Listen to a recording of this dictation (subscribers only)

Ascended Master Padmasambhava through Kim Michaels, January 7, 2024. This dictation was given during the New Year’s webinar 2024: BEING the Flame of Peace in a world in transition.

I AM the Ascended Master Padmasambhava. Did you take note of what you repeated 81 times in the refrain of my decree? Earth is an appearance where nothing is real. Consider the reaction to this statement. In the West, many people would doubt it, because then they would say that certainly the material world is real, and what your senses tell you is real and what science tells you is real. In the East, however, they would have a different reaction. Many people would say, based on Eastern philosophy, that this is perfectly true. But the reason they say this is that they consider that only that which never changes, only that which is permanent, is real and they consider that nothing that has form, nothing that is differentiated, is real.

Defining what is real

Now, you may also see that regardless of the East and the West, the human ego has a reaction to this statement because the human ego, the separate selves based on duality and separation, are based on the assumption, the claim, the belief, the experience, that that which the human ego defines as real, is real. Why is there this reaction in the ego? Because the ego ultimately is seeking to establish its own permanence through control. The ego has created this worldview based on duality and it needs to believe it is real, because it is the worldview that gives it a sense that it is in control of its own destiny and can secure its survival indefinitely. If the sense of reality is questioned, then the ego’s sense of being in control is questioned and then the ego’s very existence is questioned.

The same of course holds true for the fallen beings who are completely identified with their egos and they believe then that what they declare to be real, is real. You can find numerous examples of this by looking at world history, of people who have declared that something was real and have acted upon it. You can find entire empires that are based on certain ideas defined by the fallen beings in higher realms, believed by human beings in embodiment, even fallen beings in embodiment, and they have acted upon these ideas, created entire empires based on them.

Confrontation with reality

Many of these ideas revolved around certain groups of people being superior to others. This can be in a religious way—they are God’s chosen people, it can be in other ways that they simply have the right, because they are the strongest to force others, such as the Roman Empire, or it can be some historical necessity that the communists are superior to the capitalists, because historical necessity mandates that communism will take over the earth. There are many versions of this, but when you look at history, what do you see? They have all come and gone. Some survived for a longer period of time, some for a short period of time, but they have all either disappeared or lost most of their influence. Why is this? It is because, as we have said before, the earth is a reality simulator. You can use the dualistic consciousness to build a worldview and you can convince yourself that your worldview is real and for a time the earth will seemingly confirm and validate your worldview. But due to the second law of thermodynamics, there will come a point where your worldview begins to crumble, because, as we have explained many times, when you create a worldview out of duality, it becomes a dualistic polarity, it has an opposite dualistic polarity, there is a conflict between the two, and eventually it breaks them down, both of them.

You see that, in a sense, the reality simulator is set up to give you any experience you want for a time, but not indefinitely. In other words, you cannot become permanently trapped in your experience. And as we have said, even the fallen beings cannot be permanently trapped in their experience that they can define reality. The real message of all mystical teachings throughout the ages is that the mind can become a closed, self-validating system, where from inside the mind you can experience that an illusion is real, but that there are processes in the world designed to help you free yourself from this experience when you have had it for a time.

Seeing what is real and what is unreal

Why is it important to consider this in 2024? Well, we have said that the goal of this webinar is to be the Flame of Peace in a world in transition. What does it mean that the world is in transition? Well, of course, it means many things. But one of the things it means is that the world is transitioning into a phase where more and more people will begin to recognize what I just said, the propensities of the human mind to create a closed, self-validating system and the process that eventually and inevitably shatters that sense of reality.

In other words, you can create a sense of reality for a time but you cannot maintain it indefinitely. This is what you will see not only in 2024, but in the coming years, that there will be an accelerated process whereby people’s illusions will seemingly be validated for a time, but then will begin to crumble so that people come to see such an extreme out-picturing of their beliefs, that they can see the absurdity of it. The lesson that needs to begin to be integrated by the top ten percent in 2024 and beyond is the necessity to discern between what is real and what is unreal.

Of course, you can say this has always been a challenge, but it has never been more of a challenge than it will be from now on, from this point on.

Questioning the outdated sense of reality

And you can see, when you look at the world, how there are people, groups of people, nations, even humanity as a whole that are outplaying this. How they are taking a certain world view and out-picturing it in such an extreme form that it becomes more and more obvious. And when you look at these examples in today’s world and compare them to what you see from history, you see that it is inevitable that these examples you have today will go the same way as all of the examples from history.

They will crumble. The sense of reality will be challenged by actual physical events, or by ideas, or by people raising their awareness and by Christed beings speaking out, so that it will be shattered and people will have to find a new sense of reality. This will be the major challenge for humanity from now on forward because so many people are holding on to a world view, a sense of reality that is not only out of touch with reality but is outdated. In other words, the forward movement of the earth has gone beyond these viewpoints that people are holding on to and that is why they must act them out in more and more extreme ways. You can name any number of examples of this. You can take Russia and see that what Putin did in Ukraine was simply an out-picturing of the Russian collective mindset of the greatness of Russia, the rightness of the Russian empire, the right of the Russian empire to impose its will upon other nations and to absorb them into the empire. This is, as Mother Mary has said, the end of the age of empires, but it needed to be outplayed in an extreme form again, so that those who have not seen it, and this is not only the Russian people, can see the absurdity of it.

Another example is Israel and what is going on in Israel right now. This belief among the Jewish people that because they are God’s chosen people, they can hold themselves to a higher standard than other people. They can define their own standard, and they do not need to live up to these ideals that are found in these democratic nations that are supporting Israel. Nay, they can define their own ideals and they have a right to defend the state of Israel because nothing is more important than defending the state of Israel. You can see it in Brexit, the British belief that they could do on their own without Europe and that they would do better without the EU. Well, where is it now? Many people have already started realizing that it was not a good move. And it is just a matter of time before this breaks through, and the British nation will have to make a decision: “Will we admit our mistake and go back to the EU, or will we, as we have done in the past, outplay our stubbornness and continue to go in the direction that we know is wrong?”

You can see it outplayed in America, especially around Trump, who is an obvious example of a person who believes that he can define reality. Despite all of the evidence, none of the evidence really matters, because when he says the election was stolen, that is the way it is, or at least that is what the nation should affirm and validate. It remains to be seen whether there are enough Americans who will buy into this that they can vote him back into office, or whether he will be voted out of the political process once and for all. You see this around the world in many nations.

You saw it in Poland recently, where after eight years of the PiS government, they voted a new government in. And you see this in other nations where these populist leaders, or more autocratic, dictatorial leaders, have set themselves up to take a virtual monopoly on the political process of countries. But it is for all of them beginning to be challenged and it will be even more so in coming years. You have seen in Iran how women have begun to challenge the reality of this male priesthood and you will see this even more in Iran, in other nations, how this will be challenged.

You see in China how the image that the Chinese economy is invulnerable is beginning to be severely challenged by actual events and where the Communist Party can no longer simply declare that this is how the Chinese economy functions and they will be forced to acknowledge that regardless of the ideology of the Communist Party, the economy functions according to certain laws that no ideology can override.

“That earth is an appearance where nothing is real”

You might say, if you look back, that this has always been humanity’s challenge. But as the collective consciousness is raised, it is becoming more of a challenge. You see it in the spiritual field, as we have mentioned before, where you have now an entire culture that has sprung up around this idea of non-duality, where people are saying that the self is unreal, the world is unreal, nothing is happening. What do I mean when in the refrain of my decree I say: “That earth is an appearance where nothing is real?” Am I not seemingly affirming this, even this traditional Eastern view, that only Brahman is real and the world is an appearance?

Well, yes and no. What is real? Well, let us begin by considering what we can definitely say is unreal. And what we can say is definitely unreal is the ideas, the appearances that are created based on the duality consciousness. But even here we need to be careful because we cannot just say that any idea believed or defined by people in duality is automatically unreal. Naturally, human beings are able to make certain observations of the world. Science has called it natural laws, religions have called it the laws of God and naturally the world is based on certain principles. Even Karl Marx could see certain principles in society and in the economy and therefore, you cannot say that every aspect of Marxist philosophy is unreal. You can see likewise the capitalist ideology is not completely unreal, even though it is often defined by a power elite who wants to maintain and expand its power. There are certain principles for how the economy works. You cannot necessarily say that it is all unreal, but what you can say is that the elements of the worldview that have some reality to them are nevertheless colored and distorted and skewed by the overall worldview, which always places a certain elite of fallen beings at the top of the pyramid. There is always the value judgment, the division of humanity into those who are inferior and those who are superior. It has taken many different forms throughout history ⎯ it takes many different forms today.

But you see in all of these examples I have mentioned, past and present, how the people who think they can define reality always consider themselves superior to the general population. For that matter this applies to many of the universities of the world, the academic circles of the world, who think they can define that scientific materialism is reality. When you recognize that the duality consciousness can take certain facts and still use them to validate a clearly unreal worldview, then you can say that although elements of these philosophies and worldviews may have some reality to them or may be based on reality, the overall worldview is out of touch with reality.

The reality of the reality simulator

What then can we say is real? Is it only Brahman, the undifferentiated Brahman that is real? Or is there something in between the world and Brahman or the world of duality, the worldview of duality that is real? Well, what have we said? The world can be compared to a reality simulator. What you can say is that the purpose of the world is to give the self-aware beings who are inside the simulator a particular experience. There are certain outer environments defined by the simulator. Even these virtual reality goggles you see on earth, they have a certain programming that people interact with. And the programming of the virtual reality goggles was not created by the person wearing the goggles, but by someone outside the mind of the person who is wearing the goggles. Likewise, the reality simulator of earth was not programmed by human beings, but by beings who have a higher level of awareness than human beings.

What can we say is real? Well, the purpose of the world is to give self-aware beings who are inside the world an experience. As we have said, there are two experiences possible in the reality simulator. First there is the immersion experience, where you are completely immersed in the world, and you are firmly convinced you experience that it is a real world, that what your senses tell you is real. This is what still a majority of the people on earth experience and believe. And they would be very reluctant to question it. Yes, they will say: “Well, what science has discovered that is beyond what we can see with our senses, that is also real”. Some others will say: “Yes, but what our religions tell us through divine revelation, that too is real”. But nevertheless, it is the immersion experience that what you experience in your mind has this aura, this appearance of reality.

And then when you have had that immersion experience for a time, the next experience is the awakening experience. And how does the awakening experience happen? It happens because you start gradually and slowly questioning the sense of reality. Notice what I said, you are not questioning reality, you are questioning the sense of reality. As you go into the awakening phase, how can you question the sense of reality that you have, have had so far in the reality simulator? Only by coming to realize that there is a mind outside your own.

Connecting to something outside your own mind

Your mind is not the only mind, it is not a self-contained system, a closed system. If you are to question the sense of reality given to you by your mind, inside your mind, you must connect to something, some mind that is outside of, greater than your own. This is what we have said, the Conscious You can step outside of the mind and connect to your I AM Presence, the ascended masters or the Christ mind. And this then gives us a foundation for seeing what is real. We can say: “That which is defined by the people inside the reality simulator, based on what they experience inside the reality simulator, through their senses or through certain ideas—that is not real. But the parameters programmed into the reality simulator and the existence of the actual environment in the simulator—that is not created by the minds of the beings inside the simulator. Therefore, compared to what these beings see inside their minds, this is real.

In other words, the awakening experience is brought about when you begin to question the reality projected by your mind by connecting to something outside your mind that seems more real to you. Therefore, since the entire purpose of the reality simulator is to give the inhabitants, so to speak, an experience, first of immersion, then of awakening, we can say that as you begin to awaken, you experience something outside your own mind. And this is real compared to what is produced inside the mind. We can say, planet earth is real. Your I AM Presence is real. The ascended masters and the entire spiritual realm are real.

Self-transcending reality

Now, this is where already Eastern philosophy and even the modern non-dualists would disagree and they would make this very, very intellectual distinction. Because, while some will say that the world does not actually exist, that it is a null creation in the mind, others will say; “No, the world has a certain existence. It is just not real. It is an appearance. It has a certain substance, but it is not real.” And the reason for this is this, going back in Eastern philosophy to the Vedas and beyond, this belief that only that which is permanent can be real, and that which is permanent could never change. When you look at the world and see that it is changing, they will reason; “The world is not ultimately real. It may have some temporary existence, but it is not real because it is changing.”

And as we have always said, this is the fatal flaw in Eastern philosophy. Because there is nothing anywhere that is not changing. Therefore, from this definition, nothing is permanent. Yet there are beings who have achieved permanence, immortality by ascending. And when you ascend, you are definitely real, but you are not unchanging. You are not permanent in the state with which you ascend. You are constantly transcending yourself. And therefore, the only way to resolve this is to realize that everything is changing, and therefore, reality is self-transcending. Only that which is self-transcending is real. That which is not changing cannot be real because there is nothing that is not changing.

The illusion of permanent and unchanging Brahman

Again, you can say there is a permanent aspect of the Christ consciousness that is always based on oneness with the Creator, but even the Creator is transcending itself. That is why, It created in the first place. You see again, permanence, non-change, is not found anywhere, neither in the world of form nor beyond. It is simply a concept created by the dualistic mind by observing the world where everything is changing and then projecting that the opposite must be something unchanging. And therefore, they say that Brahman is the ultimate reality because Brahman is one, not two, and Brahman is not changing. But if Brahman is the only reality, how did the world come into being? If there was nothing but Brahman before the world existed, how did the world appear?

It must be because Brahman made it appear, and Brahman made it appear out of its own being and substance. And this means that Brahman’s being and substance is embedded in the world. And since the world is changing, that means that Brahman’s being and substance is changing. By the mere fact that there is some kind of world where you have some kind of awareness of it, Brahman cannot be unchanging. And perhaps the purpose that Brahman had for creating the world was to transcend itself. So you see the flaw, the fatal flaw of Eastern philosophy.

There is a projection that there is something that is permanent and unchanging because it is undifferentiated. But it is a projection by the dualistic mind that always thinks in terms of opposites. What sense does it make that you take this philosophy, the Advaita, the “not two”, and you say; “This is beyond duality, this is non-duality.” No, it is just a more subtle form of duality.

A balanced approach to questioning your sense of reality

Is there something that is ultimately real? Yes, the process of self-transcendence. When you ascend, you are not subject to the duality consciousness. You are beyond the illusions of duality and therefore, you see that you are a real being right now. But you also see that you will not be the same being one second from now, because you are flowing with the River of Life. You are part of the interdependent originations, you are moving forward in the process that God initiated. And this process is real. It is the process that is real. Not any end result, not any ultimate or final result that people might define as the outcome of the process. This is what you see when you ascend. This is what you cannot see from the dualistic mind. This is what the fallen beings cannot see as long as they are trapped in the fallen consciousness, because they cannot connect to reality, they think they can define reality.

What do you do as a human being on earth? Here you are, you are beginning to see these ideas, beginning to grasp these ideas. You have gone into the awakening phase. Well, you take a balanced approach and walk a balanced path. You will see people out there who are spiritual students, who are overeager to make progress because they want some final breakthrough into a higher state of consciousness. They attempt to take heaven by force by questioning every aspect of their sense of reality that they can think of. And some have literally become so unbalanced that they lost their sense of what was real and unreal and they ended up in a mental institution. Or they ended up in a Buddhist monastery or cave in the Himalayas where their condition was not considered a mental illness but a sign of spiritual progress.

What can you do to avoid this? Well, our entire teachings and the tools we have given you are actually designed to give the vast majority of people a balanced approach, whereby you question your sense of reality in increments, not all at once, that you gradually shift your sense of reality.

You see, if you really want to say what the Conscious You is, it is a sense of self. It is not a self-contained sense of self. It is a sense of self that sees itself in relation to something else. Ultimately, the Conscious You can come to see itself in relation to the I AM Presence. But for most people on earth the Conscious You sees itself in relation to the outer environment and the outer mind, the three higher bodies.

And the spiritual path is where the Conscious You gradually disentangles itself from identification with the outer mind and the world and shifts its sense of identity to the I AM Presence, its sense of self: “I am out of the I AM Presence. I am the I AM Presence”.

Taking heaven by force

But if you take too many steps up by questioning too much of your sense of self and if you have not connected to the I AM Presence or your spiritual teachers, the ascended masters, then you can end up in this no-man’s land, no-God’s land, no-self land, where you do not know who you are, you do not know what is real and unreal. And therefore, you can suffer an identity crisis where you cannot distinguish between what is unreal and what is real because you come to question; “Everything in the world must be unreal.” And this is not what we teach or have ever taught.

There are some gurus, both east and west, that will attempt to take their students through a very rapid process so they can supposedly reach the higher level of consciousness very quickly. But these are often fallen beings who have themselves attempted to take heaven by force and who are trying to get other people to do the same. And it usually ends up in disastrous results, where either they lose their sense of reality or they gain some kind of ability to manipulate matter and manipulate the minds of other people so they think this is a sign of spiritual attainment. When in reality it is just a sign of attainment on the left-handed path of control.

Finding your balance

What you can do is recognize in your mind the need to question your reality, your sense of reality a little bit at a time. And if you will study the teachings we have given, if you will use the tools we have given, you can do this gradually. And if you will look for some more human element of this, then take the messenger’s YouTube videos where he talks about balance, and in fact everything he describes is a balanced approach to the spiritual path. Because why is he a messenger? Because he has found some kind of balance and especially since he became a messenger, why is he still a messenger? Because he has maintained and even expanded his sense of balance. That is why he is not open to all of these conspiracy theories that are unbalanced. That is why he is not open to some of these wild claims that there is nobody here, nothing is happening. Because he has this inner sense of balance that allows him to look at an outer idea and sense, this is off, this is unbalanced.

Many of you have the same or can quickly develop it. When you make the conscious decision to strive for this, a balanced approach to questioning your reality, your sense of reality. You need to always hold on. There is something in your current sense of self that is real, because you need to have a sense of reality or you cannot function. You shift it gradually until you come to the point where you gain a deeper sense of reality from your I AM Presence and the ascended realm that you get from the material world and your emotional, mental and identity minds. But even so, even when you are at the 144th level of consciousness, you still have a sense of reality attached to your identity, mental, emotional minds and your physical body and the physical world, because you are still able to function in the world. It is not so that when you reach the 144th level of consciousness, you can only sit in a cave and meditate on God all day. You can have a fully active life at the 144th level of consciousness. We have never said that in order to reach the highest level of consciousness, you have to become a recluse.

Being the open door for higher reality

Jesus ascended after his very active ministry. Gautama came back after qualifying for his ascension and taught for many years. How can you function in the world? Because you must have that sense that something in the world is real, is not created by your own mind or the minds of human beings. And therefore, you can be an open door between the ascended realm and the unascended realm, whereby you can flow with the River of Life, you can allow the Holy Spirit, your I AM Presence, the ascended masters to express themselves through you in the world. And this, of course, is what we desire to see for you, not only in 2024 but beyond, that you can be the open doors for expressing something that comes from beyond your outer mind.

The messenger is not meant to be seen as an exception, but as an example of what all of you can do. Not that you will do the same as the messenger, not that you will take dictations, but that you will be an open door for the flow of the Spirit through your mind, expressing itself so that people cannot tell that this comes from somewhere else. Or perhaps they can, but you do not have to declare it openly. This is what the messenger has to do because this is the role we have assigned to him and as he has agreed to play. But this is not what is in the Divine Plan of most of you, so therefore, you need to find what that is, how you can be the open door in your particular environment with your particular background. And of course, you are the ones who are consciously aware of our teachings, you can do this consciously. But there are, of course, many other people that we are working with who are not aware of ascended masters, who are not aware of these outer teachings, but who can still gradually come to serve as open doors and some, of course, are already serving as open doors.

Defining reality vs. discovering reality

This is what will shift the world, it is that more and more people become the open doors for expressing a reality that is beyond the dualistic mind. And all of these people, from the fallen beings to people in embodiment who think, who still think, they can define reality, you can express that: “No, human beings, the human mind, the dualistic mind cannot define reality and thinking you can always leads to disaster.”

Therefore, human beings must reach beyond their own minds to a higher mind because you cannot define reality at the human level. Reality is defined at a higher level and what you can do from the human level is to connect to it. You cannot define reality, you can discover reality.

This will be the challenge in 2024, especially in these democratic elections or not so democratic elections. The challenge for people is to see the difference between those people who think they can define reality, who think that if they declare something, that is the way it is, or at least, that is the way the nation should think it is and then those people who are willing to reach beyond their own minds for a higher reality.

Choosing the higher option

What have we said over and over again? Democracy is a form of government based on the recognition that all human beings have certain rights that are not defined by the government but by a higher authority that is beyond earth. It is the government’s role, the democratic government’s role, to maintain those rights, to secure them, to make sure they are not violated, especially to make sure that a small elite cannot violate the rights of the broad population.That is the role of a democratic government.

When the democratic government begins to believe that it can define the rights of the people based on its own world view, however real they think it is, then you have started subverting democracy and this is what people need to come to see. And then they will be able to choose a better form of leadership. It may not be an ideal form of leadership in many cases. You do not have a choice between a person who is completely in delusion and one who is not in delusion. You may have a choice between candidates who have various degrees of delusion. It is not that you have an ideal choice, but you have a better choice than the other option.

You can hold the vision, you can make the calls that people will choose the higher option and thereby you can render an immense service to society, to the manifestation of the golden age, but also to your own growth. Because, of course, you have to also be willing to realize that your mind cannot define reality. And some have not fully realized this yet, whether it be ascended master students or other spiritual people. They have not fully grasped that your mind cannot define reality.

Padmasambhava’s offer

With this I joyfully seal you in the Flame of Peace that I AM. And I hope that in this Flame of Peace, all human opinions you can release, for then I can work with you. And that I will do.

And I will therefore, make the vow that, those of you who will take my mantra, “OM AH HUM, VAJRA GURU PADME SIDDHI HUM”*, and give it nine times each day, I will work with you for as long as you give this mantra nine times a day to help you increase your discernment between what is real and what is unreal in the world, in your own psychology.

Therefore, be sealed in my Flame of Peace.

*Kim had recorded a video where he demonstrated the mudras, or hand gestures, for Padmasambhava’s Maha Mantra, the OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADME SIDDHI HUM.

Padmasambhava’s Maha Mantra, the OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADME SIDDHI HUM given 9 times with mudras.

Padmasambhava’s Maha Mantra, the OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADME SIDDHI HUM with mudras. 33 repetitions.