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..:: The Atmic
Plane ::..
By
Alan Schneider
Self Realization, the Buddha Mind, and
spiritual verbalization – most especially those forms of
“verbalization” known as Darshan and Satsang, the
discourses on Spiritual Truth given by an Ascended Master, and shared
among Initiates, respectively constitute the subjects of this essay.
Self Realization is a term
with many implications. It can mean the realization or actualization
(in Maslow’s terminology), of the Higher Self – a term frequently
associated with the personal or Collective Soul – the Over Soul,
a more complex amalgam of the Collective Soul, and one that corresponds
to the Monad in the Western Mystery theory, and the Logos –
essentially referring to God Realization. Now, the realization of
the Monad pertains to the Monadic Plane, the Sixth Plane of
Ascension, and the subject of the next in the sequence of Ascension
essays. The realization of the Logos pertains to our last essay in this
series, and is focused on the Logoic Plane, the Seventh and final
Plane of Ascension. These approaches to realization will be
appropriately treated in these essays yet to come. So, we are left with
the Collective Soul and the Buddha Mind as possible aspects of Ascension
on the Atmic Plane.
The Chakra corresponding to
the Atmic Plane is Vishuddah, the Throat Chakra, and Chakra
Five. The Cabalistic correspondence is an interactive one – the
combined influence of the Martian energy of Geborah on the Pillar
of Severity, and the Jovian energy of Chesed on the Pillar of
Mercy. The implication of Vishuddah is clear – communication and verbal
expression – intonation and chanting, public and private speaking, and
discourse on spiritual subjects. The blend of Geborah and Chesed is
less clear, suggesting a balance of the aggressive restriction of
Mars and the effusive abundance of Jupiter. Perhaps when these two
opposing trends are brought into reconciliation with each other the
result is an expression of Truth on the level of the Atmic Plane – not
merely the experience of Truth, but the verbal expression of the Truth
given to the world on the Physical Plane.
Above all else that he
accomplished when incarnate, the Buddha was a teacher and
communicator of the knowledge and wisdom that he attained on the
Physical Plane as a result of his determined meditation, poverty, self
discipline, and austerity. Thus, the Buddha Mind is the essence of not
only Enlightenment, but of Instruction in the attainment of
Enlightenment as a Bodhisattva – a consciousness that has
Ascended, but has also chosen to remain incarnate on the Physical Plane
to offer the gift of Ascension and Enlightenment to the other human
Souls struggling with the realization process here. This decision is a
great sacrifice on the part of the Bodhisattva, who voluntarily accepts
the troubles of continued incarnate suffering for the benefit of us
all.
Since the
Atmic Plane is
focused at least in part on the instructions offered by the Buddha to
humanity for the attainment of muksa, or liberation, a synopsis
of Buddhist philosophy is in order here. This is taken verbatim from an
earlier essay simply entitled Buddhism. The first,
and foundational, belief of Buddhism is that all life is dukkha,
or suffering. This is the First Noble Truth. This suffering has several
origins – birth trauma, illness, old age, fear (including the primary
fear of death), and temporary or permanent separation from what one
loves caused by any number of things. The ultimate, root cause of
suffering, however, apart from the surface factors just mentioned, is
tanha, the condition of desire or craving for something. This is the
Second Noble Truth. Therefore, the way to end suffering is to end
desire and attachment, the Third Noble Truth. This is no mean feat for
the appetite-driven, ego-mediated ordinary personal consciousness, so,
in response to this condition, Buddhism prescribes the Noble Eight Fold
Path as the Fourth, and final, Noble Truth.
The Noble Eight Fold Path is
the curative for ordinary consciousness, which is virtually enslaved to
desire by the ego. The first step is Right Knowledge obtained by
intensively studying the Four Noble Truths listed in the preceding
paragraph as a means of deeply pondering and understanding their full
significance. The second step is Right Thought – the positive,
assertive decision to set one’s life on the correct moral path. The
third step toward Enlightenment is Right Speech, practiced by
refraining from lying, harsh language, unjust criticism, and gossip
about others and their activities. The fourth step is Right Conduct,
which is comprised of the Five Precepts – Do not kill, Do not
steal, Do not lie, Do not fornicate, and Do not consume intoxicants. The
fifth step is Right Livelihood – one must earn one’s living in a
manner that does not cause harm to living things. Right Effort,
the sixth step, implies continuous effort to maintain and enhance
good, positive thoughts and mental conditions, while eliminating all
evil, negative thoughts and impulses. The seventh step, Right
Mindfulness, involves becoming intensely aware of all states of
manifestation in the body, emotions, and mind. Finally, the eight step,
Right Concentration, entails practicing the deepest possible,
ongoing meditation to develop higher consciousness and ultimately attain
full Enlightenment. Additionally, The Noble Eight Fold Path is
frequently summarized as Right Wisdom, steps one and two above,
Right Morality, steps three and four above, and Right
Concentration, seen in steps five through eight. Taken together as a
system of living, these prescriptions are held to free the individual
from suffering, ignorance, and desire, thus instituting the condition of
muksa in the personal consciousness.
Beyond the conditions of
selfless love and compassion that serve as the goals of consciousness on
the Atmic Plane, the differentiation of Ascended states, and the related
Planes of Expression of those states, becomes problematic. Certainly,
there are additional forms and considerations that serve to support both
selfless love and compassion, but the manifestation of these forms is
subject to much confusion and interpretation, with both
conditions occurring on the Physical Plane courtesy of our
old nemesis, the ego, which insists on meddling in everything that comes
into its perception! If muksa is ever to be attained, this is seen
in liberation from this ego awareness, pure and simple. The
Collective Soul is arguably the freest manifestation of consciousness
that can be experienced, associated as it is with the Cosmic Soul
Consciousness of the Universe, and this can be very productively
compared to the least free condition of consciousness, seen in
ego awareness and Physical Plane information processing.
The Collective Soul can be
thought of in one sense as the Soul of Creation – a composite of the
Spiritual Essences of the total outpouring of God’s Love everywhere and
forever, as demonstrated by that ongoing act of Creation. This obviously
encompasses more than the human Souls existing now in incarnation, and
having existed in past incarnations, or will exist in future
incarnations, but this is one of the limited interpretations of the
Collective Soul that is commonly held in the Mystery Theories. This is
a good example of what I was referring to with the observation made
above regarding the “problematic” character of Ascended differentiation
beyond the Atmic Plane. Some individuals restrict the Collective Soul
to only those Souls which are currently humanly incarnate, some
include all living things in the definition, some only animal
Souls, and so on. Because Creation is a total expression of Divine Love
on all subsequent levels of manifestation, and this Universal
Love is the essence of the Soul, I accept the totality of
manifestation as the definition of the Collective Soul, and locate that
composite Soul expression on the Atmic Plane because it still deals
with segregated manifestation in separate form. On the Monadic Plane,
the Sixth Plane, we are dealing with the Monad, considered to be a
purely spiritual collection of twelve Soul expressions that are directly
released from the Logos on the Logoic Plane, the Seventh, and final,
Plane of Ascension. Hence, the last phase of discrete form is
seen on the Atmic Plane in the composite representation of the
Collective Soul.
In contrast, let us consider
the anchor that sustains the perception of separation and discrete form
– the physical body, located on the Physical Plane. The perceptual
vehicle of the body is the central nervous system and attendant sense
organs and physical senses. These receive inputs from both the internal
body and the external environment in which that body seems to be more or
less involuntarily located. The final focus of the senses and sense
perception is experienced as sentient self awareness – “I” have an
ongoing impression of “my” separate existence as an observer and
perceiver of events on the Physical Plane. This impression is generally
referred to as the ego, and is reinforced by the electronic
record of experience stored in the brain and perceived in consciousness,
known as memory. All, or almost all, of the impressions of our
memories have been subject to the qualitative interpretation of the ego
for the term of incarnation – virtually nothing escapes this
process from the first glimmer of sentience. The ego and its
interpretive function are also the inevitable consequences of the size
and complexity of the human brain – we have evolved to have our
form of sentience and memory.
It is the mechanism of
the ego that is in question here. Essentially, what we see in the ego,
and the rote human sentience that it supports, is a social difference
engine that operates by ongoing comparison of qualitative values.
We constantly compare ourselves to the others around us on every
conceivable level from the immediately personal, wherein I compare
myself to myself, up to the world community, wherein I compare myself to
everyone else collectively and individually. If this comparison was
simply an objective assessment, this would possibly not be so
problematic, but it is invariably accompanied by a corresponding
evaluation based on psychological hedonism – my “comparisons” are either
pleasant of unpleasant, based on their social implications or literal
physical content. Furthermore, the ego has its own survival agenda as a
device of conscious perception – it wants to continue to exist,
and dominate as much of consciousness as possible. On a
functional level, this means that, although the ego presents itself as a
problem solver, it has a built in problem creator in its
background – a scenario that guarantees its monopoly on generic
awareness. The ego is not our savior, it is our master –
the master of unenlightened consciousness enslaved to primarily one
condition on the Physical Plane – desire.
It can be argued that our
manifestation in separate biological form, requiring extensive
interaction with the internal and external environments on the Physical
Plane as the price of existence, makes the experience of desire
inevitable, and even necessary, but the Buddha was quite correct in his
assertion that desire is nonetheless the root of all suffering. This
condition of desire is most acute when dealing with direct physical
experience on the Physical Plane, and progressively dissipates as we
pass through the Planes of Ascension, reaching its least invasive state
on the Atmic Plane, where consciousness has been identified with the
collective manifestation – one where there is functionally little
or no separation between the perceiver and the perceived, in the
expression of the Collective Soul. From the perspective of Ascension,
the burden that one is relieved of through the attainment of Enlightenment
is the complex of ego-separation-desire which generates desire-action
on the Physical Plane. This desire-action – the attempt to satisfy
desire – creates the Karma that holds us in the physical body and
sense perception on the Physical Plane by reinforcing the illusory
experience of separation, when, in Truth, we are all One in Spirit.
This is the ultimate lesson of the Buddha, and of the Atmic Plane.
The attainment of the
perception of the Oneness of Being is the ultimate goal of
Buddhist doctrine, and all of the techniques of all of the Buddhist
variants are directed toward the realization of that goal. The condition
of Oneness is inherently profoundly peaceful, as the perception of
separation into objects of desire and fear is replaced with unity.
The ego is fundamentally control oriented, and will resist the
attainment of this inner peace vigorously as the threat to its existence
that it is – the organism that resides in intrinsic peace and harmony
with the inner and outer worlds has no need of either pleasure or
protection – and no need of control. Beyond this, perhaps the
greatest disservice done to the human organism by the ego is the
creation of the web of distractions that all but blinds us
to the recognition of the real source of control in the universe
– that which is also the source of Love and Creation – the Logos.
Buddhism experiences this level of profoundly non-dual consciousness as
Satori – the complete merging of personal consciousness with the
Consciousness of the Universe. It is fascinating, is it not, that a
belief system that seems to disavow the existence of a Supreme Being
still supports the existence of a Supreme Consciousness, and utilizes
rosary beads and prayer wheels as methods of generating the link with
this Consciousness? It would seem that the Un-God is right next door to
the Manifest God, and we are merely bandying words on the Physical
Plane.
The Buddha Mind is the
source of all wisdom – the Sanskrit term bodhi literally
means wisdom. The Collective Soul is the manifestation of
all wisdom flowing out from the Buddha Mind into perception on the
Buddhic Plane. This perception is experienced primarily as vibrational
alignment with the Logos as the Source of Peace, Love, and Creation
through chanting. The extensive litany of Buddhist and Hindu
chants is designed to afford the Initiate with the opportunity to
release the ego through the meditative aid of chanting, thus entering
the Buddha Mind State of consciousness. I have personally also used
Cabalistic, Druidic, and Native American chants of different forms to
achieve release from the ego – what appears to be required is a soft,
hypnotic rhythm that lulls the focused consciousness of the ego into an
inactive state, permitting the rapid passage through the lanes of
Ascension, and the associated altered states of consciousness, for the
experienced practitioner. I believe this variety of intonation may also
be subject to genetic encoding, and it is this code that determines what
a given individual will respond to most favorably. This code is, in
turn, the consequence of Karma given to the Soul by the Logos at
incarnation – a part of the Great Cosmic Gift of Love bestowed by the
Creator upon us all.
A comprehensive enumeration
of all the chanted techniques is most unfortunately far beyond
the scope of this essay – such an attempt would require many volumes of
discourse simply to record, let alone analyze. But, some interesting
final advice regarding one series of Buddhist chanting approaches
may be useful. Since the goal of chanting in general is ego negation,
and the ego relies on linear logic as its mode of operation, it follows
that the less logical, i.e. meaningful, a chanted
expression is, the better. For this reason, many Buddhist chants may
start out with a comprehensible form, such as om mani padme hum,
but are intentionally allowed to deteriorate into an unintelligible
drone as they progress, taking the ego with them! Far from frustrating,
the empowerment and freedom of this technique is enormous, as the voice
of the organism is allowed to wander without restriction wherever it
might traverse. I have observed episodes of Speaking in the
Tongues at Christian meetings, and this seems to evoke a similar
state of ego release, although on customarily a much more vigorous tonal
level. As I have said before, and will say again, the ego is not
our savior, but our master, and not a kind master at that,
so we must feel free to mumble our way to muksa if that is what it
takes!
Chanting is a frequent
feature of Darshan with the Ascended Master, and also Satsang among
Initiates. The Master will frequently sing the discourses of
Enlightenment to the Initiates present at meetings, transferring the
vibration of the Logos that is carried within through the harmonious
melodies to the Auras of the Initiates directly in this way, thus
bypassing the ego entirely. In turn, the Initiates may sing or chant
these and other intonations to each other to reinforce their spiritual
experience. In this way, life in the Zendo or Ashram becomes a spiritual
manifestation of Enlightenment on a literal vibrational level that
automatically transcends the Physical Plane and its master, the ego,
instituting peace as a reality of perception, not merely a
longed-for goal that is never attained. How humble and inadequate my
written words are in comparison, but this is all I have to give you for
the moment.
With the experience of the Collective Consciousness and Buddha Mind, we
have reached the furtherest extent of Dualism and Dualist consciousness
– one that bridges into the Non-Dual experience of Satori, and Universal
Oneness of perception. As we journey beyond this level onto the Monadic
Plane, the direct experience of the primary operation of the Logos, the
release of the Monad – the family of twelve Souls – into expression
becomes possible. At this level, although we are still referring to
numbers of manifestation and expression, we are contacting this
phenomenon in such close proximity to the Source of Creation that there
might as well be One Manifestation taking place, and, in fact, there is
only One – the Unifying Expression of Divine Love that associates the
apparently separate elements of the Monad with each other in a common
Karmic purpose. Please return to these pages for the next
essay, entitled The Monadic Plane, where we will illuminate this
most subtle relationship of consciousness!
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2008, Alan Schneider)
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