No one made it clearer, and continues to make it clearer,
how to live life more abundantly than Jesus.
Happy Easter, everyone.
Some say Jesus died on Holy Saturday and came back to life on Easter Sunday. Others say three days before Easter Sunday, some two days.
Whichever proves to be the case when the truth becomes known, the death of the body, if Jesus died, does not result in the death of the soul. Therefore it can be said that Jesus never died and is with us today, continuing to encourage us to walk the journey of life to its appointed destination.
A part of the Ascension Jesus later experienced will soon be available to us. So the Easter story, associated as it is with Ascension, has a special meaning for this generation who is actually in the process of ascending, as Jesus did, and will not need to die to the physical body to do so.
A psychic portrait of Jesus
Jesus said we will do greater than he. That doesn’t mean that we are greater than he. But ascending as a world without needing to leave the physical body is one example of what he may have been pointing to. So this Easter we have the opportunity to imagine and contemplate a sacred Ascension scenario and remember that the great teacher has already done what we as a world are soon to do.
Interestingly Jesus came to bring “eternal life” (1) to those who could understand and act on his message. That message was that they could ascend through enlightenment from the Third Dimension of dualistic and separative consciousness to the Fifth Dimension of unitive consciousness. But what followed his death was actually an Age of Darkness, which is only now lifting.
The stable reign of the Pharaohs ended. (2) Led often thereafter by madmen, Rome became an empire rather than a republic. The western world was ransacked by Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Vikings, Mongols and Huns, in successive waves, only to descend into feudal oppression. (3)
Nonetheless, somehow what Jesus taught remained alive, even when his own church modified his message to recreate the very religious privilege which Jesus came to end. For anyone who opposed privilege, just as for anyone who sought enlightenment, Jesus’ words remain a constant inspiration. Seldom has a spiritual teacher captured the attention and imagination of the world in the manner Jesus did. On reading the New Testament, one Zen master is alleged to have said “This man is not far from enlightenment.” (4)
Jesus is read by activist and conservative, understood and misconstrued, but his words ever invite a deeper contemplation. Often tightly-coiled parables which contain secret teachings on how to achieve enlightenment, the purpose of life, they survived where learned books on the subject gathered dust. So today we salute Jesus on the success of his mission, even while he reminds us in the pages of blogs like this one, of his support for the success of ours.
Footnotes
(1) Since we’re already eternal souls, Jesus (if he even spoke these words) was not meaning that immortality would somehow be bestowed on us. Instead he was referring (if the words were his) to the attainment of a level of enlightenment, called by Hindus Sahaja Samadhi, which lifts from us the obligation to be reborn into physical matter. After Sahaja, we’re said to be liberated from the wheel of birth and rebirth.
(2) The reign of the Pharaohs had its excesses, but offered Egypt at least a modicum of stability.
(3) I myself am writing the history of the victors by not saying that Europe was ravaged by Rome as well.
(4) Perhaps 14th century Zen master, Gasan Jōseki, who’s alleged to have referred to Jesus as an “enlightened man”. (“Who is Jesus According to Others?” at https://pleaseconvinceme.com/2012/who-is-jesus-according-to-others/)