ஒரு பானை சோற்றுக்கு ஒரு சோறு பதம்
Per this maxim, I think we have more than established that Paramahansa Yogananda battles but in vain to prove that there is unity between the teachings of Jesus and India’s ancient science of religion. Here and there, there is inevitably some harmony of course, but it is more the exception than the rule. The chasm is unbridgeably wide in many places. In these circumstances I see no point in continuing this series and burdening you further! As I mentioned earlier there is a total of over 1500 pages in these two volumes. I haven’t even dealt with 100. If I were to cover the lot, I’d have to keep writing till the dawn of eternity, by which time I would have lost all my readers one way or another! In fact I do not know if any one is still journeying with me as I close with this post!
Any lingering issues can always be sorted out in interpersonal communication:
mobile: +91 99 529 86320
gmail: judah.vincent@gmail.com
Twitter: @theriyuma
Once again, many thanks to my classmate Krishna Kumar who opened my eyes to the existence of these volumes and lent me his copy for study. I am aware that he may not be entirely pleased with my comments and conclusions but then as a fellow engineer and a thinking man, I am sure he esteems my reasoning.
But before we close we need to touch base with a few aspects like the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Oh.. I recall saying that I would deal with the so called “Jesus’ Missing Years”; that should be done as well!
Okay, let’s take crucifixion. Jesus’ first words from the cross as recorded by Luke (Luke 23:32-34) are:
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” . Simple, straightforward. I don’t think anybody – least of all his Father God – has difficulty in understanding the compassion and the spirit of forgiveness oozing from it. Yet PY is unable to emerge from the whirl of his verbosity; see how he puts it (and I quote):
“Heavenly Father, let not the exacting cosmic law of cause and effect punish these thy children who in ignorance are crucifying this body; they do not know the dire result attendant on their dreadful actions.”
Rather a laborious way to express Jesus’ tender clemency at a time of excruciating pain, don’t you think?
The following description by PY is rather more curious: after Jesus cried “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” when the weight of the sin of all mankind bore on Jesus and the heavenly Father could not bear the sight momentarily, PY says (and I quote): That mortal consciousness of separation from God was Satan’s test of delusion, opportunely seized upon when God had slipped away to see if Jesus would miss Him.
Are you suggesting PY Sir, that the Trinity could be broken? That the only begotten Son of God can be separated from Father God and go his own way? How can you? “God slipping away to see if Jesus would miss Him” doesn’t sound quite right when God is omniscient.
PY goes on (and I quote) “But as soon as Jesus cried out for God, Satan’s delusion was defeated. When Jesus cried out,God quickly revealed Himself and restored Jesus’ divine consciousness with the realization that the suffering on the cross was a delusive mental dream with no intrinsic reality, and that he was Spirit, everlastingly untouched by suffering.
Where does PY get this preposterous idea that Jesus’ suffering on the cross was a delusive mental dream? Then what was the scene in Gethsemane recorded by the physician Luke standing by as “(Jesus) being in anguish he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”( Luke 22:44). A make believe drama?
Come on PY Sir, with your much vaunted communion with Jesus, you ought not to be spreading such canards!
You (PY) write (and I quote):
“In a dream the solid physical body, the luminous astral body, and the ideational causal body can be perceived as real; when the dreamer completely awakens, those “realities” are understood to be a dream, the result of frozen mind, or materialized imagination. Likewise, in the cosmic dream Jesus was bound by his physical, astral, and causal bodies with their functional instrumentalities of perception and consciousness. It was only when Jesus was completely awake in God, three days after the crucifixion, that the cosmic dream was totally banished in the realization that Spirit alone exists. But that did not ease the difficulty for Jesus while he was on the dream cross and under the influence of the cosmic dream. Pain in a dream causes very real suffering to the dreamer. Only when Jesus lifted his consciousness into Christ Consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness was his suffering on the cross dissolved in the bliss of Spirit, in a rejoicing that his life and travails on earth served then and everlastingly to help awaken other souls in Spirit.”
Can somebody explain this verbiage please?
…..and the following gibberish as well:
“Nevertheless, even a saint with Christ Consciousness has certain limitations, in that his awareness embraces all creation—the inconceivably varied maya-show of forms and forces interacting in the cosmic matrix of sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic qualities—but not the vibrationless transcendent realm where the Creator Himself abides. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord declares: “It is difficult indeed to go beyond the influence of My divine cosmic hypnosis, imbued with the triple qualities. Only those who take shelter in Me become free from this power of illusion.” Jesus Christ demonstrated the utmost fulfillment of this divine promise, lifting his God-surrendered soul into full transcendence with the words: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”
There seems to be some kind of ham handed complement towards the end, most grudgingly given! But the rest of it is beyond my comprehension.
Let’s move on from crucifixion. I am not able to bear the pain of PY’s wanton description!
Elsewhere PY pontificates:
“AIl things are possible unto God and His great devotees.”
I suppose PY is commentating Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 19:26 which says “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible“. Please note Jesus says “With men this is impossible” and PY writes and I paraphrase ” no, this is not true. AIl things are possible to God’s great devotees” ( who are I imagine are but mere mortal men!).
Clearly an addition to the Word of God, most categorically proscribed in the Bible. “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it” (Deuteronomy 4:2). And the punishment that awaits people who do this is recorded in Revelation 22; didn’t PY know that?
There is a point at which PY calls reference to “the whole drama of Jesus’ life“. Jesus’ mission on earth, a drama? St. Paul declares in 1 Timothy 1:15 that “this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. Certainly not to act in a cosmic drama! (if I might borrow the C word from PY who seems to be fairly drowning in it)
As for Jesus’ resurrection from the grave, oh, PY does recognize it but typically couches the description in ponderous language, this time like this:
“After attaining oneness with the Absolute, Jesus infused his Spirit- expanded soul back into his crucified body, immortalizing it, and returned to his bereft disciples in physical form.”
mmm…..
Somewhere in Google search results. I read (and I quote) “Despite the worldwide interest in his life, little is known about Jesus between the ages of 12 and 30. How did he spend his missing years? While his birth, childhood, later years and death are all well documented in the gospels of the New Testament, a question mark continues to hang over how Jesus spent his time between the ages of 12 and 30. This baffling gap spans the period that stretches from his preaching (or rather debating) in a temple as a young boy, right up to the point at which, as a grown man, he first met John the Baptist.
PY writes in his 5th discourse of Volume 1 on this subject (and I quote):
“In the New Testament, the curtain of silence comes down again on the life of Jesus after his twelfth year, not to rise once more until eighteen years later, at which time he receives baptism from John and begins preaching to the multitude. We are told only:”And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52)”
Continuing the quote: “Remarkable accounts, however, do exist, not in the land of Jesus’ birth but farther east where he spent most of the unaccounted-for years (how can PY be sure?). Hidden away in a Tibetan monastery priceless records lie. They speak of a Saint Issa from Israel “in whom was manifest the soul of the universe”; who from the age of fourteen to twenty-eight was in India and regions of the Himalayas among the saints, monks, and pundits; who preached his message throughout that area and then returned to teach in his native land, where he was treated vilely, condemned, and put to death. Except as chronicled in these ancient manuscripts, no other history of the unknown years of Jesus’ life has ever been published (this may have been true at the time of writing of this book but it is no longer true as we shall see later)
PY writes (and I quote), “Providentially, these ancient records were discovered and copied by a Russian traveler, Nicholas Notovitch……. Notovitch’s manuscript tells us: “Issa (as how Jesus was called) secretly absented himself from his father’s house; left Jerusalem, and, in a train of merchants, journeyed toward the Sindh, with the object of perfecting himself in the knowledge of the Word of God and the study of the laws of the great Buddhas”
Secretly absented? !
Further, “The ancient manuscripts say Jesus spent six years in various holy cities, settling for some time in Jagannath, a sacred pilgrimage site in Puri, Orissa. The famous temple there, which has existed in one form or another since ancient times, is dedicated to Jagannath, “Lord of the Universe” —a title associated with the universal consciousness of Bhagavan Krishna.”
The following from the same account reads most interestingly that, “The ancient history relates that Jesus became learned in all the Vedas and shastras. But he took issue with some precepts of the Brahminic orthodoxy. He openly denounced their practices of caste bigotry; many of the priestly rituals; and the emphasis on worship of many gods in idolic form rather than sole reverence for the one Supreme Spirit, the pure monotheistic essence of Hinduism which had become obscured by outer ritualistic concepts.”
“Distancing himself from these disputes, Jesus left Puri.
PY continues (and I quote):
According to my guru, religion Swami Sri Yukteswar, the most recent descending and ascending Dark Ages (Kali Yuga) lasted from about 700 B.C. to A.D. 1700. In India, this period saw the gradual perversion and loss of the sublime spiritual science of the Vedas and Upanishads, resulting in priestly adherence to a number of misunderstood precepts falsely held to be taught by the scriptures.”
PY writes further (and I quote):
In spite of the meaningless superstitions and pitiful provincialism in religious thinking that have crusted on both Hinduism and Christianity down the ages……
(I cannot help wondering how the bold portions in these paragraphs go down in today’s Hinduism)
Continuing the quote from PY:
“Jesus was an Oriental, by birth and blood and training. To separate a teacher from the background of his nationality is to blur the understanding through which he is perceived. No matter what Jesus the Christ was himself, as regards his own soul, being born and maturing in the Orient, he had to use the medium of Oriental civilization, customs, mannerisms, language, parables, in spreading his message. Hence to understand Jesus Christ and his teachings one must be sympathetically open to the Oriental point of view—in particular, India’s ancient and present civilization, religious scriptures, traditions, philosophies, spiritual beliefs, and intuitive metaphysical experiences. Though, esoterically understood, the teachings of Jesus are universal, they are saturated with the essence of Oriental culture—rooted in Oriental influences which have been made adaptable to the Western environment.”
PY goes on (and I quote):
“The Gospels can be rightly understood in the light of the teachings of India—not the caste-ridden, stone-worshiping, distorted interpretations of Hinduism, but the philosophical, soul-saving wisdom of her rishis: the kernel not the husk of the Vedas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita. This essence of Truth—the Sanatana Dharma, or eternal principles of righteousness that uphold man and the universe —was given to the world thousands of years before the Christian era, and preserved in India with a spiritual vitality that has made the quest for God the be-all and end-all of life and not an armchair diversion.
Continuing:
“Granted, the East is not practical enough; but the West is too practical to be spiritually practical! That is why I advocate a harmonious union of the two; they need each other. Without spiritual idealism, material practicality is the harbinger of selfishness, sin, competition, and wars. This is a lesson for the West to learn. And unless idealism is tempered with practicality, there is confusion and suffering and lack of natural progress. This is the lesson to be learned by the East”
Further:.
“The East can learn from the West, and the West can learn from the East. Is it not strange that, perhaps due to God’s secret plan, since the East needs material development, it was invaded by Western material civilization? And since the West needs spiritual balance, it has been silently but surely “invaded” by Hindu philosophy, not to conquer lands but to conquer souls with the liberation of God-realization.”
“We are all children of God, from our inception unto eternity. Differences come from prejudices, and prejudice is the child of ignorance. We should not proudly identify ourselves as Americans or Indians or Italians or any other nationality, for that is but an accident of birth. Above all else, we should be proud that we are children of God, made in His image. Is not that the message of Christ?
Jesus the Christ is an excellent model for both East and West to follow ……..”
Well, the foregoing is a collection of extracts from PY’s essay on the so called missing years of Jesus.If you found the above a plausible explanation, let me advance an equally plausible view that comes from the West as propounded by the National Geographic. This one says Jesus went to England!
The documentary “Jesus: The Missing Years” explores the 18-year gap that incredibly, nobody knows anything about. The debate continues to rage over where the young Christ was during these ‘missing years’. Some wild theories have claimed that he traveled far and wide, with India and Tibet being possible destinations. Others claim it is far more likely that he remained in Nazareth, leading a humble life working as a carpenter. Now, scholars and theologians are using clues from ancient texts to piece together the events of Jesus’ young adulthood in an attempt to shed new light on the unknown parts of his life.
This is a long movie but if you want some material on the England story you can watch for several minutes from about 24: 50.
Between India and England you can take your pick and believe what you want to but I am content with the view that it is far more likely that he remained in Nazareth, leading a humble life working as a carpenter.
In PY’s book, there is no mention of Jesus’ ascension to heaven but since these volumes are titled “Second Coming”, we may conclude that PY is in line with the biblical accounts of these events. Only as regards Second Coming itself, he is talking about Christ consciousness in our souls (aside of the nativity narratives) which could possibly be likened to the
second birth we talked about, and not his visible return to earth promised in the Bible and looked forward to by the Faithful.
The Bible says in Acts 1:10 that attending the event of Ascension were two angelic characters who said (v11), “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” The book of Revelation puts it like this: ““Look, he is coming with the clouds,” and “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”; and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” So shall it be! Amen.”(Revelation 1:7)
It is to be noted seriously that when these eschatological events come to pass, there will be no more time for decision; hence the mourning in the previous paragraph. On the other hand, if you have put your trust in him, you can joyfully say “ Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev.22:20). This is where Joshua’s classic call in Deuteronomy 24:15 assumes critical importance. Addressing the Israelites ever prone to wandering as regards their faith, he says.”15 And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served ………… or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
I think it is about time we made it crystal clear that “there is no other name (than Jesus) under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
Will you put your trust in Jesus – today?
Tomorrow may not be ours.
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