Many traditions describe the way as an ascent: Plato’s ladder of love in the Symposium, the soul’s return to the One in Plotinus, Bonaventure’s journey of the mind into God, the merkavah mystics’ passage through the heavenly palaces, and the Prophet’s night journey. The image joins moral purification to ever higher contemplation.
Mystical Ascent
The image of the spiritual life as a climb through stages or heavens toward God.
Also: ascent of the soul