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Ascended Master Astrea through Kim Michaels, June 1, 2020. This dictation was given during a webinar about the liberation of women.

I am the Elohim Astrea, Elohim of the Fourth Ray. The Fourth Ray has often been considered the ray of purity, but we have also given you the teaching that it is the ray of acceleration. It is also said that the masters on the fourth ray are quite direct, quite outspoken and, to use an American expression, we are no-nonsense. What I aim to do in this discourse is give you the no-nonsense view on sex because sex is obviously one of the factors that have been used to suppress and abuse women.

What is the no-nonsense view on sex? Well, here is my starting remark: For over 90% of the men on this planet, sex is an addiction. What then is an addiction? Well, you go out in the world and you see how science has attempted to explain addictions. They have come up with some rather convoluted intellectual explanations, but have they really helped people overcome addictions? Have they allowed societies to stop the rise in addictions that many societies are seeing?

You can look at these, what we have called the more evolved nations, the modern democracies, and you can see that there has been considerable progress in these nations. In many ways you can look at these societies and see that there has been tremendous progress compared to 100 or several hundred years ago. You can also see that there are certain areas where there has not been progress and certain problems even are accelerating. One of these problems is obviously addictions. You go back 100 years and there were far fewer people who were addicted to drugs for example. You can also go back 100 years and see that there were far fewer people who were addicted to sex.

No materialistic explanations for addictions

You must ask yourself, if you are willing to look at this neutrally and with a no-nonsense perspective: Why do these societies see a rise in addictions when they see so much progress in other areas? You can even take the perspective of saying: What has happened in these modern democracies over the last 100 years? Well, in many ways, politically and economically, people have become more free, but is an addiction something that makes people more free? Obviously not. An addiction is something that takes away people’s freedom. Here you have societies that are seeing a rise in people’s political and economic freedom but at the same time, they are seeing a decrease in people’s psychological freedom, even in some ways their physical freedom because an addiction can force people into certain actions that clearly take away their freedom. How do you explain this? Well, you simply cannot explain it if you insist on doing what science has been insisting on doing now for a long time, and that is provide a materialistic explanation for everything.

You can study the body. You can study the brain. You can study the genes and you can try and come up with a gene that is linked to addiction. You can try and come up with certain aspects of brain chemistry that supposedly lead to addiction. You can try and look at hormones or the nervous system or whatever you want, but you will never be able to explain addiction, nor will you ever be able to help people free themselves from addiction. You cannot do this through a materialistic approach. It cannot be done.

We have before used the old story of Zeno’s paradox that shows that you can divide the distance indefinitely into smaller and smaller increments. Scientists know this very well. You can analyze the body from a purely materialistic viewpoint. You can try and find smaller and smaller units in the body or in the molecules and the atoms. You can try and find how these microcosmic elements of the body can explain addictive behavior and you will see that despite this tradition, started by Aristotle, you will never be able to explain macrocosmic phenomena through microcosmic elements. It cannot be done.

Human beings are not objects

A human being is not a collection of cells, molecules, atoms or subatomic particles. Of course, the human body is made up of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules and cells, but the human being is more than a collection of these parts. The whole is more than the sum of the parts because a human being is a being, not a machine, not a device, not an object. How will you explain addictive behavior by only looking at human beings as an object? Well, you cannot. You cannot. In fact, even science and many modern democracies are at the point where a large group of people are very close to breaking through to where they can begin to look at how human beings have been objectified.

Obviously, this relates to the topic of sex and how sex has been used to abuse, limit and trap women. What is it that happens in this process? Well, it is that women are objectified. They become sexual objects but is this the only example of objectification? Of course not. Take another obvious example—soldiers who go to war. They are not looked at as individual people or human beings. They are just objects that can be moved around and sacrificed in order to achieve some supposedly epically important goal of winning a battle or winning a war. What have I said about science when science takes a materialistic approach? What is it doing? Well, when science uses the materialistic approach to investigate anything that relates to human beings, then science is objectifying human beings. There is absolutely no other way to put it. The materialistic approach to science has been and is still objectifying human beings and this is, in the modern democracies, the very foundation for all other areas where human beings are objectified, including the objectification of women as sexual objects.

What is an addiction?

If you cannot explain the addiction to sex through a materialistic approach, how can you explain it? Well, let us first consider what an addiction is. In a certain way, we can start with a more universally acceptable explanation. We can look at the effects of an addiction. What does it do to the person who is addicted? Well, as I said, it takes away that person’s freedom and it does this first of all at the psychological level. The person, let us say it is a man who is addicted to sex, loses his psychological freedom because there is something in his psyche that compels him to have sex. It is not something he freely, neutrally chooses to do. He is compelled to do it by some force that overtakes his conscious will. He cannot choose to say stop. This is the same with alcoholics or drug addicts, they have lost their freedom of will.

This is something that should be a great concern to all modern democracies who take pride in seeing themselves as free societies that give people the greatest possible personal freedom. How can you see the rise in political, economic freedom and at the same time see the rise in this psychological addiction that takes away people’s freedom? This is cognitive dissonance. Why is it that this happens? Well, this is where materialistic science falls short. It comes up against the limitations of the materialistic approach. Yes, you can look at the body. Yes, you can analyze hormones, the nervous system, brain chemistry, genetic material and you may be able to come up with some correlations. There may be certain genes that can be linked to alcohol abuse in the sense that you find that in people who are alcoholics, certain genes are activated, or you find certain states of brain chemistry or certain electromagnetic patterns in the brain. Sure, you can find this, but are those things you discover in the body the cause of addiction or are they just a side effect at the physical level of a deeper cause? Of course, they are just side effects.

What is the teaching we have given you who are ascended master students? Well, we have said that the physical universe is not all there is. The physical octave, the physical level is actually the lowest level of a continuum of energy vibrations. Above the physical is the emotional level. Above that is the mental. Above that is the identity level. A human being is an energy system, and as has been known for thousands of years in the East, you have an energy field around the body. Now, many see that the body produces the energy field, but we have told you this is not the case. The body is actually the lowest vibrating extension of the total energy field of a human being. Energy flows through this energy system from the spiritual realm into the identity body, then into the mental body, then into the emotional body and then into the physical. This means that everything that happens at the physical level is not a cause in and of itself. It is the effect of causes at the emotional, mental and identity level. If you do not understand this very, very basic reality, you cannot explain addiction.

What happens in an addiction is not purely physical. Something happens at the emotional level, the emotional body. It is what happens at the emotional level that overpowers the person’s conscious will. In other words, in an addiction, there is such a surge of a particular form of energy that comes from the emotional body of that person into the conscious mind that it overpowers, it colors the conscious mind and it neutralizes the conscious will. It simply overrides the conscious will, and the person has no power to stop this emotional impulse and it must act upon it.

Now, of course the emotional level is not the highest level of the human energy system, for there is also a mental component and even an identity level component. When you are looking at addiction, it starts at the identity level by the way the person looks at itself and what kind of being it is. It then also has a component at the mental level where it looks at how it relates to the world, what it can do, what it is allowed to do and not do. This then sets the matrix for the production, we might say, of certain energies in the emotional body, which can then overpower the conscious mind at the physical level. Unless you understand this, you cannot explain an addiction.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: The Spiritual Liberation of Women