Episode Transcript
This is, of course, about going to China, but not the physical, transient China you’ve seen on the screen - crowded streets, traffic noise, masses of neon signs and miles of square apartment buildings. Where we’re going is to the eternal China, China the Beautiful, the etheric level of China that’s a part of heaven. We’re going there in our etheric body, while our physical body is fast asleep at home. Take your time with your prayers and meditations. And relax. Look up for our escort angels and we’ll set a heading for Kuan Yin’s Temple of Mercy in the etheric hills north of Beijing. This is going to be an eye-opener about what Sacred China was and is meant to offer the world.
We’re on our way. Angels before us, behind us, beneath, above and on either side. This is going to be good.
From high over etheric Beijing, we glance down and notice the forests and green meadows and the fortunate absence of the smog and dust storms you might see over physical Beijing. Just north of there, in the etheric wooded hills we see a large temple complex, appearing from above as golden concentric circles set within a forest. Spiraling in and around, our first impression is that we’re approaching a holy place, positioned with the eye of a divine artist, utilizing the best backdrop, foreground and proportions of the surrounding hills. Angling in at a lower altitude, we see circular pagodas set in feng-shui-perfect landscaping. Even closer, we can feel it’s special – a place of crystalline pink rays in the air, divine beauty, the feeling of comfort conveyed by the balance of earth, air, fire and water elements - the calming, quintessential essence of Chinese culture.
We can see the temple complex is centered on a six-story, gold-domed pagoda surrounded by ponds, bridges and finely detailed landscaping. Then, there are twelve, four-story pagodas evenly placed around the glistening central temple. The balanced hues and shades of the landscaping, trees, gardens, ponds and winding paths between the temples sends out a feeling of relaxation and well-being. We’re just about to touch down on lawn surrounded by cherry blossom trees but it’s like we’re gently descending into a huge sphere of millions of pink petals. The feeling is of indescribable softness around us. It’s such a relief to be here, inside a fragrant pink canopy, a masterpiece of cultivated nature.
On the ground, our guide is waiting for us - a lady master, gracious and elegant, open and friendly, as we soon find out. She reminds us of Gautama, observant of our interests. But this is heaven, so the surprises begin right away. While we’re certainly relaxed and at peace in this fantastic place it seems we’re also expected to be focused and alert. In the physical China there would be lengthy rituals for socializing, dining and small talk. In the etheric China conversation begins without formality on the mind of God.
Our guide comments that the mind of God perceives the integration of all things as an interdependent whole. She introduces us to the musical tones associated with each of the twelve outer temples. We know about the major and minor tones within a piano-scale, but this is deeper. At the entrance to each temple specially tuned wind-chimes made of crystal and precipitated metal move in the breeze and sound the notes related to the divine quality of that temple. Who knew that the formless qualities of God could be expressed as musical keynotes? Our guide invites us to experience the continuing sound and radiance while we tour the flame rooms and classrooms on the four levels of all twelve temples. Hearing the chimes triggers long forgotten feelings that bypass the mind. The feelings are upwelling fountains of love that we don’t normally talk about because we don’t normally feel this way.
Too surprised to speak about our new-found capacity to feel love, we access the second, third and fourth levels from a stairway spiraling up around the outside of the pagoda-style temples. The chimes greet us again in the breezeway at each landing and the lady master asks us to describe what we’re hearing. Apparently, ‘the sound of wind chimes’ isn’t a detailed enough answer. It becomes clear she’s a musician of great attainment as she presents us with the spiritual understanding of the notes we’re hearing.
There’s a yin and a yang, she says, or plus and minus polarity of each temple’s specific divine quality, expressed as the vibratory frequency of musical notes. The key, we understand, is that there are twelve divine qualities – Power, Love, Mastery, Control, Obedience, Wisdom, Harmony, Gratitude, Justice, Reality, Vision and Victory. These are difficult terms to define accurately in worldly speech but are apparently fixed values for definition in etheric music.
It’s too much for the mind but it’s okay because we can feel the difference in the twelve chime qualities, each with a yin and yang aspect, like immediately sensing the masculine and feminine version. Coming back full circle to the temple where we started, we hear the synthesis of the twelve cardinal aspects of the divine Word, in the interplay of masculine and feminine harmonies, expressed not as single notes but as an unusually attractive symphony of crystalline clear music. This was and is the origin and source of Chinese and oriental music.
Our guide recognizes our need to absorb this sensory revelation in complete outer silence. The combined chimes swirl inside us as a crystal-clear symphony – felt within rather than heard, a beautiful statement of identity. It’s God speaking in music. Formless qualities taking form as harmonious woven spirals of perfect sound. It’s so precise in its way of representing impersonal divinity and so different from the personality of Western music. We’re a little awed as we realize God has just spoken to us – describing one of the ways of knowing the divine identity. Are we expected to respond? How do we describe our divinity in music?
Our guide seems to be reading our thoughts and she laughs. “You could spend hours with experts in your world debating the origin, structure and meaning of Chinese music,” she says, “but, the real source is in far higher realms. And as for your identity, be patient, you will discover your divine self when you’re ready. Perhaps it will be revealed here.”
Within moments our guide, with her bright smile and twinkling eyes, leads us over an arched wooden bridge toward the six-story central pagoda. As we walk along under the fragrant trees, she explains that in the central chamber of the great pagoda there is an altar there, where silence has been observed for centuries. We climb the marble stairs and arrive at the great carved doors but have so many questions we hesitate to go in.
Our guide smiles again and says, “Let me talk about a few things, before we go inside.” We stand next to a wooden railing on a balcony, soak in the sunshine and look out over the ponds lined with lawns and cherry blossom trees. She explains that creation is continuous from the One Source and the design for creation is first expressed in form as integrated symphonies of light and sound - and then stepped down in vibration into what we see and touch. This symphonic expression could be described as the cosmic hum, coming from, in its simplest term, the Great Hub. The continuous variations in the symphony are the music of the spheres, the etheric sounds of the universe, as God designed it. What we heard in the outer temples as the musical synthesis of the twelve divine qualities is a stepped down representation of that cosmic hum.
“Silence is observed inside the central temple here,” she says, “because the cosmic hum is reproduced continuously, as the integration of the twelve qualities and their polarities, the yin and yang of each. This is for a far more practical purpose than a pleasant echo of the Great Hub. The cosmic hum, the integration or synthesis itself, has a divine quality - and it is mercy. In the central altar chamber, the cosmic hum emanates from a rose-pink mercy flame that pulsates in a golden urn. It is that radiance you feel and cherish.”
The warm sunshine and sweet fragrance from nearby flower beds anchors us to the here and now outdoors, but the gravity of the explanation about what’s indoors is almost more than we can absorb. Our guide looks at us again and says, “We will observe the silence in the central altar room and then I have something important to show you.”
Not sure that we’re ready for the silence of centuries we follow her in through the great doors, into a reception area, along very quiet, elegant hallways, through several anterooms and then we’re in the central altar chamber. But not too far in. In the center the rose-pink flame ripples occasionally in the pure gold urn. The silence suggests rest, calmness and peace. Another feeling comes up, almost like a grateful surrender, a feeling of wanting to give away heavy old memories, old fears and resentments, not-so-good energies, as if they were overdue for recycling. At last, out with that, get rid of it, is the feeling.
Time seems to have no value in the presence of the mercy flame. As we watch the occasional ruby ripples in the soft pink flame it feels like distance no longer exists either. All we can see and feel is pink comfort, all around us. We would stay there forever if we could, immersed in the feeling of love, but our guide regains our attention and indicates it’s time. We leave the central altar chamber in silence, through a different door than the way we entered.
Outside in the sunshine we pause on another flower-lined balcony.
“Even on an introductory visit you’re welcome to bathe in the flame, from a safe distance and for just enough time,” our guide says, keeping an eye on us. After feeling comfortable in a non-speaking state, it’s difficult to frame questions about gladly surrendering some kind of unwanted, unseen memories into the flame.
Our guide continues. “You are in your body of soul memory,” she says. “But even in this etheric body you don’t wear the hurts of hundreds of past lives on your sleeve. For sanity you filed them in the too-difficult-to-deal-with drawer, tucked into your subconscious, long ago. The flame tugged them out because you were ready for them to go. They were portions of energy imprinted with pain – and they were changed into a higher form in the flame. Now, I have something more to show you.”
Rather than going back through the gardens to the outer temples we go on, up the exterior spiral stairway to the third floor of the central pagoda. We enter a reception area full of fragrant blossoms and notice perhaps a dozen silk-robed attendants coming and going. They appear to be the equivalent of nursing staff, but without the urgency you’d see in a clinic or hospital in the physical octave.
And then we see the patients. They’re all asleep, not in rows of hospital beds but in an array of floral nooks and comfy alcoves that you’d never see in a hospital. They all appear be treated like VIPs, with their own private enclosed area saturated in soft clouds of violet and pink. We walk quietly past their alcoves and stop by a window to listen to our guide.
“There are many more than these that you see,” she says. “They will not wake soon, nor will they be going back to their sleeping bodies like you. Their physical bodies have passed on, but their souls are not yet ready to return to another physical life.”
She pauses and turns to look out the window at the trees and ponds below. “Do you remember seeing some sleeping souls in the Temple of the Resurrection, those who had suffered such extreme trauma that they could not return to physical life? Those who are here have done things to others that they can’t forgive themselves for, including failures great and small. In their post-life review, to their credit, they realized the harm they caused and acknowledged responsibility. But they couldn’t cope with what they’d done. They still cannot accept that God would ever forgive them, and they can’t forgive themselves. They have their karma to deal with and are in torment. But, if they felt they were unable to repay the debt to life they would not be able to function in your world. And so, these souls sleep here in the radiation of the forgiveness flame, which as you can see and feel is pink and violet, until they absorb enough to consider waking, forgiving and serving here for a while. Eventually they will return to physical embodiment, to fulfill their divine plan and to balance the debts they owe to life.”
Perhaps in our world we would back away from the presence of individuals we might consider had such burdens, maybe even run as fast as we could, but not here. Somehow, the scope of mercy and forgiveness here is of such divine magnitude and significance that we can only marvel in silence. Not knowing what to do next we look to our guide.
“Come on,” she says, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
As we walk outside to the stairs our guide explains a few things.
“I have been invited to offer a few observations that may be helpful, before I introduce you to the hierarch of the retreat, the bodhisattva, Kuan Yin. You may have already noticed that there are no boundaries between religions in heaven. Buddhism and Christianity and all the other religions are integrated as one whole here. Kuan Yin, in your world, is associated with Buddhism but she ascended thousands of years ago, long before Buddhism was founded. Buddhism adopted her, later. Please, this way,” she says, on the stairs. “We’re going up.”
We climb the stairs with her and look in on the attendants on the fourth and fifth floors. Our guide continues when we return to the stairs.
“Another observation, as preparation,’ she says. ‘Kuan Yin, or as she’s often called, Kuan Shih Yin, means ‘the one who regards, looks on, or hears the sounds of the world.’ When Kuan Yin ascended, she had the option of choosing perpetual bliss in nirvana, and she was on the threshold of stepping up in vibration, but she paused to listen to the sounds of the world. They were cries for help - and so she turned back to help. The level of commitment Kuan Yin made was that of a bodhisattva or being of enlightenment. A bodhisattva is someone who’s destined to become a Buddha but has forgone the bliss of nirvana with a vow to save all children of God, meaning to assist them until they all ascend from the physical world. One does not take that vow lightly.”
As we reach the sixth floor our guide pauses to offer a final observation. “Think of the qualities of God that could be described as mercy, compassion and forgiveness. They’re formless ideas, just ideas, until someone puts them into action and makes them personable, effecting real change. The highest representative of those impersonal qualities, expressing them personally, is Kuan Yin.”
We’re led into a reception area on the sixth floor and presented to a beautiful, serene lady in white silk, waiting for us in the center of the room. The lady smiles warmly and bows her head. She radiates kindness and comfort and we feel the same sense as when we arrived, of relaxing into a bed of a million pink rose petals.
Our guide turns to us and says, “Please allow me to introduce you to the hierarch of the Temple of Mercy, the Ascended Lady Master, Kuan Yin.”
Our tour-guide steps back and Kuan Yin invites us to be seated at a round table where she pours tea for us. She asks if we had noticed the guests of the temple on the various floors and comments that they will all graduate from their current state of incapacity because of the power of forgiveness.
She explains that forgiveness is the resolution of harmony between every part of God. What surprises us is her statement that forgiveness is actually a law, and by this law, our errors are set aside to give us time and opportunity to develop our Christ consciousness. Training in this law, she says, is necessary, because it’s not understood in our world.
“But forgiveness is not the balancing of karma,” Kuan Yin says. “It is the setting aside of karma whereby you are given the freedom in renewed creativity to conquer, to go forth, to make things right without that heavy burden, that weight of sin. And when you come to that place where you have further attainment, then, according to the law of forgiveness, that karma that was set aside is returned to you. And in your heightened state of consciousness, in the plane of self-mastery, you are quickly able to place in the flame that substance for transmutation and to pursue your higher calling.”
Kuan Yin then offers us an example where, if someone stole your purse or wallet and then he or she told you they were sorry for taking it, you might forgive him or her. But the matter isn’t closed, karmically speaking, until they return that item to you, with all the money intact, or they make whatever restitution is necessary. Forgiveness isn’t the balancing of karma it’s the setting aside of karma temporarily, so that you don’t have to carry a burden you don’t understand yet, or don’t have the mastery to repay. Forgiveness buys time to gain the maturity needed to repay the debt. Consider if the situation was not about a wallet but a massacre, intentional or unintentional. How much love, mastery and maturity would be needed to repay that debt?
Part of the training in the law of forgiveness that Kuan Yin refers to involves the saying, ‘Let bygones be bygones. Forgive and forget.’ She tells us that if you can still resurrect the memory of a wrong that has been done to you then you haven’t truly forgiven. In order to forgive, the record and memory must be dissolved. The record and memory are like scar tissue. If they’re retained in the subconscious, they tie up the energy from the event indefinitely.
Kuan Yin promises that on subsequent visits we would be able to take classes on what ‘record and memory’ meant, to actually understand that all events, good, bad and otherwise, are recorded in God’s memory in ourselves. Jesus’ teaching on the law of forgiveness is identical, because the law is as old as mankind’s need for it. There is a proven path to freedom from the heaviest karma, she says, and it can be learned and mastered.
Then she rises and walks us to the stairs. Looking over the cherry-blossom trees and ponds Kuan Yin suggests that in the coming days we’ll be offered an opportunity in our waking physical state to be tested. Situations could come up where a wrong may occur and we will be prompted to choose a negative response or a forgiving one. Afterward, an intuitive prompt will allow us to review the consequence of our choice. Such tests would determine which class we would join when we arrive here again for more training.
We feel the prompt to return Kuan Yin’s graceful bow and her smile, as we say goodbye and rejoin our lady tour guide at the next landing. It feels natural to tell our friend how surprisingly easy it was to take in concepts we hadn’t heard before, or had long forgotten, and how comfortable it felt to be so close to Kuan Yin. We take our time going down the stairs, across the bridge and into the gardens.
“Think about that idea, of being that close,” our guide says, stopping under a cherry blossom. “Consider that I am an ascended master, but Kuan Yin is a cosmic being. Her awareness not only encompasses this Earth but she is the personification of God’s mercy throughout the universe.”
Moments go by before we’re able to gather our thoughts enough to wonder, then why would she talk to us?
“She is a bodhisattva,” our guide says, answering our thoughts. “She turned back from nirvana to set all life free. All who come and go from here leave with an inner knowing and certainty that they are loved, that they can go back to the world to try again and to succeed.”
As we contemplate her words a bright cloud of sapphire blue and white auras descend from the sky and warm angelic arms are extended to us. It’s time for the journey back to our sleeping bodies, back to our world of coping with each day, but there’s a moment of realization as we rise skyward. We can come back here, any night we choose. We’re welcome here in heaven, where it’s normal to feel that closeness of being loved as we learn. Tuition is free and we know the travel is free.
And then there’s the anticipation of knowing there’s going to be some follow-up. We’re going to be reminded that this is all real. Situations are going to come up where we won’t consciously remember any of this but there will be a prompt, after an interaction, that we were just tested on forgiveness. And we’ll have to look at how we did. The bigger picture is, we’ll be taking the amazing heavenly concept back with us that we have the right to be tested.
Back here now in our world, I should remind you that the reference source or encyclopedia for each of our tours of heaven is, of course, The Masters and Their Retreats. You can browse the table of contents or buy the book on ascendedmastersspiritualretreats.com and you can reach me there by email.
Next tour, we’re in India, in the etheric foothills above Darjeeling in the Himalayas, to visit our indispensable teacher and master of the will of God, El Morya, in the Temple of Good Will.
Thanks for taking this astounding tour with me, to the Temple of Mercy and into the presence of far more love and forgiveness than we’re used to. Knowing we’re going to be tested, I can only say, Always Victory!
