For those who, at Easter time, cannot get enough of tales about Jesus (I know I can’t) and want more, I repost this article from 2014.
We often talk about a “personal relationship” with Jesus. I’m not a Christian but I am a great admirer of Jesus and have been all my life.
Might I contribute a reflection on my own personal relationship with him?
For reasons I didn’t know then, I’d been reading the classics from a very early age.
Of the classics dealing with spirituality, the Tao Teh Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, and the lives of the Zen masters particularly spoke to me at that time.
The Bhagavad-Gita was highly-comprehensible on the nature of Reality. The Tao was enticingly mystical and revealing. And the lives of the Zen masters were inspiring and invigorating.
But the only book that had all three qualities combined, along with many other rich rewards, was the New Testament of the Bible, the books of Jesus.
The epitomization of reality that Jesus was capable of would not leave me and explained in a nutshell so much that other teachers took pages to discuss.
All religions respect Jesus. It seems to me that if each named the spiritual master they most preferred after their own lineage, most would say Jesus.
His sayings are a common body of utterances among the religions of the world. Very seldom do they need explanation. Often they’re produced as the last word on the subject.
There’s a story of a Zen monk who was shown the New Testament, read it and said of Jesus that he was not far from enlightenment. Sri Ramakrishna acknowledged Jesus as an avatar and merged with him on one occasion. (1)
Moreover, Jesus has not been given his full due. Some religions look down on dualism as the equivalent of candy for the spiritual babe. And Jesus is often called a dualist. But I say he is not.
What’s the difference between calling the levels of reality the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and calling them Brahman, Atman and Shakti? There’s none. The reality being pointed at is the same.
The Father is Brahman; the Holy Ghost is Shakti (Energy), the Divine Mother. The Son is the Atman, the Self, soul, Christ, Pearl of Great Price, mustard seed that grew into a great tree. Where is anything that would offend a non-dualist?
If one can speak of Brahman, Atman and Shakti and be seen as a non-dualist, why not the same if he uses the terms Father, Son and Holy Ghost?
Jesus described the relations between the Father and Son or Brahman and Atman in unforgettable single-sentence teachings: I and my Father are one; though we are one, my Father is greater than I; he is in me and I am in Him. What is he talking about here?
Brahman and Atman are one. No Hindu would dispute that.
Though one, Brahman is greater than the Atman. The Atman is a fragment (metaphorically speaking) of Brahman, a part rather than the whole.
Brahman is in me as the Atman, Christ or soul in the heart. I am in Him in the sense that He is all there is and so I must be in Him.
In the simplest of terms, Jesus has described relationships that books of erudite scholarship were written to explain. I know I benefited from them and used them as my standard.
Or his parables, each of which was an explanation in kernel form of the steps to enlightenment.
For instance, a man found a treasure buried in a field. The body (or heart, really) is the field and the treasure is the Self, soul, Christ or Atman “buried” in the heart or field.
The man having found the treasure means the man has seen the Self in fourth-chakra enlightenment. It’s seen as a discrete light – the Christ, the Pearl of great price, the Great Fish among fish, the measure of meal that leavens the whole loaf.
He covered up the treasure. By that he means that the treasure, the vision of the Self disappears. The sight of the Atman or Self is temporary prior to the advanced stage of enlighhtenment called Sahaja Samadhi or Ascension, which we’ll be experiencing once we’re deeply within the Fifth Dimension.
He went away and sold all he had and bought the field. The man sat down and divested himself of all desires (sold all he had) save the single desire to fully realize and “possess” the Self. Meditating on that alone, he gradually moves on to the Realization of the Self of All, the Father in Sahaja Samadhi. At this point, he has “bought the field.” He is liberated. He has achieved mukti or moksha.
Again, priceless mystical knowledge in the very simplest of terms yet unmistakeable to the student who knows even a little about enlightenment, a bridge for the inquirer to get quickly oriented to the new land of spirituality. Whenever people ask me for a quick introduction to spirituality, I tell them to read Jesus.
So much of what was attributed to Jesus was written in code. The parables are good examples of that. Once we know the key to the code – which is the fact that this same Trinity is what all of us must realize before we graduate from one rung of evolution to the next – we have the Rosetta Stone that allows us to understand what’s being said in many other religions.
This knowledge is a foundation block in building a cross-cultural spirituality. With it we can see that all of us worship the same Father/Mother God. And all of us are the Christ. Or, if you prefer, the Atman, Self or soul.
Jesus was on An Hour with an Angel some time ago and expressed regret for the enmity that exists between Christians and Muslims.
“The criticisms that are anchored – and we mean anchored, not aimed – at those of Islam are unjust. They are judgmental. They are unfair. They are not of peace. They are not of love.
“It is a darkness that pervades much of the light. And what it does is it [foments] hatred, which eliminates the opportunity for the very thing Michael and I work for, which is peace on Earth.” (2)
If Jesus bears no ill will towards Muslims, if he knows that the charges against them for many acts of “terrorism” which our own governments perpetrated are false, how can we remain in enmity?
Avatars commonly bear the title “the Prince of Peace.” Jesus was not the first avatar among Jews. Melchizedek also was called the King of Salem, or Prince of Shalom, or Prince of Peace. (3) He also was an avatar. The designation Prince of Peace pays honor to the stillness of their minds, the utter and deep calm or tranquility which they manifest. But Jesus was also a tireless seeker of peace in the world as well.
Jesus’ religion is usually thought of as a religion of love but it could as arguably be called a religion of peace, as he here illustrates:
“It is time, during this phase, to make peace with your brethren, because in that you make peace with the Third. If you say to me, ‘Lord, I can never love someone of Islam, someone who is Hindu, someone who is Jain,’ this will not do. It is all; it is not highly selective. It does not mean that you agree with everything they do, they say. But there is an honoring of their divinity, and their devotion.” (4)
No one’s teachings on any mystical subject come as quickly to mind as his do and none have proven to be as appropriate a standard against which I measure other spiritual utterances.
We’re fortunate to hear him so regularly through such competent channels as Linda Dillon, John Smallman, and Pamela Krebbe.
Let me say here and now that no religious figure, with the exception of Sri Ramakrishna, has been as influential in informing my approach to things as Jesus has. I serve Archangel Michael but my admiration for Jesus remains boundless.
Footnotes
(1) “Was Jesus an Incarnation of God?” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/cross-cultural-spirituality/was-jesus-an-incarnation-of-god/
(2) “Transcript of Interview with Jesus on Biblical Mysteries, Dec. 20, 2011” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/ascension-as-of-2012/the-masters-speak/transcript-of-interview-with-jesus-on-biblical-mysteries-dec-20-2011-2/
(3) “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.” (Genesis 14: 18.)
(4) “Transcript of Interview with Jesus on Biblical Mysteries, Dec. 20, 2011,’ at https://goldenageofgaia.com/ascension-as-of-2012/the-masters-speak/transcript-of-interview-with-jesus-on-biblical-mysteries-dec-20-2011-2/