Fanciful depiction of “the last trump”

A reader asked why there is universal silence on the subject of Ascension among the great teachers of Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.

The question can be considered from two standpoints. First, why is it that many modern spiritual teachers are not speaking out about Ascension?

I asked the Divine Mother that question in An Hour with an Angel on May 7, 2011 and this is what she told me:

Steve Beckow: Why is it that not many enlightened teachers, like Adyashanti or Mata Amritanandamayi, seem to be referring to Ascension?

Divine Mother: That is not where they have chosen to focus their energies. And they have always, in their journey, wanted to bring their devotees, their students, their family, directly home to full enlightenment.

So it is a difference in the fulfillment of their unique journey. It does not mean that they are not aware of it, but to them they feel that if they can bring their devotees directly home, then why bother with the human Gaia process of this Ascension to the fifth, to the seventh?

So it is a difference in their mission and purpose. (1)

Let’s leave that version of the question and look at a second one. The second version is why classical teachers have not mentioned Ascension. There actually isn’t universal silence on the subject of Ascension itself among classical masters, either long ago or in their channeled messages today.

It’s just referred to by different masters under different names.

Jesus talked about Ascension all through Revelation. He calls it in the Gospels “the Kingdom of Heaven” and uses parables to explain how to attain it: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.” (2) I’ve explained what I think he meant by the parables elsewhere. (3)

He or his disciples called it redemption, salvation, overcoming, the rapture, and resurrection. It’s also been called liberation, moksha, etc. Any entry into Fifth Dimensionality, any instance of liberation from the wheel of birth and death is Ascension.

For instance, Archangel Michael told me that the Company of Heaven once called it the “rapture,” but the term had become politicized and so they settled on the term “Ascension.”

AAM: Now when the word … and this is a word that is highly charged, that people talk about … the “rapture.” Well I assure you, dear friend, that when you ascend, you will feel a sense of rapture! Now, because that is a highly charged word, I would say, “you will feel the bliss.” So we will not call it the “rapture.” But that is what it is.

S: I thought that might be the case, that it is a rapture.

AAM: But the word has become politicized. (4)

In 2009, the Buddha demonstrated that the ascended masters had not necessarily all finally agreed on the term “Ascension” when he called it through Marlene Swetlishoff “the Resurrection Dispensation”: “Know that the great Resurrection Dispensation is now in full effect for the Planet Earth and all upon her. All who choose will rise up with the Earth into the Higher Dimensions.” (5)

Here is a source calling itself the “Spiritual Hierarchy” equating Ascension with salvation: “To you we say, your salvation draws nigh.” (6)

Anyone who discusses liberation from the wheel of birth and death is talking about Ascension. Here are some masters discussing Ascension but using the term liberation:

Sri Aurobindo: “It has been said that complete liberation from the human birth, complete ascension from the life of the mental being is impossible until the body and the bodily life are finally cast off.” (7)

Sri Ramana Maharshi: “The Sahaja Nirvikalpa is permanent and in it lies liberation from rebirths.” (8)

Sage Vasistha: “The state of liberation-while-living is … the turiya consciousness. Beyond that is … turiya-atita (beyond turiya). In every atom of existence there is nothing else but the supreme being.” (9)

Another name for liberation is moksha and here Sri Ramana uses that term. But he could have spoken of Ascension: “Getting rid of non-existent misery and attaining Bliss which is the only existence, that is the definition of Moksha.” (10)

Wishing all our sources used common terms is a lament I had when writing New Maps of Heaven. (11) All my informants used different names and differing numbering systems for the planes or dimensions of existence in the afterlife.

It’s a complaint I also had when writing From Darkness unto Light because sages used different names for different levels of enlightenment: What some called Brahmajnana (seventh-chakra enlightenment), others appeared to call kevalya nirvikalpa samadhi, turiya, God-realization, and arahantship. (12) How is one to know which are equivalent and which not?

Thus it has always been. The situation is not unique to Ascension.

Ascension or sahaja or liberation is what’s being discussed in the following passages. King David calls it “salvation’: “He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. … I will make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth.” (13) The “first born” is the Soul, the Christ, the Atman. Others have called the person who reaches this attainment a “Christed” individual. This individual will have ascended.

Sri Ramana called it the estate of the turiya-atita, the overcomer of the turiya or Fourth State of pure consciousness. The Fourth State is akin to Brahmajana. But the overcomer of the Fourth State has reached a higher state – sahaja. He tells us that “the Self is described as beyond the fourth (turiyatita).” (14) “The Turiya … is the self or ‘I’-nature; and what is beyond that is the state of Turiyatita, or pure Bliss.” (15) The Turiyatita is one who has ascended.

Here’s another form of the discussion. In the New Testament, there are references to the “end times.” These are the times that culminate in Ascension; namely, the times that are here today. Hilarion told us in April of this year: “These are the end times spoken of by seers and prophets from the days of old. These are the times of tribulation that have been forewarned.” (16)

SaLuSa of Sirius also identified Ascension with the end times here: “You were always promised that the end times would see you restored to the higher dimensions, and in reality you have never lost faith in those who made it to you.” (18)

The end times, which bring liberation, are not the end of life or end of history, as American sage Franklin Merrell-Wolff explained:

“I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that Liberation is no more the end of life than is a college commencement the end of the young man or woman who graduates. It is simply the end of one stage and the beginning of another. The really worth-while Life begins after Liberation. When this new Freedom is attained, a Man may return Home, as it were, and spend a long period enjoying the warmth and comfort of that Home.

“On the other hand, He may return and continue with his chosen profession on a larger field. Some, who have been highly exhausted by their labors at college, may need a long rest, but obviously Those who are strong should occupy Themselves with the Activities of Real Life.” (19)

The Bible called these times of Ascension the end times. But does it matter that they didn’t use the term “Ascension”?

No matter what name is used, Ascension has been known and has been in the work for millennia, which is why Jesus spoke so much of it in Revelation. SaLuSa reminds us:

“The process of Ascension … has been taking place for many years, and has now reached its final stages in readiness for the great upliftment in 2012.” (20)

“From the commencement of the last cycle over 12,000 years ago, it was known that it would be completed through the process of Ascension. It is therefore an extremely important time for all souls engaged in the experiences of duality. At the end of every cycle there is an emergence of those who are ready to move on to the higher realms.” (21)

The very best description of Ascension from long ago is found, as far as I’m concerned, in St. Paul. St. Paul’s description of what happens at the last trump is a description of Ascension. (22) However because it’s so long, I’ll place it in the footnotes along with an interpretation of the terms of the Biblical code he uses.

But just briefly here, the trumpet is the Universal Mother’s divine sounding of Aum, the music of the spheres, the sound of the cosmic motor, which releases us from one dimensionality and raises us to another, just as it brought us into that dimensionality in the first place. The dead that are raised up are the unenlightened, who must suffer birth and death until the time of their Ascension, which for us is now. The explanation of more terms appears below the passage in the footnotes.

So it isn’t accurate to say that Ascension as a process or as an event isn’t discussed elsewhere. The entire chapter of the Bible called Revelation is given over to discussing it. All the masters discuss it as a process of liberation or redemption or salvation. The only difference is that our mentors of this generation have settled on the term “Ascension” to denote it and that one term has stuck. But Ascension by any other name is still Ascension.

Footnotes

(1) “Transcript of the Divine Mother on An Hour with an Angel, May 7, 2012,” athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/the-2012-scenario/what-role-are-the-angels-playing/transcript-of-the-divine-mother-on-an-hour-with-an-angel-may-7-2012/.

(2) Jesus in Matthew 13:44. “Heaven” is a common term used for the Mental Plane or Fifth Dimension, the attainment of which constitutes our “Ascension.”

(3) See for instance “I Am the Light of the World” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/cross-cultural-spirituality/i-am-the-light-of-the-world/; “Jesus was a Non-Dualist” athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/cross-cultural-spirituality/jesus-nondualist/; and “This is the Christ” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/cross-cultural-spirituality/this-is-the-christ-2/.

(4) “Archangel Michael: Creating a World of Peace,” Sept. 15, 2011, athttp://stevebeckow.com/2011/09/archangel-michael-creating-a-world-of-peace/.

(5) “A Message from Maitreya and Buddha,” April 1, 2009, through Marlene Swetlishoff, athttp://www.therainbowscribe.com/.

(6) The Spiritual Hierarchy, “Welcome the New (7th) Day!,” November 02, 2010, through Lauren Gorgo, athttp://transmissionsfromhome.blogspot.com/.

(7) Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1983, 379.

(8) Sri Ramana Maharshi in S.S. Cohen, Guru Ramana. Memories and Notes. 6th edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1993, 88.

(9) Sage Vasistha in Swami Venkatesananda, ed., The Concise Yoga Vasistha. Albany: State University of New York, 1984, 314.

(10) Ramana Maharshi in M. Subbaraya Karnath, Sri Maharshi: A Short Life-Sketch. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasaramam, 1986 51.

(11) New Maps of Heaven at http://goldengaiadb.com/New_Maps_of_Heaven.

(12) From Darkness Unto Light at http://goldengaiadb.com/From_Darkness_to_Light.

(13) Psalm 90:26-7.

(14) Sri Ramana Maharshi, Spiritual Instruction of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Eighth Edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1974, Chapter 4, Question 8.

(15) Sri Ramana Maharshi, Self-Enquiry. Trans. T.M.P. Mahadevan.http://www.realization.org/page/namedoc0/self/self_0.htm Downloaded 1 August 2005, Question 28.

(16) Hilarion, April 7, 2013, at http://www.therainbowscribe.com/.

(17) SaLuSa, June 15, 2009, athttp://www.treeofthegoldenlight.com/First_Contact/Channeled_Messages_by_Mike_Quinsey.htm.

(18) Franklin Merrell-Wolff, Pathways Through to Space. A Personal Record of Transformation in Consciousness. New York: Julian Press, 1973, 89.

(19) SaLuSa, May 20, 2009.

(20) SaLuSa, April 3, 2009.

(21) This is the best description of ascension I’ve seen in the ancient masters. With the physical ascension that’s happening now, a new innovation in the Ascension process, it can no longer be said: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Oh, yes, we can! Is this an example of what Jesus was referring to when he said you shall do greater than I?

Some will say, How are the dead (1) raised up? (2) And with what body do they come? (3)

Thou, fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: (4)

… There are … celestial bodies, (5) and bodies terrestrial: (6) but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. (7)

… So also is the resurrection of the dead. (8) It is sown in corruption; (9) it is raised in incorruption. (10)

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. …

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; (11) neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. (12)

Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, (13)

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, (14) at the last trump: (15) for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (16)

For this corruptible must put on incorruptible, and this mortal must put on immortality. (17)

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. (18)

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (St. Paul in I Corinthians 15:35-55.)

(1) Mortals, the unenlightened, who are “dead” to Spirit or unconscious of It.

(2) Made immortal, enlightened.

(3) To God.

(4) The lower self or ego the carnal self, is not profitable except it be transcended.

(5) The eternal Self and its higher sheaths or koshas.

(6) The lower physical and astral bodies.

(7) The glory of the celestial bodies is in enlightenment, Self-realization; the glory of the terrestrial bodies lies in lesser worldly aims like gratification of the senses, ambition, pride of accomplishment, etc.

(8) The attainment of full enlightenment, raising one from mortality (“the dead”) to immortality.

(9) We are ordained to attain God by overcoming the conditions of the world through mastering the lessons of physical, worldly life.

(10) We then leave the world behind, unstained, perfected, raised to immortality and able to enter the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Heaven.

(11) Nothing physical can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

(12) Neither can evil deeds and sensuality win us heaven.

(13) Not everyone shall remain unconscious of God and the spiritual life, as the unrealized are. Some will wake up and realize the Self. All will eventually do so.

(14) Enlightenment happens in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

(15) Yogananda suggests this “trumpet” is the sound of OM heard in the energy centers of the body. (Cf. Paramhansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ.Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979, 1, 15-21.)

(16) The unenlightened shall be purified and raised beyond the touch of materiality forever, through Self-realization.

(17) It is God’s plan for everyone that they move from darkness into light, from unenlightenment into enlightenment.

Have you become like this?

We speak of cultivating the divine qualities. Plotinus has furnished us with a wonderful gloss on that process, which came up in conversation today. Allow me to reproduce that here.

Have You Become Like This?

Plotinus

What is this vision like? How is it attained? How will one see this immense beauty that dwells, as it were, in inner sanctuaries and comes not forward to be seen by the profane?

Let him who can arise, withdraw into himself, forego all that is known by the eyes, turn aside forever from the bodily beauty that was once his joy. He must not hanker after the graceful shapes that appear in bodies, but know them for copies, for traceries, for shadows, and hasten away towards that which they bespeak. …

Withdraw into yourself and look. … Do as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be beautified: he cuts away here, he smooths it there, he makes this line lighter, this other one purer, until he disengages beautiful lineaments in the marble. Do you this, too.

Cut away all that is excessive. straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one radiance of beauty. Never cease “working at the statue” until there shines out upon you from it the divine sheen of virtue….

Have you become like this? Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude? Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form, not diffused as something without term, but ever immeasurable as something greater than all measure and something more than all quantity? Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself. Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see. (Plotinus in Elmer O’Brien, ed., The Essential Plotinus. Representative Treatises from the Enneads. Toronto: New American Library, 1964 Essential Plotinus, 40-3.)

As above, so below

Sometimes I feel that, if I don’t spend some time of a day reflecting on God, I’ll burst. And today is such a day.

There is no forgetting God. The Father has built a longing for liberation into us that will not allow us to forget him for long. (1) No matter what we fasten onto, no matter what addiction we escape into, no matter what routine we bury ourselves in, sooner or later the desire arises for more.

Nothing satisfies us for long. Absolutely nothing. Not cruises, climbing a mountain, starting a new relationship, coming into wealth – nothing.

Except God. God is all that can fill that longing. I think I must be hit by the longing at this moment and the only way to satisfy it is to think and speak of God.

God is all there is. He dreams and the world arises. He dreams and beings come into existence. I personally love listening to the sages describe God.

Here is Pseudo-Dionysius, a Greek Christian living in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. His enlightenment is one of the highest I know of and his poetic exposition of the nondualist point of view has always thrilled many.

“The Cause of all is above all and is not inexistent, lifeless, speechless, mindless. It is not a material body, and hence has neither shape nor form, quality, quantity, or weight. It is not in any place and can neither be seen nor touched. It is neither perceived nor is it perceptible.

“It suffers neither disorder nor disturbance and is overwhelmed by no earthly passion. It is not powerless and subject to the disturbances caused by sense perception. It endures no deprivation of light. It passes through no change, decay, division, loss, no ebb and flow, nothing of which the senses may be aware. None of all this can either be identified with it nor attributed to it.” (2)

Is not, is neither, endures none of this, can be identified with none of that. Not, none, neither: the via negativa or way of negation. All that we can say of God is what he/she/it is not.

God is both beyond the material domain and the source of it. Moreover everything material is, in a manner of speaking, made from God. Krishna pointed to the mystery of how God could be everything and yet remain nothing.

“This entire universe is pervaded by me, in that eternal form of mine which is not manifest to the senses. Although I am not within any creature, all creatures exist within me. I do not mean that they exist within me physically. That is my divine mystery. You must try to understand its nature. My Being sustains all creatures and brings them to birth, but has no physical contact with them.” (3)

Of everything that exists, and I’m speaking from the relative level, only God is non-physical. That includes the God in us, which is the soul, which the Mother coats in matter lending form and substance to the soul much as we clothe the body.

Jesus said that I am in the Father and the Father is in me and the Father is greater than I. What difference is there between that saying and what Krishna says here: “Although I am not within any creature, all creatures exist within me.”

One could say, well, no, the soul exists within the creature. Yes and no. Only in a manner of speaking. The soul is conceived of as existing within the creature and yet it does not. It’s not material and so has no physical location. It would be more accurate to say that the creature exists within the soul because the soul, which is one with everything, also includes everything that is. That is why sages say to us, as God in Heavenletter did recently, that “I am” is everything, that each of us is everything.

“What is Eternity? You are. What is Infinity? You are. What is Vastness? You are. What is everything? It is you. You are It. Anywhere you look, it is you. Anywhere you don’t look, it is also you. There is nothing in Creation that is not you.” (4)

The problem we encounter, which leads to so many paradoxical sayings, is that we constantly compare apples and oranges. Souls are spiritual; bodies are material. They cannot be compared. Even to say “souls” is a paradox because there is really only one Soul.

We cannot take one step in this realm without tripping over our feet and yet nothing is more fun to speak of than these spiritual verities.

We look from our vantage point and remake God in our own image. We use our senses and so recast God in the metaphors of the sense. And to a certain extent we get away with it because God is also the senses and what is sensed. We know only other people so we make God a person. Whatever is highest in our hearts, minds, and imaginations we make an attribute of God.

But God is so far higher than our hearts, minds and imaginations can reach (right now) that we fail, fall short, never succeed. But then in the next moment, we pick ourselves up and try again. Estimating God, appreciating God is something we never tire of. Does anyone ever ask why?

When we say God is not, we’re really thinking of God in his/her/its original transcendent being. But God is not only transcendent (the Father); God is also phenomenal (the Mother); and God is also immanent (the Self, Child, Christ or Soul).

There is nothing God is and nothing God is not. How else could it be with something … errr, nothing … that is everything?

Every master has tried his or her hand at describing God, probably for the sheer enjoyment of it, not because they think they’ll succeed. No one ever has succeeded.

And so here is Sri Aurobindo’s try, probably one of many. Each master tries to fail better than the last. Take a deep breath because Sri Aurobindo has a wonderfully long attention span.

“That into which we merge ourselves in the cosmic consciousness is Satchidananda [Awareness, Existence, Bliss Absolute].

“It is one eternal Existence that we … are, one eternal Consciousness which sees its own works in us and others, one eternal Will or Force of that Consciousness which displays itself in infinite workings, one eternal Delight which has the joy of itself and all its workings, — itself stable, immutable, timeless, spaceless, supreme and itself still in the infinity of its workings, not changed by their variations, not broken up by their multiplicity, not increased or decreased by their ebbings and flowings in the seas of Time and Space, not confused by their apparent contrarieties or limited by their divinely-willed limitations.

“Satchidananda is the unity of the many-sidedness of manifested things, the eternal harmony of all their variations and oppositions, the infinite perfection which justifies their limitations and is the goal of their imperfections.” (5)

No via negativa here. Strictly via positiva. Affirming what he thinks God is or knows God to be from his enlightenment.

OK, someone tell me to stop because I could go on and on describing the indescribable, wafted on the wings of love, discussing my favorite theme.

That is indeed my fix for the day. Nothing rewards a person more than paying a little attention, whenever the unscratchable itch arises, to the one thing … or no thing … that will never go away, never let us forget, never stop singing to us through everything around us and everything within us – God.

Footnotes

(1) See “The Longing for Liberation” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/the-longing-for-liberation/.

(2) Pseudo-Dionysius in Cohn Luibheid, trans., Pseudo-Dionysus, His Complete Works. New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989, 141.

(3) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 80.

(4)”Eternity and Inifinity,” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/09/eternity-infinity/.

(5) Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1983, 395.

Sri Ramakrishna in the bliss of samadhi

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that all the divine qualities are solvents. Not simply does awareness dissolve the knots in consciousness that vasanas are, but I might hypothesize that bliss dissolves pain and happiness dissolves sadness.

And we could probably work our way through the divine qualities seeing which dissolves what.

The experience of the divine in enlightenment has the ability to see us evolve to higher and higher dimensions. We know, for instance, that sahaja samadhi propels us to the Fifth Dimension and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that fabled enlightenments like mahaparinirvana open higher dimensions as well.

As I saw in my vision, (1) higher and higher levels of enlightenment or successive and deeper realizations of who we are are the gateways to God, until the highest sees the extinguishing of our individuality and our mergence again with the One.

Through our baptism by the energies that the Mother sent us last week, greater and greater clarity has been given us. And since the purpose of life is to have the clarity to recognize who we are and what our essential nature is, then enhanced clarity or discrimination allows us to make tremendous gains in accomplishing the purpose of life.

The journey is ever so slow and we’ve heard repeatedly one reason why. Archangel Michael has said to me, for instance, that if he simply stood here in front of me in his native state, he would cause the death of my body. It simply could not stand the shock of seeing him.

Too much light too fast can burn our circuits. Angels pass on the Divine Light but they do it in measured amounts not to overload our circuits and cause our death. And so movement forward, cosmically speaking, has to be slow.

But as we reverse our ways of thinking so that we value less the restless activity of the old Third Dimension and more the divine states like stillness, self-awareness and bliss, we bathe in energies that increasingly release us from our rigidities of mind and body.

Suppleness of mind and body can be expected to return on the forward journey and I’d imagine we’ll be able to hold more and more light as a result of it.

Our resistance to pain, sadness, and fear causes those rigidities. And our acceptance and welcoming into ourselves of love, bliss and awareness dissolves them.

We could consider those rigidities separately, as we’re accustomed to doing, or we could accept Eckhart’s synoptic rendering of them as the pain body, our aggregate consciousness of pain, and experience through to completion the pain body itself – or the totality of pain that we carry around within ourselves.

By opening to the experience of our awareness of pain and to the dissolving impact of bliss, my hypothesis is that we cause the pain body itself to dissolve and lift. We’d be going for the head vampire rather than all it gives birth to.

Our usual sources of bliss are artificial. I could joke that our usual sources are sex, drugs and rock and roll. Losing ourselves temporarily in orgasm, ecstacy, and external stimuli are the usual ways we have of seeking and finding brief moments of bliss.

But the much more lasting ways are cultivating stillness and awareness, in which case, bliss and love, which are native to us, arise within the space created inside of us. God himself is space, voidness. But again, it’s counter-intuitive to our Third-Dimensional culture to favor space or emptiness over the many pleasures and pursuits we try to fill the emptiness with.

Meditation, which is essentially remaining still and abiding in awareness, is a means of dissolving the pain body. Acting out, projecting our pain and seeing its cause as outside ourselves are ways of causing the pain body to grow.

So even though spiritual approaches to dissolving the pain body are counterintuitive, much of what we’ll encounter in the days and weeks ahead prior to Ascension will, I think, be as well.

What we think of as “intuition” in the Third Dimension has really only been the product of conditioned responses and our conditioning itself has been shown to be wanting. Our conditioning is the situation we’re withdrawing ourselves from and releasing our native, spiritual intuition, which will lead us in directions that we may find unfamiliar and strange at first.

It’s our trust in our own powers of discernment and in the reliability of the Divine Plan that will carry us through. And we can see from the channeled messages recently that the Company of Heaven is going full out trying to raise confidence in us of the Divine Plan, the divine qualities and our decision to ascend and to remain on the road that will take us back to God.

Footnotes

(1) “Ch. 13 Epilogue” in The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment athttp://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/16244-2/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment/ch-13-epilogue/.

This article is from November 29 last year (yes, almost a year ago!). It was emailed to me today and I feel it remains just as relevant today. Thanks to Suzy Star.

By Richard Schiffman – November 29, 2012

http://tinyurl.com/oqgl4mj

Did the Dalai Lama Just Call for an End to Religion?

Well, not exactly—here is what the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism actually told his four million friends on Facebook earlier this (2012) fall:

“All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.”

It is easy to sympathize with the Dalai Lama’s frustration. After millennia of being preached at by priests and prophets, humanity is still addicted to war; we continue to lay waste to the planet’s fragile ecosystem; we torture animals, repress ethnic minorities, and ignore the plight of the poor.

Worse still, religion has often been in service of the very sins of intolerance that its prophets have railed against. Abortion clinics are bombed to support a “pro-life” agenda; religiously inspired hatred in the Middle East have fueled ongoing war—religiously inspired hatred everywhere have led to countless horrors.

In the past, such moral failings, while contributing to human misery, did not put life itself at risk. But that has changed. Our once-marginal species is now the dominant life form on the planet numbering over seven billion souls. Granted, there are still more microorganisms in a shovelful of prime agricultural soil than human beings on Earth. But bacteria don’t have brains, and the crux of the problem is that we do.

To call the brain a “problem,” of course, is only half of the story. The human mind has created art, science, philosophy, government, education, and the miracles of modern medicine. Religion, with its exalted ethical and spiritual teachings, is another example—whatever Richard Dawkins might say—of our human capacity for creating good.

The New Atheists are right of course when they fault religion for not living up to its own ideals. They would get no argument from the Dalai Lama on this. But His Holiness would be quick to point out that the moral principles themselves are not to blame—it’s our failure to act on them.

The Dalai Lama recommends a radical new approach: a religionless religion, if you will, stripped of myth, superstition, and narrow dogmatism, and focused on the practical work of transforming human behavior. He wants to incorporate the insights of the hard sciences as well as psychology, philosophy, and sociology into a broad-based new discipline to address our current moral crisis.

But can religion be rationalized into a pure system of ethics without losing its (historically) persuasive power?

Some have pointed to Buddhism itself as an example of just such a system. Western practitioners like to think of Buddhism as a methodology for self-cultivation rather than as a religion per se. But Tibetan Buddhism, with its pantheon of deities and arcane practices, certainly looks familiarly religious to those of us brought up on Western religious myths and symbols.

I suspect that His Holiness would agree that these religious elements are not a bad thing. Because religion, for all its faults, seems to have an unrivaled capacity to move us, and to motivate us.

Perhaps that has something to do with stories—we want to know how our private stories fit into the greater cosmic narrative. The Dalai Lama seems to be saying that religion needs to work harder to bridge the gap between the story that it tells and our actions in the world. It is not enough to provide believers with a comforting world view; religion should give people tools to act upon the sacred ideals that it preaches.

The way to accomplish this, according to the Dalai Lama, is spiritual practice. “We are now in the twenty-first century,” writes Tibet’s leading monk.

“The world is also facing a lot of new problems, most of which are man-made. The root cause of these man made problems is the inability of human being to control their agitated minds. How to control such a state of mind is taught by the various religions of this world.”

The Dalai Lama advocates prayer and meditation as an antidote to the mind’s capacity for mischief. But he insists that we need not limit ourselves to traditional spiritual techniques. He has written a book on the convergence of views between Buddhism and science and he helped to organize conferences where religious thinkers meet with scientists to explore their common ground. This is because, in his view, science can help religion to fine tune its own methods. (Neurology has already gone a long way toward validating the reality of spiritual states by documenting, for example, similar changes in regions of the cerebral cortex in Cistercian monks during prayer as it has shown in Buddhist monks during meditation.)

The Dalai Lama believes that the fundamental ethical discoveries of religion are scientifically verifiable. When we actually live religiously—and don’t just profess a set of beliefs—we become more forgiving, peaceful, tolerant, attentive and inspired. This in turn leads to profound psychological and physiological changes which can be studied—and even measured.

It is time, the Dalai Lama says, to take the discoveries of spirituality out of the monasteries and into the world. While mindfulness meditation has been introduced into schools, hospitals, and even corporate boardrooms as a technique to lower stress, improve concentration, and help resolve conflicts, Tibet’s religious leader is acutely aware that none of this is enough. “It is all too evident that our moral thinking simply has not been able to keep pace with such rapid progress in our acquisition of knowledge and power,” the Dalai Lama told a group of scientists in 2005.

The bottom line is that taming the mind creates more peaceful and contented human beings. This is the crux of the Dalai Lama’s message—because, as his urgency suggests, we are running out of time to get it right.

Richard Schiffman is a spiritual author, poet and journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor and he is a regular blogger on The Huffington Post.