(7) Types of Worlds and the Proportion of Predation to Symbiosis within them
What we mean by a type of world is a life-bearing planet where certain characteristics are very strongly marked within all the inhabitants. Our own planet, Earth, is to the type that resonates most powerfully to the power of Pluto: the power of metamorphosis or transformation, the deployment of which can either raise one to superb spiritual heights, or if misused, plunge one into the depths of psychosis and degeneration. It is clear from the history of our planet that most of its political leaders have chosen the latter course. The political history of our earth has been an almost unbroken chain of needless cruelty: mass murder legitimized as war, sabotage, treachery and deception. Likewise the ecological history of our world has been predominantly that of human abuse and plunder of the natural environment to the detriment of all other species - a process exacerbated since the industrial revolution by the twin evils of overpopulation and the inevitably indiscriminate and widespread use of technology this generates. The plutonic nature of our world is further underlined by the choice of our scientists to revive the lethal element plutonium (which had long since been naturally purged from our planet) and its horrific fire of atomic fission
. Our planet earth is thus a plutonic type of world (type 10). All life-bearing planets of plutonic type, as well as those worlds belonging to the nine previous types (Venus through Neptune) lie within the outermost sector or the seventh level of the great Tree of Life. Though all beings draw their life force from the invisible and unmanifestable roots at the heart of the Tree - these roots being what we might call our Ultimate Energy Source or the Source of All Life - there are seven different levels of distance from that Energy Source. What this means in practical terms is that beings on the first level of the Tree can access its full powers to manifest limitless love, joy and life, whereas beings like ourselves, who exist within the seventh level of the Tree, cannot draw on the full power of the Source, and are subject to suffering, disease, aging and death. This is reflected in our planetary ecology: the degree of predation (the terror of who eats whom to maintain the chain of ecological balance) is greatest and that of symbiosis (mutually supportive feedbacks, such as trees giving out the oxygen we breathe, and we in return breathing out the carbon dioxide they need) is at the minimal level necessity to maintain the biosphere. We thus live in conditions of continual war between beauty and horror in our environment, an outer war that is reflected in us all by our constant struggle between harmonious states of consciousness such as love and joy, and the turbulent inner states of lovelessness that manifest as paranoia and psychosis.
Yet worlds such as our earth have had a long history as schools in which the karmic limitations and difficulties of life have prevented the great majority of their inhabitants from degenerating into worse loveless states of consciousness. Nor are the peoples of these worlds bound inevitably to the seventh level. Some have already gone on to a better, because more loving, joyous and life-affirming, sector of the cosmos. The next higher or sixth level of the Tree of Life contains a great variety of world types. These range all the way from the lower end of its spectrum, worlds of type 11 (the Pan type) - which have greater degrees of symbiosis than our earth and whose inhabitants are constructive, peaceful and trustworthy - to worlds of type 32, almost completely symbiotic worlds with just residual traces of predation. The proportion of predation to symbiosis progressively decreases on the sixth level, so the higher the type of world, the greater the amount of biological friends rather than enemies. Hence life-threatening diseases and their pathogens also decrease steadily, enabling the inhabitants of such worlds to enjoy far longer and happier lives than we can on earth, with greatly prolonged periods of youth and vigour.
There are five still higher levels of the Tree of Life. At the fifth level and above all planetary environments are completely symbiotic which means that aging and disease completely disappear. The beings living on this and higher levels of the Tree have progressively greater degrees of evolution and power. And the beings dwelling on the first level of the Tree are divine in comparison to us. They have constant access to its roots - the Source of all Life - and are greatest in power, love and wisdom. Their realm is one of eternal life beyond the need for manifestation in molecular form. Their 'bodies', like wondrous waves of light, are not limited to one set form but can take any lovely shape or quality they desire at will, and their eternity is not one of static unchangeability but states of bliss, constant evolution and ever-increasing fulfillment.
The path from our plutonic world to this supreme state of being involves a gradual ascent over some lifetimes through progressively higher types of world. To begin this journey one must first learn how to jump bardos, which means leaving behind our earth's bardo and traveling to the bardo of a higher (i.e. wiser and more symbiotic) world. A bardo is an inter-incarnational or intermediate realm (each life-bearing planet has one) where the soul dwells after the dissolution or death of its molecular body and before entry into another body through rebirth. For those who have not begun the metamorphic process of the Lion Path the experiences of the bardo are dreamlike, with the dreams being either lovely or nightmarish, depending on the degree to which those qualities had been developed during their last lifespan.
But when people walk the Lion Path they are able to do more than dream true in the bardo: they can learn to move from one bardo to that of another, higher world, from which incarnation on this type of world will ensue. This occurs in the final stage of one's Lion Path learning experience upon earth. The Cycles of Initiation promote the growth of the first six pleromic powers within an initiate to the point where, once they have become powerful enough, the seventh power (pleromic Mercury) spontaneously arises. This power is at first simply conscious awareness of the link between one's physical body here on earth and one's pleromic-energy body now fully-formed in the bardo. One can then make powerful shamanic journeys and connections with teachers from other worlds who will help one learn how to control and use this pleromic-energy body to its full potential. As these skills are acquired one learns how to prepare oneself for the next incarnational experience and how to jump bardos. And the wisdom one learns during this life will not be lost, as rebirth on another world does not destroy or weaken the link between the pleromic-energy body and the new molecular body.
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