NOTE: These teachings are taken from Lord Maitreya’s book Master Keys to Spiritual Freedom.

Excerpts from Key 4

The purpose of this universe

As I have said, the material universe is made from the same basic substance as the spiritual realm. Yet the light in the material universe has been lowered to a different vibrational spectrum. We might also say that the lower vibration makes the light less intense, and thus it is not – yet – able to fill the material universe with light. That is why the space between solar systems and galaxies appears to be empty. It appears as if there are huge areas with no light and that only certain localized areas – your sun being one example – radiate light from within themselves. We might say that there is still more darkness than light in the material universe. The effect is that you cannot see energies above a certain vibration, and thus you cannot see that physical matter is actually made from finer energies that stream into the material universe from a higher vibrational spectrum. We might say that there is an observation horizon beyond which most people cannot perceive with their current level of consciousness.

The density of matter makes it possible for people to create and maintain the illusion that there is no God or that they are separated from God by an impenetrable barrier. This sense of separation from God inevitably leads people to see themselves as separate, independent beings. People can see themselves as being separate from other people, which gives rise to the illusion that you can harm other people, other forms of life and even the physical planet, without harming yourself. This, of course, is the essential cause of all human conflict and atrocities, for if people knew they were hurting themselves by hurting others, most of them would modify their behavior accordingly. Only a few very disturbed people would deliberately hurt themselves, but in reality, even they do not fully understand what they are doing. We might say that the purpose of life in the material realm is to overcome the limited perception of reality, so that you can experience directly that you are not a separate being but an extension of your source, of your Creator.

***
Let me now ask you to imagine that you travel up through the various levels of the spiritual realm until you reach the highest level. This is the level described in the Bible as God saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending” (Revelation 21:6). This is the highest level of the world of form, because it is the first level of the Creator expressing itself in form. The Creator starts by expressing itself as two polarities, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the expanding and the contracting forces, the out-breath and the in-breath, the Yang and the Yin. On the human level, these forces are often seen as the Father and the Mother or the masculine and feminine, although they are far beyond human sexuality.

The point is that as the first level of expression, the One Creator expresses itself as two polarities. These are not opposites, and they do not cancel out each other. They are complementary forces that supplement and enhance each other. When they meet in a balanced manifestation, they multiply each other and become more. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, and thus a new expression of life is created. This is how all the succeeding levels of the world of form are created, as we will later explore. My point here is to show that the One Creator manifests itself as two polarities, yet beyond the highest level of the world of form there is still the One Creator. In other words, there is only One God, and although “without him was not anything made that was made” the One God never ceases to be One, the indivisible whole.

Many religions on Earth talk about this One God, simply using different names and slightly different descriptions for the same reality. Yet before we can go any further, we need to address a misconception that has crept into several religions. This misunderstanding states that there is nothing beyond the One God, that this superior or ultimate God is all there is to God. This is partly due to a lack of perception and understanding of anything beyond. Yet it is also caused by the human ego’s need for superiority. Many religious people have a need to feel that their religion is the only true one and is superior to any other religion. And if your religion is the only true one and is the only one worshiping the ultimate God, then it must be the best religion on Earth—or so the ego reasons. This war of religions has prevented the Ascended Host from releasing a higher understanding of God on this planet. Yet a critical mass has been reached, and we have determined to release this higher understanding for those who have eyes to see.

***
Again, reality is not linear, but I will give you a linear image. Imagine a figure-eight. It has an upper figure, a lower figure and a center—the point in the nexus. Your Creator is represented by the nexus, the meeting point between the upper and the lower figure. The lower figure is a representation of the world of form that is created by your Creator and in which you live. The upper figure is – a highly inadequate – representation of a level of God, a reality of God, that is beyond your Creator. This level of God I would like to call the Pure Being of God or the Allness of God’s Presence.

What is this Allness? It is something that cannot be accurately described or represented by any of the linear words and images that the human mind can fathom. It is beyond the world of form and cannot be represented by anything in the world of form. In this world you find separate forms that are set apart from each other, and thus they are defined by their differences. These differences are also limitations that set limits for each form and set it apart from the whole. Naturally, this causes people to focus on the differences and prevents them from seeing this world as a coherent whole. They see the trees but not the forest. In the Allness, there are no separate forms, no contradictions and no limitations. Yet the human mind finds it difficult to fathom a world without separateness, and thus it might be the wiser course of action to say nothing about it. Yet you need to understand certain things in order to understand why your universe was created.

In this universe you are used to having a separate sense of existence. You clearly see yourself as an individual being who is separated from other people. You are separated from nature and the rest of the vast universe in which you live. You experience that you have a separate will, and therefore you can create – by using the mind’s ability to imagine and conceptualize – the illusion that you can harm others without harming yourself. You can conceptualize that there is a God, but you tend to see yourself as separated from God. Thus, you tend to see his will as being outside of, possibly in opposition to, your own. You might conceptualize that God has laws, but you tend to see them as put upon you by an external authority and you might see them as restricting your freedom to do what you want as a separate being. As you walk the spiritual path, you might build a stronger connection to this external God. You may eventually build a sense of oneness with your God, as Jesus expressed when he said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). Yet you still see yourself as an “I” that has become one with the “It” or the greater “I.”

In the Allness, no such sense of separation is possible. There are individual Beings – I prefer to call them Presences – in the Allness. They do have a sense of individual awareness, but they also have an awareness of not only being one with the Allness, but being the Allness. They can focus their awareness at a particular “point” – although time and space have no meaning in the Allness – and they can focus on a particular quality of the Allness. Yet they can never lose their ability to be one with, to be everywhere in, the Allness. They can make decisions, so they have freedom of choice. But they cannot make separate decisions in the sense that they can never say that they want to do something that benefits themselves while hurting others. Nor can they seek to elevate themselves as being better or more important than other Beings. Such concepts have no meaning in the Allness. The Presences in the Allness do not have a sense of oneness with God—they are God. It would be unthinkable that they would see God’s laws as put upon them by an external authority. Consequently, it would be unthinkable for them to go against God’s laws or the purpose of creation. They are that law and they define that purpose.

I realize this is difficult to fathom with the linear mind, yet the image I want to give you is that in the Allness, a separate existence simply is not possible. You may think, “Well, but I prefer to be a separate individual.” And that is precisely why you – still – find yourself in this universe. Let me explain.

***
The Presences in the Allness conceived of setting aside a sphere from the Allness. A Presence could then project itself into that sphere and focus itself as a separate Being. It could then create a separate world in that sphere, and this could be a valuable learning experience for this Being. Yet once you have created a sphere in which a separate existence is possible, another possibility opens up. The Being that projects itself into the sphere still has a memory of its existence in the Allness. Yet this being can now create self-conscious extensions of itself, beings that are created without any memory of the Allness, and thus – from their inception – see themselves as separate beings. Because they are created out of the consciousness of their Creator, the Creator can still experience the world through their individual minds. Thus, the Creator can experience what it is like to be a separate being.
Yet precisely because these beings are extensions of the consciousness of the Creator, they have the potential to expand their individual sense of identity until they attain a sense of oneness with their Creator. They can then have the option to take on the role of a Creator, and they can even go beyond and enter the Allness as individual Presences. Because they started out their self-awareness as separate beings, they can enter the Allness with the memory of what it is like to be separated from the Allness, giving them a special sense of appreciation for the Allness. They can then share this appreciation with the Presences that remained in the Allness, and thus everyone grows from the interplay between the Allness and that which is less than the Allness.

In short, the Presences in the Allness realized that there is value in creating a process through which a being can start out with the sense of identity as a separate and limited being who is focused on itself in a world that is separated from the Allness. This being can then gradually grow in self-awareness until it expands its sense of self to encompass the Allness. The being can then enter the Allness with the memory of what it is like to climb toward the Allness, thus having a greater sense of appreciation than a being who has never experienced anything but the Allness. This process is what I will call the Path of Oneness to signify that it takes you from a sense of separation toward a sense of oneness with the Allness, oneness with all life.

***
How was your particular universe created? A Presence in the Allness decided that it wanted to experience what it is like to be separated from the Allness and create forms that are separated from the Allness. It started by projecting a spherical boundary around itself, creating the illusion of a division within the Allness.

Within this sphere, the Presence now contracted its consciousness – in the Allness everything is consciousness – into a single point, a singularity, within the center of the sphere. This created a sphere that was not filled with the Allness, and thus it opened up the potential for creating separate forms within this sphere. Yet in the beginning there were no separate forms in the sphere, neither was there the fullness of the Allness. Thus, the sphere was void, which is a concept that you find in several religions.

The singularity in the center of the void now became the focal point for the Being that is the Creator of your universe. You might notice that the concept of a singularity in the center of a void is similar to the theory of the Big Bang, developed by modern science. Science says that before the Big Bang, all of the matter and energy in the material universe was compressed into a singularity. From there, it expanded outward in a giant and uncontrolled explosion that gradually gave rise to an incredibly complex system of galaxies and solar systems—yet this complexity has arisen spontaneously from a random process. In reality, the picture is very different, as we will see later.

In the singularity of the Creator, there was no matter as it is known in the material universe where you live. There was only pure consciousness, pure Being. The creative process began when the Creator projected its own Being, its own consciousness, outward. This did not happen in an uncontrolled and unplanned explosion. On the contrary, the Creator first projected itself as a substance that we have earlier called Light. By the creation of this light, the Creator had formed the first polarity, namely between itself and the Light. The Creator is the active, expanding or Alpha principle, whereas the Light is the passive, contracting or Omega principle. If we follow a traditional religious imagery and call the Creator for God the Father, then the Light becomes God the Mother, or the Mother Light, the Ma-ter Light.

The Mother Light is in itself formless, but it has the potential to take on absolutely any form. The Mother Light is created out of the Creator’s own consciousness and Being, so the Mother Light has consciousness. Yet it does not have consciousness as an individual being that is separated from the Creator. It has awareness as a Being that is an extension of the Creator. The consequence is that the Mother Light cannot – in and of itself – create any manifest or separate form. The Mother Light can take on form only when it is acted upon by the Creator or by self-conscious, separate beings created by the Creator. In the most general sense, we can call such a being a co-creator although – as we will discus later – there are various types of self-conscious beings in the world of form.

In the beginning, the Mother Light existed only as a concept – a state of pure consciousness – and there was not yet any manifest, or expressed, light. As the first act of manifest creation, the Creator projected itself outward in the form of the Mother Light. By using the Mother Light, the Creator created a sphere that was set apart from the void. In the void is nothingness (as opposed to Allness), and the Creator now created a sphere in the center of the void. This sphere had a certain intensity of light, setting it apart from the nothingness of the void yet still being far away from the intensity of light found in the Allness.

As the next act of creation, the Creator created certain structures in the first sphere. These structures were quite different from what you find in the material universe, but the main point is that they provided a platform for life, for intelligent, self-conscious beings. Thus, the Creator now projected itself into the first sphere in the form of such self-conscious beings. These beings were extensions of the Creator, individualizations created from the Creator’s consciousness. Yet they were created as separate beings with a separate sense of identity. They did not have the full self-awareness of the Creator, and their self-awareness was focused upon their separate beings. They did not have an awareness of the Allness, and they were focused on the sphere in which they came into being. They did not have a direct awareness of themselves as being extensions of the Creator. However, they did have a direct connection to the Creator in the sense that the Creator served as a teacher or tutor for them.

The first self-conscious beings were sent into the new sphere with the command to “Multiply and have dominion!” They were given the gifts of individuality, self-awareness, imagination, free will and rational thinking. They were given the ability to command the Mother Light through the power of their minds, and they were given a certain amount of light that was theirs to command as a start. By using their creative faculties, they could create more structures in the sphere, thus gradually filling it to greater intensity and complexity. By multiplying their talents (Matthew 25:14), they would receive more light, which would increase their creative powers and also increase the intensity of the light in their own beings. As they used that light and projected it around themselves, they would increase the intensity of the light in their sphere, so that it was further set apart from the nothingness of the void and came closer to the Allness. In doing so, these lifestreams would grow in self-awareness.

They would first realize that their teacher was the Creator. They would then accept themselves as individualizations of God the Father, as extensions of the Creator. They would realize that they were living in the cosmic womb of God the Mother. As the Father and Mother elements came into oneness within their beings, a new self-awareness was born, and they attained a sense of oneness with their Creator without losing their individual awareness. As this oneness became complete, they could eventually make a choice to enter the Allness or they could become creators of their own worlds of form.

After the first sphere had reached a certain intensity of light, the Creator called the self-conscious beings who had mastered the lessons presented by the first sphere – let us call them masters – to participate with it in creating a second sphere. The Creator then projected the Mother Light out from the first sphere to create a second sphere that was set apart from the void. The masters of the first sphere then created certain inanimate structures in this sphere in order to provide a platform for intelligent life. After that, the masters of the first sphere created self-conscious extensions of themselves who were sent into the second sphere with the command to “Multiply and have dominion!”

You can now see the pattern. When the second sphere had reached a critical intensity of light, it too was used as the platform for creating the next sphere. This process of gradually expanding God’s kingdom of light by taking in more and more of the void has gone through a number of stages. The material universe in which you live is the latest stage of this process. In other words, the universe in which you live is the newest sphere in God’s creation. It is still relatively young, which is why there appears to be empty space or darkness left. So far, only relatively few beings in this world have become self-luminous and have ascended to the higher realms.

The Mother Light that makes up the material universe still vibrates at such low frequencies and has such low intensity that it is possible to create the illusion that there is nothing beyond the material universe. Yet your world is nevertheless the extension of a series of concentric, interpenetrating and coexisting spheres that started with the singularity of the Creator. Your world was created out of the same basic substance as the higher spheres, namely the Mother Light, which is made out of the Creator’s consciousness. Without him was not anything made that was made.

***
Let us consider the meaning of consciousness. In the Allness, everything is made from one mind, from one consciousness. We might call it the Mind of God, but if you project human images upon the concept “God,” you will not be able to fathom the consciousness that is the Allness. In the Allness everything is consciousness, meaning that everything is conscious. There are individual Presences in the Allness, and they focus on a particular quality. From your view in this universe, you might see them as the Presence of Infinite Light, the Presence of Unconditional Love, the Presence of God’s Will, the Presence of Oneness etcetera. However, such individual Presences do not see themselves as separated from the Allness or from each other. They are fully aware that they are extensions of the Allness and that they are part of the same whole. Thus, they are all one in the Allness. Likewise, they do not see themselves as extensions of a remote God. They are God, meaning that the Pure Being of God is not in the Allness but is the Allness. In the Allness everything is God and everything is self-aware, meaning that everything is aware of itself as God.

In the created realm in which you live, the world of form, it is possible to create something that is not self-aware. As I said, everything is created out of the consciousness of the Creator, meaning that everything has a form of consciousness. That is why Jesus said that if men should refuse to defend the Christ, the stones would cry out (Luke 19:40). Everything is created from the Mother Light, so everything has – or is – consciousness. Yet it takes a certain complexity before a form can become the focus of self-awareness.

In the Allness, there is nothing that is not self-aware. In the world of form, it is possible to create inanimate forms and animate beings that do not have self-awareness. It is also possible to have self-aware beings who are not aware of their connection to anything beyond themselves, thus not aware that they are extensions of their Creator or aware of the Allness. This makes it possible that in the world of form you can have beings who have a limited self-awareness but have the potential to expand that self-awareness until they attain oneness with the All.

In other words, the entire purpose for this world of form is to give you the opportunity to experience yourself as a separate being with a narrowly focused self-awareness. When you have had enough of this experience, you can step unto a systematic path that will gradually expand your self-awareness, until you can enter the Allness with the memory of what it is like to be outside the Allness, giving you a unique appreciation for the Allness.

***
Where does the process of expanding the spheres of light end? Naturally, it ends when the entire void has been turned into a sphere of light and when every part of that sphere has reached the intensity of light that is the Allness. In other words, what used to be separate and less than the Allness has now become the Allness. Yet this will not – as some religions portray – happen automatically or through some kind of inevitable process. It will happen only as a result of the free-will choices made by the self-aware beings who inhabit God’s spheres. This means that the darkness and limitations found in the world of form will not disappear completely until all self-aware beings have had their full opportunity to experience what it is like to be separate beings living in a world of – self-created – limitations.

You are an extension of your Creator, yet your Creator gave you a sense of identity as a separate being. Your Creator wants you to come home by expanding your sense of self until you attain full oneness with your Creator and with all life. Your Creator knows that coming back to Oneness is the only way for you to feel fully happy, fully whole, fully at peace. Yet your Creator wants you to do this out of a free choice that is based on love. Thus, your Creator has great – although not unlimited – patience with your choices and will allow you to experiment with limitations for a very long time if you prefer.

I know these concepts are most likely far beyond your present religious beliefs and understanding. I understand that it can take some time and contemplation to fully understand these ideas and integrate them. In the coming chapters, I will give you additional teachings to help you make full use of these concepts and relate them to your present situation on Earth. Yet for now I ask you to consider what these concepts can teach you about the meaning of life, the purpose of life. So many people have asked the questions about where they come from, where they are going and whether life truly has any meaning. I hope you can now begin to at least glimpse that these questions actually have meaningful answers.

As you begin to integrate these answers, you will find that an entirely new world, an entirely new world view, opens up to you. You are not a miserable sinner thrust into a hostile universe by some angry God. You are not all alone in a hostile environment where everyone is out to get you. You are not limited to who you are or what you experience right now.

You are an extension of your God. You are your God experiencing itself as a separate being who is on a journey from a lower level of consciousness to the highest level of consciousness that is the Allness. Everything you have experienced here on Earth can give you a valuable perspective on your journey, on yourself and on life. Even the most unpleasant of circumstances can be turned into an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to raise your consciousness and expand your self-awareness. Thus, you have the potential to raise yourself above any circumstances you might be experiencing.

The entire purpose of life is to rise above your present sense of self and attain a greater sense of self. No matter what circumstances you have experienced or do experience, you can never lose the ability to overcome them, to rise higher. Thus, if you do not like your present circumstances, you can unlock your inner potential to overcome them. If you do not like who you are, you can expand your sense of who you are until you transcend any limitation in the material universe.

If this does not give you a different perspective on your current limitations, there can be only one reason. You have not yet had enough of experiencing these circumstances, and thus you have not summoned the will to leave them behind. You are miserable because you want to experience what it is like to be miserable, and you will continue to experience this “reality” until you decide that you have had enough and want to experience a different, a greater, reality. I know this can sound harsh to people who are suffering, so let us move on to consider how you can make use of your ability to transcend any limitation in the world of form.

Excerpts from Key 5

To be MORE, or to be less—that is the real question

My point is that the fact that you see yourself as a separate being makes it possible for you to use your will as if you really were a separate being. Thus, you can convince yourself that your actions do not have consequences that affect you. You can even convince yourself that your actions do not have any (negative) consequences at all. What is the deciding factor between those who are trapped inside this illusion and those who have seen beyond it? It is the level of self-centeredness. The more self-centered you become – the more attached you are to your separate sense of identity – the more blind you are to the reality that all life is one interconnected whole. Thus, you begin to believe that you have a right to do whatever you want and that you can get away with doing whatever you want. If you look at history, you will see that some of the worst human atrocities were perpetrated by the most self-centered people on the planet. One of the inescapable consequences of giving separate beings free will is that it is possible that one being can build the illusion that it is the center of the universe, that it is the only being that matters and that it has a right to do whatever it wants without considering how it affects others. A separate being might even believe that all other separate beings are here only to serve its own needs.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. If your Creator had given all self-transcending beings free will without setting up any safety mechanism to guide the use of that free will, it would have given an unfair advantage to those who had become self-centered. The more self-centered you become, the more willing you are to disregard how your actions affect others. You are willing to control others and to destroy those who will not be controlled. So the more insensitive and aggressive you become, the more willing you are to use your free will to control, harm or destroy others. If there was no mechanism to restrain the most self-centered beings, this world of form could have descended into anarchy with no hope of ever emerging from this state of chaos. I know it might seem as if the law of the jungle reigns supreme on Earth, but that is not actually the case, as we will see.

Let us remember that the purpose of this world of form is to give you the opportunity to start out with a separate sense of identity and gradually expand your sense of self until you become the Allness. Yet because you have free will, it is possible for you to go in the opposite direction. In the process of doing so, you might imprison or destroy other self-transcending beings before you finally destroy yourself. In other words, free will gives you the opportunity to create a downward spiral that traps you behind a wall of self-created illusions. This can make you blind to the consequences of your choices. Thus, once you have become blinded by self-centeredness, you can no longer choose to pull yourself out. You are now hurting yourself without fully realizing what you are doing, and thus you are not truly making free choices.

An intelligent and loving Creator obviously would not want this to happen to any of the extensions of itself. Thus, it was necessary to set up certain laws that could accompany the Law of Free Will, creating a safety net that could give separate beings all possible opportunities for not destroying themselves.

Excerpts from Key 7

Understanding the cosmic growth process

In the preceding chapters I have given teachings that give you the big picture for the entire world of form and all beings in it. I will now focus specifically on helping you understand your situation as a human being on Earth.

Let us begin by summarizing the process of how a sphere is created. The first step is that a sphere is set apart from the void. Masters from the higher spheres create certain structures in the new sphere and, within the larger framework of the laws defined by the Creator, they define certain specific laws for the new sphere. Self-aware beings are then created to help the new sphere ascend, either by working from the spiritual realm (angels) or by helping to co-create it from within (co-creators). As the sphere reaches a critical intensity of light and organization, it “ascends” and becomes a permanent part of the spiritual realm.

When a sphere ascends, it becomes so filled with light that there is no longer room for the illusion of separateness. The beings who were sent into the sphere started out with a separate sense of identity, yet by transcending themselves they helped raise up their sphere. When a critical mass of beings reach the mastery of oneness with their source, they have brought their sphere to the point of ascension. As one sphere goes through the process of ascending, a new sphere is created by being set apart from the void. The ascending sphere is becoming so filled with light that the illusion of a separate identity cannot be maintained by the beings in that sphere. Yet in the newly created sphere, there is still such a low intensity of light that darkness or shadows can exist, and thus the illusion of a separate existence is possible. A new “generation” of beings is born and sent into the new sphere, beings who start out with a limited sense of identity and an awareness of themselves as separate beings.

I have explained that the very first sphere was created by the Creator itself. Thus, the beings who were sent into – or rather created in – that sphere were created directly by the Creator. The first sphere was designed in such a way that the structures in it were less defined, more fluid or less dense than what you see in the material world. We might say that the Ma-ter Light out of which the first sphere was created vibrated at a higher level and therefore everything in that sphere was more transparent than matter in your sphere. The consequence is that although the beings in the first sphere started out with a separate sense of self, it was far easier for them to overcome separateness than it is for the beings in the material universe. The first beings could easily see that there was something beyond their sphere, that it was created by a Being beyond themselves and that it was sustained by a constant stream of spiritual light that originated with the Creator and was stepped down to their level of vibration. They knew they were not alone and that there was something or someone beyond their own sphere. In other words, it was relatively easy for the first beings to ascend and attain the mastery of oneness with their source.

When the next sphere was created, the beings who had attained mastery in the first sphere helped create the second sphere. It was the Creator who set the second sphere apart from the void, and he also defined the laws for that sphere. Within that framework, the masters from the first sphere designed certain structures that could serve as a platform for life in the second sphere. These structures were more specific, more defined, than the structures in the first sphere. The masters from the first sphere used their own experiences to design these structures. It was part of the Creator’s plan that the structures in the second sphere should be more defined, more complex, more dense, than in the first sphere. In this way the second sphere would be one step further removed from oneness, making it more challenging for the beings in the second sphere to overcome separation.

If the beings in the second sphere had been created as the beings in the first sphere, the density of the second sphere might have been difficult for them to overcome. It would have been similar to taking a group of children and asking them to run a country. Yet the beings in the second sphere were created out of the consciousness of the masters from the first sphere. Thus, these second generation beings were designed based on the experience of these masters, meaning that they had a basis for overcoming the greater separation. This equipped them to deal with the density of the second sphere, making it possible that the Creator – through the second generation beings – could experience a greater sense of separation while minimizing the risk that these beings would become lost in separation. This is somewhat similar to the school system on Earth. Students start out by learning addition and subtraction, which gives them a basis for learning multiplication. This in turn gives them a basis for learning more advanced math, eventually leading to the university level.

The plan of the Creator is that the spheres are created as a continuum from less dense to more dense, from closer to oneness to further removed from oneness, from less complex to greater complexity. The specific structures in each succeeding sphere are designed by those who attained mastery in the previous sphere, but beings in all previous spheres are involved in the design of a new sphere. This means that each new sphere becomes more sophisticated, more specific, more expressed, which necessitates that the Ma-ter Light has a lower vibration. Greater complexity means a greater variety of different forms, and only light of a denser vibration can give rise to greater differentiation. We might say that the matter that makes up the material universe is more dense than the “stuff” in the spiritual realm. Matter is so dense that you cannot see that it is made from vibrating energy, that it is made from spiritual light that has been stepped down in vibration. You cannot directly perceive – at least not with the state of consciousness that is currently considered normal on Earth – that there is something beyond the material universe.

The higher density makes it more challenging for the beings sent into the new sphere to overcome separateness and come into oneness. Yet in their striving to overcome separation, they can lean on the beings who have gone before them in higher spheres. Thus, any given being is not truly separate – no man is an island – but has access to the entire hierarchy of beings that have gone before it and out of which it is the latest expression. It is somewhat like a family tree that gives you access to the experience of all previous generations, giving you the option of learning from the mistakes of others so you do not have to reinvent the wheel or repeat the same mistakes.