The Hebrew month of Nissan, which began last Saturday, marks the beginning of the spiritual New Year in Judaism. As with other great religious festivals, this timing reflects the special cosmic energies which reach the Earth at different times during its annual orbit of the Sun.
The better-known secular Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, takes place in Autumn, but Jewish mystical thought sees Nissan as the time of spiritual renewal and growth towards greater freedom.
The increase of light, the flowering plants and trees, the birth of young animals and birds, and all the joyful signs of Springtime shine forth now as the Earth passes through the Aries-Libra axis. Many ancient cultures celebrated the New Year at this time, just after the Spring Equinox, because the renewal of life is so obvious now.
Conscious men and woman situated religious festivals at the most propitious time of year for their celebration; clearly, it was appropriate that the great drama of Christ's Passion should take place now, so it was timed that both the Passover and Easter were to take place at this very special time of year. Jesus knew that His death and resurrection would have to take place directly preceding the Passover. Both Easter and Passover are about the redemption of mankind from slavery and death, and He came to deepen our understanding of this process and to show us how we may participate in it by our own self-sacrifice and personal resurrection.
Passover marks the passage of the Israelites from their life of slavery in Egypt to the freedom they were to enjoy in their Promised Land, Israel. When they left Egypt, the Jews had been conditioned to endure life as slaves, rather than to live as free people with the power of choice. They needed time to become free within, as well as without. This time we know as the period of wandering in the wilderness, when the Jews underwent a lengthy purification to make them ready for a life as free men and women, subject to the laws of God rather than slaves to Pharaoh.
Psychologically, today Passover has become a festival of freedom for oppressed people all over the world. It's celebrated in many churches, because it was at the festival of Passover that Jesus chose to suffer death on the cross in order to win a greater liberation for all. He showed us how we must die to all our mechanicalness, all our self-seeking, all our slaveries - our addictions - in order to rise to greater life in God.
In the Work, we see how the festival of Easter brings the completion, the universal fulfillment, of the spiritual possibilities given to the Jews at Passover. No longer limited to a particular people in a particular time and place, Easter makes redemption a possibility for everyone, no matter what his or her life circumstances may be.
To better understand the underlying meaning of Easter, we need to look at Passover. Jesus, as a Jew, celebrated Passover every year with his family. Whenever possible, Jews went to Jerusalem to keep the feast, because that was the location of the Temple where sacrifices were offered. We've seen in previous posts how important in the ancient world was the enactment of the blood sacrifice. Initially, conscious men and women instituted the sacrifice of animals, repugnant as it was, because it was a necessary half-way stage from human sacrifice, as practiced by pagans, to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, whose own blood purified the Earth and brought the chance of redemption to everyone. That is why animal sacrifices were no longer necessary after the crucifixion of Jesus.
Before the Jews could escape from Egypt, they were told by a messenger of God to sacrifice a lamb in each household. The blood of the lamb was then to be daubed on the doorposts of each Jewish house, so that the Angel of Death would pass over these dwelling places and spare the inhabitants from the terrible fate of the Egyptians, whose first-born sons were to be taken.
As Christians, we read what we call the Old Testament and are often horrified at the apparent blood-thirstiness of God and the ancient peoples. But Kabbalists, the mystics of Judaism, read the Bible just as we in the Work also understand it, as a series of tales to be seen on two levels. There is the literal, physical event, and the metaphysical, inner meaning. No doubt many terrible sacrifices and wars did occur, but both Jewish and Christian mystics, and we in the Work, read the stories as spiritual truths, still valid for us today.
Thus, something of great value - just as a lamb was extremely valuable, especially to ill-fed slaves - must be sacrificed so that we can experience greater freedom.
The Jews could then escape to the wilderness under the leadership of Moses, where their wanderings constituted their time of purgatorial cleansing from all the harmful habits of thought, speech and action they had imbibed as slaves.
Today we see that there are many forms of slavery, and that we are all in some way slaves to our habits. Some have obvious, easily-defined addictions - to alcohol, drugs, sex, co-dependence and so on. These mental and physical enslavements can kill the body: they certainly prevent any spiritual growth while they govern our behaviour.
And there are other, more subtle, types of enslavement, symbolized by the prohibition of hametz during the eight-day festival of the Passover.
Each Jew must ensure his or her house is completely from hametz. Hametz is the leavening agent of baked goods. This may be yeast, baking powder or any similar substance. Sometimes water alone causes the swelling up of flour, and attracts hametz. Bread, many types of cake and other foods are usually leavened, so the house must be cleansed of all crumbs to ensure that no hametz remains within. That is why the Passover is also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when only unleavened baked goods, such as matzoh (a type of crispbread) and specially prepared cakes and other foods may be eaten.
What does this mean for us, in the Work? Hametz, or leaven, is that which puffs up, or inflates, the substance in which it is placed. To us, as to the Kabbalists, this symbolizes pride. Pride, vanity, arrogance, self-importance - these are all at root the same kind of evil; they keep us bound, like slaves, to our False Personality. They keep us from reaching inner freedom.
The process of cleaning out the house to make it free from hametz is undertaken intentionally, with the simultaneous cleansing of our minds and hearts to free them from False Personality I's.
The enactment of this cleansing ritual by Orthodox Jews is very powerful. It involves walking round the home at night by the light of a candle, entering every room, opening cupboards and searching every nook and cranny, and carefully sweeping into a bag all traces of crumbs and yeasted bread that may be found. In fact, to make sure this ritual is fruitful, the head of the household will have carefully put pieces of bread in hard to reach places beforehand, so that the rite can be acted out in full.
When it is done in this way, the ritual gives to the Higher Emotional Centre an unforgettable image of how we as individuals must undertake our own inner cleansing. We may not have much light, but if we are careful and have the right intention, we can bring that light into all the dark, neglected corners of our False Personality and sweep away the harmful I's that lurk there.
The completion of the ritual is the burning of the hametz. This can take place at the synagogue or in the home; wherever it is done, it involves the gathering in one place of all the crumbs of hametz, and their careful burning in a small fire.
To watch the flames burn away the harmful remains of pride, vanity and arrogance is a very powerful experience. We may symbolically add to the fire all those I's we know must be sacrificed so that we can draw closer to God and experience greater freedom.
When we do this, we symbolically open ourselves to positive energy and create greater possibilities for newness in our lives.
Of course, traditionally it is a rite performed by Orthodox Jews. But anyone may carry it out. More and more, Christians are being invited to take part in Passover seders; in the same way, before attending the seder, many now carry out the hametz cleansing ritual to prepare themselves.
There are obvious parallels here with Easter and the Resurrection. Both tell a similar story. It is our own story, in the Work, as we gradually sacrifice all that is false in us and move towards what is true and of real value - our Essence, and ultimately, Real I.
A Work task for this time of year is to find examples of our own self-important or arrogant I's, and then deliberately sacrifice them for one day. At the end of the day, write your observations on how successful - or otherwise - you were. Practiced every day for a fortnight, this exercise can be very illuminating in showing you precisely where you need to make sacrifices so that your Essence may be set free.
At the end of this period, the written list may be burned, and the ascending smoke seen as a visible sign of the sacrifice of all the hametz we have noticed in ourselves. A real wish to be free from pride, made as the fire burns, will draw strength from the ritual.
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