Easter

At Easter we feel as if we have risen from our vague physical thoughts. In Spring the sun shines very brightly and is already warm and all of our senses seem to be brightened and warmed by the Spring sun. The sun seems to speak to all our senses out of the distance of the cosmos and we feel great joy through it. That joy rejoices in the depths of our soul and we can learn to feel how it rises up to the sun's rays and unites with it. I can feel myself, embedded in the warm rays of the sun, and I respond with great joy, which comes from me, from my perception.

This joy seems to release thoughts, seems to free me from the sheath of my self. They radiate, as it were, back into the cosmos, from my soul, my etheric body, my physical body, as if it were a choir that sings Hallelujah! From my normal consciousness I do not hear the choir entirely, but in the depth I can perceive how the tones sound in harmony and how they connect the human being with the being of the spirit. It is the physical body that is endowed with new life forces.

In other words...:
The spiritual higher beings who are the sun - not the physical object sun - united in the Resurrected Christ, touch my senses, my seeing, my hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling ... They permeate my whole being, my physical body, into the marrow of my bones. Thereby a deep inner joy comes as a response from the depths of my soul and it unites with the light in seeing. It is the power of the resurrection of the body that evokes this deep inner feeling of joy. Through the union of joy and the spiritual sun there is also a vaguely experienced union of the human being and the being of the spirit. This is realised by the thoughts evoked by the inner joy-thoughts that are not thought in the ordinary way, but which go from the sheathes of the self into the cosmic distances of the world.

Wenn aus den Weltenweiten
Die Sonne spricht zum Menschensinn
Und Freude aus den Seelentiefen
Dem Licht sich eint im Schauen,
Dann ziehen aus der Selbstheit Hülle
Gedanken in die Raumesfernen
Und binden dumpf
Des Menschen Wesen an des Geistes Sein.

When out of the world distances
The sun speaks to the human being's sense
And joy from the soul depths
Unites with the light in seeing,
Then out of the sheathes of the self
Thoughts go out into the distances of space
And dimly bind
The human being with the being of the spirit.

(Rudolf Steiner, Calendar of the soul No. 1.)

At Easter we celebrate the resurrection of the body from death. Just as nature's death must make room for life, as the plants begin to grow and flourish again, so do the forces of death in the human body make room for life.

In Autumn, the opposite occurs: nature dies and on the ground of this dying, receding force of nature the human spirit can awaken and become aware of itself.

Easter by Mieke Mosmuller