I confess I’m enjoying this series. Nothing feeds me more than the study of enlightenment.
Let me post one more, from Plotinus. Plotinus had numerous transcendental experiences in his lifetime. I’ve posted this passage before. It also may emanate from one who ascended.
Is this not a hint of his attainment: “Remaining here, you have ascended aloft”?
Because we don’t use a standardized terminology for afterlife and spiritual events, we may never know for certain if the connections we make are sound. Does Sahaja = Vijnana = Resurrection = Ascension? (1)
One does not “remain” in Brahmajnana. It comes and it leaves. But not Sahaja or Ascension.
I acknowledge my incredible good fortune to be able to have some of my own notions confirmed by the Divine Mother and Archangel Michael and I thank Linda Dillon for that inestimable opportunity.
Plotinus in Elmer O’Brien, ed., The Essential Plotinus. Representative Treatises from the Enneads. Toronto: New American Library, 1964, 40-3.
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. (2) You need a guide no longer. Strain and see.
Footnotes
(1) The Divine Mother has confirmed that Sahaja = Ascension but I did not ask her about Vijnana:
Steve Beckow: I think [Ascension] is what is called — and I’ll make this clear to readers — sahaja samadhi. Am I correct?
Divine Mother: Yes, it is beyond what you think of with your seven chakras. … 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. (“The Divine Mother: Come to Me as I Come to You – Part 1/2,” Oct. 17, 2012, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/10/17/the-divine-mother-come-to-me-as-i-come-to-you-part-12/.)
(2) You are a jivan-mukta – liberated while alive. Only those who contracted to be spiritual teachers were considered to live very long after liberation or Ascension, people like Vivekananda, Brahmananda, and Plotinus himself. Even Vivekananda – when he realized who he was – left the body (as predicted).
This is why the Mother and archangels are truncating our experiences (if they are), to keep us from vamoosing the ranch. The Mother said:
“Let me be very clear…. If you had seen the light as it actually is – yes, a million, billion suns – you would have simply departed. … We don’t mean die but you would have departed the life that you have designed – yes, with us – for yourself, for the service you are providing – you would have departed and simply said, ‘I do not need to do this. I will just simply sit in the bliss of love and good luck, everybody!’” (Divine Mother in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Oct. 26, 2018.)