In my vision, the small golden star of the Self, Christ, Atman left the domain of the Mother (mater, matter), raced back to the large Golden Sun (Father, Parabrahman, Godhead), and plunged into it, never to reappear.
Then I find out from the Divine Mother and others that, no, we don’t disappear. We re-emerge burnished brilliant. (2)
So my vision is surely incomplete. But it’s interesting to watch myself try to hitch a ride with anyone who knows what lies beyond the beyond. What is the road back to the Father?
Immediately I see that someone may know the way Home, my ears prick up. How do I complete the vision-map from here to There?
***
My (and our) view of the journey Home has evolved over the decades.
In the 1970s, the turiya, the fourth state, or Brahmajnana was “the beyond”; it was “full” and “complete” enlightenment. It saw the kundalini complete its circuit in the crown chakra. What more could there be to life?
Anyone there who still had vasanas or core issues was excused as showing “crazy wisdom.” Not. Brahmajnana is not when the vasanas are eliminated. Among other things.
Later the turiyatita, the overcomer of the fourth state or Brahmajnana, which we’d call an ascended one, (3) was considered to have gone ‘beyond the beyond.” And so on through the twelve dimensions, ascending always.
Still later, we brought the trans-dimensional Transcendental into view, past the twelve dimensions, and that was “beyond to the third power.”
Now we see mention of a new level of Reality from Sri Ramakrishna. Is that “beyond to the fourth power?”
The introduction of this new (to me) level of Reality is relevant to those angelics who want to know where they’re from. Not least because where we came from is where we’re going to.
Sri Ramakrishna’s biographer, Swami Nikhilananda, says:
“[As he rose in consciousness] Ramakrishna saw seven venerable sages absorbed in meditation. These, he thought, must have surpassed even the gods and goddesses in wisdom and holiness, and, as he was admiring their unique spirituality, he saw a portion of the undifferentiated Absolute become congealed, as it were, and take the form of a Divine Child.” (4) [My emphasis.]
Say what? “A portion of the undifferentiated Absolute.” Beyond even the Transcendental? Put a bookmark here. This is new.
Since Sri Ramakrishna was that Divine Child, we’re actually seeing him descend from this “Absolute” to the Transcendental. Is this not how an “avatar” is born?
In a second discussion, Sri Ramakrishna watches two groups of his disciples in Duality and the Transcendental, from his vantage point in the “indivisible Satchidananda,” which I interpret to be this same Absolute from which he’s come.
“I have had many amazing visions. I had a vision of the Indivisible Satchidananda. Inside It I saw two groups with a fence between them. On one side were Kedar, Chuni, and other devotees who believe in the Personal God. On the other side was a luminous space like a heap of red brick-dust. Inside it was seated Narendra immersed in samādhi. Seeing him absorbed in meditation, I called aloud, ‘Oh, Narendra!’ He opened his eyes a little. … Kedār, a believer in the Personal God, peeped in and ran away with a shudder.” (5)
We already know that Narendra hales from the Transcendental. The Seven Sages were said to be located there – individuated, I might add.
Ramakrishna described himself appearing on the Transcendental level from the Absolute.
So here we have devotees, seen from the Absolute, in both the Transcendental (Narendra) and Duality, the dimensional world (Kedar, Chuni … us). Hmmm….
Fast forward to the present day and here’s Archangel Michael, seeming to refer to this same Absolute “level” of Reality that Ramakrishna was viewing from, when he says:
Archangel Michael: Now we also know that deep space contains many other galaxies so keep going and keep going and keep going. Now, when you have gone through all of that, think of it as being contained in a bubble; go outside the bubble; that’s where we are.
Steve: Aah. So, transcendental space.
AAM: Yes. But, also at times the space – now we are going to really confuse you – the space in-between the spaces.
We occupy often the space between the spaces. We come from Source.
Steve: Right. Wow!
AAM: Yes, it is bigger than you think. (6)
It was bigger than I thought. I didn’t bookmark his comment in 2014. I just wasn’t open enough at that time to let in what to an awakened spiritual cartographer is a stupifying statement. A new continent. A new world.
It’s taken eight years for his words to gestate and be born.
(Concluded in Part 2, tomorrow.)
Footnotes
(1) For the substance of the vision, see “The Purpose of Life is Enlightenment – Ch. 13 – Epilogue,” August 13, 2011, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/08/13/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment-ch-13-epilogue/
(2) Divine Mother: Each of you is infinite and eternal. Will the day come, in terms of what you think of as time, when you will simply re-emerge [from Union]? Yes. But even that is an instant. (“The Divine Mother on the Divine Plan” from 2012, reported Nov. 11, 2015, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2015/11/11/the-divine-mother-on-the-divine-plan/.)
Archangel Michael: And when you go home, … you can reunite in the heart of One. Do not think that you go off on another tangent or another journey simply because you feel like it or because you are earning your way back [on] that linear path. You go back out into the universe as a brilliant spark of pure light!
So you come, you return, you gain not only understanding, wisdom, knowledge – what you can think of as spiritual regeneration – and then, in concert with many, including your guides and guardian angels and, many times, whoever you are going to be working with – for example, myself or Archangel Raphael – you emerge again.” (Archangel Michael, An Hour with an Angel, March 26, 2012, at http://the2012scenario.com/2012/03/archangels-michael-and-gabriel-on-the-angelic-realm-hour-with-an-angel-transcript-march-26-2012/.)
Classical enlightenment theory does not teach that we re-emerge once we merge with the One.
(3) Seventh-chakra enlightenment is known by various names: Turiya (the Fourth State), Brahmajnana, God-Realization, the first experience of “the transcendental.” But it is still in the 3rd/4th Dimension.
To ascend to the higher dimensions, one must overcome the Turiya, becoming a turiyatita. Other names for this overcoming are Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi (our natural state), vijnana (perfected wisdom), Ascension, Salvation, Redemption, buddhahood, moksha, mukti, liberation from birth and death, etc.
(4) Swami Nikhilananda, trans. Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1953, 14.
(5) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Nikhilananda, Swami, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 810.
(6) “Archangel Michael on the Angelic Kingdom,” June 13, 2014, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/06/13/archangel-michael-on-the-angelic-kingdom/.