Do you read with anticipation in The Urantia Book about the “student visitors” like I do, imagining how you’ll look forward to your own opportunities to visit another world? Several mentions of these visitations intrigue me. Here’s a few:

“Morontia mortals are student visitors only within the confines of the local universe of their origin. … These personalities may be executing a universe assignment, or they may be enjoying a period of leisure—freedom from assignment. The privilege of intrauniverse travel and observation is a part of the career of all ascending beings. The human desire to travel and observe new peoples and worlds will be fully gratified during the long and eventful climb to Paradise through the local, super-, and central universes.” (The Urantia Book, The UB, 30:3.12)

Let’s review how travel is arranged to these places for us.

“5. The Transporters.These are the transport seraphim who function in the local systems. In Satania, your system, they carry passengers back and forth from Jerusem and otherwise serve as interplanetary transporters. Seldom does a day pass in which a transport seraphim of Satania does not deposit some student visitor or some other traveler of spirit or semispirit nature on the shores of Urantia,” (39:4.15)

Shores? Surfing beach? Pacific coast maybe? Sometimes I think: no wonder my UFO-following friend sees so much going on in the sky!

These daily visits happen even though our planet is not only isolated from the broadcast circuits but also doesn’t have the ideal landing platform, a sea of glass (which makes its first appearance on second mansonia, 47:4.3). Here is how it’s described on Jerusem. And perhaps there’s “pearly gates” at the observatory entrance like we’ve heard about before:

“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.” (46:2.9)

As we can readily see in the section about Transporters, our status as a quarantined planet presents no obstacle to the comings and goings of what I think of as anthropological observers. “You will have ample opportunity to visit within any realm you have experientially attained. Student visitors are allowed on all inhabited planets, even those in isolation.” (48:3.10)

Some visiting students even get an invitation to attend a meeting of the planetary government. “Each administrative day on Urantia begins with a consultative conference, which is attended by the governor general, the planetary chief of archangels, the Most High observer, the supervising supernaphim, the chief of resident Life Carriers, and invited guests from among the high Sons of the universe or from among certain of the student visitors who may chance to be sojourning on the planet.” (114:5.5)

I once told my study group about a extraterrestrial landing that I witnessed in West Marin. I was living in Valley Ford, an isolated area, mostly dairy farms, with beautiful clear starry skies when the fog isn’t rolling in. Upon returning from a club performance in Santa Rosa about 2 am, not inebriated, I saw a round white light descending straight down, quickly and steadily, not as fast as a falling star, and landing somewhere to the south. A ship of space—a transport! It could have been landing on Marin County’s highest peak, Mount Tamalpais, probably a pretty good choice for a transporter landing.