The Morontia Life

48:3.1These hosts of the man­sion and mor­ontia worlds are the off­spring of a lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. They are cre­ated from age to age in groups of one hun­dred thou­sand, and in Neb­a­don there are at pres­ent over sev­enty bil­lion of these unique be­ings.

48:3.2Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions are trained for ser­vice by the Mel­chiz­e­deks on a spe­cial planet near Sal­ving­ton; they do not pass through the cen­tral Mel­chiz­e­dek schools. In ser­vice they range from the low­est man­sion worlds of the sys­tems to the high­est study spheres of Sal­ving­ton, but they are sel­dom en­coun­tered on the in­hab­ited worlds. They serve un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of the Sons of God and un­der the im­me­di­ate di­rec­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks.

48:3.3The Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions main­tain ten thou­sand head­quar­ters in a lo­cal uni­verse—on each of the first man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tems. They are al­most wholly a self-gov­ern­ing or­der and are, in gen­eral, an in­tel­li­gent and loyal group of be­ings; but ev­ery now and then, in con­nec­tion with cer­tain un­for­tu­nate ce­les­tial up­heavals, they have been known to go astray. Thou­sands of these use­ful crea­tures were lost dur­ing the times of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion in Sa­ta­nia. Your lo­cal sys­tem now has its full quota of these be­ings, the loss of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion hav­ing only re­cently been made up.

48:3.4There are two dis­tinct types of Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions; one type is ag­gres­sive, the other re­tir­ing, but oth­er­wise they are equal in sta­tus. They are not sex crea­tures, but they man­i­fest a touch­ingly beau­ti­ful af­fec­tion for one an­other. And while they are hardly com­pan­ion­ate in the ma­te­rial (hu­man) sense, they are very close of kin to the hu­man races in the or­der of crea­ture ex­is­tence. The mid­way crea­tures of the worlds are your near­est of kin; then come the mor­ontia cheru­bim, and af­ter them the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions.

48:3.5These com­pan­ions are touch­ingly af­fec­tion­ate and charm­ingly so­cial be­ings. They pos­sess dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties, and when you meet them on the man­sion worlds, af­ter learn­ing to rec­og­nize them as a class, you will soon dis­cern their in­di­vid­u­al­ity. Mor­tals all re­sem­ble one an­other; at the same time each of you pos­sesses a dis­tinct and rec­og­niz­able per­son­al­ity.

48:3.6Some­thing of an idea of the na­ture of the work of these Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions may be de­rived from the fol­low­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tion of their ac­tiv­i­ties in a lo­cal sys­tem:

48:3.71. Pil­grim Guard­i­ans are not as­signed to spe­cific du­ties in their as­so­ci­a­tion with the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. These com­pan­ions are re­spon­si­ble for the whole of the mor­ontia ca­reer and are there­fore the co-or­di­na­tors of the work of all other mor­ontia and tran­si­tion min­is­ters.

48:3.82. Pil­grim Re­ceivers and Free As­so­ci­a­tors. These are the so­cial com­pan­ions of the new ar­rivals on the man­sion worlds. One of them will cer­tainly be on hand to wel­come you when you awaken on the ini­tial man­sion world from the first tran­sit sleep of time, when you ex­pe­ri­ence the res­ur­rec­tion from the death of the flesh into the mor­ontia life. And from the time you are thus for­mally wel­comed on awak­en­ing to that day when you leave the lo­cal uni­verse as a first-stage spirit, these Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions are ever with you.

48:3.9Com­pan­ions are not as­signed per­ma­nently to in­di­vid­u­als. An as­cend­ing mor­tal on one of the man­sion or higher worlds might have a dif­fer­ent com­pan­ion on each of sev­eral suc­ces­sive oc­ca­sions and again might go for long pe­ri­ods with­out one. It would all de­pend on the re­quire­ments and also on the sup­ply of com­pan­ions avail­able.

48:3.103. Hosts to Ce­les­tial Vis­i­tors. These gra­cious crea­tures are ded­i­cated to the en­ter­tain­ment of the super­hu­man groups of stu­dent vis­i­tors and other ce­les­tials who may chance to so­journ on the tran­si­tion worlds. You will have am­ple op­por­tu­nity to visit within any realm you have ex­pe­ri­en­tially at­tained. Stu­dent vis­i­tors are al­lowed on all in­hab­ited plan­ets, even those in iso­la­tion.

48:3.114. Co-or­di­na­tors and Li­ai­son Di­rec­tors. These com­pan­ions are ded­i­cated to the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of mor­ontia in­ter­course and to the pre­ven­tion of con­fu­sion. They are the in­struc­tors of so­cial con­duct and mor­ontia prog­ress, spon­sor­ing classes and other group ac­tiv­i­ties among the as­cend­ing mor­tals. They main­tain ex­ten­sive ar­eas wherein they as­sem­ble their pupils and from time to time make req­ui­si­tion on the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans and the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors for the em­bel­lish­ment of their pro­grams. As you pro­gress, you will come in in­ti­mate con­tact with these com­pan­ions, and you will grow ex­ceed­ingly fond of both groups. It is a mat­ter of chance as to whether you will be as­so­ci­ated with an ag­gres­sive or a re­tir­ing type of com­pan­ion.

48:3.125. In­ter­preters and Trans­la­tors. Dur­ing the early man­so­nia ca­reer you will have fre­quent re­course to the in­ter­preters and the trans­la­tors. They know and speak all the tongues of a lo­cal uni­verse; they are the lin­guists of the realms.

48:3.13You will not ac­quire new lan­guages au­to­mat­i­cally; you will learn a lan­guage over there much as you do down here, and these bril­liant be­ings will be your lan­guage teach­ers. The first study on the man­sion worlds will be the tongue of Sa­ta­nia and then the lan­guage of Neb­a­don. And while you are mas­ter­ing these new tongues, the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions will be your ef­fi­cient in­ter­preters and pa­tient trans­la­tors. You will never en­counter a vis­i­tor on any of these worlds but that some one of the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions will be able to of­fi­ci­ate as in­ter­preter.

48:3.146. Ex­cur­sion and Re­ver­sion Super­vi­sors. These com­pan­ions will ac­com­pany you on the longer trips to the head­quar­ters sphere and to the sur­round­ing worlds of tran­si­tion cul­ture. They plan, con­duct, and super­vise all such in­di­vid­ual and group tours about the sys­tem worlds of train­ing and cul­ture.

48:3.157. Area and Build­ing Cus­to­di­ans. Even the ma­te­rial and mor­ontia struc­tures in­crease in per­fec­tion and grandeur as you ad­vance in the man­so­nia ca­reer. As in­di­vid­u­als and as groups you are per­mit­ted to make cer­tain changes in the abodes as­signed as head­quar­ters for your so­journ on the dif­fer­ent man­sion worlds. Many of the ac­tiv­i­ties of these spheres take place in the open en­clo­sures of the var­i­ously des­ig­nated cir­cles, squares, and tri­an­gles. The ma­jor­ity of the man­sion world struc­tures are roof­less, be­ing en­clo­sures of mag­nif­i­cent con­struc­tion and ex­qui­site em­bel­lish­ment. The cli­matic and other phys­i­cal con­di­tions pre­vail­ing on the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds make roofs wholly un­nec­es­sary.

48:3.16These cus­to­di­ans of the tran­si­tion phases of as­cen­dant life are su­preme in the man­age­ment of mor­ontia af­fairs. They were cre­ated for this work, and pend­ing the fac­tu­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme Be­ing, al­ways will they re­main Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions; never do they per­form other du­ties.

48:3.17As sys­tems and uni­verses are set­tled in light and life, the man­sion worlds in­creas­ingly cease to func­tion as tran­si­tion spheres of mor­ontia train­ing. More and more the fi­nal­i­ters in­sti­tute their new train­ing regime, which ap­pears to be de­signed to trans­late the cos­mic con­scious­ness from the pres­ent level of the grand uni­verse to that of the fu­ture outer uni­verses. The Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions are des­tined to func­tion in­creas­ingly in as­so­ci­a­tion with the fi­nal­i­ters and in nu­mer­ous other realms not at pres­ent re­vealed on Uran­tia.

48:3.18You can fore­cast that these be­ings are prob­a­bly go­ing to con­tribute much to your en­joy­ment of the man­sion worlds, whether your so­journ is to be long or short. And you will con­tinue to en­joy them all the way up to Sal­ving­ton. They are not, tech­ni­cally, es­sen­tial to any part of your sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence. You could reach Sal­ving­ton with­out them, but you would greatly miss them. They are the per­son­al­ity lux­ury of your as­cend­ing ca­reer in the lo­cal uni­verse.