Some people, when they hear the phrase “Mental Plane” think what’s being indicated is a plane of the mind, a plane on which the mental processes are enshrined, a place where beliefs hold sway, and not love.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
People who view matters from this perspective think of the mind as a negative thing, a force that holds back enlightenment and consumes love, leaving only dry and barren ideas, etc.
Perhaps I could be permitted to address the misapprehension that lies at the heart of this view of the “Mental Plane,” which our sources have identified as the same as the Fifth Dimension. The Mental Plane is not a plane of the mind; it’s a plane of bliss and love, as are all the higher dimensions.
The Mental Plane was known to Hermeticists, Rosicrucians, Theosophists, and New Age scholars. It’s about as far as one gets in afterlife literature before reports from communicators begin to thin out. After entering the Mental Plane, communicators often lose interest in people still incarnated on the Earth plane and don’t communicate back very much. They’re more interested in what they’re able to have and create there.
It’s true that, on the Mental Plane, things are created by and from thought. Perhaps that’s the reason for confusion around the name. But then things are created by and from thought on the Astral Plane as well and every other spirit plane so it doesn’t indicate why the Fifth Dimension is uniquely called the Mental Plane.
On the spirit side of life, the Mental Plane is the first plane on which the soul group or soul family begins to come together. And why is that? Because the Mental Plane is a plane of unitive consciousness – unity, oneness and fellow feeling.
The Mental Plane is the first plane where we’re able to recapture our memory of past lives, consult the Akashic Records, and make contact with our greater Self. On entry to the second subplane of the Mental Plane, we gain the ability to subdivide our consciousness and be in many places at once. All manner of gifts come to us by entering the Mental Plane and the gifts increase as we rise higher in its subplanes.
Each subplane of the Mental Plane is better than the one previous to it, but that could be said of any subplane and plane as we go ever higher in consciousness. On every one, the experience of life is more satisfying, more blissful, more desirable. How else to lead us back to God than to make the journey increasingly wonderful and majestic?
What kind of a journey would it be if we descended ever deeper into darkness and cruelty until we came to God? Not much incentive to seek God in that scheme of things. One might rather stay away from God.
I’m not sure who invented the term “Mental Plane.” Certainly the ancients didn’t call it that. Hindus call it the “Devachan,” which translates as “the dwelling of the gods.” Early Christians called it “heaven.”
When St. Paul spoke of meeting a man in the Third Heaven, my understanding is that he was referring to the third subplane of the Mental Plane.
“I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.” (2 Corinthians 12:2.)
When we speak of being in “Seventh Heaven,” again my understanding is that we’re referring to the seventh subplane of the Mental Plane.
If we look at topographical schemes of the afterlife generally, we find that there’s almost no agreement that I’m aware of on how to name the various planes after “death,” which we in the 2012 Ascension movement (again giving yet another name to higher states of consciousness) call “dimensions” or sometimes “densities.”
Hindus base their views of the planes of human life on there being five bodies or panchakosas before one reaches the Atman or Self. The Theosophists base their view on there being seven principles; others see ten planes; still others point to twelve dimensions.
Years ago I asked for spirit’s help in mapping the planes because at that time so many different topographical schemes existed. Before I had heard of Ascension in 2012, in an interview in Searchlight, a publication for the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, I asked the spirit world:
“I know that spirits listen to us as much as we listen to them. While drawing maps, I’m also trying to convey to them the message that we need them to tighten up the process of communication. One way would be to ensure that all communicators be required to tell us specifically from which plane (and subplane) they’re communicating. Location on the other side is of critical importance to us who are trying to fit the pieces together.
“I also ask for the help of spirit teachers in correlating the different terminologies that spirits use. For example, I don’t know what planes names like the ‘Christ Sphere’ or ‘Empyrean Plane’ refer to generally, but also how they correlate to numbering systems like ‘the seventh plane,’ etc., specifically.
“Even more importantly than that, I hope to persuade spirit and physical folks to get together on some really broad anthropological projects that would subject spirit planes to rigorous social-scientific study. Until recently, most accounts have resembled tourist guides.
“We can do better than that and, I think, we’re ready for intensive, scholarly examinations carried out by groups on this side co-operating with groups on ‘the other.’ I still don’t think this research should be affiliated with universities though, who still appear to adhere to a paradigm of empirical materialism and can be influenced by the state.” (1)
I still welcome the cooperative effort of both sides of the veil into the dimensional world. We do need to map it out and haven’t had our Christopher Columbus yet.
So, no, the designation “Mental Plane” does not mean a plane on which people simply think, as opposed to love or care or come from the heart. And, yes, what scholars of the afterlife call the “Mental Plane” is what we here call the Fifth Dimension, whether the name used for it is really an apt one or not.
We probably do need a new name for it, just as we’ll need a new name at some point for many other notions we have which suggest relationships that are not true or correct or useful any longer. Perhaps after Dec. 21, 2012, we can have that conference of scholars on the physical plane meeting with those from the spirit planes to arrive at a consistent topography or new map of what Matthew Ward calls “Nirvana” and what others call “Heaven.”
Footnotes
(1) “New Maps of Heaven,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/life-death/new-maps-of-heaven/