ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE BODY OF LIGHT

By John White

Enlightenment is the goal of human life, for the individual and for the race.

Enlightenment is awakening to the presence of God as the One-in-all-and

All-in-one and then expressing that nondual realization in every aspect of your

existence. Simply put, enlightenment is God-realization—i.e., making God real

in the totality of your being.

Enlightenment, therefore, is a developmental process, not a one-time event.

It is the highest aspect of our human potential for self-directed growth in

body, mind and spirit. That human potential can change the human condition.

Enlightenment is not purely psychological. In the course of higher human

development, physical changes also occur, most dramatically in the later phases

of the enlightenment process. In the final phase, according to various

sacred traditions, the body is alchemically changed into light. Enlightenment

becomes literally so through the transubstantiation of flesh, blood and bone into

an immortal body of light. Through a combination of personal effort and

divine grace, a person attains a deathless condition through the alchemical

transmutation of his or her ordinary fleshly body. This transubstantiated body is

called various names in the traditions, such as light body, solar body,

diamond body, resurrection body. I’ll expand on that below.

If involution is the materialization of Spirit and evolution is the

spiritualization of matter, then the end of evolution—final enlightenment—is the

complete return of matter to Spirit as humans attain full expression of their

inherent divinity and become godmen and godwomen. It is the conquest of death.

It is return to the condition of "that which never dies and that which was

never born."

From Morality to Mysticism

Morality, or the moral dimension of life, is the foundation for the process

of higher human development to enlightenment. However, the process only

begins there. As a person practices spiritual disciplines—prayer, meditation and

esoteric psychotechnologies—to deepen his or her relationship with God, the

person ascends in consciousness to higher and higher planes of existence.

Mystical experience and arcane metaphysics come to the forefront of the person's

consciousness, and the light of God shines ever more brightly through every

aspect of the person's life. Ultimately, the quest for enlightenment leads one

to actually becoming light—i.e., attaining the body of light and becoming a

being of light. Morality and virtue are then understood to be the human

reflection of divine attributes, and the practice of mysticism is understood as a

process of becoming, quite literally, more and more godlike.

The important thing in the process is, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, to "fix

your heart on God," submit your will to the Divine Will, and then invoke the

Holy Spirit, the Shekinah Glory, the Goddess Kundalini, etc., as the entry

point for your spiritual practice. Support that with moral behavior, cultivation

of the body and mind, works of social goodness and civic responsibility—in

other words, live a life of integral practice—so that your entire being—body,

mind and spirit—is oriented to the attainment of enlightenment. God will take

care of the rest. Through spiritual refinement, the psychophysical dross of

your humanity is removed. Then you can "cast off" the flesh body through the

death process. You put on the "seamless robe of light." You no longer

cast a shadow because you do not have a Shadow.

Sacred Traditions for Higher Human Development

If there is an inner unity or transcendent common core to world religions and

sacred traditions, we should expect that the human potential for

transubstantiation would be understood by them. Indeed, that is just what we find.

Some of the names given to the body of light are as follow:

• In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is called "the resurrection body" and

"the glorified body." The prophet Isaiah said, "The dead shall live, their

bodies shall rise" (Isa. 26:19). St. Paul called it "the celestial body" or

"spiritual body" (soma pneumatikon) (I Corinthians 15:40).

• In Sufism it is called "the most sacred body" (wujud al-aqdas) and

"supracelestial body" (jism asli haqiqi).

• In Taoism it is called "the diamond body" and those who have attained it

are called "the immortals" and "the cloudwalkers."

• In Tibetan Buddhism it is called "the light body."

• In Tantrism and some schools of yoga it is called the "the vajra body,"

"the adamantine body" and "the divine body."

• In Kriya yoga it is called "the body of bliss."

• In Vedanta it is called "the superconductive body."

• In Gnosticism and Neoplatonism it is called "the radiant body."

• In the alchemical tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it "the Glory of the

Whole Universe" and the "golden body." The alchemist Paracelsus called it

"the astral body."

• In the Hermetic Corpus it is called "the immortal body" (soma athanaton).

• In some mystery schools it is called "the solar body."

• In Rosicrucianism it is called "the diamond body of the temple of God."

• In ancient Egypt it was called "the luminous body or being" (akh).

• In Old Persia it was called "the indwelling divine potential" (fravashi

or fravarti).

• In the Mithraic liturgy it was called "the perfect body" (soma teilion).

• In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo it is called "the divine body" composed

of supramental substance.

• In the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin it is called "the ultrahuman."

There probably are other traditions which have analogous terms, and I would

be glad to be informed of them. As I see it, these are different terms for

the same ultimate stage of human evolution. (I feel quite tentative about

Teilhard de Chardin because he is not specific in his writings about the somatic

changes which lead to the evolved human. I have excluded Nietzsche's

ubermensch altogether for that and other reasons.)

The traditions speak of the process in different ways. Is the immortal body

created or released, attained or manifested? Is it preexistent within the

individual and the gross matter of the body simply "burned" away? Or is the

gross matter of the body altered through a process not yet recognized by

physical science which changes the atoms of flesh into something unnamed on the Perio

dic Table of Elements? Is there more than one route to the final, perfected

form of the human body-mind? Is it necessary to actually die biologically

or is there an alternate path to the light body which bypasses physical death?

These are provocative questions which remain to be explored.

However this state is achieved, the perfected individual is then capable of

operating within ordinary space-time through that altered vehicle of

consciousness which is immortal. That vehicle of consciousness is no longer

carbon-based as is biological flesh. Rather, it is composed of a finer, more ethereal

form of energy-substance unknown to conventional physics, but long known to

metaphysics and higher mysticism. That condition is, for the individual, the

most exalted stage of higher human development; for humanity in general, it is

the final stage of evolution.

Jesus and the Shroud of Turin

The best-known example of transubstantiation and perfection of the human

body-mind is Jesus of Nazareth. He was described by people of his time with the

Aramaic term M'shekha, from which we get "Messiah." The Greek translation of

M'shekha is "Christos" or "Christ," a title meaning "the attaiment of

Christhood." Significantly, the term "Messiah," which literally means "the anointed

one," more broadly means "enlightened" or "perfected" or "the ideal form of

humanity." So Jesus can be regarded as the perfected form of humanity—not a

vehicle of salvation but a model of perfection. Or, to put it differently,

Jesus offered salvation not as it is conventionally understood by institutional

Christianity, but rather as a pathway to supreme enlightenment. Therefore,

rather than saying that Jesus was the Christ, it is more accurate to say that

the Christ was Jesus, which allows for others—you and me—to be Christed.

When Jesus arose from the dead after crucifixion, he functioned in a

resurrection or glorified body attained by transubstantiation of human flesh. That

is indicated most directly by the Shroud of Turin, which legend maintains was

the funeral shroud of Jesus when he was buried in the tomb. In the 1980s a

scientific test of the Shroud's age was performed, based on the carbon-14

dating method; it appeared to show that the Shroud was no older than the 14th

century—and therefore was a hoax. However, that test has now been shown to have

badly flawed results because of the presence on the fabric of organic material

(mold-like microorganisms) and carbon smoke particles from a fire. Both

substances produce a newer or younger dating for the Shroud than is actually so.

When that skewing of the data is taken into account, the age of the Shroud

moves far enough back in time to place it at the crucifixion. Moreover, still

newer research has identified pollen grains on the Shroud which could only

have come from the vicinity of Jerusalem during the months of March and April—

Passover time—when such vegetation is in bloom. For these and other

research-based reasons, the Shroud is now clearly established as an authentic

first-century relic, precisely as legend holds.

As for the image of the Man in the Shroud, research likewise indicates that

it is no hoax. The blood stains are real and contain human male DNA. Frank

Tribbe notes in Portrait of Jesus? that the closest science can come to

explaining how the image of the Man in the Shroud got there is by comparing the

situation to a controlled burst of high-intensity radiation similar to the

Hiroshima bomb explosion which "printed" images of disintegrated people on building

walls. Shroud researcher Ray Rogers, a physical chemist from Los Alamos

Laboratory, said, "I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of

radiant energy—light if you like." Another researcher, Prof. Alan Adler of

Western Connecticut State College, concluded that the Shroud image could have

been created only by high-level energy which he could not name.

Apparently, a self-induced nuclear "explosion" was the means by which Jesus

transubstantiated. For the next forty days he functioned in a body of light—a

glorified resurrection body—in which he appeared and disappeared at will,

seeming to be solid flesh to Doubting Thomas but nevertheless demonstrating total

mastery of physics and biology. (And thus St. Paul, echoing the prophet

Hosea, rightly asked in his Epistle to the Corinthians, "O death, where is thy

sting? O grave, where is thy victory?") Then, as Jesus told his disciples, he

ascended to return to the glory which he shared with the Father before

creation.

If we share a common human nature, then what is possible for one is possible

for all. For humanity in a collective sense, then, the body of light is the

final stage of evolution, the perfection of Man, the complete manifestation of

the mystical body of Christ.

Metaphysics and Ascended Masters

Although Jesus is the primary exemplar of transubstantiation, there were

others, both eastern and western, whom history and legend record as similarly

transubstantiated. There apparently were some before Jesus and some after who

attained the light body; that is implied in various ways in biblical and

extrabiblical literature. For example, the pharaonic ceremonial tradition of

ancient Egypt is primarily about the process of consciousness transference from the

flesh body to the spirit body or akh. Knowledge of that process may have

passed into Judaism via Moses, who became a member of Pharaoh's household when he

was rescued as a baby by Pharaoh's daughter and later was initiated into the

Egyptian mysteries. From Moses, according to esoteric legends, the secret

knowledge of human perfectibility was passed down through the centuries as an

"underground stream" in some branches of Judaism, emerging publicly and most

dramatically through the resurrection of Jesus. Legend and some esoteric

documents also have the knowledge being passed through some of the early Christians

to the Cathars of southern France, and thence to the Knights Templar and,

finally, to modern Freemasonry as expounded by scholars such as W. L. Wilmshurst

and Manly P. Hall.

According to legends in various esoteric traditions, a significant number of

"ascended masters" have attained to that condition. Among them are

Melchizedek, Elijah, Count St. Germain, Boganathar, Babaji, Hilarion, Kuthumi, Dwaj

Khul, El Morya, Serapis and Swami Ramalingam. Collectively, they are known as

the White Brotherhood, the Illumined Ones or simply the Illuminati. The

beings of light whom people reportedly meet during near-death experiences and other

situations involving altered states of consciousness may be such "elder

brothers and sisters" of ours. The reports imply a veritable society of such

entities, operating in what seem to be vehicles of consciousness identical to that

in which Jesus functioned via his resurrection. That society resides at the

top of the divine hierarchy of worlds extending from the lowest physical

level to the highest of the metaphysical. The hierarchy has been called the

Great Chain of Being; it connects all life to God, from the lowest microorganisms,

through humanity, to the forms native to the higher worlds, such as angels,

archangels, devas and celestial bodhisattvas. At the highest level, the Logos—

where creation itself begins—are those perfected ones of humanity who have

ascended to the "throne of God" or that condition of existence which is the seat

of power for God's governing of the cosmos. Despite the apparently vast

distance which separates them from us, they are simply people who have traveled

the evolutionary path before us.

Therefore, the proper attitude toward them is reverence, not worship. Jesus

called people to follow him along the Way which he showed—that is, to

duplicate him so that, as the Bible puts it, we grow into the stature and fullness of

Christ. Other enlightened sages have given the same call for humanity to

ascend to the Divine. Their terminology may differ, but from the perspective

I'm offering here, their understanding of the destiny of our evolving human

race is the same: someday in a distant evolutionary future we humans will

"wear the seamless robe of light" and will not cast a shadow.

But now I don't.