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                Urantia Book Paper 44 The Celestial Artisans
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  Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART II: The Local Universe :
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   The Seraphic Hosts The Ascending Sons Of God Physical Aspects Of The Local
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                        Paper 44 The Celestial Artisans

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Introduction

AMONG the courtesy colonies of the various divisional and universe headquarters
worlds may be found the unique order of composite personalities denominated the
celestial artisans. These beings are the master artists and artisans of the
morontia and lower spirit realms. They are the spirits and semispirits who are
engaged in morontia embellishment and in spiritual beautification. Such
artisans are distributed throughout the grand universe--on the headquarters
worlds of the superuniverses, the local universes, the constellations, and
systems, as well as on all spheres settled in light and life; but their chief
realm of activity is in the constellations and especially on the seven hundred
seventy worlds surrounding each headquarters sphere.

Though their work may be almost incomprehensible to the material mind, it
should be understood that the morontia and spirit worlds are not without their
high arts and supernal cultures.

The celestial artisans are not created as such; they are a selected and
recruited corps of beings composed of certain teacher personalities native to
the central universe and their volunteer pupils drawn from the ascending
mortals and numerous other celestial groups. The original teaching corps of
these artisans was sometime assigned by the Infinite Spirit in collaboration
with the Seven Master Spirits and consisted of seven thousand Havona
instructors, one thousand to each of the seven divisions of artisans. With such
a nucleus to start with, there has developed through the ages this brilliant
body of skillful workers in spirit and morontia affairs.

Any morontia personality or spirit entity is eligible for admission to the
corps of the celestial artisans; that is, any being below the rank of inherent
divine sonship. Ascending sons of God from the evolutionary spheres may, after
their arrival on the morontia worlds, apply for admission to the artisan corps
and, if sufficiently gifted, may choose such a career for a longer or shorter
period. But no one may enlist with the celestial artisans for less than one
millennium, one thousand years of superuniverse time.

All celestial artisans are registered on the superuniverse headquarters but are
directed by morontia supervisors on the local universe capitals. They are
commissioned in the following seven major divisions of activity by the central
corps of morontia supervisors functioning on the headquarters world of each
local universe:

1. Celestial Musicians.

2. Heavenly Reproducers.

3. Divine Builders.

4. Thought Recorders.

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5. Energy Manipulators.

6. Designers and Embellishers.

7. Harmony Workers.

The original teachers of these seven groups all hailed from the perfect worlds
of Havona, and Havona contains the patterns, the pattern studies, for all
phases and forms of spirit artistry. While it is a gigantic task to undertake
to transfer these arts of Havona to the worlds of space, the celestial artisans
have improved in technique and execution from age to age. As in all other
phases of the ascending career those who are most advanced in any line of
endeavor are required constantly to impart their superior knowledge and skill
to their less favored fellows.

You will first begin to glimpse these transplanted arts of Havona on the
mansion worlds, and their beauty and your appreciation of their beauty will
heighten and brighten until you stand in the spirit halls of Salvington and
behold the inspiring masterpieces of the supernal artists of the spirit realms.

All these activities of the morontia and spirit worlds are real. To spirit
beings the spirit world is a reality. To us the material world is the more
unreal. The higher forms of spirits freely pass through ordinary matter. High
spirits are reactive to nothing material excepting certain of the basic
energies. To material beings the spirit world is more or less unreal; to spirit
beings the material world is almost entirely unreal, being merely a shadow of
the substance of spirit realities.

I cannot, with exclusive spirit vision, perceive the building in which this
narrative is being translated and recorded. A Divine Counselor from Uversa who
chances to stand by my side perceives still less of these purely material
creations. We discern how these material structures appear to you by viewing a
spirit counterpart presented to our minds by one of our attending energy
transformers. This material building is not exactly real to me, a spirit being,
but it is, of course, very real and very serviceable to material mortals.

There are certain types of beings who are capable of discerning the reality of
the creatures of both the spirit and the material worlds. Belonging to this
class are the so-called fourth creatures of the Havona Servitals and the fourth
creatures of the conciliators. The angels of time and space are endowed with
the ability to discern both spirit and material beings as also are the
ascending mortals subsequent to deliverance from the life in the flesh. After
attainment of the higher spirit levels the ascenders are able to recognize
material, morontia, and spirit realities.

There is also here with me a Mighty Messenger from Uversa, an ascendant
Adjuster-fused, onetime mortal being, and he perceives you as you are, and at
the same time he visualizes the Solitary Messenger, the supernaphim, and other
celestial beings present. Never in your long ascendancy will you lose the power
to recognize your associates of former existences. Always, as you ascend inward
in the scale of life, will you retain the ability to recognize and fraternize
with the fellow beings of your previous and lower levels of experience. Each
new translation or resurrection will add one more group of spirit beings to
your vision range without in the least depriving you of the ability to
recognize your friends and fellows of former estates.

All this is made possible in the experience of ascending mortals by the action
of the indwelling Thought Adjusters. Through their retention of the duplicates

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of your entire life's experiences, you are assured of never losing any true
attribute you once had; and these Adjusters are going through with you, as a
part of you, in reality, as you.

But I almost despair of being able to convey to the material mind the nature of
the work of the celestial artisans. I am under the necessity of constantly
perverting thought and distorting language in an effort to unfold to the mortal
mind the reality of these morontia transactions and near-spirit phenomena. Your
comprehension is incapable of grasping, and your language is inadequate for
conveying, the meaning, value, and relationship of these semispirit activities.
And I proceed with this effort to enlighten the human mind concerning these
realities with the full understanding of the utter impossibility of my being
very successful in such an undertaking.

I can do no more than attempt to sketch a crude parallelism between mortal
material activities and the manifold functions of the celestial artisans. If
the Urantia races were more advanced in art and other cultural accomplishments,
then could I go that much farther in an effort to project the human mind from
the things of matter to those of morontia. About all I can hope to accomplish
is to make emphatic the fact of the reality of these transactions of the
morontia and the spirit worlds.

1. THE CELESTIAL MUSICIANS

With 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.

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

1. Spiritual sound--spirit current interruptions.

2. Spiritual light--the control and intensification of the light of the
morontia and spiritual realms.

3. Energy impingements--melody produced by the skillful management of the
morontia and spirit energies.

4. Color symphonies--melody of morontia color tones; this ranks among the
highest accomplishments of the celestial musicians.

5. Harmony of associated spirits--the very arrangement and association of
different orders of morontia and spirit beings produce majestic melodies.

6. Melody of thought--the thinking of spiritual thoughts can be so perfected as
to burst forth in the melodies of Havona.

7. The music of space--by proper attunement the melodies of other spheres can
be picked up on the universe broadcast circuits.

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There 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.

Harmony, 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.

Appreciation 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.

Tuneful 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.

The 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.

While 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.

2. THE HEAVENLY REPRODUCERS

Mortal man can hardly hope for more than a meager and distorted concept of the
functions of the heavenly reproducers, which I must attempt to illustrate

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through the gross and limited symbolism of your material language. The
spirit-morontia world has a thousand and one things of supreme value, things
worthy of reproduction but unknown on Urantia, experiences that belong in the
category of the activities which have hardly "entered into the mind of man,"
those realities which God has in waiting for those who survive the life in the
flesh.

There are seven groups of the heavenly reproducers, and I will attempt to
illustrate their work by the following classification:

1. The singers--harmonists who reiterate the specific harmonies of the past and
interpret the melodies of the present. But all of this is effected on the
morontia level.

2. The color workers--those artists of light and shade you might call sketchers
and painters, artists who preserve passing scenes and transient episodes for
future morontia enjoyment.

3. The light picturizers--the makers of the real semispirit-phenomena
preservations of which motion pictures would be a very crude illustration.

4. The historic pageanteers--those who dramatically reproduce the crucial
events of universe records and history.

5. The prophetic artists--those who project the meanings of history into the
future.

6. The life-story tellers--those who perpetuate the meaning and significance of
life experience. The projection of present personal experiences into future
attainment values.

7. The administrative enactors--those who depict the significance of
governmental philosophy and administrative technique, the celestial dramatists
of sovereignty.

Very often and effectively the heavenly reproducers collaborate with the
reversion directors in combining memory recapitulation with certain forms of
mind rest and personality diversion. Before the morontia conclaves and spirit
assemblies these reproducers sometimes associate themselves in tremendous
dramatic spectacles representative of the purpose of such gatherings. I
recently witnessed such a stupendous presentation in which more than one
million actors produced a succession of one thousand scenes.

The higher intellectual teachers and the transition ministers freely and
effectively utilize these various groups of reproducers in their morontia
educational activities. But not all of their efforts are devoted to transient
illustration; much, very much, of their work is of a permanent nature and will
forever remain as a legacy to all future time. So versatile are these artisans
that, when they function en masse, they are able to re-enact an age, and in
collaboration with the seraphic ministers they can actually portray the eternal
values of the spirit world to the mortal seers of time.

3. THE DIVINE BUILDERS

There are cities "whose builder and maker is God." In spirit counterpart we
have all that you mortals are familiar with and inexpressibly more. We have
homes, spirit comforts, and morontia necessities. For every material
satisfaction which humans are capable of enjoying, we have thousands of
spiritual realities

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that serve to enrich and enlarge our existence. The divine builders function in
seven groups:

1. The home designers and builders--those who construct and remodel the abodes
assigned to individuals and working groups. These morontia and spirit domiciles
are real. They would be invisible to your short-range vision, but they are very
real and beautiful to us. To a certain extent, all spirit beings may share with
the builders certain details of the planning and creation of their morontia or
spirit abodes. These homes are fitted up and embellished in accordance with the
needs of the morontia or of the spirit creatures who are to inhabit them. There
is abundant variety and ample opportunity for individual expression in all
these constructions.

2. The vocation builders--those who function in designing and assembling the
abodes of the regular and routine workers of the spirit and morontia realms.
These builders are comparable to those who construct the Urantia workshops and
other industrial plants. The transition worlds have a necessary economy of
mutual ministry and specialized division of labor. We do not all do everything;
there is diversity of function among morontia beings and evolving spirits, and
these vocation builders not only build better workshops but also contribute to
the vocational enhancement of the worker.

3. The play builders. Enormous edifices are utilized during the seasons of
rest, what mortals would call recreation and, in a certain sense, play.
Provision is made for a suitable setting for the reversion directors, the
humorists of the morontia worlds, those transition spheres whereon takes place
the training of ascendant beings but recently removed from the evolutionary
planets. Even the higher spirits engage in a certain form of reminiscent humor
during their periods of spiritual recharging.

4. The worship builders--the experienced architects of the spirit and the
morontia temples. All the worlds of mortal ascent have temples of worship, and
they are the most exquisite creations of the morontia realms and the spirit
spheres.

5. The education builders--those who build the headquarters of morontia
training and advanced spirit learning. Always is the way open to acquire more
knowledge, to gain additional information respecting one's present and future
work as well as universal cultural knowledge, information designed to make
ascending mortals more intelligent and effective citizens of the morontia and
spirit worlds.

6. Morontia planners--those who build for the co-ordinate association of all
the personalities of all realms as they are at any one time present on any one
sphere. These planners collaborate with the Morontia Power Supervisors to
enrich the co-ordination of the progressive morontia life.

7. The public builders--the artisans who plan and construct the designated
places of assembly other than those of worship. Great and magnificent are the
places of common assembly.

While neither these structures nor their embellishment would be exactly real to
the sensory comprehension of material mortals, they are very real to us. You
would be unable to see these temples could you be there in the flesh;
nevertheless, all of these supermaterial creations are actually there, and we
clearly discern them and just as fully enjoy them.

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4. THE THOUGHT RECORDERS

These artisans are devoted to the preservation and reproduction of the superior
thought of the realms, and they function in seven groups:

1. Thought preservers. These are the artisans dedicated to the preservation of
the higher thought of the realms. On the morontia worlds they truly treasure
the gems of mentation. Before first coming to Urantia, I saw records and heard
broadcasts of the ideation of some of the great minds of this planet. Thought
recorders preserve such noble ideas in the tongue of Uversa.

Each superuniverse has its own language, a tongue spoken by its personalities
and prevailing throughout its sectors. This is known as the tongue of Uversa in
our superuniverse. Each local universe also has its own language. All of the
higher orders of Nebadon are bilingual, speaking both the language of Nebadon
and the tongue of Uversa. When two individuals from different local universes
meet, they communicate in the tongue of Uversa; if, however, one of them hails
from another superuniverse, they must have recourse to a translator. In the
central universe there is little need of a language; there exists perfect and
well-nigh complete understanding; there, only the Gods are not fully
comprehended. We are taught that a chance meeting on Paradise reveals more of
mutual understanding than could be communicated by a mortal language in a
thousand years. Even on Salvington we "know as we are known."

The ability to translate thought into language in the morontia and spirit
spheres is beyond mortal comprehension. Our rate of reducing thought to a
permanent record can be so speeded up by the expert recorders that the
equivalent of over half a million words, or thought symbols, can be registered
in one minute of Urantia time. These universe languages are far more replete
than the speech of the evolving worlds. The concept symbols of Uversa embrace
more than a billion characters, although the basic alphabet contains only
seventy symbols. The language of Nebadon is not quite so elaborate, the basic
symbols, or alphabet, being forty-eight in number.

2. Concept recorders. This second group of recorders are concerned with the
preservation of concept pictures, idea patterns. This is a form of permanent
recording unknown on the material realms, and by this method I could gain more
knowledge in one hour of your time than you could gain in one hundred years of
perusing ordinary written language.

3. Ideograph recorders. We have the equivalent of both your written and spoken
word, but in preserving thought, we usually employ concept picturization and
ideograph techniques. Those who preserve ideographs are able to improve one
thousandfold upon the work of the concept recorders.

4. Promoters of oratory. This group of recorders are occupied with the task of
preserving thought for reproduction by oratory. But in the language of Nebadon
we could, in a half hour's address, cover the subject matter of the entire
lifetime of a Urantia mortal. Your only hope of comprehending these
transactions is to pause and consider the technique of your disordered and
garbled dream life--how you can in a few seconds traverse years of experience
in these fantasies of the night season.

The oratory of the spirit world is one of the rare treats which await you who
have heard only the crude and stumbling orations of Urantia. There is harmony

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of music and euphony of expression in the orations of Salvington and Edentia
which are inspiring beyond description. These burning concepts are like gems of
beauty in diadems of glory. But I cannot do it! I cannot convey to the human
mind the breadth and depth of these realities of another world!

5. The broadcast directors. The broadcasts of Paradise, the superuniverses, and
the local universes are under the general supervision of this group of thought
conservers. They serve as censors and editors as well as co-ordinators of the
broadcast material, making a superuniverse adaptation of all Paradise
broadcasts and adapting and translating the broadcasts of the Ancients of Days
into the individual tongues of the local universes.

The local universe broadcasts must also be modified for reception by the
systems and the individual planets. The transmittal of these space reports is
carefully supervised, and there is always a back registry to insure the proper
reception of every report on every world in a given circuit. These broadcast
directors are technically expert in the utilization of the currents of space
for all purposes of intelligence communication.

6. The rhythm recorders. Urantians would undoubtedly denominate these artisans
poets, although their work is very different from, and almost infinitely
transcends, your poetic productions. Rhythm is less exhausting to both morontia
and spirit beings, and so an effort is frequently made to increase efficiency,
as well as to augment pleasure, by executing numerous functions in rhythmic
form. I only wish you might be privileged to hear some of the poetic broadcasts
of the Edentia assemblies and to enjoy the richness of the color and tone of
the constellation geniuses who are masters of this exquisite form of
self-expression and social harmonization.

7. The morontia recorders. I am at a loss to know how to depict to the material
mind the function of this important group of thought recorders assigned to the
work of preserving the ensemble pictures of the various groupings of morontia
affairs and spirit transactions; crudely illustrated, they are the group
photographers of the transition worlds. They save for the future the vital
scenes and associations of these progressive epochs, preserving them in the
archives of the morontia halls of records.

5. THE ENERGY MANIPULATORS

These interesting and effective artisans are concerned with every kind of
energy: physical, mindal, and spiritual.

1. Physical-energy manipulators. The physical-energy manipulators serve for
long periods with the power directors and are experts in the manipulation and
control of many phases of physical energy. They are conversant with the three
basic currents and the thirty subsidiary energy segregations of the
superuniverses. These beings are of inestimable assistance to the Morontia
Power Supervisors of the transition worlds. They are the persistent students of
the cosmic projections of Paradise.

2. Mind-energy manipulators. These are the experts of intercommunication
between morontia and other types of intelligent beings. This form of
communication between mortals is practically nonexistent on Urantia. These are

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the specialists who promote the ability of the ascending morontia beings to
communicate with one another, and their work embraces numerous unique
adventures in intellect liaison which are far beyond my power to portray to the
material mind. These artisans are the keen students of the mind circuits of the
Infinite Spirit.

3. Spiritual-energy manipulators. The manipulators of spiritual energy are an
intriguing group. Spiritual energy acts in accordance with established laws,
just as does physical energy. That is, spirit force, when studied, yields
dependable deductions and can be precisely dealt with, even as can the physical
energies. There are just as certain and reliable laws in the spirit world as
obtain in the material realms. During the last few millions of years many
improved techniques for the intake of spiritual energy have been effected by
these students of the fundamental laws of the Eternal Son governing spirit
energy as applied to the morontia and other orders of celestial beings
throughout the universes.

4. The compound manipulators. This is the adventurous group of well-trained
beings who are dedicated to the functional association of the three original
phases of divine energy manifested throughout the universes as physical,
mindal, and spiritual energies. These are the keen personalities who are in
reality seeking to discover the universe presence of God the Supreme, for in
this Deity personality there must occur the experiential unification of all
grand universe divinity. And to a certain extent, these artisans have in recent
times met with some success.

5. The transport advisers. This corps of technical advisers to the transport
seraphim are most proficient in collaborating with the star students in working
out routings and in otherwise assisting the chiefs of transport on the worlds
of space. They are the traffic supervisors of the spheres and are present on
all inhabited planets. Urantia is served by a corps of seventy transport
advisers.

6. The experts of communication. Urantia, likewise, is served by twelve
technicians of interplanetary and interuniverse communication. These
long-experienced beings are expert in the knowledge of the laws of transmittal
and interference as applied to the communications of the realms. This corps is
concerned with all forms of space messages except those of Gravity and Solitary
Messengers. On Urantia much of their work must be accomplished over the
archangels' circuit.

7. The teachers of rest. Divine rest is associated with the technique of
spiritual-energy intake. Morontia and spirit energy must be replenished just as
certainly as physical energy, but not for the same reasons. I am, perforce,
compelled to employ crude illustrations in my attempts to enlighten you;
nevertheless, we of the spirit world must stop our regular activities
periodically and betake ourselves to suitable places of rendezvous where we
enter the divine rest and thus recuperate our depleting energies.

You will receive your first lessons in these matters when you reach the mansion
worlds after you have become morontia beings and have begun to experience the
technique of spirit affairs. You know of the innermost circle of Havona and
that, after the pilgrims of space have traversed the preceding circles, they
must be inducted into the long and revivifying rest of Paradise. This is not
only a technical requirement of transit from the career of time to the service
of eternity, but it is also a necessity, a form of rest required to replenish
the energy

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losses incident to the final steps of the ascendant experience and to store
reserves of spirit power for the next stage of the endless career.

These energy manipulators also function in hundreds of other ways too numerous
to catalogue, such as counseling with the seraphim, cherubim, and sanobim
regarding the most efficient modes of energy intake and as to the maintenance
of the most helpful balances of divergent forces between active cherubim and
passive sanobim. In many other ways do these experts lend assistance to
morontia and spirit creatures in their efforts to understand the divine rest,
which is so essential to the effective utilization of the basic energies of
space.

6. THE DESIGNERS AND EMBELLISHERS

How I wish I knew how to portray the exquisite work of these unique artisans!
Every attempt on my part to explain the work of spirit embellishment would only
recall to material minds your own pitiful but worthy efforts to do these things
on your world of mind and matter.

This corps, while embracing over one thousand subdivisions of activity, is
grouped under the following seven major heads:

1. The craftworkers of color. These are they who make the ten thousand color
tones of spirit reflection peal forth their exquisite messages of harmonious
beauty. Aside from color perception there is nothing in human experience to
which these activities may be compared.

2. The sound designers. Spirit waves of diverse identity and morontia
appreciation are depicted by these designers of what you would call sound.
These impulses are in reality the superb reflections of the naked and glorious
spirit-souls of the celestial hosts.

3. The emotion designers. These enhancers and conservators of feeling are those
who preserve the sentiments of morontia and the emotions of divinity for the
study and edification of the children of time and for the inspiration and
beautification of morontia progressors and advancing spirits.

4. The artists of odor. This comparison of supernal spirit activities to the
physical recognition of chemical odors is, indeed, unfortunate, but Urantia
mortals could hardly recognize this ministry by any other name. These artisans
create their varied symphonies for the edification and delight of the advancing
children of light. You have nothing on earth to which this type of spiritual
grandeur can be even remotely compared.

5. The presence embellishers. These artisans are not occupied with the arts of
self-adornment or the technique of creature beautification. They are devoted to
the production of multitudinous and joyous reactions in individual morontia and
spirit creatures by dramatizing the significance of relationship through the
positional values assigned to different morontia and spirit orders in the
composite ensembles of these diversified beings. These artists arrange
supermaterial beings as you would living musical notes, odors, sights, and then
blend them into the anthems of glory.

6. The taste designers. And how can you be told of these artists! Faintly I
might suggest that they are improvers of morontia taste, and they also endeavor
to increase the appreciation of beauty through the sharpening of the evolving
spirit senses.

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7. The morontia synthesizers. These are the master craftsmen who, when all
others have made their respective contributions, then add the culminating and
finishing touches to the morontia ensemble, thus achieving an inspiring
portrayal of the divinely beautiful, an enduring inspiration to spirit beings
and their morontia associates. But you must await your deliverance from the
animal body before you can begin to conceive of the artistic glories and
aesthetic beauties of the morontia and spirit worlds.

7. THE HARMONY WORKERS

These artists are not concerned with music, painting, or anything similar, as
you might be led to surmise. They are occupied with the manipulation and
organization of specialized forces and energies which are present in the spirit
world, but which are not recognized by mortals. If I had the least possible
basis for comparison, I would attempt to portray this unique field of spirit
achievement, but I despair--there is no hope of conveying to mortal minds this
sphere of celestial artistry. Nevertheless, that which cannot be described may
still be implied:

Beauty, rhythm, and harmony are intellectually associated and spiritually akin.
Truth, fact, and relationship are intellectually inseparable and associated
with the philosophic concepts of beauty. Goodness, righteousness, and justice
are philosophically interrelated and spiritually bound up together with living
truth and divine beauty.

Cosmic concepts of true philosophy, the portrayal of celestial artistry, or the
mortal attempt to depict the human recognition of divine beauty can never be
truly satisfying if such attempted creature progression is ununified. These
expressions of the divine urge within the evolving creature may be
intellectually true, emotionally beautiful, and spiritually good; but the real
soul of expression is absent unless these realities of truth, meanings of
beauty, and values of goodness are unified in the life experience of the
artisan, the scientist, or the philosopher.

These divine qualities are perfectly and absolutely unified in God. And every
God-knowing man or angel possesses the potential of unlimited self-expression
on ever-progressive levels of unified self-realization by the technique of the
never-ending achievement of Godlikeness--the experiential blending in the
evolutionary experience of eternal truth, universal beauty, and divine
goodness.

8. MORTAL ASPIRATIONS AND MORONTIA ACHIEVEMENTS

Although celestial artisans do not personally work on material planets, such as
Urantia, they do come, from time to time, from the headquarters of the system
to proffer help to the naturally gifted individuals of the mortal races. When
thus assigned, these artisans temporarily work under the supervision of the
planetary angels of progress. The seraphic hosts co-operate with these artisans
in attempting to assist those mortal artists who possess inherent endowments,
and who also possess Adjusters of special and previous experience.

There are three possible sources of special human ability: At the bottom always
there exists the natural or inherent aptitude. Special ability is never an
arbitrary gift of the Gods; there is always an ancestral foundation for every

                                top of page - 508

outstanding talent. In addition to this natural ability, or rather supplemental
thereto, there may be contributed the leadings of the Thought Adjuster in those
individuals whose indwelling Adjusters may have had actual and bona fide
experiences along such lines on other worlds and in other mortal creatures. In
those cases where both the human mind and the indwelling Adjuster are unusually
skillful, the spirit artisans may be delegated to act as harmonizers of these
talents and otherwise to assist and inspire these mortals to seek for
ever-perfecting ideals and to attempt their enhanced portrayal for the
edification of the realm.

There is no caste in the ranks of spirit artisans. No matter how lowly your
origin, if you have ability and the gift of expression, you will gain adequate
recognition and receive due appreciation as you ascend upward in the scale of
morontia experience and spiritual attainment. There can be no handicap of human
heredity or deprivation of mortal environment which the morontia career will
not fully compensate and wholly remove. And all such satisfactions of artistic
achievement and expressionful self-realization will be effected by your own
personal efforts in progressive advancement. At last the aspirations of
evolutionary mediocrity may be realized. While the Gods do not arbitrarily
bestow talents and ability upon the children of time, they do provide for the
attainment of the satisfaction of all their noble longings and for the
gratification of all human hunger for supernal self-expression.

But every human being should remember: Many ambitions to excel which tantalize
mortals in the flesh will not persist with these same mortals in the morontia
and spirit careers. The ascending morontians learn to socialize their former
purely selfish longings and egoistic ambitions. Nevertheless, those things
which you so earnestly longed to do on earth and which circumstances so
persistently denied you, if, after acquiring true mota insight in the morontia
career, you still desire to do, then will you most certainly be granted every
opportunity fully to satisfy your long-cherished desires.

Before ascending mortals leave the local universe to embark upon their spirit
careers, they will be satiated respecting every intellectual, artistic, and
social longing or true ambition which ever characterized their mortal or
morontia planes of existence. This is the achievement of equality of the
satisfaction of self-expression and self-realization but not the attainment of
identical experiential status nor the complete obliteration of characteristic
individuality in skill, technique, and expression. But the new spirit
differential of personal experiential attainment will not become thus leveled
off and equalized until after you have finished the last circle of the Havona
career. And then will the Paradise residents be confronted with the necessity
of adjusting to that absonite differential of personal experience which can be
leveled off only by the group attainment of the ultimate of creature
status--the seventh-stage-spirit destiny of the mortal finaliters.

And this is the story of the celestial artisans, that cosmopolitan body of
exquisite workers who do so much to glorify the architectural spheres with the
artistic portrayals of the divine beauty of the Paradise Creators.

[Indited by an Archangel of Nebadon.]

                                top of page - 509

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  Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART II: The Local Universe :
The Evolution Of Local Universes Administration Of The Local Universe The Local
    Universe Mother Spirit The Local Universe Sons Of God The Life Carriers
  Personalities Of The Local Universe Ministering Spirits Of The Local Universe
   The Seraphic Hosts The Ascending Sons Of God Physical Aspects Of The Local
 Universe Energy--mind And Matter The Constellations The Celestial Artisans The
  Local System Administration The Local System Headquarters The Seven Mansion
    Worlds The Morontia Life The Inhabited Worlds The Planetary Princes The
  Planetary Adams Planetary Mortal Epochs The Lucifer Rebellion Problems Of The
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