Adyashanti - Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic

This book is dedicated to my grandfather, Harold Foster. He was the first true Christian that I knew in this life and a rare embodiment of Christs unconditional love. His capacity to affirm the very best in everyone he knew transformed many lives. May you eternally rest in Gods great love, grace, and mercy.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a product of the love and dedication of many people. I offer a deep bow of appreciation to Mitchell Clute. Your enthusiastic support of this project and fine editing skills were a true gift. Every time we talked, I left with a smile on my face. I also offer my deepest gratitude to Tami Simon. Your unwavering integrity, curiosity, and dedication to truth are always a breath of fresh air, and your friendship is one of the great gifts of this life.

I also want to acknowledge some of the Christian writers who have been the most inspirational to me over the years: Meister Eckhart, one of the true giants in the history of Christian mysticism, for his brilliant and enlightened sermons on the mystery of Christ. Saint John of the Cross, for his great insights into the mystical journey and his lyrical poetry. Thomas Merton, for first opening my eyes to the deeper meaning of the Christian journey. Joseph Campbell, for his great insights into the mythic understanding of the worlds great stories. John Carroll, for showing me the significance of the Gospel of Mark and for some of the most powerful writing I have ever encountered.

EDITORS PREFACE

The Jesus youre about to encounter in Resurrecting Jesus is a spiritual revolutionary, an example of awakened humanity in action, beyond the confines of any religion or theology. This Jesus is not rooted in time and history; he points us toward the timeless realm of spirit. But neither is he distant and transcendent; his story is an invitation to embody spirit in the present, in ourselves.

When I first encountered Adyashantis teachings on Jesus, I was captivated by his unexpected insights on Jesus as enlightened being. His talks brought Jesus alive for me in a way Id never experienced before. I discovered that Adyas explorations of the gospel story were an annual Christmas tradition, one he clearly enjoyed.

When it came time to brainstorm a new project with Adya, I suggested that we ask him to teach on Jesus. As it turned out, he was already preparing for a week-long retreat on Jesus life and teachings and was enthusiastic about creating a book and audio program on the topic.

So in the spring of 2013, I traveled with Tami Simon, Sounds Trues publisher, to California to record the material that became Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic. We spent four days in a comfortable studio tucked deep in the woods above Santa Cruz, listening intently as Adya shined a light on the deeper meanings of the Jesus story.

As Adya spoke, I was struck again and again by what a fantastic story the Gospels tellespecially the Gospel of Mark, the text at the heart of Resurrecting Jesus. From the moment Jesus appears at the River Jordan to be baptized, the story moves swiftly and inexorably toward the crucifixion, passing through joy and triumph, sorrow and betrayal along the way. In the light of Adyas teaching, the Jesus that comes through is deeply human, fully divine, and completely unexpected.

Throughout these talks, Adya draws from two translations of the Bible, the New International Version (NIV) and the English Standard Version (ESV). For each quotation, hes chosen the version that works best in context; for each quote, the source Bible is indicated along with the chapter and verse. The other key text here is the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, a Coptic-language collection of sayings attributed to Jesus.

Listening to Adya in the studio and, later, editing the manuscript of this book, I began to see the ways in which these teachings close the gap between us and Jesus, between us and the divine. Just as Adyas Jesus is a revolutionary figure, Resurrecting Jesus is a revolutionary bookone that challenges our conventional interpretations and confounds our expectations at every turn. The Jesus story as Adya shares it is a blueprint for the awakening process, a teaching that shows us how we might embody divine being in human formjust as Jesus did.

Yes, Adya teaches Jesus is the son of Godand in the same way, each of us is the son or daughter of God. Each of us is the word made flesh. So what does it mean to resurrect Jesusto free him from the accretions of history, theology, and belief? What does it mean for the Jesus story to come alive in you? Find out! Thats the invitation of Resurrecting Jesus.

Mitchell Clute

Editor & Producer, Sounds True

Boulder, Colorado

April 2014

PROLOGUE: JESUS THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTIONARY

Jesus is the silent colossus that has defined Western culture for the better part of two thousand years. Hes the central persona in Western cultures collective dream. In the last few decades, the scholarly emphasis has been on trying to figure out which parts of the Jesus story are historical and factual and which arentin other words, what really did happen in Judea two thousand years ago? The scholarly interest in Jesus has been what did Jesus really say as opposed to what he didnt say. My view is well never really know with any certainty; we cant really know what happened and what didnt happen, or how much is historically true and how much is mythological. This search for the historical Jesus, although its interesting, even fascinating, ultimately misses the point. The point is the story; the point is the collective dream.

In Western culture, we have for the most part forgotten the power of story, the power of myth to carry and transmit truthultimate truth, spiritual truth. Myth is that which speaks to our souls. Myth is the language that connects with our unconscious and brings forth the sense of eternity, of radiance peering through the world of time and space. Myth, ultimately, is a way of talking about what cant be said, of conveying what cant be written about. And so the Jesus story, I believe, comes most fully alive when we can let go of the obsession with history, of what did or didnt happen.

In the end, it doesnt really matter whether we read the Bible as historically accurate and factual or whether we read the story as mythic and metaphorical, as that which can carry truths of the divine to our conscious and unconscious being and help reveal to us something that facts cant touch upon. There are many ways to look at this story and to look at the character of Jesus. Each of us, hopefully, looks at the story in our own way, in a way that speaks to us. In Resurrecting Jesus, Im looking at the Jesus story through a particular lens. My interpretive lens focuses on bringing forth Jesus the spiritual revolutionary, Jesus as a presence of divine radiance and enlightenment that breaks the boundaries and lines of separation that confine uswhether those lines of separation are cultural, interpersonal, tribal, or simply within our own psychology.