*** WE ARE ALL ONE
Entering the Mental Plane – Part 1
The nearest equivalent we have to the Fifth Dimension is the plane of the afterlife that corresponds with it: the Mental Plane. Archangel Michael said to me in a personal reading recently that I was in the Fifth Dimension and I replied:
Steve: How could I be Fifth Dimensional and not have had sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi?
Archangel Michael: You are looking to the Fifth Dimension as simply being one place or another and you do not know that you are not in training and that you are … on the verge of samadhi.
So it is a preparation and those preparation phases … as we have said, there are many levels to each dimension. (1)
So the answer to the puzzle was that I am, or we are, in the first level of the Fifth Dimension. If this is the case, then it suggests that we can also look at the first subplane of the Mental Plane, about which a certain amount is written, to get some clues as to Fifth Dimensionality.
I say a certain amount is written because, by the time travellers have passed through the Astral Plane and into the Mental Plane, they feel less of a desire to communicate back to their loved ones on Earth.
Julia Ames explains:
“It is with us as with immigrants to my former country. When they arrive their hearts are in the old world. The new world is new and strange. They long to hear from the old home and the post brings them more joy than the sunrise. But after a very little time the pain is dulled, new interests arise, and, in a few years, sometimes in a few months, they write no more.
“With us here the change is even more rapid. For the new life is more absorbing and the survivors constantly recruit our ranks. When the family circle is complete, when those we loved are with us, why should we trouble to communicate? The whole planet with its 1,500,000,000 inhabitants is full of strangers, our life lies on our own plane. Therefore, do not think that what I said of the eager, passionate longing of those on this side to communicate with you is true of any but those in the midst of whom I was when I wrote [earlier].” (3)
Consequently the literature on the planes above the astral gets smaller and smaller as we progress.
Eventually we’ll hear about the Second Death, (2) which is the elimination of all traces of the astral from us, during which we experience our complete anchoring in the Mental Plane. My guess is that this experience is similar to our Ascension, but it is only a guess. We shall look at that experience later in this series of articles.
Other names for the Mental Plane are “Heaven,” (4) “the Creative Sphere,” (5) “the plane of thoughts,” (6) the “Devachan,” (7) and “the world of spirit.” (8)
But we do know some things about the first subplane, which would correspond to the first level of the Fifth Dimension that we’re in presently.
The Mental Plane vibrates at a higher frequency than the Astral Plane as A.D. Mattson attests to:
“I have taken a number of trips out into the mental plane and it is most interesting. You get there before you know it whereas in the astral plane you are conscious of your going. / This is due to the difference in the rate of vibration of the two planes.
“For example, if you can send a thought around the world in no time at all, this can be compared to the mental plane. If you send a picture around the world, it takes longer than the thought – and this can be compared to the astral plane. In the astral body, you are slower when you are moving because you are moving through denser atmosphere – denser vibrations but not as dense as the physical world.” (9)
Mike Swain also speaks of “the more rarified mental level.” (10)
Arnel calls the first subplane of the Mental Plane “Sphere Five.” Of it he says:
“It is a critical sphere where attunement has to be made in a man’s various traits and all unharmony done away. … It is a kind of sorting-room, as one should say, wherein are the inhabitants, in the course of their sojourn there, classified into their proper groups, and proceed onwards in that special branch of service for which they most properly are fitted.” (11)
Is this not a good description of what we’re going through now? All unharmony is being done away with and soul groups are forming dedicated to various missions.
(Continued in Part 2. You’re welcome to read ahead – if the next instalment has been composed!)
Footnotes
(1) Archangel Michael in personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, July 16, 2013.
(2) See “The Second Death” at http://goldengaiadb.com/The_Second_Death
(3) Julia [Julia T. Ames] through W.T. Stead, medium, After Death. A Personal Narrative.New York: George H. Doran, n.d.; c. 1914 175-6.
(4) Philemon [Archdeacon Wilberforce] in Henry Thibault, Letters from the Other Side. [Letters from Archdeacon Wilberforce or “Philemon.”] London: 1919, 45.
(5) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 131.
(6) Nikola Tesla in Carl Japikse through medium Robert Leichtman. Nikola Tesla Returns.Columbus: Ariel Press, 1980, 58-60.
(7) Sigwart in Joseph Wetzl, trans., The Bridge Over the River. Communications from the Life After Death of a Young Artist Who Died in World War One. Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1974, 28.
(8) Silver Birch in Silver Birch Anthology. Ed. Wm. Naylor. London: Spiritualist Press, 1974; c1955, 57.
(9) A.D. Mattson in Ruth Mattson Taylor, ed., Witness from Beyond. New Cosmic Concepts on Death and Survival from the Late A.D. Mattson, S.T.D., through the Clairvoyant Margaret Flavell Tweddell. Portland, ME: Foreword Books, 1975, 42-3.
(10) Mike Swain in Jasper Swain, From My World to Yours: A Young Man’s Account of the Afterlife. New York: Walker, 1977, 77.
(11) Arnel in G. Vale Owen, medium, The Life Beyond the Veil. Book III: The Ministry of Heaven. New York, 1921, in Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, Many Mansions. (London, etc.: Rider and Co., n.d., 59.
by Steve Beckow
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Entering the Mental Plane – Part 2
(Continued from Part 1.)
Yesterday we introduced the First subplane of the Mental Plane. We suggested at that time that the first subplane of the Mental Plane was comparable to the dimensional level we’re in at the moment, which is the first level of the fifth Dimension.
Today we continue to look at its characteristics and our experience of it.
Philip Gilbert suggests that we do not become exceptionally bright all at once on our arrival in the Mental Plane but grow into it:
“Having progressed out of the ‘astral’ or ‘plane of illusion, a being becomes little by little more radiant because the form is gradually ‘at-oneing’ itself with creative force.” (1)
This again mirrors our process of becoming ever more brilliant, so to speak.
Philip called the astral the “plane of illusion”; Sigwart calls it “the dream condition.” His sentiment is often echoed by others: “My true life has begun now; the dream condition has ended.” (2)
Nikola Tesla compares the Astral and Mental Planes: “The plane of thoughts is much more refined and powerful than the astral plane. It’s free of the emotional, sentimental swill most people thrive on, but which must be transcended.” (3)
Passage from the Astral to the mental Planes is often accompanied by or caused by spiritual realization. Spirit guide Silver Birch said: “When spiritual realisation dawns they are dead to the astral world and they begin to live in the world of spirit.” (4) The world of the spirit is the Mental Plane.
Mike Swain informs us that “when you wake on the mental plane, you will realize that you are and always have been a son of God.” (5) This realization of who we are is the purpose of life and will unfold more and more as we progress from one sphere to the next.
Usually a person throws off the fascination with his desires that characterizes life on the Astral Plane immediately before transition to the Mental Plane. Frederic Myers describes it:
“The hour comes when his spiritual perceptions awaken, when he seeks to escape from the memory-dream, when, in short, he realizes his own increased intellectual powers, and, above all, his capacity for living on a finer plane of being. Then he passes from the State of Illusion and enters upon an existence which few communicating intelligences have ever attempted to describe to man.” (6)
Philip Gilbert describes his existence on the Mental Plane in terms that should be familiar to us, as glowing and ecstatic: “My consciousness seems to be more and more in that luminous glow which is an ecstacy.” (7)
His further description of his experience of life should be of interest to us, who will soon be in it:
“There are hardly words to give the nature of my new experience – I glow; the body which is the static ME is a form still; very powerful but composed of light irradiated particles – it is of the nature of flame.
“But this flame is creative. It can be moulded by my Ego at will or consolidate into an ordinary astral shape or blend in an ecstacy of mutual comprehension with others like me or with the more advanced.” (8)
Frances Banks describes an aspect of life which is very similar to what has been promised us: freedom from drudgery. Frances found herself drifting towards the Hall of Learning.
“We are free, of course, to follow our own pursuits. There are no college rules or compulsory attendances but I, for one, find myself at the Halls of Learning almost continually.” (9)
Former journalist W.T. Stead says that there is no need to work on the mental Plane.
“Many of us carry on with our same work as on earth. Here we have no need to work in order to obtain daily livelihood, we work here solely for spiritual refinement and progress; at the same time we keep in touch with our earth interests as a form of recreation.” (10)
There is no need for sleep. Arthur Conan Doyle tells us that one can sit for days and chat.
“Here you can talk for days for there is no night. It stays light all the time, and you do not need sleep. It is like one long sunny day. The only word to describe it is Paradise, for nothing on earth is remotely like it. (11)
“You may sit at the side and chat to your acquaintances, for no one here would think of snubbing you as on earth. Indeed they are all too ready to speak and invite you back home to partake of refreshments.” (12)
And finally the most obvious feature of the mental Plane, as it is of the fifth Dimension, is unitive consciousness, the consciousness that all are One. Frances Banks describes it:
“That which I am learning here, in this wider state of consciousness, is a joyous apprehension of the vast wonder of the unity of Creative Mind in which all, ever atom, every soul-fragment, every Group Soul, every creative thought, is One.” (13)
Tomorrow we’ll continue with our overview of the first level of the Mental Plane.
(Continued in Part 3.)
Footnotes
(1) Philip Gilbert through Alice Gilbert, medium. Philip in the Spheres. London: Psychic Book Club, n.d., 67.
(2) Sigwart in Joseph Wetzl, trans., The Bridge Over the River. Communications from the Life After Death of a Young Artist Who Died in World War One. Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1974, 35.
(3) Nikola Tesla in Carl Japikse through medium Robert Leichtman. Nikola Tesla Returns.Columbus: Ariel Press, 1980, 58.
(4) Silver Birch in Silver Birch Anthology. Ed. Wm. Naylor. London: Spiritualist Press, 1974; c1955, 57.
(5) Mike Swain in Jasper Swain, From My World to Yours: A Young Man’s Account of the Afterlife. New York: Walker, 1977, 88.
(6) Frederic W.H. Myers through Geraldine Cummins, medium. The Road to Immortality. Being a description of the after-life purporting to be communicated by the late F. W. H. Myers [Frederic William Henry Myers, 1843-1901]. Located athttp://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/cummins/cummins1.html, n.p.
(7) Philip Gilbert in Alice Gilbert, medium, Into the Everywhere. Tunbridge Wells: World Spiritual Council, 1968, 7.
(8) Ibid., 8.
(9) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 143.
(10) William Thomas Stead, The Blue Island. Experiences of a New Arrival Behind the Veil.Estelle W. Stead and Pardoe Woodman, eds. London: Rider, n.d. 132.
(11) Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Thomson, Life in the Hereafter: Automatic Writings and Dictation from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mary, Queen of Scots, Lady Jane Seymour, Catherine of Aragon, 17.
(12) Ibid., 21.
(13) Frances Banks in TOL, 144.
by Steve Beckow
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Entering the Mental Plane – Part 3
Sir Alvary Gascoigne
(Continued from Part 2.)
Two features of entering the Mental Plane which, while not being surprising, are still very unusual are the reunion that takes place with one’s own greater Self and the drawing together of the soul group.
While many of us are experiencing the drawing together of the soul group, we may need to wait till after ascension before we experience a reunion with the greater Self (I don’t know).
Today’s let’s look at that reunion. Description of it are only to be found in Cynthia Sandys’ Awakening Letters. A sample of only two from the same book suggests that we approach the subject with a degree of caution and discernment.
Re-uniting with the Greater Self
Father Andrew Glazewski was a much-loved Polish priest, mystic, scientist and musician, who communicated telepathically with English psychic Cynthia Sandys in 1973. He met his higher Self and did not at first recognize him.
I’m not sure if this is the ascended Self that one meets when one enters the Second Heaven, or second subplane of the Mental Plane.
Notice that he meets himself as if he were outside of himself; i.e., an object.
“Now I want to speak about the greater self. This was a discovery for me of enormous importance. I had always glimpsed the possibility of there being a more advanced Andrew somewhere, but he was so elusive. I didn’t really know how or where to look for him – then we met!
“I was slightly embarrassed. I was a new boy. He was myself grown wiser, but how were we to co-operate? He was tall – I am short. He was strong and athletic – I was wrinkled and puny. He was like an elder brother and yet he was like himself and then he looked at me and took me in his arms as you would a small child and breathed on me – that was all, and I, Andrew, became as one with this great being.
“It is beyond understanding or explaining but it is true. We are only a very small reflection of the self we leave outside the earth body and, when we have accepted death and entered into the majesty of passing out of the physical, this wonderful enlargement of mind and spirit is awaiting us.” (1)
Diplomat Sir Alvary Gascoigne also made contact with his greater Self in this first subplane of the Mental Plane. His son Douglas had made contact earlier.
The discussion between him and his greater Self seems to suggest that full reunion awaits the Second Death, which would suggest that that greater Self is the ascended Self.
“I had no idea about our greater selves. Douglas has made complete contact with his, but most of us are broken pieces; the earth life body seems only to have held a small part of me and there is a much nicer Joe [nickname of Sir Alvary] – in fact, far too nice a Joe, who is waiting for me, the imperfect Joe, to take over.” (2)
“Though D. [Douglas] has only been over a short time, he is already united to at least a part of his greater self and this part spoke through him.” (3)
He describes his experience at length. He mistakes himself for his brother Oliver.
“Suddenly, as the sense of expansion grew, I was conscious of a being beside me fashioned in some ways on the same mould. I turned and looked at him and I said at once, ‘Oh, you must have been my brother Oliver whom I never saw in earth life.’
“‘No,’ he replied, ‘I am yourself.’
“’But,’ I stammered, ‘I’m still me. What do you mean?’”
“’Yes, and I’m still you and myself, one and the same. I have been your light reflection all through your earth life and now we can be re-united.’” (4)
The thought initially disturbs Sir Alvary.
“I wasn’t at all sure I was in favour of this getting together and said so. He merely laughed and said, ‘Don’t quarrel with your hands and feet and you’ll be a much more complete Joe if we are united.’” (5)
Nonetheless he gamely ventures on. His greater Self reveals that the process will take time, suggesting that he is indeed talking about what we would regard as post-Ascension.
“Well, how do we do it?’ I asked.
“’Don’t be in a hurry. You must learn to accept me first as your shadow or reflection. But I only reflect the highest in you.’
“This disturbed me greatly. ‘There isn’t very much of the higher as you call it in me.’
“’Well, I find there is,’ was the unexpected reply; ‘I am the result of your effort and industry and uprightness, together with your fundamental love for the people around you. Oh, I know, lots of them irritated you beyond bearing, but you did bear with them and all that has built up an entity which is me. Now you see I am entirely you, so you can’t throw me out or brush me off. I am you cleaned up and ready to receive the higher vibrations: how do you take that? I’m a sort of bank balance on the credit side.’
“’Well, I’m awfully glad to hear that I have a bank balance and of course I accept you as part of myself; I suppose as you are the upper boy you’ll take command.’
“I didn’t like the idea of jettisoning my way. But he only laughed and said, ‘Trust me. I won’t usurp your will. We can co-operate quite easily.’
“And so the oddest sort of marriage began between the two me’s, and I found I was enormously but enormously changed, stronger, happier, richer by far in understanding and in correlating events and the purposes behind them. And so I was able to take on these missions to and from Everest and Chartres, which the lesser Joe could never have undertaken.” (6)
This meeting of one’s higher Self as if it were an object and merging with it later stands alone in the literature of the afterlife and, since it’s found in only two examples in one book, we may need to accept it provisionally, as we’ll have to do with much that is novel and strange in the times ahead.
Tomorrow we’ll look at the reunion with the group soul that begins in the first subplane.
Continued in Part 4.)
Footnotes
(1) Father Andrew Glazewski in Cynthia Sandys and Rosamund Lehmann, The Awakening Letters. Jersey: Neville Spearman, 1978, 92.
(2) Sir Alvary Gascoigne in AL, 112.
(3) Ibid., 59.
(4) Ibid., 168-9.
(5) Loc. cit.
(6) Loc. cit.
by Steve Beckow
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Entering the Mental Plane – Part 4
William Thomas Stead, well known journalist and spiritual researcher in his day
(Continued from Part 3.)
Many of us are experiencing the reconvening of the soul group prior to Ascension. The members of the Nova Earth Foundation team are privileged to be able to ask Archangel Michael or our other guides about our connections.
We’ve found that we’ve been in all manner of connection and relationship together in other lifetimes – siblings, spouses, spiritual companions, etc., during lifetimes with Jesus, St. Francis, in Atlantis, and so on.
I’m sure the same will be found by others as their soul groups also coalesce.
Frances Banks and Donald Macleod encountered their soul group while still in the Astral Plane or on visits to the Mental Plane, but visits like these may be exceptional. Or they may prove the spur to arouse the individual from a happy life on the plane of desires, kindling the urge to progress.
Let’s listen to afterlife residents describe the coming together of their soul group. This section is so large that we’ll need to make two articles out of it.
Re-uniting with the Group Soul
Archdeacon Wilberforce describes the bonds that tie people together in groups on the other side of life.
“All who are in the sphere of love and light dwell in families, communities, groups, the binding force of which is love, love alone, sympathy, mutual affection. There you have less one-sidedness than on earth. It is a world of mutual loves and affections and pursuits.” (1)
Journalist William Stead tells us that personality subsides and impersonal love binds all on the first subplane of the Mental Plane. Notice the tie between impersonal love and unitive consciousness.
“Those who stand the tests … pass to another and altogether different and lighter land – and each becomes impersonal. Impersonal in the sense that they are no longer Jack Brown and Madge Black; they are now pure spirit people and their former love, which had been a personal and individual thing, is no longer for one but equally for all. All are alike to all. The purest tissue of God Love binds one and all.” (2)
Independence means less and less to us on the higher spirit planes, “Magnus,” a pseudonymous member of “Imperator’s” (Malachi’s) group, tells us.
“In spirit-life we do not talk of independence. That is a fallacy of earth. Spirits are in union and communion mutually interdependent. They are joined in rapport with those from whom they have learned, or to whom they have taught somewhat.” (3)
An anonymous teacher makes implicit reference to the Second Death, which we’ll look at in a later article (not necessarily in this series), as being an important factor in the drawing together of the group.
Frances Banks during her time as a nun
“Men will lose all the shells of unwanted matter accumulated around them … of a soul kind … and will become a spiritual and blessed company of brethren.” (4)
The Second Death is when “the shells of unwanted matter” will fall away, just as Ascension will see the remnants of our lower dimensionality fall away from us.
Donald Macleod was approached by members of his soul group while he lay relaxed on the Astral Plane:
“As I lay entranced, soaking in the reflected glory of the heavenly fields, I was approached by a number of souls. They greeted me kindly and told me that they were members of my group.” (5)
Frances Banks was also contacted while she was working in a rest home in the higher Astral and taken for a visit to her soul group on the lower Mental. Her description is of enough interest to cite at length.
“Do you recall that in the early communications from the Rest Home to which I first graduated for service, I recounted the story of a certain doctor, the surgeon who had, whilst in the earth body, fallen victim to drug addiction? You remember that, with him, I visited a Group and was in communication with a number of advanced Souls.
“On several visits I met and communed with these Minds which have reached high standards of consciousness and wisdom. Sometimes they patiently explained Group workings to me. One, a fine and illumined Soul instructed me: ‘Seek for your own place. Ask that Light may open your mind to that which is for you, that your vibratory rate may be increased to respond to the vibration of your Group, that you may become aware of them, for they are very close beside you.’ …
“Suddenly, as I looked upon my old friend, Father Joseph, when we were attending a patient in the Home, I beheld, not the usual brown habit with which I have always associated him, but a ‘surround’ of glorious blue which clothed him. It seemed that I looked right into him. My inner eyes were opened. I knew. His smile was gentle but all understanding as he said: ‘My child! Welcome home!’
“The words were sufficient, the contact was made. It had been necessary for me to await enlightenment, but he had always known. I found it difficult to leave the Home and Mother Florence where I had been so happy. But the prospect of progress was inspiring.
“Besides, I was comforted by learning that Mother Florence would be visiting the Group to which I was going from time to time, as she too was one with it, yet perforce chose to remain at her duties in the Home until all her ‘flock’ had been safely welcomed to this side of life.” (6)
Sometime after her visit, she joins her soul group permanently.
“I cannot make explicit to you the ‘mechanics’ of my move to the Group, partly because I yet am not entirely cognizant of all that occurred myself, and partly because there is no pocket of thought in your mind which could ‘receive’ such information.
“This I can offer for your consideration and that of the readers: whilst I was meditating in my golden garden, I found myself ‘transported’ back to that Temple of Learning where once before I dared to penetrate. Only this time, Father Joseph (I now know him by another name) was with me.
“Together we joined a cluster of entities about a Teacher. Immediately I experienced a rise of consciousness, an upsurge of joy, a mingling of unity and harmony which coloured my whole being. I cannot explain this in any other terms though I doubt whether they will have the same connotation for you.
“I knew this was right for me. I had come into my own. There was no definite acceptance, the entire operation was unobtrusive and simple, yet I had the conviction that all was well, that I was amidst my fellow-travellers on the Way.
“‘What is this Group called?’ I flashed silently to Father Joseph. He smiled.
“‘What have you always sought, my child – Reality!’” (7)
Freederic H. Myers, President of the Psychic Research Society
Psychic Research Society president Frederic Myers contrasts those who still cling to individuality with those who are drawing closer to their soul brethren. He predict that the group will draw closer and closer together until it functions as one.
“On the lower rungs of this ladder of consciousness dwell those souls who still cling to human habits of thought, to the earthly personality, to their own individual line of thought.
“The higher the ego climbs on the ladder of consciousness, the nearer it draws to other kindred souls. I have already told you that there may be a thousand, a hundred, or merely twenty souls all fed by one spirit. Their consciousness of comrade-souls increases on the higher levels of existence.
“In time they are able to enter into the other souls’ memories, perceive their experiences and be sensible of them as if they were theirs. Mind becomes communal in the last stages, for the spirit, the unifying principle, is tending all the time to produce greater harmony, and therefore greater unity. These various individuals are merging more and more, becoming one in experience and in mind, and thus attaining to undreamt-of levels of intellectual power.” (8)
Some people wedded to individuality may not accept Myers’ arguments, but the soul-group connection melts the selfishness we built up on Earth.
“Men and women may not care to accept these statements of mine. They long either for an indestructible individuality in the Hereafter or for a kind of spiritual swoon in the life of God. You will perceive in my analysis of the group-soul that we are individuals and members of one whole.
“And when you come to the Fourth [higher Astral], and more particularly to the Fifth stage [lower Mental], you will realize how fine and beautiful is this brotherhood within the one being; how it deepens and intensifies existence; how it destroys the cold selfishness so necessary to an earth life, where one living creature must continually destroy another’s manifestation in matter in order to maintain its physical life.” (9)
Myers describes how his life on Earth was spent half as an individual and half as member of his incarnated soul group.
“Here, in the After-death, we become more and more aware of this group-soul as we make progress. Eventually we enter into it and share the experiences of our brethren. You must understand, therefore, that existence for my soul — as separate and apart from my individual ego — is dual. I lived two lives, one in the world of form, and one subjective, in the community of which I am a member.” (10)
He introduces the notion that sometimes we may reincarnate and take on karma for the group.
“When I was on earth I belonged to a group-soul, but its branches and the spirit — which might be compared to the roots — were in the invisible. Now, if you would understand psychic evolution, this group-soul must be studied and understood. For instance, it explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can be removed only by the doctrine of reincarnation.
“You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true. It was our life, and yet not our life. In other words, a soul belonging to the group of which I am a part lived that previous life which built up for me the framework of my earthly life, lived it before I had passed through the gates of birth.” (11)
(Concluded in Part 5.)
Footnotes
(1) Philemon [Archdeacon Wilberforce] in Henry Thibault, Letters from the Other Side. [Letters from Archdeacon Wilberforce or “Philemon.”] London: 1919, 96-7.
(2) William Thomas Stead, The Blue Island. Experiences of a New Arrival Behind the Veil.Estelle W. Stead and Pardoe Woodman, eds. London: Rider, n.d., 147.
(3) Spirit communicator Magnus in Stainton Moses, More Spirit Teachings. Spirit Writings. Electronically published by Meilach.com.http://www.meilach.com/spiritual/books/morest/mst02.htm, n.p
(4) Anonymous teacher of the White Eagle Lodge in Paul Beard, Living On. How Consciousness Continues and Evolves After Death. New York: Continuum, 1981, 127.
(5) Donald Macleod in P.I. Phillips, Here and There. More Psychic Experiences. London; Corgi Books, 1975, 16.
(6) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 140.
(7) Ibid., 140-1.
(8) Frederic W.H. Myers through Geraldine Cummins, medium. The Road to Immortality. Being a description of the after-life purporting to be communicated by the late F. W. H. Myers [Frederic William Henry Myers, 1843-1901]. Located athttp://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/cummins/cummins1.html, n.p.
(9) Loc. cit. There is no consistent way of referring to the various planes of the afterlife, which is frustrating.
(10) Loc. cit.
(11) Loc. cit.
by Steve Beckow
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Entering the Mental Plane – Part 5
A soul group gathers on the higher planes
(Continued from Part 4.)
The life of the group transcends all divisions, including planetary locales.
“The actual construction of the group-soul must be clearly visualised. Its spirit feeds, with life and mental light, certain plants, trees, flowers, birds, insects, fish, beasts, men and women; representatives of living creatures in varying states of evolution. It inspires souls who are on various planes, various levels of consciousness in the After-death. It feeds, also, creatures on other planets.
“For the spirit must gather a harvest of experience in every form. Gradually these intelligences evolve and merge. The experience necessary to the spirit is completed when all the souls necessary to the design have reached this Fifth plane [First Heaven]. Once they become sensible of their oneness and their individuality they may go forward to the Sixth plane [Second Heaven].” (1)
He discusses what appears to be the Second Death, perhaps equivalent to our Ascension, separating the two spheres of the first and second subplanes:
“There is, then, a breaking of the threads, a casting away of the dross of emotional experience, a sifting and changing on the part of all these souls.” (2)
Frances Banks was a nun for a time on Earth and so has already a strong “belief in Group Work and in the evidence of Group Souls.” (3) She suggests that we are members of many soul groups.
“We are, to my limited knowledge, all members not of one Group but of many, and the many make up the Great Group or the Great Soul Being in which we live and move and have our being … and these great Beings unite to form further great Group Souls or Divine Beings in the Divine Company of Heaven.” (4)
She describes the higher beings in charge of the groups.
A soul group gathers in the American southwest, mid-assignment
“In the guidance of these Groups are great Beings, watching over the progress of their cell-like clusters of souls.
“They work on higher mental Rays of influence, for although I know very little about them as yet, I have questioned many souls who have contacted them and worked amongst them.” (5)
And she describes their work and its impact.
“These Soul Groups are extensive, yet concentrated in their classes and workshops. They realize more than we can possibly do the Divinity inherent in every particle of the Cosmos.
“They are able to study Divine Laws beyond our understanding. They commune together with and in the Mind of the Higher Beings whose Soul Group they constitute.
“They work for progress in Divine Imagination and they work as Divine Inspirational Groups. They inspire lower groups with their findings, for they still contain the lower groups within their Centres as cell-points in a vast, intricate and beautiful organism.
“Amongst them are philosophers, scientists, researchers, priests, teachers. They are parts of Groups which influence and impress such movements on earth as Psychic Research, Healing movements, Religious Co-operation, the advancement of Science and all movements intended to bring Light upon future worlds.” (6)
Donald Macleod describes the work of a medical soul group. Like Frances Banks, he met Louis Pasteur in the course of observing the group.
“For the last few years I have been one of a band who have been working on the cause and treatment of cancer and, in the fullness of time, we will give our reports and findings to mankind. It will interest you to know that Pasteur, Dr. Schweitzer, Madame Curie, David Livingstone, and some of the people who are working on this project are here. Others are working on heart disease, leukemia and other chronic illnesses.” (7)
Everything inspiring originates from the work of the soul group, she says.
“All great aspirations, revelations and divine whisperings of intuition originate in and through the Spirit of the Group to which one belongs, i.e., the Highest Point of the Group.
“Thus, family sacrifices, family peace, love, harmony all originate from the Group Soul of the family; in the same way, great aspirations for service and for imparting knowledge to others and for the guiding and enlightenment of our fellows comes from the Great Spiritual Being who is the Centre Group Spirit of that particular group.” (8)
Group souls are at the forefront of all great movements and actions, she says.
“Group Souls preside over universal movements, over great causes and thus members of one Spiritual Family are often attracted to each other by mutual interests, by a special life work, as well as by external links. They work together, may indeed share their lives in partnership, or may only meet occasionally as they work in some particular project.” (9)
Their advance is unified, Banks tells us.
“The Group itself is made up of souls at all levels of consciousness, from the highest to the mediocre, but the Spirit of the Groups only Itself advances as the younger and less knowledgeable members make progress.
“It is a unified advance. No member of the Group can pass beyond the call and communication of other members. When the Group itself advances into the Divine Company, then there will be no ‘stragglers.’
“But, as I am instructed, such an experience is far beyond the Group consciousness at this stage.” (10)
Banks informs us that everyone is always progressing back to God. Individuals wanting to progress into a group cannot do so until their expansion matches at least the group’s fringes.
“All is expansion here, but expansion in stages. This Law is exact. No entity can propel itself forward into a Group until its emotional, mental and spiritual expansion at least is comparable with the fringe of that Group’s awareness.” (11)
Moreover there is no way to fool the members of the group.
“Here, illusion, glamour and self-deception are of no avail. One reveals what one is. One advertises oneself even in one’s apparel. The mask has been shed with the physical body. The developing Light body, its dimness or brilliance, is apparent, especially to members of the Group to which the quality of such Light permits graduation.” (12)
Notice that their light body, like ours, is developing in this first stage of the Mental Plane. Ours is developing as we enter the Fifth Dimension and will probably be fully developed with our Ascension, which for me is the equivalent of the Second Death on the spirit side.
Sometimes members of the group become separated but rejoin them on the other side.
“Sometimes, by what appears to be a perverse fate, members of the same Group are separated, born into the apparently wrong camps. Their lives become tragic, often futile in their repeated efforts to rejoin their similar companions and their rightful work. Strangely enough many never find their right niche. Often they live and die as outcasts.
“But, as the entire complement of a Group Soul is never in complete incarnation at the same time, i.e., there is always an integrated part of the Group on this Side, the outcasts, after their transition here and after they have gained consciousness of their state and have attained to at least some measure of Light, rejoin their own Groups.” (13)
In Conclusion
This then is a preview of the full coalescence of the soul group, which we can expect to happen in the next few months as we pioneer a new form of Ascension – Ascension in and with the physical body.
Our soul groups have always been important to our work. We have incarnated as a group over at least thousands of years and perhaps millions. According to what Archangel Michael has told me, our soul groups have existed even when we inhabited other kingdoms.
What I’ve been exploring in this series of articles is some of the similarities between the first stage of the Fifth Dimension which we’re apparently in now, according to Archangel Michael, and the first stage of the Mental Plane, which is the correlate of the Fifth Dimension on the spirit side of life.
The main similarity is that we can be in the first subplane of the Mental Plane and not have gone through the so-called “Second Death,” which I believe is the correlate of our Ascension. I’ll write an article or a series on the Second Death soon, to compare its features with Ascension.
I may look at more similarities between the “First Heaven,” as this subplane of the Mental Plane is called, and our own current stage of development. But in order to keep this series from getting too long, I’m going to stop here for now.
Footnotes
(1) Frederic W.H. Myers through Geraldine Cummins, medium. The Road to Immortality. Being a description of the after-life purporting to be communicated by the late F. W. H. Myers [Frederic William Henry Myers, 1843-1901]. Located athttp://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/cummins/cummins1.html, n.p. The First heaven is the First Subplane of the Mental Plane and the Second Heaven is the Second Subplane of the Mental Plane.
(2) Loc. cit.
(3) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 114.
(4) Ibid., 115.
(5) Ibid., 116.
(6) Loc. cit.
(7) Donald Macleod in P.I. Phillips, Here and There. More Psychic Experiences. London; Corgi Books, 1975,, 10.
(8) Frances Banks, TOL, 118.
(9) Ibid., 139.
(10) Ibid., 119.
(11) Ibid., 135.
(12) Ibid., 135-36.
(13) Ibid., 139.
by Steve Beckow
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