Ascension
The ritual whereby the soul reunites with the Spirit of the Living God, the I AM Presence. The ascension is the culmination of the soul’s God-victorious sojourn in time and space. It is the reward of the righteous that is the gift of God after the Last Judgment before the great white throne in which every man is judged “according to their works.”[1]
The ascension was experienced by Enoch, of whom it is written that he “walked with God: and he was not, for God took him”[2]; by Elijah, who went up by a whirlwind into heaven[3]; and by Jesus, although his ascension did not take place on the occasion when scripture records that he was taken up into a cloud into heaven.[4] The ascended master El Morya has revealed that Jesus made his ascension from Shamballa after his passing in Kashmir at the age of 81 in A.D. 77.
The reunion with God in the ascension, signifying the end of the rounds of karma and rebirth and the return to the LORD’s glory, is the goal of life for the sons and daughters of God. Jesus said, “No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man.”[5] By the salvation, ‘Self-elevation’, the conscious raising up of the Son of God within her temple, the soul puts on her wedding garment to fulfill the office of the Son (Sun, or Light) of manifestation. The soul is made worthy by Jesus’ grace to be the bearer of his cross and his crown. Following the initiatic path of Jesus, she ascends through the Christ Self to her Lord, the I AM Presence, whence she descended.
The physical ascension
The ascended masters teach that it is not necessary to actually raise the physical body in order to ascend. The soul itself may take flight from the mortal coil and be translated through the ascension process, while the physical remains may be consigned to the sacred fire through the ritual of cremation. Although there are instances of a physical ascension noted in the scripture (Enoch and Elijah), the physical ascension does require the balancing of between 95 and 100 percent of one’s karma; whereas through the dispensation of the Aquarian age the Great Law exacts the 51 percent balance of karma, thereby enabling the soul to balance the remaining 49 percent after the ascension. In this case, the ascension process is almost never a physical one, but it is just as real and can be observed by the clairvoyant or those caught up in the extrasensory perception of the Holy Spirit.
When a physical ascension takes place, the physical body is transformed by and superseded by the ascended master light body. During the ascension ritual, the soul becomes permanently clothed with this body, also called the “wedding garment,” or the deathless solar body. Serapis Bey describes the process in his Dossier on the Ascension:
The flame above (in the heart of the Presence) magnetizes the flame below (the threefold flame within the heart) and the wedding garment descends around the silver cord to envelop the lifestream of the individual in those tangible and vital essence currents of the ascension. Tremendous changes then take place in the form below, and the four lower bodies of man are cleansed of all impurities. Lighter and lighter grows the physical form, and with the weightlessness of helium the body begins to rise into the atmosphere, the gravitational pull being loosened and the form enveloped by the light of the externalized glory which man knew with the Father “in the beginning.”... The individual ascends, then, not in an earthly body but in a glorified spiritual body into which the physical form is changed on the instant by total immersion in the great God flame.[6]
In a dictation given October 2, 1989, the ascended master Rex told us that those who are called to the physical ascension must have had many thousands of years of preparation. Today most people whose souls qualify for the ritual of the ascension ascend from inner levels after the soul has departed the physical body. The soul attains union with the Mighty I AM Presence to become a permanent atom in the Body of God just as she does in a physical ascension.
Requirements for the ascension
Purity, discipline and love are requirements for the ascension, for in these virtues the Law is satisfied: purity of consecration, of heart and mind and soul; discipline of motive and desire; transparent thoughts, feelings and acts, shining in the crystal-clear stream of consciousness flowing back to its Source.
Purity is the discipline of directing all of one’s energies in loving action. Purity is going all the way with Christ. It is ministering to the poor in spirit. It is healing the sick and raising the dead. It is submitting to the tests of the Great Initiator. It is surrendering totally and praying without ceasing.
To be pure in the discipline of the Law is to “love the Lord thy God” with one’s total being, to “love thy neighbor” as one in whom the Christ Self lives, and to love the Christ in every ascended being with enough devotion so that one can put behind him the things of the world and say, “What is that to me? I will follow thee!”[7]
The ritual of the ascension is the goal for everyone who understands his reason for being. This initiation can and will come to anyone—even to a little child, when he is ready:
- when he has balanced his threefold flame
- when his four lower bodies are aligned and functioning as pure chalices for the flame of the Holy Spirit in the world of form
- when a balance of mastery has been achieved on all of the rays
- when he has attained mastery over sin, sickness and death and over every outer condition
- when he has fulfilled his divine plan through service rendered to God and man
- when he has balanced at least 51 percent of his karma (that is, when 51 percent of the energy given to him in all of his embodiments has either been constructively qualified or transmuted)
- and when his heart is just toward both God and man and he aspires to rise into the never-failing light of God’s eternally ascending Presence.
The ascension process also involves the passing of those initiations given at Luxor:
- the transmutation of the electronic belt
- the correct use of the chakras and the caduceus
- the raising of the Seed Atom (the Kundalini)
- and the building of the cone of fire for the transmutation of the last vestiges of one’s human creation.
Originally, the complete balancing of personal karma was required before a man could return to the heart of God. Every jot and tittle of the Law had to be fulfilled; every erg of energy he had misqualified throughout all of his incarnations had to be purified before he could ascend. Perfection was the requirement of the Law.
Now, however (thanks to the mercy of God dispensed by the Lords of Karma), the old occult law has been set aside. Those who have balanced only 51 percent of their debts to life can, by divine decree, be given the great blessing of the ascension. This does not mean that man can escape the consequences of his acts, nor does it imply that through the ascension he can evade any unfulfilled responsibilities. This dispensation does, however, enable man to obtain the freedom and perfection of the ascended state more quickly in order that he may from that plane of consciousness balance all remaining debts to life.
Then, when the Great Law has been fulfilled and 100 percent of the energies allotted to him since he came forth from the heart of God have been qualified with perfection, he can proceed on the high road of cosmic adventure and service in the eternally perfect reunion of man with God.
For more information
Serapis Bey, Dossier on the Ascension.
Sources
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Saint Germain On Alchemy: Formulas for Self-Transformation.
Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 25, no. 54, December 30, 1982.
Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 35, no. 34, August 23, 1992.
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Masters and the Spiritual Path, pp. 93–94.