It’s time to rethink ascension
Redefining ascension in the light of reincarnation
The concept of ascension has been with us a long time. The ancient Egyptians believed that after death the Pharaoh ascended to the Sun’s boat and sailed in it among the stars. The Greeks considered that after death heroes ascended to the Elysium Fields where they spent a delightful eternity. The Chinese considered great sages ascended to the heavens after death.
But it was also possible to ascend to the heavens while living in a body. The Jewish prophet Jacob ascended via a ladder, while the Merkabah mystics used a chariot. Chinese Taoist sages were reputed to be able to ascend to the heavens, some on the back of dragons, some internally, via a process of inner alchemy, which purified and elevated their consciousness energetically.
The New Testament describes the resurrected Jesus bodily ascending into the heavens to rejoin God. The Catholic Church later proposed that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so divinely blessed that she didn’t die but similarly ascended bodily to heaven.
More recently the concept of ascension has been shifted into a developmental context. On the personal level, the term ascension is used to describe a shift to a higher level of consciousness. On the collective level, ascension denotes an anticipated shift of consciousness for swathes of the human population, and even in the Earth’s own planetary consciousness.
A key assumption behind both the ancient and modern views of ascension is that it involves a sudden transformational shift. But there’s another unspoken assumption behind it. It seems to me that the idea of ascension has developed in the metaphysical context that we only have one life. If we only have one life, then it makes sense to think we will eventually experience a sudden huge transformational shift, whether via a universal apocalypse, personal enlightenment, or when our body dies and we face what comes next.
But what if we live multiple lives? In a reincarnational scenario, we develop incrementally, life by life. There’s no huge singular moment of ascended revelation. Instead, step by step, we become more skilled, knowing and loving versions of ourselves.
Tossing around these ideas , I decided to ask the guides (human beings who have completed their cycles of reincarnation), what they think of ascension in the context of reincarnation. They began by discussing reincarnation itself.
The guides’ view of reincarnation
Human beings do not commonly understand that their normal domain is spiritual. Nor that journeying from the spiritual domain and incarnating into physical existence could be described as a special excursion into a very strange place.
On this planet individuals are tested again and again as they attempt to gain control of an alien monster, that being the physical body. In addition, they also have to negotiate alien physical territory, and grapple with alien social terrain and alien moral compass.
During their first incarnations individuals commonly have little understanding of the physical body’s drives. Only after having occupied a body a sufficient number of times that experiencing it becomes somewhat normal, and only after considerable exposure to human social milieu, do they achieve sufficient understanding to temper and moderate the physical organism’s impulses.
This view naturally leads to the question: If this physical organism is so strange and foreign, what benefits justify repeated journeying into what could be construed as alien territory? A comparison provides the answer.
When travelling to foreign countries on this planet you explore unknown places, encounter different races, are confronted by foreign concepts, and need to cope with peculiar customs. All these radically expand your understanding. Your perspective expands from the narrowly parochial to the global. You develop acceptance of others who externally appear different from you. Your knowledge of the variety of cultures broadens. And you come to appreciate how diverse histories have led to cultural practices very different from your own.
This is similar to what results after an identity journeys repeatedly from, and eventually permanently returns to, the spiritual domain. During multiple incarnations the identity will have encountered radically different behaviours, dealt with unanticipated consequences, and had its understanding stretched into unimagined dimensions, to a degree previously beyond its comprehension.
That world traveller will have lived multiple lives in many locations around the planet, to speak only of this one. It will be imbued with a tolerance based on firsthand experience, after having encountered a foreign culture not just for a few days, but having lived entire lifetimes within that culture. And then it will have experienced another culture. And another. And another. Each one different.
Eventually, its understanding will naturally achieve a condition that it is not surprised by any human action. It appreciates the embodied human throughout all possible experiences, the basis for its impassioned action, the range of its discursive thought, the intoxication of its emotional bliss, and the multiple limits that affect its capacity both to be violent and to love.
What about divinity and reincarnation?
This flips our thinking about the relationship between the spiritual and the physical. We normally view our embodied physical existence as primary, and we aspire to encounters with the spiritual domain, which is, as far as our direct experience is concerned, secondary. The guides say the opposite, that the spiritual domain is our primary place of residence, and living in a physical body is an optional add-on.
So how does this alter our thinking about ascension? Ascension assumes we shift from a lesser to a higher state. That we are elevated from the mundane physical to the divine in heaven.
Yet if we are primarily spiritual beings, how valid is our worship of the spiritual domain as divine?
Again, I asked the guides.
The guides’ view of divinity
The entire human concept of the divine is a false construct.
It is nonsensical to bow down before anyone’s house. Similarly, it is entirely inappropriate to define the domain occupied by non-embodied humanity as being so special it should be revered, so revered it should be considered the pinnacle of existence, such a pinnacle that obeisance should be made to it, and that it should be bowed down to and venerated in wonder and awe.
Yet this is what humanity does, in all its fantasies of heaven.
The spiritual domain is neither special, different nor pristine, nor anything else that human beings traditionally ascribe to the so-called divine realm. Rather, the spiritual is simply another location humanity can occupy. As such it is of no greater intrinsic validity or worth than the physical domain and its associated human social life.
Historically, human understanding of the character of the non-physical spiritual realm occupied by humanity has been blurred by conflation upon conflation, to the extent that it is unrecognisable from the perspective of the individual when out of the body.
Human beings have duped themselves into making such distinctions between what are simply alternative domains in which experience may be sought.
Where does ascension fit in?
So the guides reject our traditional concept of the divine. And they claim there is no hierarchical relationship between the spiritual and the physical domains. But ascension assumes that we move from a lesser physical to a higher spiritual domain. If the two domain are equal, is the concept of ascension still valid? The guides’ responded:
To answer this question we need to differentiate between spiritual movement and human social hierarchy.
People commonly say: “When I begin my life I am small. But as I mature I grow, until at last I reach the height of the full adult.” Even if that fully grown adult is short in relation to other adults, it is still accorded adult status.
As a result of referencing physical growth in terms of height, human beings have a natural predisposition to use height in other contexts, particularly when considering the social status of one human relative to another. So one person is described as possessing higher status, the other lower status.
This social assumption has been applied to ascension, which is thought of as involving vertical movement.
But spiritual movement and human social hierarchy are fundamentally distinct phenomena.
Individuals seeking power, prestige, status and wealth have contrived to raise themselves above the ordinary human population and to maximise their advantage over those they would lead. This should not be surprising. It is a natural human characteristic to seek competitive advantage.
As a result, throughout history, stories have been manipulated, both in relation to how the invisible realm was conceived, and in the ways public homage has been offered to that realm. The unlettered, uneducated individuals who historically made up the ordinary populace were impressed by the apparent humility of those who led the homage. What they failed to see was the greed for social status that drove their leaders.
Given this is the historical context, it now becomes clear why the term ascension is loaded with historical baggage. An alternative view is required, utilising fresh terminology.
We wish to make clear that the movement identities make from the non-physical zone to the physical zone and back to the non-physical is lateral. There is no essential difference between the two zones. It is a level playing field.
Accordingly, it is possible to say, yes, there is an identity that is non-physical in nature and which may be described in various ways. It makes a lateral transition to accommodate itself within a chosen species. When its experience has accumulated sufficient information, or at the demise of the member of the species concerned, it again moves laterally, at least in conceptual terms, and processes the experiences it accumulated while embodied.
As a result of doing so repeatedly, it accumulates more and more information. So it becomes more knowledgeable. But throughout these repeated incarnations, its aim is not to increase its status in the ways that so occupy humanity.
This is not just an issue for human beings. It occurs within all hierarchical social species. In every case, periodic corrections are required to decontaminate the population concerned. By this we mean there is a need to remove accumulated misconceptions that skew perceptions, cloud understanding and confuse descriptions.
The guides’ responses are edited from a book, The Kosmic Web, which I co-channelled with my colleague, Peter Calvert. We have channelled two other books together. Our books may be viewed on online bookstores and at www.attarbooks.com.
If you enjoyed this essay, my other essays related to this topic include:
