The concept of entering heaven alive (called by various religions "ascension", "assumption", or "translation") is a belief held by multiple religions and traditions. Since death is generally considered the normal end to an individual's life on Earth, entering Heaven without dying first is considered exceptional and usually a sign of God's special recognition of the individual's piety.
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Francis Bacon is believed to have undergone a physical Ascension without experiencing death (he then became the deity St. Germain) by members of various Ascended Master Teachings, a group of New Age religions based on Theosophy. They also believe numerous others have undergone Ascension; they are called the Ascended Masters and are worshipped in this group of religions. The leaders of these religions claim to be able to receive channeled messages from the Ascended Masters, which they then relay to their followers.[1][2][3][4][5]
Guy Ballard, who founded I AM, the first Ascended Master Teachings religion, claimed he could teach people how to ascend to heaven without having to die. He accumulated over 1,000,000 followers in the 1930s. However, he died a normal death in 1939. The I AM movement and people adherent to later Ascended Master Teachings religions such as Elizabeth Clare Prophet then redefined ascension as dying normally, but claimed that certain special people, such as her own husband Mark Prophet, were able to ascend to a higher heaven than the average person after they died, becoming an “ascended master” and receiving worship.
It is believed by some Buddhists and Daoists that the deity Kwan Yin was originally a woman named Miao Shan who after many ordeals finally ascended into Heaven.
Since the adoption of the Nicene Creed in 325, the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven, as related in the New Testament, has been officially taught by all orthodox Christian churches and is celebrated on Ascension Thursday. In Anglican Church and Roman Catholic Church the Ascension of the Lord is a Holy Day of Obligation. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the Ascension is one of twelve Great Feasts. Unlike the other entries in this article, Jesus did initially die, returning to life before bodily entered heaven.
In the Reformed churches' tradition of Calvinism, belief in the ascension of Christ is included in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Confession."[6]
The "Rapture" is a reference to "being caught up" as found in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord.[7]
The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion distinguish between "The Ascension", in which Christ rose to heaven by his own power, and "The Assumption" in which Mary, mother of Jesus, was raised to heaven by God's power.[8] (Enoch and Elijah are said to have been "assumed" [experienced assumption] into heaven.) However, in the Anglican Communion, the matter of Mary's assumption is considered pious, and is an optional feast day.
On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII, acting ex cathedra, issued Munificentissimus Deus, an authoritative statement of official doctrine of Roman Catholicism. In Section 44 the pope stated:[9]
The doctrine is based on Sacred Tradition that Mary, mother of Jesus, was bodily assumed into heaven. For centuries before that, the assumption was celebrated in art. The proclamation leaves open whether or not Mary died and was then resurrected before assumption into heaven.[10]
The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that three other persons were taken bodily into heaven: Enoch, Elijah (Elias) and the Theotokos (Virgin Mary). Similar to the Western "Assumption" of Mary, the Orthodox celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos on August 15. Unlike Western uncertainty about Mary's physical death, the Orthodox teach that Mary died a natural death like any other human being, that she was buried by the Apostles (except for Thomas, who was late), and three days later (after Thomas had arrived) was found to be missing from her tomb. The church teaches that the Apostles received a revelation during which the Theotokos appeared to them and told them she had been resurrected by Jesus and taken body and soul into heaven. The Orthodox teach that Mary already enjoys the fullness of heavenly bliss that the other saints will experience only after the Last Judgment.
There is a teaching among the Orthodox that the "Two Witnesses" referred to in the Book of Revelation 11:3-13 are Enoch and Elijah, who will be sent back to earth to preach the Gospel in the time of apostasy, and will be the last Christian martyrs before the Second Coming. According to Revelation, they will be resurrected and ascend again to heaven.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) believe that Jesus Christ died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven as a resurrected being.[11] They also believe that a select number of individuals have ascended into heaven "without having tasted death". Often, these persons are referred to as translated beings; they are said to be "changed so that they do not experience pain or death until their resurrection to immortality."[12] These individuals may be admitted into heaven to await their formal resurrection or they may be permitted to remain upon the earth until that time. The following are a list of persons that Latter-day Saints believe were translated; the individuals in bold script are the ones that have presumably been admitted into heaven as a translated being:
A subset of those are common to Judaism as well as mainstream Christianity. Many Latter-day Saints believe that there are also other persons who have been taken into heaven alive; there is some LDS scriptural support for this belief.[20]
Annalee Skarin was a woman who had been raised in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who claimed to have invented a meditation technique by which anyone could translate themselves directly into Heaven. She wrote a book about it called Ye Are Gods. Many proponents of New Age thought believed that Annalee Skarin, along with her husband Reason Skarin, that he and she indeed achieved physical immortality (been translated) after her clothes were found in her room in 1952 and she totally disappeared and he disappeared soon after. However, it was later shown that she had faked her "translation" and gone into hiding in order to increase sales of her books. She hid out, living away from the Mormon Belt by going to southern Oregon and later living in the far north of California. It was later proven that she physically died of natural causes.[21][22]
Simon Magus, a first century Gnostic who claimed to be an incarnation of God (as conceived by the Gnostics) reportedly had the ability to levitate, along with many other magical powers. As a dissenter from the Proto-orthodox Christianity of the time, this was branded by Christians as evil magic and attributed to demonic powers. He is said to have attempted to levitate to the heavens from the Roman Forum, but fell back to earth and injured himself.[23]
In the Daoist religion, there are eight human beings who, it is believed, eventually attained immortality and thus became the Eight Immortals. It is believed they ascended to Penglai Mountain, a heavenly realm located off of the province of Shandong, China above the Bohai Sea. Many Taoists, including some Chinese emperors have attempted to find magical potions, spells, or perform yoga exercises like Qigong that would enable them to become immortal like the Eight Immortals.
The Eight Immortals are:
Yudhishthira of the Mahabharata is believed to be the only human to cross the plane between mortals and heaven in his mortal body.
Ramalinga Swamigal (Swami Ramalinga), a great Sage revered by his teaching. Ramalinga supposedly attained the Supreme Body of the Godhead when Divinity itself merged with him. He was reported to have disappeared after deciding to de-materialize his immortal body by his own free will, his body was never found.
The Mother (Mirra Alafassa), the foremost disciple of the Hindu philosopher and guru Sri Aurobindo, attempted the physical transformation of her body in order to become what she felt was the first of a new type of human individual by opening to the Supramental Truth Consciousness, a new power of spirit that Sri Aurobindo had allegedly discovered. She believed that she could create for herself a new kind of “light body”. However, she died and was cremated.
Islamic teaching states that Muhammad ascended into heaven alive at the site of the Dome of the Rock. However, this ascent was temporary and he came back to Earth. It is ascribed to the exact descriptions presented in both the Quran and the Hadith.
Most Muslims believe that Jesus is alive in heaven,[25] but that view is not universal. Tariq Hashmi writes in the Islamic journal, Renaissance: "[W]e see that the Holy Qur’an clearly negates that Jesus (sws) was raised to heavens alive (3:55)."[26] Yet Dr. Ahmad Shafaat writes elsewhere that the Qur'an in fact states that "God raised him to himself".[27]
Twelver Shī‘a Muslims believe the Mahdi was taken into heaven and will return as a Messianic figure.
Some Islamic scholars have identified the prophet Idris to be the same person as Enoch from the Bible. This is because the Qu'ran states that God "raised him to a lofty station", and that has been taken to be a term for ascending, upon which it is concluded that 'Idris' was 'Enoch'.
According to the Jewish Midrash, eight people went to heaven (also referred to as the Garden of Eden and Paradise) alive.[28] While modern Jewish tradition (including extra-scriptural texts, such as midrash and talmud) contends that a handful of people have ascended into heaven without experiencing death, true Judaism, that is, strict adherence to the Torah (5 books of Moses plus the tanach) and the commandments contained within accepts only one human to ever accomplish such a feat, Elijah. Even though the text in the book of Genesis does indicate something extraordinary happened to Enoch, the wording is sufficiently vague enough for Jewish and Christian scholars alike to dismiss it as a post-death ascension. Although if the currently existing copies of the extra-canonical book of Enoch can be trusted, (they are at least partially verified by fragments found at Qumran) Enoch is indeed the first person to ascend to heaven without death and will return alive with Elijah in the end times.
It is believed in Zoroastrianism that the Peshotanu was taken up into Heaven alive and will someday return as the Zoroastrian messiah.
Mind uploading or whole brain emulation (sometimes called mind transfer) is the hypothetical process of scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device. The computer runs a simulation model so faithful to the original that it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain, or for all practical purposes, indistinguishably.[31] The simulated mind is assumed to be part of a virtual reality simulated world, supported by a simplified body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind is assumed to reside in a computer inside (or connected to) a humanoid robot or a biological body, replacing its brain.
Whole brain emulation is discussed as a logical endpoint[31] of the topical computational neuroscience and neuroinformatics fields, both about brain simulation for medical research purposes. It is discussed in artificial intelligence research publications[32] as an approach to strong AI. Among futurists and within the transhumanist movement it is an important proposed life extension technology, originally suggested in biomedical literature in 1971.[33] It is a central conceptual feature of numerous science fiction novels and films.
Whole brain simulation is considered by some scientists as a theoretical and futuristic but possible technology,[31] although mainstream research funders remain skeptical. Several contradictory and already passed attempts have been made during the years to predict when whole human brain emulation can be achieved. Substantial mainstream research and development are however being done in relevant areas including development of faster super computers, virtual reality, brain-computer interfaces, animal brain mapping and simulation, and information extraction from dynamically functioning brains.[34] Since a half mouse brain neural network model was simulated in a supercomputer in 2007, at a simulation speed of one tenth of real time, super computers are expected to reach sufficient capacity for whole human brain emulation within a few years. However, no realistic human brain mapping technology is expected to be presented by then, and most suggestions for scanning technologies would destroy the original biological brain.