The Feast of the Resurrection, "Easter," is no mere Spring fertility rite, nor an anticipation of heaven after death. In celebrating this mystery, we honor the spiritual potential of matter.
We affirm that we take the body with us on the spiritual journey. We proclaim that matter and spirit are a single energy, one field of divine Radiance. For we are not born into bodies life after life as a fall, a punishment, or a karmic flaw. We are here to participate in the spiritual evolution of matter.
Whether we take it as historical fact or symbol, the Resurrection of Jesus reveals the infinite and eternal destiny of our flesh. As the body of Jesus ascended into divine light, so shall we. It is not that souls ascend out of the body, but that the body ascends. In the words of the 2nd Century theologian, St. Athanasius, "God became human so that humanity could become God."
We are made of evolving and ascending matter. We do not become angels: we keep living in bodies until matter is deified, glorified, every particle infused with transcendental consciousness.
Our ever evolving energy should not be called "matter" or "spirit," but given a new name. I call it Radiance. Our radiance synthesizes heaven and earth, the cosmic and the local, in an individualized vessel for universal love, a holographic Resurrection Body. The Resurrection Body includes the Unbounded, the All, in each photon. This is why Christ proclaimed, "I am Alpha and Omega."
The Resurrection of Christ marked an epoch in the history of spiritual teaching. Prior to the Resurrection, humans either celebrated the earth in its perpetual cycles of fertility, or chose the path of the Platonist, the Sunyasi, seeking liberation beyond flesh. One proclaimed, "I exult in physical matter." The other proclaimed, "I am not the body." Many today are stuck in the same dualism.
Surely, if you practice a truly grace-filled sadhana, such as the Transcendental Deep Meditation, or the breath of Sudarshan Kriya, you feel this evolutionary energy, this spiritually scintillating yet sensuous power dance up your spine, blossom from your heart, irradiate each cell, and spill divine electrons into the atmosphere, to raise the vibrations of the planet.
Surely you know, you are not here to divide the soul from its skin by inner combat. You are not here to be 50% pure and 50% impure, half spirit, half matter, wrestling with God to see which half will win the war. That is a faded and bygone vision.
You are here to be 200%: fully God and fully Human, as Jesus was. You are 100% God in each photon of your flesh, each smell, taste, sight, sound and touch a sacrament of divine Presence.
"Therefor, glorify God in your body." (1 Cor. 6:20)
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Painting by William Blake, 'Christ as the Redeemer,' Watercolor on paper, 1808, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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