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Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels, October 27, 2019. This dictation was given at a conference in Washington, D.C.

I AM the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha. It is my joy, it is my privilege, to give the sealing dictation for this conference.

I wish to give you some thoughts based on what other masters have told you. I wish to reach back to Padmasambhava and his concept that the fallen beings have managed to deceive and control people by creating all of these labels. What would be the response of the fallen beings, if they read that dictation? They would say: “But are you not labeling us by calling us fallen beings? Are you not labeling us by calling us a power elite? Are you not doing the exact same thing that you are accusing us of doing?” Such is the serpentine mind, the serpentine logic. Whatever you try to say about the power elite in order to expose them, they will attempt to turn it around and use it against you. Whatever source, and you can see this in history so many times, where whenever an individual or group came up with an exposure of the lies and the manipulation of the power elite, they would seek to attack that person in return, seek to discredit them, and thereby supposedly counteract what was said.

Now, you have a concept that has been going around in the collective consciousness for a very, very long time, the concept of “truth.” There is this idea that many people subscribe to, that certain ideas or certain expressions can be the truth, can be true. You will see so many Christians, who of course believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and therefore is true. You will see Buddhists who believe the same about at least some of the Buddhist scriptures, not necessarily that they are the word of God, but they represent some ultimate truth. You see in Islam the same thing about the Koran. You see even scientific materialists who essentially believe the same about not only the discoveries of science, but a materialistic interpretation of those discoveries.

Many, many people, including many ascended master students, have looked at the situation in the New Testament where Jesus is facing the Roman authorities, and Pontius Pilate makes the statement: “What is truth?” Many have looked down upon this and said he obviously did not recognize Jesus, but actually, from a certain perspective, that was a very wise statement or question.

The limitations of words

Many, many people in the world could make tremendous progress if they would ask themselves the question: “What is truth?” Or perhaps a little more nuanced question: “What is my concept of truth, my current concept of truth?” Many would therefore realize that their current concept of truth is just a label. In many cases it is a label created by the power elite specifically to deceive people. As we said, you create the label, you create a superstructure that supports that label, such as the word “God,” you create a structure about how you define God, and then you project with enough force and authority that this is the absolute truth about God. This causes people to not question that expression, that label. If they would be willing to question it, they could make tremendous progress. As Padmasambhava said, this labeling everything is the primary tool used by the fallen beings to deceive people, to trap them in some false belief that they cannot get out of because they will not question the label. They think it is the truth.

As we have said before, the more mature view is to realize that you live on a planet that is dense. It has a high density of matter, it has a high density of the collective consciousness. This affects everything on earth, it affects your physical bodies, causes a lowering of the lifespan, causes many diseases. It causes many other limitations that you experience. Why would it be so difficult to realize that the density of the planet also causes limitations to what you can do with words? Everything else on earth is limited so why would words not also be limited? In other words, the concept that you could formulate a worded statement that was an absolute truth or the word of God, is a rather limited understanding of the reality of life on this planet. God would never even attempt to give people a worded statement about itself, because it is clear for any ascended being, how much words have been misused throughout history, how much words are open to interpretation.

Now, of course you can say: “But there are certain words that refer to specific things. There is apples and oranges.’’ When you say the word apple, pretty much everyone knows what you are talking about, and this is precisely the point. Words on a dense planet like earth are a means for communicating practical things. You have a need to communicate about practical everyday matters, and you have the need to have a certain precision. When you are talking about apples, people know what you mean with the word apple. They know it is not an orange, is not a pear, is not a banana and so forth. So this is the practical aspect of words. There is little room for interpretation. You know very well that words have some limitations when it comes to describing more complex aspects. For example, most people still say today: “The sun rises in the east, moves across the sky and sets in the west.” But you have known for several centuries that the sun does not rise and set. It is the earth that is spinning on its axis. The sun does not do anything. It is what you see from your vantage point on earth that changes. You see that even here, even though you have a physical event, words cannot describe that event accurately, at least not the way most people use words.

What then happens when we come to more complex ideas? Is it not obvious that there is a limitation to what can be expressed in words? Take a very commonly used word, at least by many religious or spiritual people: “soul.” If you were to look at the many different philosophies or religions out there that use the word soul, you will find quite a big range of how they define it. You will find many, many people who use the word without clearly defining it, not really knowing what they are talking about. They just assume, many people assume that when they say the word soul, everybody who hears it will have the same interpretation of it as they do. When you begin to ponder these things, you realize that words should be, as the saying goes, taken with a grain of salt. You should not actually assume that words can precisely express ideas.

Why then is it so that you have an entire culture, both in the West and elsewhere, that is based on using words to describe ideas? Well, it is because the fallen beings have created these labels, and they use the labels to stop people from thinking more deeply. The label is always a word, such as the word “God.” It is underpinned by some structure of what, over the course of a long time, has been defined as God, and then it is projected with this energy that causes many people to simply be overwhelmed by the energy. They feel it as an authority, and therefore they shut down their minds and accept that this is what it means, this is what God is like. The purpose of using words in this way is to get people to accept the word at face value and not use the faculties that people have to investigate deeper, to look behind the word, behind the label, and see what is really there.

Looking behind words

What faculties do you have for looking behind the words? Well, you have critical thinking. Even the analytical mind can be used to some degree here, to think logically, to look for inconsistencies, to compare this to something else, and to therefore see: “Is there a consistent definition of a particular word.” Does it actually make sense what the words say, how they describe a certain idea, what does the idea actually mean? You can ask clarifying questions.

Many people who are overpowered by these authoritative labels, they go into a state of mental paralysis where they do not ask those kinds of questions. This particularly happens when you have an institution or system, such as a particular religion or the scientific establishment. How many of those who grew up Catholic have asked a question, only to hear from the priest: “It’s a mystery, my child,” thereby discouraging you from continuing to ask these questions? How many of you in school have asked a question, and the teacher could not answer it, either because he did not know, he was not a scientist, or because Materialism has no answer for it? Again, you were discouraged from asking the questions that the authority figures, from parents to teachers, to the leaders of society, could not answer. This is one faculty, using critical thinking to evaluate and ask further questions. You are going beyond the label, you are going beyond the word, and asking: “What does the word actually mean? What do those words actually say? What kind of an idea are they actually expressing?” You are going beyond the words, going beyond the label.

The other faculty you have is the one that we call intuition. It is actually a faculty that can help you gain understanding and insight, but it is really a faculty that gives you an experience. What do I mean with an experience, are there not many types of experiences? Well, certainly. As an example, just consider this: How would you use words to describe the taste of an apple? A very common experience, in fact so common that you would never need to describe the taste of an apple because everybody has had the experience. Just ponder how you could possibly describe the taste of an apple to someone who had never had the experience. It is virtually impossible to use words to convey that experience. Even as common of a thing as the taste of an apple is an experience that is beyond words.

What the fallen beings do not want people to realize is that when it comes to absolutely any aspect of life, whether it is a practical thing, a physical thing or an abstract idea, it is possible to have an intuitive or mystical experience where you directly experience the essence of the phenomenon beyond the words used to name it, label it or describe it. If you go back to Plato and his idea that there, beyond the material world, was a higher realm of ideal forms, this is what we have called the emotional, mental and identity realms. Let us go with Plato’s description: There is a higher realm in which there exists certain ideal forms, and these forms are what become manifest as the things you see in the physical world. In other words, you have a physical thing called an apple, but the apple is a manifestation of, an expression of, this ideal form that exists in a higher realm. It contains the essence of an apple. It is actually possible to have an intuitive experience where you experience that ideal form, the essence of an apple. The same with any complex abstract idea, you can have an intuitive experience whereby you experience the essence of the idea, the matrix of the idea. This means you can actually then experience: Where does the idea come from? Where did it originate? When you sharpen your intuition in this way, you can come to the point where you can read an idea in a book, and you can sense intuitively: Oh that idea came from the emotional realm, from the astral plane. Or that idea comes from the mental realm, or that idea comes from the lower identity realm, or that idea comes from the higher identity realm or the spiritual realm. You can sense this by intuitively feeling the vibration, the vibrational matrix of the idea. Therefore, you can know whether it is a valid idea, whether it came from a higher source or a lower source. You may not be able to explain this in words, but you can know it.

They are many spiritual people who have had their intuitive faculties open from childhood. There are many more who had them open during childhood, and then closed them during the teenage years due to the influence from the outside, whether from a religion or from Materialism that discouraged them from using these faculties. There are many spiritual people who can pick a book from a bookshelf and sense whether it comes from a higher or lower source, sense the purity of the ideas in that book. You can also cultivate the ability to read a book and sense that, this idea expressed here has a lower vibration, but that idea expressed in the next paragraph has a higher vibration. This then, is an ability that allows you (that allows all people, because all people have it if they are willing to use it) to go beyond these labels that are created by using words and projecting that they have a specific interpretation.

Words cannot describe God

If you cannot, my beloved, know the taste of an apple through words, how could you possibly know the nature of God through words? Would you not say that the Creator is more complex than an apple? I certainly would think so. Is it not non-constructive to think that any description of the Creator given by words on this dense planet, could be accurate or adequate? You realize here a very simple truth: What the fallen beings have done is to create these labels, “God,” and then there is the overlay of what God is. There is the intense energy momentum that has been built up over thousands of years that overpowers people so they dare not question what God is. They dare not gainsay God, they dare not challenge. They are not challenging God, you are challenging a worded expression, an interpretation.

What this does is, it prevents people from ever going beyond that label, and the understanding of the concept embedded in the label. They simply do not think about it. When you accept this matrix, this process, these labels, you are trapped by those who have defined the labels. You cannot go beyond the minds of the people or beings who define the label, you are stuck in the label. That is why societies, for centuries, can be stuck at a certain level, as Europe was stuck in the Catholic mindset for over a thousand years. It could not break out of that stalemate of the kings, the noble class and the Catholic clergy holding the majority of the population as slaves, virtual slaves, even in a physical sense, as slaves. You see the same thing many times throughout history. You see the same thing today where science is stuck in Materialism, where the economy is stuck in capitalism, thinking you have a free market when you do not.

The realization you can come to is that, if you really want to know, if you really want to know anything, or know about anything, you need to go beyond the word, you need to go beyond the label. You need to have that inner experience where you experience the essence of the idea. This is mental freedom. This is the only way to mental freedom: To use critical thinking and intuition to free yourself from these interpretations that are so powerful in the collective consciousness.

What are the interpretations based on? Many times, they are based on assumptions. Go back to when people believed the earth was the center of the universe. This was a very, very strong belief. You can scarcely imagine how strong of a momentum there was in the collective consciousness behind this belief. What was it based on? An assumption. Not on actual investigation, not on a higher experience, because you can intuitively experience that the earth is not the center of the universe because it revolves around the sun. You can intuitively experience that the sun is not the center of the universe. You can intuitively experience that the universe does not have a center because the universe is in a process of unfolding and therefore has no geographical center. Despite the concept of the Big Bang, where everything started from a singularity, and supposedly that singularity is the geographical center of the universe, and all of the galaxies revolve around it, this is not an accurate observation. You can intuitively realize that the universe is not expanding from one point, from a singularity.

The universe was manifested simultaneously as a spherical shape that is constantly evolving and pulsating. It had myriad origins, multiple origins, there was not one point from which all exploded. There were many points from which the matrix of the universe was lowered in vibration through the four levels of the material world, and therefore came into the physical octave as a whole, not as the whole it is today, because it has been in the process of evolving ever since. It did not come into manifestation as a singularity. This is what we in Buddhism call the interdependent originations where everything is connected.

Once you begin to have these kinds of intuitive experiences, which many of you have had, then you can see beyond these labels and you can realize that words are not the ultimate expression of truth. This means that you can also see that if the fallen beings say: “Well, the ascended masters are just using labels. They are trying to do the same that we are doing, they are just projecting out these labels: ‘fallen beings,’ ‘ascension,’ ‘higher spheres,’ this and that.” Where in the teachings of this dispensation have we said that our words represent an absolute truth, a final statement? Where have we said that you should blindly believe in the words and never strive to have a direct experience beyond the words? Nowhere. So the difference here is that when we give a worded teaching, we have to use words, as words can be used, given the density of earth. That is our only option. Whereas the fallen beings never want you to go beyond the words and the labels they have defined, we have again and again and again said that you need to go beyond the words, you need to reach for the direct experience. Otherwise, you will not know truth because truth can be known, not through words, not through the most fanciful theory you could ever come up with, but only through that direct experience that some mystics called gnosis, the unity between the knower and the known.

The rest of this dictation, along with an invocation based on the dictation, is found in the book: Ending the Era of Elitism