(Continued from Part 5.)
Everyone will Realize God One Day
Another point upon which all sages are agreed is that it’s the destiny of everyone to realize God one day. Thus this point would also be a tenet of the Perennial Philosophy or Ageless Wisdom, rather than of only some religions.
If every one of us follows a sacred circle away from and back to God, then it follows that all of us will realize God in the fulness of time. And yet it isn’t something that most people know. Let’s listen to the masters develop this point for us.
Krishna says that:
“All mankind Is born for perfection And each shall attain it Will he but follow His nature’s duty.” (1)
He introduces the idea that we all have a natural duty, inclination, or path. The duty of one is not the duty of another. If we follow another’s natural duty, rather than our own, we may confuse ourselves and experience dissatisfaction.
Thus a lover of God (bhakti yogi) may find the path of knowledge (jnana yoga) dry or a servant of God (karma yogi) may find the path of knowledge too passive and the rituals of the lover of God unfulfilling. But if we follow our own natural inclination, that road will lead us back to God in the straightest and most fulfilling fashion.
Both Isaiah and Lao-Tzu say surprisingly similar things which have been misinterpreted by many. They both describe how, in time, everything crooked, everything that leads away from God will be made straight, bringing each person at last to God.
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
“And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” (2)
One could say that Isaiah may be pointing to the moment of Ascension when all who are open to the experience will see the Glory of God. The Glory of God is another name for the Divine Mother, also called Royal Glory by Zarathustra.
Every wise saying from a master has several levels of interpretation and Isaiah may very well have been speaking about Ascension. But he is accurate more generally as well: everyone shall eventually see and realize God in the final experience of mergence or union.
Surprisingly Lao-Tzu has a very similar statement to make:
“The crooked shall be made straight And the rough places plain; The pools shall be filled And the worn renewed….
“The saying of the men of old Is not in vain: ‘The crooked shall be made straight’ - To be perfect, return to it.” (3)
To be perfect is not something we cultivate. We’re always already perfect and need only drop the imperfect ways we’ve added to our repertoire. There’s nothing ultimate we want that we don’t already have, Lao-Tzu tells us.
Remember that when Jesus says “I,” he speaks as the realized Christ and the Christ is the soul, the Atman, the divine spark. In this passage, keeping in mind that he’s speaking on several levels, he says at one level that all shall realize God; that is, that all shall be raised up through enlightenment on the last day of mortality before the first day of immortality.
“And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.
“And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (4)
It would repay us to look at the last verse. Since the Son is the Christ or soul, the prince of peace and pearl of great price, we all, having a soul, already have everlasting life. If all of us are already immortal and always have been, what does Jesus mean by saying that we shall have everlasting life?
Well, he means that we’ll enter the Kingdom of Heaven or Fifth Dimension, in which we can trade our old body for a new one without ever again needing to go through the experience of being born and growing up from childhood. The soul has always been eternal but it now need not be born and die again in a physical body.
Paramahansa Ramakrishna also tells us that all will be freed through the experience of enlightenment. It’s just that some will reach it earlier than others.
“All will surely realize God. All will be liberated. It may be that some get their meal in the morning, some at noon, and some in the evening; but none will go without food. All, without any exception, will certainly know the real Self.” (5)
“Let me tell you that the realization of Self is possible for all, without any exception. “(6)
So far we’ve seen the same statement being made by teachers associated with Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, and Christianity. We could continue working our way through all the great spiritual traditions of the world but we’d simply find the same statement echoed.
The fact that it’s echoed throughout the religions means this truth is not available only to Christians or Jews or Hindus. It isn’t that only those who believe on Jesus will be saved: all will be saved.
This tenet is therefore a universal truth and thus a part of the Perennial Philosophy which underlies all religions and not the exclusive truth of only one religion such as the followers of Christ. And yet many, many people today believe that only those who accept Christ or follow Mohammed will be “saved.” All are bound and destined for glory, not just the followers of one religion.
Therefore the basis of the Crusades and all other religious wars – that one must accept the words of that faith alone – are invalid and have always been so. Millions and millions of people have died for what is essentially an untruth.
These statements are echoed in all religions because they are true. The fact that all will realize God one day holds for all.
(Continued in Part 7.)
Footnotes
(1) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 126. [Hereafter BG.]
(2) Isaiah 40:3-5.
(3) Lao Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 74.
(4) Jesus in John 6:39-40.
(5) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 818.
(6) Ibid., 256.