23:2.23 When it develops that it will require hundreds of years for a native ambassador to reach a far-distant local universe, a Solitary Messenger is often asked to proceed there immediately to act as ambassador ad interim. Solitary Messengers can go in very short order, not independently of time and space as do the Gravity Messengers, but nearly so. They also serve in other circumstances as emissaries of special assignment.
23:2.24 7. Revelators of Truth. The Solitary Messengers regard the assignment to reveal truth as the highest trust of their order. And they function ever and anon in this capacity, from the superuniverses to the individual planets of space. They are frequently attached to commissions which are sent to enlarge the revelation of truth to the worlds and systems.
3. TIME AND SPACE SERVICES OF SOLITARY MESSENGERS
23:3.1 The Solitary Messengers are the highest type of perfect and confidential personality available in all realms for the quick transmission of important and urgent messages when it is inexpedient to utilize either the broadcast service or the reflectivity mechanism. They serve in an endless variety of assignments, helping out the spiritual and material beings of the realms, particularly where the element of time is involved. Of all orders assigned to the services of the superuniverse domains, they are the highest and most versatile personalized beings who can come so near to defying time and space.
23:3.2 ¶ The universe is well supplied with spirits who utilize gravity for purposes of transit; they can go anywhere any time — instanter — but they are not persons. Certain other gravity traversers are personal beings, such as Gravity Messengers and Transcendental Recorders, but they are not available to the super- and the local universe administrators. The worlds teem with angels and men and other highly personal beings, but they are handicapped by time and space: The limit of velocity for most nonenseraphimed beings is 299,789 kilometres of your world per second of your time[1]; the midway creatures and certain others can, often do, attain double velocity — 599,578 km/s — while the seraphim and others can traverse space at triple velocity, about 899,367 km/s[2]. There are, however, no transit or messenger personalities who function between the instantaneous velocities of the gravity traversers and the comparatively slow speeds of the seraphim, except the Solitary Messengers.
23:3.3 Solitary Messengers are, therefore, generally used for dispatch and service in those situations where personality is essential to the achievement of the assignment, and where it is desired to avoid the loss of time which would be occasioned by the sending of any other readily available type of personal messenger. They are the only definitely personalized beings who can synchronize with the combined universal currents of the grand universe. Their velocity in traversing space is variable, depending on a great variety of interfering influences, but the record shows that on the journey to fulfil this mission my associate messenger proceeded at the rate of 1,354,458,739,823 km/s.
23:3.4 It is wholly beyond my ability to explain to the material type of mind how a spirit can be a real person and at the same time traverse space at such tremendous velocities. But these very Solitary Messengers actually come to, and go from, Urantia at these incomprehensible speeds; indeed, the whole economy of universal administration would be largely deprived of its personal element were this not a fact.
23:3.5 ¶ The Solitary Messengers are able to function as emergency lines of communication throughout remote space regions, realms not embraced within the established circuits of the grand universe. It develops that one messenger, when so functioning, can transmit a message or send an impulse through space to a fellow messenger about 100 light-years away as Urantia astronomers estimate stellar distances.
23:3.6 Of the myriads of beings who co-operate with us in the conduct of the affairs of the superuniverse, none are more important in practical helpfulness and timesaving assistance. In the universes of space we must reckon with the handicaps of time; hence the great service of the Solitary Messengers, who, by means of their personal prerogatives of communication, are somewhat independent of space and, by virtue of their tremendous transit velocities, are so nearly independent of time.
23:3.7 ¶ I am at a loss to explain to Urantia mortals how the Solitary Messengers can be without form and yet possess real and definite personalities. Although they are without that form which would naturally be associated with personality, they do possess a spirit presence which is discernible by all higher types of spirit beings. The Solitary Messengers are the only class of beings who seem to be possessed of well-nigh all the advantages of a formless spirit coupled with all the prerogatives of a full-fledged personality. They are true persons, yet endowed with nearly all of the attributes of impersonal spirit manifestation.
23:3.8 In the seven superuniverses, ordinarily — but not always — everything which tends to increase any creature’s liberation from the handicaps of time and space proportionately diminishes personality prerogatives. Solitary Messengers are an exception to this general law. They are in their activities all but unrestricted in the utilization of any and all of the limitless avenues of spiritual expression, divine service, personal ministry, and cosmic communication. If you could view these extraordinary beings in the light of my experience in universe administration, you would comprehend how difficult it would be to co-ordinate superuniverse affairs were it not for their versatile co-operation.
23:3.9 No matter how much the universe may enlarge, no more Solitary Messengers will probably ever be created. As the universes grow, the expanded work of administration must be increasingly borne by other types of spirit ministers and by those beings who take origin in these new creations, such as the creatures of the Sovereign Sons and the local universe Mother Spirits.
4. SPECIAL MINISTRY OF SOLITARY MESSENGERS
23:4.1 The Solitary Messengers seem to be personality co-ordinators for all types of spirit beings. Their ministry helps to make all the personalities of the far-flung spiritual world akin. They contribute much to the development, in all spirit beings, of a consciousness of group identity. Every type of spirit being is served by special groups of Solitary Messengers who foster the ability of such beings to understand and fraternize with all other types and orders, however dissimilar.
23:4.2 The Solitary Messengers demonstrate such an amazing ability to co-ordinate all types and orders of finite personality — even to make contact with the absonite regime of the master universe overcontrollers — that some of us postulate that the creation of these messengers by the Infinite Spirit is in some manner related to the Conjoint Actor’s bestowal of Supreme-Ultimate Mind.
23:4.3 ¶ When a finaliter and a Paradise Citizen co-operate in the trinitization of a “child of time and eternity” — a transaction involving the unrevealed mind potentials of the Supreme-Ultimate — and when such an unclassified personality is dispatched to Vicegerington, a Solitary Messenger (a conjectured personality repercussion of the bestowal of such deity mind) is always assigned as guardian-companion to such a creature-trinitized son. This messenger accompanies the new son of destiny to the world of his assignment and nevermore leaves Vicegerington. When thus attached to the destinies of a child of time and eternity, a Solitary Messenger is forever transferred to the sole supervision of the Architects of the Master Universe. What the future of such an extraordinary association may be, we do not know. For ages these partnerships of unique personalities have continued to forgather on Vicegerington, but not even a single pair has ever gone forth therefrom.
[1]
299,789 kilometres of your world per second of your time, Note that the absolutely exact (by definition of “meter”) speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s.
[2]
899,367 km/s. I have worked out the mathematical details of a possibility of travelling faster than the speed of light by interpreting the fifth dimension of Kaluza's “unified field theory of gravitation and electromagnetism” as proper time τ and the momentum conjugated to it (the total phase space being the cotangent bundle T*M over a 5-dimensional Lorentzian manifold M of signature (-,+,+,+,+)) as rest mass m: xμ = (t,r,τ), pμ=(E,p,m), thus explicitly manifesting the geometric nature of rest mass (as opposed to it being an inherent constant parameter). Therefore, the ordinary 4-dimensional mass shell constraint E2 = p2 + m2, g(p,p) + m2 = 0 appears as nothing but the restriction on all matter being supported on the “lightlike cone in 5-dimensions”: G(p,p)=0, where g and G are 4d and 5d metric tensors respectively. Thus, all energy is “lightlike” in 5 dimensions, but as this “lightlike energy” undergoes slowing down, it manifests itself (i.e. its projection to a 4-dimensional spacetime submanifold) as a normal “massive material energy”. In such interpretation of Kaluza's fifth dimension there is no need whatsoever for Klein's constraint of S1-compactification thereof. Furthermore, it is easily seen that the modern offshoots of Kaluza-Klein model (superstring theories, etc.), which impose such constraints are nothing more than the special cases of monstrous situations of energy somehow locked in a loop of time-perception. Our “normal” perception of time is linear (and has a topology of a closed interval [a,b] and no such compactification constraints are demanded. Note, further, that the velocity in the fifth dimension (as measured with respect to the coordinate time t) is extremely high for slow movements in purely spatial dimension: dτ/dt = (1 - v2)1/2. Hence, if we can imagine a surface capable of reflecting the momentum in τ-dimension (thus causing dematerialization, i.e. passing through the point m=0 in the phase space) into one of the purely spatial dimensions (just like an ordinary elastic collision at an angle of 45o causes a reflection of, say px momentum component into py), we would expect by the law of conservation of 5-momentum the corresponding spatial momentum to be likewise extremely high, even equal to that of light if the process begins from purely spatial rest (p=0). And, having crossed “the light barrier”, there is then nothing peculiar about accelerating to an even higher speed, this being permitted even by such limited treatment of the material reality as Einstein's Special Relativity theory in four dimensions. The surface itself would have to be immovable in (coordinate) time, such as the Isle of Paradise, which we are told is reachable from any point in space by moving inward, the Paradise itself remaining outside space and time. This implies that superluminal travel is possible from any point in space, but some sort of contact with the Isle of Paradise or other such “surface immovable in time” (or some other dematerialization technique) is required — and this is apparently facilitated by the transport seraphim.