Having had a brief glimpse of the Self, I asked Archangel Michael, in a reading I had with him on Feb. 17, 2017, to confirm that the experience really happened and that it was a glimpse of the natural Self.
Steve Beckow: Can you help me understand something that happened a few days ago which is that I was watching my thoughts and feelings as they were going by me. It was almost like I was on a train that was just starting out of the station and I was watching all these faces go by and suddenly, in between the crowd, in between the thoughts and feelings, I saw and recognized what I came to think of as my natural Self and then having recognized it, I became it, so to speak.
Archangel Michael: That is it exactly. (1)
And later he added:
AAM: When you have had that experience in reflection of watching your thoughts and feelings travelling by you like a train, you have been moving forward throughout dimensions.
And part of that journey of discovery is you saying, “Now where is my natural Self living? I’m going to travel this train until I find him,” which of course you have. (2)
I’ve let go of the experience now. I know there’s no holding on to anything. … Or have I?
***
Jesus said (paraphrased): A man found a treasure buried in a field and covered it up again. He then went and sold all that he had and bought the field.
Having glimpsed the treasure, which was then buried up again as all experiences are short of Sahaja, am I “selling all I have,” all my desires and agendas, to buy the field? Something is definitely happening deep inside of me. The volcano is definitely rumbling.
The experience left me with more permeable boundaries – permeable to bliss, not permeable to my former enjoyments. My taste in food gets ever more bland. My interest in it goes down. I can’t watch a movie. Nothing that used to move me moves me any more.
Add to that experience this recent move, which interrupted my ordinary life. I failed to change my Internet before the move so I was off the Net effectively for around two weeks.
Apart from pulling out my hair, I was obliged to forego everything else and read books, from my enlightenment library.
The glimpse of the Self yesterday allowed me a new ability to appreciate what terrestrial sages have been saying. They couldn’t refer to dimensionality. Their world would not have understood them.
There was no context into which such a discussion could have been fit. It would have gone over people’s heads.
And so their discussions are hung on the “non-existence” of the physical world.
Had they been born in this generation, they might be granting that world reality on its own dimension, but not granting it continuing reality if one’s vibration shifts to another, higher frequency and dimension.
***
I came upon a description from Sri Ramana which was like a gloss on what had occurred for me.
“That which appears owing to ignorance of something will cease to appear only through knowledge of that something.
“The world, which appears on account of ignorance of your Self, will disappear only through knowledge of the Self.” (3)
I can vouch that that happened when I momentarily glimpsed – or perhaps experienced would be a better word – my natural Self yesterday, in the space between thoughts and feelings. (4)
All the stressful thoughts that appeared while my awareness was fixated on my thoughts and feelings (ignorance) disappeared the moment I recognized my natural Self (truth) and briefly became it.
“‘Just as the water of the mirage does not make the desert wet, this unreal thing (world) will not do harm to me who am its basis.”
Yes, when seen from the standpoint of the Absolute, the Transcendental, beyond form.
All reality short of the One is relative and temporary. On its own dimension, it’s real. Every reality is superseded by one higher until full mergence in the One.
Only from the standpoint of the Absolute can we absolutely see that there is only One Reality (but by then “we” have disappeared). Any other view is impacted by even a slight degree of separation.
How much easier might Sri Ramana’s task have been if he could have pulled the accordion file wide open by talking about Third-Dimensional patterns when viewed from the Fifth Dimension? He continues:
“Such a conviction is real knowledge. This is the means of Liberation.”
What he calls Liberation, or moksha, we call Ascension. What he called Sahaja Samadhi, I call the culmination of our Earthly Ascension. His discussions of Sahaja prepared the way for our discussions of Ascension.
He doesn’t expand on what he means by the word “knowledge” itself. But I’m willing to bet the farm that he isn’t referring to intellectual knowledge alone (which we all have), nor to experiential knowledge even (getting the feel of it, living through an experience of it, as I did yesterday), but to realized knowledge. And, I’m willing to wager, deeply-realized knowledge.
But simple knowledge, nonetheless. Nothing fancy happened between me and the natural Self I glimpsed yesterday. It was simple recognition, like recognizing a face in the crowd.
And the delight of recognition quickly becomes union. It isn’t you here and the Self over there now. Both you and the Self are now looking out from behind the same eyes.
So, yes, simple knowledge of the Self. Simple experience of it, leading to simple realization of its reality, substantiality, and significance.
In a later article, I’ll report what Archangel Michael had to say in my Feb. 17 reading on the dimensions and the Transcendental. (5)
Footnotes
(1) Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Feb. 17, 2017.
(2) Loc. cit,
(3) All passages from Jewel Garland of Enquiry of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, n.d., 14-5. This sentence is about as close to a statement of dimensionality as sages may come. The world disappears. Does it do so because we flow to a higher dimension?
(4) Just waiting there for me to recognize it. And I always knew that space was there but paid no attention to it.
(5) “Archangel Michael on Dimensions and the Transcendental, Bliss and Love,” coming later this month.