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Ascended Master PadmaSambhava through Kim Michaels, August 9, 2025. This dictation was given at the 2025 Conference for America: Rising above the superiority-inferiority duality.
I AM the Ascended Master PadmaSambhava. I am asking you to close your eyes, forget that there are other people around you, forget that you are sitting in a room, forget that you are a physical body and just take in my voice. What is it that is happening here?
Interdependent unfolding
From a traditional viewpoint you might say you are sitting here in the physical realm on planet Earth. You are open to the fact that there are spiritual beings in a higher realm. You might see me as this remote spiritual being somewhere up there in the spiritual realm, and I am communicating with you through this outer messenger, who is speaking the words that I am projecting into his mind. You then are hearing them from an outside source.
But the deeper reality can be grasped when you consider the concept of the interdependent originations. Now, originally the Buddha gave this teaching to show that you cannot look at an isolated phenomenon or event in the physical octave on earth and trace it back towards previous causes, or more simpler causes, so you eventually find the ultimate beginning of the universe, the ultimate cause, because there is no single cause that caused the universe, there is a set of interdependent causes.
But when you fast forward to right now, that the universe is old and has been unfolding for a long time, what do you have now? Well, you actually have the interdependent unfolding. It is also based on the reality that everything, we might say, is connected, but even that is a limited view. Everything is part of a whole, so therefore everything is interdependent. You might, to give you a simple visualization, say that the universe is a piece of paper folded many, many times, and that the beginning of the universe, that piece of paper started unfolding, and the unfolding process, is still going on.
So, am I a remote being in some higher realm communicating with you from a distance? Well, that depends on your choice, whether you will see me that way, or whether you will allow me to take you beyond it and realize that I am not bound by time and space. You are not bound by time and space, but most of you are still so identified with the body, so let that be. You are here right now, you have a point-like sense of self, but I am not up there in the spiritual realm, I am beyond time and space. So, I can focus myself right here where you are. That means we are not separated by distance, by space. Our minds, our energy fields can interact directly, not over distance. When you allow this to happen, we form together the interdependent unfolding of this event. Why do I want you to tune into this?
Well, because it is of course our goal to gradually take you to a higher realization of how the world works. Let us look at your personal life where you have a situation that you would like to change. Traditionally you would say: “Here I am, I’m a separate being. There are other people that are separate beings, there are physical conditions that are separate conditions. If I want to change the situation, I have to do something to get these other people to change their minds and behaviour, or I have to try to effect physical conditions as much as I can.”
Of course, your experience will tell you that you have limited powers to change the minds of other people, or to change physical conditions. But you see, this is the traditional view based on the senses, even based on scientific materialism and the traditional classical view of science, of objects, bodies that are independent and moving independently. But the deeper reality is that everything is an interconnected whole.
So, when you are acting with other people – what happens? Is it so that your mind is separate from their minds, and you might send some kind of words at them that they might accept or reject? Or, is it actually so that your minds – when you are physically together, or when you are thinking about each other – are forming an interdependent whole, an interdependent unfolding?
Is it perhaps so, that even physical conditions are not separated from you? Because they are also an energy field, and your mind is an energy field. And when you put your attention upon these conditions, your mind and the external field are no longer external to each other, they combine and form this interdependent unfolding.
So, instead of thinking that you, as a separate being, have to change separate objects, you can step up to this higher realization that you can actually change the parameters, the equation for the situation, by changing your own state of mind. For as you change your mind, you change how the situation unfolds, and whereas you have limited powers to change other people or physical circumstances, you do have the potential to take command over your own mind.
A tree falling in the forest
Now, perhaps it would be helpful for some of you if we step back a little bit. There is a question often asked by scientists or at least philosophers of science, and it this: “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around, does it make a sound?” You see how this question is based on classical physics, with separate objects moving around in a space, even the empty space of space. Now, first of all, we could say: “If there is no one around…”—here is one problem with this statement. There is always someone around, not necessarily a human someone, but certainly elemental beings, ascended masters, Elohim, who are part of this interdependent unfolding of the universe.
The problem is that human beings only see a very small part. They do not even see the tip of the iceberg, they see the tip of the tip of the iceberg with their outer minds and physical senses. They do not see all of these other beings who are constantly part of allowing this physical world that you see to unfold. So, there is always someone in the forest, because if there is a tree and if there is a forest, some non-material being has manifested that.
Then there is the question: “Does the tree make a sound if there is no human being around to hear it?” And there we can say from a certain perspective: “No, it doesn’t”, since a sound is a concept in the human mind because you have physical senses. What does happen when the tree falls in the forest is that it changes the interdependent energy field that makes up the tree, the forest, the entire planet and the entire universe. The interdependent unfolding is changed when the tree falls. Or perhaps we could even say that the interdependent unfolding changes and that causes the tree to fall.
Again, the linear mind cannot grasp how the universe truly works. Is the effect a cause, or is the cause an effect? What is cause, what is effect? Certainly, the tree falling produces an effect in the interdependent whole. Human beings would perceive this visually as the tree falling, and hear it as a sound. It is really just an unfolding of the whole. It is almost like you could imagine that you have washed a sheet and hung it out to dry in your garden. At first it is just hanging flat but then a wind starts blowing and the sheet starts waving. The tree falling in the forest is just like one of these ripples in the sheet caused by the wind.
The double-slit experiment
Now, we move from classical physics to quantum physics, which has actually discovered that the world is an interdependent whole, a connected whole. What have they also discovered? There is some phenomenon which they do not really know how to identify and name, but they can see that when they use a certain type of instrument to investigate this phenomenon, they detect a particle, what they call a particle. But when they use another way to investigate the phenomenon, they detect a wave. Sometimes they have even detected that seemingly unconnected particles, when many of them are sent through two slits in a screen, can behave as if they are actually connected and they form a wave pattern.
They have also discovered that this phenomenon is not as it says in classical physics, independent of the mind of the observer. They have actually discovered that when a scientist is measuring a quantum phenomenon, then the mind of the scientist and the instrument used and the quantum phenomenon become part of an interdependent whole and all three factors determine the outcome.
The simple conclusion that scientists are reluctant to make, because they want to maintain materialism, is that everything is interconnected, that the human mind is interconnected with the greater reality of the universe, that the human mind has an influence on how the universe unfolds. If you are looking for a particle, the quantum something-or-other behaves like a particle. If you are looking for a wave, it behaves like a wave.
What does that mean, really? You are co-creators of the world, or rather you are co-creators of the unfolding of the whole, the interdependent whole.
Changing how your mind interacts with the whole
What does that mean for you? Again, you have a situation you want to change. Instead of seeking to directly change other people, by talking to them, or by trying to pressure them into changing their minds, instead of seeking to change physical conditions, you realize that what you really have the power to change is your own mind, and when you change your mind, you will change how your mind interacts with the whole of the situation.
What did I say? You will change how your mind interacts with the whole of the situation. I did not say you will change the situation. You will change your mind’s interaction with the whole. There is a difference, a fundamental difference. Because when you take the traditional view that there are other people and physical conditions that are separate from you, what are you then doing? You are attuning your mind to the appearances that come through the physical senses and the outer mind, even the collective mind of humankind which is still very much trapped in this view of separate objects, the illusion of separation. So, you see that the deeper reality is that everything is an interconnected whole. But when humankind stepped into separation, it now seemed real to them that they are separate beings, they are living in a world with other separate beings, they are living on a physical planet that is separate from themselves.
What does that mean? It means that the power you have to change the situation is limited by the physical senses, the physical body, the density of matter, and the conditions in the physical realm. When you step into separation and duality you are limiting the powers of your mind to the powers of the physical body. That means that if you are to change something you have to do it through physical means. You may talk to other people, you may try to persuade them or pressure them, or manipulate them into changing their minds, and you may try to use physical force to change them. If you want to move a mountain, you grab a shovel and start digging. But the deeper reality is that what you are doing here is simply limiting the powers of your mind.
When you are not trapped in this sensory perception, this perception of the outer mind and the ego, you have the option to change your mind, your state of mind, and thereby you are not limited to the powers of the physical body and the physical octave. You are using your three higher levels of the mind to change the interdependent unfolding of the situation. It is not my intent to say here that this means you now get the complete power of mind over matter so you can change anything. Because you are still acting within an interdependent whole, and part of the equation of course is that you live on a planet with eight billion other people who form a collective consciousness. You also have their individual minds; you also have physical conditions that are very much affected by the collective consciousness. Therefore, you cannot, as one mind in the whole, change everything in the whole.
But you see, you don’t have to! What you can change is not the whole but your position in the whole. You can change how you interact with the whole. You may say you are facing a physical condition, a situation with certain limitations. You may not be able to change those limiting circumstances, but by changing your mind you can flow around them into a situation with different physical circumstances. You may not be able to change the minds of specific other people, for they are not willing to flow to a higher level. But you may be able to flow around these people and suddenly find yourself among other people who have an approach to life that is the same as the one you have achieved by changing your state of mind.
You see, we can compare it again to this River of Life, you are floating down a river in a little boat, you are coming to a point where there are rocks sticking out of the river, you keep bumping into these rocks, and you are thinking, if only I had some tools where I could chip the rocks into pieces, and my boat could continue. But what could you do instead, you could realize your boat has a rudder, and if you change the angle of the rudder, you will change the angle that the boat is hitting the rocks, and gradually it will move around the rocks and now it’s free to flow.
It is as if, when you are thinking you have to change the outer situation, you and the other people are in a sense fixating on that situation in time and space, it is no longer flowing, moving. But when you change your mind, you will unfold yourself from that fixed situation even if the other people are still fixated on this. Therefore, you will move and you will be part of the unfolding of the River of Life. Your life will unfold in a different way, because you have changed what you can change, your part of the equation.
Blending with the unfolding of PadmaSambhava’s mind
Right now you may still be thinking that I am an external voice that you hear through your senses. But the voice that you hear is just the tip of the iceberg of my mind. My mind is not limited by time and space, therefore it is not confined to the voice. I am right here with you if you desire, and I fully respect your free will, but if you desire, you have an opportunity here to shift your focus from the physical voice, to realizing that your mind is an energy field, my mind is an energy field and if you open your mind to it, our energy fields can interact directly, independently of this outer voice.
That means that the outer voice just becomes a tool for helping you attune to my frequency, like the old-fashioned dial on a radio. You might have static, but you turn the dial and now you have a station where you get a clear sound. You can turn the dial of your mind to my radio station, and then you are not hearing me, you may still be hearing the voice, but you are not primarily hearing me, you are blending, and your mind and my mind become the interdependent unfolding.
Which means that I can communicate with you, give you something that is beyond the physical words that your senses are hearing. This can happen now, it can happen anytime you might listen to this dictation, or you can give my mantra and then sit in stillness and tune in to this unfolding of my mind, and become aware that your mind is also constantly unfolding. By allowing the two to blend – because you see how they are interdependent, my mind can assist you in changing the unfolding of your mind, thereby changing the unfolding of your situation. I am not doing it for you as an external being, I am helping you change the unfolding of your mind, thereby changing the unfolding of your outer situation.
I know that what I am asking you to do here, or realise, will take some work for many of you because you have been brought up with this classical view of the separate objects. It might take some re-tooling of the mind, realignment of the mind, before you have freed your mind from this so you can truly experience the interdependent originations or unfolding of my mind and your mind, and of your mind and the world around you, but it is possible, because what one has done, all can do. How did I ascend? By changing my mind until it became in sync with the unfolding of a higher realm than the physical realm.
No barrier between physical and ascended realms
When you take the classical view of separate objects, this is in a sense what was given in the I AM Movement, the Summit Lighthouse and in the beginning years of this dispensation, because that was what we determined people could handle. But now we are at a point where we see that there are at least some people who can shift. Where instead of seeing the ascended masters as these remote beings up there in the sky, you overcome the sense of distance, you tune in to the reality of the interdependent unfolding of the world. Meaning nothing is separate, the physical realm is not separated from the ascended realm, they are two aspects of the whole. Therefore, if you can re-tool your mind so that you do not see a barrier between the two, then there will not be a barrier for you. That means that now the energies, the impulses, the ideas from the ascended realm can flow into your mind, flow through your mind as it is indeed happening through the messenger’s mind right now.
The messenger does not see me as this remote being up there in the sky, but has overcome that sense of separation and distance, where he just allows his mind to become neutral so that my mind can unfold itself through his mind and vocal chords. It seems easy to some of you – because it is when you have overcome the sense of separation. It is effortless because you of your own self are doing nothing, but allowing the Father within you to unfold itself through you.
Interdependent unfolding of earth
Now, back to my original question – what is real and what is unreal? You have my decree that you just gave: “The ultimate truth you reveal, earth is an appearance where nothing is real”. This is actually meant to provoke the mind because it is not necessarily a literal statement. As we have said before, and as I even said in the example of the forest and the tree, there are beings in higher realms who have manifested the earth. But they have not manifested it in the sense that they have created a planet that is floating in empty space. It is not even so that we have sent energy to the planet, or sent the planet hurling through space. We have actually unfolded the planet from the identity, through the mental, through the emotional and through the physical [realms], and we are constantly unfolding it.
How is earth moving through space? Is there a planet like a tennis ball moving through the air – nay. There is an unfolding that just unfolds in a slightly different position, then in a slightly different position, then in a slightly different position. But as Surya was explaining yesterday, nothing is constant, nothing is unchangeable. It may seem as if the earth is on a predefined, predestined orbit. That is what materialists want to believe. They want to believe that if they could know all of the initial conditions that created the earth, if they could know the laws that determine the earth’s movement through space, they could predict with mathematical precision which position the earth would be in, in a thousand years.
But if you take the quantum physical view, then earth’s position in space in a thousand years is not fixed, it is not given, it cannot be determined from present conditions. Because the minds of humanity are part of the equation that will determine how the earth moves through space, or rather unfolds along with the space, as it is unfolding. And a slight change, even you raising your mind and tuning in to this interdependent unfolding, can shift the path of the earth through space a little bit. But a slight change in its current position will set it on a different course, and in a thousand years it will make a huge difference if we go with the traditional view.
Changing the unfolding of our minds
You see here that nothing is set in stone, nothing is fixed. Your life may seem to be on a certain track based on what you have experienced so far. You may even, if you could see your karma from past lives, say: “Oh, my karma has defined this track and I can do nothing about it.” This is what many believe in the East. But you can change how your mind is unfolding when you stop focusing on outer conditions and other people, thinking you can only change your situation through physical means. But become willing to change the unfolding of your mind. Then your mind will interact with the unfolding of the whole at the emotional, mental, identity levels and even at the spiritual level, and that means that your life can change dramatically. Even if your current physical conditions and other people do not change at all – your life can change.
This messenger decided at an early age to leave his native country. He went through a huge transformation of changing the unfolding of his mind, and has now moved back to his home country where he still has some family left. They have barely changed at all, and certainly cannot even perceive how he has changed. Yet his life, even his physical situation has changed dramatically. Many of you have experienced the same. All of you can experience something similar. Change what you can change, and even what you cannot change will not matter to you anymore. For your experience of life will have changed.
The purpose of earth
Now what does it mean really when I say: earth is an appearance where nothing is real. Well, it ties in with the concept of a reality simulator, where the important aspect of a simulator is not what you are actually seeing in the simulator. You go into a flight simulator to learn to fly an airplane; it isn’t what you see in the simulator. What is important is how interacting with the simulator changes your mind, so you learn how to fly an airplane, and gain the confidence that you could. Earth is just an appearance, nothing is real in the sense that it’s fixed and cannot be changed, but nothing is real in the sense that it is not the conditions on earth that matter to you at all. What matters is how your mind interacts with the conditions on earth, for the whole purpose of the simulator is to help you change your state of mind. You do this by coming to see that nothing on earth is fixed, it’s constantly unfolding, and when your mind connects beyond the physical level to the deeper levels of that unfolding, you will fundamentally change your life experience in the simulator. You will not let outer circumstances define you.
Those of you who opened your mind to my mind have also given me some interaction with your mind where I see what is happening in your mind. I am not here trying to pry and violate your privacy. But I simply see that many of you, your minds are so filled with outer situations, interactions with other people, spouses, children, co-workers, family members, friends, this and that. You are so fixated on this. I am not blaming you at all, I am just pointing out that this takes up a very large part of your attention. Which means that your attention is drawn towards the physical, so you cannot really connect to the deeper levels.
Often you are so fixated on an outer situation, that you do not have attention left over to say: what are the deeper levels of this situation beyond the physical, and then you can look at the beam in your own eye, your emotional, mental, identity bodies and see: “How can I change what is happening in my own mind. Because it is what is happening in my own mind that determines how I experience the situation, and how could the situation be changed by me changing that part of the interdependent unfolding that is my mind.”
Mapping out your attention
If you look at your mind – your attention – as a circle, you could, as we have said before simply say, you could sit with a piece of paper, draw a circle, and there is a centre in the middle. Now you draw a slice of the pie, and then you say, this is my spouse that takes up this much space, however big the slice is for you. You draw another slice, this is my job, these are my children, these are my studies, this is my career, this is my hobby, these are my spiritual pursuits. You can map out your attention on this pie chart and you can see which slices of the pie take up most of your attention.
Then you can look at a particular slice and say: “Yes, I am now an adult, but my mother still takes up that big slice – is that really necessary?” Then you can look at what separate selves do you have that cause you to react to your mother so she takes up that much of your attention. Then you can use our tools to dig down for those selves and say: “What are the beliefs I have that allow my mother to capture so much of my attention?”
And you can see that at some point, often in a past life, maybe with the mother you have now, maybe with somebody else, you came to accept a certain belief about how you are obligated towards your mother. How you are obligated to allow her to have an influence on your life, on your state of mind. How you have created certain buttons and you are allowing her to push them at will.
Then you can reduce that, you can see the self, let it die, and suddenly the slice that is your mother starts shrinking and collapsing until it finds a more reasonable level. This frees up your attention for other things. And you can go around the pie of your mind until you come to a point where your mind is free from many of the things that are now occupying it. Therefore, you can more easily tune in to these deeper levels and see that your outer situation is not just at the physical level, it is at the emotional, mental and identity [level]. Even if you cannot change the physical, or at least it seems like you cannot change the physical, you can change the other three levels of your mind. It will either change the outer situation or it will cause you to flow around it into another situation. You are shifting your position in the River and avoiding the rocks that are holding you back now.
Inferiority-superiority game on the spiritual path
I have in a sense given you what I wanted to give you for your personal growth. But I want to just say a few things about relating it to the topic of this conference. Earth is an appearance where nothing is real. There are many appearances on earth. One of the appearances that takes up an enormous amount of space in people’s minds is the inferiority-superiority dynamic. You look around at people. You see how many people are occupied at gaining some position of superiority. Or they are occupied by having accepted a position of inferiority, using it as an excuse for not doing anything to change their lives.
As we have said before, when you first find the spiritual path, it is inevitable that your subconscious selves will color your approach to the path. It is inevitable that avatars, when they first find the spiritual path, they have an inferiority complex. Because you came here to earth with the best of intentions, you were, as we have said, hammered down by the fallen beings who did everything they could to destroy you, and give you such an inferiority complex that you felt that it was a mistake to come to earth: “I should never have done it, I have no right to be here. I have no right to challenge the fallen beings, I have no right to challenge other people, and they don’t want to listen to me anyway. I should not try to do anything on earth. I should just dig a hole, climb in it and throw the dirt back on top of myself.” Rather difficult to do, by the way!
So, when you find the spiritual path, most avatars, not all but most, have that sense of inferiority. You often base it on your interactions with the world and with other people where you felt like an outcast, because nobody could really understand you and relate to you. So, now you find the spiritual path, you find other spiritual people, and as you are climbing from the 48th to the 96th level and building that spiritual self that takes you above the mass consciousness, it is virtually inevitable that you build a certain sense of superiority, because you are more spiritual than most other people.
Again, we are not blaming you, we are just pointing out the dynamic. And then you come to the 96th level and you will not pass the initiation at the 96th level unless you fully let go of this desire to use the spiritual path to play the superiority game. Or for that matter still play the inferiority game where you see yourself as inferior and therefore you do not dare to go out into the world and talk about your spirituality. You have to let that go, to go beyond the 96th level.
Beyond the 96th level: The path of surrender
How do you let it go? By seeing that the entire game of inferiority and superiority that is being outplayed on earth is an appearance where nothing is real. For in the Christ mind, as we have explained, there is no inferiority and superiority, they have no meaning. And what you do at the 96th level is, you are letting go of the things that be of men. You focus your attention on the things that be of God. Thereby tuning into the Christ mind and therefore saying, understanding, grasping, feeling: “There is nothing in this world that I won’t give up to come closer to Christ, to come closer to my I AM Presence, to the ascended masters. I am willing to give up, I am willing to lose my life for the sake of following Christ into the inner kingdom. Nothing here is real because nothing defines me, and nothing is going to keep me from taking the next step on my path towards Christ – because it is unreal.”
That is a decision you have to make, it will not happen automatically, even if you resolve the self at the 96th level, you still have to make that decision. You will have to validate it many times when you are confronted with things in the world. Where you can say: “I surrender, I give it up”. If you could have counted how many times this messenger has said: “I surrender it”, you would be surprised at how many things you can actually surrender on a planet like earth, where you are constantly bombarded with these impulses that want you to think that something in matter matters, defines you and pulls you back and prevents you from saying with Christ: “What is that to me, I will follow thee”.
Shifting the mind’s unfolding into the ascended state
The fallen beings are relentless, certain other people close to you might also be relentless. But when you begin to tune into this interdependent unfolding, you can see that you are not a separate being. Therefore, these conditions on earth at the physical level, they don’t limit you, they do not have power over you, and they do not have any pull on you, you have no obligation to let them determine the course of your life. You have a right to go within your mind, go after these selves that feel attached to things on earth, that are identified with things on earth, surrender them, give them up, thereby changing the unfolding of your mind, and thereby changing the position your mind has in the grand unfolding of the universe.
Again, you can take this view that the ascension is a process where you are somehow travelling up there. Really, the way I would describe it based on my own experiences and the words I am using here is that there came a point where the appearances of the world lost their ability to pull my mind into thinking that they were real. I saw them as appearances because I saw beyond the physical appearances, and I saw that it is all just this unfolding of energy. Even the mountain that might have been there for millions of years and seems immovable is still just an unfoldment of the energies in the emotional, mental and identity levels.
When I saw that behind the physical appearances is just the unfoldment of fluid energy that can be changed anytime, I saw everything on earth is an appearance where nothing is real. And then the unfolding of my mind shifted, so that instead of continually folding around the appearances on earth, it started unfolding into the other realms, eventually into the ascended realm. Now my mind was just – instead of being unfolded as a being embodied on earth – it was unfolded as an ascended being.
I am not saying you need to unfold your mind so you ascend right now, if that is your choice of course, but most of you have a Divine plan where you want to stay in embodiment for some time. You want to achieve certain goals, but how are you going to achieve those goals? Through physical means or through changing the unfolding of your mind, so that your mind simply unfolds those results that you want to achieve? How are you going to do that unless you unfold your mind so that you see that the appearances on earth are just appearances? In fact, earth is an appearance where nothing is real in the sense that it cannot limit your mind. Regardless of conditions on earth your mind can unfold so you gain a different experience where, instead of being tuned in to the physical limitations and thinking they define you, you are tuned in to the higher realms, in the spiritual realm, to your I AM Presence and you are saying: “I can of my own self, the physical self, do nothing. The Father within me, the I AM Presence, the ascended masters, they are the doers. My Father works hitherto and I work because I am paying attention to the outer situations. But I am allowing my I AM Presence, the power of my I AM Presence to flow through me, and unfold those situations so they move in the direction I determined in my Divine plan. And so they move in the direction of my qualifying for my ascension, by raising my consciousness to the levels of Christhood where I attain inner peace.” Because, what does it mean to be the Christ in embodiment? It means that you realize who you are, an extension of the Creator’s Being, and as such you are not defined by the outer conditions in the physical realm on earth, or in the emotional body, or the mental or the identity [body]. Nothing on earth defines you, because earth is an appearance where nothing is real. But you are real, the Conscious You is real, your I AM Presence is real. The ascended masters that are your spiritual lineage going all the way to the Creator are real.
Can you feel the unfolding of our interdependent interaction, and how my mind has shifted during this dictation, has unfolded? And if you are willing to unfold with it, your mind has shifted as well. If it has not shifted now, it can. If you continue to make some effort to tune in to me, even giving my mantra nine times a day, and taking a few moments afterwards to be still, and just see how our minds can unfold together.
So, with this I seal you in the flame that I AM.
PadmaSambhava I AM.
Copyright © 2025 Kim Michaels