The Spheres of Light and Life

55:2.1Nat­u­ral, phys­i­cal death is not a mor­tal in­evitabil­ity. The ma­jor­ity of ad­vanced evo­lu­tion­ary be­ings, cit­i­zens on worlds ex­ist­ing in the fi­nal era of light and life, do not die; they are trans­lated di­rectly from the life in the flesh to the mor­ontia ex­is­tence.

55:2.2This ex­pe­ri­ence of trans­la­tion from the ma­te­rial life to the mor­ontia state—fu­sion of the im­mor­tal soul with the in­dwelling Ad­juster—in­creases in fre­quency com­men­su­rate with the evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress of the planet. At first only a few mor­tals in each age at­tain trans­la­tion lev­els of spir­i­tual prog­ress, but with the on­set of the suc­ces­sive ages of the Teacher Sons, more and more Ad­juster fu­sions oc­cur be­fore the ter­mi­na­tion of the length­en­ing lives of these pro­gress­ing mor­tals; and by the time of the ter­mi­nal mis­sion of the Teacher Sons, ap­prox­i­mately one quar­ter of these su­perb mor­tals are ex­empt from nat­u­ral death.

55:2.3Far­ther along in the era of light and life the mid­way crea­tures or their as­so­ciates sense the ap­proach­ing sta­tus of prob­a­ble soul-Ad­juster union and sig­nify this to the des­tiny guard­i­ans, who in turn com­mu­ni­cate these mat­ters to the fi­nal­i­ter group un­der whose ju­ris­dic­tion this mor­tal may be func­tion­ing; then there is is­sued the sum­mons of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign for such a mor­tal to re­sign all plan­e­tary du­ties, bid farewell to the world of his ori­gin, and re­pair to the in­ner tem­ple of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign, there to await mor­ontia tran­sit, the trans­la­tion flash, from the ma­te­rial do­main of evo­lu­tion to the mor­ontia level of pre­spirit pro­gres­sion.

55:2.4When the fam­ily, friends, and work­ing group of such a fu­sion can­di­date have for­gath­ered in the mor­ontia tem­ple, they are dis­tributed around the cen­tral stage whereon the fu­sion can­di­dates are rest­ing, mean­time freely con­vers­ing with their as­sem­bled friends. A cir­cle of in­ter­ven­ing ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties is ar­ranged to pro­tect the ma­te­rial mor­tals from the ac­tion of the en­er­gies man­i­fest at the in­stant of the “life flash” which de­liv­ers the as­cen­sion can­di­date from the bonds of ma­te­rial flesh, thereby do­ing for such an evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal ev­ery­thing that nat­u­ral death does for those who are thereby de­liv­ered from the flesh.

55:2.5Many fu­sion can­di­dates may be as­sem­bled in the spa­cious tem­ple at the same time. And what a beau­ti­ful oc­ca­sion when mor­tals thus for­gather to wit­ness the as­cen­sion of their loved ones in spir­i­tual flames, and what a con­trast to those ear­lier ages when mor­tals must com­mit their dead to the em­brace of the ter­res­trial el­e­ments! The scenes of weep­ing and wail­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of ear­lier epochs of hu­man evo­lu­tion are now re­placed by ec­static joy and the sub­limest en­thu­si­asm as these God-know­ing mor­tals bid their loved ones a tran­sient farewell as they are re­moved from their ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tions by the spir­i­tual fires of con­sum­ing grandeur and as­cend­ing glory. On worlds set­tled in light and life, “fu­ner­als” are oc­ca­sions of su­preme joy, pro­found sat­is­fac­tion, and in­ex­press­ible hope.

55:2.6The souls of these pro­gress­ing mor­tals are in­creas­ingly filled with faith, hope, and as­sur­ance. The spirit per­me­at­ing those gath­ered around the trans­la­tion shrine re­sem­bles that of the joy­ful friends and rel­a­tives who might as­sem­ble at a grad­u­at­ing ex­er­cise for one of their group, or who might come to­gether to wit­ness the con­fer­ring of some great honor upon one of their num­ber. And it would be de­cid­edly help­ful if less ad­vanced mor­tals could only learn to view nat­u­ral death with some­thing of this same cheer­ful­ness and light­heart­ed­ness.

55:2.7Mor­tal ob­servers can see noth­ing of their trans­lated as­so­ciates sub­se­quent to the fu­sion flash. Such trans­lated souls pro­ceed by Ad­juster tran­sit di­rect to the res­ur­rec­tion hall of the ap­pro­pri­ate mor­ontia-train­ing world. These trans­ac­tions con­cerned with the trans­la­tion of liv­ing hu­man be­ings to the mor­ontia world are super­vised by an arch­an­gel who was as­signed to such a world on the day when it was first set­tled in light and life.

55:2.8By the time a world at­tains the fourth stage of light and life, more than half the mor­tals leave the planet by trans­la­tion from among the liv­ing. Such di­min­ish­ment of death con­tin­ues on and on, but I know of no sys­tem whose in­hab­ited worlds, even though long set­tled in life, are en­tirely free from nat­u­ral death as the tech­nique of es­cape from the bonds of flesh. And un­til such a high state of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion is uni­formly at­tained, the mor­ontia-train­ing worlds of the lo­cal uni­verse must con­tinue in ser­vice as ed­u­ca­tional and cul­tural spheres for the evolv­ing mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. The elim­i­na­tion of death is the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble, but it has not yet oc­curred ac­cord­ing to my ob­ser­va­tion. Per­haps such a sta­tus may be at­tained dur­ing the far­away stretches of the suc­ceed­ing epochs of the sev­enth stage of set­tled plan­e­tary life.

55:2.9The trans­lated souls of the flow­er­ing ages of the set­tled spheres do not pass through the man­sion worlds. Nei­ther do they so­journ, as stu­dents, on the mor­ontia worlds of the sys­tem or con­stel­la­tion. They do not pass through any of the ear­lier phases of mor­ontia life. They are the only as­cend­ing mor­tals who so nearly es­cape the mor­ontia tran­si­tion from ma­te­rial ex­is­tence to semispirit sta­tus. The ini­tial ex­pe­ri­ence of such Son-seized mor­tals in the as­cen­sion ca­reer is in the ser­vices of the pro­gres­sion worlds of the uni­verse head­quar­ters. And from these study worlds of Sal­ving­ton they go back as teach­ers to the very worlds they passed by, sub­se­quently go­ing on in­ward to Par­a­dise by the es­tab­lished route of mor­tal as­cen­sion.

55:2.10Could you but visit a planet in an ad­vanced stage of de­vel­op­ment, you would quickly grasp the rea­sons for pro­vid­ing for the dif­fer­en­tial re­cep­tion of as­cend­ing mor­tals on the man­sion and higher mor­ontia worlds. You would read­ily un­der­stand that be­ings pass­ing on from such highly evolved spheres are pre­pared to re­sume their Par­a­dise as­cent far in ad­vance of the av­er­age mor­tal ar­riv­ing from a dis­or­dered and back­ward world like Uran­tia.

55:2.11No mat­ter from what level of plan­e­tary at­tain­ment hu­man be­ings may as­cend to the mor­ontia worlds, the seven man­sion spheres af­ford them am­ple op­por­tu­nity to gain in ex­pe­ri­ence as teacher-stu­dents all of ev­ery­thing which they failed to pass through be­cause of the ad­vanced sta­tus of their na­tive plan­ets.

55:2.12The uni­verse is un­fail­ing in the ap­pli­ca­tion of these equal­iz­ing tech­niques de­signed to in­sure that no as­cender shall be de­prived of aught which is es­sen­tial to his as­cen­sion ex­pe­ri­ence.