Many people believe that our Ascension marks our entrance into the Fifth Dimension.
No, we’ll be in the Fifth Dimension before we complete our Ascension. Then, some time after our entry, we experience a level of enlightenment called Sahaja Samadhi; that marks our culmination.
The Fifth Dimension has twelve subplanes. Ascension occurs deeper into the Fifth Dimension than the first subplane or “vestibule” we initially find ourselves in.
The situation is similar to folks who transition to the Astral Planes, entering the equivalent of the Fifth Dimension on the other side of life – which they call the Mental Plane. People are in the first subplane of the Mental Plane before they have the experience that’s equivalent to Ascension, which experience they call “the Second Death.”
The first death is the death of the physical body; the second “death” is the dissolution of the astral body. The residents thereafter find themselves in the mental body, which we call the Light Body or Merkebah.
I’m going to draw on the afterlife literature from the wiki New Maps of Heaven (1) to describe their experience of the Second Death. I hope this essay will give us hints about what our experience of Ascension may be like.
First let’s establish that many afterlife residents do call this experience the Second Death. Wellesley Tudor-Pole, well known in psychic circles after the First World War for his Private Dowding, transitioned and reported back to medium Cynthia Sandys: “I woke up there on my second awakening after the ‘second death,’ when I had already shaken off all the earth attachments.” (2)
Shaking off all earthly attachments can have one of three meanings. It can mean that the traveller has passed beyond the realm of desires, or astral plane, and takes up a thoroughly heaven-centered life. It can also mean he’s shed the astral body. And it can mean that he’s gone through the dissolution of all ties between himself and his now dead physical body.
The unnamed spirit teacher speaking through Betty Bethards suggests that a complete transcendence of the personal self is what’s required to leave the astral body behind.
“Only by crucifying the lower self, only by totally destroying that nature of negativity within man can we ever hope to attain the total God-consciousness.
“Actually, the crucifixion of the lower self should be a joyous, not a ‘horrible,’ process. It is a time of great introspection, of deep learning, of understanding your mistakes, your weaknesses, and avowing to bring out only the purest you can find within yourself, and rising at all times to this highest level.” (3)
Arthur Conan Doyle, known more for Sherlock Holmes than his psychic research, tells us what it takes to experience the Second Death and what it brings with it.
“That Second Death [is] so marvelous and yet so terrible an experience. For in this life we cling with all our might to – Self. … Why not, when it seems desirable to enrich that personality with all the treasure we can gather by labour of hand or brain. …
“We do not pass naked into the astral, but rather bear with us many an earthly treasure of knowledge, strength and pride of accomplishment.
“And then … crown and climax of all our striving comes utter relinquishment – such is the marvel and miracle of the human soul and spirit.
“To relinquish knowledge, power, accomplishment, all that goes to make our personal self of claims and assertions; to relinquish self-pity, self-centredness, the hope of accomplishment for self; to bare oneself, to become nothing; to restore to the Giver of all … all that one has and is.” (4)
We don’t need to exert ourselves as rigorously as Conan Doyle did. Neither would he have had to if he participated in a planetary Ascension such as that we’re in the middle of. The “higher beings” who are designing the new realm are flooding us with elevating light which is doing a lot of the work for us.
“Crown and climax of all our striving.” That so much fits with what Sri Krishna said of enlightenment generally: “The reward of all action is to found in enlightenment.” (5)
All that Conan Doyle had to relinquish was everything that tied him to his narrow, personal self. Again we’re not required to do that rigorous a level of cleansing or purification.
Let’s now look at more descriptions of what the Second Death is like for what it can tell us about our Ascension. “Chan” in Ivy Northage’s Trance Talks describes it.
“[The second death] is not a separation … but a feeling of complete serenity and peace, with no concern for anything, or awareness of people around you. …
“You are supported by something that is almost unidentifiable. You have lost your own identity without any concern or anxiety about it. … It is a true spiritual release, and for a little while you don’t really know where you are. … There is no feeling of distress. It is a kind of oblivion, but a conscious oblivion.
“Then you become aware of what I can only describe as a harmonic reverberation around you, a beautiful ecstacy. … You feel this divine, ecstatic, unified power with such indescribable joy that you just don’t know what is happening to you.” (6)
I’ve experienced what I believe is the ecstacy that he refers to and it truly does wipe away all tears and establish one in complete satisfaction. Mine was a visit to these spheres rather than a permanent transition. I’m becoming convinced that the experience of ecstacy I had only differs in intensity from what we’ll all experience later.
The unnamed spiritual teacher speaking through medium Betty Bethards, in describing the experience, doesn’t call it a death but rather an initiation:
“Once man has completed going through the ‘death’ [or reincarnational] cycles of the earth plane, he never goes through another death cycle. When one advances through the various levels of the higher planes, there is an initiation which takes place which allows the soul to shed his ‘outer layer’ (as when he shed the physical body).
“The heavier matter which makes up your coat for one level is shed for a lighter coat when you move to the next. You shed your old beliefs and lessons and attune to your new body, a little like a snake shedding its skin.” (7)
The “outer layer” in this initial advance is the astral body. Completing the death or reincarnational cycles of the Earth plane probably means experiencing the enlightenment while alive which is the equivalent of the Second Death: that level is called Sahaja Samadhi, such as Sri Ramana Maharshi had. (8)
While many enter the Mental Plane from the Astral Plane after death, only those who achieved it while in the physical body have finished the reincarational cycle. Those who did not experience it while alive, though they do in the afterlife, must return to the Earth Plane until they do. At least, that’s the way it’s been. All that may be changed now.
The present generation are watching entirely new rules arise pertaining to spirituality. Here is Archangel Michael confirming that:
Steve Beckow: Is the realm that we’re building and taking our physical bodies with us to altogether new?
Archangel Michael: Yes, it is brand new.
Steve: … Brand new, and the rules have changed?
AAM: That is correct. (9)
Here’s St. Germaine saying the same thing:
St Germaine: You have declared that as a human race you are doing an Ascension process maintaining form.
Now that does not mean … because you are choosing as a race … you see all the rules have changed. …
That is the old paradigm: ‘You can’t come here, unless you die.’ Well, that’s not true! That’s what enlightenment and Ascension is about. You can go as far, you can go (10)
In my understanding, the rules for attaining enlightenment have changed, although I don’t clearly know yet in what ways. As well, the “rules” for what enlightenment brings and how enlightenment have changed also seem to have changed. I hope we’ll be getting information over time on what the changes are.
Tomorrow we’ll look more at what impels the individual to undergo the Second Death and what experiential changes it brings.
(Concluded in Part 2.)
Footnotes
(1) New Maps of Heaven at https://goldengaiadb.com/New_Maps_of_Heaven.
(2) Wellesley Tudor Pole in Cynthia Sandys and Rosamund Lehmann, The Awakening Letters. Jersey: Neville Spearman, 1978, 72.
(3) Unnamed spirit teacher through Betty Bethards, medium, There is No Death. Novato, CA: Inner Light Foundation, 1976; c1975. , 40
(4) Arthur Conan Doyle in Paul Beard, Living On. How Consciousness Continues and Evolves After Death. New York: Continuum, 1981, 127.
(5) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 54.
(6) Chan in Ivy Northage, The Journey Beyond: Trance Talks by Chan. London: College of Psychic Studies, 1997, 3rd ed., 9-11.
(7) Unnamed spiritual teacher in Betty Bethards, medium, There is No Death. Novato, CA: Inner Light Foundation, 1976; c1975, 17.
(8) See Ramana’s descriptions of Sahaja in and around this section of the wiki, From Darkness Unto Light: https://goldengaiadb.com/E#Enlightenment_-_.284.29_Stages_beyond_God_Realization_.28Brahmajnana.29_-_Liberation_occurs_at_sahaja_nirvikalpa_samadhi.
(9) “Archangel Michael on Sept. 28, the Ascension Portal, Pillars, and the New Domain,” Sept. 19, 2015, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2015/09/19/archangel-michael-on-sept-28-the-ascension-portal-pillars-and-the-new-domain/.
(10) “Transcript: Heavenly Blessings ~ St. Germaine on Where to Look for Results,” aired July 15, 2014,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/07/30/transcript-heavenly-blessings-st-germaine-on-where-to-look-for-results-aired-july-15-2014/.