FROM REINCARNATION TO RESURRECTION
 By Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan from lecture transcripts

Sacrifice is the way to resurrection. This is the great message of Christ’s life. Nature must be crucified on the cross of our self‑immolation, our willing sacrifice of our ego‑life. Then will come the resurrection of the Soul out of the tomb of the now conquered body‑consciousness. It is in this context that one apprehends the profound symbolism of Christ's life, its eternal message for humanity. Buddha gives us one vital, ever‑relevant principle to apply to lives seeking salvation—namely, forbearance, tranquility, calm compassion toward all living creatures, and in his life, too, there is the continuing note of unselfishness: for who indeed was more unselfish than he. Christ dramatizes still more the theme of sacrifice as the one indispensable way to self‑overcoming, to terminating at last our endless circuit of lives upon lives on the vast wheel of karma and reincarnation. 

We read about the wheel of karma in the Swetasvatara Upanishad:

This vast universe is a wheel. Upon it are all creatures that are subject to birth, death, and rebirth. Round and round it turns, and never stops. It is the wheel of Brahman. As long as the individual self thinks it is separate from Brahman, it revolves upon the wheel in bondage to the laws of birth, death, and rebirth.^*

We have reincarnated because we have not sacrificed. We have held our ego‑life close to our breasts and refused to part with it, even though the happiness and the very lives of others―not to speak of our own―are depending on our surrender of this identification with the mortal body so that we may realize our oneness with the immortal Divine.  

In other words, we have reincarnated because of ignorance, delusion, self-centeredness, and a failure to sacrifice. Sacrifice is knowledge, is truth, is enlightenment. There is nothing higher than sacrifice. It is resurrection. 

But, we must do it over and over. It often happens that, in the sudden insight that comes to us at last about the vital role of sacrifice in our evolution, we are eager to make a single supreme sacrifice of some sort—in one stroke undo what we have taken so long to do! And thus escape the long agony and anguish of rectifying a past sown in ignorance … escaping, in brief, the fruits of our mistakes. That would be the easy way. Instead, we must be prepared to face the necessity of sacrificing ourselves again and again, day by day, even hour by hour, until the rationale and reality of sacrifice become the reality of our lives and we become living vessels of sacrifice itself. 

Remember, it is Good Friday that precedes Easter. First the agony and the crucifixion, then the resurrection. There is no other way. The irritations, the restlessness, the self-division, the anxieties, the depressions we so often feel at critical junctures are the labor pains that precede birth—our birth: from winter to spring. From reincarnation to resurrection. 

“You must be born again,” says Christ. Rebirth—spiritual rebirth—is Resurrection. It can take place now. We do not have to wait.  

See also Easter and the Law of Being, AWAKENING TO RESURRECTION and the Words of Wisdom: Christ, Reincarnation. 

FROM REINCARNATION TO RESURRECTION, cont'd

by Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan

There is a well-known anecdote about Buddha that tells how he was seated one day under a tree. A man came up to him, stared at him, and asked: "What are you? Are you a God? Are you a man? Are you a celestial?" To each of these questions Buddha said, no. “What are you?” the man asked. Buddha replied, “I am the awakened.” That is: I am what it is to be awake. I am the consciousness that is awakened. While retaining his outer bodily form he had gone from reincarnation to Resurrection. Christ, too, knew reincarnation and Resurrection,* (celebrated by Christians on Easter Sunday).

Our goal should always transcend our present achievement. Our reach must exceed our grasp. We should never settle comfortably into our present level of development, even if it is an advanced stage. Even to be moral, we must strive to be holy. To be holy, we must strive to be Divine.

There are great inherent benefits in the design of reincarnation, but to achieve these benefits we must struggle to go beyond it. Otherwise the immense power of ignorance, of egoism, of Maya in each individual lifetime, or embodiment, will smother us in new waves of delusion and soul‑forgetfulness and we shall be absorbed in sense and worldly experience for their own sake all over again—again and again.

Reincarnation can be fulfilled only by our trying to break out of its power—namely, by seeking resurrection. Once we receive the grace to discover that reincarnation is the great law of moral and spiritual evolution, we have to direct our energy toward the goal of reincarnation, which is—freedom, liberation—in a word, Resurrection. While moving consciously toward the state of resurrection we can then make the most of the reincarnation process. Otherwise, not.

Some wish to go on reincarnating, “adding,” as they say, optimistically, “new experiences” all the time. The trouble is that each new birth becomes a law unto itself, obliterates the past, ignores the thought or reminder of reincarnation, and is totally absorbed in present moments. With each lifetime, we become dangerously subject to the terrible forces of Maya, of Nature, of the perils of the embodied existence, and of the ego that enthrones itself magisterially behind the barricades … and then suffer, grope, and stumble our way forward, not necessarily in a straight line, by any means.

On the contrary, once we become aware that reincarnation is the law of life, the Great Law, as it is sometimes called, we should exert our energies to overcoming reincarnation as soon as possible. When the hand of Nature’s design has been revealed we should not have to wait before taking appropriate action. A glimpse of reincarnation should motivate us at once towards Resurrection … not toward more and more reincarnation. The latter, in truth, if sought for its own sake becomes a mere extension and perpetuation of our ordinary appetite for sense experience, carried forward on a vaster scale.

To those who wish to reincarnate forever, therefore, in an “infinite” universe, we remind them that the infinite universe they wish to know, is the infinity of sense experience only. There is no end to this. No end to karma, causation, sensory multiplicity, the endless wheel of becoming, no end to desire and its inherent pain, no end to the ego’s capacity for self—and more self-indulgence. It is, in the end, a rationalization of egoism that hungers for more incarnation for its own sake, eschewing the call of the Absolute, and an end to karma and suffering.

We want more than becoming—we want Being. For it is Being that we are. The soul itself is Being, the soul is the Infinite that we want to experience, not the “universe.” We have migrated enough. Let us move from migration to meditation—meditation on the soul. From reincarnation to renewal.

First reincarnation through countless forms, then resurrection through ever‑ascending forms. First transmigration of the soul, then transformation of the soul into the likeness of itself. First, metempsychosis,** then moksha—freedom.

In resurrection caterpillars become butterflies, men become gods. We keep the same outer form but change our consciousness. The change is within, is internal, is spiritual. The resurrection—ours as well as Christ’s—is of the soul. The body is not resurrected. Our butterfly form is represented by an ascent of vision and a regeneration of mind. Now we are caterpillars, inching our way through life; tomorrow we are butterflies or moths winging into the flame—but a cool, divine flame that will not destroy, but rather transform us into the Divine. Now we have the mind of the flesh, tomorrow the mind of Spirit. It is one or the other. It must always be the one or the other.

Now we are the dead—tomorrow we awake. Let this be the last year of our death.

Then, we shall go from Generation to Regeneration. From Sexuality to Spirituality. From Division to Unity. From Slavery to Mastery. From Bondage to Freedom. From Fear to Fearlessness.

From the Unreal to the Real.
From Darkness to Light.
From Death to Immortality.^‡

 See also Words of Wisdom: Christ, Reincarnation.

AWAKENING TO RESURRECTION

By Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan

This month in Christian lands the great festival of Easter is observed, when one may both celebrate the spring season and commemorate the Resurrection of Christ—a celebration of both Spring and Spirit.

The symbolism of the Resurrection also is explainable in terms of there being two, not one Christianity: the esoteric and the popular. (This is true, of course, of every religion.) Popular Christianity—the nonmystical religion—interprets the events of the Bible literally. The esoteric or mystical religion of Christianity interprets the same events allegorically or symbolically. Enlightened metaphysical groups have always seen in Christ’s suffering, martyrdom, and resurrection, a spiritual significance only, and have dwelt on that exclusively.       

So was Christ’s resurrection of the physical body, as Christians often claim? Even if it took place, there is no special significance for us as spiritual seekers since it becomes, to speak frankly, a psychic feat, a show of occult power. After the Sermon on the Mount, the doctrine of Christ’s physical resurrection strikes us as a great irrelevance. Since all of Christ’s moral teachings are geared to a lessening and overcoming of the body-and-ego domination of the mind, the great symbolism of his last days—which has so transfixed the imagination of the world—lies precisely in his demonstration of the manner we are to free ourselves of the body and the body’s control. And that is by sacrifice, by surrender to the divine will in the Gethsemanes of our own experience. If we can pass these tests successfully we will be reborn—resurrected—in a new spiritual consciousness. It is the Soul, in short, that is raised from the death-consciousness of the body’s life and the mind’s tragic identification with it.

Thus, when Christ declared, “I am the resurrection and the life,” the “I” that is speaking is not the body’s "I," not the self of the physical entity—for that “I” had been purged away and no longer had any substantial existence. The “I” that is speaking is the spiritual consciousness of a realized soul; it is the voice of the Soul itself, which, even as the words were spoken, had experienced a new and regenerated consciousness. The “glad tidings” that Mary Magdalene announced is the demonstration of the Soul’s conquest of the body and the knowledge of its eternal separation from body-consciousness. Christ’s soul, her soul, our souls—His victory is a victory for all humanity. Therefore, it is not the body that ascends, it is the Soul that ascends. The body is not resurrected. Rather, the body is the tomb out of which the Soul is resurrected.

But how to awaken! How to be resurrected from this death consciousness? We are like the dead who do not know they be dead, like dreamers dreaming a terrible tale of loss and wandering unaware they are dreaming. For in truth our bondage is only a dream, our ignorance only an illusion. But what agony we must endure before the dream breaks, before the illusion fades.

Nature—that is to say, the life of the self-loving ego within us in all its phases—must be crucified on the cross of our self‑immolation, our willing sacrifice of our ego‑life. Then will come the resurrection of the Soul out of the tomb of the now conquered body‑consciousness. It is in this context that one apprehends the profound symbolism of Christ's life, its eternal message for humanity.  

“You must be born again,” says Christ. Rebirth—spiritual rebirth—is Resurrection. It can take place now. We do not have to wait.  

And Sacrifice is the way.

See also Easter and the Law of Being, FROM REINCARNATION TO RESURRECTION and the Words of Wisdom: Christ, Reincarnation. 

APRIL, THE CRUELLEST MONTH?

In the northern hemisphere and temperate zones the real year begins in the spring and ends with spring when the year's cycle is rounded out. In April the year is reborn. We, too, hope to be reborn. For men and women, also, have their spring—not the spring of their youth but the spring of their spirit. Though we are part of Nature, natural creatures, we are primarily the vehicle of Spirit, spiritual beings. That is our true nature and essence and it is there that we shall discover the meaning of life on Earth.

When spring comes for us, we are often unprepared—we still linger in winter, so frozen, locked-in, benumbed and wintered have our souls become. We postpone our destiny even as the moment of our greatness arrives—the spring of our ambition. We scarcely recognize the hour for which we have been long preparing as we linger still, and hold back, and rationalize, in the long winter of our discontent and self-reproach. Some respond, but many do not—perhaps cannot. For many, the spring is a painful time of year.

"April is the cruellest month," wrote T. S. Eliot at the beginning of his famous poem “The Waste Land,” a title which stood for the barren, lifeless condition of man's life—in any age—when he has lost touch with his higher centers of consciousness. But the Waste Land of the 20th century became for Eliot merely a symbol or allegory of the inner Waste Land of our lives after we have cut ourselves off from Spirit. 

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

April and lilacs and desire and spring rain become the forces that stir the dull roots of the dead land—the dead land of our unregenerate consciousness—and make the dweller in the Waste Land restless and unhappy, resisting the spring, turning away from the first premonitions of rebirth. April is the cruellest month because it awakens what had comfortably slept in ignorance, unawareness and spiritual death all these years—namely, our souls. The spring rain is the symbol of new life, a regenerative influence pouring suddenly into the dry and arid wasteland of our habitual consciousness. But we shrink from the burden; we resist the call to turn from our destiny. The winter at least had kept us sheltered—and forgetful... living on in our confined and lightless paths. The lilacs symbolize the blossoms of new birth, flowering new life, which April, the spring month of awakening, has cruelly brought to birth in our hearts—but to what purpose?

Has April been a cruel month for us again this year? Has it once again bred lilacs out of the dead land, again mixed memory and desire, again stirred dull roots with spring rain? Will we turn away once again and embrace the Waste Land, calling it our own country, thinking that winter at least kept us warm, feeding our little life with a few morsels of nourishment? And, after all, did we need very much?

Eliot’s View Corroborated by Others
T. S. Eliot's view of human life has precedence in the teachings of all the great sages and prophets of history. Plato, for example, in Book VII of his Republic, dramatized a similar vision of life in the celebrated Allegory of the Cave passage. In this sequence Socrates, the realized soul, is describing to a friend his conception of the human condition and makes use of symbol and allegory for his purpose because the truth he is trying to communicate transcends the limitations of both reason and the sense consciousness.

What Plato calls the world of the cave, Eliot calls the Waste Land; but obviously they are describing the same state of delusion, darkness, and ignorance. Buddha constantly alludes to this condition—the condition of all humanity in their natural state—as one of sleep, as do Shankara and Krishna. St. Paul thought of it implicitly as the realm of darkness and death. Ramakrishna said that without divine grace man was helpless, a slave to his senses and desires. The moment we cease thinking of God, he said, we are bound. But what, then, is the plight of those in the wasteland, in the cave, in the great world we inhabit, who have not even begun to think of God?

Christ, too, of course, corroborates what so many others have perceived. In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 8, we read of the disciple who had been picked by Christ to be one of his followers, but who, hesitating to plunge whole-heartedly into the spiritual life as a close companion of the Master (as many of us also would have done), pleaded that he had to bury his father first. Christ replied, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead." This hard answer has puzzled many, but clearly it means what it says. In effect he was saying to the new disciple, "There are people who are dead physically, ready for burial; there are others who are dead spiritually—your friends and relatives, all the people around you who are, with few exceptions, dead themselves. Let them—they who are living in death—bury the dead. You follow me, for you, I perceive, are awakened; and by following me you will awaken completely."

It is a terrible commentary on the natural human condition before the Divine Spirit has touched it. Christ is saying that in our natural state, even in the society of men, we are dead, cave-doomed, deluded utterly, our souls a wasteland—and that only by the direct influence of the Divine Spirit upon human life can we begin to awaken to the real life that is our inheritance.

So one more spring returns—but have we saved our souls? Glimpsed our own Resurrection on the day we celebrated another man's? Moved even slightly out of the fatal circuit of the wheel of karma and reincarnation toward freedom from this law and conquest over this compulsion? Or, are we still as bound as ever—and the spring a rebirth of the year, only?

When will we finally awaken and allow the life-giving rain of the teachings of these spiritual masters to soak into the ground of our being and stir dull roots to generate new growth in our Consciousness?

For more on this subject, see also FROM REINCARNATION TO RESURRECTION, and  From reincarnation to resurrection, continued, and Words of Wisdom: Christ, Reincarnation.

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