PrisonPlanet: In theory, the physical plane resides in the astral plane, which is in an even more abstract 'life' plane, which is in a 'light' plane. And all of the planes are in a nested sequence of worlds, which are in an analogous sequence of spheres. There are also sub-planes within the planes, and even sub-states within the sub-planes. This was according to various occult teachers including Rudolph Steiner, who also founded Waldorf schools, Max Heinel, who founded one of the Rosicrucian orders (not Crowley's), and many others. Some of them use different words and change it around a bit, but the general outline is similar. They would say the consistency was because they were all perceiving the same higher reality, but its primarily because they were all plagiarizing the same sources.
The description of recursive realms tries to describe something of how karma becomes physical objects and events. Things appear in the astral plane before they appear in the physical plane. So in that sense, if you can see astrally, you also have an idea of what is happening physically. And maybe some people can overly impressions of both planes at once, I can't think of any reason that wouldn't be possible.
I accept as fact that there is some kind of way that fate or providence creates events, because there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for it in my own experience. I don't believe that anyone has the descriptions right though. The theory doesn't fit with what we know about how chemistry works in the physical world, for example. Also, I've met a lot of people who believe in these higher realms, but whenever I've asked questions about it that could potentially be answered through direct experience but which isn't in any of the books, nobody can ever do anything with that. The concepts themselves are vague and involve a lot of handwaving, and if you look for further clarification where some of the details seem to break down, nobody ever clarifies anything. They just say "if you experience it you'll know", or some other evasion.
Here's one example. The four planes and their 'higher vibrational states of matter' are sort of based on the four Greek elements of earth, water, air and fire. But solids, liquids, and gases are actually made of the same elements, and the elements themselves aren't even in different 'states' or 'phases'. The states are statistical properties that describe something of how the elements are interacting. A single atom or molecule doesn't have a 'state' or phase: when liquid water condenses out of water vapor, the atoms themselves don't change at all. Even the amount of energy they have doesn't change, except in terms of entropy: kinetic energy has no meaning for a single particle in isolation from everything else. (Angular momentum has meaning in isolation, but that has nothing to do with where states of matter come from.) People have taken these ancient Greek attempts to describe the physical world, which aren't even correct for the physical world, mixed in a lot of other metaphors about 'vibrational frequencies' drawn from 19th century electromagnetics, and tried to extend it to describe how karma manifests. How to make sense out of that? Its like a clockmaker trying to form a cosmology based on the idea that the solar system is a big partially invisible mechanical clock. It only seems plausible to a clockmaker who doesn't understand much beyond clocks.
A criticism that people have made here is that my scientific mindset has complicated my thinking and prevents me from being able to directly perceive subtler truths. I think that's nonsense for a number of reasons. First, I'm not the one who's a slave to intellectual models in the context of higher worlds. That's everyone who believes the dogma about those things. Also, these ideas about higher worlds are theories just like how science attempts to develop theories for things. Its true that the subject matter is almost impossibly difficult to study, but the theories are attempts at explanation. If you're going to attempt that kind of explanation, then you're trying to do science. And if you're going to uncritically regurgitate other people's attempts, and they haven't admitted and honestly grappled with any of those issues, then that's junk science. People trust the 'wisdom of the ancients', but the same people who brought us that 'knowledge' mixed it with a lot of stuff that's objectively wrong. For instance, there are supposed to be four types of civilizational 'ages', and various sub-ages, corresponding to the four elements, and those are supposed to have existing on our present physical earth. But there's no plausible way to square that with the geological and fossil record. And even if we court insanity by discarding all physical evidence as untrustworthy, the theories themselves still have internal inconsistencies.
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