University of Life Archives
In 2025, Palm Sunday is April 13th; Passover is April 13th; Good Friday is April 18th; Easter Sunday is April 20th.
IN THESE LATTER DAYS prior to the Second Coming, we are in a transition between two historic stages of man’s spiritual evolution on planet Earth: we are crossing from the Piscean Age into the New Age of Aquarius. It is as though we and the race of man collectively have come to the city gate of Jerusalem as Christ Jesus did at Passover, just before his resurrection.
Jerusalem means “habitation or foundation of peace.” It is the “city of peace.” Also, Jerusalem is known as the “city of David”; so, we also can think of Jerusalem as the city or dwelling place of love. As we rend fully the seventh veil from our consciousness, we are moving into the Aquarian Age, which is characterized by the Seventh Ray qualities of divine peace and love. We are accepting the Christ vibration of peace and love on the planet. We are symbolically but quite literally entering Jerusalem, the time and the place of peace and love.
As the avant-garde for the race of man, we as light workers in this Easter cycle must example how to work with peace and love, the new standard for the Aquarian Age. Many ancient myths and symbols of cultures all around the world, before and after Christ, correlate with present-day symbols of Easter: tales of death and rebirth, palm fronds, unleavened bread, crowns and crosses. They are not mere fables and tokens. They portray, just as Christ Jesus exampled, spiritual events of universal patterns that really are experienced when one rises up out of mortal consciousness and material life into spiritual consciousness and light-body form.
In channelings through Nada-Yolanda, Sananda often has reminded us that we are experiencing monumental changes individually and planetarily. In the Latter Days, the transformations are as dramatic as when Jesus resurrected into his light form and ascended. Everyone is affected mentally, emotionally and physically. Unlike when he incarnated as Jesus, Sananda is not speaking to us now in parables, but in real terms.
So, the time is upon us to translate the myths, stories and symbols of Easter into physically tangible demonstrations. The time is nigh for the 144,000 light servers to anchor higher consciousness and to manifest divine peace and love in life. Now is the time for each of us to follow the example of Christ and enter Jerusalem.
Enter Jerusalem
Entering the Aquarian Age of peace and love is like entering Jerusalem. The citizens of Jerusalem celebrated the Messiah entering their city for Passover. We, too, should rejoice at the coming of the spiritual experiences we will have in this Easter cycle that will help us anchor Christ consciousness on Earth. Our life up to this point has been long and arduous. But we have reached the city or the phase of peace. We have rent every veil placed before man’s consciousness of his knowing, believing and beginning to live according to truth and spiritual principles. Reaching and entering the New Age of Aquarius — the gate of the city, so to speak — is a great accomplishment for all of us. We should be happy and give thanks.
The citizens of Jerusalem took palm branches and went out to meet Jesus. Since ancient times, the palm branch has been a symbol of victory. Entering the New Age is a victory of the light. But the palm frond also has a deeper metaphysical interpretation. Just as the Christ entered the gate to the city of peace and love amid palm fronds, the energies and inspirations of our Christ Self enter through the gate or crown chakra at the top of our head.
In the Far East, the thousand-petaled lotus represents the opening of the crown chakra. In the Middle East, the crown of a palm tree, with it’s spray of fronds shooting up and out, indicates the same. Therefore, while in meditation, one might receive a vision of a palm tree whose fronds are completely open at the top. Or one might see streamers of light coming out of the top of one’s head, like palm fronds at the top of a palm tree. These images represent the opening of the crown chakra, preparing one for a new level of integration with the I Am Self.
In this Easter cycle, we all should expect the opening of our crown chakra for greater oneness with our I Am Self. In the Book of Revelation, John saw a vision of the servants of God after the Second Coming. They were too numerous to count and they were from every nation, tribe, race and language. All of them were holding palm branches in their hands. This scene indicates not only that they were victorious, but that they mastered the ability of maintaining balance while their crown chakras were open for anchoring the second coming of their own Christ Selves.
The Crown
The crown is another symbol of Easter. During Jesus’ sentencing to be crucified, a crown of thorns was placed on his head. Throughout history, a crown has represented the bearer’s relationship to what is above or divine. It marked the integration of the celestial to the 
terrestrial. Additionally, the crown’s circular shape signified perfection and eternity. So, unlike royal crowns of gold and jewels which represent divine power and attributes, the crown of thorns epitomizes mortal error and resistance. Hatred, greed, lies, jealousy and the like are the thorns of mortal consciousness that crowned the head of Christ, placed on him by society.
Our entrance now into the cycle of peace and love should be like Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. He did not enter Jerusalem with a crown of thorns on his head. Neither should we enter Aquarius with a crown of thorns on our heads. Although Jesus was constantly challenged by others, he never denied the truth of his being. As a child of God, he held to the perfection as God had created him. He would accept no lesser conception of himself. So must we.
We should never feel as though we are inadequate to demonstrating peace and love in any of the experiences we will face in these Latter Days. Like Jesus, we may expect to run into the negative resistance and false judgments of others. So, we can expect to have a crown of thorns placed on our heads. But what we must guard against is accepting those error thoughts, feelings and judgments. By agreeing that false statements about our character are true when they are not, we place the crown of thorns on our own heads.
Unless we take the crown of thorns off our head, our high Self, Spirit and the Hierarchy cannot place the true crown of Spirit on us. Yolanda has said that in her early spiritual development, a crown in her dreams, visions and meditations represented reaching a higher level of achievement, another phase or an initiation into the next progressive level of development. Later on, however, the crown was converted from something symbolic into a literal, functioning tool within her being. It represented her crown chakra, which became activated to do Spirit’s will and work on Earth.
Since ancient times in Rome, Egypt, Mexico and many other places, crowns were associated with the sun, especially its rays. The rays of the Elohim, the seven flames of God, descending into one’s mortal being is the true meaning of these ancient symbols of a crown associated with the rays of the sun. They depict God, by way of the rays of life, using Its children as instruments for divine purposes.
The experiences of Yolanda and many others of us could not have happened had we imposed a crown of thorns on ourselves by thinking we could not possibly be worthy of interacting in such wonderful and constructive ways with Spirit. Mortal attitudes that limit our self-worth not only constrict the inflow of Spirit through our crown chakra, but they cause our spiritual development to atrophy. Our crown center and mind, the medium between the mortal self and the high Self, must remain unobstructed. We must enter the New Age with the true crown God created within us functioning perfectly. For we won’t necessarily know the time or the situation when Spirit will want to pour divine light and love through us to the world.
We give thanks to Spirit that we have reached this new phase of divine peace and love. Before we go any further, let us reassess our consciousness to see whether we are wearing a crown of thorns. If we are, let us cast it aside. We will enter the Aquarian Age with the palms of our crown chakra open. To our Christ Self we say: “Hosanna, I Am Self! Blessed are you who come in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!”
Crucifixion & Resurrection
Easter Sunday, the day of resurrection, marks the culmination of the symbols of Easter. For us and the race of man it means greater spiritual manifestation and service to our Father-Mother God. In our review of the symbols of Easter, let us see how we can relate them to our next step of resurrecting into the light.
In this transition of the Latter Days, we are being guided gradually to shift our emphasis away from the cleansings and purifications characteristic of the sixth step, or Sixth Ray, and towards accepting our resurrection, including the ascension that is the seventh step, or Seventh Ray, for the Age of Aquarius now dawning.
The seventh step of peace and love will require us to focus more on the light and less on the darkness. Our priorities will have to be reassigned. The bulk of our time and energy will be on the construction of divine peace rather than on the destruction of error; on crystallizing the light rather than decrystallizing mistakes; on actively materializing the love of God rather than resisting evil.
In the Easter cycle, we have a golden opportunity to set the proper tone by becoming more peaceful and loving towards ourselves and others. As light workers, we are to be the leavening by which all are raised into the light. Thoughts, desires and actions of peace and love are the leavening. But in order for us to be the leaven and embody peace and love, we will have to transfer our consciousness away from being mesmerized by the remaining shortcomings within ourselves and the inevitable instances of resistance to love and light we read and hear about going on in the world. To accomplish this we will have to think of ourselves as not being on the cross of personal cleansings and crucifixions that have been so prevalent in our lives.
As the vanguard for the race of man, we must lead by example. Easter is our time to come down off the cross. Only then can we be the kind of vessel through which Spirit and the Hierarchy can implant the new Christ matrix of peace, love, cooperation and coordination that we are to hold before the Second Coming.
As recorded in the writings of a Christian living in the fourth century A.D., in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, the authenticity of Jesus’ resurrection after being crucified was anything but settled. Throughout Western Asia and the Mediterranean there were whole populations who for centuries before the time of Christ celebrated the death and resurrection of their deities around Easter time.
He was called Osiris in Egypt; Tammuz in Babylonia; Adonis in Greece, Syria and Cyprus; and Attis in Phrygia, now central Turkey, just to name a few. Those people thought that the relatively recent story of Jesus’ death and resurrection was just a cheap imitation of theirs. A heated controversy ensued over whose deity was the original and, thus, the true one.
Few realized back then that Jesus actually demonstrated that the basic idea of their myths and legends of resurrection was true. Today, few people on Earth realize that the Easter story is their personal story. It is the story not of a god but of man reevolving out of mortal life into immortal life. By rising above the physical, rising above the soul and resurrecting into the light body, Jesus exampled that this is the pattern for everyone.
This Easter, let us project yet again to all people, as we have done for so many years, that the myth of death and resurrection is no myth. It is based on spiritual reality. The story of Easter is not about the achievement of God or a god. It is about man’s ability to resurrect out of every test and crucifixion through the presence and operation of Spirit within each of us. Taking this one step further, we who are working consciously with the hierarchal plan and program must believe that we are resurrecting into the New Age.
At first glance, it may seem as though little has changed; that there is just as much violence in the world as ever. What we are seeing are the continuing reverberations to the light anchored since the beginning of the Latter Days. Individually, we too are still carrying the residue of the struggles, torments, tests and challenges of this transition period. We’re still balancing out.
But upon closer inspection, can we truly say that past challenges are controlling our lives as vigorously now as they were in prior years? Aren’t our spiritual convictions stronger? Aren’t we using spiritual principles to direct our lives more than ever before? Monitoring the race of man collectively, the Hierarchy has determined that we are passing into the seventh step of peace and love, the hallmarks of Aquarius.
Passover
The occurrence of Jesus’ resurrection at the time of Passover dramatically brought together the feast day’s celebration of the Israelites’ freedom from Egyptian bondage with his demonstration of mankind’s freedom from the bondage of physical existence.
At Passover, unleavened bread is used as a symbol of freedom. In metaphysical terms, we can liken it to the loosening of soul knots that occurred during the cleansing phase, which has helped us to be free of them. At Pentecost [celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover], otherwise known as the Feast of Weeks, two loaves of leavened bread are prepared as the firstfruits offering of the harvest. In this Easter cycle, as we pass into manifesting the firstfruits of peace and love, we should now begin to replace the symbol of freedom from error, unleavened bread, with the symbol of spiritual action and manifestation, leavened bread.
In his Metaphysical Bible Dictionary Charles Fillmore, cofounder of Unity School of Christianity, defined what leaven signifies: “When the mind is raised up through affirmations of God’s omnipresent substance and life, we are not only fed but there is a surplus. . . . It is not the outward demonstration that counts, but the increase of substance in mind and body that always follows the faithful application of the divine law. Whatever line of thought is received into consciousness goes on working until it is rooted out by another line of thinking . . . [which then] manifests fully in the outer life.”
The line of thinking we want to root out is thinking predominantly in terms of crucifixions, personal sufferings and torments, cleansings of errors and the elimination of evil. The line of thinking we want to replace it with is that of the seventh step: peace and love. The Hierarchy has told us that in these end times we must measure all our actions in terms of the First Ray (divine will and divine law) and the Seventh Ray (divine love and peace). We must work for cooperation and coordination. Divine peace and love are the spiritual ideals we must employ to rend fully the seventh veil from man’s consciousness. These qualities we now embrace to become the leaven within mass consciousness for Christ’s Second Coming.
The Cross
The cross is probably the most famous symbol of Easter. In the religious history of man, various forms of crosses have been important to cultures the world over. For example, for ancient Egyptians, the ankh or ansate cross, with a loop at the top, was the symbol of earthly life as well as of life after death. Actually, the ankh predates Earth history. The Saturnian Council or Hierarchal Board, headquartered on Saturn, exercises it as a symbol for utilizing the power of God’s creative energy.
In Mesopotamia, the Greek or quadrate cross, with four equal arms, is the sign for heaven. It is also the symbol for the Fourth Ray of Life, representing the cosmic idea “as above, so below”; as in heaven, so on Earth. Certain ancient depictions of the cross in Mexico symbolize world unity. One drawing from an ancient civilization in Peru shows a silhouette of a man of light; his arms outstretched, crowned by a sun shooting out its rays. At the intersection of two lines forming a cross is his heart.
To many Christians, the cross represents the crucifixion and death of Jesus. To others, it conveys a more positive symbol of salvation. Over the years, we have projected out the thought to take Jesus off the cross, to stop thinking in terms of the mortal suffering and torments of Jesus. Instead, focus on the positive result of crossing out error, which is resurrecting into spiritual life as an eternal child of God.
This Easter, it is time that we take ourselves off the cross, take the thought of crucifixion out of our consciousness. The cycle of revealing and crucifying errors within ourselves and humanity is now being eclipsed by the resurrection and ascendancy of the Seventh Ray principles of divine love and peace.
As with the symbol of the Easter lily, our resurrection is in full bloom. At this very moment, we are being prepared for our next step in anchoring the Christ vibration for Earth. As we see and be the peace and love of the Seventh Ray, so must it be for all on Earth.
Revised from lessons published by Mark-Age in 1993.
Photos: (1) Light of the World © by Nathan Greene. (2) Palm Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem; artist unknown. (3) Jesus wearing crown of thorns, artist unknown. (4) Resurrection of Christ Jesus, artist unknown. (5) Ankh, or crux ansata.