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Feature Article (Archived) |
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Easter
and
the Law of Being "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" - John 12:24. Certain saints and prophets personify particular aspects of the Universal Truth -
Buddha: Compassion, Service Christ's passion, his thought, his supreme sacrifice, have become stamped psychically, indelibly, upon the inner consciousness of Christendom for ages. He is the Wayshower for others to follow the mold he offers. Easter has been a "rebirth of nature Festival" for millennia and, of course, before Christ. It is a universal festival in those lands where there are seasonal changes, which is half the world. The fertility goddess of different cults has been worshiped in the spring season and the word Easter comes from the name of a Teutonic goddess named Eastre who was the goddess of the dawn and was worshiped at the spring equinox every year in pagan ceremonies in pagan lands long before the Christians inhabited them. When Christianity inhabited those lands, they found it natural to fuse the two celebrations into one, retaining the original word that had become so widespread that it couldn't be changed. So we have Easter. Easter is a celebration of both the season and the Resurrection of Christ—of both spring and the spirit. For those who cannot respond to the latter there are Easter rabbits, colored eggs, new clothing; there are rites glorifying the cult of fertility, all the traditional exercises of folklore during the springtime of the year. For these—worshippers at Nature's shrine—the theme of rebirth is manifested not in a turning inward but in a turning out, not in spiritual reality but in symbols and tokens of that reality. These nature celebrations are a kind of allegory of the soul's life but no more than that. The human soul is not awakened by them; it still sleeps on. We feel that nature is reflecting something beyond her. There is something missing in the nature and pagan celebrations of Easter and that is Good Friday—the key to Easter. Without Good Friday, there is an awakening in nature, but no spiritual awakening, which is what makes Easter the chief day in the Christian year. In the West, with our strong emphasis on the creaturely self, we have needed someone to embody dramatically the grand theme of spiritual life and sacrifice. Before Christ, the figure of Socrates was there enthroned as the great moral figure of antiquity. His death, of course, is one of the memorable deaths of all time, second only to Jesus as an inspirational phenomenon. In Christ, we have something higher that we don't find in Socrates. It is not just one item in a philosophy, but it is a crucial pillar in the spiritual life: The law of life is sacrifice. This is what Buddha preached. "Truth is life—self is death," he said. Self must be overcome somehow or other. This law means the breaking down of barriers that exist between individuals and the willingness to do anything to help others to become free of those barriers too. Along the way, we get practice in our own Calvary. By serving selflessly, we are heaping up deposits in the spiritual nature until the time comes when we will be asked to sacrifice too. As we study the greatest souls, what becomes the paramount theme is the oneness of life. Life is One and sacrifice on our part is the way the oneness is penetrated. But this is a theme foreign to our tendencies. In our natural state, we need an exemplar to dramatize this vital law of life. There are other laws too, but this is the law. Buddha placed his whole philosophy on that. Christ too; as we get a feeling for his life, the major thing that comes through is his love and sacrifice for others. This must be the truth of life, then, and so we have Christ dramatizing it on the cross for the West. We have to crucify something in ourselves, something in us that doesn't want to be killed, but has to be killed ultimately and the result is ascension, immortality. Of course, the resurrection was a spiritual state. We have thought Jesus resurrected from the body, but this is a spiritual gospel. Therefore, the resurrection of the body would have no special significance. In fact, long before he died, he said to Martha, after being told of Lazarus' death, "I am the resurrection and the life." (John 11: 25) He had already reached that state. He doesn't achieve any resurrection after dying. Likewise with St. Paul, there is a passage in which he is seeking this state. "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended..." (Philippians 3: 11-12) In other words, I'm not perfect now, "not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect," but I hope to be perfect. Nothing about the body dying here. He is struggling to attain the state. As he says elsewhere "I die daily." Therefore Jesus' resurrection is not attained by dying. It is attained by living. The resurrection would be a perfection, a kind of immortality known in this life. So Christ on Good Friday is the key to Easter. The Lord of the Universe, in one of his most graphic incarnations, offers his own life as an atonement to men and women for their ignorance, showing forth the way we should go to attain our resurrection from the death state. The only way is through sacrifice. The god-man makes this law of sacrifice—the oneness of life—real for us. He embodies it. But he doesn't create the law. The law of sacrifice, of oneness, is the Law of Being. This is where the Vedantic idea comes in. We have heard this from the Upanishads, the main Vedantic scriptures. Everything is one. All is the Self. Don't separate yourself from it or from others who are embodiments of it. This is what Christ dramatizes. He kills the lower nature in order to allow the super-nature, the soul, to emerge and ascend. This is the law of sacrifice. So if we obey the law, it will save us whether there is a Christ in the world or not. Christ's contribution is so unbelievable to the West and to the whole world too. He has made it clear for all time, not only what he did, but what we must do. This is how we must live—not that we should get crucified. We are not asked to do that, but to do something in our modest way, in our modest arenas that is the equivalent of that. So Good Friday is a great day in the Christian year because spiritual life is all there. Easter is inevitable after there is a Good Friday in our life. The ascension of consciousness, what we call the resurrection is inevitable. Without the Good Friday there is no Easter, there's no illumination. Even if you love God and even if God loves you, you have to obey this. This is the chief thing. As we read about these super-incarnations of Ramakrishna, Buddha, and Jesus, they all seem to be saying the same thing. Ramakrishna said, "I would be born over and over as a dog if it could help one soul" and many other things like this. The same teaching coming through all of them. Although Christ seems to be teaching other things in the Sermon on the Mount, the more you look at it, you see that it all turns out to be variations on this. For instance the statement, "Judge not that you be not judged." How can you judge anyone? The other is yourself, is the Divine. Don't judge anybody. Everything, then, becomes a version of this great law. It is so hard for us. We are trapped in the feeling of separateness and that is why we haven't heard it from the pulpits because the ministers and the priests are trapped in the same separateness and even the prophets are trapped. Once we have come across this truth, we see this is the deepest truth that can be uttered. This is the Vedantic premise too, which teaches the oneness of the soul with the Divine—the oneness of all life. To the degree that we can sacrifice or to the degree that we are asked to do it, comes illumination. Little by little we will move towards the day when we will understand what sacrifice means from the inside. That will be a blessed day for all of us and will then be a blessing for others to the degree that we can live for them. The image of the cross represents the crucifixion, but also Joy, Giving... embracing the whole world. As Christ did on a major scale, we on a minor scale can do the same thing. Belief is only the beginning—but sacrifice—that is the way. Sacrifice yourself, make of your very life an offering to be laid upon the altar of a common and shared humanity. Die to self and rise to Life, to Resurrection, Illumination ... to Easter!
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