Friday, December 23, 2016

The True Story of Christmas

A White Christmas

As I write these words it is snowing thick, puffy flakes! While for the sake of many practical holiday matters, I hope it stays light and fluffy, for now it is a pleasure (on all levels) to behold. The shortest day of sunlight is now past and the only way is “up” towards greater Light.

At Ananda, throughout the world—even in India—we celebrate Christmas. We do so in two ways: the social form and the spiritual way of meditation. Included in my meaning of “social” are the celebrations with family and friends; gift exchanges; and, importantly, recognition and celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ as reported in the four gospels. The spiritual “way” is of course through meditation and especially in the tradition, happening even now as I type throughout the world, begun by Paramhansa Yogananda of an eight-hour, day of meditation upon the cosmic Christ universal.

But let’s view, first, the story of Christmas. We, in this new age of Dwapara Yuga (the electrical or atomic age), are very fond of facts but rather short on truth. Science has given up on finding a “theory of everything” and is content to make new discoveries, particularly ones that can be put to practical (meaning monetary) use. Facts have their place in daily life, for sure.

But truth is something lasting and of the spirit. Endless debate and research has surrounded things like, “How can a woman (mother of Jesus) become pregnant asexually?” “What about the star seen by the wise men? How is that possible, astronomically?”

For the sake of brevity and focus, I will leave aside these factual questions so dear to the historian (and, I suppose, to the doubter). The real story of Christmas involves, by contrast, its meaning to you, and me. We’ve lost the interest and habit of “story,” which is to say myth. Even the word “myth” connotes in our usage of it “that which is false.” I take issue with that but I don’t control our use of words in our language!

The story of Christmas is that “God so loved the world that He sent His ‘only-begotten’ Son.” Well, what does THIS mean? Certainly not the orthodox Christian interpretation! According to Paramhansa Yogananda and according to the Bhagavad Gita (India’s beloved ‘bible’), God sends redeemers or saviors time and time again into human history. Jesus is not the only such incarnation of divinity. Nor is he and the others mere puppets. For as the beloved disciple St. John wrote in the first chapter of his gospel, “And as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God.”

Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Rama, Yogananda and many others are no different than you or me. Rather, their level of awakening, of realization of their true soul-Self, has achieved perfection in union with God. Ours is yet struggling to emerge. They come to remind us of who we are AND to transmit the power of redemption. This doesn’t come through mere words or belief systems or rituals but through actual, but spiritual, power. “To RECEIVE HIM” means to take the savior’s life, teachings, and vibration (spirit) into your thoughts, feelings, and actions until He is in You, and You in Him.

What is “only begotten,” Yogananda taught, is that this universal, cosmic Christ-spirit resides at the still center of every atom of creation. It is the pure reflection of the Father-Spirit beyond and untouched by creation. It, and it alone, is Pure.

Second to this is the Word (In the beginning was the Word…..and the Word WAS God………and the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us). The Word is the vibratory aspect of all creation. It is secondary because its very motion and movement is the underlying foundation and structure for creation. While it, too, is pure, it is halfway, as it were, between pure Spirit and the creation which completely hides Spirit.

Hence Jesus, as a person inhabiting a human body, with a concomitant personality, is not the sole and exclusively begotten son of God, but his consciousness is united with God: “I and my Father are One.” But Christians, Hindus and others confuse the appearance, the form, with the Spirit behind the form.

This is the story—the promise of our own mortality—that allows the Christmas story to endure, and, further, why we, at Ananda, as disciples of Paramhansa Yogananda, and as practitioners of kriya yoga from India, ALSO celebrate Christmas in both its social and its spiritual aspects.

A blessed, happy, and Merry Christmas to you,

Swami Hrimananda