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Ascended Master Master Hilarion through Kim Michaels, June 5, 2023. This dictation was given at a conference in Seoul, Korea.

I AM the Ascended Master Hilarion.

What is truth? Well, here is a question that the linear mind loves, for this, it thinks, it can define in a very clear way: Truth is the opposite of untruth. Truth is something that can be understood, that can be grasped, that can be put on a linear scale, with truth at one end and untruth at the other. Certainly the linear mind can do this with all of the God qualities, but truth, it really feels, it has under control. The fallen beings have for so long, since they fell, felt they had truth under control. They have believed that they can define truth. Of course, they do not broadcast this to the people, for example here on earth, that they have defined truth. They instead broadcast that this truth is given by some ultimate authority. Therefore it is the highest possible truth.

The simplest definition of truth

But what is truth really? Truth is that which takes you closer to oneness. What is untruth? Untruth is that which takes you away from oneness. That is the simplest possible definition of truth that can be given, at least on earth.

The linear mind will, of course, be very, very unhappy with this definition, for how do you then define what truth is? There must be some ultimate truth. It is not enough to say it takes you closer. There must be an ultimate truth, and then you are in oneness. But the reality is that only the Creator is ultimate truth, which means that at any level of creation, any level of the world of form, there is a specific truth that can be grasped and fathomed at that level. Of course, earth is very far below the level of the Creator, which is why we have so many times said there is no absolute truth that can be given on earth, but we can actually say there is no absolute truth anywhere except in the Creator. Whatever level you are at in the progression towards oneness, if you are not at oneness, it is because you still see some distance. There is then a truth that can help you rise to the next level up. Therefore, it is never the goal to fathom some ultimate truth, but to see the truth that will take you to the next step up.

Levels of self-realization

Now again the linear mind will be unhappy, for it will say: “Well, then that must mean there is something wrong at every level until you reach the Creator, that even these beings in the first sphere that ascended so long ago, that have had so long to grow and transcend themselves, even they are living in illusion.” This is again the linear mind that must think as the linear mind thinks. It operates with a dualistic scale, and on the dualistic scale there is one extreme and the other extreme, and they are both ultimate, either the ultimate truth or the ultimate lie. You might say that until you reach the ultimate truth, you are still affected by a lie, but that is not the case. Once you become one with the Christ consciousness, become the Living Christ, you know and experience that Christ mind, which is the mind of Oneness. You know that everything is one, but you also see and experience that there is a hierarchy, a linear progression of levels of consciousness leading from where you are to the Creator. This is not illusion.

Once you have ascended from earth, you are not in an illusion because you know the underlying reality is oneness. You are simply at a certain level of self-realization, and you know you are on the path to going to higher levels of self-realization until you reach the ultimate state of self-realization, which is what we have called the Creator consciousness. Ultimate in this world of form, that is. You are not in illusion because you experience oneness, and you do not think even in terms of higher or lower because you are part of a process, an ever self-transcending process, the cosmic dance of self-transcendence. Serapis Bey talked about an ongoing acceleration, and this is an important concept to consider. The linear mind will, of course, have trouble considering this never-ending, ongoing, accelerating self-transcendence. It will always look for the ultimate, but it will also ask why does it need to transcend itself if it has reached a higher level? Why do you need to transcend yourself? If you have reached the 96th level and you experience the Christ mind, why do you need to continue to transcend yourself?

The ever-self-transcending River of Life

Well, the truth is that the entire creation, the entire world of form, is what we have called the River of Life. What is a river? It is water that is constantly flowing. If the river stops flowing, you do not have a river. You have a lake. Sooner or later the quality, the purity, of the water in that lake will deteriorate. The water might evaporate, various sediments and impurities might come into the water, and gradually it will start to become toxic. Why does it not become toxic in the river? Because it is moving. The water molecules are moving, shaking off impurities. They are mixing with oxygen, which purifies the water as well. So you see that the entire creation is this upward movement, constant self-transcendence. This does not mean that you as an individual being cannot say: “I have reached a certain level. I want to enjoy it here for some time.” You have a right to do this. But if you stay too long at a certain level, then your mind will start to become stale. Therefore you will fall behind that upward movement of the River of Life. You will be behind where you could have been if you had been willing to transcend.

The wise ones, those that are in touch with the River of Life, you can stand still and enjoy life for a time at a certain level, but you will sense intuitively when it is time to move on. Many of you who are spiritual people have sensed that it was time to enter a new cycle. It was time to move on and do something different. Truth is constant movement. There is a truth at the 48th level which can help you overcome the separate self, the illusion at the 48th level, and rise to the 49th level. There is another truth at the 49th level, and another at the 50th and so forth. There is not one truth. Of course, this is what the linear mind wants: “Give me the truth, the highest truth, the absolute truth.” Well, here it is then: The absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Or we can say that there is a multitude of absolute truths. The truth you can grasp at your particular level is the absolute truth for that level.
Truth, of course, is that which takes you closer to oneness. That which takes you closer to oneness cannot be put on a dualistic scale, where there is truth at one end and untruth on the other.

The dualistic concept of ultimate truth

The Living Truth is not the opposite of some lie. Only that which is defined from the duality consciousness can have an opposite. The duality consciousness defines something as a lie and the opposite as the truth, but they are both out of duality, so they are both relative. They are relative to each other, relative to that dualistic scale, relative to the dualistic consciousness. You may say: “But is not the truth that takes you to the next level up relative to that level of consciousness?” Well, yes, but it is not on a dualistic scale. When you are on a dualistic scale, you might say: “Here is an untruth.” And you might begin to move towards the other extreme of the scale. You might think you have gone through quite a journey to move from that relative truth, relative untruth, to that relative truth but it has not brought you closer to oneness. You are still in duality, and that is why thinking you are a good person who has the truth will not bring you closer to oneness. It will just keep you trapped in duality.

I can assure you that those who believe they have the ultimate truth are the most difficult people to reach for me. Why do they need the Chohan of the Fifth Ray when they already have the absolute truth? What could I possibly offer those who have the absolute truth defined here on earth? You may say: “But I (Hilarion) am an ascended master! I am at a higher level of consciousness, so obviously I can offer anyone who is unascended something”. But they will not see it that way. Just look at the fact that the Ask Real Jesus website was put online over 20 years ago. Do you really think the cardinals of the Catholic church have not heard about it or come across it? Have they changed anything based on what was stated there? Have they been open at all to the possibility that the Ascended Master Jesus could give directions today? Of course not. Why would they need the Ascended Master Jesus when they have the absolute truth in their doctrines?

You see many other people, be it the communists, the materialists, the environmentalists, the philosophers of this and that persuasion, the leaders of this and that religion, they do not need ascended masters. They do not want ascended masters. They do not want divine qualities, for they want to experience the sense of superiority that they get from believing they have the absolute truth. If you believe you have the absolute truth, what higher truth could there be? What could anyone, even an ascended being, offer you? You, of course, as ascended master students have transcended that level of consciousness, but you need to recognize that your separate selves, the separate selves you have left, have not transcended that level of consciousness. The Conscious You has freed itself from complete identification with these selves, but you still have selves that color you and that can make you believe that you have reached some ultimate level of understanding or some ultimate level of consciousness.

Being open to a progressively higher truth

This is what has happened to many spiritual students throughout the ages, but it has also happened to ascended master students, especially in previous dispensations where they thought they had the highest teaching or the final revelation that would be given by the ascended masters, and thus why would they need something else? Why would they need progressive revelation? You always need to be a little bit on the lookout for this tendency in a separate self or even the formation of a separate self that makes you think: “I have been on the path for so long. I have done all of this work. I have done all of these decrees. Surely I have reached some level.” And you have. You have made progress, you have reached some level, but not an ultimate level. If you had reached the ultimate level that could be reached on earth, you would have ascended. When you have reached some ultimate level on earth, you will no longer be on earth. If you are on earth, well, there is a higher level to rise to, and how will you rise to that higher level? By reaching for the truth that is the highest truth you can grasp at your current level, which will take you the next step up.

In this dispensation it is difficult to be trapped in this state of consciousness if you study the teachings and strive to internalize them. We have been clearer about the need for ongoing progression than in any previous teaching. Still the ego is what the ego always is, and it does what it will always do, attempt to stop your progress at any level. You need to be open to a progressively higher truth. This is partly why we give progressively higher teachings, but you individually in your mind need to be open to receiving that next insight that helps you see through your current illusion, so you rise to the next level.

Hilarion’s offer and visualization

And where will you get it from? Well, you will get it from your I AM Presence. You will get it from your ascended teachers, but only if you ask, only if you are open to it. We will, as we have said so many times, not violate your free will. Certainly you can ask me, Hilarion, to show you the next truth. You can give my “Decree to Ascended Master Hilarion.” You can use the book The Mystical Initiations of Vision to tune in to me. You can look at my decree, find two sentences that truly appeal to you, learn them by heart, meditate on them, and you will see that you will get directions from me if you are close to the Fifth Ray. There are many tools you can use, but I will give you a simple tool like the other Chohans have done.

The simple tool is this: You go into a quiet room, sit down comfortably, close your eyes, and then you visualize that you have your two eyes. You know, if you think about this, that you have two eyes because this gives you the perception of depth. You can evaluate the distance between you and another object better because you have that dual vision. Having two eyes is not the same as duality. We have never said that when you escape duality your two eyes will start moving together until they form one eye in the center of your forehead. You do, of course, have the third eye, the third eye chakra, but the visualization is that you have the two eyes, and you now visualize that they move further and further apart until they are at some distance from your body. Then you look with these eyes forward, and you see that in front of each eye is a line. You look along this line into the distance. If you know anything about geometry, you will know that the perspective will make it seem like these two lines come closer and closer together the further you move away.

You might even know about space-time and that all parallel lines will eventually converge, will meet. But you just need to project out into the very, very great distance so that these two lines come closer and closer together until at some point, however far it may be, they merge and become one line. Then you keep moving along that line as long as you can visualize it. When you have visualized that one line, you withdraw your attention back to your forehead, to your third eye. Now you allow yourself to experience that single-eyed vision.

Again, such a simple exercise that many will think it is simplistic. But if you feel close to the Fifth Ray, then practice it and see that the experience might be anything but simplistic and might in fact be more profound than you can imagine right now. The truth really is quite simple. It is only in duality that truth seems to be complicated because the fallen beings want it to be complicated. They want to complicate, complexify everything, so that they can seem to be the superior ones because they can grasp, understand or define this sophisticated, intellectual, linear thought system. They are the ones who are so sophisticated, whereas the people cannot fathom this, so they must follow the leaders. Look how the Catholic church has projected for 17 centuries that the people cannot understand the spiritual reality but must be told in very simple terms. Look how for so many years they burned books, they refused to have the Bible translated, so that the people themselves could not read the Bible but had to rely on the interpretation of the Catholic priests. The fallen beings always think that the people cannot know truth. Only they can know truth. Of course, a fallen being will never know truth until it starts reaching for that one truth of Christ that it can grasp at its current level of consciousness and then continues to reach for the next truth until it no longer is a fallen being.

A scientific image of truth

As Jesus said, the Christ consciousness is everywhere. For every level of consciousness, there is an expression of the Christ mind that can shatter the illusion at that level of consciousness and help you rise to the next level up. There is a truth for every level of consciousness, but it is not an ultimate truth. It is the truth that will help you rise to the next level up. That is the case from where you are now till your ultimate potential, the Creator consciousness. Therefore truth can never be confined to any level, and therefore no one in the ascended realm ever claims or believes that he or she has attained some ultimate truth. We all experience that truth is the living, flowing River of Life that you can follow back to the source. Then there is the highest truth you can reach in this world of form. Of course, beyond it is what we have called the Allness but which we prefer not to describe with words because it is so far from the forms and concepts you have in this particular world of form.

It is perhaps valuable for some of you at least to consider that you have been brought up with a very distorted view of truth, especially if you have received any kind of higher education, such as at a university. Many people see these higher institutions of learning as an accumulation of knowledge and wisdom, and they think that when you keep accumulating knowledge long enough, you will reach the truth. Some even think that they have already reached the truth, at least in some aspects of life. Many people in higher institutions of learning believe that the materialistic view and Darwin’s theory of evolution represent an ultimate truth that could never be surpassed by a higher understanding. This, of course, is an illusion, as history proves. There have been various stages in the history of science where scientists, or at least materialists, have believed that they had reached some ultimate understanding, for example, of the laws of physics. But there has always been a higher understanding that came forth that replaced the old.

As we have said before, Newton’s laws have not become invalid, but the belief that Newton’s laws describe the basic workings of the cosmic machine have been replaced by a higher understanding in the form of relativity and quantum physics. But as many scientists are aware today, relativity and quantum physics are two incompatible theories. Naturally this cannot be the highest understanding. There will eventually come some theory of everything, even though it will never be complete. There will, at least, come a point where you have a theory that encompasses the basic elements of how the world works. However, that theory must also encompass consciousness. It is, of course, greatly encouraging to us that some scientists have begun to acknowledge this and to explore what that actually means and what such scientific theories might look like that actually incorporate consciousness, not as an epiphenomenon of the brain function, but as a basic feature of the universe. They are beginning to acknowledge that the universe could not have come into being without some form of consciousness or conscious agents, as some call it.

If you have received any kind of higher education, it can be very constructive for you to look at what separate selves you might have created in response to being in this kind of environment, which projects at you that the purpose of the academic life is to accumulate knowledge and accumulate data until some ultimate understanding is reached.

A whole is more than the sum of the parts

You might also find it constructive to consider that you have been programmed, so to speak, by a higher education with the reductionist approach, going back to Aristotle. He came up with the idea that by studying the smaller and smaller components that make up the matter world, you will eventually reach the basic components. When you understand how they work, then you can understand how the entire universe works. This is the approach that has guided science now for a long time, but it is a completely flawed approach. The reductionist approach will never reveal how the world works, partly because it does not incorporate consciousness, but partly because studying the parts cannot tell you how the whole functions.

You cannot look at a whole, such as the human body, and come to understand how it functions by looking at the smaller and smaller components, such as the cells, the molecules, the atoms, the elementary particles. Surely, your body is made up of elementary particles, but do you really believe – and, yes, materialists do believe this, but does it really seem credible? – that if you understood everything there is to understand about the trillions and trillions of elementary particles that make up your physical body, that this could tell you why you like chocolate more than other forms of candy? How could this information possibly be encoded in elementary particles? Yet it is a part of how you function as a human being because a human being is a whole that is, as the saying goes, more than the sum of the parts. Therefore if you want to understand the whole, you must look at the whole, study the whole, instead of only studying the parts. Of course, if you want to understand how a human being functions, you must study the mind. You must study consciousness.

Scientists have defined what they call the hard problem of consciousness, which is: How can the unconscious parts that make up the physical brain produce conscious experience? This is only a hard problem because they are approaching it from a materialistic perspective. Consciousness is not produced by the parts in the brain. Consciousness is something independent of the brain that can interact with and, to some degree, merge with the brain, but it is not the brain that produces consciousness. It is consciousness that animates and gives life to the brain and the physical body. You will never understand a human being by looking at the brain.

What is consciousness?

You need to look at consciousness, and then, of course, comes the question: What is consciousness? Well, consciousness can be said to be that one underlying reality, but you cannot understand consciousness by looking at it as just the underlying reality. Consciousness has different expressions, different levels. At one level we can say that consciousness is that which has the potential to take on form and to maintain form over time, and this is the kind of consciousness that accounts for the appearance of inanimate objects. Then there is a higher level of consciousness that can manifest itself as life forms, living beings that are alive, that can change, that can adapt to their environment, that can reproduce. It is this level of consciousness that drives what scientists call the process of evolution, when they see it as an unconscious process. It is not truly unconscious, for how can an organism adapt to its environment if it does not have some form of consciousness that allows it to receive input from the environment and adjust its behavior based on that input? Even evolution is not an unconscious materialistic process, even the evolution of the animal kingdom.

Then there is, of course, the higher level of consciousness seen in human beings. This is the potential to become self-aware, whereby you are consciously, deliberately choosing how to respond to your environment. At the animal level beings are not consciously and deliberately responding. They are responding according to what has been encoded in the consciousness of a species, the collective consciousness of a species. The individual is more or less taken over by that collective consciousness and therefore responds based on the experiences that this species has accumulated over a long period of time on how to survive. But this is, at the individual level, an unconscious process. At the human level, you have the potential to be conscious of this process, to be aware of yourself and to decide that you will not simply respond based on that collective experience base. You will respond as an individual, and you will transcend the collective.

This, of course, is the entire basis for the spiritual path, where you are not simply following the mass consciousness. You are not simply doing what you were brought up to do in your culture. You are acknowledging there is an alternative to this ordinary state of life. You can be more than a normal human being. You can systematically choose to raise your consciousness to higher and higher levels. Of course, if scientists would study this, they would realize, as some have begun to realize, that there must be levels of consciousness higher than the human level because if there were not levels of consciousness higher than the human level, how could the earth, the sun, galaxies, ever have formed?

The level of consciousness that brought the universe into manifestation

There are those who have locked themselves in an intellectual reasoning saying that the moon is not there when no one is looking. The universe only comes into existence when it is observed. But because they do not acknowledge that there could be higher levels of consciousness than the human level, they think that it is human observation that brings the universe into manifestation. This, of course, is a dead end, and it is, quite frankly, completely ridiculous to think this way, when you consider the level of consciousness that human beings have on earth. The only logical solution here is that there is a higher level of consciousness that has envisioned the galaxies, the entire cosmos. That was the level of consciousness that brought the universe into manifestation, and that is the level of consciousness that has maintained it over time. Is the universe there when no one is looking? Theoretically, no, but there is always someone looking. This is, of course, not just one being but the entire hierarchy of ascended beings reaching all the way up to the Creator.

The Creator set the parameters for creation and is constantly looking. Many other beings have set other parameters at different levels, going all the way down to where you are on earth. As we, who are the ascended masters, have said, the Elohim created the earth, brought it into physical manifestation. They are upholding it by looking at it, but they are doing this within the framework of the ascended beings who are above them, at the level of the solar system, at the galactic level, at the cosmic level and in the higher spheres.

You, as a human being in embodiment, cannot reach awareness of the highest sphere, of the highest levels, but you can sense through the Christ consciousness that you are part of that entire hierarchy reaching back to the Creator, that you are an extension of that hierarchy, that you are a co-creator with that hierarchy. This is what will give you that ultimate sense of purpose, of meaning, to life and a sense of direction, where you are going, where you want to go, what you want to co-create, what you want to experience and how you want to rise to higher levels of consciousness so you can co-create something more than what you can do at your present level.

Seeing yourself as part of the cosmic hierarchy

Connecting to the ascended masters is really about coming to this realization where you can see yourself as part of that hierarchy reaching all the way to the Creator. Maybe you cannot envision the Creator level, but can you at least envision the next level up, namely us, the Chohans? And can you connect to us? Then you will connect to the entire hierarchy, and you will gain a new sense of identity, of purpose, of being part of this grand unfolding scheme, and this will give you a new perspective on life on earth. As we have said, we understand how difficult it is to be in embodiment on this planet at this time. But when you can get that sense that you are part of this hierarchy, you can avoid being so burdened by conditions on this planet, so identified with them, so obsessive-compulsive about changing them. This can shift your perspective completely. You overcome any kind of deficit approach but go into a positive state of mind, where you realize you have already reached a good place and there is really nothing on earth that can stop you from continuing to transcend yourself and reach for higher levels of consciousness. This is all that we of the Chohans want to see for each and every one of you. This is what we have at this point dedicated our lives to helping you achieve, so that you can reach the level of consciousness that we reached when we ascended and then, of course, go higher as we have done.

This, my beloved, was what I wanted to give you. For those of you who have an affinity with the Fifth Ray, I trust this will be of value and help you connect to me and to other masters on the Fifth Ray and therefore set the stage for also connecting to your I AM Presence. With this, I seal you in the Flame of Truth that I AM for earth.