(continuation from the previous article)
There are several important issues that need to be addressed regarding soul-growth and spiritual evolution.
The first is why some soul-types cannot be saved. There’s one interesting thing about astral substance, and that is its non-linear behavior in the low-energy spectrum. In high energy spectrum, when you expose an astral entity to “light”, basically to aspects of God, it absorbs them and “glows”, it is enhanced. When you expose a low-energy astral entity to the same kind of “light”, it disintegrates and “dies”. One would expect the astral particles, or kalapas, to use the proper term, to respond linearly to the influx of energy, in some predictable thermodynamic pattern, and on the level of individual kalapas, I think this is actually true, but apparently the larger structure seems to be destroyed when its constituents are exposed to the light of God that they need, and the larger structure rejects and avoids. Apparently, the individual astral kalapas refuse to put up with that shit anymore and go their own way, refusing to be bound into the darkness that is the choice of the dark entity to which they belong. As a result, when a dark spiritual entity is exposed to God’s light that is stronger than its own dark will that holds it together, the tangential momentum of the individual kalapas exceeds the already weak cohesive force of the structure, and it goes poof. Essentially, this shows that the existence of spiritual darkness is so against the basic laws of nature, that it is opposed on the kalapa level.
This law apparently holds even on the higher levels of reality, because if the level of God’s light a soul is exposed to significantly exceeds the power of its internal energy bonds, essentially if the level of love, truth and consciousness one is exposed to from the outside exceeds the level of love, truth and consciousness that bind his individual ego-structure together, he is at the risk of breaking up at the seams, metaphorically speaking, where “seams” are the weakest energy-points of his spiritual body, similar to the inclusions of weak material in a stronger rock. Those “seams” therefore limit the amount of spiritual energy one is able to take, and in order for that limit to be raised, the inclusions need to be transformed into higher-energy substance, and the disjointed fragments of the spiritual body need to be integrated. So, how does one do that?
If you’ve read the reports of the spiritual experiences of the saints, as well as the NDE experiences, which I hope you did, you will remember that the experience is usually a combination of joy and pain. Joy is because of God, and pain is because of one’s sins and flaws that light up in the consciousness as the overall energy level rises, and the soul instinctively tries to handle those weaknesses by either remorse or understanding. Both approaches work, depending on the specifics. Healing of the inner spiritual fractures and inclusions is usually done by a combination of remorse, acceptance of forgiveness, release of resent and blame, and understanding of truth. The low-energy substance is not released, it is absorbed into the rest of the spiritual body, which temporarily lowers the energy of the entire structure in the same way absorbing ice would cool down your physical body. This means your entire soul will feel pain of some kind during the process of absorption of the inclusions. The process is similar to the absorption of traumatic content encapsulated within a “larva”, where low-energy substance one was unwilling or unable to deal with was encapsulated within a membrane that isolates it from the rest of the spiritual body. Those membranes are inherently impermanent, and when they burst, the content is released into the spiritual body, creating trauma. If this trauma is absorbed and suffered through, the structure recovers and reintegrates on a higher level of functionality, because now there is no fragmentation and isolation of parts of one’s being into inaccessible regions. However, if trauma is unbearable, and one tries to shield oneself from it, another larva is formed in order to block the undesirable things from one’s consciousness. So, essentially, by accepting spiritual pain, living through it, with a combination of acceptance, remorse and understanding, one regains parts of oneself and is released from the necessity of existing in the energy spectrum that is lower than one’s maximum, because of the fact that higher energy would stress the larvas and inclusions to one’s breaking point. When those breaking points at the lower energy levels are removed, the entire structure can experience and absorb much higher levels of God’s light than was previously possible. Essentially, this reintegration and removal of low-energy inclusions, and raising the energy level of the entire spiritual body to the level of the highest-energy structures within the body, is what takes place in the process of evolution of the higher parts of the astral world, inhabited by the beings who already possess significant sophistication, complexity and purity. When the entire astral body attains uniformity at the highest energy level of the astral substance, apparently the entire structure crystallizes, it compresses into crystalline vajra form as it transcends the limitations of the astral world and goes beyond. This is basically the point I tried to lead my students towards, because once they get there, they are essentially out of the woods. Sure, there is spiritual growth even beyond that, but after that point one’s position is no longer precarious.
Another important issue is the motivator and mechanism of evolution in the astral plane. Incarnated human souls usually assume that without motivators present in the physical world, the souls would stagnate indefinitely in the astral world, and so the physical is useful as means for accelerating spiritual evolution. That, however, is not only false, but is in fact the direct opposite to the truth.
The logic goes like this: one feels comfort and is disinclined to change anything. At some point, discomforts and dangers of the physical world make him think and do things to avoid dangers and to assure his survival. The problem is, the most effective way to assure your survival in the physical world is to be the worst kind of a Darwinistic satanic animal, which by the way is also an excellent way of assuring your spiritual degradation and destruction. So, the only way to spiritually evolve in this world is to do all the wrong things, judged by the worldly criteria, because if you do all the “right” things, you’ll end up a spiritual abomination. In the astral world, however, the motivation isn’t negative. Theoretically, an astral “vegetable” can sit in the light all day and feel good, and this could theoretically go on for millennia without interruption. However, this astral “plant”, a simple aggregation of kalapas without much structure, which is able to experience only the basic, primal emotions, can also experience the existence of more sophisticated beings, who are able to interact, communicate, merge, share ideas, and eventually experiences discomfort due to its inability to do the same. This discomfort with one’s limitations is the main motivator of spiritual growth. It begins with perception, proceeds into empathy, and then into emulation, and with practice one acquires new abilities. Also, although God’s light is perceived by the simple spiritual beings as primal emotions – joy, pleasure, gratitude, fulfillment etc., it’s never just that. This light is also reason and intelligence and promise of greatness if you know more of it, and it is inherently motivating, it sort of pulls your toward and into itself, so basically the more you have it the more you desire it, and by “more” I don’t mean more of the same, but primarily the expansion of quality. There is pain, but its origin is in the awareness of one’s limitations in knowing more of God. So yes, this pain is also a motivation, because a spiritual being feels a special kind of pain when it sees that others can take from God something he’s yet unable to grasp, but it isn’t jealousy (defined as a desire for someone not to have more than you do) but its opposite (defined as a desire to be as good as those who are now better than yourself). You don’t want to allow others to be better than you, but not by limiting them, but by growing to match their high standards, and possibly even more, to be the shining example of God’s beauty and wonder for others to aspire to. So yes, there is a competition of a sort, between the spiritual beings – who will know more, who will do better, who will say the greater truth, do a greater deed, feel the purer emotion, and when one excels, others rejoice and applaud, and strive to do one better.
I have such hatred for the idea that difficulties in the physical world catalyze one’s spiritual evolution. Sure, maybe some moderate level of hardship can cause a person to show their fortitude as they stand their ground. But you’re either grass or a tree in a storm. Eventually the wind will be too strong and uproot the tree. There is a limit to anyone’s capacity. There’s always a sufficiently great breaking force. And you might be able to weather the assault but for how long? At what price?
Hardship makes you grow in risky ways that are always one step away from ruining you. It’s not conducive to developing any sort of refinement or sensitivity. Those develop in peacetime, in good conditions.
Well, at least you can’t say you’ll be insensitive to people that go through the same kind of trouble you were going through. Men in war usually form strong friendship bonds that can last way after the war is over. Someone who has been abused or depressed will have more patience or deeper understanding of other people than most do. Just some random examples.
However, there was something else interesting I was never sure about. Is it easier to tell what kind of person someone is based on his behaviour in the best possible, or the worst possible scenario?
In the first case, you don’t have to manage with any kind of internal struggle and you can easily give best of you if you want to, but your potential weaknesses remain hidden and unthreatened. (“If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”) In the second case, you can barely do anything, but still, you have to impose some limits on yourself as to what kind of ferocity you are willing to do, there has to be some limit no matter what. (“In trouble you know a hero”)
In the best possible scenario.
Put someone in a position of a slave and his decisions amount to obeying or disobeying. You can find out someone’s breaking point but very little else.
But if you put someone in a position of power where he can do a million different things, now you can not only see how good or bad someone is (whether morally or at doing something), but also his personal likes and dislikes. Potential weaknesses don’t remain hidden; a different set of (potential) weaknesses comes to surface. You’re unlikely to show jealousy if you’re at the very top, and haughtiness if you’re at the very bottom. And there’s still internal struggle, but not necessarily of the same kind. What if you’re an absolute monarch and need to decide whether to allow or ban abortion, various medical experiments, physical elimination of some citizens and to what extent, freedom of speech to what extent, what areas to prioritize in a state budget, how to decorate your castle, whether to ride first in battle or not, and so on. This to me sounds like a much more interesting way of getting to know someone, than torture methods. And it’s not like someone will automatically act properly if there’s no duress. Look at all the state leaders. Eliminate those who definitely seem like “greater evil” and “lesser evil” and almost no one is left. If a Chinese or Russian company wants to do business here, we reject them. If jihadists come, we finance them. They didn’t even need to torture the politicians. Or, to use a different example – imagine if someone ends up in a relationship with someone who is much better overall. Sure, it’s a pretty good position, except all the weaknesses will probably be even more obvious and you’re up for quite a struggle.
King can decide to build a road here or there. To provide resources to this man or that man. To honor this army commander or that army commander.
Sure, just by looking at his actions you can tell something about his intelligence, benevolence and ability to balance out things, but the problem is, hardly any of those decisions involve any kind of personal sacrifice.
Just look at Jordan Belford. People around him say he was very kind, fun and generous. Everybody liked him and wanted to be as close to him as possible. But is it because who he really is, or is it because money actually had no meaning for him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gp1envfxCo
If he had a low-wage job, would he still be able to maintain friendships with 1000 people he mentions in this video? Or, on a more daily level, would he be even able to save his marriage? Spare enough money to provide a college education for his two sons?
Those are the kind of situations where he would be forced to do some real effort to prove himself, not just tossing around monopoly cards that happen to be real dollars.
I don’t even have to make up stories like this to provide examples, I have it in my own family. My mother died last year, and from the moment she found out she was terminally ill, she started to behave in incredibly childish, irresponsible and selfish manner, and this later led to the whole series of legal complications that, among other things, tore apart the whole family, or al least what’s left of it.
It not like this was unexpected series of events. In fact, I think it was so obvious what is about to happen that she would realize it if she put her mind to it for five seconds. But she didn’t. She just didn’t care for anyone else anymore. The more I look at it in retrospective, the more I realize she didn’t give a flying fuck even for her only son.
This is quite a surprise for a person who was otherwise very well organized, measured and thought-out. So you have to draw a line at a certain point and realize that part of her personality and behaviour was a lie. It was either before she found out she is about to die, or after that.
From here on, we can rationalize those two approaches. First one would be that she was a good person, but not in her right mind at the time and too stressed to make the right choices and care for anyone else in her own misery. Second would be that she was in fact a bad person who only seemed like a good caretaker because she was never put in a position to really prove herself.
It’s a complex issue and there are plenty or arguments for any interpretation one would be emotionally inclined to choose.
Those are all valid points, but it’s difficult for me to make any kind of assessment of one’s action without first getting a very good insight into his or her motives, because you can get apparently very similar actions for vastly different reasons.
>Well, at least you can’t say you’ll be insensitive to people that go
through the same kind of trouble you were going through. Men in war
usually form strong friendship bonds that can last way after the war is
over. Someone who has been abused or depressed will have more patience
or deeper understanding of other people than most do. Just some random
examples.
Yeah, but you also have people who become more selfish and scared as a result of the war, even though they were perfectly okay in peacetime. They were put under more pressure than they could handle, and became worse people as a result. A good example is the family from Grave of the Fireflies who took in the two orphaned relatives, then mistreated them because they were all under tremendous stress and lack of food for bare survival. Hardship directly created evil in that case, where normal conditions wouldn’t have. That’s why I say that hardship is risky as a means of advancement, because it can easily become too much, and one’s inner resources aren’t limitless. It can go right, sure, but just as easily it can destroy you.
You also have people who become less sensitive, because if you allow yourself to be sensitive, you can’t make it through. Like skin that hardens on your soles if you walk barefoot, shrugging off any refinement or sensitivity.
Sure there’s that example of a Holocaust survivor who was a wonderful person as a result, but at what price? And how many didn’t? How many were broken? You never come out of it unscathed, not even in the best possible outcome.
One time, I had severe pain from cramps, I was effectively incapacitated and only able to sit curled up. I started writing and produced some of the most amazing stylistic prose that I’ve ever written. It’s as if the pain allowed me to float into some otherwordly capability I wasn’t aware I possessed. Pure desperation in a sense. But when I’m beset from all sides with stress, with existential hardship, I can never find the time or justification to write. You can’t create refined things when your house is on fire. And down here it’s always on fire.
>However, there was something else interesting I was never sure about. Is
it easier to tell what kind of person someone is based on his behaviour
in the best possible, or the worst possible scenario?
Depends on the severity of the hardship. Even the strongest person has limited resources. If they didn’t break, you didn’t push hard enough.
If the level of hardship is something within your ability to handle, then sure, you can shine under pressure. If you don’t, under those conditions, then you’ve failed by the standards applicable to your position. Similarly, if you fail to shine and develop in the best conditions, you’ve also failed by those standards.
By imposing hardship, you can filter out who is below and who above that level of hardship. But can you force a person who is below to act as if they’re not? Can you cause someone who wouldn’t otherwise be able to overcome, to overcome anyway? What if it’s simply not within their inner resources and they just break? Look at examples of shellshock from photographs, that’s what happens when people break from getting hit with way too much.
Does hardship directly increase your inner capabilities and resources? Does it cause advancement, or merely test it?
I think the crux of the matter is actually elsewhere. It’s justice. The physical world is a place where shellshock and breaking can easily happen, while elsewhere beings might get only what they deserve by karma and what’s appropriate for their personal development.
It also depends on the purpose of the world. Elsewhere the goal is to become stronger and more awesome, here the goal is to become more entangled with others because of resources, and become more vulnerable to the world so that you can be more easily manipulated. So both hardship and good conditions will guide advancement according to the fundamental purpose of the world.
I think it’s a false dichotomy, between good conditions and bad conditions. I feel more inclined to mention Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, where you influence the results with the way you perform measurements. If you repeatedly test someone’s physical strength (bench pressing), you make him stronger. If you repeatedly test for someone’s weaknesses (torture), you tend to produce them.
How does deconstruction of the physical plane affect the astral plane, and does it affect at all?
Position of everything and everyone above it is unquestionable, but what about the fate of the astral itself, taking into consideration its unstable nature and the fact that its properties enabled creation of this thing we are in now.
In the end, is there anything good you can say about the fact that this world ever had a chance to exist, even if it’s an indirect consequence of its existence?
Usual understanding would probably be that at least everybody had a chance to show their true nature, be it for better or for worse.
The main effect will be obvious, that many astral beings will have various mental and emotional scar tissue or weird, unnatural spiritual development as a result of physical incarnations. I think there’s a whole section of the astral universe populated exclusively or almost exclusively by beings who are Earth-oriented and are basically formed by incarnations on this hellhole. It remains to be seen how long will it take for the effects to wear off.
I’m not sure what will happen to the section of the Earth-bound astral that is closest to this place in spiritual frequency. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were fenced off until the madness subsides.
I’m not sure any good whatsoever came out of it all. Maybe I’ll have a different perspective on it once it’s all over and I’m safely and permanently out of it, but at the moment, the only positive I can see are those who fought this place bitterly and persevered, who didn’t get ruined and who have a very healthy understanding of spiritual dangers, that was unseen before this world came to be. Those souls who survived this place and emerged victorious are much better equipped to deal with evil, than more-less anyone before.
I don’t think this place had a function of showing anyone’s true nature, except perhaps that of Sanat Kumar, who was revealed for what he is. The others were more-less exposed to the treatment Morgoth gave the Elves in the Silmarillion, where he imprisoned them in darkness away from all light and tortured them for such a long time that they learned to hate the light, embraced evil and became the Orcs. I think it’s the best metaphor for this place – it turns souls into monsters by blocking their inner source of light, blocking their access to God, and turning them into bonsai.
The reason why I asked this is because you were earlier talking about preset threshold right above the astral plane. So I don’t know, maybe it’s just my wrong understanding of your solution, but at times I got a notion you are about to filter and shut down not only Earth-bound reality, but also the whole astral universe altogether.
BTW, there is a certain amount of your articles that seem to be a direct reaction to the level of understanding of most of your readers (of lack of it), so I’m curios, are you maybe sometimes even able to discern individual voices in this kind of feedback, or it’s just a reaction to a general conglomerate of impressions?
re: threshold, the thing is that I occasionally get really pissed off and say things like that, but what I would actually do is very balanced, like, banning certain kinds of things, making all self-imposed limitations reversible, essentially I would prohibit creation of dark hidey-holes for God’s enemies. This would mean that certain astral sub-planes would be flooded with God’s light and all the dark entities that hide there from light would be destroyed.
re: writing, I’m more concerned with following the feeling which points towards the things I should do, not so much with why. “Why” is a luxury for me, one I cannot afford. I’m more concerned with “what”.