Celebrating Easter at Home!
Well, this IS a first, isn’t it? Millions of people
celebrate Easter worldwide but this year our celebrations will take place at
home. For Jesus’ disciples that first Easter Sunday was a little bit like ours
this Sunday. They were sequestered indoors, hiding out just like us. Though the
gospel accounts of that Sunday are divided as to whether Jesus appeared to the
disciples on that day let’s just say that he did. If so, we could say that the
day for them “ended well!”
And so it can for us, too. The inability to celebrate in
customary ways offers us an opportunity to look more deeply at what Easter
represents to us—in our lives right now—under the virus cloud. This year we won’t
be distracted by Easter bunnies, socializing, festive Spring outfits and
sumptuous banqueting.
Easter is a celebration of victory. It is a celebration of
life, of soul-immortality. Isn’t that worth being reminded of right now as our
bodies are in hiding from this world-wide pandemic-virus? Even Spring, which
while cyclical, returns each year reminds us that “this (winter) too will pass.”
Yet, I admit that the first Easter took place a long, long
time ago. It has worn its celebratory robes well but they are worn nonetheless.
There’s a mountain of tradition that keeps it going but the momentum behind a
religious holiday celebrated worldwide by millions all too easily descends to
the valley of the mundane: I mean, after all, chocolate bunnies? Money stuffed
in plastic eggs? Hot cross buns? How droll!
There must be more to it than that. Of course, there IS!
Most readers of this article are students or disciples of Paramhansa Yogananda
(author of "Autobiography of a Yogi"). In Yogananda’s famous life
story there are several accounts of persons being raised from the dead and
saints appearing in physical form after death.
While past generations took this
to be a celebration of the deathlessness of the ego and physical body, it is
easier for us, now, to see it for its more subtle meaning: consciousness
survives the death of form. Death imposes no finality to the soul. To quote
Yogananda, “Man is a soul and has a body (temporarily).”
I’d say that THIS truth is both worth celebrating AND is
TIMELY given the threat to our bodies in this worldwide pandemic. You see
that’s the interesting aspect of the great spiritual teachers: their message is
not so much different as it is a reminder of basic truths. The emphasis each
one has may appear to be different, seen from different angles of time and
culture, but their “view” of the mountain top is the same: we are children of
God; we are immortal; we are made in the divine image of the Creator. Put
another way, in winter the mountain top has a mantle of pure white snow; in
summer, green, lush trees; in spring, flowers; in fall, a riot of colorful
leaves. But it is always, in every season, still the top of the mountain.
Just as our past slips into the darkness of the subconscious
mind and just as the future is veiled from us, why should we get confused if
our immortal Self is at least equally hidden from our rather distracted gaze.
To quote from Chapter 12 of "Autobiography of a Yogi": A noted chemist once crossed swords with Sri
Yukteswar. The visitor would not admit the existence of God since science has
devised no means of detecting Him.
“So
you have inexplicably failed to isolate the Supreme Power in your test tubes!”
Master’s gaze was stern. “I recommend an unheard-of experiment. Examine your
thoughts unremittingly for twenty-four hours. Then wonder no longer at God’s
absence.”
Jesus’ crucifixion symbolizes the cost of this “pearl of
great price.” It is the dissolution of the ego: our soul’s misidentification
with the body and its fawning, obsequious attendant, the personality. To examine
one’s thoughts uncritically is the advice of “Self-inquiry” given to all of us
by the great saints and sages of East and West. “Know thy Self.”
We do not know the Self, the immortal Atman (soul), for the simple
reason we haven’t bothered to look. We are busy with day to day life and, right
now, we are laying low to avoid the pandemic.
Another experiment to try is to count how many times in one period
of time (minutes to hours) we say or think “I.” We constantly refer to “I” but
we don’t know who “I” is. If you “stare” at this “I” (meaning if you silently
observe “I”) you find “I” has no name, no form, no nuttin’! There are no
attributes to this guy “I.” God replied to Moses when Moses asked who the voice
in the burning bush was: “I AM who I AM.”
Jesus’ last days of his life were extremely dramatic but not all
great saints, saviours, or avatars model for us such a dramatic pathway to I AM.
Each has a song to sing and so do we. But to peel away the layers of our
attachment and the burden of our past actions and identifications is every bit
as arduous a task as Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In our lives, we are
generally not ready for anything quite so challenging as that. For us, Jesus said
comfortingly: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil (the challenges) thereof.”
We have, witness our virus challenge, our own, tests, trials, and crucifixions.
Even as this pandemic is worldwide, our response to it and its impact upon our
health is individual. Customized karma: just for me!
So, let’s turn to what we can learn from the Easter story? For
starters, Jesus was willing to go through what he had to do. It’s not that he a
danced a jig at the prospect (of his crucifixion) but after saying “I don’t
mind if I don’t have to go through this” he quickly surrendered to the
will of the Father. So it’s ok if we have doubts, fears, reservations about
doing what we have to do or what will happen. But, in the end, if we say YES TO
(OUR) LIFE then we will have access to the power of grace to do what we must
do.
Next, he forgave his torturers in the midst of his body’s agonies.
While Yogananda taught that Jesus’ suffering was primarily for the ignorance
and future karma of his antagonists, the Bible does say that Jesus cried out
from the cross to his guru (Elias) “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” If nothing else
can be understood from this, Jesus must have at least endured an experience of
psychic separation from God before expiring on the cross. It would seem to me
that such separation was at least, and likely far more, painful than his
wounds.
Why is that? Because a true saviour, an avatar, is not identified with
the physical body and can transcend its sensory messages at will. I suspect
Jesus accepted the body’s agonies as part of his willing sacrifice and
acceptance of the karma of his disciples. It makes no point to say that he had
a choice because “I and my Father are One” suggests that what was experienced
was what was given to him, so to speak. [This is not rational; it is intuitive.
It simply IS.]
Our founder, Swami Kriyananda, had a lifetime of inspired service
in musical composition, writing, and counsel. Yet he encountered tremendous
opposition from those whom he loved and respected. Despite the hurt, he never
descended to hate and always affirmed love and forgiveness.
Jesus’ resurrection that followed the crucifixion was not some extra-credit
bonus that he got for his efforts. It was the necessary, even logical,
consequence of his acceptance of the crucifixion. Because his physical body was
tortured and killed it was at least logical that his victory would express
itself by a resurrected body. For us, then, our victories will be carved from our
own karma. (Jesus did not have personal karma. As a true son of God, he took on
the karma of others.)
It is an error on the part of some believers to take from his
resurrection the belief that our bodies will someday be resurrected from graves
at the “second coming of Christ.” It is an error, too, to imagine that for all
eternity we sit in heaven in our bodies praising God but otherwise retaining
our egos, our separation from God. Christian mystics experienced mystical union
or marriage of their soul with the great Light of God. Their testimony, not
that of theologians, shows us that this is the true and perfect union that is
our destiny.
Easter then is a dramatic reminder of the “truth that shall make
us free.” We are NOT these bodies and egos. Let us, in contemplating the story
of Easter, affirm the truth that is represented by that story. If our
celebration takes the form of silent, inner communion—seeking the formless,
eternal Christ-like Self within—Jesus’ life and sacrifice will be honored in
the best way possible. No amount of Easter eggs or chocolate bunnies can ever
replace this eternal yet ever timely message.
If for the sake of young children the eggs and bunnies must be
present, perhaps you could also have story time and share with them the “greatest
story ever told.” It is also your story, theirs, and mine. It is the story of
how the soul returns to the heaven of God-consciousness by attunement to the
Divine Will. While the body may succumb to a virus our Spirit can remain,
hands-outstretched in gratitude, devotion, and joy.
May this Easter be the most glorious of all,
Nayaswami Hriman
