What is Easter? This is a very profound question. What I want to show you in this essay is that Easter is not just for nursery kids or Bible freaks, or to keep up the appearances. It’s infinitely more profound and relevant to your life than you probably think that it is, whether you’re Christian, atheist, or just don’t care. Easter points to something very deep and fundamental about what it means to be human.
Here, we ask: when we get down to it, what is the highest meaning of Easter? What is the most fundamental meaning of Easter?
This is a written version of the first part of my talk The Highest Meaning of Easter.
What We’re Really Asking
It’s like asking: “what is physics?” When we answer that question, we might have all kinds of answers. We might talk about a particular school of physics, or what we learned at school, or what we learned in university, or the technological progress physics has enabled, or famous physics experiments.
These are all operational answers, surface-level answers. We could come up with any kind of limited, simplistic, operational answer that we like, without getting close to describing what physics is.
But when you ask “what is physics?”, you’re really asking: “when we get down to it, what is the highest meaning of physics?” “What is the most fundamental meaning?” “What is physics really about?”
And the answer is that it’s about discovering the fundamental workings of the world. It’s about decoding the secrets of the world, of our universe, of this life. That’s what physics is really about, beyond its various facets.
This is exactly what we’re going to do with Easter. When we ask the question: “what is Easter?”, we’re asking about the fundamental reality of Easter. I’m not interested in operational answers, but in the essence.
The Relevance of Easter
I want this to be an inspiring message that is relevant to people with a modern and postmodern perspective on the world.
Unfortunately, I get the sense that nowadays most people have zero connection to Christianity. For a long time, I didn’t either. I don’t think I’d ever been connected to Christianity until a few years ago after doing serious spiritual work. I just thought it was a lot of nonsense.
But I also feel that people are floundering in this modern era, struggling for a profound sense of meaning to their lives. It’s not that they need something to believe in, but that they want to understand what life is all about and have no framework now.
The scientific worldview, though a remarkable and essential cultural development, has stripped us of all meaning. It repeatedly and endlessly delays the question of meaning and of the fundamental nature of reality. Science cannot tell you what reality is about on a fundamental level, other than by referring to apersonal, dead, microscopic physical stuff that apparently composes all existence.
In science, there is no base reality. If you say that the physical world is the “real” reality, the scientist will tell you that all physical reality is composed of molecules, hence has no reality to it.
If you assume molecules are the base reality, the scientist will tell you that molecules are made of atoms, so have no reality to them.
If you assume atoms are the base reality, the scientist will tell you that atoms are made of subatomic particles, so have no reality to them.
If you assume subatomic particles are the base reality, the scientist will tell you that the quantum world is basically random and probabilistic.
This goes on and on, and scientists are now proposing extraordinarily complex models for the sub-sub-subatomic world.
This endless regression even applies to the crowning achievement of science: the Big Bang. It apparently came from somewhere too! Was the Big Bang real?
You see the problem? When we endlessly analyse, nothing can be taken as base reality, therefore nothing can be real in its own right. At the same time, the scientist will tell you that nothing is behind the scenes either. There is no God, or Gods, or deities, or loving essence. Is reality made of anything? Is it real at all? Can we say anything is real?
Put all of this together, and it’s no wonder that we’re metaphysically starved in the modern world. This is the great crisis of scientific metaphysics, epistemology and ontology.
Though we’ve been stripped of meaning, I see this as a necessary transition. Premodern consciousness, with its magic and myths, dominated for thousands of years. Modern consciousness, with its skepticism and objectivism, is clearing and has cleared us of all our premodern muck. Now we’re ready for postmodern, transpersonal levels of consciousness. What will postmodern, transpersonal faith look like?
We’re ready for higher levels of consciousness, and I see our current desert of meaning as fertile ground for those levels to take root.
When we live this in our faith lives, we will come to know who we really are, and what the fundamental essence of all of life is. This will occur not by magic, myth or rationality, but by direct experience.
In doing so, we’ll probably realise that Christianity is a goldmine that has been tarnished by millennia of bullshit, power games, domination, lies, and the usual human nonsense.
Christianity and the great spiritual traditions conceals something that is so vital to us, particularly as we begin grasping our way towards postmodern, postrational, postdogmatic levels of consciousness.
My Claim
Now, let’s begin to approach my answer to the question “What is Easter?”. There is a profound answer to this question.
Christianity and Easter are not about myths, beliefs, celebrations, Easter eggs, or any form of ritual or tradition.
Easter isn’t a frivolous celebration when children hun for chocolate Easter eggs. And in essence, it’s not about the Christian festival, with Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and so on. Despite its rich tradition, Easter is not about that.
Let me tell you, it’s not even about the Bible, and it’s not even about the church. To say so is to give a limited, operational answer. It doesn’t really get to the point.
Easter is much deeper than that. It’s much more fundamental than that. And we’re going to give a very detailed, nuanced, precise answer to this question of “what is Easter?”
Here goes: my claim is that it celebrates, signifies or points to our own potential for awakening, which is a transformation of identity, or a transfiguration. In the context of Easter, it’s convenient to think of it as a death and rebirth.
And this is what this whole video is about. This is what Easter is about. How about that your life is really an opportunity for deep transformation, and the Easter actually signifies a very important aspect of that transformation.
And this question about what is Easter, immediately, you’re probably thinking about other questions as well.
Related Questions
If we’re going to recontextualise all of Easter, inevitably we recontextualise all of its constituent parts. When we ask “What is Easter?”, we also ask “What is the crucifixion?”
If I’m telling you that Easter is a symbol for deep spiritual transformation, then what role does the crucifixion play? We’re going to answer that.
You might also wonder what the Resurrection is, since that’s the backbone of Easter Sunday. We’ll also cover what the Resurrection is.
You might also be asking: “Who is Jesus? Who was Jesus? Did Jesus exist? What were all his words about? Why was he so inspiring? What is the significance of Jesus?” We’re going to answer that too.
And, of course, we’re also asking what Christianity is all about. Isn’t that a profound question? You’re right, what is it really about? What is it about beyond mythic Christianity? And what’s it about beyond our modern rational allergy to everything religious?
If I’m saying that Easter is a symbol to spiritual awakening, then what is Christianity? After all, Easter is one of the most important Christian festivals and so ingrained in our culture, even in modern, consumerist, capitalist culture. So what is Christianity all about, then? We’re going to answer that too.
The most important question as I see it, is: “what is the real Christian teaching?” “When we really get down to it, what is Christianity trying to tell us?” This is more than the question of what Christianity is: we’re asking what it’s really talking about. And we’re going to answer that in a lot of detail here.
As a precursor, I’ll say that the Christian teaching is fundamentally about transformation. It’s not a bunch of myths made up to provide community cohesion, or to entertain school children, or to tell a nice story. The real Christian teaching is one of transformation: your own transformation.
Our Approach to This Question
Before we go into great detail about what it means for Easter to be a symbol of spiritual awakening, I want to clarify our approach to this issue. It’s not only that the answer is radical, but that its foundation is also radical.
See Christianity in a Symbolic Fashion
So what’s our approach to this question? I’ve talked about symbolism, I’ve talked about how Easter is a symbol, a pointer, a representation of something. And that is the fundamental approach that we’re taking. We’re going to look at Christianity in a symbolic fashion.
I’m going to help you to see that it’s really just a bunch of symbols and pointers. It’s nothing more than that. But it’s nothing less than that.
O one hand, when we’re talking about the symbols and pointers of Easter, we don’t want to put too much weight into the symbols themselves and worship them, because that distracts us from our own spiritual transformation, which is the real matter at hand. We don’t want to put too much stock in them.
We don’t need to remember all the stories and verses of the Bible, or the exact sequence of the Easter events, or exactly what Jesus said. That would just be fundamentalist Christianity, essentially.
When you do that too much, you get lost in the symbols, you get lost in the mire, and you forget the deeper meaning of it all. We can talk about the symbology all day long and we can argue all the fine points if we like, but that’s not our goal.
That’s not necessarily a frivolous exercise, but it’s a frivolous exercise if you’re not contacting the reality of what all this is trying to represent or point to. So it’s nothing more than the symbols, but it’s nothing less.
So while we’re not putting too much stock in the symbols and pointers, we’re not taking them for granted. We’re not just reducing all this to Easter eggs and chocolate. That would be to profoundly overlook the depth of what we’re talking about here. That would be to lessen Easter, and to make it frivolous.
The same goes for all the other symbols and pointers. We don’t want to take them for granted either. We want to realise that there’s a reason for the symbols and pointers. There’s a reason that the stories unfold the way they do. There’s a reason for the Easter story. There’s a reason for the crucifixion. There’s a reason for the cross as a symbol. There’s a reason for the resurrection. And there’s a reason for many of the fine details involved.
We don’t want to take this too far, as I said, but we also don’t want to overlook things. We don’t want to just dismiss things. We have to treat them as symbols and pointers, and we have to look for the truth in those symbols and pointers.
Questioning of Assumptions
Part of this approach is questioning all our assumptions. And this goes for me too!
Do I really know what Easter is? Do I really know? Even though I’m doing a big talk on this, even though what I’m talking about makes sense to me, and even though the Christian symbols move me a lot, I also need to question my assumptions and my supposed knowledge.
I want to have an open mind. I want to have a beginner’s mind. I want to empty my cup.
The same goes if you have no idea what I’m talking about. It also applies if you think that the Bible is literally true and describes historical events that unfolded exactly as they apparently did.
What do you really know about all of this? How do you know that Jesus even existed? How do you know that the Last Supper happened? How do you know?
I know that people’s beliefs are very close to their heart, and they’re very close to their sense of who they are, and their sense of community, and their sense of belonging, and so on. But if we’re interested in what Easter really is, we have to question these things.
What do you really know about anything? How do you know that anything written in the Bible is actually true? And if you say you know the Bible is true because it’s the Bible, then you’re begging the question. That’s not evidence, and you’re essentially just believing in something. You’re just believing in ideas that have been repeated to you over and over and that seems self-consistent.
It makes sense that when Jesus was about to die he would have a Passover meal with his disciples, and that Christ was betrayed by Judas, captured and crucified, then he rose up from the dead. It all seems very self-consistent, but what do you know?
Do you know for sure? How can you know? Were you there? Do you know someone that was there? Who wrote the Bible? How do you know they wrote it? Why are the biblical facts necessarily true? If you’re going to quote a biblical verse in an attempt to provide evidence, how do you know that verse is true?
If you’re a rational person and are listening to this out of curiosity, but actually think it’s a lot of bullshit, you’re probably thinking, “Well, Ross, you’re talking about spiritual transformation, you’re talking about spiritual awakening, but the Bible is all rubbish, right? I mean, there’s nothing true in the Bible. It’s all just mythical nonsense. It’s just children’s stories, it’s just fairy tales at the end of the day, isn’t it?”
Well, as a rationalist you have to question your assumptions as well. No one is excluded from this. I don’t care how much scientific evidence you cite: this applies to you as well. How do you know that the Bible isn’t a historical fact? How do you know there’s nothing valuable in it? Prove that it isn’t.
You might find that you just believe the Bible is nonsense because it suits your worldview too. If you’re not open to the fact it may contain truth, then your mind is closed.
If that’s the case, you’re not going to get close to the transpersonal stuff, to the gold that’s hidden within all this junk, because your mind is too closed. So that’s one of the key elements to our approach: we have to question all our assumptions.
Christianity is Yet Another System for Spiritual Awakening
Another aspect of this approach is that we’re seeing Christianity as yet another tradition that talks about spiritual awakening.
So the claims I’m making are nothing new in terms of their spiritual implications. It might be new to you in terms of the Christian symbology, but in the context of spirituality as a whole, this is really nothing new. It’s just the same stuff in different clothes, essentially. Christianity is just another container. It’s just another system.
It’s just another set of pointers and teachings to a universal path that is talked about in Hinduism, since the very early masters that precede Christ. It’s been talked about in Buddhism since before Buddhism! Buddhism isn’t original! Perhaps it is in some many ways, but Buddha apparently learned from other masters of his time. It’s in Sufism too, in the esoteric teachings: it’s all there.
All of these pointers are already with us, right? Now, what I want to show you is that it’s in the Easter story and it’s in Christianity, just as it is in all the other traditions. Some traditions like Buddhism are much more literal about it, some much more rational.
Christianity is largely grounded in pre-modern language, and doesn’t really give you practices. It’s not as explicit about how do we actually realise these things for ourselves, but it’s still talking about deep spiritual truths and possibilities for us.
The other traditions are a guide for us. If we’re not sure about a symbol from Christianity, look at other traditions. What do they say? It might be something close. It might be very closely related.
It might be not so obvious that they’re related, but if we look closely, we look with a metaphorical, symbolic eye, we might realise that the symbology is very similar.
Disregard Historical & Factual Validity of Bible
The mythic interpretation of Christianity constitutes 99% of Christianity. To wit, this is the Christianity that tells us the Bible is true, and Christ is our one true saviour, and he died for our sins, and history unfolded as the Bible tells us it did, and the world was created in seven days, and so on.
This is erroneous, and even if it isn’t erroneous, it doesn’t matter. We’re not even entering into the debate of whether the Bible is literally true. I have an opinion on it, but my opinion doesn’t matter.
What matters are the pointings and the symbols, not the historical context. If it indeed is a historical context, and it’s not just a bunch of allegories, it doesn’t even matter! We want powerful symbology for the metaphysical nature of reality. That’s it.
It’s Neither Mythic nor Rational
This point of view is not mythical. I’m not sitting here reciting the Bible. I will be quoting the Bible, but I’m doing it in a much more nuanced way. This isn’t black and white.
I won’t be pointing to my Bible and assuming that because it’s written there, it’s true. That’s not what I’m doing here. I’m not being mythical.
It’s not rational either.
So I don’t agree with you rational people out there who are convinced that science tells you everything you need to know, and that there’s nothing in the Bible of any real value, or that there’s nothing in spirituality of any real value. I’m not sitting here throwing all of Christianity under the bus. I’m going to throw a lot of it under the bus, but what I’m throwing under the bus is the mythical part of it.
What you’re missing as a rational person is post-rationality. That’s why rationality is only partially true. It’s true in some contexts.
In some contexts, rationality is a valid method, but eventually you will realise its limits if you continue to grow as a person. You’ll realise that it cannot really explain anything, and that it cannot touch what we’re talking about here. It’s also not going to help us too much with these matters, because they’re post-rational.
Includes Skeptical Rationalism but Goes Beyond It
I’m going to includes skeptical rationalism.
When I read the Bible and share this perspective with you, I’m not looking at it blindly, assuming that every single word of is true and unquestionable, regardless of whether it conforms to the laws of physics and of consensus reality. What I do is I sift through and seek the powerful pointers concealed there.
That requires some skeptical rationalism. It requires a filter for the mythical beliefs in the Bible, and for the paraphernalia.
Though it requires a rational filter, it’s not limited to that. It goes beyond rationalism.
If you notice yourself getting caught up in rationalism here, and debating everything that I’m trying to say, I’ll gently remind you that I’m actually a very rational person, and I’m using my rationality when I need to do. However, I also realise the limits of it, and my spiritual life is not about rationality. Neither is it about irrationality. It’s about post-rationality.
