Layered Reality: A Candid Conversation Between a Seeker and a Wise Being
By Valo Ray
()
About this ebook
Zachariah is an aspect of the same soul as the well-known ascended master Djwal Khul channelled by Alice Bailey in the early part of the 20th century. Zachariah and Djwal Khul share the same soul wisdom, however, Zachariah has a more lively and bubbly personality.
In the form of a relaxed conversation, this book addresses fundamental questions relating to the nature of existence. The truth seeker and Zachariah cover topics such as the nature of time, causality, the soul, reincarnation, and the spirit realm.
Encompassing aspects such as morality and the intersection between science and spirituality, the discussion then turns to more practical issues such as how to live a meaningful life and practice meditation.
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Layered Reality - Valo Ray
Layered
reality
A candid conversation between a seeker and a wise being
Valo ray
Copyright © 2020 Valo Ray
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 9781800467491
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Janet Treloar for channelling Zachariah. Without her, none of the content of this book would have materialised. I would like to give a special heart-felt appreciation to her dedication in facilitating this project – she made her schedule very flexible, especially during my moments of physical vulnerability resulting from my cancer treatment. I would like to thank Hazel Newton for introducing me to Janet during the ‘Who on earth am I’ workshop in Bristol in 2013. Auspiciously, it turned out that we lived in the same town an hour from Bristol and, even more strangely, very close to each other. I would like to express my appreciation to Katherine Ferwerda and Hazel Heath for their immerse help in transcribing the later records towards the end of the project as I was undergoing physical hardship due to medical treatment. I would like to thank Geoff Borin for the amazing cover and interior design for the book and Audrey McClellan for her swift and meticulous editing work. Last but not least, I would like to thank Zac for his wisdom, expressed in a way that is comprehensible for mere mortals like myself.
Contents
PREFACE by valo ray 6
PREFACE by janet treloar 10
PROLOGUE 16
INTRODUCTION 22
CHAPTER 1
BEFORE WE BEGIN – SOME BOOK-KEEPING 31
CHAPTER 2
THE JOURNEY BEGINs 38
CHAPTER 3
THE FIRST MEETING WITH ZAc 48
CHAPTER 4
THE LOGISTICS OF SOULS 73
CHAPTER 5
QUESTIONS REGARDING THE EARTH 103
CHAPTER 6
TIME AND CAUSALITY (PART 1) 114
CHAPTER 7
TIME AND CAUSALITY (PART 2) 147
CHAPTER 8
ON ASPECTS OF THE INCARNATION PROCESS 188
CHAPTER 9
ON SPIRIT REALM 221
CHAPTER 10
ON SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY 227
CHAPTER 11
ON MEDITATION 260
CHAPTER 12
ADVICE ON MAKING THE BEST OUT OF LIVING A PHYSICAL LIFE 279
CHAPTER 13
ON SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE DIRECTION THE WORLD IS GOING 305
IMPLICATIONS AND AFTERTHOUGHTS
CHAPTER 14
EQUALITY IS AN ILLUSION 316
CHAPTER 15
CONNECTION WITH OUR SOUL 322
CHAPTER 16
ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUDGEMENT AND DISCERNMENT 325
CHAPTER 17
WE ARE HIGHER DIMENSIONAL BEINGS LIVING IN A LOWER-DIMENSIONAL WORLD 330
CHAPTER 18
GROWTH MINDSET 333
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A:
WAYS OF HARNESSING THE EXPERIENCE OF ILLNESS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH THROUGH MEDITATION 338
APPENDIX B:
A SHORT NOTE ON THE MANIFESTED AND THE UNMANIFESTED WORLD ACCORDING TO PHYSICS 373
APPENDIX C:
ZAC’S OWN WORDS REGARDING HIS IDENTITY AS DJWAL KHUL 379
RECOMMENDED BOOKS 382
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 390
PREFACE by Valo Ray
I have a great desire to understand the bigger picture of life. My lurking feeling is that if we had access to this bigger picture, much human conflict would become easier to resolve, if it were not rendered entirely obsolete. As the boundary of our limited perspective was enlarged, we would be able to progressively include others’ perspective as our own. We would also be able to see things from a higher perspective, so that what we normally think of as very important would turn out to be trivially small. Understanding the big picture could drastically change the nature of human relationships in a positive direction.
In the Prologue I tell a story about this desire and explain how I came in contact with Zachariah or Zac, a discarnate entity with whom I have been having an ongoing conversation. My original intention when I met Zac was to find out more about this ‘big picture’ and to search for answers that would satisfy my own understanding. More recently, however, I have come to feel that this information could also be useful for others, and that is when I had the idea of sharing what I’ve learned from Zac with a wider audience.
An interesting aspect of my conversation with Zac is that he never imposes a certain doctrine to be followed. Instead, he provides enough details to allow listeners to weave their own picture based on their current level of maturity and vibration. In other words, each individual can potentially gain something useful from Zac’s words, depending on the individual’s state of development. When I requested permission to document our conversation, Zac replied:
It is more than reasonable. It is something we have been hoping for from you. Ha, ha, why do you think I said I will speak to you again in the summer? There will always be questions, but I can give you the information so that you can use your ‘clever’ brain to put it in a way that people can understand. We are not asking you to go out and do this, but what you have done is to listen to your heart. Remember, desire is what is propelling the future in a positive way. So, of course, this is the easiest question to answer. Do it, my dear. Soon or later, it is your choice. Good! The penny has dropped. He understands. Ha, ha.
Subsequently, when I asked him about the nature of the format of the book, he replied:
It could be that there are certain passages of scripts that you feel the energy, feel the energy, feel I am talking, and that I have given energy to certain parts, and for these, you may want to put them in verbatim. It could be just certain aspects of certain descriptions. But then, around that, you could, in a more generalised way, have the things we have discussed, and have these as the hub of it, the heart of it. Within these topics, everyone goes away with the part that can carry this energy – a part that is the formulation of truth in a way we have discussed it. But what I think would be the most interesting regarding this, because you are living on earth at this time, that you can put it in prose, in a way that you see the world which will talk to peoples’ hearts. So you can be free to say that this is how I understood such and such about the conversation one day with Zachariah. At the end of that, however you want to put it, you could think of it as a piece that he said to me. You do not have to say to everybody that this is the absolute truth, this is the absolute understanding. The reason is that when people read, they not only make up their own mind, they take things further. So you can always put this. You can leave suggestions to the readers to ponder upon these thoughts to find their own take on it. Then you do not have to be too worried about accuracy. Then your transcription does not have to be word-for-word. You might think, ‘I know all the time, for certain paragraphs, that I just need to put his words down exactly as they are’, and you can do it.
Earlier on when we were speaking, you put your summaries on certain topics, and I said they are exactly right. Therefore, whether a person was reading my words or your summary, they are receiving the same information. So this is good. And part of why we pass on this information is not so that people would claim Zachariah said this or that, blah, blah. No. It is so that people can take the information into their heart and understand the parts that have meaning for them. That is what is important. Even if someone who comes away and goes ‘You know, the Source is the most curious thing in the universe, and I am part of it’, and they smile. Then your job is good.
He later added,
So do not be shy about writing something that you feel is not absolutely accurate. You can say, over time, the conversation with Zachariah about a particular subject, it seems to me that some of the information changes, that is because the world is changing, and at this time, that is how I understand it. Free flow. You know. Your helper guides and I will be there. You might wake up in the morning and feel that you need to revisit that part. I do not expect so because whatever your interpretation is would be helpful for other people at this time, and that is what is important. Even if you feel you are not too sure if this is accurate, I am sure the majority of them are. The essence of these is. That is a good way of looking at it. One of your helper guides is saying that it is the essence that is important. This is so true. Everyone knows what a chocolate cake tastes like but, actually, if you taste 50 different chocolate cakes, each probably will taste completely different. So when you put them together, give your own flavour, your own style, your own ingredients.
I believe that this exchange with Zac has summed up the background for the origin of the book.
Valo Ray
July 2020
PREFACE by janet treloar
The story of how I became a channel for Zac is long, and like most people’s stories it is filled with twists and turns because rarely are lives straightforward, moving swiftly and easily from A to B. Perhaps that is why the presence of our own Higher Consciousness and Higher Consciousness Beings are as much in our lives in the 21st century as they have been throughout human history. They nudge, prod, assist and sometimes openly bridge a gap in our current understanding to that which opens up other worlds to us.
This book is a marvel in itself; how it came to light and the insights contained within its pages. I will keep my own bio relatively brief as I offer it purely as a framework for understanding how a girl from Essex came to become an out-of-body channeller, developing a close working partnership with a Higher Consciousness Being known fondly to all as ‘Zac’.
As a child the boundaries between the physical world and others were blurred to me. I could see and sense those who had passed as easily as those with physical bodies. In fact, all my senses were acute, picking up on the thoughts and emotions of those around me. I became very anxious, and was considered an over-sensitive child who had an over-active imagination.
Memories are peppered with spirit encounters, both friendly and not so, premonitions and downloads of information that I had little clue what to do with. Evidential experiences which were not delusional or imagined, were thrust at me, and my family, time and again. Confusion turned to fear and things rapidly spiralled downwards. My health suffered as did my school work because I found it impossible to concentrate. Eventually when I could no longer hold the worlds I sensed, separate, they appeared to collapse in on themselves, and I lost myself within them. Help was brought forward in the form of a wonderful, kind and experienced medium who said she had been waiting for me. I was 12 years old.
I cannot convey the relief I felt to be taken under someone’s wing who knew what I was experiencing and was so clearly focused on helping me through it all. It was not easy though. My energy system had shattered in the process and for some time I felt all at sea, quite literally, in a sea of energy I couldn’t control. The months passed and over time I learnt how to create my energetic boundaries, how to control what I experienced and the nature of what I was experiencing, too.
The story here could have taken a very different turn from the one it did: I could have embraced the energetic world, or as some call it, the spiritual world. That smooth movement from A to B. However, I did not. I was a teenager being brought up in the ever increasingly materialistic 1980s on the outskirts of London. I left school, and at 16 started working in the unit trusts division of a bank in the heart of the financial hub of the City. Many years passed fighting for my right to a ‘normal’ life whilst in the background all manner of supernatural experiences littered my life. Unwanted, unexpected – a hangover of the past I thought I’d left behind.
A thought dawned on me that I could conquer once and for all the unexpected experiences and visitations if I went back to my roots and trained my natural abilities, to the extent I was offered in the beginning. As a child I had declined and only taken my training as far as blocking and controlling. And so I embarked on training, all in secret as I didn’t want anyone to know my shameful secret, as I felt it then to be.
And so, during evenings and weekends over many years, the training developed and honed the energetic side of me which I still thought of as separate. Mediumship came first followed by spiritual healing. Looking back I see the connections, synchronicities and other developments that happened which lead me on to specialist training in the fields of spirit release, earth energies, past life regression, regression therapy and life between lives spiritual regression. All the while I kept my two worlds separate: work, family and friends in one camp, ‘spiritual stuff’ in another. Something had to give and it did…
During regression therapy training I had the opportunity to face the fears, shame and confusion my childhood experiences with the invisible world had caused, the internal wounds and scars they had left. Once these had been overcome, it was as if I woke up from a dream, a realisation that perhaps keeping my lives so separate from each other was not only time and energy consuming, but not healthy either. I also had an epiphany: with all this training under my belt and the professional qualifications achieved, I should put it to good use and help others as I had been helped.
It was not long after that insight that I plucked up the courage to leave my corporate City job and become an energy worker full time. As a regression therapist, hypnotherapist, spiritual healer, and spirit release practitioner my days were filled with light and shade. As a natural sceptic (believe it or not!), every day I received more and more evidence of the spirit world and how it can help us, if we simply ask.
Without the previous natural impulse to put the brakes on every time a new opportunity arose, it meant the next few years flew by with leaps and bounds in all areas of my own spiritual development. I started to channel within groups and with the fear from my past now healed and safe protocols in place, I found I could leave my body and allow higher being consciousnesses to use it to talk to others far easier than when I originally trained as a trance medium. With a healthy respect for all energy states and growing confidence, I allowed more opportunities for channelling to occur.
During one eventful episode a Higher Consciousness, not used to a human body, struggled to keep control of mine and the questioner became concerned I may dislocate my shoulder as it was moving and snapping about so much. She switched to asking for a spokesperson to come forward to take that spirit-energy’s place, and answer the group’s questions. And so stepped forward Zac. At first this humble and wise being gave his name only as ‘a guide for the future’. He agreed when asked to come and speak with everyone again after this first meeting.
That was 10 years ago now and since then he has availed himself to all that speak to him whenever I channel. It is perhaps an unlikely partnership/friendship on the surface. However, ultimately we are all connected, and it is what is in our hearts and our intention that defines us far more than our mind’s perception of ourselves.
Zac (Zachariah), is an aspect of the Ascended Master Djwal Khul, also known as The Tibetan, or simply DK. We discovered this a few years after our connection first started. Many people would recognise his energy, or see his face over mine; when asked if he were one and the same he used to chuckle. He is playful and there is wisdom in all he does. He wishes all those with whom he connects to see him as a friend, a peer, an equal; not an entity to be revered or have a specific label and therefore assumptions attached to. To him that is ‘sooo last century’!
When I look back over the last 10 years, Zac has provided hundreds of individual sessions to those stunned by his accuracy and care, and he has also developed channelling workshops assisting others to become channels themselves. He has created retreat-style ‘Channelling Extravaganzas’ which are a celebration of the human spirit and are always about what tomorrow can bring.
I have felt him spreading his wings further over the last few years, waiting for me to be ready to do so with him. ‘Books books books!’ He enjoys the relationship with the reader and feels it is still a highly worthwhile mode of sharing insight – even in our high-tech age.
Zac’s suggestion that I write three channelled books with him is still in process with a long way to go. To be a part of this magnificent body of work, Layered Reality, brought to the world by Valo Ray is a privilege and an honour. Thank goodness Valo was ready to share Zac’s wisdom.
And so we are up to date: as a channel for Zac I ride the etheric waves with a deep respect and gratitude for all that the higher realms and consciousnesses teach us. It is said that we are all one – to me that alone is a multi-layered truth and reality! To allow ourselves to explore this possibility, I believe we need to open our minds and hearts to new theories, perspectives and realities. Zac affirms this to myself and others more and more each day.
If, having read this book, you would like to discover more of Zac’s insights, you’ll find videos and audios of free monthly ‘Zac Chats’ at Patreon.com/Zacsportal, alongside an optional subscription for monthly Zac Deep Dive talks and Meditations.
I would like to pay testament to Valo for his dedication, time and energy spent creating Layered Reality. It involved countless hours in conversation with Zac prior to transcribing, collating, organising and summarising vast universal questions into a format accessible to all. It takes a great mind, I believe, to decipher and ‘add flavour’, as Zac would say, to such expansive perceptions and realities. Sharing such enquiries with others also takes generosity of spirit, something Valo has in abundance.
One last thought, when reading, listening or watching any channelling, always do so with an open mind; think not who or what ‘they’ are, think only of what lay within their words for you. Take what resonates and discard the rest – this is advice Zac gave me long ago and which still stands me in good stead. I trust this book has found you at the right time, and within its pages you will find at least a little of the awe and wonder the invisible world has for us.
Janet Treloar
July 2020
PROLOGUE
The broader the perspective you have the easier life is, because you see each event not as a huge crisis that may overwhelm you, but as a small blip on the screen of a full and rich life.
Nanci L. Danison
Raymond always wondered how he came to be and who he was when he was a baby. His parents told him that these were silly questions. When he got a bit older, he asked the same questions again, but this time he was told that it was his mom who made him. At first this seemed to be a reasonable answer, but soon he was confused again. ‘Who made my mom?’ he asked. He was told that his grandma made his mom. This was not a very satisfying answer, but Raymond did not pursue it further, knowing that he would not be able to understand the answer anyway. A few years later he found out that it was God who made the first person. For some reason, this answer still left him a bit confused, but a lot of people seemed to agree on this answer, so he decided there must be some truth to it. Besides, he had more important things to do at that time, so he put the question aside.
Many years later, a friend told Raymond that he might be able to get some answers from a mystical being who called himself Zachariah. ‘I have not met this person before’, his friend told him, ‘but if you wish to meet him, you would have to find him up in the mountain somewhere. In fact, I do not even know if he is a real person or some mystical creature, or if he even exists, but if you are so keen to find out the truth, this might be something to consider’.
Raymond was a bit perturbed. He remembered that this mountain was a dangerous place – at least as far as the village was concerned. Very few villagers had attempted to walk up the mountain, and those who did had never come back. Since Raymond was not a brave soul, he decided to drop this idea. He did not give up the idea of searching for the truth. Rather, he just did not feel it was necessary to climb the mountain. He was not lazy but he believed that it was possible to find the answer in the comfort of his own home.
‘Why venture out to the unknown and engage with something so ethereal, so intangible? Since there are so many intelligent people out there, all I need is an open mind’, Raymond thought to himself. In the meantime, he worked hard to establish himself as a scientist, which is where his inclination lay. Besides working, he spent a lot of time reading, trying to find clarity on his own and hoping to build up a framework of understanding that he could use as an anchor in the sea of life. At the back of his mind, he always felt that there was much more than what science could provide, so he had been devouring ideas from different philosophical and religious traditions.
Many years passed. Raymond realised that his desire to seek an answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ was no longer just an intellectual curiosity. It was now an urgent concern, as the answer to this question was meant to give guidance so he could live a meaningful life, and he was not getting younger.
When we live in a society, we have to learn the values, norms and beliefs imposed on us. In fact, we don’t just learn them; we internalise them. We internalise them to such an extent that we become them. We become the role we play, and we are lost behind the mask we wear. Society tells us what we should like or dislike. To make things more complicated, society does offer us choices, reinforcing the illusion that we are free agents.
‘But who is this free agent
behind the mask?’ Raymond asked himself. ‘Is this the real I
or is it yet another persona carefully engineered by the collective norm? And if this is not the real I
, who is the real I
?’
To attempt to answer this question, Raymond recalled the notion of the Two Truths as presented by the Buddhists. Briefly, this notion suggests that our understanding of reality mainly stays in the realm of what is known as ‘conventional or relative truth’, which consists of collectively agreed conventions regarding how the world operates, including all intellectual understanding of our phenomenal world, as well as all our social constructs. In this way, the ‘I’ is not an illusion at all. It is as real as it can get, as long as it stays within the realm of conventionally established constructs within society.¹ On the other hand, ‘ultimate truth’ takes us away from the intellectual and conceptual understanding of reality.² But if our analytical mind cannot comprehend the ultimate truth, is there any hope we can attain even a glimpse of the bigger picture, or know who we are in the grand scheme of things? While Raymond could accept that the ultimate truth cannot be grasped by the intellect, he still believed that a more accurate understanding of who we are and our place in the universe would help clarify how we should navigate our lives.
‘When we have more clarity on who we are and where we sit in the scheme of things, we will be able to re-prioritise our value system so it aligns more closely with the big picture, instead of accepting what society tells us we should need and value’, Raymond insisted to himself.
But if humanity had already established a system of understanding in the form of science and philosophy dedicated to the pursuit of truth, what made the information coming from an ethereal being more accurate, even if he really did exist? Raymond could not find a logical answer to that. However, he knew that he needed a fresh start.
The truth is, what Raymond needed was a leap of faith.
A building needs a strong foundation to support itself. Similarly, a strong system of knowledge requires solid assumptions, which are meant to be supported by rigorous validations. The problem is that assumptions are assumptions; many of them are based on claims that are not easily verifiable, and many more are based on mere common sense. ‘But what if many of our assumptions are wrong?’ Raymond wondered. ‘Or what if many of these assumptions have never been questioned?’
Raymond recalled an interesting process known as simulated annealing, which he had occasionally used to solve problems at work.³ Simulated annealing is a class of algorithms that aim to cleverly search for the values of a set of variables that optimise a given mathematical function. The algorithms are based on the idea of a random search in such a way that the search is carried out indiscriminately in order to explore the solution space more fully at the earlier stage of the search.⁴ As the results become more promising, the research process becomes more refined. In some situations, the algorithm might want to accept a solution that is worse than the previous one, in the hope that this worse solution will give rise to a much better solution at a later stage of the search. The main message of this algorithm is clear: to get a better answer, we may not want to be satisfied with a mere good answer. We need to jump away from the comfort zone of a locally optimal solution and explore different parts of the solution space, which may potentially give rise to a more optimal answer. Similarly, to find a higher truth, we may not want to be satisfied with what we know so far. We may want to explore different perspectives, even though these perspectives challenge our basic assumptions. Raymond definitely understood the need to challenge existing assumptions. The question was whether he had the courage to make this leap of faith.
Eventually, Raymond knew that it was time to venture up the mountain to meet this Zachariah, whatever he might be.
1. The argument is not dissimilar to discussions regarding meaning and definition in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.
2. Different Buddhist schools have diverging concepts of the ultimate truth. The Madhyamaka school points to the notion of emptiness of reality as the ultimate truth. The term ‘emptiness’ refers to the lack of inherent nature of any phenomena. See Nagarjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārika. A good translation of the text can be found in Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way by Jay L. Garfield. On the other hand, the Tathagatagarbha school proposes that there is a fundamental nature upon which the ‘I’ is based. This is termed the ‘Buddha nature’. It is beyond any conceptual understanding and can only be realised through direct perception.
3. ‘Simulated annealing’ belongs to a subset of what is known as the meta-heuristics. There are many types of meta-heuristic algorithms, and simulated annealing is only one well-known example. Other types include tabu-search, genetic algorithm, particle swan algorithm, etc.
4. ‘Solution space’ refers to all possible values of all variables that the given problem is allowed.
INTRODUCTION
We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
Albert Einstein
Imagine you wake up on an island. You have no recollection of how you got there and who you were before you got there. You can see that you are not alone on this island. There are other people besides you. Many of them are so used to living on the island that they have already built a life there. Very few people question what this island is all about. Those who do are mostly satisfied by what turns out to be a set of dogmas that has been passed down from those before them. There are a minority of wise people who have great insights into this island, but their understanding is often experiential. Any attempt to express such understanding in words is likely to result in subjective interpretations, which can then easily be frozen into dogmas.
The mystery of the island is like the mystery of life. We find ourselves here and some of us accept the dogmas that have been passed down while others want to find out more. For me, the quest to answer the question ‘who am I?’ has been lingering at the back of my mind since I was young. I am not sure if there is a generally accepted answer out there or if it is fundamentally beyond our ability to comprehend, but as far as I am concerned, this question has not been answered. The problem is that whether we have an answer to this question or not, it may be only the first step into an ever-complex maze of confusion. Why are we here? What is the purpose of our life? Is our life part of something much bigger? If so, what is that bigger thing?
It is tempting to tackle each question in isolation, hoping that by doing so a complete picture will emerge when we stitch the individual answers together.
I am proposing to tackle the problem more holistically by finding out the big picture first. Then each question will hopefully answer itself.
To give an analogy, our body is like a radio receiver. The receiver demodulates and decodes the radio signal to allow the music to manifest. While the quality of the receiver allows the richness of the music to be expressed, to understand the music itself, we need to look beyond the receiver. In other words, the radio receiver is one level of reality, but the music itself lives in a different level of reality. To understand how the music comes about, we need to understand the source of the music, which is the radio transmitter. This, in turn, requires us to understand the physics of electromagnetism and so on. Understanding the source of the music forces us to understand the entire package of the radio transceiver, which transcends but also includes the mere radio receiver. Now, have we solved the question of the music that we hear from the radio simply by understanding what a transceiver is? Obviously not. As we know, the transmitter of the radio signal is only a small part of an even more elaborate