December is Christmastime. No telling how we’ll celebrate Christmas this year, but our collective Christmas present may be Christ consciousness so it makes sense to discuss who or what the Christ is.
Jesus called himself the Christ and he spent much of his time teaching about the Christ. What is the Christ?
Jesus calling himself the Christ, for me, means Jesus acknowledging his possession of Christ consciousness. But, whereas strictly speaking, Christ consciousness is associated with the level of enlightenment we’ll achieve at Ascension, I’d imagine Jesus’s own consciousness embraced levels very much higher than Fifth Dimensionality, possibly higher than the human realm of twelve dimensions.
His attainment would have been less than that attained by Sananda Kumara, who overlit Jesus in his ministry and for whom Jesus is regularly mistaken (they actually are separate individuals. Otherwise, it seems to me, there would be no sense in Sananda overlighting him). (1)
Jesus called the Christ by many names: the savior, the messiah, the Son of God, the Prince of peace, the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field, the measure of meal that leavened the whole loaf, the mustard seed that grew into a great tree.
In most of his tales of the son of the landlord, the son is the Christ, the landlord the Father. When he talked about “I and my Father” being one, but the Son being less than the Father, and the Father being in him and he being in the Father, he was also talking about the Christ.
We often think that to discuss Jesus at all is to proselytize and descend, down the ladder of certainty, into belief, which is lower on the ladder than the natural knowledge that comes from enlightenment. Belief doesn’t have very much experience, truth or reality in it. It’s thought-based rather than experientially-based.
But the Christ, the Son, the treasure buried in the field is Reality. It isn’t a matter of belief. And belief in it, while it draws one to it by the Law of Attraction perhaps, does not substitute for knowledge of it. Only knowledge of it enlightens; belief does not.
Many sages have experienced the Christ and come to know that they too are the Christ. We always are the Christ but we simply aren’t aware of it. The Christ is our soul, our Higher Self. It is who we are, were and always will be.
Other religions know the Christ by different names. Hindus call it the Atman or Self. Buddhists call it the Buddha nature or our original face. It doesn’t matter what name is used. The Christ or Self is known to all religions.
So what is the Christ? The Christ is, metaphorically speaking, a Light of the Father’s Light, a fragment of the Father, a flame in the heart, a firebrand plucked from the burning. It’s a Light brighter than a thousand suns.
John Ruusbroec saw it and exclaimed: “In this darkness an incomprehensible light is born and shines forth; this is the Son of God in whom a person becomes able to see and contemplate eternal life.” (2)
This Son of God will lead one to the Father, he tells us: “It is Christ, the light of truth, who says, ‘See,’ and it is through him that we are able to see, for he is the light of the Father, without which there is no light in heaven or on earth.” (3)
In An Hour with an Angel in January 2012, I read John Ruusbroec’s quote to Jesus and asked:
Steve Beckow: Is that light indeed the Christ in its essential form?
Jesus: It is the Christed light, yes, you are correct. In its fullest form.
SB: All right, now, can you – It’d be such an important thing for me if you could discuss your relationship to that light. Were you embodying it in the fullest manner? Was that your role or mission? Or what was your relationship to the Christ?
J: That has always been the fullness of my mission, in whatever form I have taken. I am the light that burst forth. I am the light that came from the heart of One, from the heart of God. And my purpose in all this relationship was to simply ignite not only what has been referred to as Heaven and Earth, but far beyond.
If you look to my essence, dear friend, all you will see is light. That is all there is. And it can assume relationship, and after relationship it can assume various form. But it’s light was beyond the Christ light. Can you think of it as a tiering? It was an implosion, explosion of light, and it has never changed. And it will never change.
SB: And when you say, “I am the light,” who is “I am”? Are you speaking as Jesus, or are you speaking as the Christ, as the light?
J: No, I am speaking as the light. (4)
The Son is the Father and the Father is the Son: they are not different. No one can enter the Kingdom of the Father save through the Son. No one can know the Supreme Self unless they first know the individuated Self.
The Light of the Christ, when meditated upon, finally becomes the Light of the Father so it is through the Christ that we “see” the Father. That is how the Christ is the gateway, the door to the Kingdom, the good shepherd, etc. That is also what is meant when it is said that the Christ brings all his flock to the Father.
Once they see the light of the Self (or find the treasure buried in the field of the body), if they settle down into meditation on that Light, leaving all other desires behind than to know its greater identity (sell all they have), they will penetrate into that Light until it becomes the Light of the Father (they will have bought the field).
The Christ or Atman, according to Shankara, “is infinite wisdom,” (5) “unending, unalloyed bliss.” (6) It is often called the witness and the motivator of every action, as Sri Krishna does here.
“The supreme Brahman [God] in this body [i.e, the Atman or Self] is also known as the Witness. It makes all our actions possible, and, as it were, sanctions them, experiencing all our experiences.” (7)
It is, as Jesus said, “the light of the world: he that followeth me [i.e., the Christ] shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (8) And he shall have the light of life when the discrete Light of the Son becomes the transcendent Light of the Father, as Ruusbroec predicted it would.
Lin-Chi, or Rinzai, knew it and called it “The clean pure light in a moment of your mind — that is the Essence-body of the Buddha lodged in you.” (9) Zoroaster knew it and said of it:
“Happy is the man to whom you come mightily, O Fire, Son of Ahuramazda [“Wise Lord”], friendlier than the friendliest, more adorable than the most adorable! Through Thy Fire, O Lord, we draw near to Thee and Thee alone!” (10)
It is birthless and deathless, beginningless and eternal, as Moses acknowledged: “The fire [the Christ] shall ever be burning upon the altar [of the heart]; it shall never go out.” (11) And Jesus: “The Son abideth ever.” (12) And also Shankara:
“The Atman is birthless and deathless. It neither grows nor decays. It is unchangeable, eternal. It does not dissolve when the body dissolves. Does the ether cease to exist when the jar that enclosed it is broken?” (13)
So this Light is who Jesus embodied and the subject on which he expounded from the day he began his ministry until the day he surrendered it again to the Father.
And it is consciousness of this Christ that we shall attain on our Ascension. We shall become like Christ and we very well may do greater than he did in the world, so to speak. But we shall not be greater than he. We’ll have only taken one step on the path that he trod to completion. The rest of the journey awaits us.
Footnotes
(1) The question of whether Jesus and Sananda are separate beings is not a settled matter. I plan to do more research on the subject soon.
(2) John Ruusbroec in James A. Wiseman, John Ruusbroec. The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works. New York, etc.: Paulist Press, 1985., 22.
(3) Ibid., 74.
(4) “Transcript of an Hour with an Angel, with Jesus, Jan. 16, 2012,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/the-2012-scenario/the-masters-return/transcript-of-an-hour-with-an-angel-with-jesus-jan-16-2012/
(5) Shankara in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher lsherwood, Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1975; c1947, 48. [Hereafter CJD.]
(6) Ibid., 56.
(7) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 103.
(8) John 8:12.
(9) Lin-Chi in Burton Watson, trans. The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi [Rinzai]. A Translation of the Lin-Chi Lu. Boston and London: Shambala, 1993, 24.
(10) Zarathustra in Duncan Greenlees, trans. The Gospel of Zarathushtra. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978, 49.
(11) Leviticus 6:13.
(12) Jesus in John 8:35.
(13) Shankara in CJD, 53.