The Realization Behind the Resurrection

[otherbrother]

The Realization Behind the Resurrection



A sermon was going on in my head at the same time our minister delivered her Easter Sermon. When I did catch her main points it was uncanny how well her sermon and the one in my head matched. But the sermon in my head offered something a bit different and, to me at least, a little closer to the main truth, the one that works best for me in a wide variety of life situations.



In retrospect, I believe the sermon in my head was delivered by my spirit. I recently took to calling it my Connected Self because it is an aspect of me connected to a deeper, more highly interconnected, reality than the physical reality of my earthly existence.



The outer sermon was about how the resurrected Christ was more good than great, in the sense that He offered intimate support to His first generation disciples and to us disciple-like followers ever since. In contrast to the great miracles before the crucifixion and the great miracle of His resurrection, his presence after the resurrection was more like a non-sensational visit from a helpful friend than an heroic miracle worker. The spectacular holy honeymoon was over and the even holier marriage had begun. It is a loving and uplifting relationship that continues to this day in the lives of Christ’s followers.



What a good sermon! It is more spiritually empowering to have a spiritual helpmate than it would be to have a supernatural rescuer.



And yet the sermon in my head went one step further towards sustainable spiritual empowerment. The sermon in my head had something in common with an important scene in the story and movie The Wizard of Oz. Oz informs each of Dorothy’s sojourners that the empowering gifts he gave each of them were in them all along. They just didn’t realize it.



And so I come to one of the main takeaways of the sermon that my Connected Self delivered to me this Easter:

Jesus Christ death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection didn’t give us anything we didn’t already have …

except our awareness of it.



What is “it?” What was JC showing us during all the drama?



He was showing us that humans have a spirit that goes on beyond us (as individuals) in time, and connects, via love and other forms of spiritual sensitivity, beyond the simple location of our physical existence.



In response to the sermon in my head, I did a little mind experiment. Since the word and concept of “spirit” is derived from the word and concept of “breath,” I imagined my breathing interacting with the breathing of everyone in the pews this Easter Sunday. The experience yielded a result in the form of a spiritual sensation highly similar to the feeling one gets while taking communion when one’s heart and soul is really “into it.”



My overall takeaway was that the realization behind the resurrection story is that we, like Jesus Christ, our teacher by example, each have a spirit.



The ostensible hope (of a rich and meaningful existence) and victory (over sin and death) comes from the perspective of our physical selves, traditionally called “the flesh.” Flesh manipulates. It only understands overcoming despair and loss.



If, on the other hand, we come to acknowledge, know/understand, befriend, and utilize our own spirits, we begin to see something different than hope and victory, something more sustainable than simple hope and victory. Hope and victories come and go. Spiritual reality doesn’t ride that roller coaster.



Granted, that’s way easier said than done because as physical beings, notwithstanding our significant spiritual potential, we are nailed to an earthly and earthy reality. It’s not easy to be in it and beyond it at the same time. The key seems to be to develop a consciousness of a deeper reality.



This consciousness, like the sermon delivered in my head, comes automatically once we get to know our spirits or Connected Selves. Which comes first? The deep consciousness or the recognition of, and relationship with, one’s spirit? It really doesn’t matter because the two naturally work together.



While flesh manipulates, spirit orchestrates. It transcends despair and loss, even as it includes it. Nothing is overcome except the unnecessarily high resistance and friction of identifying too much with the physical aspect of our being.



What it really really means to be Easter People is to know our own spirit and to learn how to let it guide us in our lives. Christ did. We can too.

 

[wil]

In Charles Fillmore's Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, resurrection is the spiritualization of the body through the elevation of thought from material to spiritual consciousness. It is not a one-time event after death, but a continuous process of overcoming mortal limitations and reclaiming the divine perfection inherent in every cell of the organism.

 

[otherbrother]

In Charles Fillmore's Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, resurrection is the spiritualization of the body through the elevation of thought from material to spiritual consciousness. It is not a one-time event after death, but a continuous process of overcoming mortal limitations and reclaiming the divine perfection inherent in every cell of the organism.

Interesting

 

[otherbrother]

resurrection is the spiritualization of the body through the elevation of thought from material to spiritual consciousness.

Seems the process of “spiritualization” begins while still living if we accept the help of our own spirit to increase our “spiritual consciousness.” My phenomenological exercise of being the breathing of the congregants in our church was an attempt (and I feel a successful one) to increase “spiritual consciousness.” Perhaps a steady diet of similar practices will make the transition in the afterlife go smoother, quicker? Preparation for the “Biggest Game?”

 

[wil]

Some people call it faith and prayer.

 

[otherbrother]

Some people call it faith and prayer.

Yes, the active forms of faith involve spirit. Mere cognitive/belief aspect of a “faith,” not so much.

 

[otherbrother]

Wil and Tony, I wrote this insight about associating Christ’s and Isaiah’s theology with enlightenment, which is spiritually empowering, which also means invites one’s own spirit to take the regular “Concrete Self’s” reigns occasionally. My regular self is but a horse that my Connected Self rides. But a “mere” vehicle that is not so “mere” because it is an interface with the whole physical domain that is being spiritually reclaimed in what I call the “Grand Reclamation Process.” Traditionally called “doing God’s (G-d’s) work”:

Thinking a lot this Easter about psycho-sociocultural events leading up to Christ's crucifixion. One important piece of the puzzle came from something Christ said on the cross "Forgive them for they know not what they are doing." Our usual takeaway is "forgive," and that certainly is not wrong. But what if we focus on “not understanding”? Then it seems that Christ's theology was very much akin to the Eastern concept of "enlightenment." The masses were exposed to the potentially empowering enlightenment of understanding spirit and spirituality. But although exposing them to it was a loving act, they were too unenlightened to get it, and it backfired. I recently dreamed I was about to shoot an intruder in my dream, when something made me realize he was not the harmful outsider I took him to be. I laid down my weapon as the dream ended. The intruder was my own spirit (angel assigned to the life of Darrell). My normal concrete self or aspect of me fears and guards against the unknown spiritual realities (deeper zones of overall reality). But I had just enough lucidity to face and not merely defensively react against my Connected, Spiritual, Self or aspect). As my spirit reentered my body I found a degree of acceptance and understanding. I am usually like the unenlightened masses thinking my physical existence is more or less all there is to me and to life in general, even though I may give lip service to the "other side."
Perhaps something like an open esotericism like the Buddha seemed to do would vet the persons close enough to understanding or enlightenment, and then gradually teach others over a much longer period of time? But then esotericism tends to stay in the hands of a few, and the passion to share it with others gets forgotten over time. So, I can't fault Christ for casting pearls before swine, because he sensed the great potential for enlightenment and wanted to give that gift to the masses. And even though it blew up, he did manage to plant a dormant seed that might grow later when the world is finally ready to understand spirit and spirituality. BTW Isaiah (IsaiahS?) started he enlightenment theology. Christ carried on the newly emerging tradition.
The Good News is the prospect of enlightenment. The resurrection is the realization of our true, deeper, and more open nature as being breath instead of beings who breathe. I am 500 million breaths so far.
Happy Easter
———
Notice that I equate enlightenment with the concept of the Concrete Self getting to know the Connected Self, in which Concrete Self is tethered to “flesh” and matter, but Connected Self is spirit.
The Hindu concept of reincarnation is tweaked by the way I see the metaphysics: I/me doesn’t get recycled, but “my” spirit goes from one Concrete Self to another. “My spirit” has known other lives, but these are not “my” (Concrete Self’s) lives, except by spiritual association.
Interesting to think how this view may alter how one explains incarnational “wandering” . Does a given spirit or “Messenger” (Tony/Bahai) have a certain degree of efficacy and efficiency at the Grand Reclamation Project, in comparison to the efficacy and efficiency of other spirits/Messengers? Super effective spirits don’t need to ride as many horses (different lives) to complete their assignment?

This, from a previous thread (Do we have a spirit?) is related to my take on what enlightenment is:

Our veils hide us from that submission and humility, we try to steer away from any calamity, not knowing the bounty within.

In line with my jingle: “Flesh manipulates, Spirit orchestrates.
Spirit can act at a spooky distance (to quote Einstein). Flesh can’t. Even good old “love” is acting at a spooky distance. And has the potential to transform flesh into a state much more responsive to spirit.

 

[wil]

Concrete self, higher self, our "I am" are they different in your mind?

I am usually like the unenlightened masses thinking my physical existence is more or less all there is to me and to life in general, even though I may give lip service to the "other side."

I think we "dont understand" that invoking your higher self, your "I am" makes the above sn affirmation.

 

[otherbrother]

Concrete self, higher self, our "I am" are they different in your mind?


I think we "dont understand" that invoking your higher self, your "I am" makes the above sn affirmation.

Only different as I tend to see them. Spirit probably transcends but includes flesh, the latter being an illusion relative to the deeper and truer reality. But as an incarcerated being, the illusion of physical reality tends to leave me waffling on that issue (of difference between Concrete Self and Connected Self).

This excerpt from chapter five of Getting to Know One’s Connected Self (book in progress) similarly shows how I am torn between a modern era psychological explanation of spirituality and a metaphysical explanation that both a traditional era and some future era is/are comfortable with:

Is the Empty Chair Empty?



I had two more recent dreams that support the premise of this book. But there are also two different ways of interpreting these dreams. One of the ways is metaphysical. This book accepts the metaphysical explanation of a spirit interacting with a physical being. The other way of interpreting these, and other, dreams is psychological.

Both can work equally well. A useful psychological way of interpreting these dreams comes from Gestalt Therapy. According to the theory behind Gestalt Therapy, the dream characters are mental projections that, ideally, we should attempt to psychologically “reclaim.” This would lead to a better integrated personality and the sense of wholeness that accompanies it.

It is also plausible that BOTH the metaphysical re-entry and the psychological reclamation processes are going on at the same time. The metaphysical explanation need not be at odds with the psychological explanation.

With these two lenses in place, let’s look at my most recent instructive dreams. I suppose that by this time you might want to rename this book Darrell’s Book of Dreams! Here we go again!

The first dream happened a night or two before the second. In that first dream, I, the main character, was walking quietly past glass sliding doors of someone’s bedroom where they were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake them up.

I guess I failed because in the process, I did wake up. And rather dramatically at that, with a cramp in my right leg’s calf muscle.

Although I did not have a specific recall of the positioning of the dream characters laying in a bed, it seems more likely that they would be sleeping with their feet, rather than their heads, nearest the glass doors. Those dream characters seemed to be a representation of my wife and me sleeping in bed. It was another example of a semi-lucid incorporation of backstage events with events on the dream drama’s stage. The Connected Self could have been in the process of entering my Concrete Self near the foot of my bed. Did it reenter my calf muscle through the glass doors?

I strongly suspect that to be the case. Instead of the knitting sensation I experienced during my previous astral projection experience, I had a knottingsensation! Perhaps the energy surge occurring during the re-entry process was just enough to trigger the muscle’s predilection for knotting due to dehydration or other physical factors.

In terms of my dreaming mind’s level of lucidity, I appeared to being oh so close to realizing that my spirit was part of me. I could sense the Connected Self and the Concrete Self being close together. But I still wasn’t aware that they both were part of me. The dream character was still a relative stranger to the person named Darrell who was lying in bed. The Connected Self “stranger” was lurking about the familiar me, my Concrete Self. So, the reentry process was rather rough, resulting in spasms.

Lucidity progress seemed to have occurred in the second dream. I was walking with a supportive guide, a bearded black man, when I was telling him about my astral projection experiences. Before I could tell him the main part of my story about reentering my body, he said that to me. It was like someone stealing a joker’s punch line. I told him “That was what I was going to say. Did it happen to you too?”

The dream ended there. No spasms. No intense feelings. The reentry process went easier and smoother than in the dream a night or two earlier. I appeared to have a semi-lucid awareness that my Connected Self (in this case, the bearded black man) was part of me, not merely a stranger lurking about as in the first dream. I was more trusting of my spirit, and more trusting of the process of reentry.

This composure reminds me of the main goal of the Tibetan Book of the Dead: to prepare us for a calm transition to the other side as we die. The authors of that spiritual text appeared to think we can avoid unnecessary reincarnations (“wandering”) if we can understand and accept the transition at the moment it occurs. That feels like the Super Bowl of lucidity and integration. Lucid at the very end. Walking hand in hand with one’s spirit. Aware of one’s True nature as spiritual being, connected to God.

Interesting (and seemingly significant), that my Connected Self was telling me that the higher-ups approved of my writing text that I was trying to put together from disjointed pages, not having a great deal of luck. So, my dream guide seemed quite encouraging, uplifting. I was being reassured that I would eventually be able to collect the thoughts worth expressing.

The alternate interpretation of the two dreams is that the characters in the dream are mental projections of parts/aspects of me, not metaphysical beings or things. Gestalt therapy uses an empty chair as a prop for imagining that they are talking to someone there. That “someone” is later discovered to be a projection of themselves. If all goes well, the projection eventually gets “reclaimed” by the person who is going along with the little psychodrama. The person “owns” the previously disowned part of themselves and now is freer to have the emotions associated with the projection instead of those emotions having them.

Perhaps the imaginary being in the chair represents the anger that the person was afraid to claim as their own. If so, the imaginary person would probably do a bit of angry backtalk. The person in therapy would have to confront the angry person/projection, until such time that the Gestalt Therapy participant becomes aware that the anger is actually a part of themselves.

The same kind of mental projection that goes on in the empty chair technique goes on in a dream. Given this interpretation, the character lurking in my first dream was a part of me that I either disowned (perhaps due to negative qualities I didn’t want to own up to) or simply hadn’t discovered yet about myself.

It could even be a quite positive quality but one that would lead to me doing things I have been afraid to commit to. With power comes responsibility. Owning one’s responsibility to develop and use a certain gift could bring consequences that the dreamer is not yet willing to forgo. Perhaps an inconvenient truth that rocks the boat too much? Articulating truths that others are not yet willing to accept has caused many people throughout history to be persecuted. JC was one of them. The masses could not grasp the true, spiritual, meaning of his teachings. His attempt at spreading enlightenment turned out to be a bridge too far, although a seed may have been planted for enlightenment sometime in the future, during a “second coming” of the spiritual message.

My first dream could have been a dress rehearsal or trial run for the second dream. Perhaps it planted the seed that would sprout in a future dream, akin to the hoped-for second coming of Christ’s enlightenment project. In my second dream, the guide beside me gave me the affirmations I needed. He sweetened the pot to help me feel that the benefits of me submitting my insights (symbolized by the pages in disarray) or gifts to others outweighed the cost of rocking the boat or failing to deliver. He gave me courage, encouraged me.

And so, my mental projection of the positive quality or worthwhile insight was not pushed away. There was no lurking, only walking side by side with it. When he said what I was going to say, it was either a full reclaiming of the mental projection of my own gift or was awe-fully (infused with awe) close to it.

In one dream of mine from many years ago, my anger-self and me fully integrated, in that his breathing and mine became one. This was a feeling. In the most recent dream, it was a sharing of thoughts and experiences. Perhaps not quite as fully integrated as the feeling of unity. But I’ll count it as good progress anyways.

If a dream is analogous to imagining aspects of ourselves onto empty chairs and does not really involve a physical or metaphysical “other side,” then the human development of increased personality integration could be explained by a strictly secular form of humanism.



Finally Getting around to the Title of this Chapter



But if the projections are either fully or partially aided via manifestations from another dimension, then a kind of “Holy Humanism” would seem to best explain the healing and increased integration that occurs during these nighttime psychodrama sessions, what I call my “Night School.”

It is my belief that the agents in my dreams are assisted by something from a qualitatively different origin that is of another dimension. Some of the healing and integration process seems attributable to energies entering this physical dimension from some other dimension too deep to clearly discern from here. I think we have an individual spirit assigned to each of us. That spirit assists us in healing the brokenness of ourselves and the brokenness of the world.

This belief is highly similar to the notion that we have a friend in Jesus. JC was a highly spiritual person among us. He was/is an analogue of a helpful spirit. The Jesus that Christians worship could well be a powerful symbol of our individual spirits. A personal relationship with Jesus is a way for some to get to know their Connected Self.

But Jesus can’t just be a one-size-fits-all spirit if he is to meet us where we are. Jesus, like God the Father, needs to be individualized according to our ability to receive Him. An individual spirit is but an extension of Jesus and God. It in no way is a replacement. And in no way is it contradictory to the worship of Jesus and God if we should choose to get to know and work with our individual spirit.

Secular humanism may well suffice, but I feel that the process is a bit too mystical for that to be the whole picture. Not to mention (which, as I said before, means to mention!) the fact that I am accumulating experiences that evidence some sort of energetic movement out and back into the body. I choose to believe that there is an actual other self, a Connected Self, that helps regular old me. It is a way that God stays in touch. And even if I’m wrong, it is at least a meaningful myth that works for me, helps me actualize my spiritual potential.

 

[otherbrother]

spiritualization of the body through the elevation of thought from material to spiritual consciousness.

Fits with metaphysical philosophy’s Idealism, of which I am a believer. Even if that notion is but a projection of my own mind, my mind is the finest tool I have. One worth gazing upon and trying to get to know or “reclaim the projection” . What would be wrong with stumbling upon mindfulness as I hold this philosophical position?
Just discovered online that the modern mirror was invented by a German chemist with the last name of “Liebig.” Yes, one’s mere image reflected in the mirror is not oneself. It is a big lie. But the lie can reveal countenance and other features that come close to who or what I really am. Philosophical Idealism is a worthwhile exercise. Certainly in line with the earlier thread positing “consciousness” to be the ultimate reality. Was that yours? Or lightwithin’s ?

 

[Thomas]

Can I ask ... if the Resurrection never actually happened, would it make any difference to your philosophy?

 

[wil]

Can I ask ... if the Resurrection never actually happened, would it make any difference to your philosophy?

Not my question, not my circus not my monkeys but you know my answer.

Yes, one’s mere image reflected in the mirror is not oneself. It is a big lie.

Reflected being the operative word...have you ever looked at a true mirror? Two mirrors at a 90...when you look you see what others see, still a reflection, still a lie, still not you or your concrete self...but the opening of another view allows opening your mind to the what isnt and what may be.

 

[Thomas]

Not my question, not my circus not my monkeys but you know my answer.

LOL, hi, Wil. Yeah, I know your circus...

 

[Thomas]

... a little closer to the main truth, the one that works best for me in a wide variety of life situations.

I would only comment that we are inclined to see our narrative as the main narrative.

So regard these as disposable comments from another narrative.

In contrast to the great miracles before the crucifixion and the great miracle of His resurrection, his presence after the resurrection was more like a non-sensational visit from a helpful friend than an heroic miracle worker.

Specifically 'His presence', I would say no – His presence as paraklētos transcends both those categories.

I think of 'helpful friend' as anamchara (Gaelic: 'soul friend'), and in a broader context that friend does not have to by physically present, nor necessarily physically 'alive'.

It is more spiritually empowering to have a spiritual helpmate than it would be to have a supernatural rescuer.

Following on from my above comment, a 'spiritual helpmate' is somewhere on the scale of intermediate being between the lowest order of being, and the highest, God. One might consider nature spirits and faeries, daemons or angeloi, as well as archons, powers and principalities – all serve as intermediaries and, in some cases, as paraklētos in the general sense of advocate, helper, comforter or counsel – they can assist, to a greater or lesser degree, but they cannot actually 'save' – only God can.

Again, if one is talking in specifically Christian or Abrahamic terms, one is obliged to acknowledge, or radically dismiss, the distinction between something along the lines of the individual psyche or self, with its psychological states, ideas of a higher/greater and lower/lesser self and so on – and other orders of being and entity.

He was showing us that humans have a spirit that goes on beyond us (as individuals) in time, and connects, via love and other forms of spiritual sensitivity, beyond the simple location of our physical existence.

I am not sure I can agree, on the basis that the people of his day were very much conscious of that? They saw the world differently, and not as we see it today.

And what do you see this spirit as connecting to?

In Jesus' day, and in the mind of the sacred scribes, it was understood the spirits were in and around us, that there were hierarchies of spiritual being, and hierarchies of spiritual entities, and there was movement between the realms.

The idea of resurrection was not unique by any stretch, it was a common trope of Greco-Roman culture. There are specific and unique elements of the Christian understanding of the Resurrection, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.

In response to the sermon in my head, I did a little mind experiment. Since the word and concept of “spirit” is derived from the word and concept of “breath,” I imagined my breathing interacting with the breathing of everyone in the pews this Easter Sunday. The experience yielded a result in the form of a spiritual sensation highly similar to the feeling one gets while taking communion when one’s heart and soul is really “into it.”

Interesting. I would liken this to a communion as something along the lines of a Metta Bhavana practice.

It's not the totality of the Eucharist, but no bad thing for all that. I would point to where that 'breath' originates, and how it is understood – again, in Judaism as in Gentile thinking, there are degrees of 'breath', human and divine.

My overall takeaway was that the realization behind the resurrection story is that we, like Jesus Christ, our teacher by example, each have a spirit.

But in the ancient world, that's generally a given?

The ostensible hope (of a rich and meaningful existence) and victory (over sin and death) comes from the perspective of our physical selves, traditionally called “the flesh.” Flesh manipulates. It only understands overcoming despair and loss.

I'm not sure that's the case, either, to be honest.

Granted, that’s way easier said than done because as physical beings, notwithstanding our significant spiritual potential, we are nailed to an earthly and earthy reality. It’s not easy to be in it and beyond it at the same time. The key seems to be to develop a consciousness of a deeper reality.

I would suggest the ancients had a greater sense of that 'deeper reality' than we commonly do today.

By which I mean, we have become enamoured of, and beguiled by, the chimeric glamour of our technologies. We are more closely nailed to that earthly reality today, which we know and construe in a way that our ancient forbears could but dream of – but it is a construct – and as such it is one that tends to preclude a great deal.

The Ancients' sense of reality is, from our perspective, naive, ignorant and superstitious – and yet we stand so often in awe of native wisdoms. I would not for one moment trade my life for theirs. We are more secure and comfortable than they, but are we happier, or more at ease with ourselves?

This consciousness, like the sermon delivered in my head, comes automatically once we get to know our spirits or Connected Selves. Which comes first? The deep consciousness or the recognition of, and relationship with, one’s spirit? It really doesn’t matter because the two naturally work together.

Is not one's spirit still very much of one's self? is not the 'Connected Self' a projection of that?

While flesh manipulates, spirit orchestrates. It transcends despair and loss, even as it includes it. Nothing is overcome except the unnecessarily high resistance and friction of identifying too much with the physical aspect of our being.

To be honest, again, I don't think it does. How do you regard acedia, 'spiritual malaise'? There are spiritual masters who talk of the Dark Night of the Soul. This in very Christian terms. I think those schooled in Buddhist meditation have a different vernacular, but treat of similar states?

What it really really means to be Easter People is to know our own spirit and to learn how to let it guide us in our lives. Christ did. We can too.

What it means to be Christian Easter People to me is a living participation in the Divine Life – something made possible in and through the Resurrection.

 

[otherbrother]

Can I ask ... if the Resurrection never actually happened, would it make any difference to your philosophy?

Good question. Probably not THE resurrection, but whether renewal and rebirth and creative solutions akin to the Phoenix rising from the ashes (Hegelian/dialectical synthesis following antithesis) occurs and can be trusted does very much matter to me. And I do believe another dimension contributes to rebirths, to the point that death and rebirth are probably much less real than some spiritual reality behind/within the Accident (physical existence). God is at least Spirit and probably even Mind Itself that is more real than spirit

 

[Thomas]

Good question. Probably not THE resurrection ...

Gotcha. OK.

 

[Thomas]

"If the resurrection isn’t an event of history that somehow also transcends history—something that happens not only *in* time but also *to* time, that happens to everything, everywhere, all at once—then every analogy or metaphor or whatever we label “resurrection” is simply bullshit. But if the resurrection is both actual and eternal then it is limitlessly relatable and transferable."
Kenneth Tanner, pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

 

[Thomas]

Mukunda Lal Ghosh, better known as Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), was a teacher of Kriya Yoga and founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship. He belonged to a tradition that traced the transmission of Kriya Yoga, the form of yoga taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. He is the author of Autobiography of a Yogi, a spiritual memoir detailing his encounters with several deified humans and divine beings.

In his commentary on the Gospels, The Second Coming of Christ, Yogananda argues that Jesus' complete realization of his unity with God enabled and undergirded the Resurrection.
"In the resurrection of Jesus, we have the assurance of our Creator that God-realized devotees, if they wish, can find not only immortality of the soul but also of the body." (Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ, p.1637) 

Jesus is "the resurrection of the soul into oneness with Spirit – the soul's ascension from delusory confinement of body consciousness into its native immortality and everlasting freedom ... (He) infused his Spirit-expanded soul back into his crucified body, immortalizing it, and returned to his bereft disciples in physical form." (Ibid. p.1637)

Jesus' liberated "his soul ... from physical, astral, and causal limitations by three distinct efforts" to "reunite it with the omniscience and omnipotence of the Spirit." (p.1638) So "[w]hen after death Jesus had neutralized the mechanism of the three gunas, and had burnt all karmic seeds resulting from his incarnate cause-effect actions, he ascended from the three bodies straightway into the bosom of God. Then he had power even as God has. From that supreme state, Jesus put on his body again or cast it off at will." (p.1642)

"the resurrected Jesus—having ascended from the confinement of his physical, astral, and causal bodies into the Infinite-bodied Cosmic Consciousness—manifested his Jesus form not apart from Spirit but as the Infinite who has become Jesus, all individualized souls, and all manifestation." (p.1648)

"Any true devotee can see him as Jesus Christ or know him as one with the Infinite Christ." (p.1660).

Yogananda himself claimed to have been the witness of personal manifestation of Christ in bodily form several times, and from these to have received the very revelatory knowledge of the New Testament that fills his immense commentary.

 

[Thomas]

"All of this leads ... to the issue of the ‘Rainbow Body’: the jalü, that is, a Dzogchen Buddhist concept that apparently has roots in the indigenous Bon religion of Tibet, going back to times before the arrival of the dharma.

"The phenomenon it describes is the transformation of the physical body of a great teacher into a saṃbhogakāya, a body of pure light, beginning near to and then following upon his death. It is an extraordinary mark of supreme enlightenment that has supposedly been witnessed on a number of occasions, and its principal signs are reported to be the rapid shrinking away and even complete, or nearly complete, dissolution of the body at death, attended by mysterious rainbows in the sky, and in some cases followed by appearances of the departed teacher to his disciples and friends.

"It was Fr. Francis V. Tiso who brought the phenomenon to the attention of many theologians in his book Rainbow Body and Resurrection, where he treats at particular length the case of Khenpo Achö, who died in 1998. Khenpo was a Dzogchen monk of the Lumorap Monastery in Nyarong, though originally he had been a Gelug but also apparently Nyingma in training. It is said by those who were with him in his last days that, as he lay upon his deathbed, his face took on a youthful appearance, a fragrance of holiness filled the room, music was heard in the air around his little house, at twilight strange rays of sunlight shone brilliantly from the east for a long time, and five rainbows appeared over the house for many days on end. Eventually, he disappeared into his body of light, his ’od sku. Over the course of some days, during the period of his funeral rites, his fleshly body—his nirmāṇakāya—grew smaller and finer until at last, in less than a week, it simply vanished into a vajra body, leaving no physical remainder."
(David Bentley Hart Leaves in the Wind substack: Rainbows and the Prism of Perspective)

 

[otherbrother]

Not my question, not my circus not my monkeys but you know my answer.
Reflected being the operative word...have you ever looked at a true mirror? Two mirrors at a 90...when you look you see what others see, still a reflection, still a lie, still not you or your concrete self...but the opening of another view allows opening your mind to the what isnt and what may be.

Interesting experience probably. No, I have not. Would be more as THEY see me. Non local consciousness would produce a similar experience? I recall a depersonalization experience back in college as I was walking down steps in the building where my philosophy classes were. Strange perception of “who or what is this guy?” Also lost all sense of time far into a 25 mile run. Made rest of run much easier. Once perceived my left arm as a wonderment as though just discovering it. Was highly appreciative to have it. This occurred while driving to or from work (50 minute drive). Once had a vision of a seed stretching across time that totally override/eclipsed regular vision while driving. Frightened me when I realized I wasn’t seeing with my eyes. Looked down on self from above once during intense anger state. Allowed me to instantly stop being angry. Once saw self from about ten feet in front of self upon awakening from a meditative nap, then felt it reentered body via right side of torso. Intense electrical feeling (kundalini overload) while touching a video of the movie Blue Butterfly which later turned out to be very mystical, about help from the other side.
All these and probably a few more that didn’t come to mind suggest an aspect of self that is more like other than regular self. Lately I simply think of it as my spirit, and am currently exploring in a book in progress (nearly completed) the implications of that belief regarding spiritual growth, faith development. Getting to Know One’s Connected Self. I have You Tube read-aloud versions of first five chapters. Would be glad to share those via links here if anyone is interested. Chapters range from 30 to 50 minutes long. Narrated automatically (microsoft) by female robot, surprisingly non-robotic voicing.
I have shared a few text excerpts here in this forum already. Would love feedback regarding whole chapters. I have no idea if my thoughts translate into understandable terms. I mostly feel like the tree falling alone in the woods, probably not making a sound!
But I do enjoy trying to convey something meaningful nonetheless.