Chapter XX The Cosmic Meaning of Easter

PART I

On the morning of Good Friday, 1857, Richard Wagner, the master artist of the nineteenth century, sat on the verandah of a Swiss villa by the Zurich Sea. The landscape about him was bathed in most glorious sunshine; peace and good will seemed to vibrate through nature. All creation was throbbing with life; the air was laden with the fragrant perfume of budding pine forests—a grateful balm to a troubled heart or a restless mind.

Then suddenly, as a bolt from an azure sky, there came into Wagner’s deeply mystic soul a remembrance of the ominous significance of that day—the darkest and most sorrowful in the Christian year. It almost overwhelmed him with sadness, as he contemplated the contrast. There was such a marked incongruity between the smiling scene before him, the plainly observable activity of nature, struggling to renewed life after winter’s long sleep, and the death struggle of a tortured Savior upon a cross; between154 the full-throated chant of life and love issuing from the thousands of little feathered choristers in forest, moor, and meadow, and the ominous shouts of hate issuing from an infuriated mob as they jeered and mocked the noblest ideal the world has ever known; between the wonderful creative energy exerted by nature in spring, and the destructive element in man, which slew the noblest character that ever graced our earth.

While Wagner meditated thus upon the incongruities of existence, the question presented itself: Is there any connection between the death of the Savior upon the cross at Easter, and the vital energy which expresses itself so prodigally in spring when nature begins the life of a new year?

Though Wagner did not consciously perceive and realize the full significance of the connection between the death of the Savior and the rejuvenation of nature, he had, nevertheless, unwittingly stumbled upon the key to one of the most sublime mysteries encountered by the human spirit in its pilgrimage from clod to God.

In the darkest night of the year, when earth sleeps most soundly in Boreas’ cold embrace, when material activities are at the very lowest ebb, a wave of spiritual energy carries upon its crest the divine creative “Word from Heaven” to a mystic birth at Christmas; and as a luminous cloud the spiritual impulse broods over the world that “knew it not,” for it155 “shines in the darkness” of winter when nature is paralyzed and speechless.

This divine creative “Word” has a message and a mission. It was born to “save the world,” and “to give its life for the world.” It must of necessity sacrifice its life in order to accomplish the rejuvenation of nature. Gradually it buries itself in the earth and commences to infuse its own vital energy into the millions of seeds which lie dormant in the ground. It whispers “the word of life” into the ears of beast and bird, until the gospel or good news has been preached to every creature. The sacrifice is fully consummated by the time the sun crosses its Easter(n) node at the spring equinox. Then the divine creative Word expires. It dies upon the cross at Easter in a mystical sense, while uttering a last triumphant cry, “It has been accomplished” (consummatum est).

But as an echo returns to us many times repeated, so also the celestial song of life is re-echoed from the earth. The whole creation takes up the anthem. A legion-tongued chorus repeats it over and over. The little seeds in the bosom of Mother Earth commence to germinate; they burst and sprout in all directions, and soon a wonderful mosaic of life, a velvety green carpet embroidered with multicolored flowers, replaces the shroud of immaculate wintry white. From the furred and feathered tribes “the word of life” re-echoes as a song of love, impelling them to mate. Generation and multiplication are the watchwords156 everywhere—the Spirit has risen to more abundant life.

Thus, mystically, we may note the annual birth, death, and resurrection of the Savior as the ebb and flow of a spiritual impulse which culminates at the winter solstice, Christmas, and has egress from the earth shortly after Easter when the “word” “ascends to Heaven” on Whitsunday. But it will not remain there forever. We are taught that “thence it shall return,” “at the judgment.” Thus when the sun descends below the equator through the sign of the scales in October, when the fruits of the year are harvested, weighed, and assorted according to their kind, the descent of the spirit of the new year has its inception. This descent culminates in birth at Christmas.

Man is a miniature of nature. What happens on a large scale in the life of a planet like our earth, takes place on a smaller scale in the course of human events. A planet is the body of a wonderfully great and exalted Being, one of the Seven Spirits before the Throne (of the parent sun). Man is also a spirit and “made in their likeness.” As a planet revolves in its cyclic path around the sun whence it emanated, so also the human spirit moves in an orbit around its central source—God. Planetary orbits, being ellipses, have points of closest approach to and extreme deviation from their solar centers. Likewise the orbit of the human spirit is elliptical. We are closest to God157 when our cyclic journey carries us into the celestial sphere of activity—heaven, and we are farthest removed from Him during earth life. These changes are necessary to our soul growth. As the festivals of the year mark the recurring events of importance in the life of a Great Spirit, so our births and deaths are events of periodical recurrence. It is as impossible for the human spirit to remain perpetually in heaven or upon earth as it is for a planet to stand still in its orbit. The same immutable law of periodicity which determines the unbroken sequence of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, the tidal ebb and flow, governs also the progression of the human spirit, both in heaven and upon earth.

From realms of celestial light where we live in freedom, untrammeled by limitations of time and space, where we vibrate in tune with infinite harmony of the spheres, we descend to birth in the physical world where our spiritual sight is obscured by the mortal coil which binds us to this limited phase of our existence. We live here awhile; we die and ascend to heaven, to be reborn and to die again. Each earth life is a chapter in a serial life story, extremely humble in its beginnings, but increasing in interest and importance as we ascend to higher and higher stations of human responsibility. No limit is conceivable, for in essence we are divine and must therefore have the infinite possibilities of God dormant within. When we have learned all that this world158 has to teach us, a wider orbit, a larger sphere of superhuman usefulness, will give scope to our greater capabilities.
“Build thee more stately mansions, O my Soul.
As the swift seasons roll,
Leave thy low vaulted past;
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.”

Thus says Oliver Wendell Holmes, comparing the spiral progression in the widening coil of a chambered nautilus to the expansion of consciousness which is the result of soul growth in an evolving human being.

“But what of Christ?” someone will ask. “Don’t you believe in Him? You are discoursing upon Easter, the feast which commemorates the cruel death and glorious, triumphant resurrection of the Savior, but you seem to be alluding to Him more from an allegorical point of view than as an actual fact.”

Certainly we believe in the Christ; we love Him with our whole heart and soul, but we wish to emphasize the teaching that Christ is the first fruits of the race. He said that we shall do the things He did, “and greater.” Thus we are Christs-in-the-making.
“Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn.
The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain,
Unless within thyself it be set up again.”

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Thus proclaims Angelus Silesius, with true mystic understanding of the essentials of attainment.

We are too much in the habit of looking to an outside Savior while harboring a devil within; but till Christ be formed IN US, as Paul says, we shall seek in vain, for as it is impossible for us to perceive light and color, though they be all about us, unless our optic nerve registers their vibrations, and as we remain unconscious of sound when the tympanum of our ear is insensitive, so also must we remain blind to the presence of Christ and deaf to His voice until we arouse our dormant spiritual natures within. But once these natures have become awakened, they will reveal the Lord of Love as a prime reality; this on the principle that when a tuning fork is struck, another of identical pitch will also commence to sing, while tuning forks of different pitches will remain mute. Therefore the Christ said that His sheep knew the sound of His voice and responded, but the voice of the stranger they heard not. (John 10:5). No matter what our creed, we are all brethren of Christ, so let us rejoice, the Lord has risen! Let us seek Him and forget our creeds and other lesser differences.