TRUE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD

8 Copyright 2018, John H. Davidson M.A. (Cantab)

John H. Davidson M.A. (Cantab)

Adapted from The Gospel of Jesus – In Search of His Original Teachings,

John Davidson, 2004
(where all quoted texts are fully referenced).

Available from:
http://www.scienceofthesoul.org/product_p/en–176–0.htm

The resurrection of dead bodies on some distant Day of Judgment was a Middle-
Eastern belief from long before the days of Jesus. Yet it is clear that a significant
number of early Christians understood true resurrection to be spiritual, rather than
physical. What, exactly, did they mean?

Although Jesus must have been so happy to have left his maimed body and to have returned
to his heavenly Father in the eternal realms of the Spirit, it is orthodox Christian belief that he
actually rose from the dead in his physical body on the third day after his crucifixion.
Subsequently, after a period of forty days, he ascended into heaven – again in his physical
body.

But why should a soul who has just escaped from the prison of the body, want to re-enter it
once again? What would have been the practical purpose of it? It is true that mystics do talk of
‘rising from the dead’, but their meaning is something entirely different.

Since mystics have characteristically spoken of this world as the realm of the dead and have
described its inhabitants as being dead, it is understandable that being taken up from here into
the land of the living and going through the experience of dying while living was commonly
called being raised from the dead. It is a resurrection – not of – but from the body. When the
soul and mind focus or concentrate at the inner centre behind the two eyes (the third eye or
single eye), they are able to leave the body and ascend into higher worlds or heavens. In
modern times, these have been called the astral and causal realms. This is the real and mystic
meaning of resurrection and rising from the dead.

Resurrection of physical bodies on some distant day of judgment is a religious idea

originating in the ancient Middle East. The belief existed long before Christianity, being a
tenet of Zoroastrianism. Mithraism, too, one of the most prevalent of the many Roman
religions or cults, and spread throughout the Empire from the Middle East to Britain, also
taught the resurrection of the dead on some far-off day of judgment. It was also held by the
Pharisaic side of Judaism and Paul, having been raised as a Pharisee, firmly believed in it,
making it a part of early Christianity in the non-Jewish world. He brings it into his letters on
many occasions and it is almost certainly he who is largely responsible for its presence in
Christianity today.

However, it was a concept introduced when the real meaning of being raised from the dead
had been forgotten. It is an externalization of an inward spiritual truth and many early
Christians did not accept it, especially the more truly mystical amongst them. They
understood the mystic meaning of dying while living, of being raised from the dead, and of
spiritual ascension and resurrection. And this is the way they interpreted Jesus’ teachings on
the subject (John 5:28–29):
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 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming,
in the which all that are in the graves
shall hear his Voice, and shall come forth;
They that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life;
And they that have done evil,
unto the resurrection of damnation.

Either at the time of their death or during their own lifetime, those who hear the Voice of God,
the divine Music of the Creative Word, within themselves will be raised up or resurrected
from the grave of the physical body. They are the ones who have “done good”. They will be
taken within and will ultimately go back to God. This is the “resurrection of life”. And those
who have “done evil”, who have simply increased their load of sins, will experience the
“resurrection of damnation” – they will be condemned to rebirth in this world. They will be
resurrected or returned to physical life in another body.

The “Voice” is the Creative Word or Logos, the primary creative emanation or Power of God
from which many mystics have said that creation is formed, and which can be experienced
within as divine Sound and Light. Thus Jesus again says (John 5:24–25):

Verily, verily, I say unto you,

he that heareth my Word,
and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life,
and shall not come into condemnation;
But is passed from death unto life.

Verily, verily, I say unto you,

the hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the Voice of the Son of God:
And they that hear shall live.

“The hour is coming, and now is”, says Jesus. The resurrection of which he was speaking
could be experienced “now”. When the spiritually “dead” people of the world hear the “Voice
of the Son of God”, spiritually they “shall live”. This is also what Jesus meant when he said
(John 8:51):

Verily, verily, I say unto you,

if a man keep my saying (word/Word),
he shall never see death.

In the characteristic double meaning of John’s gospel, Jesus says that those who “keep my
saying” – those who both follow his teachings as well as keep themselves in contact with the
Word within – will never “see death”. They will never have to suffer the ignominy and shame
of taking another birth in this world. Otherwise, of course, Jesus and all of his disciples were
dead within a few years or decades of this statement. The intended meaning is evidently
spiritual and mystical – not physical.

Early Disbelief In Resurrection

There is no doubt that many early Christians did not believe in a physical resurrection. In a
number of Paul’s letters, for example, he speaks of other Christian teachers who disagree with
his interpretations, though their side of the story is never told and the exact nature of the
disagreement cannot always be determined. This is at a time in the AD 50s or 60s,
comparatively soon after the death of Jesus, when some of Jesus’ direct disciples would still
have been living. And they would have no doubt been far more inclined to believe what they
had heard directly from Jesus than from Paul, whose position was altogether dubious amongst
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those who were not his own converts.

It is known, for example, that the Christian groups in Palestine, the Ebionites and the
Nazoraeans, did not countenance the belief. Some explanation of Paul’s controversies is
found in the Acts of Paul. Speaking of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, it reads:

There were certain men come to Corinth, Simon and Cleobius, saying: “There is no
resurrection of the flesh, but that of the spirit only.”

This is precisely the mystic point of view on the matter. But it is the gnostic writers who are
the most scathing of the idea. The author of the Gospel of Philip is explicit:

Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error, for he rose up
first and then died.

He says that Jesus did not die and then arise in his physical body. He ascended inwardly to the
higher regions during his lifetime – and then died. Therefore, he adds:

Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first
receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.

And also:

While we are in this world it is fitting for us to acquire the resurrection, so that when
we strip off the flesh we may be found in rest.

Whatever has to be achieved has to be achieved now. If a person does not learn how to rise
into the higher realms during life, they cannot expect to suddenly acquire the ability after
death. The author of the gnostic text, the Testimony of Truth, repeats the same thing:

Some say, “On the last day we will certainly arise in the resurrection.” But they do
not know what they are saying.... Do not expect, therefore, the carnal resurrection....

They err in expecting a resurrection that is empty. They do not know the Power of
God, nor do they understand the interpretation of the scriptures on account of their
double-mindedness (confusion of thought). Those who do not have the life-giving
Word in their heart will die.... We have been born again by the Word.

He implies that only those who “know the Power of God”, the “life-giving Word” and have
been “born again” (spiritually baptized or initiated) can come to know what is really meant by
“resurrection”. Other writers are specific as to the actual nature of the true resurrection:

It is fitting that the soul regenerate herself and become again as she formerly was
(become a pure soul, attain Self-realization). The soul then moves of her own accord
(becomes a free soul), and – for her rejuvenation – she received the divine nature
from the Father, so that she might be restored to the place where originally she had
been. This is the resurrection from the dead. This is the ransom from captivity. This
the upward journey of ascent to heaven. This is the way of ascent to the Father
(Expository Treatise on the Soul).

The soul, he says, must regain knowledge of who she really is and must return to her original
spiritual Home with God, the “place where originally she had been”. “This is the resurrection
from the dead.” It is also being ransomed from the captivity of this world and the true spiritual
ascent through the inner heavens back to God. As another writer says:

But the resurrection... is the revelation of what is, and the transformation of things,
and a transition into newness (Treatise on the Resurrection).

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And:

We are drawn to heaven by him (our Saviour, the Lord Christ),

like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything.
This is the spiritual resurrection.

Resurrection, then, is the spiritual or mystic ascent of the soul from the body – not a raising of
dead bodies whose atoms have long since been recycled by natural processes.

In the apocryphal Acts of Paul, resurrection in a new body is also equated with reincarnation.
Souls are resurrected in the children of future generations:

And we will teach thee of that resurrection which he asserteth, that it is already come
to pass in the children which we have, and we rise again when we have come to the
knowledge of the true God.

But the writer also adds that coming to mystic knowledge or gnosis of God is the true rising
from the dead.

Rising from the Dead

There are a great many places in the ancient mystic literature where rising from the dead and
ascent to heaven are specifically identified as the spiritual ascent from the body into the higher
realms and, ultimately, back to God. In the Apocryphon of James, for example, it is said that
the Spirit, the Word, raises the soul, bringing life to it, while its encounters with the body only
serve to entrap it in the realm of death:

It is the Spirit that raises the soul,

but the body that kills it.

And amongst the Mandaean writings (a gnostic sect which miraculously survived from
probably pre-Christian times down to the present century in the marshlands of southern Iran
and Iraq) the terminology of ‘rising up’ is used again and again for the rising up of the soul to
the eternal realm:

Good one! Rise to the House of Life!

And go to the everlasting abode!
They will hang thy lamp amongst lamps of light.

And:

Rise up, rise up, soul,

ascend to thy First Homeland!
Rise, rise to thy First Homeland,
the place from which thou wast transplanted,
to the place from which thou wast transplanted,
to thy good dwelling, the dwelling of ‘uthras (pure souls),

Bestir thyself! Don thy garment of glory

and set on thy living wreath.
Rise! inhabit the skintas (inner realms)
amongst the ‘uthras thy brethren.

Jesus, then, neither rose from the dead in his physical body, nor did that physical form later
ascend to the skies in a physical manner, nor will all the dead bodies arise from their graves
on some distant Day of Judgment. The disciples may well have seen their Master after his
departure, but that would have been his inner, light or astral form, a form so beautiful and
4 True Resurrection from the Dead
pure, emanating so much love, that no soul who sees it can resist. But that, as they say, is
another story.

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