I was a young child when I realized that I live on a planet where there is a phenomenon called war. I still remember how shocked I was when I became aware that two groups of people can engage in an all-out effort to kill each other, even to eradicate each other. This only became more disturbing when I  learned about so many examples of inhumanity, for example the Crusades where two groups of religious people were killing each other in the name of the same God. Of course, growing up in Denmark I learned about the Holocaust at an early age, and this only added to the sense that human beings have the capacity to create subjective opinions and beliefs, yet convince themselves that these beliefs are the absolute truth.

The reason man’s inhumanity to man did not become unbearable for me was that since my earliest memory, I have had a very real experience that there is a non-material being who is always there with me. This being is not like the “magic helper” that psychologists talk about because I never prayed for it to do anything for me. This being simply gave me a frame of reference that there is something beyond the material world and therefore there is a reality beyond human subjectivity. This made my childhood and youth bearable.

The spiritual reality beyond the material

Today, I am aware that there is something beyond the material world and that this something is real in an ultimate sense. This is not something I believe but something I have experienced as a long string of intuitive or mystical experiences. When you have had such experiences, you know that they are more real than what you experience through your physical senses and normal awareness. In my world view, there is a spiritual realm beyond the material world, and in that realm are a number of spiritual, non-material beings. These beings are not like the many gods that various religions have promoted. In fact, spiritual beings cannot be confined to any image or description that we human beings can create. 

I call these spiritual beings the “ascended masters,” but they have been known by other names. The name ascended masters signifies that many of these beings have ascended from earth. They have been in physical embodiment like we are now, and they have passed the final exam in the educational institution we call planet earth. How did they do this? By mastering their own minds—and what does that mean?

Mastery of the mind 

I started talking about the human ability to create subjective beliefs and elevate them to the status of some ultimate truth. This is precisely the ability that has created all of the conflict we have seen on this planet. The creation of these subjective but seemingly absolute “truths” is the result of a specific state of consciousness in which we do not recognize how our own minds work. 

On the front page I explained that according to the ascended masters planet earth is a reality simulator in which we can have either an immersion or an awakening experience. In the immersion phase we are convinced that we are living in a real world and that it is our external circumstances that determine our inner, psychological reactions. We see ourselves as reactive beings.

In reality, we are co-creators and our minds have the power to collectively alter the conditions we see on earth. Originally, this planet did not have the conflict, misery and poverty we see today. These conditions are something we have created by allowing our minds to become polarized towards what we believe in an absolute truth but which is truly an entirely subjective illusion. Yet because of the way our minds work, we cannot see this, we cannot see beyond the perception filter that makes the subjective illusion seem like an absolute truth. We cannot see that we have become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Mastery of the mind means that we begin to understand how the human mind works so we can gradually free our minds from the subjective illusions found on this planet. We become able to see a reality beyond the subjective “realities” that currently dominate life on earth. We do this by understanding how our perception filters influence how we look at life and ourselves. We can then gradually free our minds from all illusions until we directly experience a non-subjective reality.

This is the process of self-mastery that has been known from ancient times by a small number of people, and it has often been called the spiritual path. When we take this process to its ultimate conclusion, we have awakened from the immersion phase and become awakened beings. We can then permanently graduate from the educational institution of earth and enter the spiritual realm. This is what the ascended masters have done.

Why ascended masters are significant

The real significance of ascended masters is that they have raised their minds beyond the subjective illusions found on earth. They are not colored by subjective human opinions and beliefs and they can never be “corrupted” by any illusory thought systems. They have seen through the simulated “reality” of the reality simulator and thus cannot believe that an illusion is reality. Let me give an example of why this is so important.

I always found it important for me to understand how Adolph Hitler could pull so many among the German people into following him. Even as a child, it seemed obvious to me that people had literally been hypnotized. Today, I understand that Hitler had created a vortex of mental energy that overpowered people’s minds. Yet the reason they could not free themselves from the vortex was that they had no frame of reference from outside the illusions. Likewise, we who are in embodiment are inside an energetic vortex that causes us to become self-centered and think that what we perceive through our senses and outer minds is reality.

People who are still in the immersion phase will be convinced that their perception is reality and they will not be open to the existence of a frame of reference from outside the vortex. Yet for those who want to awaken, it is absolutely essential to find such a frame of reference, and that is precisely what the ascended masters offer us. The uniqueness of the masters is that they have completely liberated themselves from the vortex, and this means they are the best qualified teachers for helping us free ourselves.

Some ascended masters moved on to other levels of reality, but some stayed with earth out of their love for us. Their vow is to serve as teachers or guides for those people who have started to question the reality of our simulated environment. The masters offer us a gradual, systematic path whereby we can free our minds from all subjective illusions. So the real significance of the ascended masters is that they offer us a frame of reference that can allow us to question the subjective “reality” that we have been programmed to think is the ultimate or only reality.

Yet for the ascended masters to help us, we must be willing to recognize that our minds currently have many illusions that we cannot see or see through. We must therefore be willing to continually question how we look at life, our sense of what is real. We cannot allow ourselves to elevate a particular religion, political ideology or even a materialistic-scientific thought system to be the absolute truth. We must even be willing to question our psychological perception, meaning how we look at ourselves and the world we live in.

The all-important realization about ascended masters is that they offer us a frame of reference that can help us question our illusions. It is up to us to provide the willingness to question our illusions instead of clinging to them or even wanting the ascended masters to validate our illusions. This is essentially what has caused many religious people to think that some superior God has validated their religious beliefs, including their sense of being superior to people who do not belong to their religion.

How ascended masters seek to help us

The ascended masters are completely beyond all human illusions and subjective beliefs. Therefore, they have absolute respect for free will and will never seek to force or manipulate us. There are indeed beings in our world who will seek to deceive and manipulate us, and they do so by making us believe that a subjective illusion is an absolute reality. This means that if we look at the planet right now, virtually all people have certain subjective illusions that they have never questioned.

So how can the ascended masters help us? Well, the only way to help us is to empower us to rise above illusion, but how can they do this if we cling to our illusions and refuse to question them? This is complicated by the fact that there is an element in the human psyche, often called the ego, that has a need for security. The ego wants us to believe that a certain illusion is an absolute truth because this makes the ego feel secure (For example, a good Christian is guaranteed to go to heaven.) 

The ascended masters respect our free will, so they can only offer us an alternative to our illusions. This cannot help people in the immersion phase because they are so blinded by their egos that they cling to security and believe it is dangerous or unnecessary to question their current thought system. So the ascended masters can only help those who have started moving out of the immersion phase and have some willingness to question their current beliefs and perception. 

Next article: How the ascended masters communicate with us