The Local System Headquarters

46:2.1On Je­ru­sem you will miss the rugged moun­tain ranges of Uran­tia and other evolved worlds since there are nei­ther earth­quakes nor rain­falls, but you will en­joy the beau­teous high­lands and other unique vari­a­tions of to­pog­ra­phy and land­scape. Enor­mous ar­eas of Je­ru­sem are pre­served in a “nat­u­ral state,” and the grandeur of such dis­tricts is quite be­yond the pow­ers of hu­man imag­i­na­tion.

46:2.2There are thou­sands upon thou­sands of small lakes but no rag­ing rivers nor ex­pan­sive oceans. There is no rain­fall, nei­ther storms nor bliz­zards, on any of the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds, but there is the daily pre­cip­i­ta­tion of the con­den­sa­tion of mois­ture dur­ing the time of low­est tem­per­a­ture at­tend­ing the light re­ces­sion. (The dew point is higher on a three-gas world than on a two-gas planet like Uran­tia.) The phys­i­cal plant life and the mor­ontia world of liv­ing things both re­quire mois­ture, but this is largely sup­plied by the sub­soil sys­tem of cir­cu­la­tion which ex­tends all over the sphere, even up to the very tops of the high­lands. This wa­ter sys­tem is not en­tirely sub­sur­face, for there are many canals in­ter­con­nect­ing the sparkling lakes of Je­ru­sem.

46:2.3The at­mo­sphere of Je­ru­sem is a three-gas mix­ture. This air is very sim­i­lar to that of Uran­tia with the ad­di­tion of a gas adapted to the res­pi­ra­tion of the mor­ontia or­der of life. This third gas in no way un­fits the air for the res­pi­ra­tion of an­i­mals or plants of the ma­te­rial or­ders.

46:2.4The trans­porta­tion sys­tem is al­lied with the cir­cu­la­tory streams of en­ergy move­ment, these main en­ergy cur­rents be­ing lo­cated at ten-mile in­ter­vals. By ad­just­ment of phys­i­cal mech­a­nisms the ma­te­rial be­ings of the planet can pro­ceed at a pace vary­ing from two to five hun­dred miles per hour. The trans­port birds fly at about one hun­dred miles an hour. The air mech­a­nisms of the Ma­te­rial Sons travel around five hun­dred miles per hour. Ma­te­rial and early mor­ontia be­ings must uti­lize these me­chan­i­cal means of trans­port, but spirit per­son­al­i­ties pro­ceed by li­ai­son with the su­pe­rior forces and spirit sources of en­ergy.

46:2.5Je­ru­sem and its as­so­ci­ated worlds are en­dowed with the ten stan­dard di­vi­sions of phys­i­cal life char­ac­ter­is­tic of the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres of Neb­a­don. And since there is no or­ganic evo­lu­tion on Je­ru­sem, there are no con­flict­ing forms of life, no strug­gle for ex­is­tence, no sur­vival of the fittest. Rather is there a cre­ative adap­ta­tion which fore­shad­ows the beauty, the har­mony, and the per­fec­tion of the eter­nal worlds of the cen­tral and di­vine uni­verse. And in all this cre­ative per­fec­tion there is the most amaz­ing in­ter­min­gling of phys­i­cal and of mor­ontia life, ar­tis­ti­cally con­trasted by the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans and their fel­lows.

46:2.6Je­ru­sem is in­deed a fore­taste of par­a­di­si­a­cal glory and grandeur. But you can never hope to gain an ad­e­quate idea of these glo­ri­ous ar­chi­tec­tural worlds by any at­tempted de­scrip­tion. There is so lit­tle that can be com­pared with aught on your world, and even then the things of Je­ru­sem so tran­scend the things of Uran­tia that the com­par­i­son is al­most grotesque. Un­til you ac­tu­ally ar­rive on Je­ru­sem, you can hardly en­ter­tain any­thing like a true con­cept of the heav­enly worlds, but that is not so long a time in the fu­ture when your com­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on the sys­tem cap­i­tal is com­pared with your some­time ar­rival on the more re­mote train­ing spheres of the uni­verse, the super­uni­verse, and Ha­vona.

46:2.7The man­u­fac­tur­ing or lab­o­ra­tory sec­tor of Je­ru­sem is an ex­ten­sive do­main, one which Uran­tians would hardly rec­og­nize since it has no smok­ing chim­neys; nev­er­the­less, there is an in­tri­cate ma­te­rial econ­omy as­so­ci­ated with these spe­cial worlds, and there is a per­fec­tion of me­chan­i­cal tech­nique and phys­i­cal achieve­ment which would as­ton­ish and even awe your most ex­pe­ri­enced chemists and in­ven­tors. Pause to con­sider that this first world of de­ten­tion in the Par­a­dise jour­ney is far more ma­te­rial than spir­i­tual. Through­out your stay on Je­ru­sem and its tran­si­tion worlds you are far nearer your earth life of ma­te­rial things than your later life of ad­vanc­ing spirit ex­is­tence.

46:2.8Mount Ser­aph is the high­est el­e­va­tion on Je­ru­sem, al­most fif­teen thou­sand feet, and is the point of de­par­ture for all trans­port ser­a­phim. Nu­mer­ous me­chan­i­cal de­vel­op­ments are used in pro­vid­ing ini­tial en­ergy for es­cap­ing the plan­e­tary grav­ity and over­com­ing the air re­sis­tance. A se­raphic trans­port de­parts ev­ery three sec­onds of Uran­tia time through­out the light pe­riod and, some­times, far into the re­ces­sion. The trans­port­ers take off at about twenty-five stan­dard miles per sec­ond of Uran­tia time and do not at­tain stan­dard ve­loc­ity un­til they are over two thou­sand miles away from Je­ru­sem.

46:2.9Trans­ports ar­rive on the crys­tal field, the so-called sea of glass. Around this area are the re­ceiv­ing sta­tions for the var­i­ous or­ders of be­ings who tra­verse space by se­raphic trans­port. Near the po­lar crys­tal re­ceiv­ing sta­tion for stu­dent vis­i­tors you may as­cend the pearly ob­ser­va­tory and view the im­mense re­lief map of the en­tire head­quar­ters planet.