Ascension
Ascension is a Christian teaching found in the New Testament that the resurrected Jesus was taken up to heaven in his resurrected physical body.
The Theosophical literature this concept is refused as a fact, and taken only in a symbolic way. As H. P. Blavatsky wrote:
No Theosophist . . . will ever accept as a fact either the resurrection of a really dead body . . . or again the miracle of the "ascension", i.e., the actual elevation to, and disappearance in, heaven, of a solid human body.[1]
As the allegory of the Four Evangelists shows, the Son, from his resurrection, ascends to heaven to be forever one with the Father. Does that mean that we should accept the “miracle” of the Ascension as applied to the resurrected body of a man who has been made into a God? Does it mean that a fact so supernatural has ever taken place in the history of mankind? No! We absolutely reject such an interpretation, we reject that dogma which degrades the great mystery of universal Unity.[2]
And she adds in a footnote:
The legend of the Ascension is merely an allegory as old as the world; to believe in it one would have also to admit the authenticity of the ascension of Elijah carried alive into cosmic space, himself, his horses and his chariot.[3]
In the first letter to A. P. Sinnett, Mahatma K. H. questions the source of the account of Jesus' ascension:
Remember that there was but one hysterical woman alleged to have been present at the pretended ascension, and that the phenomenon has never been corroborated by repetition. Yet for nearly 2,000 years countless milliards have pinned their faith upon the testimony of that one woman — and she not over trustworthy.[4]
Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. IV (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1991), 359-360.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VIII (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1990), 389.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VIII (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1990), fn. 389.
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 1 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 5.