46:2 Physical Features of Jerusem
46:2.1 On Jerusem you will miss the rugged mountain ranges of Urantia and other evolved worlds since there are neither earthquakes nor rainfalls, but you will enjoy the beauteous highlands and other unique variations of topography and landscape. Enormous areas of Jerusem are preserved in a "natural state," and the grandeur of such districts is quite beyond the powers of human imagination.
46:2.2 There are thousands upon thousands of small lakes but no raging rivers nor expansive oceans. There is no rainfall, neither storms nor blizzards, on any of the architectural worlds, but there is the daily precipitation of the condensation of moisture during the time of lowest temperature attending the light recession. (The dew point is higher on a three-gas world than on a two-gas planet like Urantia.) The physical plant life and the morontia world of living things both require moisture, but this is largely supplied by the subsoil system of circulation which extends all over the sphere, even up to the very tops of the highlands. This water system is not entirely subsurface, for there are many canals interconnecting the sparkling lakes of Jerusem.
46:2.3 The atmosphere of Jerusem is a three-gas mixture. This air is very similar to that of Urantia with the addition of a gas adapted to the respiration of the morontia order of life. This third gas in no way unfits the air for the respiration of animals or plants of the material orders.
46:2.4 The transportation system is allied with the circulatory streams of energy movement, these main energy currents being located at ten-mile intervals. By adjustment of physical mechanisms the material beings of the planet can proceed at a pace varying from two to five hundred miles per hour. The transport birds fly at about one hundred miles an hour. The air mechanisms of the Material Sons travel around five hundred miles per hour. Material and early morontia beings must utilize these mechanical means of transport, but spirit personalities proceed by liaison with the superior forces and spirit sources of energy.
46:2.5 Jerusem and its associated worlds are endowed with the ten standard divisions of physical life characteristic of the architectural spheres of Nebadon. And since there is no organic evolution on Jerusem, there are no conflicting forms of life, no struggle for existence, no survival of the fittest. Rather is there a creative adaptation which foreshadows the beauty, the harmony, and the perfection of the eternal worlds of the central and divine universe. And in all this creative perfection there is the most amazing intermingling of physical and of morontia life, artistically contrasted by the celestial artisans and their fellows.
46:2.6 Jerusem is indeed a foretaste of paradisiacal glory and grandeur. But you can never hope to gain an adequate idea of these glorious architectural worlds by any attempted description. There is so little that can be compared with aught on your world, and even then the things of Jerusem so transcend the things of Urantia that the comparison is almost grotesque. Until you actually arrive on Jerusem, you can hardly entertain anything like a true concept of the heavenly worlds, but that is not so long a time in the future when your coming experience on the system capital is compared with your sometime arrival on the more remote training spheres of the universe, the superuniverse, and of Havona.
46:2.7 The manufacturing or laboratory sector of Jerusem is an extensive domain, one which Urantians would hardly recognize since it has no smoking chimneys; nevertheless, there is an intricate material economy associated with these special worlds, and there is a perfection of mechanical technique and physical achievement which would astonish and even awe your most experienced chemists and inventors. Pause to consider that this first world of detention in the Paradise journey is far more material than spiritual. Throughout your stay on Jerusem and its transition worlds you are far nearer your earth life of material things than your later life of advancing spirit existence.
46:2.8 Mount Seraph is the highest elevation on Jerusem, almost fifteen thousand feet, and is the point of departure for all transport seraphim. Numerous mechanical developments are used in providing initial energy for escaping the planetary gravity and overcoming the air resistance. A seraphic transport departs every three seconds of Urantia time throughout the light period and, sometimes, far into the recession. The transporters take off at about twenty-five standard miles per second of Urantia time and do not attain standard velocity until they are over two thousand miles away from Jerusem.
46:2.9 Transports arrive on the crystal field, the so-called sea of glass. Around this area are the receiving stations for the various orders of beings who traverse space by seraphic transport. Near the polar crystal receiving station for student visitors you may ascend the pearly observatory and view the immense relief map of the entire headquarters planet.
