The Celestial Artisans

44:4.1These ar­ti­sans are de­voted to the preser­va­tion and re­pro­duc­tion of the su­pe­rior thought of the realms, and they func­tion in seven groups:

44:4.21. Thought pre­servers. These are the ar­ti­sans ded­i­cated to the preser­va­tion of the higher thought of the realms. On the mor­ontia worlds they truly trea­sure the gems of men­ta­tion. Be­fore first com­ing to Uran­tia, I saw rec­ords and heard broad­casts of the ide­a­tion of some of the great minds of this planet. Thought re­cord­ers pre­serve such no­ble ideas in the tongue of Uversa.

44:4.3Each super­uni­verse has its own lan­guage, a tongue spo­ken by its per­son­al­i­ties and pre­vail­ing through­out its sec­tors. This is known as the tongue of Uversa in our super­uni­verse. Each lo­cal uni­verse also has its own lan­guage. All of the higher or­ders of Neb­a­don are bilin­gual, speak­ing both the lan­guage of Neb­a­don and the tongue of Uversa. When two in­di­vid­u­als from dif­fer­ent lo­cal uni­verses meet, they com­mu­ni­cate in the tongue of Uversa; if, how­ever, one of them hails from an­other super­uni­verse, they must have re­course to a trans­la­tor. In the cen­tral uni­verse there is lit­tle need of a lan­guage; there ex­ists per­fect and well-nigh com­plete un­der­stand­ing; there, only the Gods are not fully com­pre­hended. We are taught that a chance meet­ing on Par­a­dise re­veals more of mu­tual un­der­stand­ing than could be com­mu­ni­cated by a mor­tal lan­guage in a thou­sand years. Even on Sal­ving­ton we “know as we are known.”

44:4.4The abil­ity to trans­late thought into lan­guage in the mor­ontia and spirit spheres is be­yond mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion. Our rate of re­duc­ing thought to a per­ma­nent rec­ord can be so speeded up by the ex­pert re­cord­ers that the equiv­a­lent of over half a mil­lion words, or thought sym­bols, can be reg­is­tered in one minute of Uran­tia time. These uni­verse lan­guages are far more re­plete than the speech of the evolv­ing worlds. The con­cept sym­bols of Uversa em­brace more than a bil­lion char­ac­ters, al­though the ba­sic al­pha­bet con­tains only sev­enty sym­bols. The lan­guage of Neb­a­don is not quite so elab­o­rate, the ba­sic sym­bols, or al­pha­bet, be­ing forty-eight in num­ber.

44:4.52. Con­cept re­cord­ers. This sec­ond group of re­cord­ers are con­cerned with the preser­va­tion of con­cept pic­tures, idea pat­terns. This is a form of per­ma­nent record­ing un­known on the ma­te­rial realms, and by this method I could gain more knowl­edge in one hour of your time than you could gain in one hun­dred years of pe­rus­ing or­di­nary writ­ten lan­guage.

44:4.63. Ideo­graph re­cord­ers. We have the equiv­a­lent of both your writ­ten and spo­ken word, but in pre­serv­ing thought, we usu­ally em­ploy con­cept pic­tur­iza­tion and ideo­graph tech­niques. Those who pre­serve ideographs are able to im­prove one thou­sand­fold upon the work of the con­cept re­cord­ers.

44:4.74. Pro­mot­ers of or­a­tory. This group of re­cord­ers are oc­cu­pied with the task of pre­serv­ing thought for re­pro­duc­tion by or­a­tory. But in the lan­guage of Neb­a­don we could, in a half hour’s ad­dress, cover the sub­ject mat­ter of the en­tire life­time of a Uran­tia mor­tal. Your only hope of com­pre­hend­ing these trans­ac­tions is to pause and con­sider the tech­nique of your dis­or­dered and gar­bled dream life—how you can in a few sec­onds tra­verse years of ex­pe­ri­ence in these fan­tasies of the night sea­son.

44:4.8The or­a­tory of the spirit world is one of the rare treats which await you who have heard only the crude and stum­bling ora­tions of Uran­tia. There is har­mony of mu­sic and eu­phony of ex­pres­sion in the ora­tions of Sal­ving­ton and Eden­tia which are in­spir­ing be­yond de­scrip­tion. These burn­ing con­cepts are like gems of beauty in di­adems of glory. But I can­not do it! I can­not con­vey to the hu­man mind the breadth and depth of these re­al­i­ties of an­other world!

44:4.95. The broad­cast di­rec­tors. The broad­casts of Par­a­dise, the super­uni­verses, and the lo­cal uni­verses are un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of this group of thought con­servers. They serve as cen­sors and ed­i­tors as well as co-or­di­na­tors of the broad­cast ma­te­rial, mak­ing a super­uni­verse adap­ta­tion of all Par­a­dise broad­casts and adapt­ing and trans­lat­ing the broad­casts of the An­cients of Days into the in­di­vid­ual tongues of the lo­cal uni­verses.

44:4.10The lo­cal uni­verse broad­casts must also be mod­i­fied for re­cep­tion by the sys­tems and the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets. The trans­mit­tal of these space re­ports is care­fully super­vised, and there is al­ways a back reg­istry to in­sure the proper re­cep­tion of ev­ery re­port on ev­ery world in a given cir­cuit. These broad­cast di­rec­tors are tech­ni­cally ex­pert in the uti­liza­tion of the cur­rents of space for all pur­poses of in­tel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

44:4.116. The rhythm re­cord­ers. Uran­tians would un­doubt­edly de­nom­i­nate these ar­ti­sans po­ets, al­though their work is very dif­fer­ent from, and al­most in­finitely tran­scends, your po­etic pro­duc­tions. Rhythm is less ex­haust­ing to both mor­ontia and spirit be­ings, and so an ef­fort is fre­quently made to in­crease ef­fi­ciency, as well as to aug­ment plea­sure, by ex­e­cut­ing nu­mer­ous func­tions in rhyth­mic form. I only wish you might be priv­i­leged to hear some of the po­etic broad­casts of the Eden­tia as­sem­blies and to en­joy the rich­ness of the color and tone of the con­stel­la­tion ge­niuses who are mas­ters of this ex­qui­site form of self-ex­pres­sion and so­cial har­mo­niza­tion.

44:4.127. The mor­ontia re­cord­ers. I am at a loss to know how to de­pict to the ma­te­rial mind the func­tion of this im­por­tant group of thought re­cord­ers as­signed to the work of pre­serv­ing the en­sem­ble pic­tures of the var­i­ous group­ings of mor­ontia af­fairs and spirit trans­ac­tions; crudely il­lus­trated, they are the group pho­tog­ra­phers of the tran­si­tion worlds. They save for the fu­ture the vi­tal scenes and as­so­ci­a­tions of these pro­gres­sive epochs, pre­serv­ing them in the ar­chives of the mor­ontia halls of rec­ords.