(Continued from Part 8.)
States and Stages of Enlightenment – 2
Permanent Heart Opening
Ascension occurs when the kundalini reaches the spiritual heart or hridayam and a permanent heart opening occurs in Sahaja Nirviklapa Samadhi. Here’s the Divine Mother verifying that.
SB: I’m trying to understand what level of enlightenment Ascension corresponds to. And I think it’s beyond the normal seventh-chakra enlightenment [Brahmajnana]. I think it is what is called — and I’ll make this clear to readers — sahaja samadhi. Am I correct?
DM: Yes, it is beyond what you think of with your seven chakras. It is beyond. … We have emerged from the Third-dimensional realm, which is that reference point for the chakra system, into the new. So yes, you are correct, in this question and in this statement. (1)
The chakra system, as the Mother suggests, is most relevant to Third-Dimensional experience. The chakra can fall away beyond that point, as Da Free John experienced and described.
“In February I passed through an experience that seemed to vindicate my understanding. … I saw that what appeared as the sahasrar, the terminal chakra and primary lotus in the head, had been severed. The sahasrar had fallen off like a blossom.
“The Shakti, which previously had appeared as a polarized energy that moved up and down through the various chakras or centers producing various effects, now was released from the chakra form. There was no more polarized force. Indeed, there was no form whatsoever, no up or down, no chakras.
“The chakra system had been revealed as unnecessary, an arbitrary rule or setting for the play of energy. The form beneath all of the bodies, gross or subtle, had revealed itself to be as unnecessary and conditional as the bodies themselves. …
“Now I saw that reality or real consciousness was not in the least determined by any kind of form apart from itself. Consciousness had shown its radical freedom and priority in terms of the chakra form. It had shown itself to be senior to that whole structure, dissociated from every kind of separate energy or Shakti.
“There was simply consciousness itself, prior to all forms, all dilemmas, every kind of seeking and necessity. … There was no need to have recourse to any kind of phenomena, problem or structure of seeking. The Shakti was not the primary or necessary reality. Reality was the Self-nature, the foundation of pure consciousness, Siva, who is always already free of the Divine play.” (2)
Very few sages (excluding avatars) reached Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi; Sri Ramana Maharshi was one who did and afterwards declared:
“[The] Heart is the seat of Jnanam as well as of the granthi (knot of ignorance). It is represented in the physical body by a hole smaller than the smallest pin-point, which is always shut. When the mind drops down in Kevalya Nirvikalpa [samadhi], it opens but shuts again after it. When sahaja [nirvikalpa samadhi] is attained it opens for good.” (3)
“By repeated practice one can become accustomed to turning inwards and finding the Self. One must always and constantly make an effort, until one has permanently realized. Once the effort ceases, the state becomes natural and the Supreme takes possession of the person with an unbroken current. Until it has become permanently natural and your habitual state, know that you have not realized the Self, only glimpsed it.” (4)
“The Sahaja Nirvikalpa is permanent and in it lies liberation from rebirths.” (5)
So what I’ve just described are the levels of enlightenment proper to and coterminous with Third Dimensionality. With Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi, we enter a subplane of Fifth Dimensionality that is much more advanced than the vestibule experience we’re having right now.
But there are many, many more advanced states of enlightenment that await us and maybe I can finish today’s article with a few suggestions of that further path.
This level of enlightenment ends the dualistic consciousness of a separate subject and object. From here on in, we experience life in unitive consciousness, with no separation existing between subject and object. Another way of saying that is the knower, knowing, and known are one.
Master Hilarion
“The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour has no limit.” (6)
“When after ages of struggle and many victories the final battle is won, the final secret demanded, then you are prepared for a further path. When the final secret of the great lesson is told, in it is opened the mystery of the new way — a path which leads out of all human experience, and which is utterly beyond human perception or imagination.” (7)
“Inquire of the inmost, the One, of its final secret, which it holds for you through the ages. .. When the time of learning … is reached, man is on the threshold of becoming more than man.” (8)
Adilakshmi
“The Divine Life is endless; the being of God is infinite. Whatever experience you have had, however extraordinary, remember that there are further and greater experiences.” (9)
Koran
“I swear by the glow of sunset; by the night, and all that it brings together; by the moon, in her full perfection: that you shall march onwards from state to state.” (10)
Beinsa Douno
“We think that man is on the highest rung of the evolutionary ladder, but evolution is without end. Just as there are beings that exist below man, there are Beings that exist above man as well. These Beings evolved from the universes of the past.” (11)
Dr. Franklin Merrell-Wolff
“A certain Sage…, speaking of unfolded Consciousness above the level of the highest human Adepts, said: ‘We attain glimpses of Consciousness so Transcendent, rising level upon level, that the senses fairly reel before the awe-inspiring Grandeur.’
“Here, certainly, is space for evolution far beyond the highest possibility of man as man.” (12)
“Truly, within the Infinite there are Mysteries within Mysteries, Deeps beyond Deeps, Grandeurs beyond Grandeurs. … Mystery of Mysteries, reaching inward and outward, but ever Beyond! And from that Beyond ever there come new whisperings of other imponderable Glories. Ah! How little is this world at the beginning of the Trail, barely a point in a Space of unlimited dimensions!” (13)
“Beyond [the sage’s] attainment, whatever it may be, there lie further mysteries awaiting his resolution. In other words, We find no conceivable end to evolution.” (14)
No conceivable end can be found to spiritual evolution, although it does end with our final mergence with the Divine. Enlightenment is virtually endless – virtually. By that I mean that the end of evolution, when it comes, is so far in front of us that it may as well be said to be virtually endless.
We’ve looked at only those experiences which fit into our limited perspective of Third Dimensionality. But even Fifth Dimensionality is only a stage in our growth and evolution. We cannot estimate, we cannot even imagine what lies ahead in the many dimensions beyond that.
Now that we’ve looked at the stages of enlightenment which carry us out of Third Dimensionality into Fifth, it’s time to turn to the levels of Reality which must be realized as phenomena unto themselves before we complete the overall sacred journey from God to God. They are conventionally thought of and described as the Child of God, God the Mother and God the Father.
(Continued in Part 10.)
Footnotes
(1) “The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/.
(2) Da Free John, The Knee of Listening. Original Edition. Clearlake, CA; Dawn Horse Press, 1984; c1973, 117-9.
(3) Ramana Maharshi in S.S. Cohen, Guru Ramana. Memories and Notes. 6th edition. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1993, 96. [Hereafter GR.]
(4) Ramana Maharshi in Paul Brunton and Munagala Venkataramaiah. Conscious Immortality. Conversations with Sri Ramana Maharshi. Rev. ed. 1996., n.p.
(5) Ramana Maharshi, GR, 88.
(6) Master Hilarion, channeling through Mabel Collins, Collins, channel. Light on the Path and an Essay on Karma. [LOP] Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974, 20; Mabel Collins, The Idyll of the White Lotus. Wheaton, IL: Re Quest, 1974; c1952, 114.
(7) Master Hilarion, LOP, 11-2. See footnote 8, however.
(8) Ibid., 29-30. More than humanity as presently conceived. This does not mean that many galactic species above the Third Dimension are not human; that is, are not formed from the Adam Kadmon or human template. They are, though many have reached the human level by lines of evolution distinct from our mammalian line.
(9) Adilakshmi, companion to Mother Meera and her biographer, Mother Meera, 89.
(10) Dawood, N.J., trans. The Koran. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964; c1959, 48.
(11) Beinsa Douno, “Culture of the Angels,” The Wellspring of Good. Downloaded from https://www.beinsadouno.org/lib/sg.htm, accessed 21 Feb. 2005, n.p.
(12) Franklin Merrell-Wolff in Pathways Through to Space. A Personal Record of Transformation in Consciousness. New York: Julian Press, 1973, 17.
(13) Ibid., 115.
(14) Ibid., 43.