A soul group gathers on the higher planes
(Continued from Part 4.)
The life of the group transcends all divisions, including planetary locales.
“The actual construction of the group-soul must be clearly visualised. Its spirit feeds, with life and mental light, certain plants, trees, flowers, birds, insects, fish, beasts, men and women; representatives of living creatures in varying states of evolution. It inspires souls who are on various planes, various levels of consciousness in the After-death. It feeds, also, creatures on other planets.
“For the spirit must gather a harvest of experience in every form. Gradually these intelligences evolve and merge. The experience necessary to the spirit is completed when all the souls necessary to the design have reached this Fifth plane [First Heaven]. Once they become sensible of their oneness and their individuality they may go forward to the Sixth plane [Second Heaven].” (1)
He discusses what appears to be the Second Death, perhaps equivalent to our Ascension, separating the two spheres of the first and second subplanes:
“There is, then, a breaking of the threads, a casting away of the dross of emotional experience, a sifting and changing on the part of all these souls.” (2)
Frances Banks was a nun for a time on Earth and so has already a strong “belief in Group Work and in the evidence of Group Souls.” (3) She suggests that we are members of many soul groups.
“We are, to my limited knowledge, all members not of one Group but of many, and the many make up the Great Group or the Great Soul Being in which we live and move and have our being … and these great Beings unite to form further great Group Souls or Divine Beings in the Divine Company of Heaven.” (4)
She describes the higher beings in charge of the groups.
A soul group gathers in the American southwest, mid-assignment
“In the guidance of these Groups are great Beings, watching over the progress of their cell-like clusters of souls.
“They work on higher mental Rays of influence, for although I know very little about them as yet, I have questioned many souls who have contacted them and worked amongst them.” (5)
And she describes their work and its impact.
“These Soul Groups are extensive, yet concentrated in their classes and workshops. They realize more than we can possibly do the Divinity inherent in every particle of the Cosmos.
“They are able to study Divine Laws beyond our understanding. They commune together with and in the Mind of the Higher Beings whose Soul Group they constitute.
“They work for progress in Divine Imagination and they work as Divine Inspirational Groups. They inspire lower groups with their findings, for they still contain the lower groups within their Centres as cell-points in a vast, intricate and beautiful organism.
“Amongst them are philosophers, scientists, researchers, priests, teachers. They are parts of Groups which influence and impress such movements on earth as Psychic Research, Healing movements, Religious Co-operation, the advancement of Science and all movements intended to bring Light upon future worlds.” (6)
Donald Macleod describes the work of a medical soul group. Like Frances Banks, he met Louis Pasteur in the course of observing the group.
“For the last few years I have been one of a band who have been working on the cause and treatment of cancer and, in the fullness of time, we will give our reports and findings to mankind. It will interest you to know that Pasteur, Dr. Schweitzer, Madame Curie, David Livingstone, and some of the people who are working on this project are here. Others are working on heart disease, leukemia and other chronic illnesses.” (7)
Everything inspiring originates from the work of the soul group, she says.
“All great aspirations, revelations and divine whisperings of intuition originate in and through the Spirit of the Group to which one belongs, i.e., the Highest Point of the Group.
“Thus, family sacrifices, family peace, love, harmony all originate from the Group Soul of the family; in the same way, great aspirations for service and for imparting knowledge to others and for the guiding and enlightenment of our fellows comes from the Great Spiritual Being who is the Centre Group Spirit of that particular group.” (8)
Group souls are at the forefront of all great movements and actions, she says.
“Group Souls preside over universal movements, over great causes and thus members of one Spiritual Family are often attracted to each other by mutual interests, by a special life work, as well as by external links. They work together, may indeed share their lives in partnership, or may only meet occasionally as they work in some particular project.” (9)
Their advance is unified, Banks tells us.
“The Group itself is made up of souls at all levels of consciousness, from the highest to the mediocre, but the Spirit of the Groups only Itself advances as the younger and less knowledgeable members make progress.
“It is a unified advance. No member of the Group can pass beyond the call and communication of other members. When the Group itself advances into the Divine Company, then there will be no ‘stragglers.’
“But, as I am instructed, such an experience is far beyond the Group consciousness at this stage.” (10)
Banks informs us that everyone is always progressing back to God. Individuals wanting to progress into a group cannot do so until their expansion matches at least the group’s fringes.
“All is expansion here, but expansion in stages. This Law is exact. No entity can propel itself forward into a Group until its emotional, mental and spiritual expansion at least is comparable with the fringe of that Group’s awareness.” (11)
Moreover there is no way to fool the members of the group.
“Here, illusion, glamour and self-deception are of no avail. One reveals what one is. One advertises oneself even in one’s apparel. The mask has been shed with the physical body. The developing Light body, its dimness or brilliance, is apparent, especially to members of the Group to which the quality of such Light permits graduation.” (12)
Notice that their light body, like ours, is developing in this first stage of the Mental Plane. Ours is developing as we enter the Fifth Dimension and will probably be fully developed with our Ascension, which for me is the equivalent of the Second Death on the spirit side.
Sometimes members of the group become separated but rejoin them on the other side.
“Sometimes, by what appears to be a perverse fate, members of the same Group are separated, born into the apparently wrong camps. Their lives become tragic, often futile in their repeated efforts to rejoin their similar companions and their rightful work. Strangely enough many never find their right niche. Often they live and die as outcasts.
“But, as the entire complement of a Group Soul is never in complete incarnation at the same time, i.e., there is always an integrated part of the Group on this Side, the outcasts, after their transition here and after they have gained consciousness of their state and have attained to at least some measure of Light, rejoin their own Groups.” (13)
In Conclusion
This then is a preview of the full coalescence of the soul group, which we can expect to happen in the next few months as we pioneer a new form of Ascension – Ascension in and with the physical body.
Our soul groups have always been important to our work. We have incarnated as a group over at least thousands of years and perhaps millions. According to what Archangel Michael has told me, our soul groups have existed even when we inhabited other kingdoms.
What I’ve been exploring in this series of articles is some of the similarities between the first stage of the Fifth Dimension which we’re apparently in now, according to Archangel Michael, and the first stage of the Mental Plane, which is the correlate of the Fifth Dimension on the spirit side of life.
The main similarity is that we can be in the first subplane of the Mental Plane and not have gone through the so-called “Second Death,” which I believe is the correlate of our Ascension. I’ll write an article or a series on the Second Death soon, to compare its features with Ascension.
I may look at more similarities between the “First Heaven,” as this subplane of the Mental Plane is called, and our own current stage of development. But in order to keep this series from getting too long, I’m going to stop here for now. The next subject I want to turn to starting tomorrow is the question of changes in the Divine Plan.
Footnotes
(1) Frederic W.H. Myers through Geraldine Cummins, medium. The Road to Immortality. Being a description of the after-life purporting to be communicated by the late F. W. H. Myers [Frederic William Henry Myers, 1843-1901]. Located at https://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/cummins/cummins1.html, n.p. The First heaven is the First Subplane of the Mental Plane and the Second Heaven is the Second Subplane of the Mental Plane.
(2) Loc. cit.
(3) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 114.
(4) Ibid., 115.
(5) Ibid., 116.
(6) Loc. cit.
(7) Donald Macleod in P.I. Phillips, Here and There. More Psychic Experiences. London; Corgi Books, 1975,, 10.
(8) Frances Banks, TOL, 118.
(9) Ibid., 139.
(10) Ibid., 119.
(11) Ibid., 135.
(12) Ibid., 135-36.
(13) Ibid., 139.