Episode:Our Local System of Inhabited Worlds—Administration (Part 1)
The administrative center of Satania consists of a cluster of made-to-order, architectural spheres, fifty-seven in number—Jerusem itself, the seven major satellites, and the forty-nine subsatellites. The seven major worlds swinging around Jerusem are generally known as the transitional culture spheres. The seven mansion worlds are the seven subsatellites of transition world number one.
Keywords: Urantia, Finaliter Corps, Prison Worlds, System Sovereign, Lanaforge
Opening thought: Organization is indispensable to growth: beyond a certain point there cannot be further growth without further organization. Yet... beyond [another certain] point, [excess] organization...[actually] increases the obstacles to those readjustments required for larger growth and more perfect structure. —Spencer, The Study of Sociology (1872)
Summary by Brad
On precision of language
It's beneficial to think about the precision of language in the 5th ER. Consider the expressions real faith and living faith. A foundational, initial trust in God—being born again—is a real faith grasp. Once you've entered the kingdom of heaven, it would be better to consider living faith. That word "living" is a reminder of the dynamic fruits of the spirit that will mainfest through it. It's a reminder that you cannot stand still in the affairs of the kingdom. Dynamic, living faith.
On exclusivity of religious rituals
We continued discussing how some institutionalized religions are more exclusionary than others. For example, "seeker churches" openly invite non-members to partake of the communion, whereas many Catholic churches reserve communion only for their fully accepted members. One of us commented on how painful and disorienting this is, if a religionist with a living personal religion is excluded from a communion ritual. But we reasoned it's not surprising that the Catholic religion, whose name literally means "universal," might guard this ceremony judiciously for their believers. It hinges on what the definition of a "believer" is. Some churches allow people to self-declare themselves as believers, but others want to verify you've gone through their induction process. Of course, neither self-declaring nor undergoing some rite of initiation is a guarantee that you've genuinely been born again—that is an inner-life matter.
Jesus knew what he was doing in instituting the remembrance ceremony; it has a strong drawing power. But it's also important to consider the symbology properly. Crackers and juice are not religion. Symbolology that connotes Christ's body and blood are not religion. Even symbols connoting "Jesus' incarnate life" and "the Spirit of Truth" (the symbology Jesus suggested to us) are not religion. It's our reflecting on these symbols that can lead to religion, that binding ourselves back to eternity.
So, can we reflect in a way that allows spirit gravity to operate on us, to lead us up? So it isn't the material gravity of crackers and juice, or body and blood, or even the material gravity of Jesus' outer life when he walked among us? Instead, let it be the spirit gravity of the faith of Jesus! Remember Jesus' faith―his reality―not his merely material doings, his actualities. Jesus was a man of faith, not some gentle, mystical, innocuous boatbuilder. You too can have the faith of Jesus, the religion of Jesus. You can be a religious person, not merely a piously-presenting person. It's no accident the 5th ER's closing argument concerns the religious life of Jesus.
Paper 45. The Local System Administration
Our world is one of a potential 1,000 worlds of mortal habitation in a system (and presently we are serial number 606 out of 619 of these worlds in our local system).
The headquarters of our local system is a group of architectural spheres. These spheres are built up from raw ultimatons. This construction process is not the natural evolutionary process that results in a sphere like our Earth. But this process of construction of architectural spheres is not magical nor is it instantaneous. The bodies of the power beings are literally the machines that perform the construction; they think it into form over time. And these power beings are not hands-off after they manufacture the worlds. These worlds are completely artificial; they are utterly continuously and actively managed with respect to light, heat, water, and energy. Erosion and volcanoes may produce dramatic landscapes here on Earth, but there's no room for cataclysms on architectural worlds. We aren't given much technical detail about these worlds, such as their density, amount of antigravity, etc. But we are told their relative sizes.
Speaking of which, we pondered what "100 times the size of" might signify. One hundred times the diameter? Surface area? Volume? Each would be a markedly differently object. It was suggested that the single parameter of radius is the most fundamental measure of a sphere in the philosophic sense; from radius alone the volume and surface area of a sphere are readily calculated. But it was countered that volume seems the most fundamental measure of a three-dimensional object, or that surface area would be the fundamental measure in the lived experiences of beings inhabiting a sphere. Any of these could be rationalized. A suggestion for a tiebreaker was perhaps favoring how we have spoken of spheres since ancient Greek geometry: the mathematical way, via the radius. Would the revelators disregard how we have spoken about spheres for centuries? We moved on to other topics, but we noted that in any case context always matters even when a relatively simple word like "size" is being used in the 5th ER.
We discussed the etymology of Havona and Jerusem. Most coined words in the 5th ER are constructed from fundamental Greek and Latin roots—very sophisticated. But these words are constructed simply to be evocative of "heaven" and "Jerusalem," respectively. With Havona and Jerusem, our authors seek to upstep historic Biblical concepts of "the new Heaven" and "the new Jerusalem as a headquarters." They are suggesting that our "new heaven" concept would best be those seven circuits of the central universe (which implies the Isle of Paradise is more of a trans-heaven).
This text is thoroughly evolutional; it strikes step with where we have been intellectually and where we are now. If you disdain our history and intellectual heritage, words like Havona and Jerusem might seem a little bit silly or naive to you in their coinage. But this is how revelation works, a step at a time.
45:1. Transitional Culture Worlds
Remember: architectural worlds aren't all about you and your experiences. They aren't exclusively about mortal ascenders at all. There are more types of beings left unrevealed to us than the number of beings that have been revealed to us. The universe of universes is bustling with activity.
The seven mansion worlds may be in the same orbit around one sphere, yes, but each of the seven worlds is a decidedly upward step in terms of progression (analogous to those billion worlds in Havona). Each of these seven mansion worlds is so different—such a big vertical upward step between them—we literally undergo a form of death-and-resurrection to ascend from one to the next.
The seven mansion worlds orbit the world of the finaliters, a place where the end from the beginning can be seen. Seeing those finaliters so early in our ascension career helps cultivate our faith in ultimate destiny. The presence of the finaliters there reminds us that we shall not tarry forever on the mansion worlds; we are called much higher, to Paradise.
Each of the seven mansion worlds somehow parallels the character of each of the seven transition worlds. Each transition world is markedly different from the other six. They represent a "vertical" change in status as you move from one to the other:
- Transition world #1 is decidedly material in its basis (remember it has material probationary nurseries on it).
- Transition world #2 is decidedly less material. It's even called "The Morontia World."
- Transition world #3 is "The Angelic World", a name suggesting that by mansion world #3 (its parallel mansion world) we will have overcome our animal-origin heritage and will more resemble the order of angels.
- Transition world #4 is "The Superangel World," suggestive of the next step above the Angelic World.
- ...and so on, upward through world #7.
We especially considered world #7, "the silent world of the Father." This is chock full of powerful symbology between the lines of the text here. It is silent. It is lacking domiciled beings on it. What does this remind us of? Well, in truth these remind us of God—how in our silent inner lives it's just us and the Father in "a spacious place." Psalms 118:5
The seven Earth-sized prison worlds orbit transition world #7 are also a powerful symbol. When all is said in done, "orbiting the Universal Father" is the only option. You can choose to orbit the Father in liberty, or in prison. You can be on transition world #7 freely worshiping the Father at that grand temple, or you can be imprisoned in orbit around world #7. The cosmos is designed and built to be reflective of truths like this.
Brad's Notes
- With enough reflective study, you can see past the potential distortion of meaning potential in all the complex usages of words in the 5th ER. You'll possess living truth, which is not about words on a page, but about what flows through those words.
- See [41:3.4] for another place where "the size of" is used, but perhaps in a different sense than here in Paper 45.
- An annual visualization ceremony of the finaliters on Transition World #1 must be better than any annual Independence Day fireworks show!
- The Satania Power Center is a personal being. Bit of an odd fellow, perhaps. Maybe a bit of a loner, living on a dark island of space and what not. Not many visitors.
- Is it odd that Caligastia is still on our world? Perhaps not. Like Grimm's fairy tales, it's a lesson to young children here. Yes, children, you can still join the rebellion―some rebels are still here―if that's your will.
