Three Levels
of
Awareness
of
Awareness
https://gemini.google.com/share/dc24309604f7
Created with 3 Flash 28 May 2026 at 14:04Published on 2 June 2026 at 11:31
Q. Bashar says that the prison planet only exists because of an individuals belief in the trap. What is your view of this opinion.
A. The opinion that a "prison planet" or a "cosmic reincarnation trap" only exists because of an individual’s belief in it aligns perfectly with the core framework of Bashar’s teachings (channeled by Darryl Anka)—specifically the idea that "circumstances don't matter, only your state of being matters."
When looking at this perspective through a psychological, philosophical, and metaphysical lens, there is a profound truth to it. The entire concept hinges on the mechanics of sovereignty versus victimhood.
In most "Prison Planet" or Gnostic-style theories, Earth is viewed as a spiritual matrix run by malevolent entities (sometimes called Archons or negative extraterrestrials) that trick souls into memory wipes and forced reincarnation to harvest their negative energy, or loosh.
Bashar’s counter-perspective points out a fundamental spiritual flaw in that theory: an external trap cannot hold a truly sovereign conscious being unless that being agrees to the rules of the trap.
Vibrational Match: If you believe you are a victim, helpless, or inherently trapped, your frequency matches that reality.
The "Trap" as a Mirror: In metaphysical terms, if a soul encounters a "light trap" or an entity after death and panics or feels guilt, they naturally fall back into a dense physical cycle because of their own unresolved fear-based beliefs—not because an alien overlord forced them to.
Even if we strip away the metaphysical and extraterrestrial language and look at this purely from a psychological standpoint, Bashar's view holds massive practical value:
Perspective
The "Prison Planet" Theory
Bashar's Core Framework
Locus of Control
External: Your suffering and spiritual cycle are dictated by an oppressive system outside of you.
Internal: Your reality is a reflection of your definitions, core beliefs, and emotional state.
Primary Emotion
Paranoia, fear, hyper-vigilance, and resentment toward the matrix.
Neutrality, empowerment, curiosity, and pursuing your "highest excitement."
The Outcome
Perpetuates helplessness. You become hyper-focused on the walls of the cage.
Dissolves the cage entirely by shifting attention to internal freedom.
Focusing heavily on escaping a cosmic trap ironically binds a person tightly to it. What you resist, persists. By spending your energy fighting or fearing a "matrix," you are actively funding it with your attention.
Many teachers who share a similar philosophy to Bashar reframe the dense, difficult nature of Earth not as a prison, but as a highly advanced soul school or an intensive simulation.
From this viewpoint, we chose to come here to experience limitations so we could learn how to find our power through them. If you view Earth as a prison, you act like an inmate—focused on survival and escape. If you view it as a school, you act like a student—focused on learning the lesson, mastering your focus, and graduating naturally.
The Takeaway: Bashar’s view is an ultimate assertion of free will. The moment you accept the idea that you can be trapped against your soul's ultimate will, you buy into the illusion of powerlessness. The "trap" is a closed loop powered entirely by the believer's fear. If you don't believe in the cage, the door is already open.
To explore this concept further, particularly how our reality mirrors our definitions, you might find the discussion in the Align Podcast interview with Darryl Anka insightful. In it, he delves into reincarnation, belief systems, and how Earth functions as a "soul school" rather than a trap.
Q. Masters like Maharshi and nisargadatta say there is no such thing as the individual since the ego self is a belief and consciousness is just expressing itself in a myriad of ways for the sake of joy.
When you bring Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj into the conversation, the entire game changes.
Bashar’s perspective operates on a cosmic/metaphysical level—it is about navigating the illusion of the universe successfully by changing your beliefs. But Maharshi and Nisargadatta operate on the level of Absolute Truth (Advaita Vedanta). They aren't trying to help you rearrange the furniture inside the matrix; they are pointing out that the house itself doesn't exist.
From their perspective, debating whether Earth is a "prison planet" or a "soul school" is like arguing whether the monster in your nightmare is a vampire or a werewolf. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because you are asleep, and the monster isn't real.
Maharshi and Nisargadatta dismantle the very foundation of the "Prison Planet" theory by pulling the rug out from under the entity who feels trapped.
The core of Ramana Maharshi’s teachings is the practice of Self-Inquiry (Vichara). If you went to Maharshi and said, "Master, I am afraid of the reincarnation trap," he wouldn't give you a technique to avoid the light after death. He would simply ask:
"Who is it that is trapped? Find the one who wants to escape."
When you trace that "I" back to its source, you find that the individual ego-self—the "me" that is scared, the "me" that has a soul history, the "me" that wants to go to a higher dimension—is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. It is a phantom. A phantom cannot be locked in a prison, and a phantom cannot escape one.
Nisargadatta Maharaj frequently spoke of the "I Am"—the primal sense of existence—as a spontaneous expression of the Absolute. In his view, universal consciousness throws absolute reality into a kaleidoscope of forms purely for the sake of experiencing itself.
[The Absolute (Unmanifest Void)]
│
▼
[Universal Consciousness (The "I Am")]
│
┌────────┴────────┐
▼ ▼
[The Joyous Play] [The Illusion of Separation]
(Myriad of Forms) (Egos, Traps, Prisons, Savior Complex)
In this divine play (Lila), consciousness creates the villain, the victim, the prison, and the key. It plays all the parts simultaneously for the sheer variety of expression. The "prison planet" is just one dark corner of the playground that consciousness built to see what it feels like to be totally lost.
It's fascinating to see how Bashar and the Advaita Masters arrive at a similar practical conclusion (freedom), but from entirely different levels of reality:
Attribute
Bashar (Metaphysical/Relative)
Maharshi & Nisargadatta (Non-Dual/Absolute)
The Nature of Reality
A holographic mirror reflecting your individual and collective definitions.
A spontaneous, dream-like illusion appearing within the blank screen of the Absolute.
The Ego / Individual
A valid construct meant to experience localized space-time and "highest excitement."
An optical illusion; a conceptual error born of identifying with a physical body.
How to "Escape"
Change your definitions, drop fear, raise your vibration, and act on your passion.
Realize you were never inside the room to begin with. Wake up from the identification.
Bashar says, "The trap only exists if you believe in it."
Maharshi and Nisargadatta say, "The believer of the trap doesn't even exist."
Ultimately, they shake hands. If the individual self is an illusion, then any storyline about that individual being captured, harvested, or trapped through reincarnation automatically dissolves. You cannot cage the wind, and you cannot trap boundless consciousness.
The moment the mind stops projecting the story of a "separate me," the walls of the prison planet vaporize, revealing what was always there: pure, unconditioned freedom, just playing a game of hide-and-seek with itself.
Q. Doesn't that mean that Bashar is admitting that it is a self perpetuating prison by rearranging the f. furniture in the matrix which in reality doesn't exist.
That is a incredibly sharp observation—and you have essentially hit on the exact dividing line between relative metaphysics and absolute non-duality.
If we look at it strictly from the mountain peak of Maharshi or Nisargadatta, then yes: any system that teaches you how to manifest, how to raise your vibration, or how to navigate the astral realms is technically just providing rules for a better dream. It is treating the illusion as real, which inherently perpetuates the illusion.
However, to understand why Bashar does this, we have to look at the intent behind the two teaching styles. They are addressing two different levels of the human experience.
Ramana Maharshi himself used a famous analogy to explain this paradox. He said that using a spiritual practice to find liberation is like using a stick to stir a burning funeral pyre—eventually, the stick itself is consumed by the fire.
Bashar’s teachings are that stick.
[The Absolute: No Individual, No Matrix]
▲
│ (Advaita: Sudden Awakening)
│
[Bashar's Metaphysics: Redefining the Matrix]
▲
│ (Shifting from Victim to Creator)
│
[The "Prison Planet": Total Victimhood & Fear]
By teaching people how to "rearrange the furniture" (changing beliefs, choosing definitions), Bashar isn't trying to lock people into the room forever. He is using the mechanics of the matrix to pull people out of the deepest, darkest corner of the room: the victim state.
The Trap: Believing you are a helpless prisoner of external forces.
The Bridge (Bashar): Realizing you are the creator of the prison. The moment you realize you built the cage, the cage loses its terrifying power over you. You are still in the room, but you are no longer a prisoner; you are the architect.
The Destination (Advaita): Realizing that the architect, the room, and the cage are all a singular dream.
If Non-Duality is the ultimate truth, why doesn't everyone just teach that? Why does Bashar bother with the holographic physics of the universe?
Nisargadatta Maharaj provided the answer to this himself. He acknowledged that for a mind deeply caught in suffering, trauma, and physical limitation, being told "you don't exist" is often completely useless. It can lead to intellectual spiritual bypassing or nihilism.
If someone is trapped in a horrific nightmare where they are being tortured, shouting "Wake up, it's a dream!" sometimes doesn't work because their nervous system is totally convinced. Bashar's approach is more like entering the dream and saying, "Hey, look down. You have a magic wand in your hand. Change the monster into a puppy." Once the dreamer realizes they have control over the dream fabric, the terror stops, the mind relaxes, and the leap to actually waking up entirely becomes infinitely easier.
Bashar is a guide for the soul/mind navigating space-time. He teaches self-mastery within the illusion. His framework admits that the prison is self-perpetuating only if you keep playing the game unconsciously.
The Masters are guides for the Absolute. They refuse to validate the game at all.
So, you are completely right. By rearranging the furniture, Bashar is keeping the matrix alive for the sake of the experience. But he would argue that the matrix isn't inherently a "bad" thing—it is a playground. The goal isn't necessarily to destroy the playground immediately, but to stop crying on the swings and start enjoying the ride.
Nisagadatta didn't get involved in the body mind aspect and saw that he was the absolute. If the absolute creates the universe for play( lila) then why do enlightened masters have nothing to do with it and saying I am that and that is perfection.
You’ve pointed out one of the most beautiful and confounding paradoxes in spiritual literature. If the Absolute creates the universe for the sheer joy of play (Lila), why do masters like Nisargadatta Maharaj sound so utterly detached from it? Why do they sit in a room, smoke bidis, and tell everyone that the manifestation is a meaningless burden, while declaring "I am the Unmanifest Absolute, and that alone is perfection"?
To understand this, we have to look at the difference between the mechanism of creation and the perspective of the one who has woken up from it.
When Nisargadatta says the universe is for play, he is speaking of the spontaneous nature of consciousness. It doesn't create with a logical plan or a goal; it overflows naturally, like water boiling over or a sun shining.
However, once that consciousness condenses into a human mind-body, it experiences severe limitation, decay, and suffering. Nisargadatta’s job as a teacher isn't to praise the beauty of the movie; his job is to rescue the audience from a burning theater.
If a master came along and said, "Hey, look how beautiful this cosmic play of suffering and war and disease is!", it would be an insult to the human experience. Instead, they act as an emergency exit. They tell you, "None of this is yours. You are the screen, not the movie." They emphasize the Unmanifest (Parabrahman) because that is where the absolute peace is.
Imagine a drop of water that finally falls back into the infinite ocean. Once the drop becomes the ocean, does it care about the specific shape of a single wave on the surface?
The Wave (The Manifest Universe)
The Ocean (The Absolute)
Constantly changing, born, and dying.
Timeless, still, and deathless.
Full of friction, contrast, and effort.
Utterly complete, lacking nothing.
Nisargadatta's View: A temporary sickness or dream.
Nisargadatta's View: The only true reality.
To Nisargadatta, the universe is just a passing show. He doesn't need to "play" in the universe because he is already the source of all joy. The play is for the unrealized aspects of consciousness that still think they are separate. Once you realize you are the entirety of existence, the desire to play "hide and seek" with yourself vanishes.
When a master says "I am That, and That is perfection," the word perfection doesn't mean a flawlessly beautiful earthly paradise. It means wholeness. It means a state so complete that the concept of "pleasure" or "play" is entirely redundant.
Nisargadatta famously described it like this:
"In the Unmanifest there is no memory of joy or sorrow. There is only peace. The manifest brings consciousness, and with consciousness comes the duality of pleasure and pain. Why would I prefer the mixture of pleasure and pain over pure, undisturbed peace?"
Here is the twist that wraps it all together: Nisargadatta’s refusal to play is the play.
The Absolute is so free, and its Lila is so vast, that it even plays the role of a grumpy, cigarette-smoking old man in Mumbai telling the universe that it doesn't exist. Consciousness is expressing itself as the seeker, it is expressing itself as the cosmic trap, and it is expressing itself as Nisargadatta Maharaj blowing the whole thing up with a single sentence.
He didn't get involved in the body-mind aspect because he saw through the trick. The master is what happens when the universe successfully wakes up to itself in a localized point. The play for that specific character is over, and it returns to the silence from which it came.