The Solitary Messengers

23:3.1The Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are the high­est type of per­fect and con­fi­den­tial per­son­al­ity avail­able in all realms for the quick trans­mis­sion of im­por­tant and ur­gent mes­sages when it is in­ex­pe­di­ent to uti­lize ei­ther the broad­cast ser­vice or the re­flec­tiv­ity mech­a­nism. They serve in an end­less va­ri­ety of as­sign­ments, help­ing out the spir­i­tual and ma­te­rial be­ings of the realms, par­tic­u­larly where the el­e­ment of time is in­volved. Of all or­ders as­signed to the ser­vices of the super­uni­verse do­mains, they are the high­est and most ver­sa­tile per­son­al­ized be­ings who can come so near to de­fy­ing time and space.

23:3.2The uni­verse is well sup­plied with spir­its who uti­lize grav­ity for pur­poses of tran­sit; they can go any­where any time—in­stan­ter—but they are not per­sons. Cer­tain other grav­ity tra­versers are per­sonal be­ings, such as Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers and Tran­scen­den­tal Re­cord­ers, but they are not avail­able to the su­per- and the lo­cal uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tors. The worlds teem with an­gels and men and other highly per­sonal be­ings, but they are hand­i­capped by time and space: The limit of ve­loc­ity for most nonenseraphimed be­ings is 186,280 miles of your world per sec­ond of your time; the mid­way crea­tures and cer­tain oth­ers can, of­ten do, at­tain dou­ble ve­loc­ity—372,560 miles per sec­ond—while the ser­a­phim and oth­ers can tra­verse space at triple ve­loc­ity, about 558,840 miles per sec­ond. There are, how­ever, no tran­sit or mes­sen­ger per­son­al­i­ties who func­tion be­tween the in­stan­ta­neous ve­loc­i­ties of the grav­ity tra­versers and the com­par­a­tively slow speeds of the ser­a­phim, ex­cept the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers.

23:3.3Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are, there­fore, gen­er­ally used for dis­patch and ser­vice in those sit­u­a­tions where per­son­al­ity is es­sen­tial to the achieve­ment of the as­sign­ment, and where it is de­sired to avoid the loss of time which would be oc­ca­sioned by the send­ing of any other read­ily avail­able type of per­sonal mes­sen­ger. They are the only def­i­nitely per­son­al­ized be­ings who can syn­chro­nize with the com­bined uni­ver­sal cur­rents of the grand uni­verse. Their ve­loc­ity in travers­ing space is vari­able, de­pend­ing on a great va­ri­ety of in­ter­fer­ing in­flu­ences, but the rec­ord shows that on the jour­ney to ful­fill this mis­sion my as­so­ciate mes­sen­ger pro­ceeded at the rate of 841,621,642,000 of your miles per sec­ond of your time.

23:3.4It is wholly be­yond my abil­ity to ex­plain to the ma­te­rial type of mind how a spirit can be a real per­son and at the same time tra­verse space at such tremen­dous ve­loc­i­ties. But these very Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers ac­tu­ally come to, and go from, Uran­tia at these in­com­pre­hen­si­ble speeds; in­deed, the whole econ­omy of uni­ver­sal ad­min­is­tra­tion would be largely de­prived of its per­sonal el­e­ment were this not a fact.

23:3.5The Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are able to func­tion as emer­gency lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion through­out re­mote space re­gions, realms not em­braced within the es­tab­lished cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse. It de­vel­ops that one mes­sen­ger, when so func­tion­ing, can trans­mit a mes­sage or send an im­pulse through space to a fel­low mes­sen­ger about one hun­dred light-years away as Uran­tia as­tron­o­mers es­ti­mate stel­lar dis­tances.

23:3.6Of the myr­i­ads of be­ings who co-op­er­ate with us in the con­duct of the af­fairs of the super­uni­verse, none are more im­por­tant in prac­ti­cal help­ful­ness and time­sav­ing as­sis­tance. In the uni­verses of space we must reckon with the hand­i­caps of time; hence the great ser­vice of the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers, who, by means of their per­sonal pre­rog­a­tives of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, are some­what in­de­pen­dent of space and, by virtue of their tremen­dous tran­sit ve­loc­i­ties, are so nearly in­de­pen­dent of time.

23:3.7I am at a loss to ex­plain to Uran­tia mor­tals how the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers can be with­out form and yet pos­sess real and def­i­nite per­son­al­i­ties. Al­though they are with­out that form which would nat­u­rally be as­so­ci­ated with per­son­al­ity, they do pos­sess a spirit pres­ence which is dis­cern­i­ble by all higher types of spirit be­ings. The Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are the only class of be­ings who seem to be pos­sessed of well-nigh all the ad­van­tages of a form­less spirit cou­pled with all the pre­rog­a­tives of a full-fledged per­son­al­ity. They are true per­sons, yet en­dowed with nearly all of the at­tri­butes of im­per­sonal spirit man­i­fes­ta­tion.

23:3.8In the seven super­uni­verses, or­di­nar­ily—but not al­ways—ev­ery­thing which tends to in­crease any crea­ture’s lib­er­a­tion from the hand­i­caps of time and space pro­por­tion­ately di­min­ishes per­son­al­ity pre­rog­a­tives. Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are an ex­cep­tion to this gen­eral law. They are in their ac­tiv­i­ties all but un­re­stricted in the uti­liza­tion of any and all of the lim­it­less av­enues of spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion, di­vine ser­vice, per­sonal min­istry, and cos­mic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. If you could view these ex­traor­di­nary be­ings in the light of my ex­pe­ri­ence in uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion, you would com­pre­hend how dif­fi­cult it would be to co-or­di­nate super­uni­verse af­fairs were it not for their ver­sa­tile co-op­er­a­tion.

23:3.9No mat­ter how much the uni­verse may en­large, no more Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers will prob­a­bly ever be cre­ated. As the uni­verses grow, the ex­panded work of ad­min­is­tra­tion must be in­creas­ingly borne by other types of spirit min­is­ters and by those be­ings who take ori­gin in these new cre­ations, such as the crea­tures of the Sov­er­eign Sons and the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spir­its.