Bluth - Yes techniques to keep the body healthy - through yoga, pranayama methods, etc. And you can see some amazing feats that were learned through yoga and other disciplines, where people have learned to change their relationship not just with their body, but with the planet. When we're born we agree to some basic collective constructs, such as gravity. Once we're here, we can learn how to change our agreements through certain techniques. There are people who levitate, walk through walls, get buried alive and dug up again, don't have to eat, can manifest - the list goes on. And this can be an immense distraction on our path.
Prasanna - You're welcome - glad to be of service when I can. I've always loved the story of Krishna, and there is a great rendition of the Mahabharata with Peter Brooks version that I saw on PBS with an international cast. I'd highly recommend watching it - think it was done in 1989 or so.
I particularly loved the Bhagavad Gita, the talk between Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield, because it reminds me that a master just wants us to choose path! Which doorway we choose into the temple doesn't really matter overall - just that we choose something. There is a great book by Osho on Krishna that really highlights the various paths.
In a regular incarnation, a person is a body-soul combination, where the soul has projected itself into a certain time-space and uses the body to interact on the planet. Every avatar is still just a divine projection that is happening at a certain time and place, so in that respect, Krishna is the same as Buddha, Jeshua, anyone else.
At a certain stage of consciousness, we become just another representative of Creation, but in our own unique way to make a unique contribution. So in that sense, Krishna was different than anyone else in history - a unique piece of the cosmic puzzle. Was he more special than others - no, just different - but what a demonstration! I don't see any master as being more special as much as unique - that's just my perspective.
Because of the immense energy of an enlightened child, the mother would have to be at least enlightened, or she would die of exhaustion. Mary (Jeshua's mother) actually incarnated several times in the same bloodline to purify the genetics of any conflict, and went through special training to prepare for the time to give birth to Jeshua, otherwise she would have likely died giving birth. Other examples of mother/son ascension bloodlines would include Isis and Horus in Egypt, Plato and his mother in Greece - the list goes on.
Vince - How active is the Buddha? Well he's been putting on weight by sitting on that Barco Lounger watching football and drinking beer - he should get up and use the Stairmaster! What's up with that!
Like many ascended masters, he has been helping out behind the scenes, just as active as anyone else. He is one of those rare souls that has agreed to stay around till everyone is awake.
You hear of more people communicating with, seeing, and modern miracles attributed to Jeshua, because that is part of the cultural mileau. People want to have miracles, see Jeshua, have him interject on their behalf, etc ever since the early days. Jeshua actually set himself up for those people that wanted someone to call upon - becoming a "savior" type of figure for those that needed it.
Buddha is a different story. He isn't a savior figure, he's more of a "do it yourself" kind of guy. His last words were said to have been "Remember, you are a buddha. Be a light unto yourself". So the indoctrination of being a buddhist is vastly different than being a christian. Being a buddhist means that you want to have a direct, personal experience. Not that we can't see or talk or call upon Buddha just like any ascended master, but he is seen as less of an intemediary and more of an example or inspirational figure.
How special was his ascension? For some reason this made me laugh out loud.
Well the ascension cake was particularly excellent, but the guy hired to do ballon figures couldn't make a Bodhi tree...
Every ascension is amazing and special - no exceptions. There really is no comparison. One difference in their overall program is that Jeshua/Mary had talked extensively about ascension to the disciples, and everyone knew that was a main goal - to demonstrate ascension as an option for humankind. For Buddha it was simply the next natural step, not that he talked extensively about it. People were more interested in enlightenment in that part of the world, so the Middle Way and the Noble Eightfold Path became an excellent guideline to step beyond suffering. Each master has offered something for the culture at hand, in a way that it could be accepted and used.
Riverstone - Sure there are people ascending in this current timeframe. There will be even more people ascending between 2012 and 2035 when the collective consciousness gets even more unified. I don't have the stats on how often it happens, but for our current timeframe, think of it like popcorn popping or a dam breaking. It's starting off slowly, picking up speed, then always a few left trickling at the end. Hopefully we're not the burnt kernel that got stuck on the bottom!
AngelPsychic - Many times when someone mentions Ascension symptoms, it really is what I've been talking about in the Consciousness Shifting thread. This is more about us releasing conflict to shift our awareness, which can then affect our DNA.
Now having said that, as our consciousness becomes more unified over time, our physical bodies will start changing to reflect that. After about 50 years, we are shifting into a more dominant non-gendered body - there are some already being born now. So the new dominant body will not have a gender - masculine and feminine will still be expressed, just not in the physical way. This might sound fairly strange, but remember, if it's introduced slowly it becomes more digestible.