Connections
Reality Levels, Supernatural Beings
These also exist, and in many forms. It seems that our consciousnesses are ever-refining themselves, catching up to what is going on in whatever concentric energy shell is functioning at the speed of that which we can understand and follow in order to make contributions from our own free will. Physical directions like in, out, up and down can get quite entangled as we try to point out the way to the places that are at the edges of our imagination and perception.
We are all here on Earth now feeling pretty solidly physical, am I right? And our chakra systems start from the physical survival needs and work upwards into the higher altruisms that we can imagine or see in altruistic others. But there's no reason to expect that we are at a cosmic low point, or that the physical universe is the bottom of a barrel, unless we really want to feed our egos with that "we're the worst" perspective. So what might be called the sub-physical?
Perhaps the shamans have given us a clue, since they go "down" into the earth on their visualization triggered journeys when they want to meet their animal spirit friends. On the higher levels, the next one above the physical being the astral, it is generally reported that there are no more earthly plants or animals to be encountered, excepting the occasional thoughtform companions and disguises which we might perceive to be familiar flora and fauna, but which are in fact being generated by the spirit humanoids and a whole new range of wildlife. This is a curious and unexpected situation (where went Spot and Tabby?), seemingly unecological, but you will no doubt discover the truth of it as you explore, as I more or less have confirmed for myself as well. I have seen trees and small animals that upon closer inspection became strange glowing-eyed critters, usually parasitic and charmingly harmless, also horse-drawn carts with no horses drawing them.
Apparently our nonhuman earthly friends are unable or unwilling to hold the same places in the faster generating levels, unless they are possibly and rarely escorted there to be someone else's protected guests. Advanced spiritual beings advise us pretty uniformly that human souls have evolved upward from having been the crystals, plants, and animals, so perhaps, even though we see the "lower" earthly creatures in their physical forms as being next to us, the earth's nonhumans are our own contemporaries who are currently experiencing some sub-physical instinct-driven levels of awareness that correspond to their physical animal and lower bodies.
Lower should be taken to not mean lesser of course, but simply of less and lowered free will. Lower orders are in more unquestioning compliance with natural orders, with nature's laws, all the way "down" into the obliged symmetries of the perfect crystalline. This could surely result in subjective reality experiences from their perspectives which would be tremendously different from our own. If this is so, the animals might not even be seeing their own bodies and the world as we do at all, not even physically! Ever wonder what kitty is watching? Of course, however interesting in phenomena, the animal planes of consciousness would likely seem unsatisfyingly associative and frustratingly impulsive places of perception when compared to our own human planning/thinking/reasoning worlds. Evolution goes forward and upward and outward.
Do we not feel beneath our own potentials and curiously ashamed/liberated, somehow both sub and super human simultaneously, when we find ourselves temporarily regressed into an animalistic reaction mode, as during a panic of extreme fear or pleasure? And might there not be higher analogues of our human to animal relationships, in which we humans are the slower ones who are physically focussed, yet we also are inhabiting some astral and higher bodies that are appearing right alongside the lighter faster more aware beings who would likely appear to us (if we could much study them beyond our impulses to run away like startled wild beasts) as the angelic gods and godesses of yore? Must we not seem to them, in our dazed astral bodies which are essentially unpiloted and running on reflexes, like the reactive and dangerous but lovable creatures that the wild animals here in the world can seem to us? Indeed, the beginning astral explorer must face the shame and bewilderment of becoming like an animal again, as subconscious drives take on new holds and must be tamed and satisfied to surpass being little more than a spirit-based sex and urge machine.
Again, none of this is to suggest that the crystals, plants, and animals are to be looked down upon as any less spiritual than ourselves. Even as somnabulent protrusions into own our perceptual and cognitive realms, their forms would be to us as the gateways to the higher beings that they are becoming, just as we are the human form gateways to our own sleeping giant angelic selves. We ought to relate to compassion and stewardship for the animals just as the angels must surely feel for us.
In short, whatever may be our conceptions and terminologies for the levels of reality above/beyond the physical which are awaiting our understanding (but not our populating, for they are already populated, as was America for the "first" explorers!), it is good to remember to extend the reality continuum symmetrically as well, and discover the analogies and guideposts for how it may be that all beings are "right here right now", from rocks and stones and trees to worms, humans and gods, and how we would do well to care for and be cared for by every consciousness we meet.
FYI, I am comfortable with the nomenclature of Lazaris, who suggests that our universe consists of 4 levels, the physical (this solid stuff), the astral (more 
emotional and vaporous), the causal (a templating level where
synchronous event families are sequenced into the causes and effects that we desire to work with), and the mental (idyllic realms where gods and goddesses dwell). And as grand and all-encompassing as these 4 levels may seem, Lazaris assures us that there are more sets of 4 extending infinitely!
