Question: I have an important question that, to Buddhists, is somewhat similar in scale to Christians incorrectly thinking they would be saved if they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. So to me, it is crucial that I hear directly from the ascended masters to clear this up. The ascended masters teach that one’s level of consciousness determines where one goes after death. Is this the only factor, or does one’s accumulated positive/negative karma matter too? Also, there are teachings in the Buddhist sutras that do not include consciousness as a factor to be reborn in a Buddhakshetra, be reborn as a deva, or avoid going to the lower realms. For example, it is taught therein, one could accomplish such if one or one’s dead relative makes offerings to particular buddhas/bodhisattvas, recite sutras or mantras, copy sutras, or keep a buddha’s name in mind. Please help me resolve this.
Answer from the Ascended Master Gautama Buddha through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2024 Easter webinar.
There are various teachings in Buddhism that have deviated from the original teachings that I gave and this has happened because, as we have now explained, Jesus and Maitreya in such great depth, that even when a teaching is given from the one mind then people who are trapped in the conceptual self in separation will superimpose their concepts upon the teaching and will believe that the teaching has validated their concepts.
No teaching has ever been exempt from this and no teaching ever will. There were people who were at a fairly low level of consciousness and with a low level of consciousness, I mean that they believed in the illusion of an external savior and an external path to salvation. This is why to this day many Buddhists believe that taking these outer measures of making offerings, or reciting sutras, or spinning prayer wheels will secure them a better place in the hereafter however they conceive of it. And it is indeed similar to Christians believing that declaring Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, or going to confession, or lighting a candle, or saying prayers, or rosaries will automatically get you to heaven. It is the outer path, the dream of the automatic path. And it is of course not what I taught 2500 years ago, nor what any true spiritual teacher has ever taught.
But what we run into here is that 2500 years ago, the collective consciousness was much lower, people’s understanding of the world was much lower and especially people’s understanding of the psyche or consciousness was much lower than it is today. There was a limit to what teachings could be given at the time. Just as you will see that Jesus, even though he indirectly talked about changing consciousness and changing psychology, he could not really give the kind of teachings we are giving today.
So no, it is not correct that doing these outer measures will get you into a better afterlife. What does determine your afterlife is indeed your level of consciousness and this is not an outer mechanical thing. How does consciousness relate to karma, accumulated positive or negative karma? Well, as we have now explained in several contexts, karma is an expression of your consciousness in a sense that what causes you to take a certain action that creates karma, it is the level of consciousness you have that determines how you react to situations on earth. If you kill somebody that creates karma, yes, but why did you kill somebody? Because you were at a certain very self-centered level of consciousness. As we have explained, if you have not changed your consciousness by the time you pass from the physical body, then that level of consciousness will determine where you go and it will also determine what comes back to you in future lifetimes.
But if you do change your consciousness over the rest of your life then you can go to a higher level after death and you can also, when you come back into embodiment, you can avoid the full physical descent of the karma because, as we have explained, there is nothing in your identity, mental and emotional bodies that reinforce the karmic impulse when it comes back. In other words, karma is meant to teach you a lesson. If you have learned the lesson already there is no point in having the descent of karma which means that an ascended master can set aside or dissolve that karma, or at least set it aside temporarily until you have reached a higher level of consciousness where you can dissolve it more easily.
It is perfectly true that in every religion or spiritual tradition you find people who are still at that level of the outer path and no matter what the teaching is, no matter what the teacher says, no matter what I said when I was in embodiment, no matter what Jesus taught his disciples when he was in embodiment, people will take the teaching and use it to validate the outer path.
We have done everything possible to make this very difficult in this dispensation and we will of course continue to do so. But when we no longer have a messenger in embodiment then it is indeed possible that people at a certain level of consciousness can take the outer teaching and superimpose the concepts based on separation and duality upon it and use it to validate the outer mechanical automatic path to salvation. This will, of course, become more and more difficult as you move into the golden age, but as long as there are people on the planet who are below a certain level of consciousness, it cannot be completely avoided.
As long as we have a messenger who can speak the word, then we can counteract it. But still today, even with the many teachings we have given, there are people who are still at that level of the outer path, who have found the teachings, who are supposedly studying them, and who are practicing the decrees and invocations, but still have not actually truly seen through the lie of the outer automatic salvation.
Copyright © 2024 Kim Michaels