Gautama Buddha, enlightenment and levels of the ego
: niedziela 27 paź 2024, 14:42
Gautama Buddha, enlightenment and levels of the ego
Question: Dear Buddha, in the last webinar, one of the masters said that if we are still in embodiment, we cannot be ascended. The teacher also emphasized to us not to believe anyone who claimed that they are ascended. As long as a person is still in a physical body that person still has the ego. My understanding of this is, a person cannot reach full enlightenment or be ascended until we die and leave the physical body. However, in Buddhist sutras the Buddha claimed he had reached full enlightenment—anatta, non-self—in his last and fourth level of meditation, and that is when the Buddha had the ultimate wisdom. Can you please help to explain how the Buddha can reach enlightenment when he was still in a physical body? And if this is correct for the Buddha, then how can we understand the above teaching from the ascended master that we still have ego if we are in a physical body?
Answer from the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Being the Open Door for Planet Earth.
Well, what you are dealing with here is how words are used and interpreted. We have talked at this conference about the fact that after I ascended as the Buddha, my followers started creating this idolatry around me. Some had this desire to make it appear as if I was the ultimate spiritual teacher that had ever appeared on this planet and therefore, I had to be special from birth and so forth. It is correct that I said that I had reached a certain level where I had overcome the not-self and had reached the ultimate wisdom.
However, that was the ultimate wisdom that I could see at that point. You need to recognize here that as you go to the higher levels of the spiritual path, you can start having certain spiritual experiences. Many people have had them from many different backgrounds, even some people who have not been openly spiritual. And when you have one of these experiences, it feels very, very real to you. And this means that when you then come back into the physical body and the outer mind, it becomes easy to interpret this sense of reality as if this must have been the ultimate experience. This must have been the ultimate enlightenment, the ultimate wisdom that could be attained. But the deeper reality is that it is simply what you could see at that level.
As we have already explained at this conference, I had not reached the ultimate level of enlightenment. Padmasambhava came later as an ascended master appearing with a higher level of enlightenment. And there are many higher levels of enlightenment in the ascended realm reaching all the way to the Creator.
Now, there can be some confusion here in terms of what exactly you mean with “an ego” or with “not-self”. What we are giving you is the teaching that there will always be some element of ego—what we call ego or separate self, until you ascend, because otherwise you cannot hold on to a physical body. Even though when I came back from Nirvana and was in a physical body and lived till the age of 81 and it was said that I had attained enlightenment, I still had enough of that self that allowed me to hold on to the physical body. However, the ego that I had as the Buddha was not what many people in today’s world call the ego, which is the selfish aspect of the psychology that causes you to be selfish.
I had, as I explained in my dictation, I had attained that sense of oneness, overcome the sense of separation, therefore overcome the not-self. In a sense, you could say that based on the definition that many people use, I was ego-free. But we are giving you the expanded teaching that there are separate selves that relate to each level of the 144 levels of consciousness. Each self is based on an illusion and you do not shed the final self, the final illusion until you are ready to ascend. And it was the same for me, it was the same for Jesus and all others who have ascended from earth.
So, be careful not to be too hung up in the words and the interpretation of words. And be careful to look beyond the idolatry, because the teachings we are giving you now are not based on this idolatry, we are not catering to people who have an idolatrous view. Basically, you could say that when you pass that initiation at the 96th level—that we have talked about, where you overcome the focus on self, where you are no longer working to raise yourself as a separate being, but you are working on raising the whole—at that point, you could be said to be ego free, according to the most common definition of ego found out there.
However, why do you not then ascend at that level? Because there is still something you want to experience, something you need to work out, something you need to resolve, and by doing this, you are helping to raise the collective, create that momentum in the collective that makes it easier for others.
There was a teaching given in the Summit Lighthouse that you could ascend with 51% of your karma balanced. We have explained at various times that this was a limited teaching, because you cannot really ascend until you have completely resolved your psychology. But what was meant there was that you did not have to come back into embodiment, but you could resolve the rest of your psychology, karma, from the etheric realm and then ascend from there. In other words, you did not ascend directly upon leaving the physical body as I did, or as Jesus demonstrated, although he came back in a physical body and lived to the age of 81.
You could say that, when you go to the 97th level, you are ego free according to the most common definition of the selfish ego, but you still have these separate selves. That is why there is still more to resolve, and this is what allows you not only to hold onto the physical body, but also to actually hold onto earth and still find that it is important for you to be here, there is still some work for you to do, there is still some good you can do here, which is perfectly correct, you can help raise the collective. If you just ascended at the 97th level, you would create a pull on the collective consciousness, but you would not have gone through each of these steps, while you were in a physical body, of resolving the highest psychology and therefore you would not have given the maximum service that you could give on earth.
Question: Dear Buddha, in the last webinar, one of the masters said that if we are still in embodiment, we cannot be ascended. The teacher also emphasized to us not to believe anyone who claimed that they are ascended. As long as a person is still in a physical body that person still has the ego. My understanding of this is, a person cannot reach full enlightenment or be ascended until we die and leave the physical body. However, in Buddhist sutras the Buddha claimed he had reached full enlightenment—anatta, non-self—in his last and fourth level of meditation, and that is when the Buddha had the ultimate wisdom. Can you please help to explain how the Buddha can reach enlightenment when he was still in a physical body? And if this is correct for the Buddha, then how can we understand the above teaching from the ascended master that we still have ego if we are in a physical body?
Answer from the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2021 Webinar – Being the Open Door for Planet Earth.
Well, what you are dealing with here is how words are used and interpreted. We have talked at this conference about the fact that after I ascended as the Buddha, my followers started creating this idolatry around me. Some had this desire to make it appear as if I was the ultimate spiritual teacher that had ever appeared on this planet and therefore, I had to be special from birth and so forth. It is correct that I said that I had reached a certain level where I had overcome the not-self and had reached the ultimate wisdom.
However, that was the ultimate wisdom that I could see at that point. You need to recognize here that as you go to the higher levels of the spiritual path, you can start having certain spiritual experiences. Many people have had them from many different backgrounds, even some people who have not been openly spiritual. And when you have one of these experiences, it feels very, very real to you. And this means that when you then come back into the physical body and the outer mind, it becomes easy to interpret this sense of reality as if this must have been the ultimate experience. This must have been the ultimate enlightenment, the ultimate wisdom that could be attained. But the deeper reality is that it is simply what you could see at that level.
As we have already explained at this conference, I had not reached the ultimate level of enlightenment. Padmasambhava came later as an ascended master appearing with a higher level of enlightenment. And there are many higher levels of enlightenment in the ascended realm reaching all the way to the Creator.
Now, there can be some confusion here in terms of what exactly you mean with “an ego” or with “not-self”. What we are giving you is the teaching that there will always be some element of ego—what we call ego or separate self, until you ascend, because otherwise you cannot hold on to a physical body. Even though when I came back from Nirvana and was in a physical body and lived till the age of 81 and it was said that I had attained enlightenment, I still had enough of that self that allowed me to hold on to the physical body. However, the ego that I had as the Buddha was not what many people in today’s world call the ego, which is the selfish aspect of the psychology that causes you to be selfish.
I had, as I explained in my dictation, I had attained that sense of oneness, overcome the sense of separation, therefore overcome the not-self. In a sense, you could say that based on the definition that many people use, I was ego-free. But we are giving you the expanded teaching that there are separate selves that relate to each level of the 144 levels of consciousness. Each self is based on an illusion and you do not shed the final self, the final illusion until you are ready to ascend. And it was the same for me, it was the same for Jesus and all others who have ascended from earth.
So, be careful not to be too hung up in the words and the interpretation of words. And be careful to look beyond the idolatry, because the teachings we are giving you now are not based on this idolatry, we are not catering to people who have an idolatrous view. Basically, you could say that when you pass that initiation at the 96th level—that we have talked about, where you overcome the focus on self, where you are no longer working to raise yourself as a separate being, but you are working on raising the whole—at that point, you could be said to be ego free, according to the most common definition of ego found out there.
However, why do you not then ascend at that level? Because there is still something you want to experience, something you need to work out, something you need to resolve, and by doing this, you are helping to raise the collective, create that momentum in the collective that makes it easier for others.
There was a teaching given in the Summit Lighthouse that you could ascend with 51% of your karma balanced. We have explained at various times that this was a limited teaching, because you cannot really ascend until you have completely resolved your psychology. But what was meant there was that you did not have to come back into embodiment, but you could resolve the rest of your psychology, karma, from the etheric realm and then ascend from there. In other words, you did not ascend directly upon leaving the physical body as I did, or as Jesus demonstrated, although he came back in a physical body and lived to the age of 81.
You could say that, when you go to the 97th level, you are ego free according to the most common definition of the selfish ego, but you still have these separate selves. That is why there is still more to resolve, and this is what allows you not only to hold onto the physical body, but also to actually hold onto earth and still find that it is important for you to be here, there is still some work for you to do, there is still some good you can do here, which is perfectly correct, you can help raise the collective. If you just ascended at the 97th level, you would create a pull on the collective consciousness, but you would not have gone through each of these steps, while you were in a physical body, of resolving the highest psychology and therefore you would not have given the maximum service that you could give on earth.