The counting of up to 18 planes in this tradition comes only from the unusal way how these planes are counted here. The spiritual world is split into 6 planes here, as well the material worlds of KAL. ( Lucifer Satana )
But a "loving , mercyful and graceful and protecting GOD" as the omnipresent allmighty lord stands in contradiction to the sytem of divine hierarchies and of cosmic initiations - and to our present reality ! It is more a description of the divine creator of the second ray. GOD, the all father interacts only very seldom in our worlds.
Supreme Being is limitless and endless. He has a form and is yet formless. He is inaccessible and is yet accessible. He is indescribable yet can be described. When He is formless, He is all pervading. When manifested, He is the Master of the Highest Abode, having Love, Mercy and Grace as His chief attributes ever-ready to grant His protection to all who remember him. He is Bliss personified and embodiment of Eternal Peace. He is Personal and Impersonal both.
Merciful God Himself looks after the Jiva and, through His Grace, makes his/her spirit ascend upwards. The mind and Maya also continue to put obstructions in the way, but Merciful grants the strength of His Grace and Mercy, and helps the devotee in removing all such obstructions.
He gets everything done by the devotee, though in reality He Himself is the Doer.
(The Lord of the Soul's Discourse of Love)
From there is visible the eternal terrace of the most marvelous mansion of the Supreme ALL Father .
Above that is Agam Lok which is unique. Only Saint Surats enjoy that bliss.
Sat Purush (ALL FATHER) resides in the fourth Lok. Sants dwell in everlasting beatitude
Beyond is the darbar (sphere) of Alakh Purush, which can only be perceived by Surat (or spirit entity).
Maya ( ILLUSIONED MATERIAL WORLKD), which is really barren as it has no power to create on its own, becomes impregnated with soul energy and creates this world of colour and form. The soul, which is the real creator and sustainer of things, no longer creates because it has now withdrawn itself into Brahmand and the regions beyond, leaving Maya to shrink back to its infertile state.
The Higher Regions
One's passage into the astral plane is aided by the sound of a deeply resonant bell. A dazzle of colors immediately emerges, subsiding into a deep blue, like the blue of a late afternoon sky. Subsequently a light appears in the blue, intense but diffused, as if veiled by a gauze screen. The soul aims for the light, penetrates the gauze, and arrives at a brilliant flame surrounded by a dense blue-black sky. That area, a higher realm within the astral plane, is called shyam kunj (the thicket of darkness), and it is regarded as the divine headquarters for managing both the physical and astral realms. It is controlled, of course, by Kal; here he appears as Niranjan, the Lord of the astral realm. The soul should not be satisfied with attaining this realm, however, but focus on the flame, which replaces the blue- black sky with an intense bright white. This enables the soul to by- pass all the supernatural regions referred to in the literature of other religions: the Christians' heaven and hell, the Hindus' svarga and naraka, the Muslims' dozakh and bahisht. These all exist at the level of shyam kunj, but there is no ultimate advantage to being lodged in one rather than another. Heaven may be filled with "comfortable rooms" and hell with "painful cells," but in the last analysis all who live in either are trapped "in the same jail."67 The fortunate soul, however, has a way out. The Guru or Master guides it to a dark spot in the light and a sound similar to that of a conch shell, which it hears at first only distantly from a tunnel high above. The tunnel is called banknal (the crooked path). Upon following the sound into the tunnel, the soul turns around and then enters the next plane.
This second region is called the causal plane, for it is from here that the phenomenal world is ultimately generated. At one spot, for example, is a four-petaled lotus from which emerge utterances that eventually issue as the four Vedic scriptures of Hinduism. The world was created in this region as a subtle, invisible form, and here karmic burdens are dispatched and reclaimed. Thus cause and effect, both material and moral, begin and end here. Brahm, the creator, sustainer and dissolver of this universe, is considered the Lord of this region.
The soul, forewarned, enters the causal plane with care, listening again for the guardian sound, which in this region reverberates like the sound of large drums or rolling thunder, and which may also sound like the rumbling chant of the Hindus' om, om, or the Muslims' HU, HU. The light that the soul looks for to guide it takes on a brilliant reddish color in this realm, like that of the sun in a summer sunrise. The soul fixes on these aural and visual guides, and passes by locations where the things of our physical world were created. Within the landscape are also vistas that are well known from Hindu mythology-Mount Kailasa, for example, where Lord Shiva is thought to dwell, or the forests and gardens said to have been inhabited by Krishna. The light that the soul has followed, already brighter than many suns, becomes ever brighter as the wayfarer proceeds upward, bursting through the pyramidically shaped causal realm.
At that point the soul moves beyond the arena in which causation has meaning and transcends the last shreds of materiality. It leaves behind realms referred to by Hindus as "the three worlds" (trilok), i.e., the known universe, and moves into what calculates as the third spiritual plane: Daswan Dwar (the tenth door), also known as Sunn (emptiness). This transition is more decisive than any other, and is second in importance only to the initial shift from the physical to the spiritual plane, for it marks the point beyond which the soul no longer inhabits form, whether physical, astral, or causal. From here onward, the soul exists purely in spirit. It passes beyond the karmic cycle, breaking free of the bondage that forced it to shuttle from one physical life to another. The soul has now achieved moksha (SALVATIOIN), in the Hindu reckoning, and is "rid of all covers of matter and mind, and shines forth in its naked glory with the radiance of twelve suns."68 It has a new name, too. It is called hamsa, the high-flying goose that in Indian mythology is invested with almost magical properties; in Radhasoami writings it is usually described as a swan and is sometimes identified with the phoenix. Having passed beyond the realms governed by Kal ( Lucifer), the soul is free to revel in divine bliss and enjoy an ambiance suffused by a pleasant light and a divine sound. The light resembles that of the full moon in a clear sky, shimmering in all directions, and the sound is like that of a guitar, lute, or harp. ("Radhasoami Reality," Mark Juergensmeyer, Princeton University Press, ISBN
(My comment : Since Lord Shiva and Sri Krishna are positioned here into the worlds of KAL... - this is quite a new interpretation of Hinduism.
The Adi Granth says, “ Omkar Ved nirmaye.” (Omkar(God) revealed Vedas") - not the causal plane !
Further HAMSA ist not the white swan of hinduism ( SOHAM ) but der perishabel swan ! )