The Local Universe Sons of God

35:3.1The Mel­chiz­e­deks oc­cupy a world of their own near Sal­ving­ton, the uni­verse head­quar­ters. This sphere, by name Mel­chiz­e­dek, is the pi­lot world of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit of sev­enty pri­mary spheres, each of which is en­cir­cled by six trib­u­tary spheres de­voted to spe­cial­ized ac­tiv­i­ties. These mar­velous spheres—sev­enty pri­maries and 420 trib­u­taries—are of­ten spo­ken of as the Mel­chiz­e­dek Uni­ver­sity. As­cend­ing mor­tals from all the con­stel­la­tions of Neb­a­don pass through train­ing on all 490 worlds in the ac­quire­ment of res­i­den­tial sta­tus on Sal­ving­ton. But the ed­u­ca­tion of as­cend­ers is only one phase of the man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place on the Sal­ving­ton clus­ter of ar­chi­tec­tural spheres.

35:3.2The 490 spheres of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit are di­vided into ten groups, each con­tain­ing seven pri­mary and forty-two trib­u­tary spheres. Each of these groups is un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of some one of the ma­jor or­ders of uni­verse life. The first group, em­brac­ing the pi­lot world and the next six pri­mary spheres in the en­cir­cling plan­e­tary pro­ces­sion, is un­der the super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks. These Mel­chiz­e­dek worlds are:

35:3.31. The pi­lot world—the home world of the Mel­chiz­e­dek Sons.

35:3.42. The world of the phys­i­cal-life schools and the lab­o­ra­to­ries of liv­ing en­er­gies.

35:3.53. The world of mor­ontia life.

35:3.64. The sphere of ini­tial spirit life.

35:3.75. The world of mid-spirit life.

35:3.86. The sphere of ad­vanc­ing spirit life.

35:3.97. The do­main of co-or­di­nate and su­preme self-re­al­iza­tion.

35:3.10The six trib­u­tary worlds of each of these Mel­chiz­e­dek spheres are de­voted to ac­tiv­i­ties ger­mane to the work of the as­so­ci­ated pri­mary sphere.

35:3.11The pi­lot world, the sphere Mel­chiz­e­dek, is the com­mon meet­ing ground for all be­ings who are en­gaged in ed­u­cat­ing and spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing the as­cend­ing mor­tals of time and space. To an as­cender this world is prob­a­bly the most in­ter­est­ing place in all Neb­a­don. All evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals who grad­u­ate from their con­stel­la­tion train­ing are des­tined to land on Mel­chiz­e­dek, where they are ini­ti­ated into the regime of the dis­ci­plines and spirit pro­gres­sion of the Sal­ving­ton ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem. And never will you for­get your re­ac­tions to the first day of life on this unique world, not even af­ter you have reached your Par­a­dise des­ti­na­tion.

35:3.12As­cend­ing mor­tals main­tain res­i­dence on the Mel­chiz­e­dek world while pur­su­ing their train­ing on the six en­cir­cling plan­ets of spe­cial­ized ed­u­ca­tion. And this same method is ad­hered to through­out their so­journ on the sev­enty cul­tural worlds, the pri­mary spheres of the Sal­ving­ton cir­cuit.

35:3.13Many di­verse ac­tiv­i­ties oc­cupy the time of the nu­mer­ous be­ings who re­side on the six trib­u­tary worlds of the Mel­chiz­e­dek sphere, but as con­cerns the as­cend­ing mor­tals, these satel­lites are de­voted to the fol­low­ing spe­cial phases of study:

35:3.141. Sphere num­ber one is oc­cu­pied with the re­view of the ini­tial plan­e­tary life of the as­cend­ing mor­tals. This work is car­ried on in classes com­posed of those who hail from a given world of mor­tal ori­gin. Those from Uran­tia pur­sue such an ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­view to­gether.

35:3.152. The spe­cial work of sphere num­ber two con­sists in a sim­i­lar re­view of the ex­pe­ri­ences passed through on the man­sion worlds en­cir­cling the pre­mier satel­lite of the lo­cal sys­tem head­quar­ters.

35:3.163. The re­views of this sphere per­tain to the so­journ on the cap­i­tal of the lo­cal sys­tem and em­brace the ac­tiv­i­ties of the re­main­der of the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds of the sys­tem head­quar­ters clus­ter.

35:3.174. The fourth sphere is oc­cu­pied with a re­view of the ex­pe­ri­ences of the sev­enty trib­u­tary worlds of the con­stel­la­tion and of their as­so­ci­ated spheres.

35:3.185. On the fifth sphere there is con­ducted the re­view of the as­cen­dant so­journ on the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters world.

35:3.196. The time on sphere num­ber six is de­voted to an at­tempt to cor­re­late these five epochs and thus achieve co-or­di­na­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence prepara­tory to en­ter­ing the Mel­chiz­e­dek pri­mary schools of uni­verse train­ing.

35:3.20The schools of uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion and spir­i­tual wis­dom are lo­cated on the Mel­chiz­e­dek home world, where also are to be found those schools de­voted to a sin­gle line of re­search, such as en­ergy, mat­ter, or­ga­ni­za­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, rec­ords, ethics, and com­par­a­tive crea­ture ex­is­tence.

35:3.21In the Mel­chiz­e­dek Col­lege of Spir­i­tual En­dow­ment all or­ders—even the Par­a­dise or­ders—of the Sons of God co-op­er­ate with the Mel­chiz­e­dek and the se­raphic teach­ers in train­ing the hosts who go forth as evan­gels of des­tiny, pro­claim­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty and di­vine son­ship even to the re­mote worlds of the uni­verse. This par­tic­u­lar school of the Mel­chiz­e­dek Uni­ver­sity is an ex­clu­sive uni­verse in­sti­tu­tion; stu­dent vis­i­tors are not re­ceived from other realms.

35:3.22The high­est course of train­ing in uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tion is given by the Mel­chiz­e­deks on their home world. This Col­lege of High Ethics is pre­sided over by the orig­i­nal Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek. It is to these schools that the var­i­ous uni­verses send ex­change stu­dents. While the young uni­verse of Neb­a­don stands low in the scale of uni­verses as re­gards spir­i­tual achieve­ment and high eth­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, nev­er­the­less, our ad­min­is­tra­tive trou­bles have so turned the whole uni­verse into a vast clinic for other near-by cre­ations that the Mel­chiz­e­dek col­leges are thronged with stu­dent vis­i­tors and ob­servers from other realms. Be­sides the im­mense group of lo­cal reg­is­trants there are al­ways up­ward of one hun­dred thou­sand for­eign stu­dents in at­ten­dance upon the Mel­chiz­e­dek schools, for the or­der of Mel­chiz­e­deks in Neb­a­don is renowned through­out all Splan­don.