gardens of God

43:6.1The sys­tem cap­i­tals are par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­fied with ma­te­rial and min­eral con­struc­tions, while the uni­verse head­quar­ters is more re­flec­tive of spir­i­tual glory, but the cap­i­tals of the con­stel­la­tions are the acme of mor­ontia ac­tiv­i­ties and liv­ing em­bel­lish­ments. On the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters worlds liv­ing em­bel­lish­ment is more gen­er­ally uti­lized, and it is this pre­pon­der­ance of life—botanic artistry—that causes these worlds to be called “the gar­dens of God.”

43:6.2About one half of Eden­tia is de­voted to the ex­qui­site gar­dens of the Most Highs, and these gar­dens are among the most en­tranc­ing mor­ontia cre­ations of the lo­cal uni­verse. This ex­plains why the ex­traor­di­nar­ily beau­ti­ful places on the in­hab­ited worlds of Nor­la­ti­adek are so of­ten called “the gar­den of Eden.”

43:6.3Cen­trally lo­cated in this mag­nif­i­cent gar­den is the wor­ship shrine of the Most Highs. The Psalmist must have known some­thing about these things, for he wrote: “Who shall as­cend the hill of the Most Highs? Who shall stand in this holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to van­ity nor sworn de­ceit­fully.” At this shrine the Most Highs, on ev­ery tenth day of re­lax­ation, lead all Eden­tia in the wor­ship­ful con­tem­pla­tion of God the Su­preme.

43:6.4The ar­chi­tec­tural worlds en­joy ten forms of life of the ma­te­rial or­der. On Uran­tia there is plant and an­i­mal life, but on such a world as Eden­tia there are ten di­vi­sions of the ma­te­rial or­ders of life. Were you to view these ten di­vi­sions of Eden­tia life, you would quickly clas­sify the first three as veg­etable and the last three as an­i­mal, but you would be ut­terly un­able to com­pre­hend the na­ture of the in­ter­ven­ing four groups of pro­lific and fas­ci­nat­ing forms of life.

43:6.5Even the dis­tinc­tively an­i­mal life is very dif­fer­ent from that of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, so dif­fer­ent that it is quite im­pos­si­ble to por­tray to mor­tal minds the unique char­ac­ter and af­fec­tion­ate na­ture of these non­speak­ing crea­tures. There are thou­sands upon thou­sands of liv­ing crea­tures which your imag­i­na­tion could not pos­si­bly pic­ture. The whole an­i­mal cre­ation is of an en­tirely dif­fer­ent or­der from the gross an­i­mal species of the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets. But all this an­i­mal life is most in­tel­li­gent and ex­qui­sitely ser­vice­able, and all the var­i­ous species are sur­pris­ingly gen­tle and touch­ingly com­pan­ion­able. There are no car­niv­o­rous crea­tures on such ar­chi­tec­tural worlds; there is noth­ing in all Eden­tia to make any liv­ing be­ing afraid.

43:6.6The veg­etable life is also very dif­fer­ent from that of Uran­tia, con­sist­ing of both ma­te­rial and mor­ontia va­ri­eties. The ma­te­rial growths have a char­ac­ter­is­tic green col­oration, but the mor­ontia equiv­a­lents of veg­e­ta­tive life have a vi­o­let or or­chid tinge of vary­ing hue and re­flec­tion. Such mor­ontia veg­e­ta­tion is purely an en­ergy growth; when eaten there is no resid­ual por­tion.

43:6.7Be­ing en­dowed with ten di­vi­sions of phys­i­cal life, not to men­tion the mor­ontia vari­a­tions, these ar­chi­tec­tural worlds pro­vide tremen­dous pos­si­bil­i­ties for the bi­o­logic beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the land­scape and of the ma­te­rial and the mor­ontia struc­tures. The ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans di­rect the na­tive sporna­gia in this ex­ten­sive work of botanic dec­o­ra­tion and bi­o­logic em­bel­lish­ment. Whereas your artists must re­sort to in­ert paint and life­less mar­ble to por­tray their con­cepts, the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans and the uni­v­i­ta­tia more fre­quently uti­lize liv­ing ma­te­ri­als to rep­re­sent their ideas and to cap­ture their ide­als.

43:6.8If you en­joy the flow­ers, shrubs, and trees of Uran­tia, then will you feast your eyes upon the botan­i­cal beauty and the flo­ral grandeur of the su­per­nal gar­dens of Eden­tia. But it is be­yond my pow­ers of de­scrip­tion to un­der­take to con­vey to the mor­tal mind an ad­e­quate con­cept of these beau­ties of the heav­enly worlds. Truly, eye has not seen such glo­ries as await your ar­rival on these worlds of the mor­tal-as­cen­sion ad­ven­ture.

43:1.7The sea of glass, the re­ceiv­ing area of Eden­tia, is near the ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­ter and is en­cir­cled by the head­quar­ters am­phithe­ater. Sur­round­ing this area are the gov­ern­ing cen­ters for the sev­enty di­vi­sions of con­stel­la­tion af­fairs. One half of Eden­tia is di­vided into sev­enty tri­an­gu­lar sec­tions, whose bound­aries con­verge at the head­quar­ters build­ings of their re­spec­tive sec­tors. The re­main­der of this sphere is one vast nat­u­ral park, the gar­dens of God.