Many of us are trying to envision what the Fifth Dimension will be like. The closest we may be able to come to it are descriptions of the Mental Plane, which is the equivalent of the Fifth Dimension on the spirit side of life.
Before we turn to descriptions of the Mental Plane, let’s ensure that we agree that it’s the same as the Fifth. Here Archangel Michael confirms that the Fifth Dimension and Mental Plane are one and the same:
Steve: Can I just confirm with you that the Fourth Dimension is the closest equivalent, not exactly equivalent obviously, of the Astral Planes, and the Fifth Dimension is the closest equivalent in the physical world (1) of the Mental Planes [in the spiritual world]. Is that correct?
Archangel Michael: Yes. (2)
And here he again specifies that the Mental Plane is the Fifth Dimension
“You must … strive to establish emotional harmony and serenity within the illusionary world of the fourth dimension as you seek wisdom and endeavor to become acclimated to the mental plane of the lower fifth dimension.” (3)
However, the descriptions of it are not as fulsome as are those of the Astral Plane. This may be because people usually arrive in the Astral Plane first after the transition we think of as death and eagerly communicate back with their loved ones. Therefore we get detailed descriptions of their initial setting, much as a recent immigrant will communicate back to their loved ones in the old country.
But by the time they reach the Mental Plane, they are less oriented towards those they left behind and they may already have given their most detailed descriptions. Consequently they mostly describe their internal reactions to the more elevated state of the Mental Plane, rather than their setting.
The designation “Mental Plane” should not be interpreted as meaning a plane of thought, as Helena Blavatsky advises us:
“When I say mental, by the way, I usually mean ‘of the mental plane’ – which is not the same as ‘being intellectual’…. When I say ‘of the mind,’ I’m talking about a level of consciousness that I equate with being spiritual – ‘of the mind of God,’ really.” (4)
Let’s see what we can gather from their accounts. One communicator called the Mental Plane “the Creative Sphere.” (5) Frederic Myers called it “the world of Eidos — pure form — to the human soul the Heaven World, the ultimate goal. For while on earth the human soul has, in rare moments, perceived that world but has not passed beyond it even when in the loftiest mystic trance.” (6)
He calls it “heaven” after the practice of early Christian mystics who knew and characterized the Mental Plane as “heaven.” For instance, St. Paul spoke of meeting a man in the third heaven, which would mean 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.” (7)
Of the Mental Plane, Philip Gilbert says: “Having progressed out of the ‘astral’ or ‘plane of illusion,’ a being becomes little by little more radiant because the form is gradually ‘at-oneing’ itself with creative force.” (8)
Just how radiant Philip himself was in the Mental Plane was described by an unnamed medium his mother went to: “There is a most wonderful young man building up, but in a blaze of light – brilliant white light – he is very advanced.” (9)
While still on the Astral, Philip took trips to the Mental.
“I was allowed to expand my consciousness for a longer period. I found that I could bear the increased light frequency and the surge of power for a much longer space – at least, it seemed to me. … Anyhow, I ‘rose,’ though it is not really rising in height and, much to my pleasure, I found I could actually float and function for a time as an entity in this higher phase. I spent most of the time trying out motions and thought power. It was terrific.” (10)
Once in the Mental Plane, Philip describes the bliss he feels: “My consciousness seems to be more and more in that luminous glow which is an ecstacy.” (11)
“There are hardly words to give the nature of my new experience – I glow; the body which is the static ME is a form still; very powerful but composed of light irradiated particles – it is of the nature of flame. But this flame is creative.
“It can be moulded by my Ego at will or consolidate into an ordinary astral shape or blend in an ecstacy of mutual comprehension with others like me or with the more advanced. An inner withdrawal into a focus is the secret for acquiring transcendental knowledge.” (12)
Julia Ames also describes the bliss on that plane: “The lowest heaven [i.e., the first subplane of the Mental Plane] is higher than the most wonderful vision of its bliss that you ever had.” (13)
Adyashanti, whom I believe has the same consciousness we will, once said that he retains just enough ego to know when his name is being called. Philip Gilbert describes something similar: “I lose the individual that you knew to an extent – but a pin-point remains and the thought image it builds is what you would see now – an ovoid glow.” (14)
Arthur Conan Doyle tells us that there is no need for sleep.
“Here you can talk for days for there is no night. It stays light all the time, and you do not need sleep. It is like one long sunny day. The only word to describe it is Paradise, for nothing on earth is remotely like it.” (15)
“You may sit at the side and chat to your acquaintances, for no one here would think of snubbing you as on earth. Indeed they are all too ready to speak and invite you back home to partake of refreshments.” (16)
On the Mental Plane, Philip can be in two places at once doing different things.
“There is a new phase of existence beginning for me – very interesting. I am learning to keep two minds going, in a manner of speaking. I just don’t know how to explain it. I can function mentally in two aspects of myself. I can be with you keeping an eye on your doings and I can also be having a Maths. Lesson!
“I have not yet tried to do my helper job as well as doing Maths. That would be more than I can cope with yet, as it demands all my resources. … Advanced people here can actually project a sort of shadow image (equipped with power to think) of themselves into several situations, whilst their real Being is somewhere else. I think your Teacher once said something similar, but I am now trying this out and it is very queer. The project image of me is attached by a thought-ray to my real Entity.” (17)
He describes to his mother the settings created by higher beings for the enjoyment of residents of the Mental Plane.
“Come into my world for a few minutes now and try to visualize it. It is a shimmering world, shifting and blending. …
“There are many … spots of thought-created environments made ‘permanently’ for our use by the higher people. An advanced being can develop enormous powers of exteriorizing thought without it turning into dense matter.
“He can hold such images fixed, and yet withdraw his surface attentions from them – leaving them in the background of consciousness. They project these images so that other people can live in them.” (18)
He adds: “We are not dependent on the sun for light – we ourselves are, to an extent, luminous – in ratio with the degree of our advancement.” (19)
Mike Swain identifies it as the first plane on which we realize our true nature: “When you wake on the mental plane, you will realize that you are and always have been a son of God.” (20) Like Adyashanti, residents of the Mental Plane are aware of unity, as Frances Banks tells us.
“That which I am learning here, in this wider state of consciousness, is a joyous apprehension of the vast wonder of the unity of Creative Mind in which all, every atom, every soul-fragment, every Group Soul, every creative thought, is One.” (21)
What do residents of the Mental Plane do? Frances tells us they are free to follow their own pursuits.
“We are free, of course, to follow our own pursuits. There are no college rules or compulsory attendances but I, for one, find myself at the Halls of Learning almost continually. Again, you notice, I repeat the pattern, that avid desire for spiritual knowledge which I now realize characterized all my excursions into different experiences on Earth.” (22)
People still work, William Stead tells us.
“Many of us carry on with our same work as on Earth. Here we have no need to work in order to obtain daily livelihood. We work here solely for spiritual refinement and progress; at the same time we keep in touch with our Earth interests as a form of recreation.” (23)
One can study whatever one wishes, Donald Macleod tells us: “Teaching faculties of every faculty known and unknown to mankind are available here, and one can study whatever subjects one wishes to master.” (24)
Frederic Myers hints at what scientists do there.
“A great scientist may at once seek those surroundings in which he will have full liberty to pursue further scientific studies, though these will naturally now be of a rather different character. In life, for him, the thing and not the person roused and stirred his imagination. So he chooses to travel alone and thereby satisfies the fundamental passion or desire of his nature.
“Equally men and women who care more for some particular work, pleasure, or pursuit, than for any human soul, or circle of souls, will continue to be engrossed in it until the point of satiation is reached. Nor do they require intimate companionships of the usual kind although, when conditions are satisfactory, they can meet and hold intercourse with dwellers on the same plane who are kindled with like enthusiasms. Or they may be drawn together because mutual interest has been aroused, or because each is necessary to the other in a wider and more intellectual sense.” (25)
“Sigwart” describes a concert on the Mental Plane which he was asked to give:
“The loftiest spiritual beings were present at [this concert]. Very few could see them because here too, these sublime [souls] remain hidden from the less developed souls. I was able to catch a short glimpse through a kind of mist and this proved to be the culmination of these magnificent hours.” (26)
“A roundelay by a community of the most radiant spiritual beings was the finale. They all had to float in groups through space as the crowning of the greatest event ever.” (27)
“The clearest essence of these spiritual harmonies will penetrate the earthly spheres and should influence mankind. Much illness will be healed, pains of soul will be relieved, and good seeds will be encouraged to germinate and sprout.” (28)
And what about love and marriage on the Mental Plane? Stewart Edward White tells us:
“It’s been said that in heaven there is no marriage because our ordinary contact with each other is more like a completely merging into someone else. Instead of having a conversation, it is as though both parties become one for awhile. …
“Sex, particularly in marriage, is as close as this merging can be approached while in the physical life – except by the enlightened person who has learned to focus his awareness in heaven even while he’s alive in a physical body.” (29)
Frederic Myers tells us that women do not bear children on that plane.
“Women do not bear children though the illusion of sexual passion may be experienced as long as it is the soul’s desire. …
“In uttering that famous saying, ‘But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage,’ Christ spoke of the circumstances that prevail on the higher planes of consciousness. …
“The problem of marriage, of two husbands or of two wives, is usually solved after death by the pull of the stronger, finer affection. Each soul is either drawn to the one who is most akin and sympathetic to it, or is absorbed by whatever special passion or desire fills its nature.” (30)
The sexual love that Myers referred to earlier is unencumbered by the physical body – pure and passionate, harmonious and free – says Myers.
“A pure but passionate love experienced by a certain number of normal men and women on earth is creative in character. It enlarges and inspires the imagination so death does not put out this fire for ever.
“On the contrary, in the world of Illusion [the Astral Plane] and in the world of Eidos [the Mental Plane] such men and women know pure yet passionate love again. Thus they create with their whole being and because of their greater sensitiveness such self-creative experiences are often heightened and intensified, and increase the vigour of the soul.
“There exists in the higher regions of the sphere of [the Astral] and in Eidos a harmony and freedom that may not be the lot of true lovers when their minds are dulled and they are weighed down and oppressed by a heavy material body.” (31)
Since the mental body does not have organs like the physical, love on the Mental Plane must resemble what on the Astral Plane is described as “a sort of temporary merging of one with another” (32) or “a glorious mingling of the vibrations of the auric fields” which “widens one’s aura and field of contact and leaves a deep glow and warmth of affection.” (33) One spirit communicator describes it this way:
“What you know as a sexual relationship is a higher merging of souls and is not limited to husband and wife. This is a total merger with anyone you choose to give the love energy to. It’s just steeping inside of one another’s auras, a total blending of energies. It’s a way of expressing love and sharing.” (34)
All of the quotes above, except the few relating to the Astral Plane, describe the first subplane of the Mental Plane. One’s experience simply grows more sublime the higher up on the Mental Plane one goes. If time allows we’ll look more at life in the higher subplanes of the Mental Plane or Fifth Dimension.
Footnotes
(1) Strictly speaking all realms up to the transcendental could be called material or physical. The matter of which they are made is simply more and more refined. But I am referring here to our physical world, where we call the Mental Plane the “Fifth Dimension.”
(2) “Archangel Michael: Creating a World of Peace,” Sept. 15, 2011, at https://stevebeckow.com/2011/09/archangel-michael-creating-a-world-of-peace/ .
(3) Archangel Michael,”A Clarion Call for World Servers,” May 2010, through Ronna Herman, at https://www.ronnastar.com/latest.html . The Pleiadians through Hannah Beaconsfield also affirm that the Fourth Dimension is the Astral Plane. Although they don’t say that the Fifth Dimension is the Mental Plane, it follows in that the Mental Plane is next after the Astral.
“We will give you our view on your numerical designations. What you call 4D is what we see as the astral or etheric plane that surrounds you, the level to which you ascend after death.” (“The Pleiadian Light” through Hannah Beaconsfield, February 29, 2012, via email.)
SaLuSa also does not equate the Fifth Dimension with the Mental Plane but he does equate the Fourth Dimension with the Summerlands, which is a way of referring to the subplanes of the Astral. The next higher would be the Mental.
“Ask anyone who has been into the astral realms known as the Summerland what it is like, and they will inevitably tell you that you are surrounded by an energy that is peaceful and of love. Yet that is what you call the 4th. density, and when you ascend you are going even higher to the 5th. density.” (SaLuSa, March 7, 2012, at https://www.treeofthegoldenlight.com/First_Contact/Channeled_Messages_by_Mike_Quinsey.htm)
(4) H.P. Blavatsky in Robert R. Leichtman through the mediumship of D. Kendrick Johnson, H.P. Blavatsky Returns. Columbus, OH: Ariel Press, 1980, 69.
(5) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 131. [Hereafter TOL.]
(6) 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.
(7) 2 Corinthians 12:2.
(8) Philip Gilbert through Alice Gilbert, medium. Philip in the Spheres. London: Psychic Book Club, n.d. , 67. [Hereafter PTS.]
(9) Unnamed medium to Alice Gilbert of Philip Gilbert in Alice Gilbert, medium, Philip in Two Worlds. London: Andrew Dakers, 1948, 224. [Hereafter PTW.]
(10) Philip to his mother, Alice Gilbert, in PTW, 177.
(11) Philip Gilbert in Alice Gilbert, medium, Into the Everywhere. Tunbridge Wells: World Spiritual Council, 1968, 7. [Hereafter ITE.]
(12) Philip Gilbert in ITE, 8.
(13) Julia [Julia T. Ames] through W.T. Stead, medium, After Death. A Personal Narrative. New York: George H. Doran, n.d.; c. 1914, 52.
(14) Philip Gilbert in ITE, 9.
(15) Arthur Conan Doyle through Elizabeth Mary Thompson, medium, Life in the Hereafter. London: Regency Press, n.d. , 17. [Hereafter LH.]
(16) Arthur Conan Doyle, LH, 21.
(17) Philip to his mother, Alice Gilbert, in PTW, 207.
(18) Philip Gilbert in PTS, 68.
(19) Ibid., 31.
(20) Mike Swain, Jasper Swain, From My World to Yours: A Young Man’s Account of the Afterlife. New York: Walker, 1977, 88.
(21) Frances Banks in TOL, 144.
(22) Ibid., 143.
(23) William Thomas Stead, The Blue Island. Experiences of a New Arrival Behind the Veil. Estelle W. Stead and Pardoe Woodman, eds. London: Rider, n.d. , 132.
(24) Donald Macleod in P.I. Phillips, Here and There. More Psychic Experiences. London; Corgi Books, 1975, 12.
(25) Frederic W.H. Myers through Geraldine Cummins, medium, Beyond Human Personality. Downloaded from https://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/cummins/cummins2.html, n.d. [Herefafter BHP.]
(26) Sigwart in Joseph Wetzl, trans., The Bridge Over the River. Communications from the Life After Death of a Young Artist Who Died in World War One. Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1974, 69.
(27) Loc. cit.
(28) Ibid., 68.
(29) Stewart Edward White in Robert Leichtman, The Psychic Perspective. Columbia: Ariel press, 1978 211.
(30) F.W.H. Myers, BHP, n.p.
(31) Loc. cit.
(32) Rev Charles Fryer in Paul Beard, Living On. How Consciousness Continues and Evolves After Death. New York: Continuum, 1981, 118.
(33) Rev. A.D. Mattson in Ruth Mattson Taylor, ed., Witness from Beyond. New Cosmic Concepts on Death and Survival from the Late A.D. Mattson, S.T.D., through the Clairvoyant Margaret Flavell Tweddell. Portland, ME: Foreword Books, 1975, 46-7.
(34) Unnamed spirit teacher through Betty Bethards, medium, There is No Death. Novato, CA: Inner Light Foundation, 1976; c1975, 24.