A letter to all my dear friends, from Bivalia [a]
(Issued through Michael James Edwards of Camberwell [b], Victoria, in 1994:
26 February - 1 March, 29 - 31 March, 13 May, and 28 October.)
My beloved friends,
I am Bivalia, and I am writing this letter to you from the future (as it
would appear in your time-stream). And in "my beloved friends", I include all
my personal friends and family and acquaintances into whose hands this letter
may fall at any time, any people on similar or very different spiritual paths to
that which I followed, who may identify with any of what I say here; and indeed
anyone at all who may chance to read this. I send you all my love.
Since I have ascended and found my way in this whole new way of life and
got to know how things work, I just had to write back to you all to let you know
how things are: for one thing, because I am so pleased and happy and fulfilled
that I just had to share it with you; and secondly in the hope that what I say
may help any of you who are yet to ascend or who have started your ascension and
who might benefit from another's experience.
This letter is quite literally from the future. The body which is typing
this letter for me may appear to be a rather unremarkable fellow who is still
grappling with the concept of ascension, and this body is the one associated
with the "I am" presence known as Bivalia: myself, that is. But I am ascended,
and writing about how my life is now, and I am sending it back in time through
the body and mind known as Michael Edwards, so that those who are his
contemporaries and who are ready to receive this message may be able to read
what I wish to share.
Please do not be too quick to regard Michael Edwards as ordinary, or as a
failure. Whatever his problems, there is much more to him than may meet the
eye, because, as I can now testify, he did make his ascension, and his ego did
unite with the being known as Bivalia, who is writing these words now.
However little you may suspect it, Michael Edwards in your time and
dimension already has the makings of a being who has become (in our time and
dimension) one of our greatest composers in the ascended realm. I, Bivalia, am
that composer; and, while you may, in your present time, have to take my word
for that, after you have ascended you will in due course come to see that this
is so. There are quite a few others here who will back up such a claim.
I do not say this to boast, but merely because the intention of this letter
is to tell you what my ascended life is like and what I am doing. Ego does not
count in this new life, but I tell you about such things as an example of the
wonderful things we can all do after we have ascended.
I will tell you a little more about my life as a composer later in this
letter, as well as some of the other things I am doing. And I tell you about my
wonderful accomplishments not in a spirit of "Aren't I clever? Look at how much
I can do" but of "See how wonderful it is to ascend, and what wonderful
accomplishments we will all make, of which these are examples".
* * *
There is so much to tell, I hardly know where to begin. But please bear in
mind that much of what I will say is very personal in nature, and is not
purporting to be a general formula for how to ascend or for what ascended life
is like. These are matters which are completely individual for every being who
ascends.
I grant the existence of broad universal principles such as God, love,
unity, freedom, and so on, which have their definite nature, and which do have
an effect on ascension. But when it comes to the detailed procedures on how one
should ascend, it is difficult to make rules. If there are general principles
akin to immutable laws in this area, I do not know what they are, and often when
I have had ideas about what they might be (or other people have laid down such
principles), they have later been confounded by subsequent events.
I am now wary of formulating such principles; but if they exist, I hope
they can be gleaned or inferred from the particulars of what I will say, but I
will not consciously try to extrapolate such principles. Rather, I just want to
tell you how wonderful it is, and give you a taste of what ascended life is
like. I do not seek to prove ascension to you (that probably cannot be done);
rather, I seek to give you such a wonderful taste of it that you can't wait to
ascend yourself, that you feel "I just must do this myself".
* * *
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about ascended life is that there are no
limits save those you make for yourself. If only you can transcend doubts and
self-limitations, nothing, absolutely nothing, is too ambitious, grandiose, or
outrageous to aim for. This means that ascended life is quite literally what
you decide to make it.
And the good thing is that even those of you who have not ascended yet can
start making life what you want it to be. I would go even further and say that
I believe that this is true even of people who are not even thinking about
ascension, who do not even know of it, although such people are often designing
their life in a less controlled way, because they are not so conscious of the
effects their thoughts are having on themselves, and therefore they are more
prone to making mistakes, and thus manifesting things in their lives here and
now that they don't really want.
This principle applies even more strongly once you have ascended. You can
reach a stage where you only have to think something, and it is so. It takes a
bit of practice to get to that stage, but the more you practise, the easier it
gets, until it finally seems quite effortless.
It might be a reasonable approximation of truth to say that merely thinking
a thought creates what we may call a thought-form in the astral plane, mental
plane, and so on. This is so whether or not you have ascended.
A thought-form is a structure, I suppose - I can't think of any better name
for it, although in some ways it is a living thing or entity - made out of
astral matter, mental matter, or whatever kind of matter exists on each plane it
manifests on, which somehow embodies the very essence of the thought which
created it, in all its detail. In a sense it is the thought. It is
tied to the thought in some essential way, and is not merely a picture of it
like a portrait of a person or a picture of a town or a mountain. If anything,
it is the subjective experience of thought in your head that is the picture - or
blueprint might be a better analogy - rather than the thought-form.
Feelings, spiritual ideas, and the like also create their own forms on
their own plane and all higher planes, and although they have their own
character and work according to their own principles, they can be thought of as
analogous to the thought-forms I've just described.
It's very difficult to describe what all these forms on various levels are
like. They can be seen with clairvoyant vision, and their appearance can vary
infinitely: it entirely depends on what they represent. If you are interested
enough in this matter, there are books in your dimension in which artists have
tried to give their representation of what these forms look like. (For that
matter, with clairaudient hearing, you can hear them, and similarly with other
senses, including various senses which don't correspond to any physical senses.)
If you have not ascended, and are still living mainly in the 3rd
dimension, perhaps partly in the 4th (the realm of intuition and feeling), these
thought-forms are not sufficient in themselves to fully manifest that idea or
thought on your 3rd-dimensional plane. This is fortunate for you, because
otherwise you would be constantly buffeted about like a leaf in a storm as every
passing thought you had instantly manifested for you physically.
Just think about it for a moment! Bear in mind the consequences of that
next time you are angry with someone and feel like hitting or even killing them.
Next time someone is angry with you, be thankful their thoughts and feelings are
not instantly manifested in physical reality. I would hazard a guess that if
your thoughts and feelings were instantly and fully manifested, your world would
not work for even five seconds before collapsing into total chaos. Everyone
would be working at cross purposes with everyone else. You must have complete
control over your thoughts before you are ready to handle the power to manifest
through thought alone in the manner just described.
On your plane, sustained and disciplined holding of an idea is necessary to
manifest it, usually accompanied by the appropriate physical actions. In a
sense, thought-forms, feeling-forms, and so on, could be regarded (on your
plane) as an embryo of reality, which you can choose to nurture into full growth
if you so choose, and do the appropriate things to make that so.
In the ascended state, in the 5th dimension, it would be closer to the
truth to say that the thought-form, feeling-form, or whatever, is
reality. On your 3rd-dimensional plane, you have thought-forms, feeling-
forms, and so on, and then you have physical reality, and these two levels are
quite distinct from each other. You would probably lump together forms in the
levels of thought, feeling, spirit, and so on, as "occult" or "supernatural" or
"spiritual" (even though these are in fact several different levels), and in
contrast to that, the physical manifestation would probably simply be called
"reality" or "the world" or "the universe".
In the 5th dimension, such distinctions as "reality" and "the occult" do
not exist. In a way, thought-forms and so on are physical reality, all
at once. This is why it is so important to have complete control of our
thoughts before we ascend, and why in fact we cannot ascend without doing this.
(If you want to ascend, and feel you are a million miles from having control of
your thoughts, do not despair. If you decide to ascend, and work on it, these
things will, in their own time, fall into place much more easily than you
anticipate. You are receiving much help from the 5th dimension. All of us
here love you dearly, and want to give you all every bit of help you will let
us give.)
There is only one safeguard in the 5th dimension against instant
manifestation of passing thoughts, and it is one we have created ourselves,
rather than it being inherent in the 5th dimension. Although we have complete
control of our thoughts and feelings, we like to be able to relax, to allow a
certain degree of casual thinking or feeling to take place without having to be
constantly on our guard as to whether we want it to manifest instantly.
A general safeguard we have adopted is that casual thoughts or feelings do
not instantly manifest, but as they pass through us, we can just let them go if
we choose, and nothing will happen. Yes, the thought-form does come into
existence as we think the thought, but there is a sense in which it does not
become fully real. For it to manifest fully, and become reality, we must
definitely will it, even only for an instant. There is no effort to it, but
there must be that instant of willing it to be so. If we don't do that, the
thought-form may exist but has no effect, and fades away as the thought that
created it fades away. This safeguard was effected by the simple expedient of
creating an automatic block which filters our thoughts, feelings, and ideas, and
which confines their effects to certain safe regions of space in close proximity
to us, which are part of our own personal space (the only way I can describe it
in your language) until we decide to lift the block.
This is not an inherent property of the 5th dimension, that we must
consciously will something to be real before it is real. The inherent property
is that these things are instantly real; but we have manufactured this safeguard
of willing something before it has any effect, and the safeguard is itself
making use of the fact that whatever we think can be instantly real.
* * *
I want to address the idea that some people have, that ascension itself is
difficult. Although Michael Edwards is open enough to receive this message,
some of which goes against his conditioning, he does have the concept that
ascension is difficult. Well, I would have to say that it is difficult if you
make it so; but you do not have to do that. Just let go of the idea that it is
difficult - again and again, if the idea keeps coming back - and eventually it
will let go. It can be marvellously easy if you decide to make it so.
Michael did have difficulties in the months following his first awareness
of the idea, but finally got clearer on it, and things fell into place, as he
got used to me, his Higher Self, and talked more and more to the Masters, and
indeed even to Father/Mother God Himself/Herself.
(If talking to God seems more difficult than talking to the Masters, as
Michael found it, simply adopt the idea that God is just as loving and
approachable as the Masters, perhaps even more so, difficult as that is to
imagine.)
In particular, Michael had difficulty with the idea of letting go of things
in his past, even to the extent (as one of his friends suggested he do) of maybe
disposing of old books and other belongings he had had for some time but was not
using currently. For a while he was troubled by the idea that he would have to
dispose of these things, and be irrevocably parted from them, and he felt he
just couldn't do this.
A time came when he said to himself: "Hey, this is very difficult for me.
If I regard that as an ironclad condition for ascension, I'm making ascension
difficult for myself. I don't need to do this. I don't have to make ascension
so dependent on such a difficult thing. I probably won't ascend if I do tie it
to conditions like that. I'm going to make ascension easy and pleasurable, not
full of fear and anxiety. Perhaps I will eventually dispose of the stuff, and
if so will do it without fear or regrets; on the other hand, perhaps this isn't
yet the time for that. But either way, I will enjoy and use those things if I
want to, and on the other hand, will just leave that aside for a while if I want
to. But the attachment to those things will gradually fade, very
easily and without trauma, as I get more and more enthusiastic about ascension,
even if ownership of them continues for some time. But most importantly, I'm
just not going to let this be an issue at present. If I make it a big issue, it
will simply be a stumbling block, and I've decided not to let that happen."
In the end, Michael didn't feel obliged to physically dispose of those
things before he was ready (but kept that option open as a future possibility),
but the attachment grew less and less, gradually and imperceptibly, not in any
great dramatic way; and he did make his ascension, and it was according to his
wishes, that it just didn't become a big and traumatic issue like it could have
become. And that was because he decided that it would be that way.
And now that Michael has surrendered his ego to me, his Higher Self, he now
regards as quite unimportant whether or not he continues to own those things, or
anything at all. If the books, for example, were to go, he knows full well that
if he wants access to what the books contain, the universe can provide that
information in full detail to him now that he is ascended. He knows, and I
know, that the whole issue was nothing more than a paper tiger.
There is no outside authority who lays down the one and only way of
ascending, and if someone appears to present themselves that way, I would urge
you, my friends, to listen carefully to what they say in case some of it is
valuable, but to take with some caution any claims or implications that such-
and-such is the only way of ascending. If you disagree strongly enough
with something that is claimed by someone to be essential for ascension, make it
a challenge to prove them wrong: not for the sake of saying to them "You were
wrong and I was right" (as if it were a game of one-upmanship), but for the sake
of knowing inside yourself that your way of doing things is as valid for you as
their way is for them. At the same time, try to be humble enough to change your
mind if indications come that you really were wrong about something, and perhaps
even to acknowledge the other person's ideas with good grace if it turns out he
was right after all. Being open in this way is much more important than being
right itself is. Better to be wrong a thousand times than to be dogmatic and
closed-minded.
This isn't a game of point-scoring, of being right and the other person
wrong; it's a game of us all just ascending and sharing our knowledge and
helping each other in the most enjoyable way possible. All of us can be right
in many things, and wrong in many others, and what's right for me might be wrong
for you, and vice-versa. We cannot afford to be too sure that something we
believe in is right for everyone in a universal way.
Of course, I am talking here about particular methods or techniques or
conditions, not about such fundamentals as developing love, contacting your
Higher Self, and aligning yourself with God, because those do seem to me to be
essential for ascension. I hesitate to be dogmatic about even this, but at
least I can say that I have not yet discovered any alternative to these
fundamental principles. (I did say at the outset that on the broad level I
believe certain principles almost certainly are universal.)
* * *
Well, I'm getting bogged down perhaps in philosophical points, and wish to
return to what ascended life is like. Actually, because there is no limitation
here (which is probably the most important fact about it), it is difficult to
describe things. Perhaps I should try to describe what my life is like now, and
you may get the general idea of what it is like, and apply that to what you
would like your ascended life to be like.
Here is one way in which ascended life contrasts sharply with 3rd-
dimensional life. In the3rd-dimensional world, there are only 24 hours in
the day, only 7 days in the week, only 52 weeks in the year, and so on. In
other words, time is limited, ultimately to a life-span of rather less than a
century, in most cases.
Almost invariably, there is far more that you would like to do than this
time allows, and you are almost constantly faced with the painful choice of
whether to do this rather than that. This is difficult enough when both of the
things are things you long to do, that you truly believe to be good and
worthwhile. Often, the choice is not merely between two different things, but a
dozen or a hundred.
But of course, things are complicated further by the fact that some of the
options are things you don't really want to do at all, but are obliged to do for
one reason or another. Earning a living, for most people, would be the biggest
item in this category. Perceived duty to friends, family, society, religion,
and a multitude of other things, would be another form of this sort of thing.
In other areas, you are prevented from doing what your heart wants to do by
limitations such as not having enough money, talent, or whatever: or, more
precisely, by the deep belief that you lack these things, which in practice
amounts to the same end result.
In the ascended state, things are quite different from this. Time isn't
the same here as in the 3rd-dimensional world. It's impossible to
describe, but perhaps one way of putting it is that if time in the physical
world is one-dimensional, a single straight line running from the past to the
future, time here has two dimensions, and is a whole flat plane rather than a
mathematical line. Or maybe it is even 3-dimensional, covering all of space
rather than just a single line. Or maybe even more dimensions. It's difficult
to say, because this is only a rough analogy.
Here is another way of putting it. On your 3rd-dimensional Earth, in
your time-frame and in unascended state, you all have 24 hours per day, and that
can't be changed. Only the perception of how fast time is going can be changed
slightly, by your emotions at the time. By this I mean the well-known feeling
that time speeds along when you are enjoying yourself, and plods along when you
are not, and positively grinds its way along when you are in pain or difficulty.
But this only changes the subjective speed of time to a limited extent; apart
from this, it is by and large true that you move through time at the fixed rate
of 24 hours per day, and you cannot either increase or decrease that.
Well, here (still on Earth, but in her ascended state and in your
future), we can in a manner of speaking fit more than 24 hours in a day if we
want to, and so even the present moment is unlimited time-wise, instead of a
single point of time as in your world.
Perhaps another way to look at it is that, whereas on your 3rd-
dimensional Earth you have a body that can only be in one place at a time,
doing one particular thing at a time, here on our 5th-dimensional Earth
one can (in a manner of speaking) manifest further bodies at will, which can be
doing different things in different places, but each of which is fully oneself,
just as much as in your world your one body is yourself.
Please don't take any of these models too literally. This is just a rather
inaccurate attempt to give you some idea of something which really cannot be put
into your words.
Anyway, the practical consequences of this expanded concept of time (which
is very real here, not merely a theoretical idea) are that you don't have to
make difficult choices between doing this and that. Here you can have your
cake and eat it too. That is one of the most wonderful aspects of ascended
life. It deserves repeating: in almost all aspects of ascended life, in almost
all matters of choice, you can have your cake and eat it too - provided you
believe you can. (Although, that becomes so obvious after a while that no-one I
know has any difficulty in believing it.)
There is time to do everything you want to. And you do not have the
spectre of death hanging over you as many people do in 3rd-dimensional life,
so that even if time were still linear, but merely infinite, there would still
be time for everything, although some things would have to wait a long time; and
you probably know how frustrating it can be to have to wait even for something
you know you will eventually be able to devote time to.
But no, time is not linear: there is not only time to do everything you
want (no matter how many things that may be), but there is time for them all at
the same time, difficult though that may be to comprehend. As I said, there is
no limitation here at all. Not only can you do everything you want to; you
can do everything you want to this week or this day, if you choose, although we
do not necessarily choose to multiply time like that without good reason. It's
entirely up to our own choice.
(By the way, before I continue, this is a good place at which to explain a
little trick of semantics I want to adopt to make my explanation easier. I
sometimes talk about "here" as contrasted to where you are; at other times
I refer to "Earth" or "yourEarth", referring to where you are as
contrasted to the ascended state where I am writing from. Of course, I am
writing this from Earth, and I am presently on Earth just as much as you
are. It's a bit misleading, perhaps, to talk about "here" and "there" as
if we were in two totally different places. But of course what I mean is that I
am writing from what is your future, and the Earth I am on presently is very
different from the Earth you are on. You are in my past, and I am in your
future. The Earth I am writing from has fully ascended into the 5th
dimension, whereas the Earth you are receiving this on has not fully ascended
- or perhaps has begun to ascend, but to a degree that is not yet outwardly
manifest. Rather than explain all this every time I must contrast my time and
condition with yours, I will continue to refer to where you are as "Earth",
and to use "here" to mean the time I am in, here in the 5th dimension.)
(By the way, before I continue, this is a good place at which to explain a
little trick of semantics I have adopted to make my explanation easier. I have
already several times talked about your 3rd dimension as contrasted to my 5th
dimension; sometimes I refer to the latter simply as "here". This would seem
to imply that I am here, but you are not, which begs a few questions that
perhaps I should not beg. Since I am on the Earth at least sometimes, and you
are all the time, it might seem as if I shouldn't distinguish where I am by the
word "here", if I am not applying it also to where you are.
(Of course, what I mean when I refer to myself as being "here" is that I
am on the Earth in its 5th-dimensional aspect, in the ascended state, and in
what you would call the future. This may seem to be cutting a few corners,
because one might suppose both you and I are in the same place (if not the same
time). Well, in a way we are and in another way we aren't; "here" and "not
here" are concepts that almost don't apply in the 5th dimension, because we
can be in different places simultaneously (of which I will speak more later).
If I am at a given moment on the Earth, I am in that sense in the same place as
you - we are both "here"; but because the Earth is now (in my time) ascended,
and in the 5th dimension, in another sense I am not in the same place (or the
same time) as where you are, which is not (in your time) ascended - and
therefore you are not "here" (as I see it). Nevertheless, despite all these
caveats, for the sake of being able to quickly and easily refer to this
difference in times and dimensions, I am going to continue to refer to my time
and dimension as "here". Language was not designed for 5th-dimensional
concepts, so if I am not to be tiresomely laborious, I will have to cut a few
corners here and there.)
Before I give you some idea of how we might fill our time here, or at
least how I choose to, I would like to expand a little on some of the other
3rd-dimensional limitations I mentioned above, and how we transcend them. I
mentioned time as one such limitation which we can rise above once ascended,
literally by willing it, and gave you some idea of how that is done - or at
least how I do it, because I concede that others may other ways of dealing with
time.
Another limitation I mentioned was lack of money. Well, we don't use money
here anyway. While it may be true that some people here may own more
things than others, if you bothered to count it up (and I haven't yet met anyone
who has bothered), differences between wealth and poverty simply aren't relevant
here. You can manifest anything, material or otherwise, that you choose
here, so if one person has more belongings than another, that is nothing more
than personal choice; and because you can also dematerialize things you no
longer need (for the time being, at any rate), even that difference may change
tomorrow. Number and type of belongings are simply not an issue here of the
slightest importance. Belongings are simply something you have for a particular
purpose, and we have a very functional attitude to them. There is no status or
prestige attached to them.
Besides, I am cutting a few corners here talking about owning things at
all. (Obviously, I have to cut quite a few corners to give you a flavour of
ascended life in 3rd-dimensional language.) In truth, we don't really own
anything at all. You don't in 3rd-dimensional life, either, but that fact is
transparently obvious here. Rather, we make use of parts of the universe,
with a feeling of gratitude.
With the permission of God, and of the universe, we take parts of it, and
mould them in certain ways with our thoughts or with our bodies, in order to
accomplish various things. Then, when we no longer need those parts of the
universe, we simply relinquish them to the universe. Then, if we need those
things again, we are permitted to take temporary possession of them again; and
so on.
But we don't have a grasping attitude to possessions like many 3rd-
dimensional beings do. And we certainly don't have the slightest desire to harm
others in order to take control of them or anything they are temporarily using.
That is completely counter-productive, and goes against everything we stand for
and hold dear.
An attachment to possessions is really a fear-based attitude: the fear that
you may not have enough of what you need or want, so you grasp at as much as you
can. In the ascended state, we realize that fears are groundless if we can but
let them go, and we have learned how to let them go. The universe itself
provides us with everything we need, and everything we want also, without us
having to have an attitude of possessing it.
Although there is no law against selfishness in the 5th dimension
(because there are no laws here at all in the 3rd-dimensional sense), no-
one here would even think of trampling on the rights of others simply to
further their own material interests, or indeed their own interests of any sort
at all. A person who would consider doing this simply would not have ascended
yet, because this sort of attitude is completely contrary to the spirit and
essence of what ascension is all about.
It's not so much a matter of such a person not being good enough
to ascend (as if ascension were some sort of elite thing, which you can qualify
for if you get enough marks in the examination of life); it's more that it's
simply a contradiction in terms to talk of such a person ascending. To talk
about an ascended person who has a competitive self-interest is a bit like
talking about an honest person who habitually robs banks. Ascending
means (amongst many other things) rising above this sort of competitive
self-interest.
The things that count here are people, and matters of spirit, although
we do not hesitate to enjoy the more material things if we so feel like it.
(Not quite everything is very holy and spiritual, and by no means is everything
serious. We have plenty of fun here, as well as our more serious interests.)
The other limitation I mentioned in connection with 3rd-dimensional life
was the perception of lack of talent to do what you want to do. Perhaps in some
cases there might have been a real lack of talent, although probably less often
than many of you might think. In any case, it has the same end result, whether
you lack a talent or merely believe you lack it. The end result is that you
stifle creativity. Even if what you call "lack of talent" is real in some
people, and it is not merely talent stifled by such things as lack of self-
confidence, it is merely a limitation that body has taken on for that life-time;
I want to be clear that it is not an inherent limitation that belongs
to spirit.
Even in 3rd-dimensional life I believe that such problems can be overcome
to a much greater extent than is commonly believed; but in the 5th dimension
they cease to be problems at all. You simply have any ability or talent you
want to have. There is no such thing as wanting to do something, but resigning
yourself to frustration because you lack the talent. If you don't already have
it, you simply get it. The problem is as much a phantom here as are the
problems of time shortage and poverty.
In a general sense, all these problems, which can be quite real in the
3rd-dimensional world, are examples of the same basic thing: poverty - a lack
(or perceived lack) of something, whether it is money, time, talent, creativity,
or anything else. And poverty simply doesn't exist here. It would be an
oxymoron to talk about poverty here, simply a contradiction in terms. It is
as meaningless as talking about darkness that is full of light.
In fact, it would not be a bad working definition of ascension to call it
the overcoming of poverty or lack of all sorts. If you still perceive, or have,
poverty or lack of any sort in your life, then by definition you have not yet
ascended.
So a vital aspect of ascended life is this ability to manifest whatever you
want in your life. Many people who are still not ascended, but are well on the
path, are starting to find even 3rd-dimensional life like this. With
reference to your time-frame as you read this message from the future, you will
very likely find this increasing as the Earth herself completes her ascension.
But the flood-gates will really open once you ascend; you will then have
the full working-out of the basic precept that what you will to be so,
will be so. The examples of this which some people are experiencing
already in the 3rd-dimensional world are merely a foretaste of this. I'm
thinking here of such things as manifesting a parking spot in a busy street just
when and where you need it, or meeting just the very person you needed to meet
for some purpose, and similar things. They are mere fleabites compared to what
you are about to experience.
The first major example of this that I personally experienced was the
experience I have already described, where I feared ascension would be hard, and
approached it a bit like a very stiff examination I was afraid I might fail, and
finally decided I wanted to make it easy, and found I was able to.
God, the Masters, the universe, are not trying to catch you out,
however much it may, in your more pessimistic moments, appear that way. They
all want you to ascend, perhaps even more than you yourself want to.
If only you knew how much they long to see you face to face again, how much love
and energy they are pouring into each and every one of you. If you could only
perceive this, I am sure you would be so overcome with longing for the same
thing that you would renew your intention to ascend, and let nothing stand in
the way.
So, I made my ascension easy just by deciding to make it so; when I saw how
well this worked, and I got accustomed to the general principle, I started to
let myself go wild. I got all sorts of wild ideas, and was delighted to find
that I could make them come true. Perhaps it took a little effort to begin
with, but it got easier and easier. In fact, I am pleased to be able to tell
you all that life gets easier and easier, more and more fulfilling, as you go
along, without any limit as far as I can make out. Although many people may
believe the now-famous words quoted from a poet by an Australian Prime Minister
not generally noted in the field of philosophy, I am very glad to be able to
assure you that Malcolm Fraser was very limited indeed in his belief that life
is not meant to be easy. (The quote he gave was not even complete, so the words
he quoted are in fact a little out of context.)
Life is easy here, and getting easier all the time, although I don't
mean by that that we are all lazy and decadent. And I am making more and more
friends, being filled with more and more love, and have the delightful company
of the Masters whenever I want it (and it's wonderful how, despite how busy the
Masters are, they have so much time to spare to be with me whenever I want it,
and the same for anyone else, ascended or not, who requests their company); and
I am even coming ever closer to God all the time.
It really is too wonderful for words, and I hope these words urge and
inspire you on to your own ascension. I really look forward to meeting you all
in time, and I can assure you that the Masters, and God too, are as pleased and
full of joy at each person's ascension as if that person were their only loved
one in all the universe.
Here I am talking about the Masters as if they were a group above me.
Well, I must be honest and tell you that I could be considered a Master now,
although I haven't quite yet fully got used to the idea. I caught myself
talking about them, as a group, as if they were above me, because I am not fully
accustomed to the idea yet; but it may not always be that they are above me,
although obviously many of them have been Masters much longer than I have.
I don't want to boast about it, but in writing this message, I must tell
the truth. We all become Masters once we complete our ascension; I am not
claiming anything special for myself in this regard.
However, I must qualify my remarks by pointing out that although we in the
ascended states do have individual bodies, at levels above the physical the idea
of separate beings is much less important than it is for you. As you go up the
levels, astral, mental, and so on, individuality becomes less pronounced, until
at the top level of pure spirit, there is no division of individuals at all.
Yet in losing individuality at the highest levels, that should not be taken
to mean a watered-down sort of idea of life without any substance or character.
Just the very opposite. In losing individuality, we gain far more than we lose.
Life is more full of variety and meaning and fulfilment, not less.
* * *
I'm circling round the problem of trying to describe ascended life, because
words really are inadequate to describe it. As a start, just imagine all the
desires of your heart, all the wonderful things you've longed to do all your
life, all the places you've wanted to visit, all the people you've wanted to do
things with. All these desires can be fulfilled to your heart's content in the
ascended state.
Do you ever feel an unidentified yearning or longing deep inside you? You
couldn't possibly describe it in words, but, vague as it seems, you know you
would recognize it instantly you saw or experienced it. Do you ever find quite
everyday scenes or experiences seem to arouse a deep longing, as if there were
something wonderful or spiritual in that experience that would not ordinarily be
associated with it? Do you ever have the feeling that the things you do which
are most important to you are somehow connected with this sense of wonder?
If you have experienced many hardships in life, do you ever have the
feeling that this sense of wonder that seems occasionally to beckon round this
or that corner, just out of sight, is the main thing in life that enables you to
maintain hope? Do you ever see a sunset or a rainbow or a thunderstorm or a
moonrise that somehow seems momentous, somehow seems to hint, in private ways,
at wonderful things to come one day? Do such things ever seem to have a special
sort of magic to them, almost as if they were a scene in a wonderful and moving
and inspiring story?
These (as far as words can describe the ineffable at all) are some of the
ways in which I have occasionally felt hints of my heart's deepest desires. And
I can assure you that ascension has led me ever close to those desires. They
are continuously fulfilled in a way that does not exhaust itself, so that you
feel satisfaction in their fulfilment, yet realize there is always more to
follow, so that you do not become bored through having nothing more to do or to
achieve.
These are the things of spirit, much more than the pressing concerns of
everyday life, much more than the rat-race of society's treadmill. In fact, it
is very likely that the source of that longing is directly from the things of
the heart, the things of spirit. If that longing seems attached or associated
with some physical object or experience, which logically would not have such
deep meaning, I would suggest that the physical thing or experience seems to
have that feeling simply because in some respect it reminds you of something
spiritual, which is the real thing you long for, and the physical thing is
really nothing more than a pointer to it.
While you may want to enjoy the physical experience which has this
ineffable suggestion about it, it might be a mistake to seek the spiritual too
much through that specific thing. It is my experience that if you pursue the
sense of wonder too intensively through that particular experience, the
suggestion of wonder tends to fade and disappear like a mirage. It then may bob
up again later on at a moment when you are not expecting it.
But if you just let things happen, just enjoy the experience without trying
to grasp at something which can't be grasped anyway, then that magic which can
make even physical experiences so sweet and so poignantly nostalgic will tend to
linger longer, and come up in all sorts of other places too.
It's a bit like trying to enjoy butterflies. If you forever try to chase
every butterfly you see, thus to enjoy its presence all the more, you will not
catch them, and they will just move away from you. And I would suggest that, if
you were lucky (and quick) enough to catch one, you would not enjoy it anyway.
On the other hand, if you don't try to catch them, but just pause a while
to enjoy them and then go about your business, just enjoying seeing them when
they happen along, you will find that they will alight in front of you all the
more because you are not chasing after them and scaring them away. Perhaps it's
a poor analogy, but it at least hints at the point I'm trying to make.
I realize that, even if you do things that way, by not trying to pursue the
wonder that occasionally comes into life, but simply enjoying it as it comes, it
somehow fails to satisfy. Although it seems poignantly bittersweet when it
happens, it is somehow evanescent at the best of times, let alone if you
desperately try to pursue it. I know this only too well, and Michael who is
giving you this message knows it only too well also. It has, in various guises,
been one of the big concerns of his life. It is largely this great hope which
has largely kept him going through many difficulties.
Although I can promise you that in ascended life the fulfilment you long
for, which these snatches of magic merely hint at, will be satisfied, I'm not
sure that it can be fulfilled fully in 3rd-dimensional life. As I've
indicated, I think it is in its essence a longing for that which is not
earthly anyway, and that the things on Earth you think you long for are merely
reminding you of something spiritual. They cannot in themselves satisfy such
desires of the spirit, no matter how intimately they seem bound up with that
longing.
Because of this, perhaps I cannot give a completely satisfying answer to
this in 3rd-dimensional terms. But I would suggest that you will, even before
ascension, get ever closer and closer to this great longing, if you earnestly
follow some sort of spiritual path, or self-improvement path, or path of serving
others, or whatever you deeply believe in, and stick to what you know to be
right. Follow the indications of your conscience, and give as free rein to the
imagination as you can.
Deliberately do imaginative things you would not normally see any point in
doing. Be whimsical at times. Don't be too serious; let a little lightness and
fun into your life as often as you can. In fact, more than just a little. Get
deeply involved in something creative or some hobby that truly captures your
interest. Perhaps none of these ideas is a magical formula to finding and
fulfilling your heart's desires, but in combination I believe they will help you
get closer to them, and will also help prepare you for ascension, should you
choose that option. If you feel you can't or won't choose that option, don't
close your mind to it. You may change your mind on that one day, and you may be
much closer than you imagine to being ready to ascend.
Meanwhile, of course, many of you must devote much time to mundane everyday
concerns, such as employment, housekeeping, or any other obligations you have
undertaken. I'm not suggesting that you can, or even should if you can, devote
all your time to some spiritual method, or to hobbies or imaginative activities.
Although you may be obliged to continue these more everyday things, please
do not lose sight of the things of spirit. However much you are occupied with
mundane concerns, if you do not completely lose sight of the things of spirit,
they will always be there to give you hope and comfort, and will not desert you.
Know that one day these deepest heart's desires will be fulfilled. If you
cannot for any reason devote much time explicitly to working on spirit, or if
you are plagued by doubts that you somehow can't remove, just hold on to it in
the background, as a foundation of all that you dearly hope for.
And if you feel you have truly lost the thread of spirit, truly lost
contact with your innermost heart, do not despair. If you have strayed very far
from the path, further opportunities will come for you to come back to it. I
want you all to know that nobody, absolutely nobody, is ever lost beyond hope.
Please take my word for it, that the Masters, and God Himself, never abandon
anyone, no matter how hopeless such ones may consider themselves to be, no
matter how hopeless others may judge them to be.
Also, my friends, please consider the idea that you may not be nearly as
far from the path as you think you are. Do not be overly pessimistic on this,
whatever faults you may believe you have, because it can be a very difficult
thing to judge how far off you are, without complete knowledge of your whole
situation in life, emotionally and spiritually. If there is any region of
doubt, give yourself the benefit of the doubt!
Even as an ascended Master, I do not know all the answers to the great
questions of life, and I am wary of being dogmatic about anything; but if I am
to be dogmatic about anything at all, it is this: that those religions or
philosophies that have a doctrine that claims that certain categories of people
(or any other being, for that matter) are lost beyond hope for all eternity is
sadly mistaken and tragically limited.
As Michael Edwards, for many years I already perceived such ideas to be
wrong, and was always repelled by them. I found myself unable to believe in
such religions, no matter how many airtight arguments their proponents put to me
that I couldn't refute. Even if God was like that, I didn't feel I could
respect, love, or worship a God like these people were describing to me.
As Bivalia, I still have this attitude just as strongly, and perhaps with
more conviction than Michael Edwards had. It is totally against everything I
cherish and believe in, and it is simply not my experience of the Masters, or
God Himself, that they ever abandon anyone at all, for any reason whatsoever.
It pains me, and I believe it pains the Masters, and God too, to see many people
living with the spectre of hell dangling over them, filling them with fear and
dread. They may outwardly believe they are safe from hell's eternal torments,
but are they ever completely free of the fear that they may stumble and be
condemned? It must be like living your whole life on a tight-rope, always
having to guard against falling, never being able to relax for a moment lest you
fall.
People may limit themselves through wrong or ignorant choices, but they can
always come back onto the main path as soon as they choose to, no matter how
many times or how far they have strayed. And if through negativity they have
reached a point of being unable to decide to come back to the Light again, the
Masters are always standing there, willing to lavish help on them the moment
they can receive it. In fact, they long to help such beings who have badly
strayed. Nothing gladdens them more than to see such a one turning at last in
the right direction.
And such people will be offered experiences from time to time which will
help them see the truth of things as it affects them, although it has to be
conceded that these experiences are sometimes painful; but such experiences are
offered them with the highest of intentions.
Although my discussion of the fate of people who stray from the Light was a
bit of a digression, I allowed myself that, because I feel quite strongly about
that, and think it was well to tell you my views on that, especially since many
prominent religions or denominations would have you believe that certain classes
of people are lost forever.
* * *
I still haven't told you in detail what my life is like in the ascended
state. Each time I try to work up to it, I seem to think of something else that
I want to say, which fits in especially well at that point, and, because I have
persuaded Michael to be receptive to everything I'm giving him without judging
or censoring it, it's just all coming out higgledy-piggledy.
In the embodiment known as Michael, my main interests were composing music
and writing stories, and, more recently, writing computer programs. I suppose
those are still amongst my main interests, although I have broadened my horizons
in a way time allows here, but which 3rd-dimensional time probably
wouldn't. These interests have also featured prominently in a number of
previous incarnations, because all one's different lives do seem to have a
thread running through them.
(Perhaps an interest in computer programming is new to the embodiment known
as Michael, at least as far as recent embodiments go, but that interest can be
traced back to Atlantis, where computers certainly featured in the technology of
those times, and the interest was renewed in my life as Michael, for the first
time in quite a long time. It may be of interest to know that, in Atlantis, one
of my embodiments had a mixed relationship with computers, because he did a lot
of work with them, but was also hurt as a result of their misuse by others, and
that accounts for why, before Michael became interested in computers - took to
them like a duck to water in fact - he actually had something of a fear of
computers: quite a revulsion to them, in fact. But the fact that this was
overcome with much less difficulty than one might have expected indicates,
partly, that the underlying interest, stemming from Atlantis, was sufficiently
strong to counteract that. Not only is that a factor: perhaps Michael ought to
be given credit for using considerable courage to face what he quite strongly
feared, and allowing himself to like it; because a previous interest in
computers, so long ago also, need not necessarily have been sufficient in this
life to overcome that fear.)
Of course there were some previous incarnations where I sometimes had
different interests than those I had as Michael, and some of those interests
have been sufficiently lasting to have also contributed in various ways to my
way of life now.
In the ascended world, we do not have to earn a living like you have to on
your 3rd-dimensional Earth. We do not eat in the way you do, but live off the
energy which surrounds us, and anything else we need or want, including our
homes, we can manifest by willing it into existence.
But not needing to earn a living doesn't mean there is no work to be done;
our motivation simply isn't for money or other self-gain, nor for ego or
prestige, nor in order simply to survive. We do it because we want to. It is
not compulsory, but I would say everyone here wants to do something useful,
and chooses a field they are suited to, which makes their heart sing, and which
also benefits others in some way.
You would be allowed to slack here forever if you wanted to, but I think
that ascended life, with the stupendous powers that bestows, would quickly
become unbearable without some creative and useful channel for expressing those
powers. But of course we have periods of rest and relaxation, which is quite a
different matter.
Of course, we all want to share the ascension with everyone who hasn't yet
done it, and we want to let you know how to do it, and to help in whatever way
we can. But, aside from that, I do have an area of interest which is perhaps
related, but not exactly the same.
As Michael Edwards, I long resisted the idea of karma, the idea that
whatever you do in some fashion comes back to you in like manner. Putting it
crudely, according to this concept, if you murder someone, you could expect to
be murdered, in order to balance things up. Then, when you went into it a bit
more deeply, you had the slightly more sophisticated view that the karma, or
forces, you set in motion by that act had to be balanced up, and you had to do
that, but it need not necessarily be by being murdered yourself. There might be
other ways, but even so, they were liable to be difficult, and full of hardship
and pain, and they would very likely be very dreary and time-consuming, paying
off your karma inch by painful inch. (Of course, the good things you do would
come back too, but it's the bad things that caused me all the problems in
accepting the concept.)
I found I could not accept this basic way of growing spiritually, no matter
how many people tried to explain it to me, no matter how many books discussed
it, no matter how strong and airtight the arguments for karma were. At a very
deep level, I could not accept the rightness of pain and tragedy being such an
integral part of the whole universal system of spiritual growth for beings
everywhere.
It seemed to me that most of the arguments for this were based on some sort
of analogy with earthly, 3rd-dimensional aspects of life, and this never
seemed good enough. On a crude level, karma could be seen as some sort of
cosmic reward and punishment system. It would be argued that just as we must
reward and punish children to prevent them going wild, and sometimes reward and
punish adults to prevent anarchy, so must we do the same on a spiritual level.
Admittedly most of the arguments for karma I encountered were more subtle
than this. Some people drew quite a precise analogy with Newton's Laws of
Motion, about equal and opposite reactions, and the like. It was never obvious
to me that laws of pure physics could self-evidently apply to moral concepts
like karma, and no-one could ever give me a good reason why such an analogy
should hold.
It was sometimes taken for granted that justice could only be served by
some sort of accountant's view of right and wrong, that the accounting books of
karma should balance up to the last cent, and it was far from obvious to me that
this was the main concern. I did not believe, and still do not, that two wrongs
make a right, that justice is best served by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. I must admit that I still don't entirely understand karma, and still
find it something of a riddle. Even with my greater awareness now, karma does
sometimes give the appearance of applying in certain situations, and I don't
pretend I can understand how or why, because it doesn't feel right to me. I
don't know whether, or to what extent, God approves or condones the existence of
suffering; but I do know that He is so full of love it could bring tears to
one's eyes, and that the suffering of any being hurts Him as deeply as it does
that being, or maybe even more so. I have attempted to seek answers from
various Masters of great love and knowledge and experience, but I still haven't
got to the bottom of it. Perhaps, as I grow in knowledge and understanding, I
will understand this riddle one day.
It was sometimes held by those who justified the common understanding of
karma that the most important thing for us was to grow spiritually, to grow
closer to God, to leave behind the more negative or destructive aspects of our
character. (I have, and had then, no dispute with that general idea.) It was
held that sometimes, only through pain and suffering could we learn these
lessons, especially if we remained blind to spiritual truth, and to learning it
consciously and voluntarily. Some people even considered such experiences to be
beautiful lessons to be learned, an idea which always made me cringe. Such an
attitude, however spiritual it may seem, always struck me as insensitive to the
suffering of others.
I thought it monstrous that the most horrendous tragedies in life were
somehow ordained for our spiritual growth. No-one would condone a loving parent
using torture or disease or starvation to discipline a child; why should it be
any more justified here? And it made no difference if someone pointed out
that from the view of spirit such suffering was, in a relative sense, no worse
than a light smack given to a child; spirit may think that, but it was the
physical human being who was having to do all the suffering. And I thought that
no matter how you juggled things to make it all seem justifiable spiritually,
there was no getting round the fact that horrendous and totally unjustified
physical or mental suffering was being imposed, supposedly at the will of
(variously, according to various people) God, the Lords of Karma, the Masters,
the Angels, or the Higher Self of the individual concerned.
It made no difference if someone said to me, "But no-one's imposing that
suffering from outside onto you against your will; it's your own Higher Self
that's doing it." It still seemed to me that a part of the being capable of
feeling and suffering (namely, the lower self) was still having that imposed
from without itself, the lower self. If this was the explanation, it made it
obvious to me that the higher self and the lower self were to some extent
differentiated beings with different points of view, and that therefore a breach
of the will of the lower self was still involved. And respect of free-will was
always held to be paramount, above all other considerations.
And if some suffering is the result of choices made by the lower self,
almost always that suffering was unintended by the lower self, and therefore the
choice was made without a full awareness of the consequences of that choice. I
never thought a choice of the will was truly free choice unless it was made with
full awareness of the whole situation, which would include full knowledge of the
consequences of each possible choice. And of course, much suffering was not in
any way the result of choices made by that lower self which had to do all the
suffering.
So, in short, I was wary about arguments in favour of karma which were
based on some sort of analogy with the way the limited 3rd-dimensional world
which surrounded me worked. And I was greatly bothered by the various ways in
which the suffering and pain involved in karma were attributed to Spirit, which
was supposed to be in charge of the whole process.
I had always thought Spirit generally was good, a sort of ideal source of
goodness, and it truly amazed me to hear people so often trying to explain the
workings of ultimate goodness (spirit) by drawing analogies with the imperfect
and limited physical world we were all in at the time. It may be true that
suffering is unavoidable in this realm, and for purposes of correction or
discipline it might sometimes be necessary to impose suffering on someone, such
as when we discipline children or jail a convicted criminal. But I would only
advocate such measures because in the state of limitation in that dimension it
may sometimes be the only way that can be thought of to deal with the problem,
not in the least because in some sort of spiritual ideal way I think the
offender "deserves" suffering. Indeed, the very need in some situations to take
practical measures against wrongdoers that involve pain and suffering is itself
an inherent symptom of the spiritual problem.
I was always totally repelled by the idea of deliberately imposing
suffering on a physical person for the purpose of spiritual growth (regardless
of whether we attribute that imposition to the Higher Self, Lords of Karma, or
whomever), and I always thought deep down there must be a better way than this.
Even if this was how it was currently working, surely that could be changed, and
wasn't quite an immutable law of the universe like so many people believed.
So along came the concept of ascension, with a whole philosophy which to
some extent accorded with the traditional New-Age ideas, but which was also
overturning quite a few of the old ideas. And one of the ideas to be overturned
was the traditional view of karma, which interested me very much indeed, making
me feel this was the best news in the spiritual realm I'd heard for a good many
years; and I somehow felt vindicated in my years-old feeling that karma just
didn't seem right; it felt deeply wrong somehow, and offended some fundamental
part of my spirit, and violated everything I held dear, and believed in. This
may well be one of the early factors that caused me to become interested in
ascension in my life as Michael Edwards.
As I learned a bit more, I found that the general belief was not quite that
karma was being overturned universally. People who were ready to ascend would
be entering a new system where karma didn't operate, but the old traditional
system would apparently continue in full strength in the 3rd dimension, for
those who were not yet ready to ascend.
Well, of course, as I felt more and more sure I could ascend, I felt
considerable personal relief at this new development, and felt as if I'd been
released from prison. But I thought to myself, personal interest aside, this
really isn't good enough. I really thought it would be good if karma, with the
appalling suffering so intimately involved with that whole system, could be
abolished for all beings, for all the rest of time. But it doesn't
appear that this is an option yet.
I've taken a long time to work up to it, but the area of interest to me I
mentioned before relates to this. According to the traditional idea, karma is
totally universal for everyone, and yet here, with the ascension of the
Earth and of many humans, it was being abolished at least for certain people, or
at least in certain dimensions of the universe (5th and above). It was at
least a start: if it could be (and was being) abolished for some, perhaps in
time it could be abolished for all.
I did not know before ascending if anyone in the spiritual hierarchy was
working on this or not, and even in my life as Michael Edwards, such an idea
occurred to me from time to time, over many years. Without conceit, I honestly
believed (and still believe) that if this problem could be solved it would be
one of the greatest favours that could be bestowed on the universe.
Just think how wonderful it would be: to rid the universe of pain and
suffering for ever, and yet have non-painful ways of allowing people to learn
their spiritual lessons. And I am optimistic enough to believe even that once
such alternative methods are in use, they will be more effective anyway.
One of the things I have been doing in the ascended state is looking into
this whole question, and trying to determine if ways can be developed to abolish
pain and suffering once and for all from the whole universe, regardless of
whether one perceives beings as "deserving" it or not, and yet working out other
ways for people to learn whatever they need to, and growing spiritually, by non-
painful methods, and perhaps even working on developing such a system. It has
become one of my pet projects, in a manner of speaking.
I said I did not know initially if anyone other than me was interested in
this problem; certainly, as far as I can recall, I never heard anyone in my
3rd-dimensional life as Michael ever so much as mention the problem. A
disturbingly high number of compassionate and sensitive people seemed quite
happy to accept karma and pain as a fact of life, or at least resigned
themselves to it. Even if they had to acknowledge this as a fact of life,
because their experience and knowledge made it obvious, they did not ever seem
to be outraged at it, and never seemed to see it as something that might somehow
be changed for the better. It amazed me; to question the system, and to
challenge it (and maybe change it, if it were factual) was an obvious
proposition to me from quite early in my involvement in such areas of philosophy
during my life as Michael.
Well, of course I shouldn't have assumed I was the very first to think of
my proposal; it just happened that I didn't in that particular life happen to
meet anyone who had latched onto the same idea. But I have met a number of such
people in the ascended state, and we are looking into the problem, with the
blessing of many of the well-known Masters, and of God Himself, and there are a
number of promising avenues to look into.
I cannot describe them in any detail, because I cannot think of any 3rd-
dimensional words to describe the ideas involved adequately.
One avenue I can describe faintly is rather analogous to the idea in human
penology that jail, fines, etc. are not always the best way of rehabilitating
offenders. Instead, there is the concept that they misbehaved because of some
deprivation in their life, or some psychological or emotional disorder, or
because of some dreadful trauma in their life. The idea is to try to correct
those problems, and then (at least in some cases) the person will reform.
Of course, in the limited physical world, this does not always work, falls
into disrepute, and is criticized by hard-liners as the idealistic wafflings of
hopeless left-wing idealists, and the like; but I don't think we should be too
quick to transfer to the world of spirit these perceived weaknesses in the
general idea of rehabilitation as against punishment. The analogy falls down
because, unlike the physical world, the world of spirit is unlimited, and it is
my firm belief that if something is wrong that causes a person to act wrongly,
it should be possible to fix that in such a way that the person will not wish to
act wrongly any longer.
This is only a vague analogy. Please don't regard it as a full explanation
of one of the concepts I and my group of friends in the ascended state are
working on, to be proved wrong or found fault with. The analogy gives you only
a faint taste of the idea we're working on, and should be accepted only in that
light.
I also realize that, for simplicity's sake, I cut a few corners in that
analogy, such as by equating karma in the traditional sense with punishment,
when I am perfectly aware that even the traditional idea of karma is more subtle
than a mere matter of punishment or reward; but I'm only trying to give you the
flavour of my point, not trying to present a formal proof of its correctness.
In connection with abolishing karma and installing a whole new system,
there are other ideas worth exploring too, which are very difficult to explain
in words.
But, so far, there is nothing whatever to indicate that we cannot devise
ways of eliminating pain and suffering from the universe one day; and the
sooner, the better, as far as I am concerned. I think the very existence of
pain and suffering is a great blot on the whole universe, even if I've
personally escaped it for good. It's like a chain: the universe is only as
strong as its weakest parts, and I am anxious to see this weak part of the
universe healed and made stronger. This is why, in collaboration with a group
of like-minded friends, I am spending so much time on this problem.
If I regard the existence of pain as a blot on the universe, I suppose I am
denying the complete perfection of the universe, which does go against a certain
New-Age orthodoxy of belief. Well, I regard the matter as largely one of
semantics; it all hangs on how we choose to define perfection, and
misunderstandings and disagreements are liable to arise because different people
have different concepts of what "perfect" means, and are unaware that we have
different concepts. To make things worse, we sometimes are led to believe
wrongly that the dispute over what is nothing more than semantics is a dispute
over an actual matter of fact or principle.
As Michael Edwards, I occasionally found myself involved in discussion with
someone over some philosophical point (such as whether or not the universe is
already perfect), and we seemed for many minutes to be in heated disagreement.
Then suddenly some remark by the other person made me realize that in fact we
were substantially in agreement in our real attitudes; we were simply using
words differently, assigning them different meanings, and this gave the
impression that we had a fundamental disagreement over facts, not merely over
how words should be used.
I won't waste time trying to argue whether or not the universe is perfect.
But perhaps the universe is itself evolving, that in the beginning it had only
certain potentialities which had to be fulfilled. Perhaps one of the purposes
for our existence is to help the universe evolve, maybe even to help God evolve
(if God can be considered separate from the universe). It cannot be denied that
pain has existed and still does for some beings. It will be a great step in the
universe's evolution when pain is no longer unavoidable, and I hope my modest
efforts will contribute to this goal.
* * *
Of course I spend lots of time in other ways too, and have more personal
interests; but even those, I believe, are contributing to the welfare of others,
and to the welfare of the universe in a sense. But I shouldn't claim too much
credit here, because in the ascended state it is difficult to do anything at all
that doesn't help others in some way.
In fact, one of the things I like about life nowadays is that I can spend
as much time as I like on the pain problem just described, and yet it in no way
interferes with my other activities, or time I spend just enjoying the company
of friends without actually working with them on a specific project.
I still compose music, and I'm happy to be producing some pretty wonderful
stuff too. In fact, I've found I'm at last able to fulfil all those wonderful
plans for pieces I tried to do as Michael Edwards, but for various reasons was
unable to do. I can now fulfil those plans in all their full detail, more
wonderfully than I would ever have dared to hope for in that physical life.
In the to-ing and fro-ing of life, I've lost many of the papers on which I
wrote ideas, something which would have devastated me once, even made me feel
suicidal; but I've found it just doesn't matter now. I can remember anything I
want to from any of my past lives, and can access the akashic records if I want
to. There are in fact various distinct methods of recovering any fact in the
universe that has ever existed.
(In doing this, we all scrupulously respect the privacy of others who want
certain things about themselves to remain private. I am pleased to be able to
say that such violations of privacy are simply unknown here. I do not know
of a single case of this in the 5th-dimensional realms.)
Of all my faculties as an ascended being, this ability to recall any
desired fact or idea is one of the ones I most value, mainly for the sake of
being able to reconstruct all those ideas which I thought were so wonderful,
which although they had their origins in 3rd-dimensional life were
sufficiently good that even now I believe those ideas to be very worthwhile in
essence, if not always in the actual way I worked them out (or started to do so)
during my 3rd-dimensional life.
And of course in 5th-dimensional life they can now be fulfilled even
better than they could ever have been in 3rd-dimensional life. I have in fact
written most of those pieces now; the remaining few of those old ideas are
coming along well, and there are a few that I've just let go because they didn't
seem so good after all. And of course I have had multitudes of wonderful new
ideas since ascending, and have used many of those too.
Everything in my composing life has just worked out perfectly. I can now
reconstruct old ideas, no matter how scattered and disorganized they were
originally, so well that it's just like having a sort of spiritual computer to
organize and classify everything. It's almost like waving a magic wand.
The music I write now is so good that it's probably better than anything
the great musical masters wrote on your 3rd-dimensional Earth; but that's not
to put myself above them, because they too have gone on to greater things. If
only you could hear what they're producing now, it would make your heart melt.
But I really think I'm not too far behind, and I'll keep going. There's never
any need to stop here because you've reached the limit of your capabilities.
There are no such limits here (as I think I've already said several times).
Besides, I've been oversimplifying things here talking about writing "good"
music, going on to "greater" things, and so on. There is a sense in which this
is so, but there is also a sense in which it counts for less than it does for
you, because we do not have a competitive way of thinking, comparing ourselves
with each other as being "better" or "worse" at something. Each one of us is
just himself (or herself), and in many ways it means nothing to say one is
better than another; it's like trying to compare apples and oranges. And yet in
another way each of us is improving all the time. I suppose it's a bit
of a paradox, and I can't really explain it to you; you'll just have to see what
it's like when you get here yourself.
One of the fascinating things about music, and the other arts too, is the
way they exist on many different levels, and have beauty on each of those
levels. And when you have a grand overview, you can also see how the different
levels correspond to each other, or you might say translate to each other.
For instance, music on its simplest level is nothing more than a pattern of
sounds. But when you look into it, or feel into it, or think into it, you can
see that it's more. On one level it can be an evocation of a place or an event,
and on another level, it is the expression and amplification of thoughts; yet
further, it is also the expression and amplification of feelings and emotions.
There are further levels where it expresses pure spirit, and so on.
The same is true of all the other art-forms too, each in its own manner.
An idea which many composers use here was one that was developed to an
extent in the early 20th century by the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (a
good friend of mine now). During this incarnation, he wrote an orchestral piece
(called Prometheus: The Poem of Fire) which he intended to be accompanied
by coloured light effects which he actually notated in the score. Although it
is (speaking from within your time-frame) more often performed on Earth
without these lighting effects, it occasionally is, and it gets varying
reactions from people.
And towards the end of his sadly short earthly life, Scriabin also planned
a vast work called "Mysterium" in which he intended to go further with the idea
of unifying music with colour, and with other art-forms too. It would be a
union of almost all the senses, with music, coloured lights, perfumes and
scents, singing, acting, dancing, all combined in a sort of multi-media
extravaganza, but infused with Theosophical symbolism. He saw this proposed
work as a sacred ritual, something which would uplift all humanity.
Unfortunately he died before he could do any more than sketch 50 pages or so of
the music, together with a few pages of text to be sung by the chorus.
Well, he has completed this work now, and it certainly is stunning,
although perhaps disconcerting for many because it is virtually unprecedented
for anyone to mix together so many different media of expression. He is a real
pioneer in this area in the ascended realm, just as he was on Earth in your
time-frame. Although it is still in your future, I can tell you that this work
has, since the Earth's ascension, been made available for performance.
I am quite interested in the use of coloured lighting (in a much more
subtle way than the relatively crude methods used on Earth at the time you're
reading this), and have experimented with it quite a bit, with quite good
results. But as for going the full hog, perfumes, dancing, and the works, I
have rather mixed feelings about that. While it is interesting, I don't feel
ready to work in this area myself yet.
But even using sound and light alone is quite stunning, because so many
more octaves of sound are available than the 7 or so earthly music normally
uses (although sound may not be quite the right word; perhaps it's more like an
astral, mental, or even higher equivalent of sound; in another aspect, it's an
amplification of thoughts and feelings arranged in just the right way); and in
light too, we have much more than the single octave of light vibrations that the
3rd-dimensional human eye is restricted to: in other words, in the slower
vibrations we can go far into infra-red and beyond, even into microwaves, radio
waves, and so on; and at the other end, we can go into ultra-violet, and beyond
that into X-rays, gamma rays, and even further. So even if we restrict
ourselves to sound only, or to sound and light, the possibilities are
considerably greater than in music as you know it.
The uniting of different media and different art-forms I've been describing
is well-based in theory, because there are definite ways in which the different
art-forms are related to each other. This is difficult to describe, but I will
try to give you a hint of it.
You will remember that a little earlier I described how each of the arts
existed on several different levels, and how each level was subtly related to
all the others. I used music as an example, but it is equally true of each of
the arts. (It is also true of other areas such as science and philosophy, but I
won't go into that now.)
Well, not only does each art-form (considered by itself) exist on these
different levels, with the levels being interrelated, but each art-form is
related to others too. (It is really just an example of the ultimate fact that
everything is united, but the idea is much easier to understand, and to
illustrate, in specific examples rather than as a general fact.)
This means that there is a sense in which music can translate into
painting, and painting into poetry, and poetry into sculpture, and so on. The
correspondence is amazingly exact really when you go into it properly. If you
have a piece of music, just as an example, there is one possible painting, and
one only, which is an exact translation of the piece of music. A person skilled
at such translation can listen to the piece of music and create the exact
painting that represents it in the art of painting - or vice-versa, of course.
And equally such a person can translate it into poetry or literature or
sculpture or dance, and so on.
Because the various art-forms themselves are different, on a more
superficial level, the thought-forms representing the music and the painting are
quite different; but deeper down (or perhaps I should say higher up - at a more
fundamental level anyway), they are exactly the same (assuming the translation
is indeed accurate), because the same fundamental thought or feeling lies behind
them both. At that level, the thought-forms are exactly the same (assuming an
accurate translation, of course). This ultimate level is the level of true,
pure spirit, where everything is totally united.
If you accept the idea that one art-form can translate to another in this
manner, so that you can have different artistic representations of the same
basic idea (and it is a fascinating area to explore, too), it is only one step
further on to conceive the idea of a work of art that itself incorporates
different art-forms in the whole, instead of being solely in this or that art-
form.
There are two fundamentally different ways you can combine different art-
forms.
Firstly, you can translate exactly the same basic idea into several
different art-forms, and present them all together as a unified work of what you
might call multi-media art.
The other thing you can do is present one thought or feeling or idea in one
art-form, and combine it with other art-forms which are expressing
different ideas or feelings or thoughts. Of course, to avoid a
disagreeable (or meaningless) clash of ideas, the different ideas, etc., which
are so combined should be compatible or related in some way, but they may
nevertheless be different in detail. They may merely be different aspects or
views of some fundamental unifying idea, or they may be more fundamentally
different but still compatible.
The result is an agreeable blend of difference and unity which can be
incredibly moving at times. (Even in the 3rd-dimensional realm, artists have
long made use of the technique of juxtaposing opposing ideas for maximum impact,
sometimes in a subtle blend, and sometimes with stark contrast. Well, we do
exactly the same on a broader scope.)
This second method of combining the different arts (involving the
combination of different ideas in the different art-forms) is more difficult to
use than the first method of combining exact artistic translations of exactly
the same idea, and is much more subtle, and requires much finer artistic
judgement. It is also considerably the more common method of combining the
different arts.
Although this sort of multi-media art is quite common, the idea of creating
art-works purely in one art-form has by no means died out. There are plenty of
artists who sometimes produce just a painting or a piece of music or a poem,
without any other artistic elements at all, and there are plenty of people
making up their respective audiences who prefer this some or all of the time.
And works which are in only one pure art-form, in the traditional manner, are
still extraordinarily powerful and inspiring. There is no sense in which this
more restricted way of creating art-works is inferior. It's nothing more than a
matter of preference or mood which one you prefer. Even within each individual
art-form, the possibilities available are so much broader than they are in
3rd-dimensional worlds.
Just within the realm of painting, for example, not only do you have a much
wider range of frequencies of colour available, in the way I explained a bit
earlier (going beyond ultra-violet and infra-red, and so on). Quite apart from
that, it would be truer to say that painters work with light itself more than
with dead pigments which merely reflect light. And that light can be either
still, or moving in all sorts of dynamic patterns.
And in music, although I can't think of a neat description in 3rd-
dimensional language as I just did with painting, there is a sense in which
sound is more real and alive than in 3rd-dimensional realms, in a way quite
analogous to the difference between light itself and pigment which merely
reflects light. And we are not limited by the sorts of things that limit 3rd-
dimensional musicians, such as the fact that they have only 10 fingers, and can
play only one instrument at a time. If a performer on the 5th-dimensional piano
wants to play more than 10 notes, he can manifest as many fingers (or their
equivalent in the 5th dimension) as he or she needs; and there are ways of doing
the equivalent of playing many instruments at the same time, but more is not
necessarily better in these things (although it can be at times), and musicians
seem to prefer to make performing a group activity, with each playing just part
of the music, even though a single performer could engineer a way of doing it
all himself.
In sculpture, you are not moulding matter so much as you are moulding
thought-forms and feeling-forms, using certain techniques. In dance, you are
creating exquisite patterns of energy through various movements and
transformations of your light-body.
And so on with the other arts. In every case, it is analogous with the
3rd-dimensional art-form, but so greatly expanded in its meaning and techniques.
Because in any art-form you are really giving more permanent form to
thoughts, feelings and ideas, there is a sense in which merely by
having thoughts, feelings, and ideas - merely by living, in fact - you
are creating works of art. (Of course, if we don't know how fully to control
them, they may not always be pleasing!) You and I (whether ascended or not)
constantly create thought-forms and feeling-forms which could be regarded as
works of art, although they tend to be less permanent if not expressed
explicitly through some art-form. This may be the origin of the idea that
living itself is an art, the greatest art, although it clearly isn't that in the
traditional meaning of the word "art". And of course, the great thing is to
learn to live better, think better, and feel better, so that what we produce is
more and more pleasing, both to the self, and to others - to the universe and
God Him/Herself. From another perspective, this is what ascension is all about.
In connection with my discussion of the various 5th-dimensional arts, I
would like to thank my dear friend Serapis Bey, who, in a few passing remarks,
inspired some of the ways I have expressed these ideas. And, by making those
remarks available to the embodiment of Michael Edwards in a book he channelled
through Tony Stubbs, he helped Michael's mind be receptive to ideas which he may
not have been otherwise perceptive enough to receive. Thank you, Serapis. [c]
* * *
Moving on to other aspects of my artistic life in the 5th dimension, I
now know a great many of the famous composers, and some of them are amongst my
dearest friends. There are of course many who never achieved fame in your
world, who are also doing wonderful things. Fame counts for nothing here; in
a manner of speaking we are all equally famous.
We are all inspiring each other in a great cross-fertilization of ideas.
While we each develop our own style, which is generally a continuation and
expansion of the characteristic styles each of us had in the 3rd dimension, we
are not nearly so concerned here with originality for its own sake as
composers in the 3rd dimension can be. The big thing here is simply to
write what you feel deep inside. Using a consistent style is merely a tool to
this end, and is considered dispensable the moment it starts to get in the way
rather than help that greater purpose.
These composers I know particularly include many I felt an affinity for in
my life as Michael Edwards, some of whom were rather less well known and
regarded in the 3rd dimension, but whose music I nevertheless greatly
treasured, and whose friendship I now treasure as well. That affinity I felt in
the 3rd dimension was nothing more than a reflection of a much deeper
spiritual affinity that had existed for some time even before I was born as
Michael Edwards.
Apparently many of these composers were more aware of my existence than I
ever dreamed of. And it seems to have turned out that, although things in that
particular life of mine went wrong and messed up my composing efforts for a time
at least, there was a great deal more to my musical talent in that life than
anyone (including myself) dreamed of. (Only occasionally in that life did I get
subtle hints that there might be something big hidden there.) And of course,
I've built on that since ascending.
In fact it turns out that in this particular life I was already in contact
with a number of well-known composers; the dreams I occasionally had about them
were in fact the scattered memories of those astral meetings. I was doing
nothing less than having composing lessons from them, although it was to be some
time before they bore fruit in practical terms. The dreams did not seem to be
of music lessons, but it seems that, even back then, I did have other dealings
with these composers on occasion.
I am also building a career as a performer on what I can only describe as
the 5th-dimensional equivalents of the piano and the organ, and I have also
conducted 5th-dimensional orchestras with some success; but I think, even now,
as in the 3rd dimension, I still regard composing as the very heart of my
musical activities, although performing has become very important too.
I love performing much of the great music that exists here, by all sorts
of different composers, and putting my feelings into it; but I also like to
perform my own music, of course, which I can honestly, without conceit, say I
think is extremely good. Many people have found it very inspiring.
I have also had very satisfactory results channelling some of it to various
planets still in the 3rd dimension in the hope of inspiring the people there.
It gives me great pleasure and fills me with love to see that I have had some
success here, although obviously I can't expect to lift all these planets up to
my own level single-handedly. But, in my own little way, this is part of the
whole idea.
We have regular concerts here, and the range and quality of the music,
and the standards of performance, leave any of the great cultural centres of
your 3rd-dimensional planet for dead. As well as performing in such concerts,
I frequently go as a member of the audience just to enjoy it.
I am still a student here. No matter much you get to know about music,
there is always more to learn, and there is infinite time in which to learn it.
Although I associate a great deal with many musicians, there is no clear
distinction between student and teacher. We are all students and teachers of
each other, and we greatly enjoy this exchange of learning and technique. We
are all helping each other to get better and better at what we do.
In much the same way as we can materialize our homes, bodies, or anything
else, we musicians can instantly conjure up the score for any composition ever
written, for purposes of performance, study, or if we feel like reading the
score while we listen to a concert (which, here as well as on your plane, is
one of the very best ways of learning more about the techniques of music).
Indeed, it is interesting to think about in what ways a score is quite a
different thing in the 5th dimension from what it is in the 3rd. Of course,
in the 3rd it is a printed representation of the notes making up a piece of
music, using accepted conventions of notation, plus instructions on how to play
those notes.
In the 5th dimension, a score can be various things, including this. We
do have musical notation here, a set of more-or-less arbitrary conventions of
visual symbols for various elements of music, such as pitch, loudness, and so
on. (Because music is so expanded here, the system of notation is much more
expanded as compared with musical notation in the 3rd dimension.) And, like
all artifacts in the 5th dimension, such a score can conjured up at will and
then dematerialized when we no longer need it. Fundamentally it is a series of
ideas expressed in visual form, not just a printed book.
However, such a system of notation is more or less an arbitrary set of
conventions. You probably remember how I described earlier the way in which one
art-form can translate completely accurately into another. Well, an odd
consequence of this is that the painting equivalent of a musical composition can
serve quite literally as the score for that piece. If a musician doesn't know a
particular piece, and he is presented with the painting version of that piece,
he could look at it and sit down and play the piece quite accurately from that
painting.
However, this is not usually done, except perhaps as a party trick. It
simply is not the easiest way of reading music from a visual representation.
Firstly, a painting takes up much more space than a more traditional score, and
secondly, the methods of translating from one art to another are highly complex
and sophisticated, and to do that mentally while actually playing is not easy.
While it is true that we are without limitation, and this definitely can be
done, nevertheless we don't make a habit of doing things the difficult way when
an easier way exists that gives just as good results.
Traditional musical notation (in its 5th-dimensional expansion) is not
like a painting, and is not really an artistic version of the music itself. It
is a more-or-less direct visual map of what notes to play when, a sort of
shorthand representing instructions on how to play the music, and doesn't have
visual meaning of its own; but it is much easier to mentally translate into
notes during performance, because it was designed for that purpose.
There is an in-between type of musical score, in between traditional
notation and a painting which is the translation of the music. It is not a
painting in the usual sense, but it's a bit more than just musical notation. It
is a sort of map of the music, which simply shows its musical shape in visual
terms, and which, looked at in detail, shows all the notes and other details
that a score would indicate. I suppose it's a bit like an abbreviated and
compressed version of the painting, leaving out all the parts that express
feelings, thoughts and so on (because it is not the purpose of a score to
express such things in itself), leaving in only the parts that contain the
instructions on how to play the notes. Of course, when you actually follow
those instructions and do so with feeling, the music you produce will create the
appropriate thoughts and feelings.
It's difficult to describe beyond that, but some musicians prefer to read
music from this type of score, especially if they are the sort of person who has
a strong visual orientation. Others who are not so visually-oriented find it a
bit more difficult to read from than a traditional score, but it's not anything
like trying to read music from a painting, which as I said no-one does seriously
on a consistent basis.
As to the actual physical (so to speak) form of a score, we do not have to
worry about such practicalities as whether the music is in print or not, since
we simply print it astrally in an instant, I suppose a bit like a computer
screen with pages, only much better. Nor do we have copyright problems here
like in your world, which are designed to protect the income of composers and
performers (without any great success that I observed while living as Michael
Edwards), but which serve simply to restrict availability of music for purposes
of study or indeed actual performance. It is a wonderful thing that we have
none of these problems here; we really have worked out a much better system -
here, and it all works out fine.
Much the same thing is true of all other creative works, such as books and
paintings. They are universally available to anyone who wants them. And the
foregoing description of the different scores musicians use applies in a
parallel way to anything else that requires notation of some sort, such as
choreography or poetry or mathematics or science or philosophy - lots of other
things, in fact. For instance, in mathematics, you can not only think it, but
you can see it, you can feel it, and you can even hear or smell or taste it too,
if you translate it into the appropriate medium. And so on for just about
everything else. There are no barriers here.
And, while on the subject of making art available to anyone at all, we have
techniques of making absolutely perfect reproductions of paintings, sculpture,
and the like, so that everyone who wants to can enjoy them, not just a
privileged few. Because the copies are perfect, no artistic value is lost. The
snob value associated with owning a rare work of art is not a factor here,
although, in your dimension, so many people, even those who do genuinely
appreciate art, seem so caught up in this that they seem quite unable to
separate the prestige factor from purely artistic factors, so they mistakenly
believe that unlimited perfect reproductions would reduce the artistic value of
the work.
I can only say that their outlook would not find much agreement amongst
most of the people I am close to in the ascended world. Perhaps there are
others here who would not agree with what I am saying.
* * *
Another interest of mine which has borne fruit is computer programming. It
is true that we don't need physical computers now, although some still exist as
curiosities, or in the hands of hobbyists. But the serious work of the world is
done now on at least the astral level, or maybe the mental and higher, depending
on the abilities of the people involved and the needs of the problem. Although
we can will any condition into existence, we have to be clear what we want,
which in a complicated problem is not always simple.
There are theorists at work on a sort of astral equivalent of computer
science, who are working out the algorithms of what I can only call the
mechanics of astral manifestation (and mental and higher manifestation too).
There are subtle ways in which this can be automated in a way roughly analogous
with computer programming in the physical world. This is vaguely related to
Artificial Intelligence and virtual reality so topical in your world at the time
you are receiving this letter, but in many ways is quite different. It's
impossible for me to describe beyond that.
I'm not talking about anything that physically resembles computers as you
know them, but simply processes indescribable in 3rd-dimensional language,
whose methods and techniques are in some ways analogous to 3rd-dimensional
computer science.
I have made contributions to this field, although it's not quite as big a
thing in my life as the other two main things I've already described. But I
often do my own "computing" projects in the higher planes as a sort of hobby,
much as I did computer programming in my physical life, not as a profession but
as a personal interest.
Another curious area of research, related to this "astral computing", that
has developed has been based on the premise that the akashic records are like a
huge database on a hard disk; and certain beings here are working out new
ways of accessing and organizing this data, in ways quite analogous to your
3rd-dimensional computer scientists organizing databases and then writing
database programs to access and organize the data, a process known in your
earthly computer science as "querying" the database.
Yes, I have dabbled a little in this too, but you can learn to access the
akashic records quite well without such methods, even if your instinctive
methods are at times a little less streamlined. Using the querying methods may
give you the information you ask for in a very organized way; but using the
older instinctive methods sometimes gives you something extra which you didn't
ask for, and which can sometimes be very valuable, a little akin to the way
creative artists can use their intuition to get more than they planned for.
Sophisticated as akashic querying the new way can be, so far it is not able to
give you that extra bit intuition can give you. It gives you what you ask for,
no more, and no less. It will, I think, be a long time before the innermost
workings of intuition will be reduced to complicated computer algorithms.
Another aspect of this work which is more closely related to computer
science as you in the 3rd dimension know it is the development of computer
technology which we do not need ourselves but which could greatly benefit 3rd-
dimensional worlds, and which will be introduced to them as soon as they can
handle it without completely destroying themselves with it.
I'm afraid it would be very dangerous at the present time in your 3rd-
dimensional history to introduce this technology to your dimension. You are
busily in the process of destroying yourselves with what you already have, quite
without the help of something like this which is even more powerful still by
quite a few orders of magnitude. We dare not give this to 3rd-dimensional Earth
yet, but since the Earth is shortly (as you read this) to complete her
ascension, she will have no more need of this technology; but it will be our
pleasure to introduce this technology onto other 3rd-dimensional planets as
soon as we feel sure they can use it properly and without destroying themselves.
I have also done some work in this particular area of computer technology,
but once again it's not my main area. But there's no doubt that I have a
natural aptitude for this sort of work, and further involvement in the future is
a real possibility.
* * *
As for writing stories, it's more difficult to describe what I'm doing
here. What I'm writing now is not exactly like stories as you know them on your
present Earth.
If you stop and think about it, practically all stories you know, or can
conceive of, in your world, whether good, bad, or indifferent, involve pain and
suffering and conflict of some sort. Some stories just sensationalize such
things for entertainment of sometimes dubious quality or upliftment. But even
the very best revolve around some sort of conflict or pain and deal with its
resolution (either happily or tragically, or sometimes ambiguously).
The problem with writing stories in the ascended world is that pain and
conflict don't really exist. There is nothing to write about - at least nothing
meaningful. To be sure, we could make up hypothetical situations of suffering,
or even write about pure 3rd-dimensional life, for the sake of writing a good
story, but since we don't have these experiences any more, such writing loses
its point and seems contrived and artificial.
What we can write about is the various worthwhile things we enjoy doing,
and our feelings about them, and our dreams for the future (yes we still have
dreams, but we have a greater sense of confidence in our ability to fulfil them
than we did in the 3rd dimension), but it turns out that such writing, even if
it's in the form of prose (or the 5th-dimensional equivalent) is more akin to
poetry as you know it.
We are more concerned with evoking subtleties of feeling and thought,
further developing that sense of wonder we are generally closer to than you are
in the 3rd dimension with your occasional fleeting glimpses, than we are with
developing story plots, building up tension, and all the other traditional
ingredients of story-telling. It seems to me that this is the inevitable
result, in terms of literature, of the fact that ascended beings have left
behind that aspect of human nature that enjoys hearing about (or even
witnessing) the suffering of others, whether real or fictional.
We have films of a sort here, and they follow much the same trend as I
just mentioned for writing. I said "films", but they involve all the senses,
and are much closer to what computer scientists in your world call "virtual
reality", and the viewer can interact with such films, changing the course of
events. But this is not such a big thing as you might expect, simply because
with our unlimited abilities to travel anywhere in the universe instantly, and
to manifest in reality anything we want to do, we are not so interested in
simulated versions of events or places we can visit in person just as easily.
I might as well add, for the benefit of any readers who don't know much
about virtual reality, that it is a computerized simulation of some environment
or location. You wear a specially-designed helmet, and special gloves; and in
the helmet are screens onto which the computer can project images, and sounds
can be transmitted too. The gloves can transmit tactile sensations to the
fingers through electrodes or vibrators of some sort. Other sensors in the
helmet and gloves can detect hand or body movements you make and send these to
the computer, which accordingly modifies the sensations it sends you, so that
the environment the computer sends you changes in response to what you do.
For instance, if you are in a simulated forest, and you turn your head a
little to the left, the helmet picks that up, sends it to the computer, which in
turn swivels your visual image to one side correspondingly. Possible future
developments of this whole idea (as of the 3rd-dimensional time this is being
transmitted to Michael) include things like wearing a body stocking which can
transmit tactile sensations to the whole body instead of just to the hands, and
which could also detect movements made by any part of your body. This simple
description of virtual reality as your computer scientists are developing it
gives some idea of what 5th-dimensional movies are like.
But, as I said, this is not such a big deal here as in the physical
world, simply because simulations of anything are of less interest when we can
at will have the real version of anything we like. We can instantly go
anywhere we like, so we don't need movies of far-away places to experience them.
If we make the movies better and better, things reach a point where the movie is
indistinguishable from the reality, and is the reality in a manner of
speaking.
Your 3rd-dimensional scientist, Arthur C. Clarke, pointed out quite
rightly that developments in transport tend to inhibit developments in
communications, and vice versa too. That is also true here in a sense; but
in another way, it could be said that the distinction between transport and
communications has blurred, as both areas have merged into each other. It's one
of the many examples of the way in which features of life here we take for
granted have no exact equivalent in your dimension, where everything is divided
up into different fixed categories much more than here, where everything is
very fluid and changeable.
But, coming back to writing, there is another department of writing that is
more akin to story-telling in the usual sense, and that is the writing of
stories or poetry dealing with more 3rd-dimensional concerns, for the purpose
of channelling or otherwise introducing them to 3rd-dimensional worlds. Such
writings are intended for the spiritual upliftment of such worlds, and usually
have a more spiritual tone to them than most of your current stories do,
although we hope they entertain as well.
We are especially pleased when we are able to write such a story that
imparts a spiritual message so naturally that the reader absorbs it and acts on
it, but does so without ever suspecting he was being "preached at", so to speak.
Of course such influence is imparted without emotional manipulation, or by such
techniques as subliminal messages, so no question arises here of using
literature to violate a person's free-will. It is quite similar to the way in
which your own artists inspire people through their works.
I am involved in both these types of story-writing (the second of which of
course has to be reduced to 3rd-dimensional language), and like to use them to
express some of the ideas and concerns which are closest to my heart.
You find, once you've ascended, that you have a burning desire to share
with others (ascended or not) those ideas which mean a lot to you, although you
don't get all evangelistic about it, and you only share with those who are
willing to listen without being pressured into it. But it is sweet indeed when
you do meet such individuals and they love what you're telling them.
* * *
I think I am leading up to the end of this message to you, my friends; but
I would like to tell you a little about the more everyday parts of our lives,
what we do for recreation (or what I do anyway), and so on. (I'm largely
speaking for myself, because everyone does things very differently.)
There are many other areas of interest too that I have, which would take
far too long to explain, and for which I'm not sure I could find 3rd-
dimensional words. And even if I could theoretically find the words, I might in
fact be unable to, because, although I'm writing this from a consciousness far
beyond the conscious mind of Michael Edwards, I am nevertheless having to filter
this through his mind and his way of using words (to say nothing of the need to
beam these words backwards in time, which can cause a few difficulties one must
pay attention to). Still, I think, considering his situation, doubts, fears,
etc., at the time he is typing these words, I think he is doing very well.
But one of the wonderful things in ascended life is that, although we speak
English, or German, or Russian, or any other language we like, or at least a
5th-dimensional version of it, there is the wonderful way in which language
itself is expanded to include such concepts for which 3rd-dimensional words
don't exist. And of course, here we don't have to speak words vocally
(although we can if we choose); we can communicate with each other by pure
thoughts, using a sort of thought-oriented version of our own language. And we
find that the more purely we use the 5th-dimensional version of our native
languages, and the more we transcend the 3rd-dimensional version, the more we
find that all our different native languages are all part of the one universal
thought-language anyway. It's really wonderful. But I got side-tracked there.
* * *
There are many things we do which are quite like your own earthly
activities, such as games, sport, travelling, and so on, but which are much less
limited. Some of these activities, such as sports, are physically-oriented, but
of course our bodies are marvellously light and just soar wherever we want to
go, or even go somewhere else just instantaneously. More intellectual games of
the chess type exist here too, but they cover more dimensions, in a manner
of speaking, and have more aspects. And I mean that both in the sense of
metaphysical dimensions, such as the 5th I have often spoken of, and in the
purely physical sense in which you might increase the number of physical
directions a game operates in, such as 3 or even 4 or more dimensions. Thus you
in the 3rd dimension have expanded versions of some games which are regarded
as very difficult and intellectual, such as 3-dimensional chess, 4-dimensional
noughts and crosses, hexagonal chess, and so on; and such newer versions of
traditional games give some idea of the way such games are expanded in the 5th
dimension. But because our mental powers are much greater, they are not
regarded as especially difficult.
Also, such games are essentially competitive, in the sense that there is a
winner and a loser. While we play such games without attaching too much
importance to who wins, and certainly without letting any feelings of ego depend
on this, we also have other games where players cooperate to achieve a certain
goal, where it is not a case of one player or another winning. A few such games
do exist in your 3rd-dimensional world, so the idea is not entirely new to
you; but such games do not seem to be common or well-known.
And of course we in the 5th dimension have a great sense of fun and play
at times, so that we have our equivalent of things like "He" or "Hide and Seek".
We don't have any concern about whether we appear frivolous or childish or not;
we just do what we feel like and whatever seems right for the group who are
together. It is quite a sight to see a group of 5th-dimensional beings
playing what virtually amounts to a form of Hide and Seek.
* * *
We all have what you would consider psychic powers of various sorts, such
as clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, telepathy, the ability to
dematerialize and rematerialize physical bodies (or to do the same with any
objects), the ability to control matter with pure mind power, and many other
things - all the usual gamut of psychic abilities, in fact. Some people have
developed such abilities more than others of course, but anyone can acquire any
such ability if they want to.
The thought-forms and feeling-forms I have spoken of before, we can see if
we choose. But we can choose to attend to them or not to, a little like you
might focus on or ignore specks of dust on a window-pane. But because thought-
forms are visible if we choose to see them, it means it would be very difficult
to tell a lie in the 5th dimension.
Not that we have a problem with people who tell lies; but if someone did,
it would be transparently obvious because it would show in their thought-forms;
and even if you were not looking at the liar's thought-forms, the person would
just feel like a liar. It would be the same with any other sort of
dishonest or hurtful activity. For all that we can literally read each others'
thoughts and feelings, we do respect the privacy of others if for any reason
they want something to be kept to themselves.
However, despite this, there is a sense in which the concept of separate
people doesn't really count. At the ultimate level of spirit we are one, we are
indivisible; "us" and "them" are just irrelevant concepts. But all the same, at
lower levels than this, we still have the illusion of being different people,
which can be a useful concept at times, like in playing the games I just
mentioned before. It also enables us to share things with others, which is
always such a delight to do.
But it is an illusion only of differentness, quite sufficient for the
purpose, but not ultimate reality. It is a convention we adopt when it suits
us. Perhaps there will come a day when we don't need it at all any longer; but
we are quite happy to enjoy it in the meantime.
* * *
We still have our physical bodies, and they look much like you would have
known them in your world, but they remain young in appearance and abilities.
I'm talking about how they appear to us, because, being 5th-dimensional, they
would be invisible to you in the ordinary way. (We can, however, project a
visible form into the 3rd dimension, but it is not our normal mode.) We can
dematerialize them and rematerialize them at will, which gives us the ability to
"teleport" instantly from one place to another, without any need to physically
traverse the intervening distance. This makes transport of any sort, as you
know it, quite unnecessary here.
However, we can and do create what you might think of as spaceships which
we can use to travel in if we like, which sort of double as a place to live in
while travelling. They are in fact a manifestation of our higher bodies, not
merely a physical or even astral or mental artifact. The ships Ashtar commands
are of this type, and are truly magnificent to look at and visit.
I think the best way of describing ascended life would be to say (perhaps
rather facetiously) that it is like being alive and dead at the same time
(thinking of "alive" and "dead" in fairly traditional terms). We still have a
physical dimension to life, but it's also like the traditional interval between
reincarnations, where you are in the astral world, or higher, depending on what
suited your needs, and our life is like this in the sense that all those realms
are accessible to us, and we can leave our bodies at will (with or without
dematerializing them), so we can live in pure spirit form if we like.
Some of those who have ascended originated on other planets or realms of
the universe, and have chosen to return there. Some have stayed on the now-
ascended Earth, but thanks to teleportation of our physical bodies, or to our
ability to leave them and travel astrally or even higher, we can visit each
other as if we simply lived next door to each other.
Just on a physical level, we can visit anywhere in the universe we choose,
land on any planet we like (protecting ourselves if necessary against
atmospheres or conditions which we find uncomfortable).
Then there are the astral realms, mental realms, and higher. These seem to
go upwards infinitely, and although we tend to explore these progressively
upwards, instead of jumping up randomly to levels we don't really understand
yet, there are as far as I know no hard and fast limits as to how high we can
explore.
Our spiritual development itself continues upwards, seemingly without
visible limit. We certainly do not stagnate after we ascend. There is too much
to do, too much to enjoy, too much to share with others. I understand that
because God Himself is infinite, even when we finally merge with Him, that
itself is only the beginning of a process that can go on infinitely, getting
better and better all the time.
We do sometimes visit other places for a break, for what you would call a
holiday. We can go there instantly, but sometimes soar to our destination
through the intervening space for the sheer pleasure of it.
There are many planets we can visit, and there seem to be realms which are
not exactly planets, but just vast infinite places of some sort (the only way I
can describe it). The variety of locations the universe contains on all its
levels is simply stupendous. There are planets which have day and night,
seasons, and the like, and those which don't. There are realms where there is a
whole natural world something like that which you know in your world, but where
life is based on higher principles than the ruthless survival of the fittest.
So many of these realms have so much beauty to them, as even your 3rd-
dimensional world does. There is plenty to satisfy nature-lovers, bush-walkers,
bird-watchers, and all who love the beauties of nature.
Another fascinating thing is that we have the ability to see and commune
with other kingdoms of beings, such as fairies, angels, devas, and so on.
There's a whole hierarchy of beings either unknown to 3rd-dimensional beings
or dismissed as myths or children's fairy tales. There's a lot more truth to
these things than many of you suspect. And it is really beautiful to be able to
see these other forms of life, to be able to appreciate how different they are
from 3rd-dimensional life, and to be able to make friends with them.
* * *
Another intriguing activity to many of us is to explore the world of
dreams. We don't need to sleep here, but we can if we feel like it, and we
do have dreams, that is, astral or higher projection at a less conscious level
than usual.
What we have discovered is that even the dreams we had as 3rd-dimensional
beings had much more reality to them than we believed at the time. The reason
those dreams often seemed so nonsensical and garbled was that they concerned
matters of higher dimensions than the 3rd, which simply couldn't be expressed
accurately in 3rd-dimensional terms. What we considered to be garbled dreams
was the best our limited 3rd-dimensional minds could make out of them.
Of course, there were some dreams which even on higher dimensions did not
have a great deal of significance or meaning, but nevertheless they did have
some corresponding reality on those higher dimensions.
But other dreams were highly significant. You may have had dreams which,
although overtly unrecognizable and even jumbled, nevertheless seemed to have
something familiar and emotionally meaningful in a way that could not be
described. There may have been places in those dreams which seemed hauntingly
familiar, even though you were sure you had never seen them before; or you may
meet people in dreams whom you have the feeling of knowing quite well, even
being close to, whom nevertheless you think you have never met before, who seem
completely fictitious. You may do things which on the surface seem quite
nonsensical, even impossible in physical terms, yet which have the peculiar
feeling of having their own consistency, of being meaningful in their own terms;
it's almost as if the very laws of physics and perspective in the dream world
are totally different from those of your waking world.
Very likely these are the dreams that are in fact most meaningful on higher
dimensions. You were visiting higher-dimensional places while you left your
body at night, meeting people in those realms, and doing various things with
them which might be quite important.
One of the satisfying things we can now do in the ascended state is to
revisit those places and renew those acquaintances and activities. Our 3rd-
dimensional dreams were a world of their own, and we can now quite literally
explore those worlds at will.
* * *
Our everyday life is quite different from what it was in 3rd-dimensional
life.
We build houses for ourselves, by willing them into existence. Because
there are no limits to the way we can design our houses to suit our needs, their
designs vary much more than do those of your physical houses. They vary so much
in fact that it would be impossible to describe a standard pattern.
We can change place of residence as often as we wish, even to the point of
being like a gypsy, with no fixed place of residence; but most of us tend to
settle in a place we love, near those we feel especially close to. We can turn
our house into a spaceship at will, and vice-versa. Distinctions of the sort
that dominate 3rd-dimensional life don't seem to figure here much at all.
We don't eat physical food like you do, although we absorb energy from the
universe. This can be automatic, although we can if we like turn it into a sort
of spiritual food which we consciously ingest. We can even give it different
flavours if we choose, but this equivalent of eating just isn't nearly such a
big deal here as it is on your present Earth, or on other 3rd-dimensional
planets.
We have an active social life, which I suppose is roughly analogous to your
social life, although we can communicate on many levels, emotionally, mentally,
and so on. There are languages of the emotions, intellect, spirit, and so on,
which are vastly more expressive than your physical systems of body language,
facial expressions, gestures, and the like.
I know I said before that at the most real level we are all one, and that
would sound as if it would make social life impossible, just a nonsensical
concept in fact. But I also said there are lower levels where we can perceive
ourselves as separate, and this does enable us to have a social life which is at
least analogous to the social life you experience. In those areas where we
perceive ourselves as separate, it is only done because it enables us to do
various things we enjoy; and it is ultimately done for the benefit of the
unified "us".
We do have marriage here, but it is not regarded as the only standard
pattern of life, like people in your world tend to regard it. You do not in any
way feel different or excluded if you happen not to be married. Many of us are
still married to the person we were married to in 3rd-dimensional life, but
there is no obligation to remain so married. Those of us who made mistakes in
3rd-dimensional life and married the wrong person are now either single, or
married to someone else. It is extremely common to find that the person one is
married to is one who is a soul-mate or twin flame. That is not necessarily the
person to whom you were married in your 3rd-dimensional life.
Because we have ascended, our marriages work well, and we do not know
divorce as you know it. Occasionally a couple decide to part, but is just
regarded as a change in living arrangements, not as a divorce with all the
emotional implications that has of a relationship breaking up destructively, and
so on. If a couple decide to cease living together for the time being, or even
permanently, they frequently remain close friends thereafter; occasionally they
part and go different ways, but such parting is always done in a spirit of
complete love.
We do not have sexual relations in a purely physical sense like you can do,
but we do have what might be thought of roughly as physical, emotional, mental,
and even spiritual equivalents, all in one, which are actually much more
satisfying than physical sexual intercourse can ever be. We hug each other
physically quite often, and in fact, we do not pay much attention to
distinctions between physical relationships, emotional, mental, and so on up the
scale. They all tend to merge into one another.
Such relationships are made without regard to gender, as we are realizing
that gender is largely a 3rd-dimensional attribute (which after all frequently
changed from one incarnation to another) which we may (for the time being) have
chosen to continue in the ascended state, but which is not inherent, and which
becomes less and less important as time (so to speak) passes.
We can give birth to children in a way analogous to how you do it, but it
is not such a big part of life here; newly ascended beings often tend to
enter our realm in the bodies they had on a lower dimension. But nevertheless a
form of what you may call childbirth does happen, although it is much more than
simply a matter of physical union. Even though you have the feeling on the
3rd dimension that sexual intercourse involves your whole being, it is only the
physical part that is absolutely essential for the conception of a child.
Here, our equivalent of sexual intercourse involves the whole of our being to an
even much greater extent than it does in the 3rd dimension, and unlike that
dimension, all of that involvement, on all levels from physical to pure spirit,
is essential for the well-being of the child. Sexual intercourse on the 5th
dimension in fact is an elaborate process, almost a ritual, which is designed to
give the newly-born being a foundation of love and security on which to start
life in this realm.
But there are other people of a nurturing inclination who do not give birth
in this way. Some of them specialize in providing temporary homes for beings
who have newly ascended in their old bodies while they get used to living in
what for them is a completely new way of life. In some ways it is akin to being
a family for them, and the same sort of family intimacy is involved, and these
beings attend classes where they get to learn all the various things they need
to know to live as an ascended being, although this bears very little
resemblance to schools as you know them.
We tend to wear clothes, not by making them out of dead material, but by
growing them (the only way I can describe it) from our auras. We choose styles
which we feel comfortable with, and pay little attention to fashion as you know
it. You occasionally see trends spreading, but the whole process is much less
intense than it is in most of your societies, because it is not driven by
intense commercial forces, but merely by the remnants of tendencies even
ascended beings still have slightly to follow good ideas they observe in other
people. Some people (at times) do not wear clothes at all, and this is
considered quite acceptable. There are no indecent exposure laws here.
We have parties of a sort, which can be great fun (I've found Sananda to be
very good company at such events, and I've developed a wonderfully close and
loving relationship to him as well as to a number of other well-known Masters
such as Hilarion, Archangel Michael, Ashtar, El Morya, Kuthumi, St. Germain,
Serapis Bey, and quite a few others).
We may have our parties here, but here we also seem to devote more
attention than 3rd-dimensional people do generally to more intimate time spent
with close friends in ones and twos, where we share ideas of some depth that we
both hold in common. And of course, we frequently, although not always,
collaborate with close friends and colleagues in the great life missions most of
us have taken on. The decision whether or not to collaborate is based purely on
how we think it will affect the task to be achieved, and ego considerations do
not come into it.
Some things of course, such as work in the various art-forms, tend to be
more personal, although even here collaborations are much more common than in
your 3rd-dimensional world, where ego can be more of a consideration. (I must
try to remember that where I am (for the time being) is the same planet as where
you are, but of course, I'm crossing a time gap in contrasting "here" with
"your world".)
Where we collaborate on anything, such as a work of art, or any of the many
missions we undertake, the sense of separateness is less than for instance when
we play sport or games, which depend to an extent on the concept of separate
people. In the great missions of life, however, and in creating works of art,
the sense of separate people is not important, and thus collaborations between
groups of people can be so close that it almost seems like one person anyway -
just "us" working on the job.
We tend to adopt a regular schedule or timetable of some sort, but we are
very flexible about it if the need arises, and are not so bound to such
schedules as you in the 3rd dimension tend to be.
* * *
It occurs to me that I have not said anything directly about what the
ultimate purpose of life is, even though I think much of what I have said
alludes to this indirectly. Yet you must be wondering if I know what the
purpose of life is now, or at least if I am closer to knowing this.
The answer is yes and no. I suspect the real answer is infinite, that it
is something we get ever closer to understanding, yet never fully do. In fact,
there is a similar phenomenon as can be found even in the 3rd dimension to some
extent, where the more we know on any topic, the more we realize how much we
don't know.
In 3rd-dimensional life, many things are done not for their own sake, but
because they contribute to some purpose greater than those things themselves.
For instance, few people wash for the fun of it; they do it for the greater
purpose of not smelling. A great many things in your world are of this nature,
and very likely, if you could simply wave a magic wand and have such things
done, you would be glad not to have to go to the bother of physically (or
mentally) going through the actual movements.
Other things would seem to be done because of sheer enjoyment, just for
their own sake. Eating and sex are like this for many people, even though those
activities do have purposes of their own, and can be seen as means to those
ends.
But, all the same, a sceptical mind can question even these things, even
question the purpose of doing enjoyable things, even consider them utterly
meaningless and pointless - even at the same time as thoroughly enjoying doing
those things! Enjoy it or not, there is still a philosophical point to the
question of pointlessness or meaning.
But you see, my friends, it is a dead-end path trying to answer the
question of the meaning of life by finding greater purposes than those you
already know, because those greater purposes can also be questioned in the same
way, and so on ad infinitum. Even when you get to purposes relating to
God, you can still say things like, "What's the purpose of God existing?" or
"What's the purpose of finding God?", or even "What's the point of finding out
the purpose of life?"! You can prove the entire universe, on all dimensions,
utterly meaningless by airtight reasoning of this sort. You can say that
meaning and purpose are themselves meaningless concepts, and are no more than
human invention, and that the universe is just what it is, and no more and no
less. Even if meaning and purpose are devised by God, they can still be
dismissed as merely contrived or made-up, and with no intrinsic validity.
And in a sense I agree with you, although I now see it is not nearly as
simple as I believed when I was in the body called Michael Edwards, who was at
times quite troubled by these seemingly abstruse questions.
I suggest a slightly different approach to this matter. If anything seems
boring or pointless considered by itself, simply see it as a means to some
greater end that means more to you, or more to your loved ones, or more to God.
(If it doesn't seem to you to contribute to such a greater end, well you might
then consider not doing the thing that seems pointless, and just forget about
it. Let's assume, though, that it is something you either want to do because of
some greater purpose to it, or else that it is something that you just have to
do.)
Okay, if the greater purpose (either straight away, or later) itself seems
pointless, repeat exactly the same process on that, finding a yet bigger purpose
that it leads to, and so on as often as necessary.
If you can (at least in principle) go on doing this forever without ever
coming to an end, I would suggest that you have a mind-set that is determined to
see the whole universe, and God Himself, as intrinsically meaningless no matter
what, and I suggest you try to take a more open-minded attitude to this. At the
very least, it has to be regarded as an open question whether there is intrinsic
meaning to be found somewhere in the universe, if you just get big enough in
your ideas. At least you could set the purpose of finding out whether there is
a purpose to life. Seeing that you're here in the universe, you might as well
do at least this; there would be nothing to lose, and I suspect it would be much
more boring to go on living in a pointless universe.
Supposing you're not this type of person, I'm willing to bet that sooner or
later you will reach something that doesn't need to be explained any further in
terms of yet greater purposes, or yet more meaningful meaning. It may be
something quite physical and worldly, or it might be highly spiritual, or
anywhere in between; it doesn't matter in the slightest. You can then live for
that, and be content to accept that as an interim purpose, even if in the back
of your mind there is the thought that ultimately it's just yet another step in
this chain.
I can tell you that some of the purposes of life as we see it (there are
many purposes to life, not just one!) are to enjoy fellowship with each other,
to get ever closer to God, and to make the universe an ever better and better
place for all beings; but of course, these purposes may seem just as pointless
to some people as anything else can be made to seem. It would do no good to say
that these purposes are qualitatively different in a way that renders them
intrinsically meaningful, in a way that makes it impossible to dismiss them in
the reductionist manner I've already described.
If you are this way inclined, I can only say that experiencing these
realities will induce you to think differently, and no amount of explanation
from me will do the trick; and you can work towards experiencing it by various
methods of spirituality or other types of self-improvement, or alternatively it
will gradually come in this life-time or another, probably more slowly than if
you worked towards it.
But the whole thing is that you can't use reason about questions relating
to the purpose of life; one must use faculties that few people have developed
well in the 3rd dimension, such as intuition and mystical experience.
But when you ascend, you begin to get delightful hints that the way to
knowing the purpose of life might at least be beginning to look clearer. You
find, for instance, that more and more all the loose ends of life are resolved,
and are all neatly tied up, like the end of an "And they lived happily ever
after" type of story; everything dovetails in a lovely way you could never dream
of in advance.
And this doesn't lead to boredom or stagnation, because, meanwhile, you are
starting to do other things that are (for the time being) still unresolved.
When those things are resolved, still other things are in progress in your life
- and so on, forever. You are able to experience simultaneously the best of
both of what might seem to be contradictory experiences: you can constantly
enjoy the fulfilment of having completed things, and at the same time enjoy the
interest of still having things to do.
Here's another nice thing about 5th-dimensional life, too. You find
increasingly that you can bypass those routine things of the sort I mentioned
before that you don't really enjoy doing, but do simply because they are a
necessary step on the way to doing something more important. You bypass them by
astrally or mentally automating them, by working out an exact way of performing
them, then once that algorithm (as computer scientists in your world would call
it) is fixed, it can be invoked merely by willing it, and you don't have to pay
any attention to the details.
It is quite similar to computer programming in languages like Pascal. If
there is a series of calculations or other tasks you find you are frequently
asking the computer to do, you can type them out once, and put them in a special
package called a procedure, give them a name, then perform that set of
instructions any number of times simply by calling them by name (the difference
is of the order of a dozen versus hundreds or thousands of keystrokes). And you
can go further too: a whole bunch of procedures can be encapsulated into yet
another procedure of even greater scope, and so on as many times as you want.
It is like that here. By doing this sort of thing more and more, you can
live life at ever greater levels of abstraction, and think in bigger and bigger
terms, and ignore the details more and more (once you have fixed them firmly in
the beginning). Even in 3rd-dimensional life, life is becoming more abstract,
with more and more processes which, if you look at them historically, really
include a whole bundle of things that once upon a time had to be done
separately.
Just to give a simple example, a medium of exchange such as gold was at
some time used to avoid all the inconveniences and uncertainty of bartering. If
you wanted to buy something from someone, you simply gave him an equivalent
value of gold. This was later abstracted further with bank-notes which are of
little intrinsic value, but which are generally accepted as signifying value but
not possessing value themselves. This method of transferring assets was further
abstracted in things like cheques, credit cards, loans, insurance, stocks,
bonds, and all sorts of other financial transactions.
There are many other instances of this kind of thing even in your 3rd-
dimensional world (of which my computer-like mind thinks computer programming in
a procedural language like Pascal is the clearest example); well, in the
ascended realms, this sort of abstraction can continue literally without limit,
as far as you like, and can be applied to any field of activity that you desire;
and you have all of eternity in which to refine these processes.
And there comes a time when all this seems to tie in with the hierarchy of
ever-broadening purposes I mentioned before, where each (if it comes to seem
pointless) can be given meaning by a reference to some yet greater purpose. And
with each level of abstraction, you get a broader and broader view of the
universe, and you are less and less troubled by questions of meaning. It all
falls into perspective more and more, and there is no end to how far you can
continue this process of abstraction, and how far you can transcend (by the
processes already described) the nitty-gritty details, which nevertheless do get
looked after. You simply keep building on your own achievements and learning,
and those of other people too, because we share things with each other, and do
not have a possessive attitude to such things.
The ultimate purpose of life as I see it is this ever-upward spiral into
ever-more dizzy and glorious heights, not some sort of static goal or
destination. God is not sitting at the top of the spiral (which doesn't
have a top); rather, God is the spiral itself, in entirety.
And would you have it otherwise? If the ultimate purpose of life were
something fixed, you would be in a terrible dilemma once you got there, because
there would be nothing more to do, quite literally. No, it never ends, but all
along the way you do achieve quite definite things, so you are not constantly
plagued by a sense of incompleteness, in the way you often are in 3rd-
dimensional life.
I cannot say much more about the purpose of life than this, because it
cannot really be summed up; but I hope this explanation has at least given you
the flavour of how we see this matter, and I hope it gives you something to work
towards, and something to look forward to.
* * *
Well, I suppose I could go on for ever about all sorts of aspects of 5th-
(and higher-) dimensional life, but I have to draw this message to a close at
some point. There is always the possibility of my writing you a second letter,
and I think I have covered most of the important points about life in the higher
dimensions. I cannot write a book about this at this time; but I just wanted
you to give you a general idea of what my life is like as an ascended Master;
and if you want to imagine your own life as ascended Masters, you can simply
invent whatever you want, following my example here in a general sort of way.
Above all, please do not accept everything I say as being authoritative, as
being immutable laws about how the ascension is, or what things are like after
it. This is simply how I have found it to be. To quote a little saying that
does the rounds amongst people interested in ascension, the universe rearranges
itself to fit your concept of reality.
Just decide what you want to do, what you want life to be like, and forget
about what is "possible" or "impossible", forget about what other people think,
forget about what seem to be immutable laws of nature. Most of these things are
simply opinions people hold, which have become sufficiently widespread that they
have taken on the appearance of universal laws.
The laws of nature may (perhaps) not be determined by what people believe,
but they are the ways of 3rd-dimensional life, and that is being left behind.
The Earth herself is ascending (as you read this), leaving that behind, and if
you want to do the same, you are welcome to join the Earth in her ascension.
This letter was addressed to all my friends, which includes everyone I was
close to as Michael Edwards, and other acquaintances I did not get closely
involved in over a long time but whom I enjoyed knowing for the short time I
knew them; and ultimately it includes everyone who reads this, and for that
matter everyone who doesn't; it includes all beings everywhere, because at the
highest level of spirit we are all each others' friends, and we are in fact all
one. We are all a part of the loving God of all the universes, and we all love
Him/Her, and He/She loves us completely.
We may at various times in our journey through life appear to be separate,
and afflicted with pain and hardship. I still don't know why this happens, and
(as I explained earlier) I hope to be instrumental in changing this state of
affairs one day. However, even under the present system, please be assured that
it will all come to an end one day. There is a light at the end of the
tunnel, even if you can't see it yet; and that light is more glorious,
comforting, inspiring, and loving than you can imagine. That light is God, and
He will never abandon you, no matter how far you stray, no matter how many times
you make the same mistakes, no matter how many incarnations you really blow.
Just hold on to what you know is right, follow your heart and your highest
feelings. Anything that gives you a sense of wonder, just hang on to it,
whatever other people think of it. Do that which makes you feel good inside,
that which brings you closer to any other beings. Don't become too rigid with
dogmatic beliefs, no matter how noble and inspiring they may seem, because they
may be right now, but truth can change as the universe itself changes. Accept
beliefs if they help you now, but be willing to drop them in favour of something
else if they don't seem to fit any more.
Just try to keep doing these things even if life becomes discouraging.
These are the things that point to God, and to the fulfilment of your heart's
desires. God longs for you to come home again, just as much as you do. And you
do long for that, even though you don't realize it. At the innermost level, it
is really the only thing that you truly long for.
I look forward to welcoming you into the 5th dimension when you are ready
to enter it, and I look forward to sharing with you our journey back to God. I
love you all, and it will be really great to be with you in the ascended state,
perhaps in much less time than you may think.
My fondest love to you, my friends. May we meet again one day not too far
ahead.
Bivalia.
* * *
[d]
And now, in closing, I would like to address some words to Michael Edwards,
who is receiving this letter from his future and from me, Bivalia, his Higher
Self, his I Am Presence.
My dear one, I know how difficult you find life, and my thoughts and
feelings are with you. I know you are full of doubts about the ascension and
how this holds you back. I know that other people have given you answers to
those doubts which are supposed by them to be sufficient to deal with the
doubts; and I understand why from your point of view those answers have so far
not been sufficient to deal with them.
I'm not at all sure I can give you a super-answer beyond what you have
heard so far that will wave the magic wand and remove those doubts. I think you
are going from one person to another trying to find a sort of ultimate answer to
your difficulties, and each time, you either get an answer you have already
heard many times, or you get a new one which doesn't seem good enough.
I urge you to think about these answers again, and see if there isn't after
all something in them that will help you. But even if, after most careful
consideration, you find in all conscience that they are not sufficient, I would
like to suggest to you that perhaps the very seeking of answers may not be the
best approach for you to follow.
You see, my beloved, the very idea of considering doubts and then trying to
find answers from others to answer them is based on the assumption that you can
use reasoning to dispel doubts and fears, and that, if only you get a strong
enough answer, it will disprove the doubts. I'm not at all sure that these
matters work on that level of intellect and reasoning. I know you have
difficulty in even understanding this, let alone accepting it: you are very
intelligent, and have lived most of your life with intellect as the very
foundation for your way of thinking.
I urge you to please consider other ways of approaching this matter. I so
much want you to get on top of this, and not have to suffer these difficulties
for any longer than you have to. You may have a strong intellect, but you do
have other faculties too. Perhaps you have neglected them a bit in recent
years, but they are still there, waiting to be used.
Just think about all that lovely music you once wanted to compose, and
still want to. Intellect may be involved in organizing the composition of
music, but it certainly is not the source of the very inspiration which first of
all gave you the original idea of the music. Think about the way, when you
conceive a passage, you just know what key it should be in. That is
intuition, and feeling. Just think about the emotions, the intangible
atmosphere, you want to express in the music. That is feeling too. You do have
it, you know.
Coming back to the doubts, I suggest you sidestep them, in a manner of
speaking. Don't try to refute them intellectually, whether with your own ideas
or those of other people. On the other hand, don't try to deny them. Trying to
think or feel what you know is false is not the answer. Just defer them for the
time being, with the intention of sorting them out later when you are better
equipped to do so. If they keep coming back, just acknowledge them in a relaxed
way, and affirm that they will sort themselves out in their own time, probably
in a way much better than you could presently imagine, and don't try
yet to sort them out with your mind; and then focus your mind on that sense of
wonder that occasionally comes out in life. Try to feel it as well as think it.
I know you have spoken of that sense of wonder to various people; I know
that has in a way been the whole underlying theme of your life, the whole
purpose of it, the thing that has kept you going so far. You have been aware of
it for as long as you can remember, from early childhood onwards, even if you
couldn't have then found the words to describe it. But you knew perfectly well
what it was, and you still do.
It expresses itself in many ways, big and little, ordinary and unusual: the
magic in a piece of music or a story, the sense of atmosphere in a sunset or a
moonrise or a late-afternoon rainbow, the excitement of a science-fiction novel,
the wonderful vistas opened up as you contemplate the planets or stars, the
occasional unaccountable feeling of something momentous and wonderful that could
be about to happen, even if in everyday life no such thing is about to happen,
the idea of hidden worlds of wonder that seem suddenly to beckon round a corner.
Another aspect is the feeling of delight I know you've had in watching the
willy wagtails on the nearby fence, or in throwing crumbs towards sparrows at
your feet while eating a meal on a park bench.
That sense of wonder, that thread that links together so many things for
you which are otherwise quite unalike, also appears in things one would not
normally associate with such feelings, but which you do so associate, or have
done. Don't be put off simply because you find wonder in something that you
perceive that others consider completely ordinary or pragmatic or even silly.
You don't actually know whether other people do regard your sense of wonder
about something misplaced, because they have never actually said so. And if one
day they do, it is nothing more than their opinion - and the opinion of someone
whose reality is quite different from yours, and who doesn't understand the way
things are for you. I know you are self-conscious about what you fear other
people may think about something you are interested in, but which you perceive
to be unusual.
Trains, interstate trains, were something that had this special magic for
you. They were one of the great loves of your childhood. You seem to have left
that behind in recent years, to have lost interest. But they were always
something you were a bit self-conscious about, in a way you weren't about music,
or the beauties of nature.
Another thing of this sort is actually something that seems to cause you
many conflicting feelings, and has done for quite a few years recently. I know
you have come to feel quite squirmish about having your voice recorded, and you
don't, in most situations, like listening to recorded music. And you have taken
a certain dislike of cassette recorders generally.
But there remains the fact that, before cassettes came into common use, you
were very fond of tape recorders, the sort that use reels of tape. That was
another of the great loves of your childhood. It has to be said that they were,
and perhaps still are, if you didn't suppress it, one of those things with a
sense of wonder that you felt self-conscious about, because you felt that such
things shouldn't have a sense of wonder associated with them.
And even though you have bad feelings about cassettes now, and have never
really accepted them, that feeling in recent years has relaxed at least
sufficiently that you now own a few cassette recorders. Perhaps your feelings
about them may be mixed rather than entirely bad.
I also realize that, on top of all this, your feelings about them, and
about sound equipment generally, are also poisoned by the way such equipment is
so often used by people in all sorts of places so as to inflict their choice of
music on you against your will. This has become more prominent in the last
decade or two, and of course further complicates your bad feelings about sound
equipment generally, which is now nothing more than an instrument of torture for
you. But I think you remember a time before this when you did not feel so bad
about this, when it wasn't a problem, when this happened much less often, and
when you used to enjoy listening to recorded music yourself; these were the days
when you enjoyed using tape recorders yourself - perhaps 20 or 25 years ago.
I'm not saying you either should or shouldn't pursue interests such as
these ones I've just mentioned, any of the things I've been mentioning which
interested you in various ways at various times. But they are things that have
had a certain magic to you, however unusual this may seem to many people. What
I am saying is that I feel you should not try to cancel this special feeling
simply because they seem unusual things to have such feelings about. If you
find yourself doing this, you might like to look at why you have done this, and
reconsider whether you should continue to do this.
In particular, the tape/cassette issue seems to be coming up a lot
recently. It may well be that now would be a good time to look at it more
closely, and consider changing some of your feelings on this, rather than just
trying to wish the whole matter away. There has to be a reason why it is coming
up so much now, and if you look at it squarely, it may cease using up so much of
your energy uselessly. You might even come to feel quite good about it one day;
after all, as a child, you didn't merely accept tape recorders; you actually
positively liked them. I would suggest that as a child you probably found it
just as easy to talk into a microphone as to other people, and quite possibly
nearly as enjoyable too.[e]
I've diverged a little there from the sense of wonder I was talking about,
but it seemed a good opportunity to bring up a matter that it can't be denied is
quite prominent in your mind at present, and causing you quite a bit of stress.
But to come back to the sense of wonder, the magic that can touch your
everyday life if you let it, and don't swamp it with negative thoughts, I urge
you to regard this magic as the central force guiding your ascension, not the
doubts you have about various aspects of it, not whether you are following the
ascension "rules" closely enough or not. I'm not proposing that that is a
general rule; but it is obviously the thing that touches your heart the most.
Or you might find it worthwhile to consider another approach to the matter
of this sense of wonder. This matter is so important that you should not
overlook any way of bringing it more and more to life.
What about the way you played with a group of children recently at the home
of B. and G.? [f] This may be an unfamiliar experience to you, and you may
feel a bit uneasy at being with children, but while you may have felt a bit
embarrassed at hearing that the children found you very funny and child-like,
but enjoyed your company, isn't it possible you were secretly pleased that they
liked you? Hearing how the children regarded you may embarrass you, but there
was no indication that these remarks were made in any other than a kind way.
You may have the potential to get on well with children, such as your own
nephews and nieces. I know that you don't in any way associate children with
that sense of wonder, which is why I described this as another approach to the
matter; but being with children can be a good way of cutting through the dross
of your life and just enjoying the here-and-now. If you want to find other
people who know about the sense of wonder, you might find it more often in
children than in adults, who have often let the grind of life smother that
feeling that everyone knew about early in life.
I know your young niece Katherine is quite awed by your piano-playing
ability that you tend to downplay. You might find that she is fonder of you
than you imagine. I know you were thinking perhaps of visiting her at home and
playing the piano for her. I think she might like that, and I think you might
enjoy it too. Katherine is a nice young girl, and perhaps you could develop a
good relationship with her.
So I have just reminded you of several things that have, or have had in the
past, a sense of wonder associated with them. There are many others too.
Individually, the feeling evoked by each of these things, which I know you have
been aware of all your life, may not seem much, but collectively they all point
to something quite real and wonderful. The direction they all point to is the
direction of ascension, of the 5th dimension (and higher), the direction of
your Higher Self, the direction of God Himself.
In telling you about all these various things that evoke a sense of wonder
and magic (or which could do so), I'm not telling you anything you don't already
know very well. But you have become jaded about some of these things, and I'm
just trying to remind you that that feeling does exist, and hoping to inspire
you again to take more notice of them.
Perhaps you are being a bit too intense about the ascension process,
reading books, talking with everyone, going from one meeting to another. There
is nothing wrong with doing all these things; but, on the other hand, it
wouldn't hurt if you let yourself have an occasional break from all this. You
are worrying whether, as a Light Worker, you are doing enough, earning your
keep, in a sense. It doesn't work like that; it is not an examination you have
to pass. It might do more good for the world in the long run if you just
decided not to worry about that so much, and perhaps just follow that sense of
wonder you know about so well. If you just hang on to that thread of truth in
your own life, as Sananda advised you to do, and as you have already been doing
for decades, and do nothing more, it will be sufficient to assure your
ascension. No-one who endeavours to follow truth and their own highest feelings
will miss out.
You don't have to feel that you may miss out if you don't meditate enough,
or do enough visualizations, or talk to the Masters often enough. You have had
two messages from Sananda addressing your doubts, and just think how encouraging
they are. Sananda is very fond of you, you know; if you could feel his love for
you, it would melt your most hardened doubts and fears, cut through the shell
you have put around your heart. He's not going to let you miss out unless you
decide not to ascend.
If it turns out that there are things you have to do upon which ascension
is absolutely conditional, such as (for example) doing the ground ascension
process, or anything else that may come up, you will be guided to that at the
right time, and it will all happen so that later on you will wonder what all the
worry and fuss was about. Until you receive inner guidance to do anything like
that, I suggest that you simply don't need to worry about it. Don't feel that
you must do it in order not to get left behind, and don't reject the
idea out of hand, either. Just remain open-minded about any ideas that come up,
and if there are things that you have to do (things that you have to
do, not necessarily things that others have to do), it will come up all in good
time. Since I know that in your heart you do want to ascend, when
anything necessary to do comes up, you will find that you want to do
it; there will be no issue of having to struggle with yourself, steeling
yourself to do something you find unattractive, and the like.
My dear Michael, you do not need to worry about anything at all really.
You have so much help from the 5th dimension, and higher; there are so many
people who are barracking for you. If it is any comfort to you, if it inspires
you, I am able to tell you that you have the personal encouragement and deep
love of Sananda, Hilarion, Serapis Bey, Ashtar, Mother Mary, Kuthumi, Archangel
Michael, Saint Germain, and El Morya, no less, as well as myself, of course.
All of them care for you and are giving you what help they can - as of course I
am too. But you must be open to receive help; we cannot force anything on you
against your will. And there are a lot of composers whose music you love who
are helping you too, which I know would mean a lot to you.
And I can tell you, your attitude is not really so bad as you sometimes
imagine. You have much less to worry about than you imagine, as Sananda told
you so clearly on both the occasions he channelled answers to your questions.
You are really doing very well. You have had a difficult life so far -
there is no doubt about that - but you haven't fallen under yet, and none of us
here really think you will, now that you've come this far. Despite very good
reasons for having doubts, for adopting a completely nihilistic attitude to
life, you haven't lost the thread of spirituality that has in subtle ways run
through your life in various different guises. You have shown great courage
over the years in your quiet unobtrusive way. You have kept your eyes, your
mind, and your heart on things that are ultimately good and spiritual, and have
not even been tempted to succumb to crime, alcohol, sexual promiscuity, drugs,
and selfish hedonism of the sort that ignores others' rights, even though these
are ever-present traps in the society in which you have spent your life.[g]
Every time you feel discouraged or depressed, just remember Sananda's words
to you. They are perfectly true, not exaggerated at all, stupendous as those
words seemed to you. You are a very special person, destined to do great things
for the universe.
We all love you, and will continue to help you. You only have to say or
think any of our names, any of the Masters or myself, and we will instantly be
with you for as long as you want.
Keep your chin up, dear one, keep your eyes lifted up. Continue to follow
what you know is right, and you will have all this difficulty behind you much
sooner than you now imagine. You are already on the way, and we are very
pleased with what you are already doing.
There are many of us here who have great love for you. I hope these
words are of help to you now. I am Bivalia, and I farewell you now, Michael,
leaving my love with you, and the love of our Mother/Father, and of Sananda and
many other Masters, with you also.
Bivalia.
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