 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
| The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed. | |
| See the article's talk page for more information. |
One definition of an ascended master is an individual who has undergone the process of ascension. Throughout history, there have been stories of these individuals who have reached a higher state of
spiritual awareness and placed themselves in service to humanity.
One concept of an ascended master derives from the teachings of Theosophy.
| Contents |
|
|
In Theosophy, and various descendants and offshoots of theosophy, ascended masters are a group of spiritually enlightened beings, once mere mortals, who have undergone a process of spiritual transformation. According to these teachings, they remain attentive to the spiritual needs of humanity, and act as superintendents of its spiritual growth. In this, they can be compared to the Great White Brotherhood or Secret Chiefs who are posited by various magical organizations; and more remotely, to the bodhisattvas of Buddhism, or the saints of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.
One idea may actually have originated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who in his satirical book The Coming Race posited the existence of "nine unknown men" who secretly run things in the world. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, was a huge Bulwer-Lytton fan and may have decided he was presenting true facts, disguised as fiction.
Blavatsky brought attention to the existence of ascended spiritual leaders through her activities which included channelling messages from beings she called "Mahatmas", especially her spirit guide "Koot Hoomi" or "Kuthumi." From these beginnings, her successors in the Theosophical Society leadership, Annie Besant and especially Charles W. Leadbeater, developed the mythology of Ascended Masters, and fleshed out many of their alleged biographies and past lives. Leadbeater's 1925 book, The Masters and the Path, marked the crystallisation of the lore that had accumulated around the concept of Ascended Masters into a published, public form.
Belief in ascended masters is found among the Theosophists, and among followers of the I AM movement, the Temple of the Presence (http://www.templeofthepresence.org), and Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant. The occult organization, Servants of the Light, claim to have contact with an ascended master. Many New Age channelers routinely talk about the Masters, taking it as given that they exist.
In some versions of the doctrine, the ascended masters, as a collegiate body, are the "Great White Brotherhood," white referring to advanced spirituality rather than race—very much like "Gandalf the White" after his victory over the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings. In fact, most early reports of the masters described them as racially Tibetan or Hindi, not Anglo. Belief in the Brotherhood and the masters is an essential part of the syncretistic teachings of these several groups. Various important spiritual leaders such as Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad, the Virgin Mary, and Kuan Yin the compassionate bodhisattva, take their seats alongside magical or alchemical personalities like the Count of St. Germain, and other mystic celebrities like Kuthumi, one of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's claimed spiritual guides—all of these leaders have put aside any differences they might have had in their earthly careers, and unite instead to improve the spiritual well-being of the human race.
Reincarnation is a notable feature of some groups' teachings about the ascended masters. For example, according to the Summit Lighthouse the ascended master Kuthumi was also reincarnate as a number of historically important people, including Pharaoh Thutmose III, the philosopher Pythagoras, Saint Francis of Assisi, Balthasar the Magus, and Shah Jahan. Several of the other ascended masters are said to have had equally distiguished careers in reincarnation.
One of the most interesting beliefs about ascension is the notion of "ascension bloodlines". According to the Gnostic tradition, ascension is said to happen only after several dedicated lifetimes that directly support the ascension process. If an individual ascends leaving daughters, the daughters supposedly become able to reproduce at will rather than going through the process of sex. The ascension process is said to transmit forward along the genetic line for seven generations, giving the females the ability to give birth through immaculate conception to offspring who will ascend. The priest class in various cultures were said to guard these bloodlines in order to ensure that all descendants would ascend. This belief is based on the many accounts in mythology and spiritual history of individuals born of virgin mothers (Jesus Christ, Mithra, etc.) who then accomplish extraordinary social changes, preceding their ascension.
Believers propose that humans are composed of a physical body and a soul, both of which are composed of energy. As physics has revealed to us, everything is composed of energy. Even if we cannot physically "see" something (radio waves, X rays, etc.), that energy exists at various frequencies and with the proper medium we can experience at least the effect of these energies. In the theory of ascension, it is assumed that humans are composed of seven energetic bodies—physical, etheric, astral, causal, mental, celestial, and Christ bodies. The physical body is at the lowest frequency, and each of the successive bodies exists at higher frequencies. Each of these energetic bodies is essential to maintaining the harmony between the physical body and the soul. The bodies are related to the seven main chakras, which correspond with specific endocrine glands.
Ascension is described as consciously increasing the vibratory rate of the physical and other bodies to the Christ level. Stories describe the physical body losing its definition, diffusing, then finally resembling a star imploding or exploding.
Believers in ascension make a distinction between an enlightened individual and an ascended master. When an individual becomes enlightened—that is, consciously lives on the Christ/Buddha level of awareness—they need experience no further lifetimes to realize their oneness with the universe. The enlightened person can then use their innate awareness to learn more about the universe, or choose to become a master and help others achieve this state. Not every enlightened person becomes a master. Once enlightened, a person can opt for further reincarnations.
People who have raised their bodies through ascension are fully in command of the physical realm, capable of decelerating their vibratory rate to appear any way they desire, including moving about freely on earth. Thus, ascension is seen as an alternative to death.
The topic of ascension and ascended masters is one that probably will continue to spark controversy and disbelief, and can be a difficult subject to comprehend even for those who have spent years studying esoteric doctrines. Having been playfully described as something like getting "beamed up", as in the television series Star Trek, the idea of ascension has not reached widespread acceptance. Some relegate the subject matter to the realm of New Age myth and fantasy, while others maintain the process of ascension is as natural as human evolution. Historically, for the past two thousand years, the concept of ascension seemed so outrageous and confrontational, especially within traditional, western, orthodox religious belief systems, that many people dismissed the idea immediately or have a very strong adverse reaction to it. The idea that all humans could conceivably do what Christ supposedly did is seen by many religious persons as presumptuous, if not blasphemous. This is ironic in view of Christ's teaching in John 14:12: "The things that I do shall ye do also, and greater things than these shall ye do."
In the 21st century, the notion of ascension seems to attract individuals more interested in eastern religions, spirituality, metaphysics, or those simply looking for a deeper meaning to their existing beliefs and experiences.
One difficulty in discussing the idea of an ascended master is that there is no universally-accepted, definitive, scientific text which describes what the conditions are to become such a person, or how to verify the conditions. Even in the 21st century, most public sources, even books directly dealing with the topic, tend to describe various ascended masters, their activities, meetings with such people, etc., without giving us the requisite understanding of how we ourselves could undergo the process of ascension firsthand. With only anecdotal reports and no actual "how-to" manual, we are then left struggling with how to either retrofit this concept into our existing beliefs, how to shift our beliefs entirely, or simply reject the system altogether. Texts that actually give a deeper understanding of ascension, including practical exercises, meditations, diet, etc., are usually dismissed by mainstream audiences.
In the 20th century, more books finally surfaced about the topic, but prior to that, the practical knowledge seems to have been held in strict secrecy within mystery schools due to the pressures and intolerance of orthodox religious authorities. Even for spiritual adepts or initiates, the concept of ascension has not been widely accepted or understood because of the radical nature of transformation that has been ascribed to it.
The history of ascension predates Christianity, indeed extending back for thousands of years, yet the story of Jesus is one of the most widely known stories of ascension. In the Bible when Mary Magdalene wants to reach out and touch Christ at the tomb, he says, "Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father." This has led to the idea that the ascension process is apparently so delicate that even the touch of an ordinary human, who still holds the concepts of limitation and separation, is enough to hold the ascension process back. (This does not explain how Jesus was then able to sit down and have a fish dinner with his disciples.) It is generally thought that one does not have to die in order to ascend, but the fact that Jesus was said to have died, then resurrected, then ascended, has led some people to believe that this must be the case for everyone.
Other individuals with stories of ascension include
One television show that has regularly portrayed this set of ideas is the sci-fi series Stargate SG-1. The aliens that built the Stargate artefacts, the Ancients, and left them on many worlds in the galaxy and in others were forced to abandon their homeworld due to an unsaid catastrophe. Later on the cast meet a few aliens that can shift shape and face, and control the forces of nature.
First on the legendary planet Kheb, where SG-1 were to find the totiscient offspring of a Gou'ald system lord and Daniel's snatched betrothed, they find a Buddhist temple in the woods where a monk then appears. Not responding to interrogation, and masking his speech with Zen koans, Daniel the civilian archæologist decides to sit with him and learn about Oma Desala, or Mother Nature, and how he stokes the fire with his mind. When the Gou'ald find the temple, the monk had left, but the sky develops a thunderhead that strikes down each of the Gou'ald. The storm vanishes, and a flying, glowing being with white flowing tendrils—now much resembling the plasmic, multispectral screensaver Flurry on Mac OS X—takes the baby and makes a wormhole in the Stargate, pausing before it to show a woman's face in the midst of the being before going through. When the child grows up, he appears in a whirlwind on a desert planet and introduces himself as Shifu, meaning light, and stays in the infirmary, giving Daniel a dream teaching him how building a powerful SDI-like weapon to defend the world from the Gou'ald would lead to him shutting out his friends, Earth's allies, and American allies as he uses the weapon to pre-emptively destroy the Russian capital when it objects to sole American control of the weapon.
Soon after, in the episode "Ascension", Samantha at home is stalked by an alien, Orlin, who made himself look human because he was in love with her. He revealed that he had been one of the ascended, but was punished by the others for helping a lesser race build a defensive weapon which it used within, wiping itself out. He serves as an example that even an ascended can make mistakes, and break rules, Oma also almost by telling the humans of her abilities. Even in Orlin's fallen state, he could still disappear and reappear and pass through matter. He also demonstrated a great knowledge of technology, as he used a microwave, toaster, and large lots of optical fibre and titanium to make a huge emerald for Sam and a small Stargate in the basement so that they could stop one of the Stargate teams from reactivating the weapon. He had chosen to become fully human to be with Sam, so he lost his alien abilities, but apparently he was given the ability to ascend again by the others after he tries to unplug the device and is shot: He turns into that glowing being, shedding his clothes, and takes the power core into the sky where it explodes.
In "Meridian", Daniel in the nick of time takes out a naquadria fuel core from a reactor, without a radiation suit, saving millions of alien people but ending up on his death bed. As he is dying he is contacted by Oma Desala in a vision, who offers to make him ascend. Daniel chooses to ascend instead of dying, so he could help more people, and would not appear until he was allowed to console Jack, Colonel O'Neill, when he is held in an experimental gravitic facility, laboratory, and cell, where he is being tortured by being killed and revived again and again, in "Abyss". There Daniel may not tell him the knowledge he took on, and he says that being ascended doesn't mean that one can know or do anything, and especially not that that is to a lesser race as the other ascended would stop him. Jack insists on using ascended powers for busting out, blowing up Baal's fortress, and making the Gou'ald suffer and die, following from the ascended's ostentatious lightning and wind show, even to intervene against the Gou'ald: [1] (http://www.geocities.com/sg1_oneills_house/deepintheabyss.htm). Though he refuses to break Jack out, he later breaks his own rule by fighting the half-ascended, resurrected Gou'ald system lord Anubis as he is to destroy the Abydonians in "Full Circle". He is stopped by Oma, who sends him away, but apparently she saves the world by ascending them as Anubis's mothership unloads his then-upgraded weapon on the pyramid by the village. As SG-1 stargates to the world, they find everyone safe as if nothing had happened, and talk to one who says that they were well off now. As they are done talking, the village and people vanish, leaving only the Stargate.
Earlier Daniel had revealed himself to Jack, which no one believed, saying he found evidence that the ascended were the same race as the Ancients, who learned to ascend to escape a plague. He is also alluded to as having made a breeze around Jack after he talked to Sam, after she has left. By this point, Jack and fans of the show refer to ascending as "going [all] glowy". In the following stories to find the Ancient homeworld however, Stargate Command members learn that the Ancients had left to escape from an enemy race they could not defeat, the Wraith, who could quickly heal from trauma and eat by sapping the life out of a person, aging one to death, and had ascended to not be taken or found by them. After Daniel was descended, his memories of being ascended and as a person were gone, and he was living with villagers on yet another world as a new person, denying any involvement with SGC. As time goes by, memories as Daniel come back, and he rejoins the team; only flashes of memories from his ascension return, though. Little to nothing is revealed on the show about what ascension is like or for.
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
