It may be that every religion either has its Ascension lore or else is by its very nature an Ascension manual.
Christianity and Buddhism are examples of the first and Taoism or the Watercourse Way an example of the second.
The Buddha upon his death – or mahasamadhi – passed from Nirvana to Mahaparinirvana – “the great state beyond Nirvana.” (1) That is surely Ascension.
Ascension, by the way, does not stop with our rise from the Third/Fourth to the Fifth. It continues, as I’m sure did the Buddha’s ascent.
But it’s really Jesus’s discussion of Ascension I’d like to focus on, both because of the day and because I’ve studied his life the most, among the avatars.
Jesus died and, after three days, his followers found the stone rolled back and an angel sitting upon it.
Jesus, so the angel said, “is not here: for he has risen. … Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead.” (2)
Risen from the dead? Was such a thing possible? Death is the end, is it not?
When Jesus appeared unto Mary, who was herself an Incarnation of the Divine Mother, (3) he said: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto my Father.” (4) Ascending unto my Father is undoubtedly much higher than ascending simply to the Fifth, as most of us are doing.
When Jesus appeared to John, as recorded in Revelation 1:18, he said: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen.”
What did he mean?
If I can translate into our language, I think Jesus was saying, I’ve ascended from the Third/Fourth Dimension to one far beyond, where there is no longer the need to be born into a physical body or to die in one. I therefore can be said to be “alive forevermore.”
Again he says, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.” (5)
“A pillar in the temple of my God” – I shall grant him access to higher dimensionality – (6) “and he shall go no more out” – he (or she) shall need no longer to incarnate in these dense, Third-Dimensional, carbon-based physical bodies.
Yet again Jesus says, “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” (7) Keep in mind that physical Ascension had not been invented yet; we’re inventing it. In Jesus’s time, one ascended upon death.
For most people, Ascension meant ascending from the Astral Plane (our Fourth Dimension) to the Mental Plane (our Fifth Dimension). As I found in researching New Maps of Heaven, this shedding of the astral body was generally called “the Second Death.” (8)
Here Jesus is understating: Never mind not being hurt by the second death; you shall be infinitely rewarded.
Other names for Ascension in the New Testament? Resurrection, salvation. Other parables about it? The treasure buried in a field, the Pearl of great price, the virgins and the wedding feast, the Great Fish among fish, the mustard seed that grew into a great tree … if we leave Jesus, and venture back in time to the Old Testatment, the firebrand plucked from the burning, the fire always burning on the altar, the journey up Mt Sinai to receive the law…. (9)
All of these are road signs and pointers to the ascended state, beyond birth, beyond death, life everlasting, immortality, etc. And all of them say something about how to get there.
Ye shall do greater than I. Hmmmm, I don’t think so. But it is true that we shall ascend (1) without dying and (2) as a planet. The baseline of Ascension has moved forward, to be sure, but we … OK, I …. still have a long way to go, in my view, to do anything greater than Jesus.
Footnotes
(1) “Death of the Buddha” at https://www.buddhist-art.com/about-buddha/death-of-the-buddha/.
I’ve always used the term “nirvana” to refer to the Fifth Dimensional world. Matthew Ward uses it to refer to the afterlife world generally. Before his death – and probably before his birth – the Buddha was already an ascended being, just as Jesus was already one as well. On his mahasamadhi he passed on to higher levels than the Fifth – in fact he probably passed beyond the dimensions, retracing his steps from whence he came.
(2) Matthew 28:6-7.
(3) “I am known by many names, and that is appropriate. And I am thought of in many forms — as Mary, as Shakti, as Mare, which is very close because it is the word of ocean in your world and language. It represents the movement and the giver of life, the creator of life, of love, of form, of substance, of essence.” (“Transcript of the Divine Mother on An Hour with an Angel, May 7, 2012,” at http://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/.)
(4) John 20:17.
(5) Revelation 3:12.
(6) Any who don’t believe that the divine beings participate in deciding the timing and extent of our enlightenment may want to read “What Truncated Experiences?” AAM on Truncated Experiences,”
(7) Revelation 2:11.
(8) See “The Second Death” at http://goldengaiadb.com/index.php?title=The_Second_Death
(9) The Bible was often written in code. For example, the firebrand plucked from the burning referred to the Christ, Self, soul, Atman, buddha nature; the climb up Mt. Sinai to the kundalini’s climb up the sacral column; the selling of all we had to buy the field in which the treasure was buried represents the discarding of all other desires except to own the treasure of enlightenment, and so on.
One saying could have many meanings: “making straight the way of the Lord” could mean meditating with a straight back as a discipline, straightening the back as the path of the kundalini, purifying oneself, dropping unwholesome behavior patterns, and so on.