Nine layers

 

 

1. Perception, physical layer

   You cannot see the world. If you look at a ball, you don't see that ball. Light is reflected from the ball and this light changes something in your eye. I call this physical change a perception. Perceptions belong to the physical plane.

   If the ball is 'real', the reflected light is an abstraction of the ball. This is an abstraction of the first degree. The changes in your eye are then an abstraction of the second degree. A perception is therefore a second degree abstraction. We cannot perceive the physical world.

2. Sensations, sentimental layer

   The physical change in your eye is registered and processed by sensory nerves behind your eye. I call this activity a sensation. Sensations belong to the sentimental layer.

   We can regard sensations as an abstraction of the third degree. (This is a highly simplified model.)

3. Emotions, emotional layer

   The sensory information is passed on to an old part of the brain: the limbic system. First, the information enters the thalamus dorsalis. This sends a pattern to the amygdala. This connects the information with an emotional response. These activities cause emotions. Emotions belong to the emotional layer.

   We can regard emotions as an abstraction of the fourth degree. (This is a highly simplified model.)

4. Mentals: thoughts and feelings, mental layer

   When the thalamus dorsalis transmits the information, it enters neural systems in the cerebrum. This is where thoughts and feelings arise. These belong to the mental layer.

   • Thoughts and feelings I call 'mentals'. Thoughts are processed linear with retraceable steps. Feelings are processed parallel, many steps at the same time. You can read a book linear, word by word, line by line, page by page. But what is the right way to read a painting? This question may seem absurd. It illustrates 'feelings', the parallel processing of information.

   • Thinking and feeling are both rational and belong to the mental layer of the mind. A 'mental' can be a thought or a feeling. It is a higher level of abstraction.

   Mentals can be regarded as an abstraction of the fifth degree. (This is a highly simplified model.)

   One of these neural systems corresponds to our everyday personality. This personality corresponds to a neural system. This personality may have learned that it sees the world. And that is incorrect. The neural system that makes up your personality shows a virtual world to the personality. This virtual world is an abstraction of the fifth degree, according to a highly simplified model.

   If we are mentally reasonably healthy, there is a strong structural similarity between the physical world and our mental world. If there are major structural differences, we are 'mentally deranged' or 'insane'. But we should use the word 'unsane' instead of 'insane'. We can repair an unsane view of the world by sanitizing our view of the world. By sanitizing we become less unsane. If we want to become mentally healthier, we need to sanitize our mental system. Then we have to replace deviant abstractions with abstractions that are in structure identical to the structure of the physical world.

   This is NOT a cure for psychiatrical problems. Many psychiatrical problems are caused by malfunctioning of the nervous system. To address this kind of problems you need to influence the biochemistry of your nervous system. Changing your diet can in some cases give some improvement. But for many psychiatrical problems you need farmaceutical substances.

   Many mental and emotional problems are caused by a structural difference between the physical world and our mental view of the world. This kind of problems can be cured by sanitizing our mind and by changing our conditioning.

5. Spiritual consciousness

   Beyond the mental neural systems, a spiritual system can emerge. By rising above your ordinary state of consciousness, you can develop this spiritual system. I've been doing that since I was 12 years old. If you start doing this at the beginning of puberty, you can greatly develop the spiritual system. The later you start, the harder it is to form this spiritual system.

6. Causal consciousness

   Beyond the spiritual system, a causal system can emerge. Some people talk and act without realizing, that they influence their live and their relations with other people with what they say and do. Other people develop consciousness of their causal influence on their environment. Some people accept their environment as it is, without realizing that they are influenced by their environment. Others realize, that they can be the cause of changes of their environment and that they can change the way their environment affects them. When you develop your causal consciousness you get more control over your environment. Scientific people usually are more aware of this. With scientific training you can develop your causal consciousness.

7. Evolutionary consciousness

   Whatever you do, you evolve. When you develop consciousness over your own evolution, you can influence the way you evolve. And you can learn how to use evolution and growth for your own benefit. To illustrate this: How did you solve the problems you had in kindergarten? You did not solve them, you outgrew them. And then you faced new problems. And you outgrew them to. Once you realize that you can and will outgrow most of your problems, you stop wasting time and energy by attempts to solve them.

8. Monadic consciousness

   I just typed "Monadic consciousness" in in a search engine. I could not find a webpage that gave a clear definition of what it is. I am also not able to give a definition that I find satisfying. I will define it as good as I can at this moment (2023).

   'Monad' refers to the number one and to a single unit. Most people have a lot of separate personalities. Each personality is connected to a separate neural network in the brain and to a separate complex system of thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations, desires, fears, et cetera. As a result of this, most people have a lot of separate objectives and desires. These separate objective often hinder each other or conflict with each other. As a result, most people are not very effective. When you develop monadic consciousness, you merge these personalities one by one to a greater complex system. The more you do that, the more single minded you become. But you block this process. You have 'a mind of your own' and you don't want to surrender your own will to the will of the monadic consciousness. Once you learn to surrender your own will and learn how to sacrifice 'your own mind' to the monadic consciousness, your inner conflicts disappear and you become a single minded being.

9. Cosmic consciousness

   When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see an alien person that invaded your home? Or do you see a reflection of yourself? All your nervous cells together are capable of recognizing yourself in the reflection in the mirror. But one isolated nerve cell can not do that. The combination of a vast number of nerve cells create self-awareness. When there are not enough nerve cells connected, self-awareness is not possible.

   Imagine that there is a world-soul: Anima Mundi or Gaia. And imagine that you are 'a nerve cell' of Anima Mundi. And that other people are also 'nerve cells' of Anima Mundi. One nerve cell can not create self-awareness, but a vast number of interconnected nerve cells can. In a similar way Anima Mundi can have self-awareness.

   Imagine one nerve cell that is part of the neural network that recognizes you as yourself in your reflection in the mirror. That one cell does not recognize you, the neural network does. And one human does not have the self-awareness of Anima Mundi. The combination of many humans has this self-awareness and it creates the 'soul of the world'. This 'soul of the world' is often experienced as 'god'. But the word 'god' is used for far to many concepts. It is underdefined (we have no clear definition) and overdefined (we have to many ideas and emotions around 'god').

   In our usual state of mind we are not aware of Anima Mundi. We have to focus our mind on the physical world to survive. But when we are save at home and relaxed, we can open ourselves to Anima Mundi and open the connection with it. And at those moments we can experience cosmic consciousness.

On the basis of the above I came to the following model of the cosmos.

The drawing shows nine two-dimensional worlds one above the other. In reality we are dealing with nine three-dimensional worlds 'above' each other. 'Above' is in quotes because it's not really above. It is a direction in the fourth dimension. You can't imagine that with a three-dimensional brain.

These nine worlds are three-dimensional. They have no fourth dimension. They therefore do not touch and interact with each other. Compare this to nine sheets of paper on top of each other.

• What happens on one sheet does not affect other sheets. If one sheet falls apart, nothing will happen to the other sheets.

• If you apply a force from the third dimension to one sheet, it can affect the other sheets.

  • If you write on the top sheet with a pen and press hard, the sheets below will be pressed.

  • If you put the sheets in a place with a lot of sunlight for a few months, the top sheet will be affected by the sunlight. The other sheets are protected by the top sheet.

This model raises a question: What happens in one world does affect other worlds. How is that possible? We can explain this by assuming that there is a fourth-dimensional force passing through these worlds.

In Hinduism there are three gunas: Rajas, Tamas and Satvas. In addition, there is an ascending energy which is named Kundalini.

The following is as I see it right now (2022). It is a model under development.

• I see Rajas, Tamas and Satvas as three streams of energy, flowing 'down' from the direction of the cosmic plane towards the physical plane. 'Down' is in quotes because it is a direction in the fourth dimension.

• I see Kundalini as an energy flow, which flows 'up' from the direction of the physical plane towards the cosmic plane. 'Up' is in quotes because it is a direction in the fourth dimension.

• These energy flows connect the nine layers and transfer power through the nine layers.

• Tamas, Rajas and Satvas presumably do NOT come from the cosmic world, but from something beyond the cosmic world.

  Kundalini presumably does NOT come from the physical world, but from something beyond the physical world.

 

Where is 'god'?

In the past, when the earth was still flat, God sat on a cloud above our heads. Today, the cosmos is also under your feet. Have you ever imagined god upside down under your feet? Suppose you live on the equator and God is above your head. Then 12 hours later It is upside down under your feet. Unless god follows your movement. But that would make you very important. So if god is on top of a cloud above your head and that cloud stays in place, then you have god on top of your neck all the time.

This is a nonsensical representation of 'god' and the place of 'god'. We can imagine that four-dimensionally there are several layers of reality. Now we can imagine 'god' on a higher plane of reality.

A better question would be, 'What is 'god'? And the answer is very simple. 'God' is a word, a label to which every person attaches a different meaning.

'Table' is also a label. But 'table' refers to an object in the physical world. The word 'god' does not refer to an object in the physical world, but to a mental (a group of thoughts and feelings) with a strong emotional charge.

Every person has other mentals associated with the word 'god' and these mentals have an emotional charge, which differs greatly from person to person. Therefore, we can never agree on what 'god' is. Therefore it is meaningless to speak of 'god'.

If we make 'god' more concrete, maybe we can talk about it. Then we need to specify the word 'god' more closely.

Judging by my own observations, I am made up of different bodies, according to the nine layers above. Above my mental body I distinguish five more bodies. The body directly above my mental body I call my spiritual body. I think this corresponds to what is sometimes called 'the god in our heart'. If you focus on the energy at your heart, you can get in touch with this layer of consciousness. You then get 'contact with God'.

The ninth body I call the cosmic body. This is connected to the crown chakra, a power center on or above your crown. When you develop your crown chakra and send a lot of energy to it, you can make contact with 'a higher intelligence'. 'God' in this sense is definitely not the same as 'the god in my heart'. I consider 'the god in my heart' as a higher layer of myself. 'God' as something beyond the crown chakra looks more like something outside of myself. Above I called it Anima Mundi or 'the soul of the world'. Note: This description is flawed. Currently (2023) I am not able to produce a description that will not be misunderstood.

 

Life after death

There is by definition no life after death. If there is life, you are not dead. This seems like a lame pun, but it is much more than that. It is actually a denial of death.

Many people believe in reincarnation, the idea that you have 'multiple lives'. How can we explain that and introduce it into our cosmology?

In the nine-layer model above, the physical body belongs to the physical layer. We can consider our soul as our spiritual body, which belongs to the spiritual layer. You can imagine that your spiritual body makes a physical body in order to work in the physical world. You can then see your physical body as a coat. The soul makes this coat and puts it on. Over time, this coat wears out. The soul throws off the coat and makes a new one. In the physical world, that corresponds to the aging of our physical body and ultimately the death of that physical body.

If you look at it in this way, there is no life after death. The physical body just dies. And the soul just lives on. From the soul's point of view, there is no death in this process. The soul exists before the birth of the physical body and after the death of the physical body. So a soul does not have 'several lives', but has several physical bodies.

You may wonder whether the soul can die. I have observed things that I interpret that way. What I observed was the dying of the spiritual body of individuals. That is not a pleasant experience. So I believe that the soul can die. But beyond the spiritual body are still higher bodies. The next body is the causal body or karmic body. Judging by my observations, the causal body changes and stores experiences. It also ages. But it can also regenerate. It could be that the causal body can make a new spiritual body. That would then correspond to the making of a new soul.

Before this I stated that the soul has several bodies. You may wonder whether the soul has these bodies one after the other or all at once. Time in the physical plane does not have to be the same as time in the spiritual plane. It may be that from the soul's point of view the physical lives are lived simultaneously. You can compare this with an actor, who plays multiple roles. Perhaps the actor will star in a long-running series as character x. In between, the actor plays character y in a feature film. Character x then exists before and after character y.

Judging by my observations, the soul ages. I believe that the soul also knows time. But that is not to say that the soul experiences time in the same manner as the physical body experiences time.

 

The model above is flawed

When we use words, we refer to physical 'things'. When words are used as labels for things we can observe with our physical senses, we can be more or less precise. (We can agree on the properties of 'this table' when we both can see it.) When words are used as labels for 'things' in the sentimental layer or 'things' in higher layers, we can not be precise. We can talk about paintings, colors and music because we can see in colors and we can hear. Have you ever heard deaf people talk about music? Have you ever heard blind people talk about the use of colors in a painting? We can understand each other when we talk about things we experience in a similar manner. So when I try to communicate with you about the sentimental layer or higher layers, it is easy to misunderstand each other.

I do what I can to write as clear and specific as possible. But in the end only your own experience can teach you how the higher layers are. You can ready yourself for these experiences by 'spiritual exercises' like TRANCE-FORMATION, breath-exercises, concentration and contemplation. Reading can prepare you for 'spiritual experiences' and can motivate you to do 'spiritual exercises'. But reading will not give you direct experience.