Conciliators maintain group headquarters on the capital of their superuniverse, where their primary reserve corps is held. Their secondary reserves are stationed on the capitals of the local universes. The younger and less experienced commissioners begin their service on the lower worlds, worlds like Urantia, and are advanced to the adjudication of greater problems after they have acquired riper experience.
The order of conciliators is wholly dependable; not one has ever gone astray. Though not infallible in wisdom and judgment, they are of unquestioned reliability and unerring in faithfulness. They take origin on the headquarters of a superuniverse and eventually return thereto, advancing through the following levels of universe service:
1. Conciliators to the Worlds. Whenever the supervising personalities of the individual worlds become greatly perplexed or actually deadlocked concerning the proper procedure under existing circumstances, and if the matter is not of sufficient importance to be brought before the regularly constituted tribunals of the realm, then, upon the receipt of a petition of two personalities, one from each contention, a conciliating commission will begin to function forthwith.
When these administrative and jurisdictional difficulties have been placed in the hands of the conciliators for study and adjudication, they are supreme in authority. But they will not formulate a decision until all the evidence has been heard, and there is absolutely no limit to their authority to call witnesses from anywhere and everywhere. And while their decisions may not be appealed, sometimes matters so develop that the commission closes its records at a given point, concludes its opinions, and transfers the whole question to the higher tribunals of the realm.
The commissioners’ decisions are placed on the planetary records and, if necessary, are put into effect by the divine executioner. His power is very great, and the range of his activities on an inhabited world is very wide. Divine executioners are masterful manipulators of that which is in the interests of that which ought to be. Their work is sometimes carried out for the apparent welfare of the realm, and sometimes their acts on the worlds of time and space are difficult of explanation. Though executing decrees in defiance of neither natural law nor the ordained usages of the realm, they do ofttimes effect their strange doings and enforce the mandates of the conciliators in accordance with the higher laws of the system administration.
2. Conciliators to the System Headquarters. From service on the evolutionary worlds these commissions of four are advanced to duty on a system headquarters. Here they have much work to do, and they prove to be the understanding friends of men, angels, and other spirit beings. The referee trios are not so much concerned with personal differences as with group contentions and with misunderstandings arising between different orders of creatures; and on a system headquarters there live both spiritual and material beings, as well as the combined types, such as the Material Sons.
The moment the Creators bring into existence evolving individuals with the power of choice, that moment a departure is made from the smooth working of divine perfection; misunderstandings are certain to arise, and provision for the fair adjustment of these honest differences of viewpoint must be made. We should all remember that the all-wise and all-powerful Creators could have made the local universes just as perfect as Havona. No conciliating commissions need function in the central universe. But the Creators did not choose in their all-wisdom to do this. And while they have produced universes which abound in differences and teem with difficulties, they have likewise provided the mechanisms and the means for composing all these differences and for harmonizing all this seeming confusion.
3. The Constellation Conciliators. From service in the systems the conciliators are promoted to the adjudication of the problems of a constellation, taking up the minor difficulties arising between its one hundred systems of inhabited worlds. Not many problems developing on the constellation headquarters fall under their jurisdiction, but they are kept busy going from system to system gathering evidence and preparing preliminary statements. If the contention is honest, if the difficulties arise out of sincere differences of opinion and honest diversity of viewpoints, no matter how few persons may be involved, no matter how apparently trivial the misunderstanding, a conciliating commission can always be had to pass upon the merits of the controversy.
4. Conciliators to the Local Universes. In this larger work of a universe the commissioners are of great assistance to both the Melchizedeks and the Magisterial Sons and to the constellation rulers and the hosts of personalities concerned with the co-ordination and administration of the one hundred constellations. The different orders of seraphim and other residents of the headquarters spheres of a local universe also avail themselves of the help and decisions of the referee trios.
It is almost impossible to explain the nature of those differences which may arise in the detailed affairs of a system, a constellation, or a universe. Difficulties do develop, but they are very unlike the petty trials and travails of material existence as it is lived on the evolutionary worlds.
5. Conciliators to the Superuniverse Minor Sectors. From the problems of local universes the commissioners are advanced to the study of questions arising in the minor sectors of their superuniverse. The farther they ascend inward from the individual planets, the fewer are the material duties of the divine executioner; gradually he assumes a new role of mercy-justice interpreter, at the same time—being quasi-material—keeping the commission as a whole in sympathetic touch with the material aspects of its investigations.
6. Conciliators to the Superuniverse Major Sectors. The character of the work of the commissioners continues to change as they advance. There is less and less of misunderstanding to adjudicate and more and more of mysterious phenomena to explain and interpret. From stage to stage they are evolving from arbiters of differences to explainers of mysteries—judges evolving into interpretative teachers. Arbiters of those who through ignorance permit difficulties and misunderstandings to arise, they once were; but they are now becoming instructors of those who are sufficiently intelligent and tolerant to avoid clashes of mind and wars of opinions. The higher a creature’s education, the more respect he has for the knowledge, experience, and opinions of others.
7. Conciliators to the Superuniverse. Here the conciliators become co-ordinate—four mutually understood and perfectly functioning arbiter-teachers. The divine executioner is divested of retributive power and becomes the physical voice of the spirit trio. By this time these counselors and teachers have become expertly familiar with most of the actual problems and difficulties encountered in the conduct of superuniverse affairs. Thus they become wonderful advisers and wise teachers of the ascending pilgrims who are in residence on the educational spheres surrounding the headquarters worlds of the superuniverses.
All conciliators serve under the general supervision of the Ancients of Days and under the immediate direction of the Image Aids until such time as they are advanced to Paradise. During the Paradise sojourn they report to the Master Spirit who presides over the superuniverse of their origin.
The superuniverse registries do not enumerate those conciliators who have passed beyond their jurisdiction, and such commissions are widely scattered through the grand universe. The last report of registry on Uversa gives the number operating in Orvonton as almost eighteen trillion commissions—over seventy trillion individuals. But these are only a very small fraction of the multitude of conciliators that have been created in Orvonton; that number is of an altogether higher magnitude and is the equivalent of the total number of Havona Servitals, with allowances for the transmutation into Graduate Guides.
From time to time, as the numbers of the superuniverse conciliators increase, they are translated to the council of perfection on Paradise, from which they subsequently emerge as the co-ordinating corps evolved by the Infinite Spirit for the universe of universes, a marvelous group of beings which is constantly increasing in numbers and efficiency. By experiential ascent and Paradise training they have acquired a unique grasp of the emerging reality of the Supreme Being, and they roam the universe of universes on special assignment.
The members of a conciliating commission are never separated. A group of four forever serve together just as they were originally associated. Even in their glorified service they continue to function as quartets of accumulated cosmic experience and perfected experiential wisdom. They are eternally associated as the embodiment of the supreme justice of time and space.