An article from "CentreCOMM", May 1996 ...

Resurrected Thinking
by Rev Heather Gilmour

The passing of Easter leaves us with a crucial question about the degree to which we have taken in the spiritual impulse of this season. The question is: Do I have a pre-resurrection consciousness or a post-resurrection consciousness?

In a historical sense we all belong to the post-resurrection era: Christ's death and resurrection brought about a dramatic change in the earth and in human evolution which affects us all. But as individuals we can still be living as though the resurrection had not happened. 

Luke, in the opening verses of Acts, says that Christ “presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them (the disciples) during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Those forty days between the resurrection and the ascension, the time we call the mystical interval, enabled the disciples to move forward from their old thinking and understanding into a post-resurrection consciousness. As we consider their experience, we see how our thinking too can be transformed.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PERCEPTION

The body in which Christ appeared to his disciples was not the same as the body they had known before the resurrection. They did not recognise him at first when he came to them. Mary thought he was the gardener. The disciples on the Emmaus road did not know him until he broke bread with them. The disciples fishing on Galilee did not discern who was calling to them from the shore. He could vanish and appear before them in a way no physical body could.

The way in which the Christ was present with the disciples in those forty days was different from the way he had been with them before. His presence was real, but not in an ordinary physical form. They perceived him rather than saw him. We could say that they experienced his presence not through their physical senses but through their spiritual senses.

Ordinary consciousness relies on the physical senses and what they reveal to the mind about our external and internal worlds. This results in the rational thinking that characterises our everyday lives. The post-resurrection consciousness is based on a perception of reality that goes beyond the senses. The mark of this consciousness is spiritual or resurrected thinking. 

FROM CONCEPTS TO REALITY

Luke says that when Christ appeared to the disciples during those forty days he spoke of the kingdom of God. This was not a new message. Mark tells us that at the Christ began his ministry by preaching, "The kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:14). He told many parables about the kingdom and to the disciples he said, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God." It was their privilege to be led into an understanding of the mysteries of the kingdom. During Christ's earthly ministry, however, they were unable to make this great privilege their own.

"Do you not understand this parable?" he said when they asked him the meaning of the parable of the sower. "How then will you understand all the parables?" And on another occasion, he said to them, "Do you not yet perceive or understand?" He called them "slow of heart" and "foolish" because of their inability to grasp the truth presented to them. So although they had been chosen to be the recipients of the truth, they did not yet comprehend it.

It was not that they didn't think about what Christ said. Their minds were very busy as they listened to his words and puzzled over them, for truth at this stage was an intellectual concept to them. They discussed his words among themselves. Sometimes they reached conclusions that seemed right to them, only to have Christ cut across their treasured notions to expose their error.

To the pre-resurrection consciousness, truth belongs to the intellect. On the spiritual path, we receive new concepts and ideas which stimulate and excite our mind. Our rational mind then works overtime trying to reconcile what is said here with what was said there. We discuss with others what this can mean. We create our models of how things are and we come to solutions which seem to us to be appropriate yet can be very far from the truth. The Christ has to say to us, "Do you not yet perceive or understand? Do you still think in earthly terms? Have you not yet learned to discern the truth?”

For the disciples, this intellectual phase was a necessary stage in their learning. The words which Jesus spoke, although not understood fully, entered into them. That seed would eventually bear fruit - after the resurrection. In our reaching towards a greater consciousness, we likewise have to receive the teachings into us, often with little understanding. We have to think about them. We have to puzzle over them. The conclusions we draw at this time are often erroneous, and if we think we have really understood we are wrong. The seed will bear fruit, but not yet. Not before we enter into a post-resurrection consciousness, not before truth has become more than an intellectual concept.

Before the resurrection, the disciples knew what Christ had said; after the resurrection they understood the inner meaning of his words. We comprehend quite well the difference between these two kinds of knowing. We read or hear something and it sits somewhere in our consciousness until the time is ripe for us to understand it. Then something happens in our lives that lights up those words for us, and we say, "Now I know what that means." The seed has borne its fruit.

This was the experience of the disciples during those forty days. The words of Christ became more than ideas to feed their minds. They became a living and powerful force within them.

            A NEW EXPERIENCE OF CHRIST

Resurrected thinking also changes our understanding of Christ. During Christ’s earthly ministry, the disciples received hints as to who he was. Peter made the great statement, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus replied, “Blessed are you... for flesh and blood has not revealed this unto you.” But Peter could not fully grasp the implications of his own statement. In the next breath, he showed that his understanding of Christ was not large enough to encompass the possibility of Christ's death. He said, "This will never happen to you, Lord," and Christ had to rebuke him.

When we live in a pre-resurrection consciousness, we follow a Christ of our own making. In spite of tantalising revelations and glimpses of who Christ is, our thinking is still bound by earthly concepts. We have our own interpretations, our own images and concepts of him. Our knowledge of him is limited by these. But when we perceive him in his resurrected life, in his etheric form, those concepts about him give way to knowledge.

After the resurrection, the disciples discovered the immensity of the being with whom they had companied for three years. This Christ could not be defined by the mind. In his commission to them he said, "All authority (exousia) in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18). The power of the Exousiai, those exalted beings so closely linked with our earth and its evolution, was working through him. The disciples experienced him as an enlivening presence with them and as a cosmic being in whom, as Paul says, all things hold together.

A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF GOD’S PURPOSE

Before the resurrection, the disciples thought that Christ would save the Jewish nation and set up an earthly kingdom. He tried to explain to them that his kingdom was not of this world and that he must die and rise again, but they could not take it in. The events of Good Friday left their dreams and expectations in ruins.

After the resurrection, though, they discovered that the work of redemption was far greater than they had envisaged. Out of the wreckage of their hopes a new vision was born. It reached out far beyond the Jewish nation. Christ's commission to his disciples was, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation" (Mark 16:15). Earlier versions translated this as “to every creature”, but that is not what the text says - it is to the whole creation. Not just every person but the whole of creation is affected by and reaps the benefit of the deed of Christ. Paul understood this when he said, "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the sons of God ... the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Romans 8.19-21).

With a pre-resurrection consciousness, we are parochial in our outlook, concerned about our own well-being and salvation and that of those close to us. When through resurrected thinking we discover the purpose of God for us and for the world, that littleness of vision disappears in the realisation that we are part of one great unity moving forwards towards freedom and perfection.

A NEW POWER

Soon after he had called them, Christ sent the disciples out to preach and to heal and to have authority over the demons. They returned jubilant about their success, but it was not sustained. Later there were failures. A father came to Christ to ask him to cast out the deaf and dumb spirit from his son when the disciples were unable to help. Afterwards the disciples said, "Why couldn't we do it?" They had been given the authority, but they couldn't use it. Something was missing. When we live in a pre-resurrection consciousness we are often defeated by the forces of darkness and negativity, and we experience feeling powerless. Yet we know that this is not how it ought to be.

Mark portrays the risen Christ as saying:

These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover. (Mark 16:17)

There is an absolute assurance in these words that the disciples would have the necessary power to overcome all negative influences. When our thinking is resurrected, we experience the power of the Christ within as stronger than any other force we confront. We can take up our authority in his name.

            THINKING WITH THE HEART

After the resurrection, the disciples learnt to stop looking for someone else to make the kingdom happen for them and to discover it within themselves. The resurrection showed them that Christ was victorious over the forces and power of death; they saw in him the first fruits, the promise, of what they would one day be - sons of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

This was no mere mental exercise. It was a vision that captivated their being. The disciples who walked with him on the road to Emmaus said, "Did not our hearts burn within us?"  The burning heart is a sign of the post-resurrection consciousness.

John Wesley was brought up in the church, educated in theology, ordained as a priest in the Church of England and became a missionary to North America. He failed in his ministry and returned to England full of doubts and fears and searching for some reality in his religion. One night, in a small meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, his heart was “strangely warmed”. He experienced the spirit of the living, resurrected Christ setting him free. That fire sent him to preach Christ to the ordinary people, the poor and downtrodden, throughout England. The great movement of the spirit that was the result saved England from the bloody revolution France suffered. Wesley’s powerlessness became powerfulness when the spirit of Christ flowed through him, when what he knew in his head became real in his experience.

As long as the teachings of Christ remain concepts in our minds, we live in a pre-resurrection consciousness. But when our hearts are warmed by the experience of his presence within us, our thinking and feeling unite in an inner knowledge that transforms us. That is what it means to live in a post-resurrection consciousness.

As Rev Mario Schoenmaker says in The New Clairvoyance:

The person who has seen the risen Christ in the etheric no longer walks in the darkness, guided by the faculty of faith, but now walks in the light which streams from the living Christ. Faith becomes transformed into the light of an inner knowing. Then the auric field will be aglow with the radiance of the Christ, and the vibrance of the colours will express his life. Then his words will be fulfilled: “You are the light of the world“ (Matthew 5:14).