have paintings in your churches that depict Hell. You have discourses in your holy books about Hell. You have preachers who tell you that you will go to Hell if you do this and that, or if you think this and that (…you would be surprised at how many preachers are in the Lower Astral), but what I wish to tell you is that those images of Hell are an echo of a race memory. You know within yourselves (because you know all things) that you have the power to create your environment when you leave the earth plane. You have within yourselves a pointer or compass that tells you vibrationally whether your actions are elevating or heavy. You know within you to be true, as you read this book, that violence begets violence, anger begets anger, and that you, if you choose these things, place yourselves for a time in a low and unnourished place with regard to the higher vibrations that emanate from the Godhead.
I wish to take away the mystique regarding the Lower Astral. As with all elevations of the spirit – all spirit worlds, all spirit existences – it is a temporary construct but it is a construct that is visited and is dwelled in by those who have chosen during their lives to ally themselves always with the base, the material and the physical. The lesson, therefore, is plain: if you wish to elevate yourselves, consider carefully what you do and how you live – not for me, not for Joseph… but for yourselves.
It is difficult for us to consider that souls suffer in this way. It is even more difficult (as we shall learn in future chapters) to elevate those souls. We have no wish for any single soul to be in a miserable state but, through free will, you are allowed to make your own choices. Perhaps reading this you do not believe in God or an afterlife but I would ask you, for insurance’ sake, to at least try to elevate your vibrations because – whether you believe in me or not, whether you believe in the scenario I have put forwards or not – it exists.
It exists!
To return (with reluctance) to the Lower Astral, at its basest it is a very violent place, and it is a violent place of an unending horror. If someone takes your life on the earth plane that is a single act but if someone ‘takes your life’ in the Lower Astral it is a self-perpetuating, repeating act because they cannot kill you and you cannot kill them, but the violence is there and the essence of the act is there to be drawn upon repeatedly. The unenlightened souls at the lowest levels seek to do harm to each other but the harm they do is like an unending nightmare because it does not involve physicality and yet it goes on… and on… and on.
There is a lesson in this and you might think that this is a terrible state for God to leave souls in but God always allows souls to choose for themselves and, even on the darkest level, there dawns a day when a soul in the Lower Astral feels: ‘Enough! All I have to do to stop this – is to stop it.’ So simple: ‘All I have to do to stop this – is to stop it, is to withdraw my desire to be a part of it out of the vibration and my vibration lifts’ – and then we can step in and help them.
I also have to say that even though souls may seem to exist in the Lower Astral (with regards to earthly time) for a great deal of earthly time, it is but the blink of an eye in the scheme and evolution of the Universe. So those souls, once they have been lifted into a higher vibration and into a higher current of the soul, only regard the Lower Astral as a dream that they half remember and which then disappears in the beautiful light of day – because the current of the soul or that burst of energy around the soul changes as the soul progresses in understanding and in appreciation of the transmission of God-love.
So the current of the soul that the soul takes with it upon physical death is not locked into a certain vibration forever but continues to evolve and to change in order to bring that soul new experiences. You see, the soul, at its essence, is unchanging, so experience has to change around it to enlighten it. Enlightenment is not a journey – it is a realisation. Enlightenment is the realisation that what that soul amounts to it has always had but has forgotten. So the soul does not change but its perception changes, and its perception changes by relating to the energy that it is clothed in, by taking experiences from that personal field of energy and by elevating that field of energy through personal enlightenment.
[Speaking to David and Jane] I did say that this book would be a vast undertaking and it is. There are so many aspects we have to touch upon… but we will get there and we will put everything in order. I hope that you have been entertained too by what has been said today, because the information is also for you to keep close to your hearts and say, ‘Now I understand, even if others don’t, now I understand.’
I did invite questions and I invite them now, if you would like to take advantage of this short period we have before the earth plane encroaches to such an extent that we cannot continue…
David: How should we organise questions? Should we ask questions about the first chapter today and then, when you deliver the third chapter, ask questions about the second chapter? Would that be a good idea?
Joseph: What will happen with your questions is that they may stimulate in me some aspect that I had not considered at this time and the answers to the questions should be looked upon as inserts to the chapters or pointers in bringing the whole together. Many of the topics you ask me about will be covered in greater depth in future chapters, but also you will give me and yourselves bookmarks so that eventually you will have a number of chapters we have brought through together but also a number of questions and answers that can be inserted at the appropriate points within those chapters – perhaps at the end of them as a rounding off of a topic… or certain responses from myself can be inserted as part of those chapters to expand them.
It is good to start with a question about the questions! Are there questions proper? We will restrict them to three.
Jane: Do people in the Lower Astral know where they are – do they know they have gone to the Lower Astral?
Joseph: Perception in the Lower Astral is quite cloudy because it is driven by the baser desires so, if perception were a car, then the soul in the Lower Astral would be driving from the back seat. The spiritual aspects of the soul are shrouded in the heaviness that I talked about with regard to the spiritual atoms. That heaviness surrounds the soul and the souls in the Lower Astral at basest level are aware, as in a murky dream, of their existence in this dark place. As they are elevated to higher levels of astral existence their surroundings become more realistic to them – or, rather, their perception becomes sharper until there reaches that time of their waking moment into the Light.
God is not cruel and purposely the effects of the Lower Astral are presented to the soul as a dream because there would be too much for that soul to cope with were there a heightened reality at that level. So they are aware murkily, but increasingly aware as they are drawn out of the darkest levels, and this murkiness is caused by the current of energy that surrounds the soul. Their personal field is murky, is soupy, is foggy but then that vibration changes – and it must change, has to change for every soul – and they become more aware of sharper and more clearly defined realities.
Jane: In the Lower Astral do they ever form friendships and help each other – maybe in the higher levels there?
Joseph: At the lowest levels the phrase that comes to mind is everyone for his or her self, because it is that isolated thinking that has placed them there in the first place. You use the word ‘friendship’- I would use the word ‘attraction’. You talk of a ‘den of thieves’, so you would expect someone who had been manipulative of people in a very base way to be linked, on an atomic level via the current of their soul, to other people who are like that. This is an astounding thing for souls to go through because it is like looking into a mirror. Remember that souls, at their deepest level of being, know that what they are doing is detrimental to their existence and the existence of other souls. They do it to people but they do not expect that to be reflected back to them in everyone they see. But that is a kindness too because, in seeing themselves reflected back, there comes a time when they wake up to how they have been, how they have acted,
