The Spheres of Light and Life

55:3.1Dur­ing this age of light and life the world in­creas­ingly pros­pers un­der the fa­therly rule of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign. By this time the worlds are pro­gress­ing un­der the mo­men­tum of one lan­guage, one re­li­gion, and, on nor­mal spheres, one race. But this age is not per­fect. These worlds still have well-ap­pointed hos­pi­tals, homes for the care of the sick. There still re­main the prob­lems of car­ing for ac­ci­den­tal in­juries and the in­es­cap­able in­fir­mi­ties at­ten­dant upon the de­crepi­tude of old age and the dis­or­ders of se­nil­ity. Dis­ease has not been en­tirely van­quished, nei­ther have the earth an­i­mals been sub­dued in per­fec­tion; but such worlds are like Par­a­dise in com­par­i­son with the early times of prim­i­tive man dur­ing the pre-Plan­e­tary Prince age. You would in­stinc­tively de­scribe such a realm—could you be sud­denly trans­ported to a planet in this stage of de­vel­op­ment—as heaven on earth.

55:3.2Hu­man gov­ern­ment in the con­duct of ma­te­rial af­fairs con­tin­ues to func­tion through­out this age of rel­a­tive prog­ress and per­fec­tion. The pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties of a world in the first stage of light and life which I re­cently vis­ited were fi­nanced by the tithing tech­nique. Ev­ery adult worker—and all able-bod­ied cit­i­zens worked at some­thing—paid ten per cent of his in­come or in­crease to the pub­lic trea­sury, and it was dis­bursed as fol­lows:

55:3.31. Three per cent was ex­pended in the pro­mo­tion of truth—sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, and phi­los­o­phy.

55:3.42. Three per cent was de­voted to beauty—play, so­cial leisure, and art.

55:3.53. Three per cent was ded­i­cated to good­ness—so­cial ser­vice, al­tru­ism, and re­li­gion.

55:3.64. One per cent was as­signed to the in­sur­ance re­serves against the risk of in­ca­pac­ity for la­bor re­sul­tant from ac­ci­dent, dis­ease, old age, or un­pre­ventable dis­as­ters.

55:3.7The nat­u­ral re­sources of this planet were ad­min­is­tered as so­cial pos­ses­sions, com­mu­nity prop­erty.

55:3.8On this world the high­est honor con­ferred upon a cit­i­zen was the or­der of “su­preme ser­vice,” be­ing the only de­gree of rec­og­ni­tion ever to be granted in the mor­ontia tem­ple. This rec­og­ni­tion was be­stowed upon those who had long dis­tin­guished them­selves in some phase of super­ma­te­rial dis­cov­ery or plan­e­tary so­cial ser­vice.

55:3.9The ma­jor­ity of so­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive posts were held jointly by men and women. Most of the teach­ing was also done jointly; like­wise all ju­di­cial trusts were dis­charged by sim­i­lar as­so­ci­ated cou­ples.

55:3.10On these su­perb worlds the child­bear­ing pe­riod is not greatly pro­longed. It is not best for too many years to in­ter­vene be­tween the ages of a fam­ily of chil­dren. When close to­gether in age, chil­dren are able to con­tribute much more to their mu­tual train­ing. And on these worlds they are mag­nif­i­cently trained by the com­pet­i­tive sys­tems of keen striv­ing in the ad­vanced do­mains and di­vi­sions of di­verse achieve­ment in the mas­tery of truth, beauty, and good­ness. Never fear but that even such glo­ri­fied spheres pre­sent plenty of evil, real and po­ten­tial, which is stim­u­la­tive of the choos­ing be­tween truth and er­ror, good and evil, sin and righ­teous­ness.

55:3.11Nev­er­the­less, there is a cer­tain, in­ev­i­ta­ble penalty at­tach­ing to mor­tal ex­is­tence on such ad­vanced evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets. When a set­tled world pro­gresses be­yond the third stage of light and life, all as­cend­ers are des­tined, be­fore at­tain­ing the mi­nor sec­tor, to re­ceive some sort of tran­sient as­sign­ment on a planet pass­ing through the ear­lier stages of evo­lu­tion.

55:3.12Each of these suc­ces­sive ages rep­re­sents ad­vanc­ing achieve­ments in all phases of plan­e­tary at­tain­ment. In the ini­tial age of light the rev­e­la­tion of truth was en­larged to em­brace the work­ings of the uni­verse of uni­verses, while the De­ity study of the sec­ond age is the at­tempt to mas­ter the pro­tean con­cept of the na­ture, mis­sion, min­istry, as­so­ci­a­tions, ori­gin, and des­tiny of the Cre­ator Sons, the first level of God the Sev­en­fold.

55:3.13A planet the size of Uran­tia, when fairly well set­tled, would have about one hun­dred sub­ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­ters. These sub­or­di­nate cen­ters would be pre­sided over by one of the fol­low­ing groups of qual­i­fied ad­min­is­tra­tors:

55:3.141. Young Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters brought from the sys­tem head­quar­ters to act as as­sis­tants to the rul­ing Adam and Eve.

55:3.152. The progeny of the semi­mor­tal staff of the Plan­e­tary Prince who were pro­cre­ated on cer­tain worlds for this and other sim­i­lar re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

55:3.163. The di­rect plan­e­tary progeny of Adam and Eve.

55:3.174. Ma­te­ri­al­ized and hu­man­ized mid­way crea­tures.

55:3.185. Mor­tals of Ad­juster-fu­sion sta­tus who, upon their own pe­ti­tion, are tem­porar­ily ex­empted from trans­la­tion by the or­der of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of uni­verse chief­tain­ship in or­der that they may con­tinue on the planet in cer­tain im­por­tant ad­min­is­tra­tive posts.

55:3.196. Spe­cially trained mor­tals of the plan­e­tary schools of ad­min­is­tra­tion who have also re­ceived the or­der of su­preme ser­vice of the mor­ontia tem­ple.

55:3.207. Cer­tain elec­tive com­mis­sions of three prop­erly qual­i­fied cit­i­zens who are some­times cho­sen by the cit­i­zenry by di­rec­tion of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign in ac­cor­dance with their spe­cial abil­ity to ac­com­plish some def­i­nite task which is need­ful in that par­tic­u­lar plan­e­tary sec­tor.

55:3.21The great hand­i­cap con­fronting Uran­tia in the mat­ter of at­tain­ing the high plan­e­tary des­tiny of light and life is em­braced in the prob­lems of dis­ease, de­gen­er­acy, war, mul­ti­col­ored races, and mul­ti­lin­gual­ism.

55:3.22No evo­lu­tion­ary world can hope to pro­gress be­yond the first stage of set­tled­ness in light un­til it has achieved one lan­guage, one re­li­gion, and one phi­los­o­phy. Be­ing of one race greatly fa­cil­i­tates such achieve­ment, but the many peo­ples of Uran­tia do not pre­clude the at­tain­ment of higher stages.