Psalm Sunday - the Role of the Ass

How many people happily take an Easter holiday and have no idea why it is a holiday? Today is Psalm Sunday, the doorway to the final steps taken by Jesus Christ to his crucifixion. To look deeply into this event we might need to scrape away all the mesmerising and often trivial images the church has implanted into human minds over the centuries. Palm Sunday is not a story about an event in the life of a man who lived 2,011 years ago; it is the story about what is happening within us NOW!

And when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Beth'phage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find an ass tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If any one says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord has need of them,' and he will send them immediately." This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass." The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the ass and the colt, and put their garments on them, and he sat thereon. Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him shouted, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" And when he entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, "Who is this?" Mt 21:1-10

This ass and its colt have not just been tied up, they have been bound, the Greek word is deo, which means tightly bound, perhaps in chains. These animals represent our animal nature, our astral or earthly ego which often behaves like an ass. This is the seat of our emotions, our feelings, our sympathy and antipathy and it can have a paralysing and polarising effect on us.

If we are to develop our spiritual nature then we must tie up our animal nature, we must bind it strongly so that it cannot work against us. We find this animal nature in our instincts, in fact, in all our behaviour that is animal-like. This is the part of us that is called our astral body or astral being and it is here that we find the human ego. The ego is an important part of us because it essentially ensures that we prevail. We live in a society where everyone is striving to prevail. Mostly we are unaware of this until we are in a situation where one person has the opportunity to go first, or get something, or be chosen and so on. Then the ego steps up and says, “Pick me!”

So the ego has ensured our survival but at some point we must have the experience that we have prevailed, that we have focussed on ourselves sufficiently and that something higher begin to operate. So then we bind the ass and any offspring it may have. This binding represents the end of a cycle in our development. Then, when we are ready to proceed we can unbind the ass which is like the symbol a spiral, it changes from the inturn to the outturn. Then we ride on it. We demonstrate that we have conquered our animal nature, our astral – which has been so necessary in carrying us thus far in our development. This ass and its colt now have a higher function; when they are conquered in our physical being they can then operate in our spiritual being as Imagination. They then represent the depth of feeling we can have when we create images in our mind to bring to life the true concepts of human nature which in the highest is our I AM. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The Lord is the kurios which means our I AM.

Know Yourself

While I wait for some inspiration about what to write next in the bLog I have been revisiting my book “I Connecting : The Soul’s Quest”. This book is the scaffolding for the work we each must do TO KNOW OURSELVES. While I haven’t mentioned the Bible in my book, the information in my book can be found everywhere in the Bible.

To know ourselves is not a psychological journey, that is only part of it. Knowing ourselves means that we can differentiate between the activities of our body, soul and spirit. Whenever we meet the words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ today they are not usually referring to what is really soul and spirit.

So let’s be clear about this. In the introduction of my book I put it this way:

What is our soul? What is our spirit?

So, if we have a soul, where is it and what does it do? And what is our spirit? To be able to truly understand ourselves we need to build a picture of the place of our soul and our spirit in our being.

Have you ever looked into a coffin to see the lifeless body lying there? It is then that we realise that the personality we knew is no longer present. We usually recognise the face and then we are hit by the fact that there is much more to this person than their physical body. Yet science, demanding scientific proof, continues to ignore this part of us that is obviously present while we live and leaves when we die.

In essence, our soul is an activity within us which is created by the way we feel, think, and act. Obviously when we die we stop feeling, thinking and acting and it is this activity that leaves the shell of our body at death. Apart from that, we must ask, “Who is feeling, thinking and acting?” The answer is I am. This “I” or ‘self’ is the name we call ourselves when we refer to ourselves. This is our human spirit.

Our “I”, this ‘self’, experiences life through our soul and our body. The “I” is the artist, the soul his work of art and the body is the canvas. Similarly, the “I” is the gardener, the garden is our soul and the soil is our body.

Why study our soul and spirit?

The question is: How do we connect these things up within ourselves? When we become more conscious of how we paint the canvas or tend to the garden, we have a new lease on life. The new consciousness wakes up our soul and we become aware of the guiding, directing, ‘all-seeing’ presence of the painter or gardener; our spirit which in this book we refer to as our “I”.

We all want to understand ourselves better, we all want to know how to get along with others more harmoniously, and we all want to have loving relationships. Knowledge of our soul and spirit holds the key to developing these aspects of our lives.

The rise in popularity of self-development systems is witness to the yearning within many people to understand their being more fully. Psychology (the study of the soul) being one of the most popular courses of study today testifies to this. Yet how many psychologists are aware of the specific activity of the soul? Furthermore, the rise of so-called mental disorders, especially in young children, and the increasing use of medication for these, points to an urgency to unravel some more of the mysteries of the human being. A suburban mother, when interviewed for a current affairs programme, described her ten year old son on medication for Attention Deficit Disorder as an empty shell with no soul. This speaks of a growing awareness in the population in general that we are more than just a body, just a shell. 

My book is a guide to becoming increasingly aware of ourselves. It wakes us up to the knowledge of who we really are and gives us a taste of freedom like we have never known it before.

The Purpose of the Bible

When I began these bLogs my intention was to put forward various ways to open up the Bible so that it can make more sense to our modern minds. I hoped to appeal to anyone regardless of their religious beliefs as well as those who had no religious beliefs.

Many theologians and church leaders, who influence vast followers of organised religion, have a very limited view of what the words in the Bible mean. Some even go so far as to suppress its meaning so that they are in a position of control over their congregations; one example among many is Papal Decrees.
Then, even those who have glimpsed inner meanings in the Bible apply them in a narrow way. Instinctually – perhaps influenced by past life memories –when some people are presented with Biblical stories they enter into a mystical feeling element of religiosity at the expense of clear thinking. It is almost as if people get drunk on scripture and cannot see or hear into the true meaning of the words. We could call this blind belief although those who experience it would strongly disagree. For them it is a real experience but they cannot express it clearly in words indicating that it does not enter their ability to think. ie, they have no ideas about their experience.

Still others, who are able to think about what they read don’t like what they see and are unwilling to measure their own activity by what they read. Then, the other way is to reject scripture and religion – perhaps because it is seen to be nonsense; what they hear expressed by those who say that they know makes no rational sense.
This is a major problem to be faced in the immediate future as we are forced to make sense of this world and our place in it. Rudolf Steiner spoke the following words in 1912 which shed some light on our task. May I add that many of his adherents have no interest in the Bible nor what he had to say about the entrance of Christ into the man Jesus. I suggest that this is exactly the issue the church faces – picking out the bits they want to understand, the bits that suit their purpose, and discarding the rest. I speak plainly here without the intention of damaging anyone’s ego – each of us is called to examine how our ego responds to anything that we read and if we can engage our I Am and become the interested observer we will see elements of truth in my words.

It remains to be said that the deed of Christ was for all humanity, the various religious beliefs are different ways to experience this deed. If we can open our hearts and appreciate how each person experiences the presence of Christ – even if they don’t call it that – in whatever religion or philosophy they dedicate themselves to, we are standing in the purpose of the deed of Christ which at its core says, “Love one another.”

These are Rudolf Steiner’s significant words spoken almost 100 years ago. As we read them we can ask ourselves how we have contributed to the founding of this universal Christianity.

“Indeed, it has often been emphasized that in [evolutionary] developments such as those here referred to, all that has taken place since the Mystery of Golgotha is not particularly meaningful. As yet everything is only at the beginning; only during the future evolution of the earth will the great impulses that may be ascribed to Christianity make themselves felt. Over and over again we must emphasize the fact that Christianity is only at the beginning of its great development. If we wish to play a part in this great development, we must enter with understanding into the ever increasing progress of the revelations and impulses which originated with the founding of Christianity. Above all we are required to learn something in the immediate future; for it does not take much clairvoyance to see clearly that if we wish for something definite to enable us to make a good beginning in the direction of an advanced and progressive understanding of Christianity, we must learn to read the Bible in quite a new way. There are at present many hindrances in the way, partly because of the fact that in wide circles biblical study is still carried on in a sugary and sentimental manner. The Bible is not made use of as a book of knowledge, but as a book of common use for all kinds of personal situations. If anyone has need of it for his own personal encouragement, he will bury himself in one or the other chapter of the Bible and allow it to work on him. This seldom results in anything more than a personal relationship to the Bible. On the other hand, the scholarship of the last decades, indeed that of virtually the whole nineteenth century, increased the difficulty of really understanding the Bible by tearing it apart, declaring that the New Testament is composed of all kinds of different things that were later combined, and that the Old Testament also was composed of many different parts which must have been brought together at different times. According to this view, the Bible is made up of mere fragments which may easily produce the impression of an aggregate, presumably stitched together in the course of time. This kind of scholarship has become popular; very many people, for example, hold that the Old Testament is combined out of many single parts. This opinion disturbs the serious reading of the Bible that must come in the near future. When such a serious way of reading the Bible is adopted, all that is to be said about its secrets from the anthroposophical viewpoint will be much better understood. Rudolf Steiner, St Mark Lecture September 16, 1912

7. The Resurrection

The whole of John chapter 20 speaks to us about our resurrection experience. How can we prepare for the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christed one in our own being? One response might be to just let it happen BUT if we are not aware of it the experience will just pass us by – read about Mary standing at the tomb.

“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rab-bo'ni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary Mag'dalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.” John 20:10-18

How can we make this story real in our 21st Century lives? Read another version of the story.

But our soul stood weeping outside the body, and as she wept she stooped to look into the body; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the “I” had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Soul, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my “I”, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Saying this, she turned round and saw her “I Am” standing, but she did not know that it was her “I Am”. Her “I Am” said to her, “Soul, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing her “I Am” to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried my “I” away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Her “I Am” said to her, “Soul.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rab-bo'ni!” (which means Teacher). Her “I Am” said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, the I am is ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary Mag'dalene (the soul) went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the I Am”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Personalising these Biblical stories in this way brings them right into our life now. Our soul looks into the physical for its reality. This is a natural, evolutionary thing to do. The time has come when we can start looking to our spiritual being for a sense of reality. For this to happen the earthly sense of “I” must die and it must be removed from the tomb of the body to be resurrected as the spiritual I AM. This continual refinement is an agonising process and our soul will weep; so much so that we will find it hard to see through the tears.
Then we must hear the words “Do not hold me”. It is as if, in the refining process, we must wait for the metal to cool. This fights against the earthly inclinations to have things instantly. Fortunately the solution is given. We must keep busy: “go to my brethren and say to them, (the) I am (is) ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

The brethren are all those processes within us that must be resurrected, that must be spiritualised; then if the “I” is missing from the grave it doesn’t necessarily mean some ‘one’ has taken him; and the man in the garden isn’t necessarily the gardener. The first process that must change is our thinking, our conscious awareness. A good way to begin it to stop having opinions and to be open to as many as twelve explanations for every situation we meet in the world. In this way we can observe deeply all that happens around us and reach a new understanding of our purpose in this life.

6. The Burial

“After this Joseph of Arimathe'a, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. So he came and took away his body. Nicode'mus also, who had at first come to him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds' weight. They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.” Jn 19:38-42

There is a huge demand for proof today; many people consider that something is not ‘real’ if it cannot be proved. At the same time scientists disprove what they previously proved and increasingly admit that they cannot explain many things. The demand for proof is directly tied to our ability to think, and to think something through fully. A thorough understanding of the nature of human thought will reveal that human beings have two primary methods of thinking. One way is tied to what we have previously thought, or been taught to think; the other is the kind of thinking that leads to new ideas, new inventions and a completely new expression of the way to live. The first kind can be called earthly or material thinking, the other is spiritual thinking.

Whenever we think spiritually our first inclination is to make it material, to make it conform with the all the we have previously thought. This materialistic thinking leads us a long way away from spiritual truth. If we explore our understanding of what burial means we encounter the things we say using the concept of burial. For instance, we say that someone or something is dead and buried and we mean that the object of our thought ceases to exist. It is common for people to think that a corpse is merely food for worms or ashes scattered in the wind.

Anyone who has any knowledge of a living physical body knows that it is a miraculous thing. The silent will-forces course through it to give it life; digesting food, moving blood and other fluids etc.. Among other things, the will-forces regulate the body so that it is nourished and warm and moves appropriately. Great wisdom is contained in these will-forces. Is it possible that all this is cancelled out when our soul leaves our body at death?
Of course not! These forces enter into the earth and contribute to the character of the earth. To the extent that we worked with our I AM, and to the extent that Christ is alive within us, is the quality of our gift to this earth at death.

This contribution affects the very substance of the earth. The minerals, plants and animals contain our forces from past lives. The physical substance used by mothers to create the bodies for their babies contain our forces. The forces which are the product of our life will affect this earth for years to come. This points to the significance of the Christmas greeting in Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men (of good will)!” The good will contained in the body of Jesus who incorporated the fullness of Christ was enough to turn the evolution of the earth around.

Surely Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus knew this and so they took great care to place him “a new tomb where no one had ever been laid.” Is that what is really being said here? If we can accept the ideas we have just read wouldn’t it make more sense for these words to say, ‘After Jesus had died he was the first one to contribute the living Christ forces into this earth at his burial.’?

The more we contemplate these esoteric truths the more we come to understand how our every action impacts on the future of the earth. External rules and laws are no longer necessary for the person has the good will to act appropriately. They are the ones connected with their I AM and in whom the presence of Christ is no longer dormant.

5. Mystical Death

Read John 19:23- 42 “After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), “I thirst.” A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” Jn 19:28-30

The thing most people fear more than anything is death – physical death that is. However we also fear the many small deaths that are part of everyday life. When we are enjoying ourselves we want the enjoyment to last forever. We don’t stop to think that the real source of enjoyment arises in the birth of a new moment and its subsequent passing away. Then we can look back on the moment and savour it. It is impossible to look back on it while it is happening.

There are other things within us that need to die; they need to be crucified ‘on the cross’ and the cross is a symbol of our physical body which we are nailed to while we are incarnated in this world.
In my original Reflections on the seven Christian Initiations I wrote the following. “Often we know within ourselves that we are acting out of character when we interact with some people. We also know that they are not seeing us as we truly are but we are powerless to change this.

It is our dull consciousness that directs us to express ourselves through past life memories - memories that didn’t die with our body in that past life. Memories whose core lies within our I AM.

We have to ‘kill off’ these memories. The way to kill them off is to become conscious of them. But beware; during this process we experience the content of our soul in all its suffering and pain. We have to face our agony and there is no way we can withstand it if we do not have a strong and vital relationship with our I AM. We also need a living experience of the presence of Christ in our life.

Courage and daring is required to experience the mystical death. There is no room for false pride or even embarrassment. We have to accept the conscious view of ourselves and give birth to the new personality that can be ours through our I AM.

This, of course, is really the meaning of forgiveness of sins – we forgive ourselves for missing the mark. We accept our karma. Our I AM recognises that all we have experienced, life after life, was necessary to bring us to this point. And this point is, of course, that moment in the aeons of history when the presence of Christ in the life force of this earth can appear before us in the twinkling of an eye.”

4. The Crucifixion

“So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Gol'gotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.” Jn 19:17-18

In some ways it seems odd that Jesus had to carry his own cross. In fact, we could even wonder how heavy it was and if he had the strength to carry it up a hill, especially after he was knocked around by the scourging and slapping. The other gospels say that Simon of Cyrene was ordered to carry the cross but John doesn’t mention this. John is revealing something here of our own initiation.

This cross really represents our own body to which, as beings of soul and spirit, we are ‘nailed’. We have to carry it wherever we go while we are awake and only when we lay it in our bed at night can our soul and spirit escape it.

The place of the skull, kranion, is the place that can represent our mind, that place where we can become aware of our thoughts. At night when we go to sleep it is our thoughts that die. If we continue to think when we lie in our bed we cannot get to sleep, we cannot disconnect from our body. This gives us an idea of the strength of our thoughts, yet there is much more to discover through the use of the powerful ability to think.

Through our ability to think we can experience the difference between our body, soul and spirit. As we try to work through this it can be helpful to assign the faculties of thinking, feeling and willing to these three. Our body is the domain of our will or actions, our soul is the domain of our feelings and our spirit is the domain of thinking. By contemplating these associations we can become more aware of the different parts of our being that are at play in our daily activities. My book I Connecting : The Soul’s Quests explains this very clearly.

Then we can apply these ideas to the scene that John describes here. It is as if we have to fight our way through the image of the crucifixion. If we only engage with our feelings we get caught up in the image of the bleeding and battered body. We might even get caught up in a religiosity that clouds the cosmic purpose of this deed. If we only engage with our will we get stuck on the logistical actions of the event. If we use our thinking to balance feeling and will we will have an inner realisation of the true purpose of crucifixion in our lives.

Our task is to become aware of our entire being, and when we do, our body will crucified, in other words, it will no longer hold the prominent position that it does by eclipsing our soul and spirit in everyday life.