Consider the difference between spirituality and religion. Higher awareness is not supporting religion as it is generally known in the world. Why not? Because religion separates people from their God, from Christ, from the Buddha, from the inner experience of reality. Religion, as it has been known on earth in the large religions that have dominated countries, cultures, and civilizations, is not of God, is not coming from God, is not coming from higher awareness.
Many will be startled and will object to this statement because they will say that, surely, their religion came from a direct revelation from a divine source. There are, indeed, several mainstream religions that make the claim that they are based on what is, in fact, genuine, divine revelation. Yet, these mainstream religions are not based on the divine revelation; they are based on a human interpretation of the divine revelation. And, herein, lies the difference.
Spirituality, or shall we call it mysticism, is different from religion, in that mysticism and spirituality does not seek to separate you from your God, from a direct, inner experience of a higher state of consciousness, even a direct inner experience of your own, inner being—pure awareness. This is the all-important difference, and it is one of the initiations that humankind will be faced with in coming years. A new cycle has dawned upon earth, and it is time that human beings in greater numbers, certainly all among the top 10% and many among the 80% of the general population, awaken to the difference between religion and spirituality or mysticism.
The essence of a mystical approach
What is, then, the essence of the mystical approach to spirituality as opposed to the religious approach? Religion is based on the very subtle concept that there is a distance, a gap, a separation, between spirit and matter, between human beings and their God or the spiritual beings in a higher realm.
Spirituality that is not internalized becomes religion. The new cycle that has dawned is a cycle where more and more people need to awaken to the difference between a form of spirituality that is based on the illusion of a gap and that actually upholds this illusion and then, the true spirituality that seeks to help the individual overcome the gap and have a direct experience of the reality of a higher state of consciousness, of the reality of a higher realm, and of higher spiritual beings—having that experience of reality directly within themselves.
The spiritual approach taught by the Buddha
Religion sets up doctrines and dogmas, and it says: “Believe in this, and you will go to Heaven. Deny this, and you will go to Hell.” This, then, puts people in the situation where they have to accept or reject something that is external to them, to their own minds. What did the Buddha attempt to teach 2,500 years ago? That you need to look within to master your own mind and that you need to realize that the key to spirituality is to raise your consciousness. This is not a matter of following outer doctrines.
The Brahmins of the Hindu religion opposed the Buddha and his teaching. They were not quite as radical as those who opposed Jesus and nailed him to a cross, but they came pretty close. They did everything that they could to discredit the Buddha publicly, while he was still in embodiment on earth. Had there been better technology for communication and he had been able to spread his teachings even further, the manipulators would have done much more to discredit him, as they always do to the true representatives of higher awareness. Truly, the manipulators seek to discredit any teaching that will awaken people to the reality of spirituality, as opposed to the illusion of religion.
Why people accept their beliefs
When you accept a teaching that is external to you, what are you doing? You believe something that you do not experience the reality of within yourself. This is, again, a statement that some will object to, and again, there is a discussion here of the more subtle aspects.
Now, in one sense, we can say that all human beings believe what they believe because they have had a certain experience of reality that has caused them to accept their beliefs as not being beliefs but being somehow real or having authority. The Brahmins of the Hindu religion, as the scribes and Pharisees of the Jewish religion, were absolutely convinced that their religion, their interpretation, their scriptures, were real. If you had said to them what was just said about the difference between religion and spirituality, they would have objected and said that they have had inner experiences that showed them the reality of the Hindu religion. Indeed, this is true.
As a human being, you have many fundamental psycho-spiritual needs that are not generally recognized by western culture. One of these needs is that you need to have a foundation for functioning in the material world. If you have no psycho-spiritual foundation, you cannot function normally. You might end up in a straightjacket, or you might end up in various forms of seeking to dull the mind through substances, chemical or otherwise. You might throw yourself into an endless race for more and more material possessions to cover over your inner insecurity.
All human beings need to have some foundation, something that they accept or believe to be real. How do you come to the point where you accept a religious scripture or a political ideology or even a materialistic philosophy as being real? How is it possible, for example that some can claim to have had inner experiences showing them that the Bible is the literal word of God, while others will claim to have also had inner experiences showing them the fallacy of religion and that the world is entirely material?
The answer to this enigma – which truly is not an enigma considered by many people, but nevertheless, an enigma that needs to be considered by more and more people – is indeed that you have an inner experience based on your present state of consciousness. This is what the Buddha explained in the opening verses of the Dhammapada.
Your perception and mental state
At the higher levels of your being, there is what is called a mental state. This is what we could call your identity body. In your identity body, you have accepted a certain outlook on life, a certain sense of who you are in relation to the world, perhaps even in relation to God.
Most people are not consciously aware of this. In fact, even most spiritual students are not consciously aware of this. It requires much work of cleaning your energy field and meditation and contemplation to uncover your deeper beliefs about your identity. This is the work that people must do in the coming years in order to pass the initiations that will be forthcoming.
This mental state at the identity level gives rise to what the Buddha, in the Dhammapada, called perception. Your perceptions are your thoughts, your conscious beliefs, your feelings, or at least the feelings are the consequences, the outcomes, of your perception. When you go into the world and perceive the world, you see the world. Your perception of the world is defined by your higher mental state, the state in your identity body. You are not aware that your perception is colored by your mental state. You think that your perception is real because you are not aware that your perception springs from your mental state and shows you an image, a mental image. You think that your perception shows you the world as it really is.
At the identity level, perception and mental state are intertwined, meaning that you perceive the world based on your basic state of mind. For example, you may perceive the world based on the illusion that you are a separate being. This perception at the identity level gives rise to a state of mind at the mental level. This mental state of mind cannot override or question the state of mind or the perception at the identity level.
Your state of mind at the mental level affects how you see the world at this level. This in turn creates a state of mind at the emotional level. Again, you cannot question the mental level while you are focused on the emotional, and the same holds true for the physical level. The path to higher awareness is a process whereby you disentangle the core of your mind from the lower levels and become more aware at what is going on in your mind. You first become aware how your actions spring from your emotions, then how your feelings come from your thoughts and then how your thinking is produced by your sense of identity. You can then disentangle yourself from the separate self and become aware that you are a formless spiritual being.
Question and expand your perception
If you see yourself, at the level of your identity body, as a separate being – separated from your God, separated from the world – then you will be susceptible to one of the religions in the world that reinforce this image of the separation between God and man. It may be the Buddhic religion, the Hindu religion, Islam, Christianity, or any other religion. Therefore, a person can have an inner experience that they will even claim to be a spiritual or mystical experience, showing them that their particular religion is real that their scriptures are real. They’re absolutely convinced that this is so.
It is one of the great challenges of the path of higher awareness to come to the point where you understand, with the higher levels of your mind, that your perception cannot be trusted. All of the more aware people have already started to acquire this understanding because you know that your physical senses cannot be trusted. That is why you are open to the idea that there is something beyond the material world, the world that can be detected by the senses. Even though you do not see the non-material world, you are open to its existence because you have had an inner experience that there is something beyond the material realm, something beyond what most people call normal, human awareness.
There are many religious people who debate endlessly about the value of faith and belief, but faith and belief are not the determining factors in what you accept about life. The determining factor is your perception. You may think that you have come to have a conversion experience, and that you were converted to a particular religion, as some people in the West claim to have found Jesus. You may think that this experience has caused you to believe, but in reality, the central aspect of this experience is that, for a brief moment, your mind was able to connect to something beyond your normal perception. You experienced a contrast between your normal perception and something higher. This “something higher,” therefore, seemed to have a greater reality than your normal state of awareness.
If you do not understand that perception can still be colored by your higher mental state, you might think that the experience you had was a pure experience or an ultimate experience. There are many spiritual and religious people who have had genuine experiences of something beyond their normal state of consciousness. Yet, they fail to understand the all-important truth that even a genuine experience is not necessarily the ultimate experience.
Going beyond your normal mental state
This experience might be beyond your normal perception, but it may not be beyond your normal mental state. Only when you have risen to a certain level on the path, will you be able to question and expand your mental state.
You see how a person can be influenced, for example, by a charismatic preacher or Guru to have a conversion experience. The person snaps out of his or her normal level of perception, experiences something that seems more real, but then makes the mistake of thinking – because this experience of reality came in a certain outer context – that the outer context must have reality. Therefore, the person now begins to accept everything said by the preacher or Guru, instead of using the experience of a higher reality as just the starting point for having more and more of these experiences until you have experiences that are not tied to any belief system on earth.
Spirituality that is not internalized becomes religion. Higher awareness has, for a long time now, been giving teachings that, from a certain viewpoint, we can call spiritual teachings because their aim is to give you a direct, inner experience, to put you in contact with something beyond your normal state of mind. Yet, if you do not use the teachings and the tools to rise beyond your perception and start to question your mental state, then you are not actually internalizing the teaching.
Then, that spiritual teaching will gradually become for you an outer religion that you follow. You may have started following it because you had a genuine experience of something beyond your normal perception, but you have not gone further and permanently raised your perception by questioning the underlying mental state.
Spiritual teachers are not idols of worship
Higher awareness has no desire whatsoever for teachings to be turned into a mainstream or dominant religion. This is entirely possible, as you can witness by the fact that the teachings the Buddha gave 2,500 years ago have been turned into a mainstream religion. The teachings that Jesus gave 2,000 years ago have been turned into a mainstream religion.
What is it that can make a certain teaching become mainstream, as opposed to being a fringe teaching that only appeals to those who are willing to question their perception or their mental state? Higher awareness has no desire whatsoever to control you. It has no desire whatsoever to come between you and your God. Higher awareness does not want you to worship it in front of, or before, the Creator. “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” The beings of higher awareness have no desire to become Gods that stand before the Creator in your vision.
Yet, there is a reality of hierarchy, and in order to get to God, you need to go through hierarchy. The beings of higher awareness are the link in hierarchy that is right above you, and that is why you cannot get to God without going through higher awareness.
There are those on earth who claim that the beings of higher awarenes are not needed, perhaps that they are impostors who seek to set themselves up between people and God. But it is not the beings of higher awareness who have set themselves up between people and God; it is God who has set them up between people and God. Not that they stand between people and God, but that you cannot, as a human being embodied on earth, make contact directly with the Creator without going through the hierarchy of the beings of higher awareness.
You can use your ability to step outside of your perception filter, even outside your mental state. You can experience the Creator, but it does not happen by you going directly to the Creator with nothing in between. It happens by you going through the chain of hierarchy. You may not notice this. There are people who have had genuine experiences of the Creator and who have not been aware that those experiences were facilitated by the hierarchy of beings that is the chain between humans and the Creator.
The reason for this is simple. The beings of higher awareness have no desire to come between you and your God. If you are able to raise your consciousness, they become transparent, and you might not see them. This is perfectly in order. They are not here to take credit.
Higher awareness is here to make humankind aware that – by making use of higher awareness in its natural, God-designed role – you will make it much easier for yourself to have genuine spiritual experiences that will not stop your progress and turn you into a religious follower. Instead, higher awareness aims to turn you into mystics who never stop, who are never satisfied by anything in the material world, even the teachings in the material world, for they are only stepping stones to the direct experience.
Religions and Satanism
What is religion? Well, the stark reality is that most mainstream religions on earth are Satanism in disguise. How can one make such a startling statement? It is really very simple when you understand what Satan is. In the western culture – based on the Bible and the teachings of Christianity, including the Book of Revelation – you have the concept of Lucifer and the concept or name of Satan.
What is the difference between Lucifer and Satan. They actually represent two aspects of the misuse, the perversion, of the most basic elements of creation, namely the two forces depicted in the yin and the yang, often called the masculine and the feminine, the Alpha and the Omega. Lucifer has perverted the Alpha, the masculine aspect. Satan has perverted the feminine aspect, the Omega aspect.
This is what they represent. This is not to say that this is accomplished by two particular beings only, but for the purpose of using the cultural background that you have in the western world, we can say that Satan represents the misuse of the feminine element of creation, and Lucifer represents the misuse of the masculine element of creation.
When you have a perversion of either of these two elements, you cannot find balance, you cannot find the Middle Way of higher awareness. If you cannot find the Middle Way, you cannot make genuine spiritual progress. You cannot ascend from earth. You cannot enter a higher realm, whether you call it Nirvana, Heaven or anything else.
Why are most religions on earth Satanism in disguise? Because they have perverted the feminine aspect of creation, the feminine force of creation. It is time that humankind begins to understand the wisdom of the mother, which has, in the Christian, mystical tradition, been called the Divine Sophia. You may know of the scripture called the Pistis Sophia, where this concept is presented. Yet, there are other sources, so what is the true wisdom of the Mother?
The wisdom of Father and Mother
The wisdom of the Father is that you are a co-creator with God. You have been given free will. Within the parameters set for planet earth, the Law of Free Will mandates that you have a right to experiment with your free will. The law also mandates that you will reap what you sow—you will make karma. You will experience the conditions that you project out by using your free will to direct the faculties, the co-creative faculties, of your mind.
The Alpha aspect is that you are a co-creator that you have free will, and that you have the right to experiment with your co-creative abilities in the environment in which you have taken embodiment. The Omega aspect, the wisdom of the Mother, is that any choice you make has consequences, and those consequences have a certain longevity in time and space.
This means that when you have made a certain choice, you cannot instantly undo that choice because the impulse that you have sent out into the four levels of the material universe will cycle through those levels, and it will come back to you. When it does come back, it may very well limit your ability to make completely free choices in your new return of karma.
The perversions of the masculine and the feminine
What has happened on earth is that there has been both a perversion of the masculine and the feminine aspect. The perversion of the masculine has caused, among other things, the arise of the illusion that you should be able to do anything you want, that there should be nothing that restricts your freedom. This is what you see in the western world in the many people who have abandoned traditional religion, meaning mainstream Christianity.
They do not want to have any doctrines or rules that restrict how they live their lives. Truly, this is a necessary stage on the spiritual path because if a soul has accepted this outer religion that claims that you can follow rules and this will take you to heaven, then you need to go through a certain stage of rebelling against this consciousness before you can move on to a higher level.
Nevertheless, this denial of any restriction of your freedom, which is a perversion of the father, naturally opens you up to a perversion of the mother where you simply do not understand the cycles of karmic return. Thus, when things happen, people do not understand why, and they become resentful. Some resent God, some resent the Mother, and this gives rise to hatred of the Father and hatred of the Mother.
The outcome of this scenario is that people are now in a situation where they experience that their choices are limited by the matter world, the world of the Mother. Given that people have another desire, another need, to understand their situation, mainstream religions have now been perverted by the satanic consciousness which says two things.
Number one, it says that you can look at the conditions in the material world and use them to make inferences and statements about what the reality of the spiritual realm is like. The effect of this state of consciousness is precisely what you see in many religious scriptures, such as the Old Testament, where people have projected the images of the human consciousness, the characteristics of the human consciousness, upon God. They have created the angry and judgmental God in the sky who will smite their enemies or justify that they themselves smite their enemies—men, women and children.
This is one perversion of the Mother: that higher awareness can be known or defined based on the conditions that exist in the material world. The other perversion of the Mother is that higher awareness either cannot express itself in this world, or when it does so, should conform to the conditions already here. You see this in the western tradition in the desire of Peter to make Jesus conform to his mental image of what should or should not happen to the Christ in embodiment. What was the reaction of Jesus: “Get thee behind me Satan, for thou art an offense to me. Thou savourest not the things that be of God but the things that be of men.”
Christ helps you transcend
Jesus was a representative of the universal Christ consciousness, which is the consciousness sent by higher awareness to help you transcend the consciousness that has created your own karmic return. It is the deliverer because it is the only way for you to transcend the very consciousness that has created your present situation. It is the only way for humankind to transcend the very consciousness that has caused them to collectively create the current situation on earth.
Christ then – or any true representative of the spiritual realm – comes to help you go beyond your perception, even beyond the conditions of the material world. What is it that Satan whispers in people’s ears that they must do? They must take the representative of Christ and force him to conform to their perception. But how can the Christ help you transcend your perception, if you demand that the Christ should conform to your perception or you will not listen to the Christ?
How Lucifer perverted the Father
This is the catch-22 that many people have created for themselves. It has not only come from the perversion of the Mother. It has also come from the Luciferian perversion of the Father relating to free will, denying that you either have it, or denying that you still have it after having made unwise choices in the past.
In the reality of higher awareness, you see that you cannot make a choice that cannot be undone through another choice. This is what Lucifer denied or attempted to make people deny. He attempted to make people believe that they could make certain choices for which there was no redemption, such as the concept of original sin.
Again, there is a subtlety. Yes, you cannot overcome the choices made by the human consciousness by staying in the human consciousness. Lifetimes ago, you accepted a certain identity for yourself. This became your higher mental state at the identity level. It has determined your perception of life.
Your perception of life is not simply that you receive sense impressions. Perception also has an alpha aspect, the active aspect, where you project out, but what you project is based upon what you have taken in.
You now see a situation where humankind collectively have created many limiting conditions on earth. You now take an individual human being who perceives the conditions currently found on earth. Based on this perception, the person then directs an impulse into the four levels of the material universe—the cosmic mirror. This creates karma.
When the karma comes back, the person will have to deal with it, and naturally, the person wants to escape it. But you cannot escape it with the same level of perception and the same mental state that created the karma in the first place. You will only seek to compensate or get away from it and that will only create another karmic impulse. All of a sudden, you are in a downward spiral that leads you to feel like you are drowning in the Sea of Samsara—and you are. You are drowning in your own karmic return and the collective karmic return created by humankind.
Yes, you cannot escape this on your own. You do need the Christ. You do need a higher state of consciousness. Yet, for that higher awareness to deliver you, you must make the choice to question your perception, your mental state, to abandon them and to accept Christ as the higher perception, the higher reality.
Yet, because of the combination of the perversion of the Alpha and the Omega, the perversion of the Divine Father and the Divine Mother, many people are so attached to their perception and their mental state that they think their current perception is more real than what is offered by the representatives of Christ. Therefore, they say to the representatives of Christ: “You are not real. You are a false teacher. You are a false guru. You have a false teaching.” How many times, have people reacted this way?
There is no ultimate experience
Many people are actually ready at inner levels to embrace the teachings of higher awareness, but they have not yet come to the point of consciously being willing to question their current perception, even the sense of reality that they have. As long as you are in embodiment, it is always possible to have a higher, more pure, mystical experience. There is no ultimate experience possible while you are on earth. You may find any number of gurus in the world who claim that they have achieved some ultimate state of consciousness or authority. You may find any number of people who simply long to believe in this claim, thinking that if they follow this perfect guru, they themselves must be guaranteed to be saved.
Again, this is a necessary stage where people have to go into the School of Hard Knocks and get some very, very hard knocks by being disappointed by false gurus until they become open to the reality, namely that you must go within, but that you must continue to go within, seeking for higher and higher experiences. This is the deeper reality that the beings of higher awareness teach, that they have taught for a long time now.
Thus, for those of you who are open to this teaching, consider that you are receiving a unique opportunity to embrace it, to internalize it. You can thereby become one of the forerunners that will carve a pathway through the jungle of the collective consciousness. This will make it easier and easier for others to follow the trail, until they reach the mountain upon which sits the Buddha, the Christ and all other true spiritual teachers.
See past your perception
Teachings may seem straightforward, but they have many layers. They can be understood at many different levels—at least 144 different levels for those of you who are in embodiment.
Perception is, and always has been, and always will be, the single greatest challenge on the spiritual path. Perception, combined with a sense of realism, is really the greatest deceiver of spiritual students. One of the basic needs that human beings have is that there must be something they think is real or they cannot function. If you do not believe the earth is real or that the sun will rise in the morning, how can you function in your daily life?
Yet, when you come to the higher levels of the spiritual path, it is absolutely necessary that you begin to question your perception. There is no desire to have you become a skeptic who questions everything and believes nothing is real. There is no desire to have you become an agnostic who says that a human being can never know what is real. You cannot know what is real from a distance, but you can experience something that is real.
Higher awareness has no desire for you to intellectually question your perception. It desires you to go into a twofold process of using teachings and tools to question, to look at, to become more aware of, your perception while, at the same time, using our tools to seek a direct, inner experience of a higher state of awareness, even the pure awareness that is possible for you. When you have this experience, then you will still know that something is real. But be very careful not to ever think that you have had the ultimate or the highest possible experience. As long as you are in embodiment, there is no such thing.
Consider very carefully the need to separate the inner experience of reality from any outer context, including your physical body, your outer personality, what many people call your soul, a particular religious ideology, even the outer teachings of spiritual teachers. Any outer teaching expressed in words can only be an approximation. It can only be a description of reality—it is not reality itself.
Any teaching is affected by cultural context
Words are inherently tied to the culture in which they are used. They are given very subtle, sometimes very ambiguous, meanings by that culture. If you do not understand this, you might come to be attached to a certain teaching, a certain worded expression.
This is a genuine teaching, but higher awareness could give a similar teaching about similar concepts in a completely different way in a completely different cultural context. Higher awareness could not do it through a person who has grown up in a particular cultural context and, therefore, is used to using words in a certain way. But if higher awareness had a messenger who has grown up in a completely different cultural context, then it could give the same teaching in a different way that might seem very strange, even false, to those who have grown up in a Western culture. Yet it would seem perfectly acceptable and profound to those beings in that other culture.
This is not to say that you need to downplay the importance of a given teaching that has helped you expand your awareness, be it this one or another teaching. It is not to say that you need to go and doubt the validity of all teachings, but it is to say that you should not turn any teaching into an end in itself and worship it as the graven image that you set before the direct, inner experience, not of a higher description, but of something that is beyond description, beyond words—that is pure awareness.
The highest truth is the formless. The formless is beyond all form. This is the higher awareness that is the source of all form but can never be confined to any form. Truly, if you could internalize the teachings in this relatively short discourse, you would be what many people call enlightened, although you would also see the folly of attaching any label to yourself.