Personalities of the Grand Universe

30:3.1The seven cour­tesy colonies so­journ on the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres for a longer or shorter time while en­gaged in the fur­ther­ance of their mis­sions and in the ex­e­cu­tion of their spe­cial as­sign­ments. Their work may be de­scribed as fol­lows:

30:3.21. The Star Stu­dents, the ce­les­tial as­tron­o­mers, choose to work on spheres like Uversa be­cause such spe­cially con­structed worlds are un­usu­ally fa­vor­able for their ob­ser­va­tions and cal­cu­la­tions. Uversa is fa­vor­ably sit­u­ated for the work of this colony, not only be­cause of its cen­tral lo­ca­tion, but also be­cause there are no gi­gan­tic liv­ing or dead suns near at hand to dis­turb the en­ergy cur­rents. These stu­dents are not in any man­ner or­gan­i­cally con­nected with the af­fairs of the super­uni­verse; they are merely guests.

30:3.3The as­tro­nom­i­cal colony of Uversa con­tains in­di­vid­u­als from many near-by realms, from the cen­tral uni­verse, and even from Nor­la­ti­adek. Any be­ing on any world in any sys­tem of any uni­verse may be­come a star stu­dent, may as­pire to join some corps of ce­les­tial as­tron­o­mers. The only req­ui­sites are: con­tin­u­ing life and suf­fi­cient knowl­edge of the worlds of space, es­pe­cially their phys­i­cal laws of evo­lu­tion and con­trol. Star stu­dents are not re­quired to serve eter­nally in this corps, but no one ad­mit­ted to this group may with­draw un­der one mil­len­nium of Uversa time.

30:3.4The star-ob­server colony of Uversa now num­bers over one mil­lion. These as­tron­o­mers come and go, though some re­main for com­par­a­tively long pe­ri­ods. They carry on their work with the aid of a mul­ti­tude of me­chan­i­cal in­stru­ments and phys­i­cal ap­pli­ances; they are also greatly as­sisted by the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers and other spirit ex­plor­ers. These ce­les­tial as­tron­o­mers make con­stant use of the liv­ing en­ergy trans­form­ers and trans­mit­ters, as well as of the re­flec­tive per­son­al­i­ties, in their work of star study and space sur­vey. They study all forms and phases of space ma­te­rial and en­ergy man­i­fes­ta­tions, and they are just as much in­ter­ested in force func­tion as in stel­lar phe­nom­ena; noth­ing in all space es­capes their scrutiny.

30:3.5Sim­i­lar as­tron­o­mer colonies are to be found on the sec­tor head­quar­ters worlds of the super­uni­verse as well as on the ar­chi­tec­tural cap­i­tals of the lo­cal uni­verses and their ad­min­is­tra­tive sub­di­vi­sions. Ex­cept on Par­a­dise, knowl­edge is not in­her­ent; un­der­stand­ing of the phys­i­cal uni­verse is largely de­pen­dent on ob­ser­va­tion and re­search.

30:3.62. The Ce­les­tial Ar­ti­sans serve through­out the seven super­uni­verses. As­cend­ing mor­tals have their ini­tial con­tact with these groups in the mor­ontia ca­reer of the lo­cal uni­verse in con­nec­tion with which these ar­ti­sans will be more fully dis­cussed.

30:3.73. The Re­ver­sion Di­rec­tors are the pro­mot­ers of re­lax­ation and hu­mor—re­ver­sion to past mem­o­ries. They are of great ser­vice in the prac­ti­cal op­er­a­tion of the as­cend­ing scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion, es­pe­cially dur­ing the ear­lier phases of mor­ontia tran­si­tion and spirit ex­pe­ri­ence. Their story be­longs to the nar­ra­tive of the mor­tal ca­reer in the lo­cal uni­verse.

30:3.84. Ex­ten­sion-School In­struc­tors. The next higher res­i­den­tial world of the as­cen­dant ca­reer al­ways main­tains a strong corps of teach­ers on the world just be­low, a sort of prepara­tory school for the pro­gress­ing res­i­dents of that sphere; this is a phase of the as­cen­dant scheme for ad­vanc­ing the pil­grims of time. These schools, their meth­ods of in­struc­tion and ex­am­i­na­tions, are wholly un­like any­thing which you es­say to con­duct on Uran­tia.

30:3.9The en­tire as­cen­dant plan of mor­tal pro­gres­sion is char­ac­ter­ized by the prac­tice of giv­ing out to other be­ings new truth and ex­pe­ri­ence just as soon as ac­quired. You work your way through the long school of Par­a­dise at­tain­ment by serv­ing as teach­ers to those pupils just be­hind you in the scale of pro­gres­sion.

30:3.105. The Var­i­ous Re­serve Corps. Vast re­serves of be­ings not un­der our im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion are mo­bi­lized on Uversa as the re­serve-corps colony. There are sev­enty pri­mary di­vi­sions of this colony on Uversa, and it is a lib­eral ed­u­ca­tion to be per­mit­ted to spend a sea­son with these ex­traor­di­nary per­son­al­i­ties. Sim­i­lar gen­eral re­serves are main­tained on Sal­ving­ton and other uni­verse cap­i­tals; they are dis­patched on ac­tive ser­vice on the req­ui­si­tion of their re­spec­tive group di­rec­tors.

30:3.116. The Stu­dent Vis­i­tors. From all the uni­verse a con­stant stream of ce­les­tial vis­i­tors pours through the var­i­ous head­quar­ters worlds. As in­di­vid­u­als and as classes these var­i­ous types of be­ings flock in upon us as ob­servers, ex­change pupils, and stu­dent helpers. On Uversa, at pres­ent, there are over one bil­lion per­sons in this cour­tesy colony. Some of these vis­i­tors may tarry a day, oth­ers may re­main a year, all de­pen­dent on the na­ture of their mis­sion. This colony con­tains al­most ev­ery class of uni­verse be­ings ex­cept Cre­ator per­son­al­i­ties and mor­ontia mor­tals.

30:3.12Mor­ontia mor­tals are stu­dent vis­i­tors only within the con­fines of the lo­cal uni­verse of their ori­gin. They may visit in a super­uni­verse ca­pac­ity only af­ter they have at­tained spirit sta­tus. Fully one half of our vis­i­tor colony con­sists of “stopovers,” be­ings en route else­where who pause to visit the Or­von­ton cap­i­tal. These per­son­al­i­ties may be ex­e­cut­ing a uni­verse as­sign­ment, or they may be en­joy­ing a pe­riod of leisure—free­dom from as­sign­ment. The priv­i­lege of in­trau­ni­verse travel and ob­ser­va­tion is a part of the ca­reer of all as­cend­ing be­ings. The hu­man de­sire to travel and ob­serve new peo­ples and worlds will be fully grat­i­fied dur­ing the long and event­ful climb to Par­a­dise through the lo­cal, su­per-, and cen­tral uni­verses.

30:3.137. The As­cend­ing Pil­grims. As the as­cend­ing pil­grims are as­signed to var­i­ous ser­vices in con­nec­tion with their Par­a­dise pro­gres­sion, they are domi­ciled as a cour­tesy colony on the var­i­ous head­quar­ters spheres. While func­tion­ing here and there through­out a super­uni­verse, such groups are largely self-gov­ern­ing. They are an ever-shift­ing colony em­brac­ing all or­ders of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals and their as­cend­ing as­so­ciates.