Listen to the audio book version of the dictation.

Ascended Master Hilarion through Kim Michaels, May 22, 2026. This dictation was given at the conference in Kazakhstan: Co-creating with the ascended masters on the seven rays.

I AM the Ascended Master Hilarion. I will begin by considering a question that has baffled philosophers, theologians, scientists, spiritual people for a very long time, in fact for much longer than recorded history. And it is this question: “How can something come from nothing?”

Whether you believe the world was created by God or whether you believe it was created by the Big Bang, the question is always: “Before there was anything, how did something emerge out of that nothingness? How did some thing that we can perceive emerge out of nothing?”

How did something come out of nothing?

And nobody has really found a satisfying answer to this, and the reason for this is that it is the wrong question to answer, the wrong question to ask. It cannot be answered the way it is asked. And the reason for this is that it is a dualistic question, and it is not necessarily dualistic the way we normally talk about duality where there is a value judgment, but there are still the two opposite polarities.

You are in a world where you perceive that there are things, there is something here, it has some substance, you can touch it, and therefore, you are saying: “Where did this world come from?” And you are thinking with the linear mind that there must be a time where this world had a beginning. And since the world is made up of something, before the beginning of the world of something there must have been the opposite of something, and in the dualistic polarities the opposite of something is nothing.

But if the opposite of something is nothing, then how did something come out of nothing? How did a thing come out of this state where there is no thing? And the mind, the linear mind, can go over this argumentation again and again. It can get stuck in a loop. There are philosophers who have been thinking about this for their entire lifetimes, maybe even several lifetimes, and the mind cannot resolve it.

Does nothing actually exist?

But for you who are open to the spiritual path, here is a general principle that relates to the Fifth Ray of vision and truth. When you have a question you cannot resolve, you cannot answer, question the question. Question the premises, the assumptions built into the question.

Here you are in a world where there is things and you are reasoning with the mind that the opposite of something must be nothing, but why does that have to be the case? In other words, question why. Why must there be nothing before there is something?

And of course the linear mind will say, well, this world has not always existed. The things that we see have not always been there. If we go back to the point where none of the things we see in this world were there, then there must have been nothing. There were no things. That must mean nothing. But is no thing the same as nothing? In other words, you could ask: “Is there such a concept or such an occurrence as nothing? Does nothing actually exist?”

There has always been consciousness

And the answer there is no, nothing does not exist. There has never ever been a state where there was nothing. And again the linear mind will struggle with this because it wants there to be some ultimate beginning. But there was no beginning and there will be no ending. Again the mind will say: “But are we not in a world that is evolving? And therefore, if we turn back the evolutionary process, it must have started at some point.”

And ascended master students will say: “Well, have you not told us there was a point before our world of form began where there was only the void created by the Creator? Is the void not nothing?” No, the void is not nothing. The void is no thing. But there is still an energy, an awareness, a consciousness in a void.

And there is consciousness in the Allness, even though in the Allness there is no beginning and ending. You see, there was never a state of nothing. There was always awareness. And awareness shifts, grows, transcends itself and this is an indefinite, never ending process.

How can an image in consciousness become a thing?

What has this got to do with co-creation? Well, it is simply that you need to realize that in order to co-create, you are not creating out of nothing, you are not starting with nothing and creating something. You are starting with something from a higher level that you are lowering to a lower level. You are starting with something from the spiritual realm that you are pulling into the four levels of the material universe.

Otherwise, how can you co-create? There must be something you are co-creating with, which of course is us, our consciousness. But my point is, there has always been consciousness. There was a time when there were no things as you perceive, but there was always consciousness. Now we need to consider how consciousness manifested things that you perceive with the physical senses. How did consciousness, how did an image in consciousness become materialized as a cup?

Well, what was the principle I just gave you? If you cannot answer the question, question the question. Does this cup exist independently of consciousness? Most people would say: “Yes, of course it does.” But could we not question the question? If there was always consciousness, then does the cup have an independent existence?

Well, you will say, if you are an ascended master student: “No, because you have told us that everything is manifested originally by the Elohim who manifested the original earth. And therefore, in their consciousness they manifested the earth and they are holding that matrix for the earth which gives it existence over time. The earth existed before there were human beings on earth, before human beings had embodied here.”

You would say the earth has an objective existence. We have sometimes agreed with this, but there is of course a deeper level of understanding that I will attempt to give you here. We have hinted at this earlier by saying—at the basic level of the world of form, you have what we have called the Ma-ter light, it is a substance that can take on any form, but it cannot take on form by itself. But remember we have also said the Ma-ter light does have consciousness, not self-awareness as you do, but it is conscious.

Now a mental image is formulated at the level of the Elohim, it is projected onto the Ma-ter light and it takes on the form of first the energies that make up the identity realm, then the energies that make up the mental realm, then the energies that make up the emotional realm and then the energies that make up the physical realm. But the question is: “Are these energies what you would perceive as energy from the inside?”

And as quantum physics has shown, what you perceive from being inside the material universe is not energy but particles. As science also can show, particles are really energy, but nevertheless they appear to you as particles. And then these subatomic particles form atoms that form molecules that form cells and so forth until you have the myriad of things.

Your perception of the cup creates the cup

But the question now is: “Are these particles that are used to build things such as a cup, are they actually things? Are they what you perceive as material things?” And as we have explained, a particular form such as this cup is formed by an elemental taking on a mental matrix for the cup. But the elemental does not see itself as a cup, it does not have the concept because the elemental does not have what we call the conceptual mind.

The conceptual mind has the ability to formulate a concept that is projected onto the Ma-ter light. But the elemental cannot formulate the concept for itself, it takes on the concept projected upon it. That is why even though the elemental forms the cup, the elemental, and even though the elemental is conscious, the elemental is not sitting there thinking: “I am a cup, I am a cup, I am a cup.”

Where does the cup come from? It comes from your perception of it. Your perception of the cup is what creates the cup. I know I am confusing your minds here, but that is precisely my intent. Is the cup a cup? You will say: “If it is not a cup then it cannot be a form, so that means it does not exist.” But again, that is the wrong question to ask. Are the only two options that there is a cup or there is nothing? There is a cup that exists independently of the mind or there is nothing?

No. That is my whole point here. Everything exists in mind, yes? The Elohim are holding a matrix in their minds of the earth, the elementals are taking on that image, the Ma-ter light which is conscious takes on the image. There is an image in consciousness. But the elementals are not seeing the cup, the Elohim are not seeing the cup, the Ma-ter light is not seeing the cup, only you are seeing the cup. Only you are using your conceptual minds to call it a cup and to give it some kind of meaning in your minds.

It could be a cup that you drink tea or coffee out of in the morning and it has an emotional significance for you, that you feel good about starting your morning ritual with a cup of hot liquid. It could be that the cup really for you is a beer mug and you associate it with all those happy hours at the inn where you were drinking beer and getting drunk and talking to your friends.

Imposing meaning gives you an experience

You see what I am pointing out here. In your mind you are the ones who are creating the thing and attaching meaning to the thing. The elementals have no meaning. The ascended masters are not thinking about drinking beer at the inn on Friday night. You see here that you are the ones who are imposing a meaning on things and therefore, by imposing meaning with your minds you are creating the things in your mind.

You are not creating the cup but you are creating the meaning that the cup has in your mind. And what does the meaning in your mind give you? It gives you an experience, an experience.

The purpose of the world of form

Now we need to ask the question: “What is the purpose of the world of form that you are in? Why was it created? And why were you sent here? What is it you are doing to the world or with the world?”

You are experiencing it from the inside. And as we have said before the world can be compared to a reality simulator. You enter the simulator and once you are inside the world that you see inside the simulator seems real. Yes, there really is a cup, it is real, I can touch it, it must be real. But you see, how are you touching it? How is the messenger touching the cup? You will say: “His physical body is touching the cup.” But what is it that happens when the body touches the cup? The mind has an experience.

What is it to be in a physical body, to be in embodiment? We have given you images that in previous times you have a soul. The soul was created in the spiritual realm and the soul was sent into embodiment. Here is this outside soul that enters the body and now it is residing inside the body. There is a separation between the body and the soul, which incidentally is when you see this separation, how can the mind heal the body? But that is not my point here. My point is, just because your body, your physical body can touch a physical cup, does not mean that the cup is real or that the body is real.

Experiencing the world as real

The cup is an experience in the mind and your body is an experience in the mind because everything that occurs in your mind is an experience in your mind. Now again, people are going to say, are you saying the world is not real? Are you saying the world is created by the mind? Well, the world is created by mind, not your mind. But you are not seeing the world that was created by the Elohim or by the elementals because the elemental who makes up this cup sees the atoms, the subatomic particles and sees them just arranged in a certain pattern.

But it also sees, as we said, there are atoms in the air, everything is made out of these little dots of atoms that just take on certain patterns. The elemental does not see that pattern, this particular pattern as a cup, but your mind does. Which part of your mind? The conceptual mind. Your physical senses are touching the cup, but that creates an experience in your mind and the conceptual mind imposes a form on the experience and a meaning on the experience.

The co-creative process, as we have explained, is that you formulate an image in your mind and you project it in order to manifest something that is not yet physically manifest. But you see, on a planet like earth, with a density of matter and a low level of the collective consciousness, people are not aware of this. They are not aware that everything started as a concept in mind. They think the world is real. They experience the world as real and they do not question their sense of reality.

This means that they have forgotten they are co-creators because they are not realizing that they are not experiencing the real world. Their experience of their environment is created in their minds. If you take the average person and say, say to them, there is something in your environment that forms this thing that I am holding in my hand. But what is in your environment is not a cup. Seeing this as a cup is an experience created in your mind. And you could see it as something different. You could have a different meaning to it or you could even see that this cup is made out of smaller particles, even made out of energy, so that it is fluid, it could be changed. Even though this cup is finished and burned, it is still as pliable as the clay it is made out of and it could be molded into a different shape. But this is what people cannot accept on a planet like earth.

The mind trapped by what is already here

My point is, you co-create with your conceptual mind. But on earth, people have forgotten the role of the conceptual mind. They believe that they do not have a conceptual mind that experiences their environment. What they experience is what is there. But if what you are experiencing is an objective thing independent of your mind, how could you change anything?

If there are things that are independent of your mind, how could you change anything? How could you have an architect who envisions a house that is different from any other house ever built and he is able to build it? Well, because the architect, even though he may not be conscious of it, he is using his conceptual mind to reach beyond what he sees in the world around him. He is conceptualizing something that is not manifest.

And that is the only way you can co-create something new. What I am pointing out is that for most people on earth, their conceptual minds have been locked by what is already there, what they see and how they see it. And therefore, most people cannot envision something beyond what they see.

They cannot imagine that things could be better than what they are. They cannot imagine that matter could be less dense than what it is right now. And therefore, the body could live much longer and there would be no diseases and they would not have to work because they could manifest with the mind what they need to sustain the body.

You see how this ties in with what Serapis Bey explained, that the initiation you need to pass at the 96th level is that you let go of this self that looks at what is already here in the environment it is in, formulates an image based on what it sees and projects it up at the spiritual realm, at the ascended masters, therefore, essentially projecting that we cannot go beyond what the conceptual mind can see, therefore, projecting that we should validate what the conceptual mind sees instead of seeing that we can give you a vision of something that is not manifest currently in your environment.

You see there is a reverse flow we might say of the conceptual mind where the conceptual mind partly by the influence of the fallen beings but not exclusively by that, but the conceptual mind has been used to project that what you see now is real and cannot be changed, at least not by the mind.

But the original use of the conceptual mind is to conceptualize something that is not here now and then manifest it. You see, if your conceptual mind is trapped by what is already here you cannot conceive of something new, you cannot believe it is possible to bring it forth, you cannot accept it. This is a realization that you need to come to before you can really engage in a co-creative process.

The world is a screen

Everything that is here, that you perceive, what you perceive, is created in your mind. Be careful to listen to what I am saying, I know this is very subtle. There is something in this hand but that something is not what you perceive through your physical senses and often not through the conceptual mind either. You think that what is here is exactly what you are experiencing in your mind, namely a solid thing that cannot easily be changed.

But as I said this is really just a pattern in the Ma-ter light as we have sometimes used the analogy of an image on a movie screen. If you saw a movie with this cup would you say that the cup I am seeing on the movie screen is real, it is a real thing? No of course not, you would know it was an image on the screen and it could change instantly if a new image was projected onto the screen.

Well, my beloved—“Hilarion with light so green, we see behind the matter screen”— even what you think is the real world is just a screen with an image projected upon it and some of those images are projected from the level of the Elohim or the elementals or even some lower forces but what you perceive in your mind is an image projected by your mind.

How do you co-create with us? By learning how to project a different image with your mind. Have you perhaps studied the alchemists a little bit? You know what the alchemists are who attempted to take lead and through some mystical process of incantations and various things and chemicals turn it into gold and they thought they needed this philosopher’s stone that was the missing ingredient?

Have you heard of black magicians who are attempting to create various phenomena? You see what all of these people are doing, they are trying to manifest something without changing the images they have in their minds. That is not co-creation, that is just another form of de-creation. What we are hoping to help you lock into is this process of co-creation which really means that you realize whatever you are experiencing in your environment right now, what you are experiencing in your mind is created by your mind and in order to change your environment, your situation, you need to first change the image in your mind because that is the only way you can change your experience.

The reality simulator

Why have we given you this image of the reality simulator? Well, because it illustrates that in a reality simulator you in a sense know you entered this room or you put on these goggles and you are now seeing something. It seems just as real as what you are seeing outside the simulator but you know because you entered the simulator that what you are seeing is just images projected on this screen or these goggles.

You know that this could easily be changed, you know that the purpose for entering the simulator is just to have an experience. Just as the purpose for entering a movie theater is to have an experience you are not having outside the theater. The shift that we have talked about many times but we need to repeat it here so we make sure that you grasp that this is part of the co-creative process, the shift you need to make is that the purpose of your existence on earth, well in fact the purpose for your existence, is to have experiences.

It was not the purpose of the Elohim to create a real world that never changes. The purpose of the Elohim for creating the earth was to create an environment that seems real to beings who have gone inside of it. The whole purpose for the earth, we will focus on the earth for now because that is where you are, the whole purpose for the earth is to give you an experience.

Now you may very well think: “Well I would like to learn how to co-create with the ascended masters so I could change my outer situation, I would like to have a healthy body, I would like to have more money, I would like to have a nice house, I would like to have a nice career, I would like to have the perfect partner, so forth and so on.” Yes. But why do you want what you perceive as outer things?

Learning to consciously change your inner experience

If you look at the many, many people out there right now who are involved with New Age teachings, who are working on manifestation, manifesting something, you will see that the vast majority of them are focused on getting things: more money, a nice house, the perfect partner. They have not clarified why they want to get those things. They have not acknowledged, most of them, that what they are really trying to do is not to change their outer physical situation. They are trying to change their inner experience.

We have said this before and many of you have realized it, but we again, we need to just mention that the purpose for ascended master teachings, the purpose for the co-creative process, the purpose of the spiritual path, the purpose of the path to Christhood is so you can learn to consciously and deliberately change your inner experience, your life experience. That is the whole purpose for our teachings. It is not our purpose to change outer things or to teach you how to change outer things, but to change your experience.

Getting a nice house through the co-creative process

Now I will attempt to be less philosophical. We shall see whether this is possible for me. I will reach back to what Kuan Yin described. She gave you a relatively simple process. Where you start at the identity level, you accept the image of a healthy body or a healthy heart and then you gradually step it down. Now we will use this same gradual process to focus on co-creating something with the ascended masters.

It does not really matter what it is, but let’s just for practical purposes say that you want a nice house, however you perceive it. You want a nice house to live in. First of all, why do you want a nice house? Because you want to change your inner experience, your life experience. And you are thinking, because that is what you have been brought up to think, that if I have the house, my inner experience will change. Okay. Let’s just stay with that thought, put it aside.

But now we will say, you can of course take physical measures. You go to work, you try to get a better job, you save up your money until you can buy a nice house. But that is not really the co-creative process we want to teach you.

Let’s say that we are trying to teach you how you can use your mind to not necessarily manifest a house out of thin air, but to attract it to yourself. How would you go about getting that nice house through the co-creative process?

Well, first of all, you reach up for a higher vision. You might have formulated the vision in your outer mind of what this nice house should look like. This is what most people do when they create a treasure map, for example, where they take a picture of the house they want. But you need to be willing to give that up, as we said. You give it up and you open yourself up that there potentially is a higher vision in your Divine plan. Let’s say that you do this, you reach up and you receive a vision for a nice house that you could have. It is part of your Divine plan to have a nice house.

How would you bring that vision down into the physical? Well, you start by reaching up first to the vision in the spiritual realm, but then you bring it down to the identity realm. At the identity realm you need to superimpose that vision on the elementals at that level. But how do you superimpose the vision on the elementals? You must experience how you would feel yourself, how you would identify yourself as the owner or at least the occupier of this nice house. You have to live your way, live yourself into experiencing at the identity level, having that house. And by really making that experience at the identity level real, you are projecting the vision onto the elementals at that level.

Then when you have that experience and it seems real to you, you pull it down to the mental level. Now you think the way you would think if you had that house: what would it require, what would you need to do, how would you decorate it, what furniture do you want? But first of all, how would you see yourself, how would you think of yourself when you had that nice house and you are living in it? And again, you need to make that an experience at the mental level and make it feel real. Because when it seems real to you at the mental level, you are projecting that vision onto the elementals at that level. And it is the elementals who are going to manifest your vision at the physical level, but it must start at the identity and be brought down.

Now you have that complete experience at the identity and the mental level. You own the house, you see yourself in it. But now you go down to the feeling level. How would you feel if you had that nice house? How would it feel to get up in the morning, open your eyes and you look at this nice bedroom that you had decorated? And you get up and you walk into this nice bathroom and you walk down and you make yourself breakfast. How do you feel then? And again, you need to make that feeling real at the emotional level because that is what projects the image or the vision onto the elementals at that level.

But then comes the final step, which is that you accept that your experience in the mind is as real now as it would be if you had the house. In other words, you are realizing that surely if you actually had that physical house, your feelings would change, your thoughts would change, your sense of identity would change.

But if you had the physical house, your experience would be exactly the same as what you have now created in the mind, where instead of starting at the physical level and going up, you just started at the identity level and it goes down. But you are still having the same experience. And in your mind it is completely as real as if you actually had the house.

And that is when you can then realize something very profound. Which is: if you have created an experience in your mind of having a physical thing and if that experience seems completely real to you, do you actually need the physical thing? Do you? Well, some people do, but many spiritual people can realize that they do not.

How do you overcome the desire for a physical experience?

And this is important because you are a spiritual person, you are working on your Christhood, you are working on your ascension. We can say, this has the potential to be your last lifetime, but you still have certain experiences you would like to have on earth. In other words, you can sort of make a map and you can say: “In order to be able to let go of earth and ascend, I need to first have that experience, the nice house, then I need to have that experience, I need to have that experience.”

And then you can say: “Is it really physically practically possible that I would have first a nice house and then this and then that in this lifetime? Do I have enough time left in the physical body to have these experiences physically?” And the answer might very well be no, for most of you it will be no.

How can you then overcome the desire to have the experience? By realizing that the experience takes place in your mind. And that the experience can be attained in two ways: it can be triggered by something physical or it can be created in the mind. But what you create deliberately, consciously in your mind is just as real as the experience you have based on the physical substance, the physical house. And if you can create an experience in your mind that seems equally real, you do not need to spend the time, the energy on having the physical house. You can overcome the desire for the house so you can qualify for your ascension.

Looking outside for inner change

You can also take this to look at the path of Christhood. Because what Serapis Bey was explaining is that you have this self that causes you to be focused on self. I will just describe the same process, not that my description is better than Serapis. It is just from a different perspective. It complements Serapis’ explanation.

From my perspective of the Fifth Ray, the way I would explain this is: We have explained that you descend to the 48th level in order to take embodiment. At the 48th level on a dense planet like earth, you do not feel complete, you do not feel whole. You are in a new environment, a difficult environment, you do not quite know how to behave in that environment, who you are in that environment, so you feel incomplete. And you feel like you need something from outside your current sense of self in order to become more complete.

And naturally you explore: could you get that from your environment? And then you can go below the 48th level where you lose your intuitive sense and now you have an even more intense sense that you are incomplete in yourself. But what happens when you go into separation is that now you lose your connection, your intuitive connection. And when you are still above the 48th level, you can reason: “Perhaps I can get a sense of completion by expanding my connection to whatever it is I am connected to.”

But you cannot reason that way when you go below the 48th level, now you think you have to get something from this world. This means that now you are using your conceptual mind to try to conceptualize how you get something from this world that will make you feel complete. It can be a nice house, it can be the perfect partner, it can be enough money, it can be power, it can be any number of things that human beings desire and thirst for.

All of what people want is to create an inner experience. But they are attempting to change their inner state of mind by changing something in the outer world. Why can this never work? Because the outer world was still created from consciousness. And now they are thinking they can change their inner experience by changing something in the outer world that they do not think is created by consciousness. But their inner experience they are having in consciousness. They are trying to do what is impossible.

And you carry an element of that self with you to the 96th level. And that causes you to be focused on self. Essentially you can say you find an ascended master teaching, you hear about the path to self-mastery, you go through the course from the first book all the way to Saint Germain’s book and now you are at that 96th level of consciousness. But all along you were still thinking that by following the path of the ascended masters you would attain that completeness that you desire. We the masters would magically give it to you.

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The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Co-Creating with the Ascended Masters.

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