In my travels through the more esoteric spiritual writings, I have come across two authors who delineate various levels of human consciousness. Both describe a hierarchy of ever-expanding awareness from the most basic animal level to the most enlightened.

Ultimately of course, there are no hierarchies. All states of consciousness simply are what they are, and all humans simply inhabit whatever place of awareness they inhabit. However, our human perspective is naturally hierarchical, and it can be very useful for us to place various stations of awareness within a hierarchy, from ‘lower’ to ‘higher’. It gives us a sense of where we have been, and where we might next aspire to land.

The two authors I’m going to talk about are Ramaji, with his book 1000, and the channeled guide Michael whose wisdom is recorded in the book by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Messages from Michael.

So let’s look at these two systems.

Michael’s teachings set out a system of ascending awareness with five levels of consciousness ranging from Infant Soul to Old Soul. Ramaji describes levels of consciousness (LOC) on a scale of 0 to 1000. Both outline the human characteristics that we encounter at each level of their scale. Here is what we see when the two perspectives are placed side by side.

 

Level 1: Michael’s Infant Soul/Ramaji’s LOC 0-200. Keywords: fear, violence, survival

Infant Soul. Lives in fear. Terrified of change, novelty. No understanding of right/wrong. Cruel, violent, sadistic, murderous, lustful.

LOC 0-200. The animal soul, living in fear by the law of the jungle, completely self-focused but with growing mastery of physical reality. Lost souls, desperate survival, psychopathy, cruelty, cunning and violence.

 

Level 2: Michael’s Baby Soul/Ramaji’s LOC 200-300. Keywords: rigid morality

Baby Soul. Fundamentalist religious beliefs, immovable personal beliefs, no empathy, can be apparent ‘pillar of the community’.

LOC 200-300. The first glimmers of humanness, emotion, self-awareness. Narcissistic and aggressive but capable of unbending morality and narcissistic generosity.

 

Level 3: Michael’s Young Soul/Ramaji’s LOC 300-400. Keywords: success, emotion, narcissistic morality

Young Soul. Achievement oriented, the architects of civilization. Blind idealists with a missionary zeal to convert others to their beliefs.

LOC 300-400. The heart appears with love, courage, passion, vulnerability and empathy. Basic personal ethics appear with the desire to be a good person, following the laws of religion and state.

 

Level 4: Michael’s Mature Soul/Ramaji’s LOC 400-500. Keywords: emotional truth, scientific truth.

Mature Soul. Empathy appears, seeks to understand inner motivations. Perceives real vs false. Can make massive contributions to knowledge, both scientific and philosophical.

LOC 400-500. The rational brain now takes precedence and seeks to control emotion. It is cool and calculating but shines in the realm of logic, science, technology.

 

Level 5: Michael’s Old Soul/Ramaji’s LOC 500-600 & 600-1000. Keywords: peacefulness, simplicity, spiritual focus

Old Soul. Seeks spiritual evolution, which is practiced in creative unorthodox ways, replacing outer success. Recognition of being part of something greater than the individual self.

LOC 500-600. Spirit appears, love reappears. Seeking spiritual truth and personal evolution replaces both outer success and adhering to science or religious dogma. War, violence no longer make sense.

LOC 600-1000. Knowing oneself as non-dual divinity unfolds to more and more profound levels of awareness. The realm of spiritual teachers and ever-expanding enlightenment.

 

As you can see, the two systems are fundamentally similar, and reinforce each other as valid perspectives on our human condition.

So let’s look at where we are now at this point in history.

In terms of the average soul age on the planet today, Ramaji and Michael are in broad agreement. Michael states that ‘this is very much a planet of Young Souls’. Ramaji’s book indicates that the average level of consciousness is currently evolving rapidly towards 300, or late Baby Soul heading towards Young Soul. (In 2014 it was 210, in 2019 it was 245, so in 2024 it is probably in the high 200’s, heading towards 300).

Let’s average these two systems, and assume that the majority of humanity is currently functioning at the Baby and Young Soul level. If we imagine a bell curve distribution, the top of the curve is on the Baby/Young Soul cusp, falling away on either side to much smaller numbers of Infant Souls on the left, and Mature Souls on the right. There is a very long tail on the right side indicating very few Old Souls.

This actually matches my observation that Old Souls make up only a tiny percentage of humanity at this time.

But for now, let’s look at what it means for the world today that Baby and Young Souls predominate.

It means that everyone on the left side of the bell curve, perhaps half of humanity, is functioning at the Infant and Baby Soul levels. Infant Souls are at the most basic level, the level of the fearful savage animal living by the law of the jungle. The entire awareness of these humans is immersed in survival in the moment by whatever means available. In contrast, Baby Souls have evolved somewhat from this animal level, and show the first signs of becoming human. They are still completely self-centered, but do have a rigid, fundamentalist morality

For both Infant and Baby Souls, there is no real comprehension of the future, or of planning for the future. There is no capacity for empathy, no understanding of the feelings of others, and no real connection. There is no awareness of the Earth as a living being. There is just greed, competitiveness and aggressiveness. We see this playing out in the world today, especially in the behavior of corporations which function psychopathically, focused on the bottom line and without regard for the long-term future.

When we turn to Young Souls, we see humans who are not yet fully human, but are learning how to express and manage the heart and emotions and to connect with others. They can and do create codes of ethics and laws, elect and follow leaders, and create systems of support for themselves and their co-citizens. But they are still caught in the conviction that violence is a method, and readiness for war and war itself are seen as non-negotiable necessities. Young Souls are attracted to positions of power in states and nations, become our leaders, and build the structures of civilization according to their limited, rigid perspectives.

It is only with Mature Souls, who are far smaller in number than the Infant-Baby-Young Soul cohort, that we see the capacity to fully embrace both heart and mind. There is a search for both emotional and scientific truth, and Mature Souls become the cultural thought leaders, followed in a rigid one-dimensional way by the younger souls. In current times we see this in the new ‘religions’ of science, psychotherapy and medicine, all firmly ‘evidence-based’.

This is where we are today. Mature Souls are the thought leaders, setting our beliefs, but Young Souls have the power, and shape the world according to rigid moralities that are mostly devoid of empathy for others and for the Earth.

And yet, if we are to fulfill the prophecies for a future of peaceful, loving coexistence, many many more of us, perhaps a majority, will have to be functioning at Old Soul level, LOC 500 and beyond.

It seems that humanity as a whole will have to evolve to higher levels of consciousness much more rapidly than we have so far. How will we do that? it’s not at all clear. However, there may be help from the Earth herself. According to Ramaji, the consciousness of Gaia, our living planet, is very rapidly increasing. He predicts that she will reach LOC 600, the first level of enlightenment, in 2024, and in fact has recently stated that amazingly, she has already reached LOC 999, one step below full enlightenment.  Given that we humans cannot help but be impacted by whatever spiritual energies surround us, it seems that Gaia herself can support us in our quest.

 

Sources

Ramaji, 1000: The Levels of Consciousness and a Map of the Stages of Awakening for Spiritual Seekers and Teachers

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Messages from Michael: 25th Anniversary Edition