The Ascension! book says many things, but one thing is frequently brought to the surface. That Christ and other great Masters of Consciousness were teaching something vastly different than most traditional religions will have you believe. So what was Christ teaching? 

What exactly is enlightenment? Everyone has been talking about it for years, but what is it? Is it different from the Salvation of the Christian tradition? Is it the same for Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Sufis, Muslims, Christians, agnostics, atheists? What exactly is the Voice for God? Can anyone experience it? Can there be modern prophets and sages, or were they an historical phenomenon only, never found in the modern world? Or did they ever exist at all? Was their supposed existence only historical aggrandizement? Are miracles real, or are they fantasy merely?
Do these questions deeply move you? If they seem impractical to you, of little relevance to your life and your world, they probably don’t interest you much. If this is so for you, what does fascinate you? What interests a modern human being? Are we all content with the quality of our lives? Do we, any of us, care what is the possible range of human experience? Or are we too interested in our financial and social standing to care about anything else? What if expansion of consciousness resulted in greater success in every area of our concern? And what if it were truly possible to do anything we desired, anything at all? Would we be interested then?
For some of us, it may be that we were once interested, but then we stumbled across a teacher or a teaching or a minister or a church or a science and are now completely content with receiving answers from others, and rarely or never seek for our own inner truth. Or it may be that we despaired of ever finding answers and abandoned our quest.
Another way to find no answer is to try a little of everything available and deeply experience nothing. We occasionally have such people come and learn some of the Ishaya Techniques. These have a habit of trying everything they find, thrashing about wildly, seeking everywhere for truth, finding it nowhere. This grab-bag approach to enlightenment is never successful. Only by diving deep into one’s own heart can progress ever be made. Only by seeking within are answers ever found. Adopting someone else’s belief system is no answer. Blindly following yet one more teacher or teaching is ultimately pointless. The True Teacher will always point the finger of understanding back at the heart of the seeker. There only is progress possible. The True Teacher always seeks independence in his/her followers, never slavish devotion. Growth comes from the inside out. Always. Always.
Within each of us lies a treasure house of undiscovered wealth. Beauty greater than human eyes have ever beheld is hidden inside our hearts; wisdom greater than human minds have ever known is cached within the secret jeweled chamber within our breasts. Safety, security, freedom from fear of every kind lie there, as do fulfillment of every desire, calmness from every storm, a loving hand to dry every tear, a peaceful balm to soothe every hurt.
What can be done to liberate our hidden genius? Even modern psychology has declared that the average person uses a frighteningly small percentage of the mental potential available -- 66 Enlightenment most agree that only 5% to 10% of our human capacity is employed by the average adult. What a tragic waste of life that so much of our inner mind is never used, lies forever untapped, unappreciated, unknown!
Lying inside each of us is a magnificent reservoir of creativity and brilliance. It is not difficult to learn how to tap this inner repository. What stands in the way is just habit. It is habit that restricts the use of our minds; it is habit that keeps us believing in a limited life of ups and downs, of pleasure and pain, of success and failure. Any habit can be broken or retrained. If it is our beliefs that keep the mind chained to a tiny fraction of its full potential, these beliefs can be changed.
Ascension! - Maharishi Sadasiva Isham