The Body is the Cross

‘Give up this life if thou wouldst live.’

‘Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it’. Matt. 10:39

‘The Body is the Cross’ (Ramana Maharshi)
Ego is not real
God is True Life

‘The body is the cross’ (these words came to me this morning so clearly that I started to write this blog – then later I looked and found that it was Ramana who had actually stated these words)

The ego or false personal identity associated with the body is seen as passing, unreal and not true
The Spirit of God is realised to be the True imperishable, infinite Life

In other words:

The crucifixion is a metaphor for spiritual awakening

The story ABOUT Jesus is on the one hand a historical amazing inspirational account of the Son of God. A story with such impact and depth and mystery like no other. Many people all over the world who do not necessarily call themselves Christians somehow feel a love for this remarkable being.

A literal story of its time and also perhaps a metaphorical story, seen on a deeper, allegorical level perhaps, as a pointer to who we truly are now, and always – in harmony with God. Perhaps the story of Jesus and the powerful light of Christ points to our own transformation, transcendence and Truth.

Perhaps Jesus never meant ‘I AM’ – and you are not!
Perhaps He loves us too much to see us as a mere finite ‘person’ when we are in essence the presence of God, through the truth of Christ. The dissolution of the illusion of separation is the birth into ‘new life’ as oneness, as consciousness.
He is the example that illustrates our own ascension and he has been sent many times, perhaps, to be this living transformative vortex of God’s pure grace.

Blessed is the one who removes the veil of delusion to reveal the true and timeless heart.

‘The body is the cross’
Ego is not real
God is True Life

Infinite Light

On a similar theme from Muryoko ‘Infinite Light‘ Journal of Shin Buddhism (Lafcadio Hearn)

‘The mind, the thoughts, and all the senses are subject to the law of life and death. With knowledge of Self and the laws of birth and death, there is no grasping, and no sense-perception. Knowing one’s self and knowing how the senses act, there is no room for the idea of “I,” or the ground for framing it. The thought of “Self” gives rise to all sorrows, binding the world as with fetters; but having found there is no “I” that can be bound, then all these bonds are severed.’ Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King

‘The only reality is One – all that we have taken for Substance is only Shadow. The physical is the unreal, and the outer-man is the ghost.’

For Ramana Maharshi, Christ-consciousness and Self-Realisation are all the same.

With further investigation into what Ramana says about the crucifixion and Self Realisation I found it is he that says

‘Jesus, the son of man, is the ego or ‘I-am-the-body’-idea. When the son of man is crucified on the cross, the ego perishes, and what survives is the Absolute Being. It is the resurrection of the Glorious Self, of the Christ, the Son of God (Maharshi’s Gospel, 29).

‘The body is the cross; the sense of its self-hood is named Jesus; his attainment of the State of the Real Self by the extinction of that sense is the resurrection.’

‘All those men that have won this State are (alike) Sons of God, since they have overcome maya; they are worthy of being adored.’ (Sarma, Guru Ramana, 18).

And Ramana says that if the ego is killed the eternal Self is revealed in all its glory: Jesus the Son of Man is the ego, or the I am the body idea. When he is crucified he is resurrected, a glorious Self, Jesus, the Son of God! (Conscious Immortality, 88).

Many people, it seems, do not like the idea of ‘killing’ the ego as they think of themselves as precious (understandably) and perhaps do identify with ego (the psychological self – who they THINK they are). This is part of our conditioning as human beings on this planet actually – we do all have to taste this conditioning and believe we are who we THINK we are personally – so the idea of killing oneself seems violent and not loving at all!

However this is really a misconception. The psychological self is not actually ‘alive’ – it is not actually a reality – only as a cluster of thoughts, memories, beliefs, conditioned impressions that we hold and believe to be something continuous or permanent or real. But – as ‘self enquiry’ shows – if we search to find this ‘me’ that is a result of all these mental images and changeful thought patterns that are related in our minds to our body and personal identity – we find that this entity cannot actually be found! It is not actually real. How can you kill something that is already passing like a cloud, across the sky of awareness? Ego is not a form – it may be associated with the body – but its nature is psychological so there can be no bloody death as there is no flesh to ego! Do you see?

Mooji says: “Ego is a ghost who is terrified of dying’

Ramana is referring to a kind of death to ego, however, and speaks of this ‘killing’ of the ego. Perhaps because it does seem that through the falling away of the illusion of that kind of separate self there is such a profound shift in identity that is radical, completely life changing and transformative in the deepest way. Not only is it profoundly liberating to have the dark cloud of egoic identity removed by grace, it is also the difference between the ‘Son of man’ and the ‘Son of God’.

It is the RESURRECTION LIFE!

‘Give up this life if thou wouldst live.’

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Matt. 10:39

‘Christ is the ego. The Cross is the Body. When the ego is crucified, and it perishes, what survives is the Absolute Being (God), (‘I and my Father are one’) and this glorious survival is called Resurrection (Ramana Maharshi – Talks, 86).