Maitreya: Everything is consciousness and the three creative forces in the universe. So what is the spirit? Spirit is the ethereal. Spirit is ether. God is consciousness. And what is karma? Karma is the crudification of the consciousness. And what's the first level of the crudification? It's the ethereal level.

That is also our subconscious mind. We don't need the subconscious mind. We shouldn't have the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is a program. It's a karmic program that has been put in our spirit. And because of this karmic presence, this subconscious presence, we react in different situations. We react in every situation according to that program because of our past experiences.

Now this crudified consciousness which has become a kind of ethereal level, also becomes unclean spirits. In Christianity especially, they talk about the unclean spirits, they become possessed by them, they affect their lives. Some people say, Envelop yourself with the light all the time so these spirits won't affect you.

What are these spirits? This crazy man came, and Christ said to the spirits, Go away from him. The spirits went into the swine, and the swine became crazy and drowned themselves.

So the unclean spirits are the crudified consciousnesses. Actually, they are etheric beings. These spirits are wherever there is ether, and ether is everywhere. So I guess what you are referring to when you say you pick up someone else's karma, is that some unclean spirit from them enters you. And that is exactly what happens.

You lighten their burden. You pick up their burden. As it is said, Christ took our sins, or he forgave us. He accelerated our salvation. That is another way to pick up other people's karma and burn it for them to help them to become lighter so they can go on lighter.

There are three kinds of people who pick up karmas. There are people who are not aware of all this truth. And they have very heavy karma themselves, but have no ability to burn those karmas. They are completely dragged down in their own life and in bondage of this earth. They live in the outside world and they come in contact with other people, and these unclean spirits or karmic energies enter them. So their burden, or crudification, or negativity, becomes even greater.

You see, when you go out there, after awhile you feel you really want to get away. Or people who go to work say, We want to get home because we are very tired. Why do they become tired? Because the energy of these spirits affect them. But they don't have the ability to transform this energy, this karmic energy, to higher energy. That is why they take them and they become even more crudified.

And there are other people who can shake these energies off themselves. They go outside, they pick up these energies. They come home and they feel very burdened and heavy, but they shake these energies off themselves. The next day they are clean and they can continue with their lives.

And the third category are the people who are called Masters, who have reached a point of their evolution where they don't have much karma of themselves. They come to this world to help other people to reach higher consciousness and Pure Consciousness. Such people are able to pick up your karma and help you to burn it. As it is said, Because of the Christ I can reach salvation, not by myself but by His Grace. Or, as it is said in Eastern Philosophy, You can only reach salvation with the Grace of the Guru, not with your works, not with your words, not with your analytical mind, or anything, but by His Grace you can reach there.

So these Masters, because they have so little karma left in them, have a lot of Grace to give away. And the more they give away, the more they have. With their Grace they can take some karma and burn it out for you, and make you progress faster.

If we pick up other people's karma, either it is going to burden us and make our life even heavier, or we can shake it off, or a Master can burn this karma.

But we cannot shake off our karma that easily. Our karma is the lessons we have to learn. They are there as programs so we react in such a way in every situation. Why do we react the way we do? We react because of the programs in our subconscious mind. It is in our karmic energy which makes us react the way we do.

That is why we have to learn our lessons. As long as we don't learn our lessons, this karmic energy which is related to us and is ours, is going to stay with us, and it's not going to be shaken off easily.

So if you don't have enough light and understanding of your own self, other people's karma can become your karma. That is why you get possessed with those energies. And when you get possessed, it's very hard for you to shake them off. Even if a Master burns them for you, and you don't learn the lesson, those karmic energies might return. That's why the Master is so harsh with you sometimes. They seem so harsh because intuitively they know you have to learn the lessons yourself. Again if I take them from you without you learning your lessons, what's going to happen?

Christ said, when an unclean spirit leaves a person he goes and finds seven more, even more wicked than the one which left. And then he tells them, Let's go, the house is empty and clean, we can go and reside in the body.

Christ cleaned a lot of people. He healed them. He cast the devils from them. But their later state became worse than before. That's why I don't heal anymore because it didn't work. He saw it didn't work. He cast the devil out of this person, and a month later he was even worse than before, because the person who was healed didn't learn the lesson. It didn't help him that much because when the karmic energy came back, still he didn't know how to deal with it. Again it entered his body. He didn't learn his lesson. So the ultimate victory in this battle with karmic energies is when you learn the lesson yourself, when you have the ability not to let the unclean spirit or karmic energy come back to you.

A lot of people want someone to heal them. They do not want to learn how to heal themselves. They don't want to learn their lessons. That's why we are here, to learn our lessons. If we don't learn our lessons, what good is it to be healed for a month, or two, or three months, and later we become even worse than we were before? That's why I say, You have to learn to heal yourself.

That is the healing power of the Golden Age. In the Golden Age, the age coming, we increase our understanding of how our body, how our mind, how this energy works. And because we understand, and because we create the ability to deal with this karmic energy, the unclean spirit can't affect us. So we can free ourselves from this burden, this negativity.

That's why I said earlier tonight, I don't want to hear who's not coming to the Feast of Tabernacles. I want to hear who is coming to the Feast. When you say someone is not coming, it brings a negative energy, just like we are rejected.

But we don't care. We are not rejected, because if it is from God it doesn't matter if no one comes, still we are not rejected. How can you reject God? You can't reject God. If you are rejecting God you are rejecting yourself, aren't you? You are in the image of God. God is within you. If you say, No, I'm not going to follow God's Feast, I am not going to come, you are rejecting yourself. You're not rejecting the Feast. That's why I don't want to hear something that has a negative tune in it. It sounds like if they are not coming they are rejecting us. They can't reject us.

But if we hear about the people who are coming, it brings a positive energy. These people are coming to God. These people are interested in God and His Work. They are accepting His Call. That's why more and more we have to eliminate these negativities in all levels of life.

In the Communities of Light we have to create as much positive energy as possible. We have to become as positive as possible, and be positive with each other also. With this positive energy we can create a positive environment, not negative.

Don't look at the half empty glass, look at the half full glass. See, there are two ways to look at the glass. If you are a negative person you say it is half empty. If you're a positive person you say it is half full.

So let's concentrate on what is positive about the Mission. Who is coming? These people are coming. That's wonderful. That's positive. That's good. That is how we also can deal with this negative energy, with a positive outlook, with realizing that we are called by God, from God.

It doesn't matter how many people apparently reject us. We always know they can't, because the moment they reject us, they reject themselves, they reject God. They reject God within themselves, and they are rejecting themselves by rejecting us. So with this outlook, we are never rejected. It doesn't matter what the rest of the universe says. You are with God. You are called by God. You are the Children of God.

With this real focus, being focused on God, and really being completely faithful to your experiences and what God called you for, nothing negative comes in. The negativity just slips over you. But the positivity pulls you toward heaven. So the negativity has to go, the positivity has to replace it. And that is the way you deal with the negative karmas out there also.

Those are not your karmas. Those are other people's karmas. Just don't accept them, or accept them only if you can, if you are a Master. Accept them if you can assimilate them, if you can deal with them, destroy them, put them to heaven and at the same time teach the other person their lessons. Just don't take their karmas without their learning their lessons, because then you are doing a disservice to them.

Again as Christ said, Many of you come to me and say, I healed many in your name. And I say, I know you not, you have done iniquity. Why have you done iniquity? Because the people you healed haven't learned their lessons.

Question: How can you tell when you're out there, if you're accepting someone else's karma without them learning their lesson, or if you're just accepting it because you're supposed to help them?

Maitreya: By meditation. As you meditate and you become more sensitive to your body, to your consciousness, to your mind, to your spirit, then you will realize or recognize how different environments affect you. So you try to avoid those environments that affect you negatively, or the people who affect you negatively. And eventually you reach a point where it doesn't even matter if you go into a negative environment.

The first approach is the approach of yoga. You discipline yourself to avoid the negativity in the environment that affects you. Later is the path of tantra. This is not the sexual relationship that a lot of people think the path of tantra is. The path of tantra means you go to the negativity but you are so focused on God that it doesn't affect you. It doesn't matter where they put you, still your focus is on God.

So in that state you don't avoid the world, you destroy the negativity in the world. No matter where they put you, after awhile you are going to affect everything around you. You have no choice because God's energy is coming through you. You don't even try, the action you do affects everything around you. Why? Because that energy is a pure energy.

It's just like sound. The shorter the wave the farther it goes. The longer the wave the shorter it goes. So your energy becomes focused. Your energy affects everything around you much deeper and farther. That's how meditation brings you to a point where your energy becomes purer and purer.

With following the Eternal Divine Path and with understanding God's Love, you learn your lesson. When you are following God's Law that means you learned your lesson, you don't need karma. You don't have to create more karmas. When you don't create more karmas you also lose some karmas.

You see, that's what the third eye is, your third eye is just open. You can see the karmic energy very easily in other people, how it affects them, how they're fighting it and how they are bound with it. You say, OK, that's how that person can be helped. You see the karmic energy lessened, and lessened, and lessened. And one day they are joyful, happy, and wonderful, and they become another Master. We have another worker for God.

Question: Can you clarify between the unconscious, conscious and subconscious? Where does the karma reside with the subconscious mind? Where is the memory in relation with the brain, and also the karmic and Akashic Records?

Maitreya: Can you put it in a different question?

Question: First of all what is the distinction between the unconscious, conscious and subconscious mind?

Maitreya: Conscious mind is what you're conscious of right now. I can see you. Consciously I'm able to see you. That is the conscious mind, something that we are conscious of here and now, in this moment. That is the conscious mind.

Unconscious, or super-conscious, or universal conscious is the Universal Mind. That is everything and covers all corners of the universe. That is the whole universe, Universal Mind. That is the unconscious mind. We are unconscious of it because we are not connected to it.

When you are connected to it, it is no longer unconscious. Actually it is more conscious than you are. That's just a phrase they picked up as unconscious mind, because they just had a glimpse of it. But really when you are into it, it is more conscious because it knows everything at the same time. It is beyond our imagination, beyond our understanding how a Being can understand and know everything at the same time. But if you experienced It once, then you understand what it means to know everything at the same time.

And not only does It know everything at the same time, It is full of Grace. It's a Love beyond Loves. It's an experience that then you understand why they say the Love of God is a million times more than any love on earth. It's not comparable. It's Grace.

So that is the unconscious mind that people talk about but really don't know It until they experience It. You can also say it's the collective consciousness. We already are connected with one another in that level because that mind is everything, is a part of us.

The conscious mind is what we see now. The unconscious mind or Universal Mind is the mind of God. Now, we create karmas with our lessons we have to learn. These lessons or karmic energies are programmed in the ethereal level in our consciousness, in the Chitta level of our consciousness. And this subconscious mind becomes a buffer, a separator between us and the unconscious mind, our God.

And because of these karmic energies we don't experience God. We still have a buffer between us. God is with us but we are not with Him. And that subconscious mind is something that we dissolve in meditation. You chip it. You hammer at it each time you meditate. But it's very hard material, you have to hammer a lot.

However, of course, with His Grace (everything comes by His Grace) one day you are enlightened. You don't have to have that subconscious mind. He doesn't give His Grace to you until you learn your lessons. With His Grace you learn your lessons. You seek His Grace.

When your spiritual energy awakens, the first thing you do is you seek His Grace. With His Grace little by little you know the truth. You know how your subconscious mind is affecting you. You know how you are a slave of these creatures in you, which is the subconscious mind. These creatures are really running your life.

You become God-conscious, with His Grace, because these creatures cannot stay in His Grace, they have to run away. So that's why the subconscious mind has to go. You don't take the subconscious mind and put another program in it. You just completely get rid of the subconscious mind. Then you become the conscious mind and unconscious or Universal Mind. You have no subconscious mind. You become a pure channel for God.

Question: Is the subconscious mind just in relation with the karmic life of the person's present life or is the subconscious just the karma of this person's life that resides there? What about the karma of the past life, is it in relation with the Akashic Records? And what about the relation of the memory with the brain?

Maitreya: The subconscious is not only from this lifetime. It is from previous lifetimes. Actually when you come to the body, the subconscious mind is going to come with you because you didn't learn your lessons from previous lifetimes. So it's an accumulation of many lifetimes when you didn't learn your lessons.

Now the relationship between memory and Akashic Records and the brain: Memory is that part of the universe that says, "I have done." It is the remembrance of your actions. Whatever memory you have in this lifetime, it is in your mind of this lifetime, because your mind needs a brain to relate to the external world. The brain is just like a computer, just like a memory bank there.

So you have a memory of this lifetime, and also the universe has a memory. This is your memory which is mostly related to this lifetime. But there is a universal memory which has been alive for millions of billions of years. So He has everything in His mind.

As I said, He knows everything at the same time. So He remembers your karmas and everything you did for any lifetime in the past, because He knows everything that happens in the universe for whatever time He's been awake in the universe. That memory is called Akashic Records.

The memory you have of this lifetime is called your memory. Your brain is just a mechanical thing. It has nothing to do with your mind. Mind and memory are completely different. Mind is your three gunas, the three creative forces, the knowingness, the doership and the Chitta.

Question: So that's the relation between the memory of the brain, the subconscious mind, the conscious mind and the Akashic Records which is unconscious?

Maitreya: Subconscious is your karmic energy, the things you have to learn, the things with which you are programmed. It has nothing to do with the memory.

Question: Well, does it have something to do with the Akashic Records?

Maitreya: Yes. The subconscious mind is what you didn't learn from your previous lifetime; which is in the memory of God, which is in the Akashic Records. Because of the Akashic Records and the memory of God, you have been programmed in such a way to learn special lessons in this lifetime. That is your subconscious mind.

Your memory is your remembrance of this lifetime. But because you are a Soul, if you meditate, and God permits it, and you get in touch with the Universal Mind, you are also going to have some memory from your previous lifetimes, from the Akashic Records.

Those memories have nothing to do with this lifetime. They have something to do with the Akashic Records. When you eventually have no subconscious mind, then you are connected with the Universal Mind. Then in the Universal Mind again your remembrance is not connected to this lifetime alone but to many, many lifetimes. There's no longer only this lifetime's memory. Actually this lifetime's memory becomes a very small little part of your being.

Question: So when you are born you don't have any memory in your brain? It's empty, but you have a lot of karmic memory in your subconscious? You are not conscious of this, and you try to reach the unconscious mind? This is it? Well, the conscious mind is already there but there is a buffer between the two, and you have to absorb the buffer?

Maitreya: That's right.

Question: And what's the relationship between that and the spirit? Where is the spirit, the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and unconscious mind or Akashic Records, memory? Where is the Spirit in that?

Maitreya: Memory actually is ether. Memory is stored in ether.

Question: You mean the brain, or the memory of the subconscious?

Maitreya: Both. See, you are separating them. Then you have to go to the koshas and lokas, the sheaths.

We are in the image of God but because we are so separated, so limited, we have sheaths around the different levels of consciousness. But God doesn't have any sheaths. He has lokas, worlds. Also we have sheaths in our different levels of consciousness, but these sheaths are connected to the lokas or the universe. So in a sense you cannot separate them but in explaining the difference between man and God you put the sheaths around your consciousness.

Now the memory is ether. In the ethereal level you have the memory. The chips that they use in computers are solidified ether, that's why it can take the memory and keep it. So in a sense your memory stays in your spirit until the time of death. See the spirit needs a connection, something to connect it to the body. That is the prana.

Question: This connects the Soul to the body?

Maitreya: Soul and spirit always stay together. Soul stays in the spirit. But the body which is solid, liquid, heat and air, is separated from the Soul and spirit. Prana, or life-force, connects them together. At the time of death, the Soul and spirit separate themselves from the rest of the body. As we said, the memory stays where? Memory stays in ether. Ether is a spirit. So you take your memory with you, you go and you die. Memory stays in the universe. But the next time you come back, it depends on how karmic you lived your previous lifetime. They come back as your subconscious mind, the program, the buffer between conscious and unconscious mind. You start having those karmas back for you to learn your lessons.

Actually when the child is first born, he is more in heaven than in the body. He hasn't completely incorporated himself into the body, and his subconscious mind is very little. That's why children have very little ego in the beginning. Their ego is completed when they are five years old. By five years old their karmic past will be completely solidified in them. So then they create a subconscious mind.

In a sense, your memory is your spirit too.

Question: So when you are born, you're born with your own Soul, always the same? But are you born with your own spirit, always the same spirit?

Maitreya: Not necessarily. But your Soul carries your karma with it. See the Soul stays in the ethereal level, ether is everywhere. It is not your spirit alone. But your Soul is your Soul as long as you have karma. When you don't have any karma even that Soul is not yours any longer. It's One with God. You don't have any individuality any longer.

Question: And what about the spirit in that?

Maitreya: Then your spirit becomes the universe. You don't have any sheaths any more. You get connected with the lokas, with the worlds.