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- Many spiritualists describe experiences of other worlds beyond, or parallel to this one. They speak of astral planes, lower and higher mental planes, of themselves and others possessing astral bodies capable of leaving their physical bodies and travelling in these spirit dimensions; of meeting other entities on those dimensions or planes, much greater and wiser beings than ourselves. They speak of an ability to obtain a vast wealth of information from them, or even from some form of spirit-library which they call the Akhasic record. Is there any truth in these claims?
Of a limited kind, yes.
- How much truth? Do we, for example, possess astral bodies within or attached to our physical bodies?
Yes. But not in the way that spiritualists describe the matter. What they see as the astral body is your spirit, your reality. Far from being a part of you, an emanation from your physical body, it is your totality. Your physical body is an emanation from it, and merely a temporary one.
- Some spiritualists and other adepts of occult knowledge speak of our possessing seven bodies. Is there any truth here, as well?
Yes, but again it is distorted. You know already that your spirit experiences seven existences of a physical kind. Although each of these existences is temporary, the essence of each existence remains with and within your spirit. It is a part of it. In that sense you might be said to possess seven bodies.
- But these existences are not all as human beings?
No, of course not. You know that too. Your spirit's physical experiences range through the entire physical creation, as plant, insect, animal, man. I have explained these things to you elsewhere. The spiritualists and occultists who speak of seven astral bodies have stumbled on, or heard of, this truth, and misunderstood it. they have done the same in their beliefs about reincarnation. I have told you that for a man or woman to live a second life as a human being is very rare, and usually because their first life was ended in early childhood by violent means, or because there is some important task that their spirit left uncompleted and that must be completed by them and no one else.
These instances are too rare to merit discussion here. The experiences which deceive the spiritualists into believing in reincarnation are of other individuals' lives, of individuals who are closely connected with them in spiritual reality, although in a physical sense they may have lived a long time ago. I have told you in The House on the Rock that during your physical existence it is possible to make contact with individuals of your own Real Mind, that closest grouping of a thousand spirits, of which you form a small fragment.
In a very real sense their lives are also your lives. Your life is a part of what will eventually be their experience of physical life. When your Real Mind is fully developed, its thousand component fragments are fully integrated. it will form one being, one spirit, with the experience of a thousand human lives within it, like a library that contains a thousand biographies. You yourself will retain your sense of individuality, and yet you will share in and possess completely the entire thousand experiences. and your own individuality will be enlarged to possess the entire thousand individualities. It is as if you not only possessed a library of a thousand biographies. but had lived all those thousand lives yourself, were all those thousand individuals.
Naturally, it is easy to misunderstand this reality in terms of reincarnation. But that would be misleading. Many of these thousand Lives, to take a simple illustration of how a simplistic belief in reincarnation would distort the truth, are simultaneous. At any given moment during the span of a Real Mind's physical experiences, several, and perhaps several hundred of its lives, are continuing simultaneously. Its total span is no more than six thousand years, which clearly requires many of its thousand fragments to be alive at the same time.
Where an adept achieves genuine knowledge of an existence outside that limited period of six thousand years, it will be because he has made contact with a fragment of, an individual belonging to, his Greater Mind, that includes a million human beings, or in other terms a thousand Real Minds among them his own Real Mind But even that Greater Mind spends only ten thousand years involved in physical existences Any spiritualistic or occult experience of an existence in a period much longer ago than ten thousand years arises from a different cause. The experience there will not be of a physical existence in the world you see round you, but of another type of existence, on the so-called astral plane, that you referred to in your first question.
For you to understand the nature of the astral and other planes or dimensions of existence, I must give you a metaphor. Imagine a large spool of film, lying on a table in front of you. What you are looking at is undoubtedly a film. But until you attach it to a film projector, and begin to show its contents on a screen, it is a film in only the most limited, technical sense. Its reality, its value as art or entertainment, is hidden from you. Now, that inert, silent and almost colourless spool of film, is the universe that you see round you with your waking, physical eyes. The most that you can do with it, lacking a projector and a screen, is to unwind a length of it and hold it up to the light examining it frame by frame
That is the situation of a man or a woman who stumbles by accident on some 'occult' or spiritual experience. As you can imagine, the information that experience will give them about the film is very limited. Now suppose that the possessor of this reel of film obtains a projector, but an antique one, like a magic lantern, that can merely show the frames of the film one by one, distorting their colours in the process, a projector that is absolutely incapable of running the film through at the proper speed of so many frames a second that would give the pictures a true meaning. Also, of course, there will be no sound accompanying the pictures, no words, no music, no background noise.
That is an illustration of the experience of the universe obtained by most adepts of any occult system of belief and practice. Undoubtedly they are seeing more of the film than the man-in-the-street can see. But not much more, and that addition has very little meaning. For the adepts to flatter themselves that they have seen the "reality" of the universe is laughable. To do that one needs, to continue our metaphor, a projector capable of running the film through at its correct speed, and at the same time playing the sound track and the music track, in proper balance and with true and faithful reproduction.
Indeed, there is much more required than that. For the film of the universe is not a simple one, as earthly films are. To grasp its nature you must attempt to imagine a cinema film that contains seven layers of images and seven sound and music tracks, that tells seven stories and requires for its projection a machine capable of showing those seven layers or dimensions of the film all at once, on seven different screens. Beyond that, you must attempt to imagine an observer capable of enjoying those seven performances simultaneously, integrating them in his mind into one complex experience of sight and sound, story and colour and music.
Such a projector is not within the grasp of any spiritualist or human adept, and if it was, he could make no use of it. He would not be capable of absorbing what it showed him, and any serious attempt to do so would merely destroy his mind. A few adepts do obtain glimpses of more than one layer of reality, even of two or three of the seven layers of images of our metaphorical reel of film. They may even hear snatches of one of the sound tracks, but rather than enlightening them, this additional experience merely serves to confuse them more as to the real nature of the universe they are attempting to explore. That is not the way the universe should be explored, nor can anything truthful and significant be discovered about it in that way. It is like a traveller setting out on foot to discover the reality of China, without knowing a word of Chinese, and worse still, convinced that he has no need to learn anything of the language.
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- How close are these images you have been giving me to the reality of the Universe?
If you can avoid thinking of the trivial nature and emptiness of the things you know as films, and instead can imagine a film of infinite beauty and meaning, then the image does come close to the reality. The seven layers or dimensions of the film are images of the seven planes of existence.
- Do You inhabit the seventh plane?
I inhabit all of them. I am all of them. It is a mistake to imagine these seven planes as simple steps towards Me. They can also lead to the Devil. They can lead down as well as up. And it is possible to find Me without progressing through those seven planes at all. As you can begin to see, the image of the complex, seven-dimensioned film that I have given you is, although accurate, incomplete. Within each of those seven dimensions of reality there are different levels, and true spiritual progress consists in rising from one of those levels to the next above it, regardless of which dimension of reality you are in.
To change our images, in order to illustrate this, imagine a vast, circular building, or rather, complex of buildings, each shaped like a ring, and the rings built one within the other, so that you have seven concentric rings. You may, if you like, walk through the ground floor of the outer building and find yourself in a courtyard leading to the ground floor of the next building. And so on until you reach the central tower. But you will still be on the ground floor.
Alternatively, as soon as you enter the first building you may begin climbing the stairs, and reach the upper floors. There are, you must imagine, seven such floors, and from any one of them an aerial walk-way will bring you to the next, inner ring of the complex of buildings. You can therefore climb to the first floor, and then walk inwards, or to the second floor, and do the same thing, or you may, in that first, outermost building, climb all the way to the seventh floor, and above that again to the roof garden. Once there, you will discover that the roof garden is common to all the buildings, and covers all of them, and that only from the roof garden can you obtain a total view of the entire complex and of the surrounding countryside. All other vantage points give you only a limited view.
Now, if you wish, you can determine how many ways there are of reaching the roof garden, and can begin to see how unimportant it is which path you have taken, once you arrive. But you must also bear in mind that there are not only stairs and aerial walk-ways above the ground level, leading you eventually to the roof garden. There are also stairs leading downwards, and subterranean passages, which will eventually lead those who follow them far enough to reach the lowest level of all, seven stories below the ground.
This is another image of reality, and closer to the truth, for with a film you are merely an observer but in these buildings you are an inhabitant, with duties to perform.
However, to complete this image you must imagine that this complex of circular buildings is surrounded by a park, also circular, and you must visualise this park divided into segments by high walls, and surrounded on the outside by an equally high wall. You should now have a vision of the entire ground plan of buildings and park as a wheel. The buildings at the centre form the hub. The outer wall of the park forms the rim. The dividing walls between each segment of the park represent the spokes. And the segments of parkland are the open spaces between the spokes of the wheel.
It is in one - and only one - of those segments that you must imagine that humanity lives, accompanied by all the forms of physical life that humanity knows.
Now look at the situation of mankind in this enclosure. It is surrounded on all sides by high and hitherto unscalable walls, one of those walls being the facade of the outermost building, or rather, a small section of that facade, pierced by a great number of windows, on many levels. Only on the ground floor of that segment of the facade which mankind can see are there any doors, and these are locked.
You know already mankind's reaction to this situation. That portion of humanity that is religious believes that God lives behind the facade and looks out on mankind through the windows. Those who are imaginative as well as religious furnish the rooms behind the windows with many luxuries and imagine the souls of the dead who have behaved well during their lifetime living in those rooms in eternal bliss.
That part of mankind on the contrary that is materialist and scientifically minded, scoffs at these beliefs and claims that the facade is no more than a facade. That there is nothing behind the windows, except perhaps empty, infinite space. It claims that if mankind is to discover any ultimate truth, it will not be by concerning itself with those blank and deceitful windows, but by climbing the walls on either side of its segment of park and discovering what, if anything, lies beyond. It desires to find out if there are other segments, and if there are, to see whether they are inhabited. Those who are imaginative as well as scientific claim that there must be many other segments, and many other humanities, and even believe that representatives of some of those alien humanities have actually visited mankind in machines capable of flying over the intervening walls. Which, in parenthesis, they have indeed. But their visits have nothing to do with the questions we are discussing here.
Now, one of the few emotions that unite both the religious and the materialist portions of mankind, is a fear or suspicion of the three doors leading into the facade of the building. They have agreed on names for these doors and have labelled them. One is Death. Another is Mysticism. The third is Magic. Everyone in that segment of the park knows that eventually he or she must enter the first and largest door. All that they disagree on is what happens afterwards. But the vast majority of mankind, however it may disagree on that, agrees that the other two doors are highly dangerous or else useless even to approach - that those who do succeed in forcing the locks and entering the building by one or other of them are likely to come to a bad end, at the best deluded, and at the worst damned, or driven mad. Would you accept that as a fair image of mankind's situation?
- Yes, except that a great number of individuals have forced the locks, and many of them have returned to describe what they saw. Some claim even to have entered the first door, however briefly, and to have glimpsed the interior before they returned. And their reports disagree. Will You explain this to me?
Gladly. The three doors lead first into different rooms. If three people entered your house, one into the kitchen, one into the coal-cellar, and one into the hall, and none of them penetrated further, they would return outside with very different impressions of your house. But it would still be the same house. And you will notice, if you examine the reports of those who claim to have opened one of our three metaphorical doors, that they fall into three recognisable categories. The reports of mystics have a great deal in common, no matter what religion the mystics belong to. And the reports of magical initiates, adepts, caballists, sorcerers and so on, have also a similarity, a number of common factors. So have the reports of those people who have 'died' momentarily and returned to life.
These three broad types of experience differ because those who have had them have visited different areas of reality behind the facade. Nevertheless, if you look carefully, you will find that there are also common factors shared by all three groups. The rooms they have visited, to keep to our metaphor, may be different, but the atmosphere is the same.
You are now going to ask me why the rooms behind the three doors are different, and I will answer you before you can ask.
The three types of people entering differ in their motives, and in their goals. They are looking for different things, and they find them. In the case of those who die, it would scarcely be correct in most cases to say that they are looking for anything, except perhaps an end to sufferings. And unless they commit suicide they cannot be described as forcing the lock of their door. What they find, and what those few who do return commonly describe having found, is a waiting-room, or its equivalent. And in it, sometimes others also waiting, perhaps a being or beings who greet them and tell them that they have come too soon and must go back. They commonly describe a reluctance to obey, and great sadness at being obliged to.
But for the moment let us leave their experiences on one side, and consider the other two categories, the mystics, and the magicians, and consider how they differ. Broadly speaking, the mystic is seeking God, while the magician is seeking a personal benefit. And just as their goals differ, so do their methods. The mystic prepares himself, or herself, by a series of spiritual exercises, and then waits for God to come to him, or to her. The mystic knows that it is both wrong and useless to attempt to force matters, to summon God so to speak before God is ready.
The magician on the other hand prepares himself or herself by a series of psychic exercises, and then uses his or her developed psychic sensitivity to demand whatever it is he or she is seeking. It is the difference between the gymnast, interested in suppleness and health, and the wrestler interested in strength and victory. To an outsider, the exercises the gymnast and the wrestler perform in their training may appear similar. But this similarity is at most only apparent, and since the motives are almost opposite, the results are vastly different.
- Before You go further, my Lord, there are two questions. Many people will not recognise the difference between psychic and spiritual exercises and abilities. And many magicians, or adepts of magical systems, will claim that their motive is a legitimate curiosity about the Universe, and that this curiosity includes a desire to know God. Will You answer them?
First, as to the difference between psychic and spiritual force or energy, I have explained this to you elsewhere. To explain it again here, briefly, let me compare the two forces to the spectrum of wave bands of physical energy. At one end of this spectrum lie the long Hertzian, radio waves that are harmless to physical life, and useful to man's ability to communicate by means of radio messages. At the other end lie the very short cosmic and beta, gamma and X-ray bands that can, if misused, or if a human being is wrongly exposed to them, damage life severely, or even destroy it. In the middle of this spectrum lies the band of light-waves that you use for vision.
The man or woman who is neither mystic nor magician uses only the mental equivalent of the light-waves in the middle of the spectrum. The mystic uses the equivalent of the long, radio or Hertzian waves. But the magician uses the gamma and beta, the cosmic and X-rays and in doing so runs great dangers which will in the end certainly destroy him if he continues. He may know the risks he is running, yet he has no choice if he wishes to practice magic.
But I have just spoken of using only the mental equivalent of light-waves. Do not for that reason imagine that the so-to-say ordinary powers of the human mind are negligible. Many of the results which magicians obtain dangerously and wrongly by the misuse of psychic power can be achieved quite properly and safely by the right and full use of your own mental powers. At the moment men and women do not understand these powers, nor do they use one tenth nor even one hundredth part of them. All the so-called miracles of faith are in fact no more than expressions of these powers, brought about accidentally, at a moment of intense spiritual emotion. Instantaneous cures of supposedly incurable diseases or injuries, whether at a shrine such as Lourdes, or elsewhere. The levitation or bi-location of saints. Just as a doctor of medicine may cure a patient by one of several means, either by drugs, or surgery, or physiotherapy, so the mind can act on the body by psychic or spiritual or 'ordinary' means. And the full extent of those ordinary means is so vast that it would seem extraordinary even to a magician.
There is indeed no such thing as a miracle, in the sense that men have used the word, of a suspension of the laws of Nature. Those Laws cannot by suspended, for they are an expression of Me. It has been merely the case that you have not known their full reality. Even the miracles truthfully described in the Gospels, including the raising of Lazarus, and the multiplication a thousandfold of bread and fishes; the changing of water into wine; the curing of the blind and the cleansing of lepers; all these acts were within the Laws of Nature; and as Jesus promised, His followers could, if they possessed sufficient faith, perform still greater acts. For the body is made to be obedient to the mind, and matter to be subservient to the spirit. Matter is only an illusion, an emanation or image of the spirit, and images can be altered by the image-maker.
I have told you elsewhere, in The House on the Rock, that these powers of the mind, these achievements of mind dominating matter and the body, are not worth developing. But this will not always remain so. Until now it has not been necessary for men and women to develop them, nor right that they should. But a time is coming when it will be necessary, and it will be right. A generation has already been born which will practice them as a means to salvation, and a way to Perfection.
As to the second question, or claim, that the magician may be moved not by desire for power or wealth, but merely by a scientific, or para-scientific curiosity, and that this curiosity may embrace a desire to know God, the claim is simply untrue, and cannot be true. The magician may indeed be moved by curiosity, a desire to know as much as possible. But this desire cannot include a desire to know God. Knowledge of God cannot be included in anything, in the way that a tourist may include Jerusalem in his world tour.
The magician may indeed have a curiosity to know about God, in the way that the tourist might desire to visit the Wailing Wall or the site of Solomon's Temple. But that is not a desire to know God, any more than the tourist's curiosity is the same as desiring to become a Jew. If the magician truly desired to know God, he would cease to be a magician and become a mystic. He would give up his magical, psychic practices, and submit himself to spiritual disciplines. And desiring to know God he would desire nothing else, because God contains all things, and all knowledge.
Now, let us return to our imagery of the circular buildings, and the surrounding park, and let us imagine a mystic and a magician both about to force their entry through their respectively chosen doors. In the magician's case, forcing an entry is the exact expression, because he is acting like a housebreaker. He is doing something which is against God's Will. And when he succeeds in forcing his entry, or she if the magician is a woman, then the magician is an intruder, in a place where he has no right to be. He will bring an intruder's, a burglar's mentality and fears with him, a burglar's greed for gain, even if that gain is merely knowledge.
And the legitimate occupants of the building will regard the magician as an intruder. In most cases they will treat the magician courteously, but they will tell him no more than courtesy requires, and show him no more of the building than courtesy obliges them to. He may wander into several of the buildings, but only on the ground floors. He cannot climb to any of the higher floors, and he will understand nothing of what he does see, nor any of what little may be explained to him in answer to his questions. And all the time he runs the severe risk of being treated as a burglar, and punished. He also runs the even greater risk of finding himself in the underground portions of the buildings, where courtesy is not the rule, and violence and cruelty are commonplace.
The mystic's situation will be entirely different. He or she may be said to have forced their entry, but only by imploring permission to enter, by waiting so long at the door, that the doorkeeper at last allows them to come in. And once inside, their sole interest is to climb to the roof garden, where they know that God wishes them to be, and where they will be able to see Him and know Him most clearly and most fully. They have no interest in the other, inner buildings. They have no interest in the furniture of the rooms they pass, nor in the rooms' inhabitants. Their sole interest in anyone they meet is to gain knowledge of where God is to be found.
And if they are true mystics, and truly ready for their entry into the outer building, they will not need to ask, for God Himself will have met them at the door. He will have acted for that moment as the doorkeeper, and will Himself bring them from level to level through the seven stories of the building, until they reach the roof garden. Their climb may, indeed it will, be very hard. It will entail great suffering, as they gain enlightenment and self knowledge, and knowledge of the immensity and terror of God's love. It may, almost always it will, take a great length of time and many, many visits to the building, and sad returns to the grey and desolate park outside, but eventually the mystics will be granted a permanent home in the roof garden, the right to stay there always, except for the duties that God will impose on them, in the continuing struggle between good and evil.
Section 2
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