The Mystical Christ and Christ Consciousness

When we delve into the background of Jesus’ teachings, it becomes clear that the Gospels contain a universal esoteric message that has been awaiting full and systematic explication since the apostolic age.

The mystic Christ is not a personality, but a Divine essence. It is a spiritual emanation from the God. It is the Son of God. In its creative aspect, that power which animates all manifestation of life. It is the great stream of life, giving creative essence, which manifests all things, on all planes, as the animating principle of the one life.

Prayer

Oh Christ, lay down within my heart the loving flame of love and wisdom that I may dwell forever in thy radiance and rest in thy light.

Christ and Jesus

The first and cosmic incarnation of the Eternal Christ, the perfect co-inherence of matter and Spirit see (Ephesians 1:3-11), happened at the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the human incarnation of that same Mystery a mere 2,000 years ago, when we were perhaps ready for this revelation.

Christ is not Jesus’ last name, but the title of his historical and cosmic purpose. Jesus presents himself as the “Anointed” or Christened One who was human and divine united in one human body, as our model and example. Peter seems to get this, at least once (Matthew 16:16), but like most of the church, he also seems to regress. Christ is our shortcut word for “The Body of God” or “God materialized.” This Christ is much bigger and older than either Jesus of Nazareth or the Christian religion, because the Christ is whenever the material and the divine co-exist, which is always and everywhere.

Teilhard de Chardin,

I think we are all sad to admit that organized Christianity has often resisted and opposed the true coming of the Cosmic Christ. The coming of the Cosmic Christ is not the same as the growth of the Christian religion. It is the unification of all things.

Paramahansa Yogananda speaks of Christ consciousness. The “Only Begotten Son”, that was born as the vast omniscient Intelligence of God in every part and particle of creation. This Consciousness is the “only begotten Son of God,” so designated because it is the sole perfect reflection in creation of the Transcendental Absolute, Spirit or God the Father.

It was of that Infinite Consciousness, filled with the love and bliss of God, that Saint John spoke when he said: “As many as received him (the Christ Consciousness), to them gave he power to become the sons of God.”

Rediscovering the Heart of Jesus’ Message

The lack of individual prayer and communion with God has divorced modern Christians from Jesus’ teaching of the real perception of God, as is true also of all religious paths inaugurated by God-sent prophets whose followers drift into byways of dogma and ritual rather than actual God-communion.

Those paths that have no esoteric soul-lifting training busy themselves with dogma and building walls to exclude people with different ideas. Divine persons who really perceive God include everybody within the path of their love, not in the concept of an eclectic congregation, but in respectful divine friendship toward all true lovers of God and the saints of all religions.

The Kingdom of God within You

There is a beautiful accord between the teachings of Jesus Christ to enter the “kingdom of God within you” and the teachings of Yoga set forth by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita to restore the Soul, the reflection of God in man, to its rightful place of the bodily kingdom, with full realization of the soul’s godly states of consciousness.

When man is settled in that inner kingdom of divine consciousness, then the awakened intuitive perception of the soul pierces the veils of matter, life energy, and consciousness and uncovers the God-essence in the heart (essence) of all things.

Raja Yoga, the royal way of God-union, is the science of actual realization of the kingdom of God that lies within oneself.

The coming of yoga to the West in the 20^th century

It seems likely that the division between Christian teaching and India’s ancient spiritual science will finally be bridged. Paramahansa Yogananda’s new book, The Second Coming of Christ, holds out this promise, arguing that the division has always been superficial. The implications for yoga practitioners in the West and for society at large are enormous.

The traditional Christian teachings hold that Jesus Christ came to the world in order to reconcile the fallen children of the Lord to their creator. The means of redemption was for Christians to believe from the depths of their soul that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was full payment for the arrogance and disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

This is the mainstream of Christian belief. Less visible but no less ancient is a body of esoteric belief, that depicts Jesus as a mystic, as a yogi teaching in the manner of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. The essence of these esoteric teachings is that if we explore our own soul in the depths of meditation, we will find that we are partners with Christ in our access to cosmic consciousness.                                    

With the publication of The Second Coming of Christ, the argument for mystical Christianity no longer needs to be drawn from isolated fragments of the past 2,000 years, the Gospel of Thomas, the pondering of the desert fathers, the neo-Platonism of Plotinus, or the insights of Meister Eckhart.

Now we have a 1,700-page commentary on the Gospel story that finds, in the words of Jesus, a fully developed vision of the path of meditation and the science of God-realization. To read Yogananda’s commentary is to discover that Jesus was preaching the same doctrine of spiritual self-discovery that Krishna, the apostle of yoga, preached to his disciple Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.

This is true not only of the passages that point explicitly to inner spirituality, but also of passages that are oblique or puzzling. To start with a passage that is an obvious summons to meditation, let us consider Luke 17:20–21. “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, ‘the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or lo there! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

For Yogananda this statement is clearly in the tradition of Raja Yoga (meditation as the “royal” or highest path to God-union). He writes in The Second Coming of Christ:

Jesus addresses man as the perennial seeker of permanent happiness and freedom from all suffering: “The Kingdom of God, of eternal, immutable, ever-newly blissful cosmic consciousness is within you. Behold your soul as a reflection of the immortal Spirit, and you will find your Self encompassing the infinite empire of God-love, God-wisdom, and God-bliss existing in every particle of vibratory creation and in the vibration- less Transcendental Absolute.”

The teachings of Jesus about God’s kingdom sometimes in direct language, sometimes in parables laced with metaphysical meaning, may be said to be the core of the entirety of his message.

Many people think of heaven as a physical location, a point of space far above the 

atmosphere and beyond the stars. From the esoteric perspective, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven consist, respectively, of the transcendental infinite Cosmic Consciousness and the heavenly causal and astral realms of vibratory creation. These realms are considerably finer and more harmonized with God’s will than those physical vibrations clustered together as planets, air, and earthly surroundings.

The above passages bear no resemblance to conventional biblical exegesis. There is no scholarly examination of the wording. There is no attempt to recreate the intellectual climate of Judaea 2,000 years ago. Here Yogananda is speaking with the voice of the spiritual visionary, the voice of Patanjali, Shankara, and the Old Testament prophets. These are the sages who stand, not on the authority of their learning and intellect, but on their their unmediated knowledge of spiritual truth.

We saw, that Yogananda finds yogic truth in the words, “The kingdom of God is within you,” as he does in all of Jesus’ sayings. Take, for example, John 14:1–2, a passage whose meaning is anything but clear. Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.” Yogananda comments as follows:

When Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled,” he voiced an exact parallel to a profound spiritual aphorism in the Yoga Sutras. There the illumined sage Patanjali says that yoga, union with God, is possible only by stilling the restlessness of the heart (chitta, the feeling faculty of consciousness).

When Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” he warns his disciples that unless they attain Cosmic Consciousness, after death they would have to dwell on one of the variously graded planes of existence where unredeemed souls go according to their merits and demerits.

His promise, “I go to prepare a place for you,” refers to the fact that the blessings and or of a true Master can help his disciples to gain a better place in the many-mansions of vibratory spheres in the after-death state.

Yogananda leaps headlong into the metaphysics, psychology, and space-time concepts of yoga philosophy and claims that throughout the entire Gospel narrative Jesus speaks to his disciples exactly as a guru speaks to his devotees. His immediate task is to clear their spiritual path of the delusional debris that stand in the way of deep meditation i.e. God communion.

Yogananda also shows that Jesus, like a guru in the yoga tradition, is acquainted with the realms, the lokas, spheres to which the soul may travel

Traditional Christianity envisions each soul as a pilgrim traveler in this dark and troubled world, headed toward some indeterminate rapture where time and space shall cease to be.

Yogananda aligns Jesus with the great mystics of India, finding in his words a full vision of the yogi’s emancipation in spirit. In this view, the soul of man moves from life to life through many layers of spiritual space until the impurity is cleansed by meditation and gives way to the unitive immersion of the individual self in universal spirit.

It is hoped, that the esoteric or inner explanation of the gospel teachings will lend life and greater understanding about these writings and perhaps even lead to a renewed interest in what the scriptures are actually telling us.

Christianity vs. Eastern religions

Christianity vs. Eastern religions

Many people practice Christianity or some form of Eastern Religion.

First, let us take a look at Christianity.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1, 26-27).

The fact that humans were created in the image and likeness of God does not imply that God has a physical nature, but suggests that humans received by creation a way of existing resembling that of the persons of the Holy Trinity.

According to the Church fathers of the first centuries, the "image" conferred to the human being represents the personal character of God, as an ontological fact of creation. Since God exists only as person, human nature too, exists only as person. Humanity is defined primarily by the ability to have communion with the creator and other people and only secondarily by self-consciousness, ability to think, feel and will.

As the underlying reality of the Holy Trinity are defined only in relationship with each other, in the same way the human underlying reality is defined only in relationship with God and other humans. This relationship is a reciprocal fellowship, accomplished by a personal unfolding of each toward the other.

While God's image is imprinted on humans and remains in them as their personal character, the "likeness" is defined as a way of being. It corresponds to a free will relationship of obedience to the creator. While the image is a metaphysical fact of human nature, the likeness is an attribute that has to be built up through exercising the relationship with God. This position is held by most Church fathers of the first centuries, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon.

Man does not have the nature of God, but only qualities resembling his. Therefore, "the breath of life" (Genesis 2, 7), which God has transmitted to humans, is not a small part of God’s essence (a kind of atman as in Hinduism), but the act of life giving, which marked the beginning of experiencing self-consciousness.

According to Christianity, human personhood has real and unique value. It does not succumb to the Eastern doctrine of illusion (maya). Both body and soul define human personhood and neither of them is intrinsically bad or illusory.

The command says: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10, 27). Nor do the elements of psycho-mental life have anything bad in themselves, reason for which Christianity demands the renewal of mind (Romans 12,2), discernment between good and bad feelings (Galatians 5,16-23) and using the will for good purposes (Titus 3,8). Nowhere in the Holy Scripture is it taught that they should be annihilated in order to grasp a higher impersonal Ultimate Reality.

In Hinduism, the principle of individuation, ahamkara, ego, the sense of the "I", of duality and separateness from others is considered to be one of the most important causes of illusion and suffering in the world.

In Christianity being dualistic, on the other hand, the sense of the "I" itself is not the cause of problems, only its wrong usage, which generates egoism, can be an issue.

The Christian teachings imply that without the quality that makes one person different from another, the idea of personal communion with God, the very reason humans were created, is not possible.

Hinduism affirming Brahman as the Ultimate Reality and the individual as the, self, atman or purusha, Elements that influence human existence are karma (cause and effect) and attachment that require to be worked out.

Hinduism states that desire leads to attachment and hence to bondage.

The Christian view is that desire does not have an adverse nature; it is part of being human. Personal desires have to be channeled to function in obedience to God.

In conclusion, Christianity brings a novelty in defining human nature. Humans are created as personal beings by a personal God, but without having the same essence with him. Personhood holds the premise for grounding a personal relationship with the creator.

The nature of sin

God’s command to Adam was: You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2,16-17).

Here must be emphasized the following important aspect: The knowledge of good and evil does not mean gaining some new information. In this Biblical text, God’s command is not a hindering from getting necessary knowledge or an artificial limitation of man’s freedom, but a warning concerning the possibility of getting involved with the nature of evil, of participating in another reality than that intended by God. This other reality was the world of Satan and the fallen angels.

The teachings state that human beings are a part of creation. In the context of creation in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the meaning of human existence cannot be found in oneself, but only in one’s creator.

What about the soul of man is it not part of God? The teachings imply, that humans are not meant to find an inner "true spiritual nature" or a "higher self" inside (a kind of atman), but to adjust to the character of God, fashioned by free will to obey God or Satan.

The story in Genesis reveals that Satan’s temptation cast doubt on the justice of God’s demands, suggesting that God’s command was not just and that rebellion against him would bring total freedom:

‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?"

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’" "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman”.

"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3, 1-5)

The temptation can be summed up as "to be like God", that is, to find all resources in oneself and follow the same path of rebellion Satan had followed, in order to find self-determination.

The Genesis story says that Adam and Eve sinned against God and that the first thing they came to know was not that they had become like God, but that they were separated from God and also from the perfect environment where they lived (Genesis 3,24).

In order to define sin, it suggests using the phrase having missed the mark that God has intended. Calling us sinners, God blames us for what we know is wrong but still do, not for unknown mistakes done against some unknown laws of God (see Romans 2, 1-15). According to God’s justice, the consequence of this situation would have been that God should respect humans’ desire to live a separate existence from him (as a fulfillment of their free will), and to abandon them in a world where he withdraws his presence and intervention, where separation from him and any good thing he created is eternal.

This world is called hell. (See some comments of the Early Church Fathers on hell, death and life after death.) It is often asked: How can a loving God condemn humans to such a horrifying punishment? But instead of seeing hell as a punishment, it can rather be taken as a real chance of existence offered to those who reject his presence. God would be unjust if he forced humans to live in his presence against their will.

The notion of sin, as stated in Christianity, has no correspondent in the Eastern religions. Although there are some Hindu terms translated as "sin" or wrongdoing, adharma or acting against one's own dharma, intrinsic nature, they do not represent a crime against God, but an act against dharma (the moral order) and against one's own self (leading to accumulation of karma). The origin of "sinful" conduct is spiritual ignorance (avidya). Therefore, a "sinner" needs only instruction and not condemnation. He needs help to reason the right way and realize that he is responsible for his actions, for which he must pay the consequences in samsara (the world of delusion in which we all live). Being a manifestation of the Absolute, humans have in themselves the divine nature (atman, purusha) and all resources to overtake the state of ignorance.

But Jesus stated: For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.' (Mark 7, 21-23)

According to the Judaic understanding of humanity, which was the context of Jesus’ saying, the "heart" is the core of man’s being, the emotional and volitional life. Consequently, in the New Testament, the heart is depicted as something that can think and understand (Matthew 9, 4; 13, 15), be troubled (John 14, 1; Romans 9, 2), rejoice (Ephesians 5, 19), make decisions (2 Corinthians 9,7) and also participate in salvation by expressing faith (Romans 10,9-10).

There is no deeper level of man’s nature that could hide a superior spiritual self. According to Christianity, the attitude of relying on inner resources in order to find an alleged "true inner nature" is a result of spiritual pride, the very cause of the fall. The Bible teaches that humans do not possess an intrinsic divine nature, and thus are incapable of saving themselves from sin. The only "true inner nature" humans possess is a sinful nature.

Hinduism: Ultimate Reality and human nature are in a cause and effect relationship. An impersonal Ultimate Reality determines that the essence of the human being, or its innermost nature, is also impersonal. This is the case in the pantheistic religions. The core of human nature is the impersonal self (atman), of the same essence with Ultimate Reality (Brahman in Vedanta, or Shiva in Tantric thought). Humanity's present condition is governed by karma, an impersonal law started by spiritual ignorance that forces the self to reincarnate until true knowledge is attained.

Buddhism rejects both personal gods and Brahman as Ultimate Reality. As a result it denies the reality of any permanent self residing in humans and defines human nature as a mere process of becoming. This process involves five aggregates, namely: form, sensation, perception, mental formation and consciousness.  They are called aggregates because they work together to produce a mental being. Each of the aggregates is undergoing constant changes. Aggregates are not static things; they are dynamic processes.         

The only reality of human existence is that of suffering. Although reincarnation is fully accepted, it deals only with the passing of karma from one life to another, without any permanent self being involved.

The monotheistic religions humanity's personal created status as a fundamental element of their theology. Personhood has nothing bad or illusory in itself, since it is the major condition for having personal communion with God. Karma and reincarnation are excluded. They have no room in Judaism, Christianity or Islam, because the role of supreme judge belongs only to God. The major flaw that defines human existence is sin, understood not as ignorance for one's "true inner nature", but as an offence against the creator. The barrier between humans and God has a moral nature, not an epistemological one, as in the Eastern religions. The result of sin is hell, a state of definitive separation from God, according to man's decision during this single earthly life.

In conclusion, there is no harmony among the world's religions concerning the status of humans and their present condition. Their positions are too divergent for any possible reconciliation.

Why are so many young people looking to the east for spiritual insights?

 One of the criticisms of Christianity, and one of the reasons why many young Christians turn to the East, to Buddhism or to Hinduism, is that in Christianity there is no apparent help with a method of understanding. How do we find God? How do we even start? Good intentions are not always enough. We need instruction in how to make ourselves fit to receive the revelation of God, to receive the eternal birth.

What we need is a guide to the spiritual life suitable for people who are not academics. Generally speaking, sermons, as a whole, are not ideal for instructing people in spiritual development in a simple and systematic way, unless they are being given to a regular audience.

We need to learn, that that as human beings whatever we do, think or experience as humans, we are really searching for permanence, for God.

In search for God

Most people look outside themselves to find God. Yet in doing so, they are making a big mistake because we do not find God outside of ourselves; we need to conceive Him within our own being.

This constitutes for many people a new birth in understanding, a birth that takes place in the depths of the soul. We have to go beyond the senses, and with God’s help acquire the capacity to inwardly empty the mind of all sense experience, because they takes us out of our inner being to the world around us.

This process demands two things. The first is stillness; the second is an ability to concentrate the mind and stop it from wandering into multiplicity. As for stillness, one must still both mind and body, and then practice the presence of God.

 Letting go

If we can learn to let our personality selves go, we are in effect letting everything go. Total letting go is the way to gain all things in the God, who is the real Being of all. God wants no more from us than that we go out of ourselves, and let God be in us.

It is in and through detachment, through letting go, or relinquishing our sense of separation from God and from one another that the new birth in the soul takes place. Detaching and birthing are not successive stages in a mystical path but two sides of the same coin.

We must know that God is born in us when the mind is stilled and the senses trouble us no longer, when we live in peace and joy.

A word about prayer

Most people with a religious background use prayer to petition the help of God for current needs. Yet we should never pray for anything transitory, but pray for God’s will alone “Thy will be done” and nothing else. Then we get everything. In God there is nothing but Oneness, and Oneness is indivisible. If we seek or expect anything more that is not God, but a fraction of whatever we may want to call it.

If we seek God’s will alone, whatever flows from it or is revealed by it, we ought to take it as a gift. We should not question whether it is the result of nature or grace or how it comes or in what guise it manifests. We accept the gift and are thankful.

It is hoped that in spite of our emphasis on the importance of inwardness and of abandoning materialism, we come to acknowledge the beauty and mysticism of everyday life. “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28).