In previous posts, we learned about the afterlife and the astral plane, which exists at several levels and sub-levels ranging from hellish, purgatory, paradise to heavenly realms. What are these astral heavens like? Is there a heaven beyond astral heavens?
How many heavens are there?
To answer this and other questions, I’ve been reading several books by Gordon Phinn, who is an advanced consciousness explorer with years of experience in soul retrieval and other spiritual work (see What Is the Afterlife Like? – Big Picture Questions.com & How To Astral Travel In Dreams to Merge With Your Higher Self? – Big Picture Questions.com).
What are the astral heavens like?
In “More Adventures in Eternity,” Phinn said what you believe creates your reality. There are various astral heaven worlds/belief system levels occupied by souls from all time periods and areas of our planet. He explained:
- These are consensus realities envisioned by various religious sects or communities (e.g. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindu, etc.), each with their own version of “heaven,” where the believers can praise and worship their prophets and deities until they get tired of it.
Image: Shamballa, Astral City of Lights
- Eventually people start questioning what’s real vs. fantasy, when the personality and its needs erode. In the more refined heaven worlds, they become more at ease with the idea of dropping the body to move onward and upward to a bodiless/formless scenario.
Phinn wrote: “All the purgatories, paradises and [astral] heavens are energetic entrapments, merely places to be, fascinating rest stops on the incarnational cycle.” It’s not our final destination.
What is the agenda of the Higher Self?
According to Phinn, the agenda of the Higher Self/True Energetic Self/Monad is creative play. They plan and execute experiments with form, energy and modes of organization. They are both the creators and the players of the game. Phinn explained:
- They explore various levels of density and gravity, where each level is a different game with its own requirements (e.g. willpower, deceit, adaptability, compassion, etc.).
- The Higher Selves are not limited by time and space. Neither are their soul extensions.
- Each plane has a myriad of sentient beings, who are essential to the evolution of the Higher Selves back to omniscience and omnipresence of the “God consciousness” level.
“God supplies the plans and the endless energy. But the monads [higher selves] are the creative types. Variations of the creative game are played by all, on every level: from the subatomic to the galactic, being endlessly re-creates.” (Confronting Your Immortality)
Phinn asked: “Do you gossip with the other Higher Selves in your neighborhood?” His Higher Self (dubbed “H.S.”) replied:
“Yes, as part of our multidimensionality, we radiate what you would call wiggly beams of light at each other. It’s a sort of high level tickling. We’re always devising ways of catching each other off guard. We’re the clowns of the monadic plane, game-playing buffoons with enormous data banks of experience to draw on.” (More Adventures in Eternity)
What does heavenly reunion with the Higher Self feel like?
In “More Adventures in Eternity,” Phinn gave a vivid description of his Higher Self, which is a transdimensional being, whose pull is almost magnetic or irresistible. He reported:
“I often now feel this process of the higher self slowly reeling in the soul like a baited fish through the spheres, the soul is utterly amazed at all its wondrous experiences, but not quite seeing that it’s being slowly pulled back home.” – Gordon Phinn
In merging with it, he couldn’t tell where the Higher Self stops and he begins. There was gradual dissolving of polarities in unity, but it was “unity-in-diversity” kind of unity, which he described as “being inside a seemingly large, soft, warm glowing white space that contains multitudes as it were; many forms and energies in potential.”
“I could move around at will and felt welcome anywhere, and wherever I stopped I was suddenly at rest in the easiest of easy chairs, with any number of pleasant companions ready to manifest at my side – long time lovers, favorite trees, social situations, any sentient being from any of my incarnate adventures, every slight desire manifested another bliss, added to the bliss of the surroundings, if you can call a featureless vacuum surroundings… completely at rest and yet bustling with energy… quite lovely and blissful.”
His Higher Self asked: “Does that experience not give you an immediate understanding of why religious and political belief systems chain you to inferior heavens? That there is nothing quite so heavenly as your real Self?” Phinn explained:
- When you ascend and merge with your Higher Self, it’s like watching, say 20-30 equally engrossing movies all at once, but you could focus in on any detail or set of details.
- There is no strict dividing line between the incarnate ego, the indwelling soul and the boundless Higher Self, which exist in an “energetic continuum” that is endless.
- But as we know, if the ego is determined to rule, it can “strangle the life out of its link” to the soul and the Higher Self.
“The Higher Self merge means sacrificing the self on the altar of Self.” – Gordon Phinn
Phinn also said the “bliss of non-being somehow begets the itch for more life.” As “H.S.” put it: “After a century of unrestrained bliss, you’ll be ready for another splash in the pool.” 😉
Where is the heaven beyond astral heavens?
Phinn observed that when he moved vertically up through the planes, one by one, he felt the various levels and collective psyches of their inhabitants.
But he observed that the Higher Self level was down a bit from the God consciousness level, also known as the Radiant Void, which appeared like a “shining white sea of light with golden points twinkling like stars, where each point is a Higher Self.”
“The Void is a formless energy plane, where being nothing, doing nothing is all the rage.” – Gordon Phinn
