My preamble talking about the currents of the soul is leading you into one of the places that is often mentioned in spiritual books, in churches, in circles and in meetings of those who purport to know about the spiritual realms; it is leading you to the doorway of the Astral Realm. In a future chapter we shall consider how souls are collected but today I wanted to bring you to the astral level.
The Lower Astral
Much is spoken glibly about the astral or the ‘Lower Astral’ as you call it – ‘I am being affected by souls from the Lower Astral’ or ‘My thoughts are being invaded by thoughts from the Lower Astral.’ Souls gather together in clusters of similar vibration and, in the case of the Lower Astral, you can apply the image of Marley’s ghost, dragging behind it the chains and the chests of heaviness from its past life, to the vibrational quality of the soul’s current of energy, in that that current of energy (because of the soul’s perception of life and reaction to life whilst in a physical body) has weighed it down. The soul is surrounded by its own misadventures, and those misadventures drag it like a chain around its neck into a realm that is composed of similar vibrations. It is a field (as everything is a field) of reality but it is a field of low reality, and within that field of low reality are contained the souls of those who have not striven to elevate their vibrations above the base during their incarnation or incarnations.
There is no place on a higher level, for example, for a murderer who loves the violence that he or she has done – that is not a judgement but is a statement of fact. There is no place because the vibration of that person is too low to exist within a lighter, less dense realm at this point (and another thing we will touch upon is reaction to souls and how souls are helped out of their vibrational pockets but, for now, I want to take you on a journey through the Lower Astral).
The quality of light in the Lower Astral is very poor because the spirit atoms do not vibrate at a sufficient rate to show that purity of light, that luminescence that exists on the higher levels. This is because the atoms are coated with the heaviness of thought of the area that they exist in, so the Lower Astral is grey to black because the Lower Astral segregates itself into layers, as do the other spirit levels.
So the concept of the Lower Astral contains within it a number of levels and at the lowest you would say that souls exist in a soup of blackness where there is so little light that they cannot see. Then there are various levels or grades above that where, for example, perhaps the souls on a level are not as violent as those below them, and they can see and there is a greyness about them. They live in very impoverished conditions, or very impoverished projections of reality; you would describe them as ‘slums’ and this is because their creative process or ability to think higher thoughts has not been stimulated, so all they are capable of creating around themselves is the depravity that they are used to (depravity in the sense of lack) and so the houses and dwellings are poor. Then, above that level, you will find that there is a little more light and the people are in less crowded conditions – the lower you get on the Lower Astral, the less personal space there is between souls because the almost-physical attraction of their soul-currents binds them one to another. The magnetic charge is so great, with the violence attracting violence and the depravity attracting depravity, that they are stuck together like glue.
Of course, this set of conditions is not permanent and for each soul in the Lower Astral there is salvation. Full stop! …Not the ‘hope’ of salvation but salvation (eventual or current, in the next hour or in the next millennium, but there is salvation) and I shall talk about how salvation occurs and the mechanisms that allow it to occur in future parts of the book.
The Lower Astral, quite rightly it is said, has an effect on the physical world, on the earth-field. It does so because its charge or vibrational signature is very similar to the vibrational signature of the Earth at this time. The two are only a hair’s breadth apart and your dominant vibration on Earth – being one of violence, greed and depravity – sets up (because you are souls now with that current of the soul around you collecting, minute by minute, a record of what you have done) a resonance that is very similar to the currents of the souls that exist in the Lower Astral. Through magnetic attraction one attracts the other and you could say that souls from the Lower Astral are attracted to the Earth, but equally you could say that souls from the Earth are attracted to the attractions of the Lower Astral.
So much of the violence you encounter at the moment on Earth is stimulated, enhanced and magnified by the violence that exists in the Lower Astral. The solution is quite simple. The solution is to raise your vibrations, which is, of course, why we come back to you to show you a way out of this cycle of lower thinking and base vibrations.
Should you pray for the souls who are existing in the Lower Astral? You can, of course, but in doing so you hardly help them because your Light does not penetrate the density of those levels of existence – because those levels of existence cling on to their vibrational quality. They do not wish to change, so all the Light in the world directed into the Lower Astral will not, of itself, raise those souls. The souls have to wish to raise themselves, have to wish to change, have to wish to change their magnetic attractive-frequency… but more on this later.
You have paintings in your churches that depict Hell. You have discourses in your holy books about Hell. You have preachers who tell you that you will go to Hell if you do this and that, or if you think this and that (…you would be surprised at how many preachers are in the Lower Astral), but what I wish to tell you is that those images of Hell are an echo of a race memory. You know within yourselves (because you know all things) that you have the power to create your environment when you leave the earth plane. You have within yourselves a pointer or compass that tells you vibrationally whether your actions are elevating or heavy. You know within you to be true, as you read this book, that violence begets violence, anger begets anger, and that you, if you choose these things, place yourselves for a time in a low and unnourished place with regard to the higher vibrations that emanate from the Godhead.
I wish to take away the mystique regarding the Lower Astral. As with all elevations of the spirit – all spirit worlds, all spirit existences – it is a temporary construct but it is a construct that is visited and is dwelled in by those who have chosen during their lives to ally themselves always with the base, the material and the physical. The lesson, therefore, is plain: if you wish to elevate yourselves, consider carefully what you do and how you live – not for me, not for Joseph… but for yourselves.
It is difficult for us to consider that souls suffer in this way. It is even more difficult (as we shall learn in future chapters) to elevate those souls. We have no wish for any single soul to be in a miserable state but, through free will, you are allowed to make your own choices. Perhaps reading this you do not believe in God or an afterlife but I would ask you, for insurance’ sake, to at least try to elevate your vibrations because – whether you believe in me or not, whether you believe in the scenario I have put forwards or not – it exists.
It exists!
To return (with reluctance) to the Lower Astral, at its basest it is a very violent place, and it is a violent place of an unending horror. If someone takes your life on the earth plane that is a single act but if someone ‘takes your life’ in the Lower Astral it is a self-perpetuating, repeating act because they cannot kill you and you cannot kill them, but the violence is there and the essence of the act is there to be drawn upon repeatedly. The unenlightened souls at the lowest levels seek to do harm to each other but the harm they do is like an unending nightmare because it does not involve physicality and yet it goes on… and on… and on.
There is a lesson in this and you might think that this is a terrible state for God to leave souls in but God always allows souls to choose for themselves and, even on the darkest level, there dawns a day when a soul in the Lower Astral feels: ‘Enough! All I have to do to stop