Personalities of the Local Universe

37:6.1The Neb­a­don ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem is jointly ad­min­is­tered by the Trin­ity Teacher Sons and the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing corps, but much of the work de­signed to ef­fect its main­te­nance and up­build­ing is car­ried on by the Ce­les­tial Over­seers. These be­ings are a re­cruited corps em­brac­ing all types of in­di­vid­u­als con­nected with the scheme of ed­u­cat­ing and train­ing the as­cend­ing mor­tals. There are up­ward of three mil­lion of them in Neb­a­don, and they are all vol­un­teers who have qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to serve as ed­u­ca­tional ad­vis­ers to the en­tire realm. From their head­quar­ters on the Sal­ving­ton worlds of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, these over­seers range the lo­cal uni­verse as in­spec­tors of the Neb­a­don school tech­nique de­signed to ef­fect the mind train­ing and the spirit ed­u­ca­tion of the as­cend­ing crea­tures.

37:6.2This train­ing of mind and ed­u­ca­tion of spirit is car­ried on from the worlds of hu­man ori­gin up through the sys­tem man­sion worlds and the other spheres of prog­ress as­so­ci­ated with Je­ru­sem, on the sev­enty so­cial­iz­ing realms at­tached to Eden­tia, and on the four hun­dred and ninety spheres of spirit prog­ress en­cir­cling Sal­ving­ton. On the uni­verse head­quar­ters it­self are nu­mer­ous Mel­chiz­e­dek schools, the col­leges of the Uni­verse Sons, the se­raphic uni­ver­si­ties, and the schools of the Teacher Sons and the Union of Days. Ev­ery pos­si­ble pro­vi­sion is made to qual­ify the var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verse for ad­vanc­ing ser­vice and im­prov­ing func­tion. The en­tire uni­verse is one vast school.

37:6.3The meth­ods em­ployed in many of the higher schools are be­yond the hu­man con­cept of the art of teach­ing truth, but this is the keynote of the whole ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem: char­ac­ter ac­quired by en­light­ened ex­pe­ri­ence. The teach­ers pro­vide the en­light­en­ment; the uni­verse sta­tion and the as­cender’s sta­tus af­ford the op­por­tu­nity for ex­pe­ri­ence; the wise uti­liza­tion of these two aug­ments char­ac­ter.

37:6.4Fun­da­men­tally, the Neb­a­don ed­u­ca­tional sys­tem pro­vides for your as­sign­ment to a task and then af­fords you op­por­tu­nity to re­ceive in­struc­tion as to the ideal and di­vine method of best per­form­ing that task. You are given a def­i­nite task to per­form, and at the same time you are pro­vided with teach­ers who are qual­i­fied to in­struct you in the best method of ex­e­cut­ing your as­sign­ment. The di­vine plan of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vides for the in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion of work and in­struc­tion. We teach you how best to ex­e­cute the things we com­mand you to do.

37:6.5The pur­pose of all this train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence is to pre­pare you for ad­mis­sion to the higher and more spir­i­tual train­ing spheres of the super­uni­verse. Prog­ress within a given realm is in­di­vid­ual, but tran­si­tion from one phase to an­other is usu­ally by classes.

37:6.6The pro­gres­sion of eter­nity does not con­sist solely in spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In­tel­lec­tual ac­qui­si­tion is also a part of uni­ver­sal ed­u­ca­tion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of the mind is broad­ened equally with the ex­pan­sion of the spir­i­tual hori­zon. Mind and spirit are af­forded like op­por­tu­ni­ties for train­ing and ad­vance­ment. But in all this su­perb train­ing of mind and spirit you are for­ever free from the hand­i­caps of mor­tal flesh. No longer must you con­stantly ref­eree the con­flict­ing con­tentions of your di­ver­gent spir­i­tual and ma­te­rial na­tures. At last you are qual­i­fied to en­joy the uni­fied urge of a glo­ri­fied mind long since di­vested of prim­i­tive an­i­mal­is­tic trends to­wards things ma­te­rial.

37:6.7Be­fore leav­ing the uni­verse of Neb­a­don, most Uran­tia mor­tals will be af­forded op­por­tu­nity to serve for a longer or shorter time as mem­bers of the Neb­a­don corps of Ce­les­tial Over­seers.