M.J. Rose

Easter is about reincarnation. Renewal of body, mind and spirit.

Here is a lovely and inclusive piece reflecting on this time of year from America: The National Catholic Weekly

Paramahamsa Yogananda I: on Holy Thursday

by Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Cambridge, MA. In this Holy Week, we are of course invited to quiet ourselves down, pull back a bit, and reflect on the meaning of our lives, in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are fortunate to have an abundance of aids in this reflection, ranging from the Bible and the liturgies of the Triduum to myriad homilies, spiritual writings, works of music and art. What we are not used to doing is listening to how people of other faith traditions think about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Hindus and Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, have been listening for centuries to what we Christians think of them and their faiths; rarely do we take time in a week like this to listen to their insights. Even if they see things differently than we do, and perhaps misunderstand parts of what we believe — as we have always tended, even with best intentions, to misunderstand the traditions of others — learning is still possible.

I would like to take a step in this direction with a small series of reflections for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, based on the reflections on the Gospels by Paramahamsa Yogananda (1893-1952). Founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, and author of the famous Autobiography of a Yogi, lived a good part of his life in the West. During these years he studied the Gospels, and wrote The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ within You (Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 2004), a nearly 1600 page reflection on selected Gospel passages, published posthumously. For the three days, I will simply offer a summation of a few of his insights into the relevant texts…

[the rest, here]

Here is a lovely piece from Daily Om –

Journey of the Senses: Incense Meditation

When we focus on incense sticks during meditation, we move into a mystical space that is both physical and spiritual at once. Like us, the incense stick is earthbound with an ember that burns for only a finite time, but the diaphanous spirit it releases is unbound by time or space. Rather than shutting down our senses to focus on an inner realm, incense involves our senses as we follow whirling smoke upward and outward while we take its scent into us, filling us as we breathe.

The journey starts with a flame, and then a glowing ember releases smoke to rise above us in an ethereal dance. Ashes fall below, purified by the fire. We can use this to imagine negative thoughts being changed from darkness into the beauty of warm gray snowflakes and a scented spun-silver plume, lighter than air. We can watch as our atmosphere is altered to become reminiscent of the heavens and lifts our thoughts: Embers become shooting stars, and the silver ribbon of smoke becomes unraveled clouds. Altered senses may guide our inspired thoughts to travel along new, perhaps undiscovered, pathways…

[the rest, here]

Oddly, as we advance scientifically it seems as if science itself is becoming more esoteric. For example, Alchemy may be be in the process of “reincarnating” as modern science (see the article below). String theory, chaos theory, and my favorite: Regenerative Medicine (recently a man was able to grow back a fingertip by applying a powder made from pig bladder!) are modern sciences that are nothing short of magical. So, where do we draw the line separating magic from science? Are these two seemingly at odds disciplines actually THE SAME THING?

Good as gold
What alchemists got right
By Stephen Heuser  (The Boston Globe)

THREE HUNDRED YEARS ago, more or less, the last serious alchemists finally gave up on their attempts to create gold from other metals, dropping the curtain on one of the least successful endeavors in the history of human striving.

Centuries of work and scholarship had been plowed into alchemical pursuits, and for what? Countless ruined cauldrons, a long trail of empty mystical symbols, and precisely zero ounces of transmuted gold. As a legacy, alchemy ranks above even fantasy baseball as a great human icon of misspent mental energy.

But was it really such a waste? A new generation of scholars is taking a closer look at a discipline that captivated some of the greatest minds of the Renaissance. And in a field that modern thinkers had dismissed as a folly driven by superstition and greed, they now see something quite different.

Alchemists, they are finding, can take credit for a long roster of genuine chemical achievements, as well as the techniques that would prove essential to the birth of modern lab science. In alchemists’ intricate notes and diagrams, they see the early attempt to codify and hand down experimental knowledge. In the practices of alchemical workshops, they find a masterly refinement of distillation, sublimation, and other techniques still important in modern laboratories…[the rest]