Touring the Spiritual Realms

Scientists group the world's many species in classifications of increasing size and complexity: each individual belongs to a species, a genus, a family, a phylum, and so on.  Just as there are hierarchies of increasing complexity among earthly creatures, so is the spiritual realm structured into "levels" whose entities grow in size, complexity, and purpose.

The spiritual hierarchy does not occupy some distant "place," like the Sunday School heaven floating above the clouds. All levels of the spiritual hierarchy blend and interpenetrate one another. What holds them apart as distinct bands of activity and purpose is the vibrational frequency of each level.

In the spiritual realm, frequency refers to qualities of consciousness rather than "higher" and "lower" pulsations. You might visualize the spiritual realm as a vast chorus broken into smaller clusters of stylistic variety — here a barbershop quartet, there a Gregorian chant, over yonder a full — costume opera. Characters are free to flow from one venue to another, contributing to and learning from each genre until they are ready to move on. The greater a soul's progress, the more complexity it seeks, and the greater the number of souls participating in each realm of growth.

The Astral Plane

The astral plane is the "way station" between earthbound life and the spiritual realms. It is a field of tremendous bustling activity, as one might expect to find "behind the scenes" of the Earth's exuberant and diverse living systems. The astral plane is the portal through which consciousness crystallizes into flesh, and to which consciousness returns upon release of material form. Entities seeking incarnation in a given time and place crowd the astral plane, scanning the available pregnant women for the most compatible match. The astral level also hosts the wandering consciousness of sleeping humanity, gathering to plot the events of the next day, week, and year.

The astral plane carries the slowest vibrational frequency within the spiritual hierarchy. It pulsates just above the frequencies of matter, just beyond your senses' reach, enabling pure consciousness to readily tap into the thoughts and activities of earthbound creatures. This negligible gap between earth and astral levels also eases the death transition of souls departing their bodies.

The astral plane is "staffed" with entities who act as midwives to crossing souls. While we call them astral beings, they do not naturally reside on the astral plane, but a few levels higher. The natural order is for entities of a given level to serve as guides and mentors to beings a few steps below.

Once a soul understands where it is and that its body has died, its first task is to conduct a life review. Every moment of life is stored within the body's energy fields as a memory matrix; at death, this matrix is propelled into the astral plane as the eternal record of a life. Under a welcomer's tutelage, this memory stream is "played back" and reviewed for moments of significance, especially any karmic ramifications.

While all of this post — death activity occurs on the astral plane, life's other great passing — from soul to birth — is mediated here as well. Every living being emits a steady stream of vibratory information into the atmosphere, a ticker — tape torrent of experience and thought and dreams. Souls nearing incarnation cluster at the boundary between astral and earth planes — in vibratory terms, they decelerate from higher dimensions — the better to evaluate the personality — streams flowing from pregnant women. Once a woman has passed the first trimester of pregnancy and her fetus appears viable, astral souls sift potential matches for the best fit.

Once a match is settled, a soul gradually links with its fetal anchor by projecting a strand of decelerated consciousness into the womb, enveloping the fetus with its signature vibration. The soul does not leap into the earth system all at once, but gradually trickles across the boundary between astral and earth planes. Even for a period of up to six months after birth, a soul frequently washes back to the astral plane to review its reincarnational history and the tasks established during prebirth planning.

The Expanding Soul

One of the most difficult concepts for earthbound beings to swallow is the gradual absorption of individual souls into greater bodies of consciousness. The fear of losing one's unique personality and identity, of being swallowed up and lost to eternity, often surpasses the fear of death itself. Recognize this fear as the instinctive reaction of the ego to any threat to its integrity. Then recognize that the ego evaporates at death; so there will be nothing to fear, because there will be nobody to fear for. As a consolation, your "biography" imprinted on the astral plane at death remains there forever as the eternally vital history of your life. However, this is not you, in the sense of containing your consciousness, but is simply an energetic record of your life.

The essential you, your core of consciousness, does move on through the spiritual hierarchy and does actively seek to contribute to ever — expanding bodies of consciousness. If you look back on your life and recall being three, ten, fifteen, thirty, you agree that these were all "past" versions of yourself; they have been incorporated into who you are today but do not retain their own individual vitality. So it is with the soul: it seeks eternal growth and expansion through blending with other soul fragments into large bodies of consciousness.

The Omega Level

The omega level lies above the astral, and is the next stop on the soul's ascending journey. Entities at this level contain, on average, between 20 and 100 soul fragments. These are the intellectuals and philosophers of the hierarchy: they immerse themselves in understanding the principles and forces governing operation of physical systems. The omega level is the hierarchy's university, for souls must completely grasp the immensely complex, interwoven systems which underlie physical reality. The crystallization of energy patterns into air, liquid, and bedrock is studied, especially the ideal balance of elements necessary to sustain animate life.

These "omega entities" are composed of soul fragments who have entirely released the earth system. Having grown through the reincarnational cycle from the selfish grasping of baby souls to the quiet wisdom of old souls, and having released all karmic bonds, they now work to release the earth system entirely and move on to other dimensions. Before they can do so, they must master the principles through which physical reality is created.

With each step "up" in the hierarchy, involvement and interest in the earth system wane. Earth is but one small venue available to consciousness seeking physical experience; even the totality of all physical systems is one small corner of activity. Once a soul has completed its reincarnational cycle, and contributes its store of experience to ever — expanding bodies of consciousness, the attachment to Earth, and the learning to be gleaned from earth experience, lessen. As we have seen, the astral level is intimately connected with the everyday bustle of the earth system, managing its flow of souls in and out of flesh. At the omega level, a more abstract, cerebral approach governs, where the underlying mechanics of sustaining the physical system are of greater interest.

The Theta Level

Above the omega lies the theta level, another great step away from earth mechanics and toward greater abstraction. Here, after mastery of the omega level's knowledge, the scope broadens to a spacious appraisal of the creation, operation, and cessation of entire systems of activity, the physical system being but one such domain.

Consider, as an example, the relationship between consciousness and matter as you experience it — though you take the parameters of your system for granted and perhaps have never given it any thought. Within a certain range, consciousness affects matter. The most obvious example is your body's receptivity to chronic negative thought patterns, which may manifest as disease; conversely, a flood of positive, healing thoughts can restore the body's health. So there is a built — in relationship between consciousness and matter where the mind is granted some power to affect matter, but only within a limited range.

This relationship between mind and matter is but one of the parameters "set up" within each physical system. In other systems, consciousness is so powerful and matter so receptive to its sway that the beings there need no flesh — and — blood bodies; they manipulate their environment through focused intention alone. At the other end of the spectrum are systems where consciousness is so sluggish and matter so impervious to its influence that it is only with difficulty that one could convince one's hand to pick up a spoon, much less expect it to bend through sheer force of will.

This spectrum — from stark duality of mind and matter to their intimate synergy — is but one of the myriad parameters involved in establishing physical systems. Theta entities study the historical experiences of systems in all their parameters, to judge which seem to offer the greatest opportunities for growth — for growth, after all, is the ultimate purpose of existence. A system in which life is too easy offers only superficial experience, while a system fraught with immense challenge crushes too many souls in despair. By tweaking and adjusting the various parameters governing physical systems, theta entities can study diverse "workshops" of experience.

Physical systems do not exist for their own benefit, of course, but as venues of activity for bodies of consciousness seeking matter — based experience. Thus, theta entities are intimately involved in the relationship between consciousness and matter, and focus especially on those venues where conditions support a profusion of animate life. This requires a mastery of the omega — level "mechanics" as background, upon which theta entities build their study of animate life and its many permutations. Because humanity is a special case, radically standing apart from other species with its rational/mythic/emotional life, some theta entities specialize in human life, including its emphasis on relationships and the operation of the reincarnational cycle.

Reincarnation is far too vast a subject to delve into here, but we might briefly mention that it is a far messier and more convoluted process than the common notion of souls leaping from carcass to fetus and magically working out their past difficulties. Because free will is the cornerstone of your system, each incarnation is free to do whatever it pleases — including adding to its karmic burdens rather than releasing them, or failing to resolve karmic debts which its higher self intended it to. The theta entities come into the picture as the guides leading souls through the process of recasting their karmic ties into fresh lifetimes.

Souls within the reincarnational cycle lack the wisdom and knowledge to hammer these complex and intricate relationships together on their own, and theta entities help by offering their wisdom to less — evolved souls. Each reincarnational relationship is an immensely complex blending of private and mutual purpose, with no guarantee that the anticipated resolution will result. With their vast store of human experience — theta entities usually contain between 500 and 1,000 soul fragments — theta entities juggle the myriad factors involved and fashion a relationship offering at least a possibility of karmic resolution.

The Zeta Level

Beyond the theta level lie infinite gradations of mind, ever — expanding aggregations of consciousness ultimately leading back to the undifferentiated Universal Mind. These realms, if they hold knowledge of Earth at all, do so only as a distant awareness held by their soul fragments, a few highlights of lives spent in human or animal form, diluted by the vast experience gained in other realms. There is one exception to this vast gulf between earth and higher realms, which we term the zeta level. This is the level from which we — and many other entities — communicate.

Having passed through and mastered the knowledge of the astral, omega, theta, and other levels, zeta — level entities are a unique lot in that they participate in one final "altruistic" venture with Earth before releasing all involvement. To do so requires, first, that entities at this level have experienced life in human form, so they retain knowledge of how the system operates from the perspective of those enmeshed within it; and, almost always, that they shared a prior lifetime with their present human hosts, creating a "bridge" of intertwined consciousness and experience which serves as the nexus of the relationship.

The zeta level offers its entities an opportunity to zero in on and closely observe the workings of one planet within the physical system, as a "case study" of the broader principles mastered before reaching this stage. Of particular interest are worlds in trouble — where something in the structure and operation of the system has gone awry, where the creatures involved are maladapted to their circumstances. We trust we need not offer copious evidence that this is the condition of your planet now, ravaged by a mercurial experimental species (this means you).

With your powers of thought, memory, discernment, and speech, you are able to forge social alliances and manipulate the environment in ways no other species can match. You can fashion clothing and footwear to house your tender nakedness, agriculture to release you from constant foraging, machines to carry your burdens for you. Reason — not your maladapted bodies — makes you the masters of the planet.

And yet you are far more than your rational minds. You are deeply spiritual creatures, immersed in myth and fairy tale, inspired to altruism and savagery by religious beliefs lacking a whit of rational foundation. You are emotional beings, moved to tears and sacrifice and war by the mercurial swirl of emotions running roughshod over reason in their all — consuming intensity. You are psychologically complex, your minds a dissonant chorus of clashing voices, desires, and impulses.

So this experimental species — capable of love and barbarity, art and devastation, reason and madness, truth and deception — stands at a crucial juncture now, struggling to synthesize its conflicting intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and psychological aspects into a unified, integrated mind — field; a suprahuman consciousness. If it succeeds, the result will be a race which is truly the masters of the planet — and with humility takes its proper place in the natural world that sustains it.

Because this transition is so critical, and its outcome so uncertain, this era has seen an unprecedented intervention by zeta — level entities into the earth sphere in the form of "channeled" entities. The intention is to "tip the scales" in favor of accelerating the species' struggle toward holism and humility, and thus to avert eco — suicide.

Beyond the Zeta

The goal of all life, all consciousness, is ultimately to return to the source, the Universal Mind, and contribute one's store of learning gathered along the journey. Each of you, in your private life, is driven by this fundamental ambition — to live and prosper, realize your highest potential, gather diverse experience, leave your mark on the world. In doing so you take the first steps on a journey of unimaginable expanse and depth, from the earth plane to the astral plane, through the spiritual hierarchy, to the Universal Mind. Happy trails!

Excerpted from Spirit Wisdom II: The Enlightened Warrior's Guide to Personal and Cultural Transformation. Ramón Stevens has been publishing the material of Spirit Teacher Alexander for over 20 years; their collaboration has produced five books.
Website: www.alexandermaterial.com.