Why Do We Celebrate Christmas at Ananda?

Paramhansa Yogananda, author of "Autobiography of a Yogi," is the source of inspiration and yoga teachings for the Ananda communities, centers and groups around the world. Why, then, is Christmas, and indeed the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, such an integral part of Ananda?

Generally (though more so in western countries than in India), you will find that at Ananda during the Christmas season there are nativity scenes, the Three Wise Men, gift giving, celebrations, and the adoration of the Christ child. Why did Yogananda himself make a special point of celebrating Christmas, not just spiritually, but socially? 

There are a number of reasons. They include:

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•     A special relationship exists between Yogananda, Jesus and the three “wise men”
•        A new dispensation of universal understanding has come to reconcile east and west
•        A new understanding of the divinity of Christ is needed
•        The time has come to affirm the Christ-potential of all people
•        True communion is “inner” communion through meditation
•        The “second coming of Christ” is personal and individual, not historical

Here are some thoughts and facts to share:

1. Yogananda stated that the three wise men were none other than his guru-preceptors: Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar (in former incarnations). 
2. He taught that the term "second coming of Christ" refers to the teaching and to the individual, personal realization (however slight or only intellectual, at first) that divinity is within each person, indeed, each atom of creation. (This is an extension of the Vedic teaching that in creating the world, God manifested it through "his" own consciousness, for there was no "thing" or no objects with which to "use" to create anything!")
3.  "Christ" was not Jesus' name. It is a title. So, too, "Krishna." Indeed, the two words are linked etymologically. Each refers to the fact that these souls, and others, have fully realized their innate and eternal divinity and oneness with the "Father," the Infinite Spirit beyond and untouched by his consciousness manifesting the creation.
4. Yogananda averred that Jesus himself, as a unique and individual soul, came to Babaji (the peerless master of the east) and asked him to anoint and send a "savior" to the West to re-ignite the teaching and how-to knowledge that divinity is "within you." This would be transmitted through the art and science of meditation: especially the advanced and nonsectarian technique of Kriya Yoga.
5. Yogananda affirmed the Christian teaching of the Trinity: the three-fold manifestation of God and said it is the same teaching as expressed in India as "Tat...Sat....Aum." God, the Father, beyond and untouched by creation; God, the son, the "only begotten of the Father," reflected in each atom of creation and fully awakened in the greatest saints and avatars**; and the creation itself, in constant motion, or vibration, the primordial level of which is the "Holy Ghost" or Divine Mother in whose womb, hidden from casual view, resides the seed of intention and intelligence implanted by the "Father" to carry out the purpose of creation: Self-realization!

Christmas, then, is, for us at Ananda, an affirmation and celebration of our oneness as children of God. Our devotion to Jesus Christ rests upon our recognition of his realization of his soul’s innate divinity and of our own potential for Self-realization. It is with joy, then, and fellowship that we affirm and celebrate our own Christ-like potential: God’s promise to us of our immortality in Him.

As Swami Kriyananda, Ananda's founder taught us to say: "Happy Christmas"

Swami Hrimananda

** Yogananda uses the term "Christ consciousness" to express the "Tat" of the Vedas. Others might say "Krishna consciousness". It is universal and eternal and in every atom.

Who will win the Super Bowl? God knows. Reflections on the Super Bowl Battle of Life

Super Bowl Sunday, February 2, 2014:  Seattle SeaHawks against the Denver Broncos

The Divine Incarnation: the Avatara

Today we come to contemplate the great battle of life, between the people of the sea and the people of the mountains. The people of the sea are like hawks flying high and swooping low to snatch and harass their prey, the wild and bucking broncos who are of earth and mountains. The people of the sea are swift, flexible, and wise; the people of the mountain are hard, obstinate, and tough. Who will win?

Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita taught that we must take up arms and fight the battle of the Super Bowl of life. He taught that the owner of the game sent his son, the manager, as the brains behind the whole creation and that the son’s divine mother cheerleads and inspires the quarterback, God’s own prophet, to take the team to victory.

We live in an age of individualism. It’s every person for himself. All knowledge can found and accessed by anyone willing to make the effort. Social barriers, prejudices, glass ceilings: all impediments created by socially imposed rules have been dismantled or are under attack. Hierarchy, rulership, and leadership are looked upon with suspicion and disfavor. Cultures are in varying degrees embracing, fighting, or otherwise adapting to this new wave of consciousness that, so far as we know, has never occurred on a mass scale before in human history.

The freedom to do what we like and want is assumed and what we do is presumed to be our right until proven otherwise. That’s a revolution and a half, for sure.

And it isn’t wrong. But it can be misunderstood and abused, causing harm to oneself and others. It can foster selfishness, laziness, and narrow mindedness. Freedom can also inspire one to reach for the heights of one’s potential.

In former times, the imposition of social castes and taboos forced people to live within tight constraints of action and attitude. In this confinement, unnecessary desires and impulses were suppressed or redirected into the channels of one’s narrowly defined station in life. One could go deep into dharma or suffer greatly under the lash of adharma. The image of God projected in such times and out of such attitudes is not surprisingly one of King to his subjects; one of absolute ruler whose mandates were not questioned and were eternal and fixed. Religion in such circumstances is characterized by ritual, formal prayers, highly stylized music, and rigid forms of art. It is top-down and hierarchical. God as King delegates to others a portion of his absolute authority over his subjects. This is of course the priestly class who claimed sway even over kings and princes.

This rigidity of authority is fast crumbling and is rapidly being eroded by those in every walk of life as well as religion who want to take matters in their own hands. This is generally a positive step. The democratization of religion is called “spiritual but not religious.”

What we potentially lose in this new-found freedom to think and act for ourselves is the remembrance that “truth simply is.” Like the law of gravity, its existence does not depend upon our acknowledgement. It’s not just the laws of nature that exist outside our assent, but the moral laws that guide the unfoldment of our consciousness. After the twentieth century’s experimentation with the outside boundaries of behavior, we have seen a rise in conservatism which affirms traditional values.  Unfortunately with this affirmation has come all the trappings of hierarchy and dogma. Thus a great struggle is taking place in the world today: between earth and water, between rigidity and fluidity, between social rules and individual freedom.

The age of individualism is, however, unstoppable though its dark side of violence and selfishness will always result in a reactionary step backwards whenever the dark side threatens too greatly that status quo.

So we come, then, at last to today’s subject: Does God incarnate in human form?

Such a teaching has been with humanity as far back as one can determine. It is expressed literally but also indirectly, as in when God speaks to and through his human prophets. The teaching of God’s involvement in human history and human lives has always had a place in spirituality and religion.

Some religionists will say God “Himself” incarnates in human form. One obvious example would be the Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God and that God, in creating the universe, manifests Himself as One in Three: the Trinity. Another would be the dogma that great prophets like Krishna are literal incarnations of the Hindu god, Vishnu, preserver of dharma and creation.

In the other direction we have Buddha and Mohammed being described only as human messengers. But in various sects of Buddhism we see the Buddha revered every bit as much as Jesus Christ or Krishna, even if the theology can get a little murky. Buddha, unlike Jesus or Krishna, made no overt claim of divinity. The thrust of the Buddha’s teaching is to emphasize self-effort, not dependency upon grace or higher powers.

But no matter how narrow or wide the slice of dogmatic pie may be, the intercession of God, divinity or truth into the affairs of human lives and history is an undeniable tenet of the world’s major religions and most of the lesser branches of spirituality.

Here at Ananda we are in the lineage that includes Krishna, Lord Rama, and many other great prophets of India. Our lineage includes Jesus Christ and a link-up between east and west. We sit squarely in the traditional teaching that God descends into human form. Well, perhaps not exactly that way!

Paramhansa Yogananda refined the teaching of the avatara (descent of God into human form) toward a middle path. He taught that the human incarnation of divinity occurs through an individual soul who, though many lives, has achieved Self-realization. In achieving the realization that he and all creation are but manifestations of the one and sole reality, God, such a one becomes a true “son” of the Infinite Spirit of God beyond all creation. In this distinction, a Jesus Christ, Buddha or Krishna is not a divinely created puppet who is almost non-human and more like an alien but is, instead, a soul like you and I. Not different in kind but in level of soul realization and Oneness with the Father.

On a sidebar, Yogananda also explained that the entire cosmos and creation is “avatara” in the sense that God didn’t make the universe like a carpenter who goes out to obtain building materials. God became the universe by vibrating His consciousness from its eternal rest in bliss. In doing so, he became triune because Bliss remains untouched (as God the Father) by creation; the vibration itself creates the illusion of separate objects and yet is God in vibration (as the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Aum, the Witness and the Word), while His intelligence and consciousness which remain immanent at the still heart and center of vibration constitute His reflection in creation as the “only-begotten son.”

This sidebar relates more to the cosmogony and cosmology of creation and isn’t directly related to the avatara as the savior and guru-preceptor.

But it relates in this way: we, as souls, as are as much “God” as the avatar and as the Trinity because nothing within or without creation is ever “wholly other.” All is God: God alone is the sole substance of reality.

But as a wave cannot claim to be the ocean, but can only claim to be a part of the ocean, so too neither the savior nor you or I, or any single and separate aspect of creation, can claim to “be God.” “He who says he is God, isn’t. He who says he isn’t, isn’t. He who knows, knows.”

And yet, Jesus did claim, as does Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, that he is “one with the Father.” When chastened for boasting, Jesus retorted that he knew of what he spoke but they did not. So, yes, claims are sometimes made by the avatar. And, unfortunately, so are such claims sometimes made by those who are not Self-realized.

The history of religion is as much about frauds and wanna bees as the real thing. Such is the human drama and the inherent illusionary nature of creation. When Jesus asked his disciples “Who do men say I am,” it was Peter who declared Jesus to be the “son of God.” Jesus remarked that Peter’s gnosis came not from outside himself but was erected on the “rock” of his soul intuition. It is through intuition, ultimately, that we know God: whether in human form or in the formless state of our own soul.

God cannot be proved. “Ishwar ashidhha.” And of course this is where religion and spirituality get sticky. But are the material sciences free from constant doubt and paradox? Hardly. Ultimately the verdict lies with each and every one of us to find our path and our way to the truth.

To ignore sources of wisdom in the name of going on alone or being free from false teachings and teachers is simply not possible for truth is One (though men call it by many names). Truth is something we open ourselves to. We don’t create it to suit our personality, biases, or temperament. Truth comes to us both from outside ourselves as scripture, teachers, life experience and, yes, in the form of the Godhead in human form.

Yet its ultimate reality is as much in ourselves as in every atom and in the form of the guru-preceptor.

We need to start where we are and do so with an attitude of listening, of openness, and freedom from personal bias, likes or dislikes. To receive truth we go step by step shedding every vestige of ego attachment or self-identity. In the end we receive the pearl of great price by offering the “human sacrifice” of body and personality into soul and soul into Infinity.  This is the deeper meaning of the many and varied forms of sacrifice: harvest, animals or human. We offer all matter, all lower forms of consciousness, all materiality back into the consciousness from which all things derive.

This is not a condemnation or denial of matter or form but a recognition of the only reality that is absolute, eternal and unchanging. Ever-existing, ever-self-aware, and ever in the bliss of Spirit — this describes our true Self as unique manifestations of God.

The existence of the avatar is the promise of our own immortality in God. If such a one did not exist, how could we possibly aspire to such a realization? To acknowledge divinity in such a form is to acknowledge our own potential.

The “first-coming” of the Christ divinity is thus in the human form of the avatar. The “second-coming” is the awakening of the Christ within ourselves which is sparked and nurtured by the spiritual teachings and consciousness of the living Christ in human form. There is no “third coming” in the sense that the creation itself ever becomes Self-realized. It may be dissolved wholly or in part by the forces of nature and the divine will, but only consciousness can become Self-realized because to be realized is an awakening of consciousness, not matter as matter.

It could be said that the first descent, or avatar, is the creation itself, but this gets confusing since the creation as creation is not, as such, Self-realized.

The Super Bowl of Life then is the cosmic battle of the forces of matter which are empowered to go outward and multiply versus the Spirit’s invitation to awaken and go within to find itself and reveal itself to the inquiring Mind. In Self-realization all paradox and duality and conflict are resolved in the One. But in the creation itself, the pendulum of the opposites means we will have Super Bowls onto eternity. As water is more fluid than earth, may the hawks of the sea prevail!

May the best team win!

Nayaswami Hriman

 

Will the Real Christ Please Come to Christmas this Year!

A door that leads to the outside also leads to the inside. A cup is said to be either half empty or half full. Both are true, but one may be more useful than the other.If you are trying to get outside the house, the fact that the door goes outside is keenly of interest to you. If you are dying of thirst, the half cup of water is earnestly appreciated.

The famous interchange in the New Testament that begins with Jesus asking his disciples, "Who do men say I am," is like that door or that cup. Most people, whether during Jesus' life or down through the centuries, see only the man Jesus, who lived in a particular time, said specific things, and lived in Palestine under Roman occupation. Others see his form, his words, and his actions as doorways to divinity itself. I would go further and say, as I have often said, that the answer to Jesus' question to his disciples is the same for him as it is for you or me. The one disciple who answered Jesus' question correctly was, as you probably know, Peter who said, "Thou art the Christ, son of the living God."

The Hindu "bible," the Bhagavad Gita, is a conversation between Lord Krishna (the Hindu equivalent of Jesus), and Arjuna (Krishna's Peter). In both scriptural conversations ("Who do men say I am?") and the Bhagavad Gita, the master (the guru: Jesus, or Krishna) reveals his divine nature as "one with the Spirit (Father)."

The incarnate form of divinity is like that door or that cup of water. As it is Christmas, we'll stick now to the subject of Jesus. Jesus, you, and I, and metaphysically speaking, every atom of creation, are what I say, tongue-in-cheek, "bi-polar." We have a dual nature. (In fact, like the Trinity, we have a triune nature, but let's hold that thought for now.)

While Christians may insist that Jesus' claim was an exclusive one, a careful and intuitive reading of the New Testament reveals this cannot be so. For example, St. John's gospel in Chapter 1 asserts that "As many as received Him gave he the power to become the sons of God." (Note "sons" is plural.) Jesus told his disciples "these things I do (miracles etc.), greater things will you do."

For the human soul to aspire to know God directly, as a Spirit -- infinite, omnipresent, omniscient, all-pervading etc. etc. -- is a tall order. How can you love or even approach something so abstract, so beyond human comprehension? By seeing God, God-consciousness, God's goodness, wisdom, love and so on incarnate in a human being we can relate more meaningfully. Nor does such a fact demean either us or God, for the very universe itself is a manifestation of God's intention, consciousness, and goodness. Yet form (whether subtle such as various forms of energy or gross such a physical objects and human bodies), the universe also cloaks that divinity.

The world, including our bodies and acquired personality traits, dutiful activities, and desires, is both a doorway into and toward the hidden divinity, and, a door that keeps us outside and apart from that divinity. Well meaning adherents or disciples of a great teacher all too often miss the point, mistaking the form of their guru (his appearance, his words, his actions) as the essence and that essence as to be distinguished from all other forms, teachers, teachings and so on. Only true and wise disciples see through the form to the divinity which animates the form and in that broad perspective recognize the divinity in other forms, other great teachers, and, indeed, in all people and all creation.

Is Jesus Christ, however, the "only" begotten son of God? Is he somehow qualitatively different than Krishna, Buddha, and others? Is Jesus Christ, or Krishna, or Buddha direct incarnations of God: God taking on human form?

God has already taken human form in you and I! And, in all creation. This has already happened, in other words. The only greater thing that can happen is for those forms to become self-aware of that divine nature, to become as Paramhansa Yogananda and others have described it, Self-realized in our divine nature. This doesn't deny or reject our form (our human form and nature); rather, it elevates and ennobles the human body and persona to true goodness and godlike qualities.

Jesus announced that "I and my Father are One!" For this alleged blasphemy he was killed by the religious authorities for whom such a claim was the ultimate threat to their privileged lives and positions. Yet he had a body and, one presumes and can sense from reading his words and considering his actions, a personality of his very own.

Thus Paramhansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi), whose own followers including me, believe that he was also "one with the Father," taught that when the soul, after countless incarnations, at last achieves Self-realization, the soul retains characteristically unique traits which, in order to be incarnate at all, are both necessary and part and parcel, eternally, of the soul's Being. Oneness, in other words, does not destroy or sublimate the soul into some amorphous mass consciousness. The soul can plunge into God, swimming in Infinity, but is not destroyed and may, if called upon by other souls (not yet free in God) seeking spiritual enlightenment through the vehicle of that soul and the deep bond between them, reemerge with its unique traits as yet intact. This free soul may take physical form (then becoming an "avatar") or appear in vision, or render assistance through thought-inspirations. In this way devotees have prayed to their respective gurus for many centuries after the guru's human incarnation. In so doing, they have been uplifted, taught, and received true communion with God.

Our nature, then, is divinity in form and therefore dual (or as I like put it, "bi-polar"). But it is also triune because the bridge between these two is the vibration of God from which all forms manifest. God beyond and untouched by creation (as "the Father"), vibrates His consciousness with intention, intelligence, and love in order to "boot-up" or initialize creation. All things in form are moving on the atomic, sub-atomic, chemical and electrical levels, if not in outward appearances (think rocks or minerals). The intelligence of a star, a tree, or a human is hidden because intelligence is "no thing." But the evidence of its intelligence is the form and its functions (including self-perpetuation) that clothes (even as it cloaks) that intelligence. Trees look like trees; chickens, chickens, and so on.

This vibratory energy of creation has many names. It is chanted as Aum, Amen, Amin, Hum, or Ahunavar. It is called the Holy Ghost or the Divine Mother because being holy, pure, a virgin it is the "stem cell" vibration underlying and out which all things become differentiated and take separate form.

The divine intelligence or nature that exists in creation is the only begotten and true son of God. Like a true human son, this intelligence reflects the image of its father, having the intention and attributes of divinity, at least in latent potential. Jesus was the Christ, or anointed one, because he had realized his divinity both within his form and beyond his form in the Father. We all are Christs but we, by contrast, have not yet realized that and cannot yet demonstrate mastery over life and death itself, as Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Yogananda demonstrated to close disciples.

Yogananda called his mission to the world the Second Coming of Christ not because he claimed to be Jesus but because the second coming takes place in the birth of the Christ child of divine consciousness in our own heart and mind and soul.

So, will the real Christ come to Christmas? That depends on you! "Tat twam asi." "Thou art That," it says in the scriptures of India. This is who we should say we are! Who am I? I am the Christ, the son of the living God! (Then behave accordingly!) Be careful, however, for he who says he is, isn't. He who says he isn't, isn't. He who knows, knows. One should not boast nor say "I am God." Rather, "God has become this form."

With the blessings of the great ones of self-mastery, we can be guided to Self-realization. Attune yourself to them. Study their lives, teachings, and actions, and make them your own. Walk like St. Francis in the footsteps of the master and He will help you to be free as He is Now.

Meditate daily, serve selflessly, endure hardship and difficulties with equanimity and cheerfulness, and watch and wait, for, "like a thief in the night, He will come!

Christmas blessings to all, and to all, a good night!

Swami Hrimananda aka Hriman

The Trinity - FATHER, SON AND HOLY GHOST

The Cosmic Drama
Part Three (of Five)
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost - AUM, TAT, SAT

This is part one of a series of articles. It has its origins in a prior blog article entitled, "Who is Jesus Christ?" You may wish to read that first, though not absolutely necessary. This series attempts to describe the Trinity, or, how God can be omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, and immanent in creation at the same time. And, what significance this has for the reality we face as individuals. As the prior article on Jesus Christ noted, "Who Jesus is says a great deal about who we are." So, too, who God is addresses who we are.

In India, that aspect of God that is the Creator, separate and untouched by “His” creation is called “SAT,” and can be called “the Father.” The creation itself as a creative act of SAT and a manifestation of the Creator in the act of “becoming,” is “AUM.” The creation comes into being through an illusion caused by movement (“duality”) in opposite directions from a point of rest at the center. A whirling fan or the hubcaps of a wheel can create the appearance of solidity owing to their motion. Basic subatomic particles, atoms and molecules combine in an infinite variety of ways to give the appearance of separate objects. This “God AS the underlying reality of creation” is called “AUM” in India and, in Christianity, is given the term the “Holy Spirit.” It is “ghost-like” (Holy Ghost) because invisible; its presence is “felt” as a breeze, a whispered sound, or an ethereal rumble of thunder or a crashing sea.  Its visible appearance is as the inner light of meditation.

In Christianity, it is personified as the Virgin Mother of Christ: virgin because God AS creation is unpolluted or untouched by creation’s subsequent and infinite variations. In India, Divine Mother (personified in a variety of goddesses) is the personification of the AUM vibration.

This primordial and essential level of creation is characterized by sound and light, especially sound. Hence we find in the great faith traditions the universal intonation of a core and divinely conscious prayer-word such as “Aum,” “Amen,” “Amin,” and “Ahunavar.” This utterance attempts to articulate the metaphysical reality called “the Word.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).” A word is a sound uttered based on thought and consciousness. The Aum vibration is the voice of God at the heart of all creation. It creates, sustains, and withdraws from sight all things. As the living presence of God in creation, it is the “Comforter” and brings to our “remembrance” all things because all things are made by it. In hearing it, we also enter into the presence of God’s presence and “remember” that presence. In that presence wisdom comes to us. Listening to the inner sound (of AUM) brings to devotees not just comfort but protection and inner guidance.

Just as the artist or scientist or inventor has a seed idea that triggers further details and enthusiasm and finally manifests in the intended object, so creation is said to contain three distinct levels: thought (ideation), energy (astral), and the physical cosmos. The investigations by science into the underlying chemical, atomic, electrical and electro-magnetic properties of matter are suggestive of the energy or astral world that underlies the superficial appearance of matter on the gross level of the senses.

But if the universe were only God’s manifestation it would be a sham. For God to set in motion His creation and yet remain apart from it, He had to impregnate the creation (Divine Mother, his consort, the Virgin and the Aum vibration) with His seed, which is to say, with his intention, His “looks,” and, you might say, His DNA. Genesis declares that we are made in His image and thus we “resemble” our Creator, not in physical appearance but in our true essence. (The five points of the body—two feet, two arms and head—resemble the five points of a star commonly seen in meditation.)

God thus had to bestow upon His creation, His only begotten Son, His own intelligence and intention, the seed of His own perfection in Bliss. In order to sustain and perpetuate His creation, he had to endow the perpetual motion of the illusion of creation with intention and intelligence. His seed of intention and intelligence resides at the center of each atom and each object and endows all things with the power and the desire to procreate. As God is Bliss itself (meaning the summum bonum of existence), and as it is the nature of Bliss to express itself and share, so too God’s creation and creatures find joy in the act of procreating (on all levels of intelligence and intention) and, at the same time, as the inner essence of Being. God is thus Being and Becoming.

This spark of divinity and intelligence is always appropriate to the need and context. Thus it is that trees make more trees and only trees, not frogs. Thus it is objects seek to survive and to perpetuate their existence. This divine spark of intelligence and joy is itself the aspect of God that is immanent in creation. This is the true and “only begotten son of God.” The intelligence inherent in creation is God’s “son,” for it resembles him in these respects. “God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son” that the son might reveal the Father. This intelligence seeks to reveal the Father. All creation is endowed, to some measure, with the bliss of God and the desire, born of the nature of bliss itself, to expand and multiply.

In India the term of this is TAT, or the Christ Intelligence in creation: the reflection in creation of the Infinite Spirit beyond creation. In matter and in lower life forms it can only express itself instinctually. But when it reaches the human form, the soul has the potential to become “one with the Father.” In Christianity it is given the term “Holy Ghost:” the silent, invisible ghost or spirit which gives “life” to all things.

Joy and blessings,

Nayaswami Hriman

Who is Jesus Christ?

It is once again the Christmas season and while “Who is Jesus Christ” is a question one can ask at any time, it seems especially appropriate this time of year. Millions celebrate Christmas, whether religiously or only just socially. The life of the man who became known in history as Jesus Christ has influenced, nay, changed the course of the history of the western nations. His life has certainly affected every continent on this earth to some degree, better or worse, according to one’s point of view.

So, like, “Who is this guy?” Jesus himself asked his own disciples that question, according to the New Testament. Reading behind the lines of that report one can easily feel the disciples looking down and shuffling their feet nervously, fearing to get the wrong answer. Since Jesus actually asked “Who do men say I am?” some of the disciples felt to venture responses on the basis of what they had heard others say, rather than offering their own opinion. And their answers are revealing. One response is rather ignorant saying “John the Baptist!” I say “ignorant” because John was Jesus’ older cousin and had only recently been murdered by King Herod. So, even assuming one believes in reincarnation, that would have been well-nigh to impossible.

Others responded with the names of some of the Old Testament prophets (e.g., Jeremiah). Why this aspect of the dialogue (which reveals that reincarnation was widely accepted and that Jesus made no attempt to deny or correct it when given a perfect opportunity to do so) hasn’t been noticed by Christians is an example of precisely what Jesus himself was frequently quoted as warning his listeners that his deeper teachings were “for those who have ears to hear.” (I have read that scholars have discovered that the doctrine of reincarnation had been taught for the first several centuries of Christianity but was intentionally removed in the fourth century A.D. Prior to that, one of the early teachers of Christianity, Origen, confirmed that the doctrine had been taught since apostolic times. Jewish scholars, too, can attest to the long-standing debate regarding its validity.)

Returning to our topic, it was, famously, Peter (bar Jonah, the “Rock”) who declared the true nature of Jesus: “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” On other occasions, Jesus publicly declared “I and my father are one.” He alternated between referring to himself as “the son of man” (presumably a reference to his physical form and personality) and “the son of God” (presumably a reference to his divine nature). He further declared that “Before Abraham was, I AM.” By this shocking and seemingly blasphemous statement, he is saying that his spirit, being one with God, has, existed since all eternity, with God. But, now, just his soul? Or?

Now, let’s pause, after all, I am mostly just quoting Jesus himself. For that, you can read the New Testament yourself. Why, however, is this question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” a useful one to ask? Because the answer implies as much about whom you are as it does about Jesus.

Was Jesus Christ a special creation of God? Is he therefore unique and uniquely separate from the rest of humanity, despite his human form? Was he, then, like some spiritual alien? Did God Himself incarnate into the body of Jesus? (If so, who was minding the store for thirty-three years?)

When challenged by his self-styled tormentors, the scribes and the Pharisees (keepers of the Hebrew law), Jesus quoted back to them a phrase from their own scriptures (Jesus, mind you, was a Jew and he knew his Bible, too): “Do not your scriptures say, ‘Ye are gods’?” In reference to the many miracles Jesus is reported to have done, he told his disciples that they would do these and more, for he was soon to return to his father.

The beloved disciple, John, whose gospel stands apart from the other three evangelists for its impersonal presentation of the nature of Jesus, describes Jesus as the “Word made flesh and dwelt amongst us.” He states that the Word is God and is the co-creator of all things. Jesus is thus more than the human being whose life and teachings are described in the New Testament. But is he uniquely so? John the Evangelist goes on to write that “As many as received him to them give he the “power to become the sons of God.” 

Here then we see clearly and profoundly that Jesus was not uniquely different than you or I. It must be added, that to “receive him” must go beyond belonging to a church, being baptized with water or through mere intellectual or emotional assent. Whatever it is must be very powerful and life changing.

John is saying nothing less than we, too, are potentially sons of God as Jesus was “one with the Father.”

This teaching of our oneness with Jesus’ divine nature permeates the original teachings of Jesus in the early formative years of Christianity. The term “body of Christ” was used to describe both those who followed his teachings (and, in other contexts, all people) and to describe the sacrament of sharing bread and wine as symbols of the Christ presence in all creation and in all souls. That Churchianity later arose to make that an exclusive teaching is hardly a surprise given the exigencies and limits imposed upon it by history, culture, consciousness and circumstances.

The mystical saints of Christianity, however, attest in various ways to this universality, to this truly “catholic” teaching. St. Thomas Aquinas and later St. Theresa of Avila experienced the “formless Christ” as the eternal light that “lighteth all men” and which creates and sustains all things since the beginning of time. Their very experience of this formless Christ is testimony to its being our very essence (indeed, the essence of all creation!)

Now if you want to stop reading here, I’d forgive you. From where we, as westeners and Christians stand, we are not so shaken thus far in anything I’ve written (unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool believer). But from where Jesus stood, he was crucified for his unforgivable audacity in revealing himself as “the son of God.” 

We can’t fully appreciate how revolutionary this was, unless we are perhaps Jewish or Muslim.

Judaism (and later, Islam) represents a monotheistic tradition for which the appearance of a human being claiming to be God is the height of blasphemy. Insofar as the apostles were good “Jewish boys” they had an uphill climb to make. In the pagan cities of the Mediterranean, it was tough enough to sell a new religion based on the story of a poor Jew who died on a cross at the hands of the Romans and who was resurrected from the dead (not your usual, every day experience). But in some ways that line was easier with the pagans who believed in all sorts of things (after all Augustus was proclaimed a god, too!). But, for the boys back home in Judea, this was a tough sell. It’s hardly a surprise that Christianity ended up going its own way.

he idea that the Deity could incarnate as a human on earth required an entirely new understanding of creation and God’s role in it. This, in part, is what made Jesus’ teachings and message so revolutionary in its times. In fact, however, it is far more oriental in its message than we can possibly appreciate. I’m not about to write a book, so I won’t elaborate on that statement. Suffice to say that a broader understanding of divinity was needed. No longer would God be “wholly other” and outside human history except as He interjected himself through his messengers, the prophets. It was bad enough that Jesus took on the religious establishment of his time to expose their pusillanimity and hypocrisy in holding to the letter of the Mosaic law and not its spirit. 

But to declare the presence of God in human form would require the birth of a new religion that would change the world and, ironically, would, in fact, overthrow the Roman rule (which the Jews themselves yearned for). It would give birth to a new understanding of creation itself, though this was to take some time to formulate and articulate.

I will reserve a separate blog article on the teaching of the Trinity, for the triune nature of God has been taught in India since time immemorial and the fact that this teaching appears in early Christianity is no coincidence for its reflects this new and deeper understanding that Jesus came to initialize. But for now, during the Christmas season, let me say that we, too, are potential “Christs” and may only need to awaken, and then to perfect, this realization. It is on the basis of the recognition that we are all children of the One God that we can truly celebrate the Christmas spirit of giving and sharing.

Blessings to you this Christmas,

Nayaswami Hriman

The above is based upon and inspired by the teachings of the modern Yogi-Christ, Paramhansa Yogananda and the writings of Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple and founder of the worldwide work of the Ananda communities. For additional reading, see “Revelations of Christ,” by Swami Kriyananda, available from Crystal Clarity Publishers, Nevada City, or the East West Bookshop nearest you.