlds of space. Though Urantia mortals may not be in a position fully to appreciate all of these reasons, we would call attention to the following:
Variety is indispensable to opportunity for the wide functioning of natural selection, differential survival of superior strains.
Stronger and better races are to be had from the interbreeding of diverse peoples when these different races are carriers of superior inheritance factors. And the Urantia races would have benefited by such an early amalgamation provided such a conjoint people could have been subsequently effectively upstepped by a thoroughgoing admixture with the superior Adamic stock. The attempt to execute such an experiment on Urantia under present racial conditions would be highly disastrous. (UB 64:6.30-32)
Homogeneity of the human race is not desirable until the peoples of an evolving world attain comparatively high levels of spiritual development. (UB 64:6.35)
We see that the reasons for the existence of these six races are, according to this revealer, good and sufficient but that this must be done cautiously before thinking about mixing the races: firstly to allow natural selection, the races must carry superior hereditary factors and finally the degree of spiritual development must be relatively high.
¶ A Son Lanonandeck mentions:
The evolution of six—or of three—colored races, while seeming to deteriorate the original endowment of the red man, provides certain very desirable variations in mortal types and affords an otherwise unattainable expression of diverse human potentials. These modifications are beneficial to the progress of mankind as a whole provided they are subsequently upstepped by the imported Adamic or violet race. On Urantia this usual plan of amalgamation was not extensively carried out, and this failure to execute the plan of race evolution makes it impossible for you to understand very much about the status of these peoples on an average inhabited planet by observing the remnants of these early races on your world. (UB 51:4.4)
A Mighty Messenger tells us about the man after the Planetary Prince on a normal planet:
The races are purified and brought up to a high state of physical perfection and intellectual strength before the end of this era. The early development of a normal world is greatly helped by the plan of promoting the increase of the higher types of mortals with proportionate curtailment of the lower. And it is the failure of your early peoples to thus discriminate between these types that accounts for the presence of so many defective and degenerate individuals among the present-day Urantia races. (UB 52:2.9)
The term purification here does not apply to races but to individuals of all races. In the post-Adamic era there is a continuation of purification:
This age usually witnesses the completion of the elimination of the unfit and the still further purification of the racial strains; on normal worlds the defective bestial tendencies are very nearly eliminated from the reproducing stocks of the realm. (UB 52:3.4)
The Adamic progeny never amalgamate with the inferior strains of the evolutionary races. (UB 52:3.5)
By the end of the Adamic dispensation on a normal planet the races are practically blended, so that it can be truly proclaimed that “God has made of one blood all the nations,” and that his Son “has made of one color all peoples.” The color of such an amalgamated race is somewhat of an olive shade of the violet hue, the racial “white” of the spheres. (UB 52:3.7)
During this era the problems of disease and delinquency are virtually solved. Degeneracy has already been largely eliminated by selective reproduction. Disease has been practically mastered through the high resistant qualities of the Adamic strains and by the intelligent and world-wide application of the discoveries of the physical sciences of preceding ages. The average length of life, during this period, climbs well above the equivalent of three hundred years of Urantia time. (UB 52:5.9)
We are informed that this purification continues unceasingly even during the successive ages of a planet where evolution occurs normally. Our planet has not followed this kind of evolution, because there was the rebellion of Lucifer and the fault of Adam and Eve (we did not have all the help expected from these two planetary administrations):
The great handicap confronting Urantia in the matter of attaining the high planetary destiny of light and life is embraced in the problems of disease, degeneracy, war, multicolored races, and multilingualism. (UB 55:3.21)
On a normal world the biologic fitness of the mortal race was long since brought up to a high level during the post-Adamic epochs; and now, from age to age throughout the settled eras the physical evolution of man continues. Both vision and hearing are extended. By now the population has become stationary in numbers. Reproduction is regulated in accordance with planetary requirements and innate hereditary endowments: The mortals on a planet during this age are divided into from five to ten groups, and the lower groups are permitted to produce only one half as many children as the higher. The continued improvement of such a magnificent race throughout the era of light and life is largely a matter of the selective reproduction of those racial strains which exhibit superior qualities of a social, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature. (UB 55:6.3)
2. The second stage of light and life. This epoch is signalized on the worlds by the arrival of a Life Carrier who becomes the volunteer adviser of the planetary rulers regarding the further efforts to purify and stabilize the mortal race. Thus do the Life Carriers actively participate in the further evolution of the human race—physically, socially, and economically. And then they extend their supervision to the further purification of the mortal stock by the drastic elimination of the retarded and persisting remnants of inferior potential of an intellectual, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature. Those who design and plant life on an inhabited world are fully competent to advise the Material Sons and Daughters, who have full and unquestioned authority to purge the evolving race of all detrimental influences. (UB 55:4.11)
¶ Dangers of not having action plans
What are the dangers to which we are exposed, according to the revelations? What should we do?
Democracy, while an ideal, is a product of civilization, not of evolution. Go slowly! select carefully! for the dangers of democracy are:
- Glorification of mediocrity.
- Choice of base and ignorant rulers.
- Failure to recognize the basic facts of social evolution.
- Danger of universal suffrage in the hands of uneducated and indolent majorities.
- Slavery to public opinion; the majority is not always right. (UB 71:2.1-6)
Religious experience is markedly influenced by physical health, inherited temperament, and social environment. . . . There are present in all normal mortals certain innate drives toward growth and self-realization which function if they are not specifically inhibited. (UB 100:1.6)
Originally, the seraphim were definitely assigned to the separate Urantia races. But since the bestowal of Michael, they are assigned in accordance with human intelligence, spirituality, and destiny. Intellectually, mankind is divided into three classes: (UB 113:1.2)
¶ The first class is this:
- The subnormal minded—those who do not exercise normal will power; those who do not make average decisions. This class embraces those who cannot comprehend God; they lack capacity for the intelligent worship of Deity. The subnormal beings of Urantia have a corps of seraphim, one company, with one battalion of cherubim, assigned to minister to them and to witness that justice and mercy are extended to them in the life struggles of the sphere. (UB 113:1.3)
¶ By a Mighty Messenger:
It is neither tenderness nor altruism to bestow futile sympathy upon degenerated human beings, unsalvable abnormal and inferior mortals. There exist on even the most normal of the evolutionary worlds sufficient differences between individuals and between numerous social groups to provide for the full exercise of all those noble traits of altruistic sentiment and unselfish mortal ministry without perpetuating the socially unfit and the morally degenerate strains of evolving humanity. There is abundant opportunity for the exercise of tolerance and the function of altruism in behalf of those unfortunate and needy individuals who have not irretrievably lost their moral heritage and forever destroyed their spiritual birthright. (UB 52:2.12)
An Archangel of Nebadon:
The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native stock eventually resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier and purer Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement, which was continuously weakened as their Andite inheritance became progressively attenuated. And this is what doomed the budding civilization of India almost twelve thousand years ago. But the infusion of even this small amount of the blood of Adam produced a marked acceleration in social development. This composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on earth. (UB 79:3.1)
For many thousands of years, so the records of Jerusem show, in each generation there have lived fewer and fewer beings who could function safely with self-acting Adjusters. This is an alarming picture, and the supervising personalities of Satania look with favor upon the proposals of some of your more immediate planetary supervisors who advocate the inauguration of measures designed to foster and conserve the higher spiritual types of the Urantia races. (UB 110:4.6)
According to the revelations of the Urantia Book, humans must seriously address this problem. They cannot continue to act as if it did not exist, they must provide their own solutions. Mistakes have been made in the past and this should not be an excuse for inaction. We should also not wait to have an ideal and perfect solution before starting. Let us remember that we are evolutionary beings and that we improve with experience. In the area of justice we act and we improve its application over time. If we had said to ourselves that before implementing a judicial system, that an ideal system would be necessary, we would not have yet started our system of judicial administration and it would be chaos.
What could then be the possible solutions according to The Urantia Book?
When a primary Sangik race amalgamates with a secondary Sangik race, the latter is considerably improved at the expense of the former. And on a small scale—extending over long periods of time—there can be little serious objection to such a sacrificial contribution by the primary races to the betterment of the secondary groups. Biologically considered, the secondary Sangiks were in some respects superior to the primary races. (UB 82:6.10)
Hybridization of superior and dissimilar stocks is the secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains. And this is true of plants, animals, and the human species. Hybridization augments vigor and increases fertility. Race mixtures of the average or superior strata of various peoples greatly increase creative potential, as is shown in the present population of the United States of North America. When such matings take place between the lower or inferior strata, creativity is diminished, as is shown by the present-day peoples of southern India.
Race blending greatly contributes to the sudden appearance of new characteristics, and if such hybridization is the union of superior strains, then these new characteristics will also be superior traits.
As long as present-day races are so overloaded with inferior and degenerate strains, race intermingling on a large scale would be most detrimental, but most of the objections to such experiments rest on social and cultural prejudices rather than on biological considerations. Even among inferior stocks, hybrids often are an improvement on their ancestors. Hybridization makes for species improvement because of the role of the dominant genes. Racial intermixture increases the likelihood of a larger number of the desirable dominants being present in the hybrid. (UB 82:6.5-7)
There are no pure races in the world today. The early and original evolutionary peoples of color have only two representative races persisting in the world, the yellow man and the black man; and even these two races are much admixed with the extinct colored peoples. While the so-called white race is predominantly descended from the ancient blue man, it is admixed more or less with all other races much as is the red man of the Americas. (UB 82:6.1)
Of the six colored Sangik races, three were primary and three were secondary. Though the primary races—blue, red, and yellow—were in many respects superior to the three secondary peoples, it should be remembered that these secondary races had many desirable traits which would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if their better strains could have been absorbed. (UB 82:6.2)
¶ On a neighboring planet:
The methods of this people in dealing with crime, insanity, and degeneracy, while in some ways pleasing, will, no doubt, in others prove shocking to most Urantians. Ordinary criminals and the defectives are placed, by sexes, in different agricultural colonies and are more than self-supporting. The more serious habitual criminals and the incurably insane are sentenced to death in the lethal gas chambers by the courts. Numerous crimes aside from murder, including betrayal of governmental trust, also carry the death penalty, and the visitation of justice is sure and swift. (UB 72:10.1)
Efforts to prevent the breeding of criminals and defectives were begun over one hundred years ago and have already yielded gratifying results. There are no prisons or hospitals for the insane. For one reason, there are only about ten per cent as many of these groups as are found on Urantia. (UB 72:10.3)
The feeble-minded are trained only in agriculture and animal husbandry, and are committed for life to special custodial colonies where they are segregated by sex to prevent parenthood, which is denied all subnormals. These restrictive measures have been in operation for seventy-five years; the commitment decrees are handed down by the parental courts. (UB 72:4.2)
If the present-day races of Urantia could be freed from the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated, antisocial, feeble-minded, and outcast specimens, there would be little objection to a limited race amalgamation. And if such racial mixtures could take place between the highest types of the several races, still less objection could be offered. (UB 82:6.4)
Present-day prejudice against “half-castes,” “hybrids,” and “mongrels” arises because modern racial crossbreeding is, for the greater part, between the grossly inferior strains of the races concerned. You also get unsatisfactory offspring when the degenerate strains of the same race intermarry. (UB 82:6.3)
After all, the real jeopardy of the human species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples rather than in any supposed danger of their racial interbreeding. (UB 82:6.11)
¶ Conclusion and what to understand in all this according to these revelations?
- There are not so many inferior races as inferior individuals in all races (they have become so by accident or in other ways).
- The red race is a race which contains in its fullness the living energies (a general race).
- The other races represent a genetic manifestation of a distinct human group mainly and this becomes, so to speak, a specialization in relation to the red race (the other races are therefore more specialized in a few areas);
- In the evolutionary context, such genetic specialty of a race (or an already mixed group) takes on relative importance in time and space only;
- Ideally, the long road to a mixed and unified race should follow a fairly precise algorithm (process) in time (we should have been assisted in this by the Planetary Prince administration and by the Adamic administration). Unfortunately, this is our entire responsibility now.
- Let us also remember that we have not benefited much from the purple blood supply that the biological uplifters had planned for us, but Jesus has shown us the way.
We understand well that our physical origin is animal and that the selection of individuals is important for reproduction. The important thing is to start cautiously of course but with gentle ways that would produce positive results, which would improve the physical body consequently allowing the mind to function better and leading it to harmonize more with the spirit that inhabits it.
Now here is what The Urantia Book tells us about Jesus’ earthly parents, which demonstrates in my opinion that to accomplish his mission, Jesus knew he needed a healthy body:
. . . Gabriel, Michael finally chose Urantia as the planet whereon to enact his final bestowal. Subsequent to this decision Gabriel made a personal visit to Urantia, and, as a result of his study of human groups and his survey of the spiritual, intellectual, racial, and geographic features of the world and its peoples, he decided that the Hebrews possessed those relative advantages which warranted their selection as the bestowal race. Upon Michael’s approval of this decision, Gabriel appointed and dispatched to Urantia the Family Commission of Twelve—selected from among the higher orders of universe personalities—which was intrusted with the task of making an investigation of Jewish family life. When this commission ended its labors, Gabriel was present on Urantia and received the report nominating three prospective unions as being, in the opinion of the commission, equally favorable as bestowal families for Michael’s projected incarnation. (UB 122:0.2)
From the three couples nominated, Gabriel made the personal choice of Joseph and Mary, subsequently making his personal appearance to Mary, at which time he imparted to her the glad tidings that she had been selected to become the earth mother of the bestowal child. (UB 122:0.3)
Joseph, the human father of Jesus (Joshua ben Joseph), was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, albeit he carried many non-Jewish racial strains which had been added to his ancestral tree from time to time by the female lines of his progenitors. The ancestry of the father of Jesus went back to the days of Abraham and through this venerable patriarch to the earlier lines of inheritance leading to the Sumerians and Nodites and, through the southern tribes of the ancient blue man, to Andon and Fonta. (UB 122:1.1)
Mary, the earth mother of Jesus, was a descendant of a long line of unique ancestors embracing many of the most remarkable women in the racial history of Urantia. Although Mary was an average woman of her day and generation, possessing a fairly normal temperament, she reckoned among her ancestors such well-known women as Annon, Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, Ansie, Cloa, Eve, Enta, and Ratta. No Jewish woman of that day had a more illustrious lineage of common progenitors or one extending back to more auspicious beginnings. Mary’s ancestry, like Joseph’s, was characterized by the predominance of strong but average individuals, relieved now and then by numerous outstanding personalities in the march of civilization and the progressive evolution of religion. Racially considered, it is hardly proper to regard Mary as a Jewess. In culture and belief she was a Jew, but in hereditary endowment she was more a composite of Syrian, Hittite, Phoenician, Greek, and Egyptian stocks, her racial inheritance being more general than that of Joseph. (UB 122:1.2)
Of all couples living in Palestine at about the time of Michael’s projected bestowal, Joseph and Mary possessed the most ideal combination of widespread racial connections and superior average of personality endowments. It was the plan of Michael to appear on earth as an average man, that the common people might understand him and receive him; wherefore Gabriel selected just such persons as Joseph and Mary to become the bestowal parents. (UB 122:1.3)
In the booklet of the planetary government of the Seraphim it is stated that the seraphic masters of planetary supervision operate on Urantia in twelve corps, one of which deals with the races:
- The angels of the races. Those who work for the conservation of the evolutionary races of time, regardless of their political entanglements and religious groupings. On Urantia there are remnants of nine human races which have commingled and combined into the people of modern times. These seraphim are closely associated with the ministry of the race commissioners, and the group now on Urantia is the original corps assigned to the planet soon after the day of Pentecost. (UB 114:6.9)
Now here is what a Mighty Messenger reveals to us concerning a type of tertiary seconaphim working at the headquarters of the superuniverse, those of the Original Meaning:
- The Significance of Origins. The ascendant Trinitized Sons of a superuniverse government are charged with the responsibility of dealing with all issues growing out of the origin of any individual, race, or world; and the significance of origin is the paramount question in all our plans for the cosmic advancement of the living creatures of the realm. All relationships and the application of ethics grow out of the fundamental facts of origin. Origin is the basis of the relational reaction of the Gods. Always does the Conjoint Actor “take note of the man, in what manner he was born.”
With the higher descendant beings, origin is simply a fact to be ascertained; but with the ascending beings, including the lower orders of angels, the nature and circumstances of origin are not always so clear, though of equally vital importance at almost every turn of universe affairs—hence the value of having at our disposal a series of reflective seconaphim who can instantly portray anything required respecting the genesis of any being in either the central universe or throughout the entire realm of a superuniverse.
The Significances of Origins are the living ready-reference genealogies of the vast hosts of beings—men, angels, and others—who inhabit the seven superuniverses. They are always ready to supply their superiors with an up-to-date, replete, and trustworthy estimate of the ancestral factors and the current actual status of any individual on any world of their respective superuniverses; and their computation of possessed facts is always up to the minute. (UB 28:6.2-4)
The least we can say is that the question of human evolution is not finished, that we have an important part to play in it and that it is one of the cornerstones of the teachings of the Urantia Book.