The lowest plane is Nasut; the material world, of which we are conscious by the sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. In this plane we live in the physical body.

Malakut.

When we are asleep our body is lying in bed here, but our mind may be in Paris, in America, in Russia. It may go to the North Pole or to the South Pole. This shows us that our mind is independent of the physical body. Its attachment is only caused by our physical experience, which makes the mind dependent. When we awake we find ourselves in the same room in which we were before we went to sleep. We call this real and the dream unreal, because this remains, and the other comes and goes. When we shall be without our physical body, in what we call death, the dream will remain, and the physical world will go from us. That will be our reality. This is Malakut, the mental plane. In this your higher self is independent of the body. You see, hear, smell without the eyes, ears, nose.

Jabarut

When you are so fast asleep that you are not even dreaming, yet if someone calls you, you at once answer 'Yes,' this shows that though you are not conscious of any names or forms, you are conscious of being. This is Jabarut, the astral plane.

The other two planes are Lahut, the spiritual plane, and Hahut, the plane of consciousness. Everyone experiences these planes also, but ordinarily a person experiences them for a very short time, so that he is not conscious of them. These states come and go so quickly that a person is not conscious of them. The mystic holds them.

Lahut

A person may be sitting still, and for a few moments he falls asleep, and by a voice, or by a symbol or by actual sight, something is shown to him. A poem is revealed to a poet, music to a musician, or a message, or an object is revealed. It is not only the mystics who experience this, but musicians, poets, artists, inventors, the people who have made the great factories. The musicians, poets, artists, experience this, and the mystics after their development. This is sometimes called inspiration.

Hahut

Sometimes, while you are sitting or standing with your eyes open, for one moment you do not see what is before your eyes, or someone speaks to you, and you have not heard. You may be sitting here, and a child or a dog may come and destroy something, and you have not seen. A person feels: I am blank, but before he has time to say, "I am blank" the state is gone. This is Hahut, the plane of consciousness where there is consciousness alone, without form and without name. This is the highest state, in which the consciousness is free from the self. This is liberation, towards which you are going, for which you are trying.

Everybody in the world in twenty-four hours experiences all those states. Our waking state lasts much longer than the dream. The dream lasts much longer than fast sleep. The fast sleep lasts much longer than the state of Lahut. The state Lahut lasts longer than Hahut.

The mystics take the contrary way. Ordinarily we like to be conscious physically longer than in the dream, and we like to be in the dream longer than in the fast, because there is a great joy in dreaming. The mystic holds fast the consciousness of the highest planes, and makes that last longer. God bless you.