15-03-2022
All religions are different and within each religion different denominations and sects are distinct from one another. In this secular age, all religious beliefs are losing meaning, significance, and relevance. And yet, beyond its diverse religiosity, mythology, and cosmology, in religion there resides timeless wisdom that unites humanity at home in the universe.
EASTER is a pre-Christianity tradition universally celebrated by different religious traditions with a profound universal spiritual and cosmological significance. The fact that Easter is on a variable date, different each year, is proof that it is not an anniversary.
Around this time the Persians celebrated the death of their savior, Mithra, the Egyptians theirs, Osiris; the Greeks mourned for their slain Adonis, the Babylonians for their Tammuz (son of Ishtar, whose name some speculate is the origin of the term “Easter”).
Even the Christ-rejecting Jews celebrated around this time, for originally their Passover and the Christian Easter were observed concurrently, until forbidden with the penalty of death by the Emperor Theodosius (347-395 AD). Even in present-day Mexico the Aztecs had their Easter, a festival called Toxcatl, in which they celebrated the death of the god of gods Tezcatlicopa, which was immediately followed by the divine resurrection.
Another remarkable example: The Phrygians (an ancient Indo-European people, initially dwelling in the southern Balkans starting around 8th century BC) celebrated the resurrection of the god, which was hailed by the people as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave, i.e., the physical death. This divine resurrection was celebrated on March 25, reckoned as the vernal equinox by the people.
According to the early Christian author Lucius Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325 AD), who served as an advisor to the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine I, Christ was crucified on March 23rd and resurrected on March 25th.
Thus, Jesus Christ was not the only god to die and then resurrect, nor was he the first to offer (the promise of) immortality. For instance, in ancient Egypt at funeral services the following was recited to the dead:
“Thou hast not gone dying, thou hast gone living to Osiris. As Osiris lives forevermore, so shall he (the dead) also live; as Osiris died not, so shall he also not die; as Osiris perished not, so shall he also not perish.”
The term “Lent” stems from the old English “lencten,” meaning spring. In esoteric cosmologies (of the ancient origin), “spring” signifies the spring of the universe.
The death of the divine signifies the final materialization of the Spirit (cosmic life principle), the completion of the involutionary or genetic cycle (the “Genesis”) of Creation; while the resurrection of the divine signifies the new beginning of the evolutionary or epigenetic cycle of Creation, in which matter becomes increasingly more spiritualized. This involutionary-evolutionary or genetic-epigenetic cycle can be observed in Nature.
The 40 weekdays of Lent signifies the four cyclic planes of cosmic involution through which Spirit becomes materialized, which also foretells or “divines” the advent of the four cyclic planes of cosmic evolution.
Translated to the individual human term, the death signifies not the physical but the spiritual death, which implies the identification of the spiritual self with the physical self, which is what the ego is – the “I” resident in and identified with the body; while the crucifixion signifies the death of the ego and hence the ending of physical identification of the spiritual self. Thus, the resurrection signifies the beginning of re-spiritualization and of evolution or epigenetic development of the self.
Therefore, Easter is a happy and joyous occasion not merely because it is the day of the resurrection of Christ (for the Christians) but because, much more importantly, it signifies the possibility of a life that is evolutionary, free from the physical or material identification that imprison us in the delusion of the finite self.
The Buddha taught us that life is suffering (meaning “existential suffocation”) precisely because we are uniquely significant beings imbued with the infinite deluded to confine ourselves in the illusory prison of space-time finitude. And as the Buddha taught us, there is a way out of this self-imprisonment.
Easter is the day of celebrating our common human possibility of emancipation from and freedom toward the Life Triumphant imbued with the infinite and the eternal. Easter is the day of celebrating our uniquely significant participation in the Cosmic Infinite Game that is the Life of the Universe.
Happy Easter, my friends!