These are a number of Yoganandaji's Easter messages and reflections written during his time in America.

"Why Celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus?"
by Paramhansa Yogananda (Inner Culture, April 1937)

Why should we celebrate the anniversary of the resurrection of the Master Jesus Christ, which event happened twenty centuries ago, unless it yields us some great benefit?

It is God Himself who has descended as a living Being into the bodies of all of His human children. Some of His children are still sleeping, while a few are awake. In the awakened children, the presence of God is recognizable. Great souls, God-knowing prophets, have come to this earth and gone again, forever sealing their lips–forever carrying the secrets of the knowledge they attained hidden in their hearts.

No one is now allowed, nor has ever been allowed, no matter how great a saint he might have been, to come back after death and tell the masses of people (or to tell anyone except perhaps a few devotees) of the life hereafter, or the life-eternal. Not one of the billions who have died since the world began has returned to life in the same body and stood on a lecture platform and cried, “Behold, here I am, come back from the dead, and I hold the mysteries to the kingdom of the hereafter.” From the bourne of death not one has openly returned and openly declared his presence on earth after passing through the experience called "death."

God does not want to influence anyone by miracles performed through saints. God wants to keep Himself as a suggestion hidden behind all cosmic beauty. He wants every human son to use his own free will and innate willingness to find his cosmic Father.

Because great prophets, after their death, do not appear to the sight of all people as they were during their earth life, does not mean that they do not appear at all to anyone. In fact, by spiritual television, ecstasy-tuned hearts can behold any of the so-called gone-forever liberated saints of God.

In the case of Jesus, we have the unquestionable testimony of His honorable, discerning disciples, and of Mary Magdalene, that Jesus Christ was resurrected in the flesh. Hundreds of years after the passing of Jesus, St. Francis used to meet Him in the flesh almost every night in Assisi. We must believe his testimony, for certainly a saint as great and as enlightened as St. Francis could not lie. If such an experience were possible for St. Francis, then why is it not possible for anyone, by persistent devotional seeking, to see Jesus Christ?

When a soul ceases to roam in the veil of matter as a prodigal son and returns to the Father’s Infinite Kingdom by the practice of spiritual ecstasy, then he sheds the temptation of the mortal frame and has all the power of God at his command.

God has become all Creation, and His devotee, who is one with Him, can become like Him. Even as God materialized man into the fleshly form, so all liberated sons of God can take on the physical form at any time in answer to the devotional call of a devotee.

The anniversary of the Resurrection is mechanically celebrated at Easter time by a great many people merely as a historical event in the life of Christ. Even this much is good, but if one is really in earnest and prays unceasingly with intensity, and if he gets inspiration, guidance, and advice from God-known saints, he too will be able to see Jesus Christ resurrected in the flesh.

As the invisible gas represented by the formula H 2 O can be condensed by cold into liquid water, and then can be further condensed into an iceberg, so also God, or Spirit, can be frozen into the forms of Jesus Christ or any other liberated or enlightened soul, by the condensing power of strong, unceasing devotion.

The celebration of the Resurrection merely as a matter of form and custom, as a religious ceremony, is of some meager value, but to celebrate Easter with the supreme desire and determination to make an unceasing effort at meditation and spiritual development until the Resurrection of Christ is witnessed in the flesh–this is really worth while.

Do not think that it is impossible for you to have this experience. Always remember that you are made in the image of God, and if you "seek the kingdom of God first, all these things," (including the first-hand knowledge of the Resurrection of Christ) "will be added unto you."

"Easter Awakening"
by Paramhansa Yogananda (Inner Culture, April 1935)

The little wavelet of Christ Life played helpfully over the bosom of the Cosmic Life for a while, and then it vanished within the ocean’s tenderness, not to die, but to be fed with eternal Ambrosia, and to come back again to declare the immortality of its tiny existence. The ocean of God throbbed once more in the resurrected Prince Jesus.

Flowers fade never to return, but Jesus only slept to obey the sweet command of Nature, and woke again to declare His mastery over Her.

Jesus has silenced the laughter of unbelieving eyes and the audacious poetic assertion that no traveller has ever returned from death’s bourne, by coming back from the place from which no one ever returned before.

With the return of Jesus to this mundane domain, a hope was resurrected in the hearts of a thousand million mortals—the hope that they, too, could wipe away the sting of death from their breasts of everlastingness.

Christ hid Himself again to show that He could not only resurrect His eternalness in the body of Jesus, but also in every blossom, and in every living Being that would ever smile in the garden of Creation through endless aeons.

Christ was resurrected not only on Easter Morn, but He reanimates Himself in the dawn of each Soul’s awakening. Our Souls die every day, whenever we are buried in the tomb of ignorance, and we resurrect ourselves again in Cosmic Wisdom.

Banish the death-consciousness perceived during the sleep of delusion, and resurrect your Soul in the ever-reigning Light of Immortality. Let this be your Easter Awakening.

"Resurrect Your Soul in God"
by Paramhansa Yogananda (Inner Culture, April 1937)

Christ is risen from beneath the sepulcher of your indifference if you would behold Him in the light of your devotion.

He is risen from the imprisoning walls of flesh if you, a sleeping son of God, would come out of your bodily prison into the freedom of Spirit.

Crucify your ignorance and hide-bound evil customs, and rise from beneath the tomb of narrowness into the freedom of Cosmic Brotherhood.

Resurrect your soul from the tomb of reincarnations.

Christ-fragrance is ascending from the living graves of material human consciousness, and descending on the devotion of true devotees everywhere. Wash the altar of your heart with tears of repentance, so that Christ Consciousness, love of all races, all creatures, may resurrect within you.

When your body is crucified with disease, ascend into the consciousness of health.

When your mind is crucified with trials and temptations, awaken into the sphere of self-control.

When you are entombed in sorrow, resurrect yourself into happiness.

When you are buried beneath restlessness, resurrect your mind into continued deep silence.

Your God-love has long been crucified by your inner indifference remaining hidden within you; awaken it, and resurrect it into the consciousness of the Absolute Bliss by daily deep concentration.

"Easter Thoughts"
by Paramhansa Yogananda (Inner Culture, April 1938)

Easter may bring lilies, bunnies, and eggs for you to celebrate Christ’s resurrection; but I pray that the lily of Christ wisdom grow in the garden of your soul, that you taste the sweetness of Christ love in your heart, that you enjoy the infinitely colored egg of true happiness—and that, like the fast-footed bunny, may you quicken your pace towards your divine home.

I want you to pray to Christ the following prayer in the secret temple of deep meditation:

“Thou didst resurrect Thyself from the bondage of flesh, karma, ignorance, and reincarnation, so inspire us with Thy invisible wisdom that we may know how to resurrect the Divine Image within us from the confinement of sense lures. From the miasma of doubt resurrect our vision into the region of Invincible Understanding. From the atmosphere of mental smallness teach us to resurrect our large-heartedness in the kingdom of love for all.

"From the darkness of delusion resurrect us into the sphere of Thy lambent effulgence. From race and class prejudices teach us to resurrect our spirit of brotherhood into the oneness of universal union. Bless us, O Christ, that from this moment we use our inner sense to follow al the mental, moral, and spiritual laws by which we can resurrect our souls from the enthrallment of cosmic delusion into the everlasting freedom of God-contact."

"Easter Message"
by Paramhansa Yogananda (Inner Culture, April 1940)

As Christ resurrected His consciousness from beneath the sepulcher of bodily limitations, so must thou learn to resurrect thy mind from beneath the tomb of material desires. Resurrect thy thoughts by meditation from body confinement to the consciousness of omnipresence.

Resurrect thy divine love from beneath the sod of mundane human attachment. Resurrect thy calmness from beneath the soil of restlessness. Resurrect thy wisdom from beneath the earthliness of ignorance. Resurrect thy love for all from the limited love for family, society, and country.

Resurrect thy soul from the imprisonment of body consciousness and unite it with omniscient Spirit through the developed consciousness of Christ.

As Jesus withdrew his mind from the body by ecstasy and united it with all-pervading Spirit, so unite thy life with eternal life by constant meditation.

"The Resurrection of Christ Within You"
by Paramhansa Yogananda (East West, April 1933)

Who Was Jesus and Who Was The Christ?

Christ consciousness is the intelligence governing all finite Creation. Christ intelligence resides secretly in all the atoms of Creation and directs them to form into nebulae, island universes, and solar systems, and binds [corrected from “bnds”—Ed.] them with cords of thermal, electro-magnetic, gravitational rays, and keeps them swimming and soaring in the endless void of Eternity.

Jesus, the man, through step-by-step methods of Self-Realization, freed His consciousness and Life Force from all body objects of material attachment, such as muscles, heart, spinal plexuses, brain, and medulla, and let them expand into the Cosmic energy and Christ intelligence pervading all finite vibratory matter.

Jesus and The Christ

Jesus, the man, could feel His consciousness and Life Force pulsating in the space cells of His Cosmic material body as well as in the little body named Jesus. This expanded state of consciousness is called Christ Consciousness.

Jesus, with His power over atoms, did not use material miracles to subdue his enemies. He, on the other hand, used the super-subtle all-alluring power of love to conquer His erring brothers.

Because God gave independence to man, He cannot contradict Himself when man does wrong and suddenly deny that right of independent choice and punish man with material miseries. Man suffers from his own ignorance, and from misuse of his God-given freedom of choice. He suffers because of the lack of harmony between his own nature and the blessedness of Thus, God in His wisdom and with all His power, uses only the Almighty Power of love to lure man back from his wanderings in the world of delusion to the abode of blessedness. This method of persuasion involves delay and, therefore, God has to wait for man to gain understanding while the world goes on suffering with its self-created scourges of sin, disease, accident, war, famine, and cataclysms of Nature.

Man Creates Upheavals of Nature

Nature evolves earthquakes, spitting volcanoes and cataclysms through the accumulative wrong thoughts of men. These destructive thoughts distort the ethers and throw the atomic and thermal combinations out of balance, thus creating natural disasters.

When Jesus resurrected, or lifted, His consciousness from the consciousness of the body to the consciousness of the universal intelligence in all space, He realized that He was not only the little body called Jesus, but that He was also all forces and all substances. Jesus, in the human consciousness, thought of Himself as circumscribed by the physical body. This state is called the son of man consciousness. Jesus, as the Son of God, actually realized that He was the intelligence in all manifestation and that all matter was His body.

Resurrection

When the body of Jesus was crucified, He carried out His statement: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19.) Jesus knew that He was not like other mortals who could not separate their souls from their bodies, and who could not perceive their existence apart from the body. For that reason it was possible for Him to say that He would rebuild His body after its destruction. He knew that He was the omnipresent Christ intelligence in all matter and that He had the power to command the atoms to grow another body or to rebuild the crucified body into a new one.

The resurrection of Jesus was not performed to glorify the little material residence of flesh, but to show man what can be done by tuning in with Christ Intelligence. Any man who can receive Christ in his consciousness through expanding it in meditation can become a Son of God and can perceive the universe as his body.

The omnipresent Christ Intelligence is caged in the little physical body of every man. Everyone should try to release this vast consciousness from imprisonment behind the walls of material possessions and body consciousness, and let it realize its own vast omniscience.

Just as sound may be caged in the mouth but when uttered travels all over the universe, ever expanding spherically in all directions, so the soul, caged in the body, when resurrected into the ether by right meditation, forgets the confinement of the little body and expands with the Cosmic Vibration into the Eternal Omnipresence.

The celebration of the resurrection of Jesus on the first Easter morn should not end only in gifts of colored eggs to the children, feasting, and new spring hats. Man must learn to resurrect his soul from its long sleep and from its sense attachments.

Just as a rich prince, if brought up in the slums, would forget the wealth and vastness of his kingdom, so also, the omnipresent soul (made after the image of omnipresent Spirit) forgets its omnipresence and omniscience through being held in a consciousness limited by the imperfect body. However, if the prince were made to realize his own position, and were brought back to his kingdom, he would feel himself rich and unlimited. In the same way, the soul, made to realize its superconscious state, can know again its vastness and omnipresence.

Therefore, pass this Easter, at least a few hours of it, in lifting your consciousness from the domain of matter into the vastness of the Silence within your own temple and commune with the risen Christ there. Rise above the body consciousness. Resurrect yourself from the tomb of ignorance. Sit on the throne of Christ Consciousness and say in Realization: "I and my Father are One."

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