The Urantia Book

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celestial musicians

15 paragraphs · about 3 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under celestial musicians, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

44:1.1With the lim­ited range of mor­tal hear­ing, you can hardly con­ceive of mor­ontia mel­o­dies. There is even a ma­te­rial range of beau­ti­ful sound un­rec­og­nized by the hu­man sense of hear­ing, not to men­tion the in­con­ceiv­able scope of mor­ontia and spirit har­mony. Spirit mel­o­dies are not ma­te­rial sound waves but spirit pul­sa­tions re­ceived by the spir­its of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. There is a vast­ness of range and a soul of ex­pres­sion, as well as a grandeur of ex­e­cu­tion, as­so­ci­ated with the mel­ody of the spheres, that are wholly be­yond hu­man com­pre­hen­sion. I have seen mil­lions of en­rap­tured be­ings held in sub­lime ec­stasy while the mel­ody of the realm rolled in upon the spirit en­ergy of the ce­les­tial cir­cuits. These mar­velous mel­o­dies can be broad­cast to the ut­ter­most parts of a uni­verse.

44:1.2The ce­les­tial mu­si­cians are oc­cu­pied with the pro­duc­tion of ce­les­tial har­mony by the ma­nip­u­la­tion of the fol­low­ing spirit forces:

44:1.31. Spir­i­tual sound—spirit cur­rent in­ter­rup­tions.

44:1.42. Spir­i­tual light—the con­trol and in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of the light of the mor­ontia and spir­i­tual realms.

44:1.53. En­ergy im­pinge­ments—mel­ody pro­duced by the skill­ful man­age­ment of the mor­ontia and spirit en­er­gies.

44:1.64. Color sym­phonies—mel­ody of mor­ontia color tones; this ranks among the high­est ac­com­plish­ments of the ce­les­tial mu­si­cians.

44:1.75. Har­mony of as­so­ci­ated spir­its—the very ar­range­ment and as­so­ci­a­tion of dif­fer­ent or­ders of mor­ontia and spirit be­ings pro­duce ma­jes­tic mel­o­dies.

44:1.86. Mel­ody of thought—the think­ing of spir­i­tual thoughts can be so per­fected as to burst forth in the mel­o­dies of Ha­vona.

44:1.97. The mu­sic of space—by proper at­tune­ment the mel­o­dies of other spheres can be picked up on the uni­verse broad­cast cir­cuits.

44:1.10There are over one hun­dred thou­sand dif­fer­ent modes of sound, color, and en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tion, tech­niques anal­o­gous to the hu­man em­ploy­ment of mu­si­cal in­stru­ments. Your en­sem­bles of danc­ing un­doubt­edly rep­re­sent a crude and grotesque at­tempt of ma­te­rial crea­tures to ap­proach the ce­les­tial har­mony of be­ing place­ment and per­son­al­ity ar­range­ment. The other five forms of mor­ontia mel­ody are un­rec­og­nized by the sen­sory mech­a­nism of ma­te­rial bod­ies.

44:1.11Har­mony, the mu­sic of the seven lev­els of melo­di­ous as­so­ci­a­tion, is the one uni­ver­sal code of spirit com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Mu­sic, such as Uran­tia mor­tals un­der­stand, at­tains its high­est ex­pres­sion in the schools of Je­ru­sem, the sys­tem head­quar­ters, where semi­ma­te­rial be­ings are taught the har­monies of sound. Mor­tals do not re­act to the other forms of mor­ontia mel­ody and ce­les­tial har­mony.

44:1.12Ap­pre­ci­a­tion of mu­sic on Uran­tia is both phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual; and your hu­man mu­si­cians have done much to el­e­vate mu­si­cal taste from the bar­barous mo­not­ony of your early an­ces­tors to the higher lev­els of sound ap­pre­ci­a­tion. The ma­jor­ity of Uran­tia mor­tals re­act to mu­sic so largely with the ma­te­rial mus­cles and so slightly with the mind and spirit; but there has been a steady im­prove­ment in mu­si­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion for more than thirty-five thou­sand years.

44:1.13Tune­ful syn­co­pa­tion rep­re­sents a tran­si­tion from the mu­si­cal mo­not­ony of prim­i­tive man to the ex­pres­sion­ful har­mony and mean­ing­ful mel­o­dies of your later-day mu­si­cians. These ear­lier types of rhythm stim­u­late the re­ac­tion of the mu­sic-lov­ing sense with­out en­tail­ing the ex­er­tion of the higher in­tel­lec­tual pow­ers of har­mony ap­pre­ci­a­tion and thus more gen­er­ally ap­peal to im­ma­ture or spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent in­di­vid­u­als.

44:1.14The best mu­sic of Uran­tia is just a fleet­ing echo of the mag­nif­i­cent strains heard by the ce­les­tial as­so­ciates of your mu­si­cians, who left but snatches of these har­monies of mor­ontia forces on rec­ord as the mu­si­cal mel­o­dies of sound har­mon­ics. Spirit-mor­ontia mu­sic not in­fre­quently em­ploys all seven modes of ex­pres­sion and re­pro­duc­tion, so that the hu­man mind is tremen­dously hand­i­capped in any at­tempt to re­duce these mel­o­dies of the higher spheres to mere notes of mu­si­cal sound. Such an ef­fort would be some­thing like en­deav­or­ing to re­pro­duce the strains of a great or­ches­tra by means of a sin­gle mu­si­cal in­stru­ment.

44:1.15While you have as­sem­bled some beau­ti­ful mel­o­dies on Uran­tia, you have not pro­gressed mu­si­cally nearly so far as many of your neigh­bor­ing plan­ets in Sa­ta­nia. If Adam and Eve had only sur­vived, then would you have had mu­sic in re­al­ity; but the gift of har­mony, so large in their na­tures, has been so di­luted by strains of un­mu­si­cal ten­den­cies that only once in a thou­sand mor­tal lives is there any great ap­pre­ci­a­tion of har­mon­ics. But be not dis­cour­aged; some day a real mu­si­cian may ap­pear on Uran­tia, and whole peo­ples will be en­thralled by the mag­nif­i­cent strains of his mel­o­dies. One such hu­man be­ing could for­ever change the course of a whole na­tion, even the en­tire civ­i­lized world. It is lit­er­ally true, “mel­ody has power a whole world to trans­form.” For­ever, mu­sic will re­main the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of men, an­gels, and spir­its. Har­mony is the speech of Ha­vona.

Onward

See also celestial artisans