I promised I’d cite some cases of angels facilitating or bestowing enlightenment.
Let me start the ball rolling. Here’s Archangel Michael promising his servant an experience of enlightenment when all Ascension work is done:
Archangel Michael: When all is done, when peace within you exhibits on the outside, which is not just no war but truly harmonious relationships and ways of being and behavior, then I will invite you to come and listen to our music. More importantly you will hear our music and you will see me painting the sky.
Steve Beckow: That means something, Lord, a little bit more than just the words might seem to indicate, does it not? If I were to hear your music, that would transport me to another realm, would it not?
AAM: That is correct. (1)
Here we have an archangel offering the experience to a servant when the time arrives. In my opinion, if enlightenment happened independent of the angelics, he would not be saying this.
Now let’s go back in history. First to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s enlightenment at the hands of a seraph. I’ll cite just a few paragraphs here and the whole experience in the footnotes:
I stood upon the Mountain which o’erlooks
The narrow seas….A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! the bright descent
Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me
There on the [mountain] ridge, and look’d into my face…. my human brain
Stagger’d beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.
With ministering hand he rais’d me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill’d
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears…
“There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man: and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable….” (2)
“Shadowing forth the Unattainable” – that encapuslates the angelic role. The glory of the Seraph, as majestic as it must be, is just a hint of the glory of the One.
Let’s go second to the Blessed Henry Suso, who had numerous visions of the angels bestowed on him, each probably conferring an enlightenment. Here’s a vision of the angels themselves, which must have been illuminating:
“Once, … it seemed to him in a vision that the heavens were open and he saw clearly the bright forms of angels going back and forth in splendid garments. He heard the most exquisite singing ever heard in the court of heaven by the joyous members of the court. It sounded so sweet that his soul dissolved in great pleasure.” (3)
Is this the same music of the angels that Michael refers to?
And here is a vision of Wisdom, which may be the Divine Mother, as mediated by an angel:
“And once in the morning after a period of suffering it happened that he was surrounded by the heavenly hosts in a vision. He asked one of their shining heavenly princes to show him what the hidden dwelling place of God in his soul looked like.
“The angel said to him, ‘Look with joy into yourself and see how dear God plays his games of love with your affectionate soul.’ He quickly looked inside and saw that over his heart his body was as clear as crystal, and he saw in the middle of his heart eternal Wisdom sitting quietly with a pleasing appearance. Nearby the soul of the servant was sitting and longing for heaven.
“It was inclined in love at God’s side, embraced by his arms, and pressed to his divine heart. There outside itself and immersed in love it lay in the arms of its beloved God.” (4)
Again, this vision must have transported Suso. I have no idea what level of enlightenment it may have been.
Now back into times half mythical, half historical, when Caedmon the shepherd was enlightened by an angel:
“Caedmon was an illiterate herdsman, who did not even know the alphabet. One night he had a vision of an angel, and by that angel’s grace his poetic faculty came to life. Caedmon composed extemporaneously and even recited his hymns and poems in public.” (5)
The Bible is full of passages in which angels enlighten humans. Moses for instance:
“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” (6)
Here’s a Seraph enlightening Isaiah:
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple … and one [seraphim] cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
… Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. (7)
Karmic dispensation at the hands of a seraph. Ordinarily I’d say that goes with Ascension.
And finally the case of Mohammed, who was enlightened on the Night of Qadr (translation: Night of Glory) by Archangel Gabriel.
“We [Gabriel says] revealed the Koran on the Night of Qadr.
“Would that you knew what the Night of Qadr is like!
“Better is the night of Qadr than a thousand months.
“On that night the angels and the Spirit by their Lord’s leave come down with His decrees.
“That night is peace, till break of day.” (8)
The Night of Qadr is the night of enlightenment, the last day of mortality and the first of “immortality.” (9)
Mohammed’s meetings with Gabriel are described:
“By the declining, star, your compatriot is not in error, nor is he deceived!
“He does not speak out of his own fancy. This is an inspired revelation. He is taught by one who is powerful and mighty.
“He stood on the uppermost horizon; then, drawing near, he came down within two bows’ length or even closer, and revealed to his servant that which he revealed.
“His own heart did not deny his vision. How can you, then, question what he sees?
“He beheld him once again at the sidrah-tree, beyond which no one may pass. (Near it is to the Garden of Repose.)” (10)
Gabriel has ushered Mohammed into the Light of enlightenment.
I’ve cited many times a passage in which the Divine Mother acknowledges moderating an enlightenment experience:
“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!’” (11)
So the Mother – as well as the angelics – watches over our enlightenment progress and manages our process.
We can therefore find ample examples of Archangels, Seraphs, and other angelics – and even the Divine Mother herself – enlightening humans.
Thus there is no reason to be mystified by how enlightenment takes place. Our spiritual evolution is watched over by the Mother and her angelics and illumination is given when the aspirant is ready for it. And it’s the angelics or the Mother who bestow it.
Footnotes
(1) Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, April 3, 2015.
(2) Here is Alfred Lord Tennyson’s description in whole:
I stood upon the Mountain which o’erlooks
The narrow seas….
A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! the bright descent
Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me
There on the [mountain] ridge, and look’d into my face
With his unutterable, shining orbs.
So that with hasty motion I did veil
My vision with both hands, and saw before me
Such colour’d spots as dance athwart the eyes
Of those, that gaze upon the noonday Sun….
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye (A) grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem’d to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Each failing sense,
As with a momentary flash of light
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon’s white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes…
… The clear Galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin’d depth
And harmony of planet-girded suns
And moon-circled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch’d the wan sapphire….
… my human brain
Stagger’d beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.
With ministering hand he rais’d me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill’d
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears…
“There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man: and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable….”
(Alfred Lord Tennyson in Marghanita Laski, Ecstacy in Secular and Religious Experiences. Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1961, 401-2.)
(A) Third Eye
(3) Blessed Henry Suso in Frank Tobin, trans. Henry Suso. The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons. New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989, 142-3.
(4) Ibid., 72-3.
(5) Swami Chetananda, They Lived with God. Life Stories of Some Devotees of Sri Ramakrishna. St. Louis: Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 1989, 373.
(6) ) Exodus 3:2.
(7) Isaiah 6:1 + 5-7.
(8) Koran, 27.
(9) “Immortality” in the sense of not having to be born again or die; that is, Fifth Dimensional or higher. The soul has always been and, evidently, will always be immortal.
(10) Ibid., 112.
(11) Divine Mother in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Oct. 26, 2018.