SPRING BRANCH, Texas – The belief that Jesus bodily arose from the dead is challenged in a new book by J. Thomas Devins, The Illusion of Death. The book questions that He miraculously awakened from death and exited the tomb, body intact.
Devins writes there was no miracle. Instead, outrageous as it sounds, Jesus’s body dematerialized into its atomic parts, suggestive of the well-known principle of matter duality. And, he claims that the Church’s most precious, most visible relic, The Shroud of Turin, proves that fact. Accordingly, Devins writes that what is claimed for Christ in orthodox teaching is not a singular, unique event in human history. Instead, it is the natural way the human body is designed to make graceful exit from the planet. That is, death without leaving a corpse behind.
In further support of his claims, Devins cites the September 1998 death of the Buddhist monk, Khenpo A-Cho whose body, tucked away in hermetic isolation, completely vanished at death. The phenomenon is called rainbow body and the practice, the cause behind the effect, is known as dzogchen. Dzogchen is the meditative intent to not have a bodily existence, a blatant denial of biological design. Devins points out that Jesus also taught dzogchen but one must go to the cryptically written secret Gospel of Thomas to find it. His book identifies eleven other rainbow body deaths. The internet, he writes, makes reference to one hundred sixty thousand documented cases on file. A-Chos’ death was investigated on site by an extremely popular, highly regarded Catholic priest, a true expert in Eastern religious traditions, who concluded that rainbow body is a real, natural phenomenon that is available to anyone who follows a prescribed yogic practice.
Devins was born and raised Catholic but his book sends a strong message to the Church: return to your ascetic, meditative roots. Based on what we now know about the true nature of death he concludes that the words of Genesis 3:19, “…to dust you shall return” need to be appended with the words, “…but only if you so choose.” That simple addition sends shock waves through religion and science and, indeed, the currently perceived nature of reality.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Devins is a Chemical Engineer who was mystically called to write as he did. He lives in Spring Branch, Texas in the Hill Country just north of San Antonio. To learn more about him and the book, go to www.jthomasdevins.com.
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