Orvonton (superuniverse)

15:3.1Prac­ti­cally all of the starry realms vis­i­ble to the naked eye on Uran­tia be­long to the sev­enth sec­tion of the grand uni­verse, the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton. The vast Milky Way starry sys­tem rep­re­sents the cen­tral nu­cleus of Or­von­ton, be­ing largely be­yond the bor­ders of your lo­cal uni­verse. This great ag­gre­ga­tion of suns, dark is­lands of space, dou­ble stars, glob­u­lar clus­ters, star clouds, spi­ral and other neb­u­lae, to­gether with myr­i­ads of in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, forms a watch­like, elon­gated-cir­cu­lar group­ing of about one sev­enth of the in­hab­ited evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses.

15:3.2From the as­tro­nom­i­cal po­si­tion of Uran­tia, as you look through the cross sec­tion of near-by sys­tems to the great Milky Way, you ob­serve that the spheres of Or­von­ton are trav­el­ing in a vast elon­gated plane, the breadth be­ing far greater than the thick­ness and the length far greater than the breadth.

15:3.3Ob­ser­va­tion of the so-called Milky Way dis­closes the com­par­a­tive in­crease in Or­von­ton stel­lar den­sity when the heav­ens are viewed in one di­rec­tion, while on ei­ther side the den­sity di­min­ishes; the num­ber of stars and other spheres de­creases away from the chief plane of our ma­te­rial super­uni­verse. When the an­gle of ob­ser­va­tion is pro­pi­tious, gaz­ing through the main body of this realm of max­i­mum den­sity, you are look­ing to­ward the res­i­den­tial uni­verse and the cen­ter of all things.

15:3.4Of the ten ma­jor di­vi­sions of Or­von­ton, eight have been roughly iden­ti­fied by Uran­tian as­tron­o­mers. The other two are dif­fi­cult of sep­a­rate rec­og­ni­tion be­cause you are obliged to view these phe­nom­ena from the in­side. If you could look upon the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton from a po­si­tion far-dis­tant in space, you would im­me­di­ately rec­og­nize the ten ma­jor sec­tors of the sev­enth galaxy.

15:3.5The ro­ta­tional cen­ter of your mi­nor sec­tor is sit­u­ated far away in the enor­mous and dense star cloud of Sagit­tar­ius, around which your lo­cal uni­verse and its as­so­ci­ated cre­ations all move, and from op­po­site sides of the vast Sagit­tar­ius sub­galac­tic sys­tem you may ob­serve two great streams of star clouds emerg­ing in stu­pen­dous stel­lar coils.

15:3.6The nu­cleus of the phys­i­cal sys­tem to which your sun and its as­so­ci­ated plan­ets be­long is the cen­ter of the one­time And­ro­no­ver neb­ula. This for­mer spi­ral neb­ula was slightly dis­torted by the grav­ity dis­rup­tions as­so­ci­ated with the events which were at­ten­dant upon the birth of your so­lar sys­tem, and which were oc­ca­sioned by the near ap­proach of a large neigh­bor­ing neb­ula. This near col­li­sion changed And­ro­no­ver into a some­what glob­u­lar ag­gre­ga­tion but did not wholly de­stroy the two-way pro­ces­sion of the suns and their as­so­ci­ated phys­i­cal groups. Your so­lar sys­tem now oc­cu­pies a fairly cen­tral po­si­tion in one of the arms of this dis­torted spi­ral, sit­u­ated about half­way from the cen­ter out to­wards the edge of the star stream.

15:3.7The Sagit­tar­ius sec­tor and all other sec­tors and di­vi­sions of Or­von­ton are in ro­ta­tion around Uversa, and some of the con­fu­sion of Uran­tian star ob­servers arises out of the il­lu­sions and rel­a­tive dis­tor­tions pro­duced by the fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ments:

15:3.81. The rev­o­lu­tion of Uran­tia around its sun.

15:3.92. The cir­cuit of your so­lar sys­tem about the nu­cleus of the for­mer And­ro­no­ver neb­ula.

15:3.103. The ro­ta­tion of the And­ro­no­ver stel­lar fam­ily and the as­so­ci­ated clus­ters about the com­pos­ite ro­ta­tion-grav­ity cen­ter of the star cloud of Neb­a­don.

15:3.114. The swing of the lo­cal star cloud of Neb­a­don and its as­so­ci­ated cre­ations around the Sagit­tar­ius cen­ter of their mi­nor sec­tor.

15:3.125. The ro­ta­tion of the one hun­dred mi­nor sec­tors, in­clud­ing Sagit­tar­ius, about their ma­jor sec­tor.

15:3.136. The whirl of the ten ma­jor sec­tors, the so-called star drifts, about the Uversa head­quar­ters of Or­von­ton.

15:3.147. The move­ment of Or­von­ton and six as­so­ci­ated super­uni­verses around Par­a­dise and Ha­vona, the coun­ter­clock­wise pro­ces­sional of the super­uni­verse space level.

15:3.15These mul­ti­ple mo­tions are of sev­eral or­ders: The space paths of your planet and your so­lar sys­tem are ge­netic, in­her­ent in ori­gin. The ab­so­lute coun­ter­clock­wise mo­tion of Or­von­ton is also ge­netic, in­her­ent in the ar­chi­tec­tural plans of the mas­ter uni­verse. But the in­ter­ven­ing mo­tions are of com­pos­ite ori­gin, be­ing de­rived in part from the con­sti­tu­tive seg­men­ta­tion of mat­ter-en­ergy into the super­uni­verses and in part pro­duced by the in­tel­li­gent and pur­pose­ful ac­tion of the Par­a­dise force or­ga­niz­ers.

15:3.16The lo­cal uni­verses are in closer prox­im­ity as they ap­proach Ha­vona; the cir­cuits are greater in num­ber, and there is in­creased super­im­po­si­tion, layer upon layer. But far­ther out from the eter­nal cen­ter there are fewer and fewer sys­tems, lay­ers, cir­cuits, and uni­verses.

15:4.7Not all spi­ral neb­u­lae are en­gaged in sun mak­ing. Some have re­tained con­trol of many of their seg­re­gated stel­lar off­spring, and their spi­ral ap­pear­ance is oc­ca­sioned by the fact that their suns pass out of the neb­u­lar arm in close for­ma­tion but re­turn by di­verse routes, thus mak­ing it easy to ob­serve them at one point but more dif­fi­cult to see them when widely scat­tered on their dif­fer­ent re­turn­ing routes far­ther out and away from the arm of the neb­ula. There are not many sun-form­ing neb­u­lae ac­tive in Or­von­ton at the pres­ent time, though An­dromeda, which is out­side the in­hab­ited super­uni­verse, is very ac­tive. This far-dis­tant neb­ula is vis­i­ble to the naked eye, and when you view it, pause to con­sider that the light you be­hold left those dis­tant suns al­most one mil­lion years ago.

• most is visible to our optical telescopes

12:2.2Al­though the un­aided hu­man eye can see only two or three neb­u­lae out­side the bor­ders of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton, your tele­scopes lit­er­ally re­veal mil­lions upon mil­lions of these phys­i­cal uni­verses in pro­cess of for­ma­tion. Most of the starry realms vi­su­ally ex­posed to the search of your pres­ent-day tele­scopes are in Or­von­ton, but with pho­to­graphic tech­nique the larger tele­scopes pen­e­trate far be­yond the bor­ders of the grand uni­verse into the do­mains of outer space, where un­told uni­verses are in pro­cess of or­ga­ni­za­tion. And there are yet other mil­lions of uni­verses be­yond the range of your pres­ent in­stru­ments.

• many island universes

12:2.3In the not-dis­tant fu­ture, new tele­scopes will re­veal to the won­der­ing gaze of Uran­tian as­tron­o­mers no less than 375 mil­lion new galax­ies in the re­mote stretches of outer space. At the same time these more pow­er­ful tele­scopes will dis­close that many is­land uni­verses for­merly be­lieved to be in outer space are re­ally a part of the galac­tic sys­tem of Or­von­ton. The seven super­uni­verses are still grow­ing; the pe­riph­ery of each is grad­u­ally ex­pand­ing; new neb­u­lae are con­stantly be­ing sta­bi­lized and or­ga­nized; and some of the neb­u­lae which Uran­tian as­tron­o­mers re­gard as ex­tra­galac­tic are ac­tu­ally on the fringe of Or­von­ton and are trav­el­ing along with us.

• 1 trillion inhabitable planets

15:2.24One super­uni­verse (10 ma­jor sec­tors) 1,000,000,000,000 worlds

• 10 trillion suns

15:6.10The super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton is il­lu­mi­nated and warmed by more than ten tril­lion blaz­ing suns. These suns are the stars of your ob­serv­able as­tro­nomic sys­tem. More than two tril­lion are too dis­tant and too small ever to be seen from Uran­tia. But in the mas­ter uni­verse there are as many suns as there are glasses of wa­ter in the oceans of your world.

• 1 trillion inhabitable planets

15:7.11Uversa is the spir­i­tual and ad­min­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters for ap­prox­i­mately one tril­lion in­hab­ited or in­hab­it­able worlds. The glory, grandeur, and per­fec­tion of the Or­von­ton cap­i­tal sur­pass any of the won­ders of the time-space cre­ations.

• Milky Way is densest plane, central nucleus of O.

32:2.11The Sa­ta­nia sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds is far re­moved from Uversa and that great sun clus­ter which func­tions as the phys­i­cal or as­tro­nomic cen­ter of the sev­enth super­uni­verse. From Je­ru­sem, the head­quar­ters of Sa­ta­nia, it is over two hun­dred thou­sand light-years to the phys­i­cal cen­ter of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton, far, far away in the dense di­am­e­ter of the Milky Way. Sa­ta­nia is on the pe­riph­ery of the lo­cal uni­verse, and Neb­a­don is now well out to­wards the edge of Or­von­ton. From the out­er­most sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds to the cen­ter of the super­uni­verse is a tri­fle less than two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand light-years.

• 10 major sectors, of which 8 are distinguishable as symmetrical star clusters

41:3.10In one group of vari­able stars the pe­riod of light fluc­tu­a­tion is di­rectly de­pen­dent on lu­mi­nos­ity, and knowl­edge of this fact en­ables as­tron­o­mers to uti­lize such suns as uni­verse light­houses or ac­cu­rate mea­sur­ing points for the fur­ther ex­plo­ration of dis­tant star clus­ters. By this tech­nique it is pos­si­ble to mea­sure stel­lar dis­tances most pre­cisely up to more than one mil­lion light-years. Bet­ter meth­ods of space mea­sure­ment and im­proved tele­scopic tech­nique will some­time more fully dis­close the ten grand di­vi­sions of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton; you will at least rec­og­nize eight of these im­mense sec­tors as enor­mous and fairly sym­met­ri­cal star clus­ters.

• Milky Way is densest plane, central nucleus of O.

42:5.53. The short space rays. These are the short­est of all purely elec­tronic vi­bra­tions and rep­re­sent the preatomic stage of this form of mat­ter. These rays re­quire ex­traor­di­nar­ily high or low tem­per­a­tures for their pro­duc­tion. There are two sorts of these space rays: one at­ten­dant upon the birth of atoms and the other in­dica­tive of atomic dis­rup­tion. They em­anate in the largest quan­ti­ties from the dens­est plane of the super­uni­verse, the Milky Way, which is also the dens­est plane of the outer uni­verses.

• Andronover is a primary nebula in

57:2.2800,000,000,000 years ago the And­ro­no­ver cre­ation was well es­tab­lished as one of the mag­nif­i­cent pri­mary neb­u­lae of Or­von­ton. As the as­tron­o­mers of near-by uni­verses looked out upon this phe­nom­e­non of space, they saw very lit­tle to at­tract their at­ten­tion. Grav­ity es­ti­mates made in ad­ja­cent cre­ations in­di­cated that space ma­te­ri­al­iza­tions were tak­ing place in the And­ro­no­ver re­gions, but that was all.

• unfolding evolutionary purpose

15:14.2Or­von­ton, the sev­enth super­uni­verse, the one to which your lo­cal uni­verse be­longs, is known chiefly be­cause of its tremen­dous and lav­ish be­stowal of mer­ci­ful min­istry to the mor­tals of the realms. It is renowned for the man­ner in which jus­tice pre­vails as tem­pered by mercy and power rules as con­di­tioned by pa­tience, while the sac­ri­fices of time are freely made to se­cure the sta­bi­liza­tion of eter­nity. Or­von­ton is a uni­verse dem­on­stra­tion of love and mercy.

15:14.3It is, how­ever, very dif­fi­cult to de­scribe our con­cep­tion of the true na­ture of the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose which is un­fold­ing in Or­von­ton, but it may be sug­gested by say­ing that in this super­cre­ation we feel that the six unique pur­poses of cos­mic evo­lu­tion as man­i­fested in the six as­so­ci­ated super­cre­ations are here be­ing in­teras­so­ci­ated into a mean­ing-of-the-whole; and it is for this rea­son that we have some­times con­jec­tured that the evolved and fin­ished per­son­al­iza­tion of God the Su­preme will in the re­mote fu­ture and from Uversa rule the per­fected seven super­uni­verses in all the ex­pe­ri­en­tial majesty of his then at­tained al­mighty sov­er­eign power.

15:14.4As Or­von­ton is unique in na­ture and in­di­vid­ual in des­tiny, so also is each of its six as­so­ci­ated super­uni­verses. A great deal that is go­ing on in Or­von­ton is not, how­ever, re­vealed to you, and of these un­re­vealed fea­tures of Or­von­ton life, many are to find most com­plete ex­pres­sion in some other super­uni­verse. The seven pur­poses of super­uni­verse evo­lu­tion are op­er­a­tive through­out all seven super­uni­verses, but each super­cre­ation will give fullest ex­pres­sion to only one of these pur­poses. To un­der­stand more about these super­uni­verse pur­poses, much that you do not un­der­stand would have to be re­vealed, and even then you would com­pre­hend but lit­tle. This en­tire nar­ra­tive pre­sents only a fleet­ing glimpse of the im­mense cre­ation of which your world and lo­cal sys­tem are a part.

• tardy, backward compared to others

23:2.17There is no lim­i­ta­tion upon the ser­vice of Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers in the super­uni­verses; they may func­tion as ex­e­cu­tion­ers of the high tri­bu­nals or as in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ers for the good of the realm. Of all the super­cre­ations they most de­light to serve in Or­von­ton be­cause here the need is great­est and the op­por­tu­ni­ties for heroic ef­fort are greatly mul­ti­plied. In the more needy realms we all en­joy the sat­is­fac­tion of a more re­plete func­tion.

• high degree of symmetry
• tardy, backward compared to others

34:2.6While the sev­enth seg­ment of the grand uni­verse may, in many re­spects, be tardy in de­vel­op­ment, thought­ful stu­dents of our prob­lems look for­ward to the evo­lu­tion of an ex­traor­di­nar­ily well-bal­anced cre­ation in the ages to come. We pre­dict this high de­gree of sym­me­try in Or­von­ton be­cause the pre­sid­ing Spirit of this super­uni­verse is the chief of the Mas­ter Spir­its on high, be­ing a spirit in­tel­li­gence em­body­ing the bal­anced union and per­fect co-or­di­na­tion of the traits and char­ac­ter of all three of the eter­nal De­i­ties. We are tardy and back­ward in com­par­i­son with other sec­tors, but there un­doubt­edly awaits us a tran­scen­dent de­vel­op­ment and an un­prece­dented achieve­ment some­time in the eter­nal ages of the fu­ture.

41:3.5The most re­cent of the ma­jor cos­mic erup­tions in Or­von­ton was the ex­traor­di­nary dou­ble star ex­plo­sion, the light of which reached Uran­tia in A.D. 1572. This con­fla­gra­tion was so in­tense that the ex­plo­sion was clearly vis­i­ble in broad day­light.

15:1.6Uran­tia be­longs to a sys­tem which is well out to­wards the bor­der­land of your lo­cal uni­verse; and your lo­cal uni­verse is at pres­ent travers­ing the pe­riph­ery of Or­von­ton. Be­yond you there are still oth­ers, but you are far re­moved in space from those phys­i­cal sys­tems which swing around the great cir­cle in com­par­a­tive prox­im­ity to the Great Source and Cen­ter.

15:1.5Your lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don be­longs to Or­von­ton, the sev­enth super­uni­verse, which swings on be­tween super­uni­verses one and six, hav­ing not long since (as we reckon time) turned the south­east­ern bend of the super­uni­verse space level. To­day, the so­lar sys­tem to which Uran­tia be­longs is a few bil­lion years past the swing around the south­ern cur­va­ture so that you are just now ad­vanc­ing be­yond the south­east­ern bend and are mov­ing swiftly through the long and com­par­a­tively straight­away north­ern path. For un­told ages Or­von­ton will pur­sue this al­most di­rect northerly course.

15:7.2Time is stan­dard­ized on the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verses. The stan­dard day of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton is equal to al­most thirty days of Uran­tia time, and the Or­von­ton year equals one hun­dred stan­dard days. This Uversa year is stan­dard in the sev­enth super­uni­verse, and it is twenty-two min­utes short of three thou­sand days of Uran­tia time, about eight and one fifth of your years.

0:0.5Your world, Uran­tia, is one of many sim­i­lar in­hab­ited plan­ets which com­prise the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. This uni­verse, to­gether with sim­i­lar cre­ations, makes up the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton, from whose cap­i­tal, Uversa, our com­mis­sion hails. Or­von­ton is one of the seven evo­lu­tion­ary super­uni­verses of time and space which cir­cle the never-be­gin­ning, never-end­ing cre­ation of di­vine per­fec­tion—the cen­tral uni­verse of Ha­vona. At the heart of this eter­nal and cen­tral uni­verse is the sta­tion­ary Isle of Par­a­dise, the ge­o­graphic cen­ter of in­fin­ity and the dwell­ing place of the eter­nal God.

12:1.12The Seven Super­uni­verses are not pri­mary phys­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tions; nowhere do their bound­aries di­vide a neb­u­lar fam­ily, nei­ther do they cross a lo­cal uni­verse, a prime cre­ative unit. Each super­uni­verse is sim­ply a ge­o­graphic space clus­ter­ing of ap­prox­i­mately one sev­enth of the or­ga­nized and par­tially in­hab­ited post-Ha­vona cre­ation, and each is about equal in the num­ber of lo­cal uni­verses em­braced and in the space en­com­passed. Neb­a­don, your lo­cal uni­verse, is one of the newer cre­ations in Or­von­ton, the sev­enth super­uni­verse.

15:14.7The mi­nor sec­tor of Ensa con­sists of one hun­dred lo­cal uni­verses and has a cap­i­tal called Umi­nor the third. This mi­nor sec­tor is num­ber three in the ma­jor sec­tor of Splan­don. Splan­don con­sists of one hun­dred mi­nor sec­tors and has a head­quar­ters world called Uma­jor the fifth. It is the fifth ma­jor sec­tor of the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton, the sev­enth seg­ment of the grand uni­verse. Thus you can lo­cate your planet in the scheme of the or­ga­ni­za­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

30:4.34This nar­ra­tive, to­gether with what has been re­vealed to you and with what you may ac­quire in con­nec­tion with in­struc­tion re­spect­ing your own world, pre­sents an out­line of the ca­reer of an as­cend­ing mor­tal. The story varies con­sid­er­ably in the dif­fer­ent super­uni­verses, but this recital af­fords a glimpse of the av­er­age plan of mor­tal pro­gres­sion as it is op­er­a­tive in the lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don and in the sev­enth seg­ment of the grand uni­verse, the super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton.

15:7.10Uversa, the head­quar­ters of Or­von­ton, your super­uni­verse, is im­me­di­ately sur­rounded by the seven higher uni­ver­si­ties of ad­vanced spir­i­tual train­ing for as­cend­ing will crea­tures. Each of these seven clus­ters of won­der spheres con­sists of sev­enty spe­cial­ized worlds con­tain­ing thou­sands upon thou­sands of re­plete in­sti­tu­tions and or­ga­ni­za­tions de­voted to uni­verse train­ing and spirit cul­ture wherein the pil­grims of time are re-ed­u­cated and re-ex­am­ined prepara­tory to their long flight to Ha­vona. The ar­riv­ing pil­grims of time are al­ways re­ceived on these as­so­ci­ated worlds, but the de­part­ing grad­u­ates are al­ways dis­patched for Ha­vona di­rect from the shores of Uversa.