Hereafter Ye Shall See Heaven Open - Part 7

[Guest guest]

" Hereafter Ye Shall See Heaven Open " - Part 7

 

'Jesus answered and said unto him [Nathanael], " Because I said unto thee, I saw

thee under the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than

these. " And he saith unto him, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye

shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the

Son of man " (John 1:50-51).'

 

How to " see heaven open "

through the spiritual eye

 

(p.207) When Jesus told Nathanael that he would " see heaven open, and angels

ascending and descending on the Son of man, " it was a promise that man has a

divine inheritance to reclaim the omniscience of spiritual perception, that

heaven and its wonders can be realized in the here and now.

 

This son of man, this human body and consciousness, has become dissociated from

its heavenly essence because of its identity with the physical world. But Jesus

intimated that all those who tune their physical self with their spiritual Self

can perceive the astral world and transcend the consciousness of physical

limitations. If a radio is not properly tuned in, it cannot catch the songs and

voice-information passing through the ether. If a television set is

dysfunctional, it cannot receive the vibrations of televised electronic images.

Analogously, the human body is tuned in with matter. That is why it doesn't

perceive the presence of divine beings and all finer forces just behind the

astral etheric firmament separating heaven and earth, and one's finer

constituent lifetronic form within the gross manifestation of the physical body.

 

Though paradise is not visible to the eyes of most mortals, nevertheless it is

real. There was a time when people would have dismissed with utter skepticism

the idea of radio and television vibrations in the ether, but now millions hear

and see them daily. Likewise, any devotee can tune in the celestial sights and

sounds of the angelic realms through the soul's powers of super-audition and

super-vision, when by meditation the inner television and heart- and mind-radio

are freed from the static of restlessness and mortal desires. [1]

 

(p.208) To " see heaven open, " as expressed by Jesus, is possible in two ways:

(1) By removal of the vibrations of etheric space with its boundary walls of

light through the command of the Ultimate Intelligence. (2) By overcoming the

limitations of the physical eyes and penetrating the spiritual eye of

omnipresent perception.

 

Now as to the first supposition, imagine the chaos if the Lord were to remove

the dividing firmament between earth and heaven. If heaven were bombarded by all

the noises and discord of the earth, even the angels couldn't stand it! Heaven

is heavenly because the Lord has made it a place of respite from mortal mania.

Conversely, the physically circumscribed instrumentality of the ordinary man

could not cope with the intrusion of a dimension it could neither enter nor

control. God keeps man focused on the learning tools and lessons he is to master

in this earthly schoolhouse. At the same time, the Lord has guarded the astral

universe so that the cacophony of human beings on earth cannot disturb with the

gross vibrations of their troubles the rapturous pleasures and meditations of

astral beings.

 

The door to heaven, through which one can enter the divine spheres consciously,

and as a welcome visitor, is the spiritual eye in the Christ center in the

forehead. The eye of mythological Cyclops is true in concept, but as a

spiritual, not a malevolent, instrument of perception. (p.209) The third eye of

the gods is a more accurate depiction: The aspect of God as Lord Shiva--God's

power of dissolution for the renewal of created forms--for example, is shown

with two physical eyes and one divine eye in the middle of the forehead.

Similarly, in astral beings the two physical eyes are but faintly visible, their

sight is through the single intuitive spiritual eye. Those who are advanced

enough to peer into the physical cosmos from their heavenly home open the two

eyes when they want to see the relativity of matter. [2] All saints, also,

receive their communion with God and the supernal realms through the spiritual

eye. The eyes of saints in ecstatic communion are always upturned, locked in

that center of divine perception.

 

By the right method of meditation and devotion, with the eyes closed and

concentrated on the spiritual eye, the devotee knocks at the gates of heaven.

[3] When the eyes are focused and still, and the breath and mind are calm, a

light begins to form in the forehead. Eventually, with deep concentration, the

tricolored light of the spiritual eye becomes visible. Just seeing the single

eye is not enough; it is more difficult for the devotee to go into that light.

But by practice of the higher methods, such as 'Kriya Yoga', the consciousness

is led inside the spiritual eye, into another world of vaster dimensions.

 

In the gold halo of the spiritual eye, all creation is perceived as the

vibratory light of the Holy Ghost. (p.210) The blue light of Christ

Consciousness is where the angels and deity agents of God's individualized

powers of creation, preservation, and dissolution abide--as well as the most

highly evolved saints. Through the white light of the spiritual eye, the devotee

enters Cosmic Consciousness; he ascends unto God the Father.

 

Science itself confirms that with our limited senses we perceive only a certain

range of vibrations of matter: We do not perceive it as its constituent dancing

electrons, and the solid body as an electro-magnetic wave. In the spiritual eye,

the veritable darkness of physical light disappears and the electronic and

astral lifetronic nature of substances is perceived through the sixth sense of

intuition. The materially formidable firmament between heaven and earth becomes

only a diaphanous veil revealing astral scenes and beings. When I enter the

sanctuary of meditation and peer through the portals of the spiritual eye, in a

trice the lights of the material creation around me vanish and I am in that

other world. The ordinary astral phenomena hold no interest for me, but it is

the greatest joy to be in the presence of the angelic saints and of the Mother

of the Universe.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 10, pg. 207-210

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] Since the divergence of science and religion in centuries past, scientists

have typically greeted the idea of " higher dimensions " with skepticism. At the

forefront of advanced physics today, however, is the theory of superstrings--a

theory that not only allows for additional dimensions but 'requires' them,

writes Brian Greene, Ph.D., in 'The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden

Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory' (New York: Vintage Books,

2000).

 

Furthermore, reports 'Los Angeles Times' science writer K.C. Cole, scientists

acknowledge that cosmic forces as yet unnamed by physics may well exist in the

other dimensions required by string theory. " If so, " she writes in 'The Hole in

the Universe' (New York: Harcourt, 2001), " they could have far-reaching effects,

and perhaps even explain some of physics' most difficult puzzles. "

 

String theorists explain that we don't detect the additional dimensions in the

universe because even though forces emerge from them, spatially they are tightly

" curled up " to almost infinitesimal size. Other scientists, including William

Tiller, Ph.D., professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford

University, maintain that higher dimensions remain invisible not because they

are small but because they are " inaccessible to the physical sensory system, or

to present-day instrumentation. "

 

A proposal that is all the more remarkable in that it comes from a Nobel

Prize-winning physicist has been put forth by Professor Brian Josephson of

Cambridge University, renowned for key discoveries in subatomic quantum

mechanics: " Mystical experience by self-development through meditation, etc., is

not only the key to one's own development but also the key...to putting this

attempt to synthesize science and religion on a sold foundation....If we follow

this path of a synthesis of science with religion (using meditation as an

observational tool), what we are doing is using our own nervous systems as

instruments to observe the domains in which God works. Ordinary scientific

instruments like telescopes, galvanometers, and particle detectors are not going

to be good in this context because they are designed to function in the material

domain. Our nervous systems, on the other hand, are designed to allow us to

interact not only with the material level of existence but also with the

spiritual levels....All the different levels are open to exploration if we

develop our nervous systems so that they tune in. One can imagine that this

would be a part of the scientific training of the future. " - from 'Nobel Prize

Conversations With Sir John Eccles, Roger Sperry, Ilya Prigogine, Brian

Josephson' (Dallas: Saybrook Publishing Company, 1985). ('Publisher's Note')

 

[2] Yoga explains that the two physical eyes are an externalization of the finer

forces in the single spiritual eye of the astral body. From the seat of the

spiritual eye in the subtle center in the medulla, a bifurcated current of life

energy flows into the physical eyes, giving the dual or dimensional perception

of matter. In deep meditation, when the gaze of the two eyes is concentrated at

the point between the eyebrows, the dual positive and negative currents flowing

from the medulla into the two eyes reunite, and the meditator beholds the

" single " or spiritual eye.

 

Modern scientific evidence that our two eyes begin as a single structure is

found in the research of molecular neurobiologist Yi Rao of the Washington

University School of Medicine, reported in 'Discover', May 1997. Dr. Rao studied

eye development in frog embryos and isolated the so-called " Cyclops " gene, which

may control eye development. By the time the embryo is twenty-one hours old, the

two dark spots that later form into the eyes are visible. Dr. Rao found that

these two spots had originated as a single band. His experiments demonstrated

that if the brain does not signal cells in this " single band " to shut down and

allow two separate eyes to form (which happens in normal development), one-eyed

tadpoles are the result. Furthermore, his research suggests that this process

" is general to all vertebrate species. " ('Publisher's Note')

 

[3] " Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it

shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that

seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened " (Matthew 7:7-8).