Hi Robin,
As wonderful as a Beatific Vision can be it is transient. It arises and passes away. The awakening of the Buddha, or Bernadette Roberts is not spoken of as a momentary event but rather as a realizing of that which has always been the case. It can be called transcendent in the sense that it is not subject to the change. It is not ecstatic but profound such that the Buddha described it as a turning in the deepest seat of consciousness. I think it is when consciousness is freed from all the identifications that obscured it.
It is not something someone experiences. It is what happens when conciousness realizes it never was a someone. The someone can be said to die, but that is a dramatic way of speaking. How can something that never existed die? An illusion is seen through is all.
ABE: What happens to a characer protrayed by an actor, say Prospero in the Tempest, when the curtain falls and the actor returns to his dressing room? Shakespeare had some very deep insights to this.
lfen
This message has been edited by lfen, 02-04-2005 15:31 AM