^44:0.14 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.

^44:0.15 ¶ 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.

^44:0.16 I cannot, with exclusive spirit vision, perceive the building in which this narrative is being translated and recorded. A Divine Counsellor 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.

^44:0.17 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.

^44:0.18 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.

^44:0.19 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 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.

^44:0.20 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.

^44:0.21 ¶ 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

^44:1.1 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 marvellous melodies can be broadcast to the uttermost parts of a universe.

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

^44:1.3 1. Spiritual sound — spirit current interruptions.

^44:1.4 2. Spiritual light — the control and intensification of the light of the morontia and spiritual realms.

^44:1.5 3. Energy impingements — melody produced by the skillful management of the morontia and spirit energies.

^44:1.6 4. Colour symphonies — melody of morontia colour tones; this ranks among the highest accomplishments of the celestial musicians.

^44:1.7 5. Harmony of associated spirits — the very arrangement and association of different orders of morontia and spirit beings produce majestic melodies.

^44:1.8 6. Melody of thought — the thinking of spiritual thoughts can be so perfected as to burst forth in the melodies of Havona.

^44:1.9 7. The music of space — by proper attunement the melodies of other spheres can be picked up on the universe broadcast circuits.

^44:1.10 ¶ There are over 100,000 different modes of sound, colour, 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.

^44:1.11 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.

^44:1.12 ¶ 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 35,000 years.

^44:1.13 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.