“Father Forgive Them; for they Know Not What They Do.”
PY crowns his Discourse 1 with these immortal words uttered by Jesus as he hung from the cross, recorded for us in the gospel according to St.Luke in the Bible, chapter 23 and verse 24.
With these words (PY writes and I quote), “Jesus placed his signature on a unique life that enthroned him everlastingly on the altar of worshipful hearts as the incarnation of God’s loving compassion.”
Some truths that accord with the Bible here:
- Jesus was unique
- Jesus is enthroned
- Jesus is worthy of worship
- Jesus is the incarnation of God
- Jesus is everlasting
- Jesus is loving and compassionate
(there are verses in the Bible that I can quote in support of each of these attributes, should anybody be interested )
So far….so good, but I find PY deviating from the truth of the Bible when he goes on to say (and I quote) :
“Many are the voices that have intermediated between God and man”.
Now this would be correct if this refers to “judges” or true “prophets” mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible but the New Testament clearly says: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5)
PY goes on to hold up as other intermediaries – “khanda avatars, or partial incarnations in God knowing souls and and purna avatars, liberated beings who are fully one with God.” In support of his contention, he quotes Bhagavad Gita (which he insists on calling sacred Hindu Bible!!) chapter iv: 7-8. According to PY ” The same one glorious infinite consciousness of God, the Universal Christ Consciousness, Kutastha Chaitanya,becomes familiarly appareled in the individuality of an enlightened soul, graced with distinguishing personality and godly nature appropriate to the times of times and purpose of the incarnation.” Phew!!!
I find it rather curious that PY should invoke Universal Christ Consciousness when he talking about these various avatars. How do you see it?
Further, according to PY “without this intercession of God’s love come to earth in the example, message and guiding hand of his avatars, it would scarce be possible for groping humanity to find the path into God’s kingdom midst the dark miasma of world delusion, the cosmic substance of human habitation.”
Very well put. In fact, this indeed is the reason why Jesus was born in time in fulfillment of the eternal plan of God for man’s (humankind’s) salvation (path into God’s kingdom ), but the Bible has nothing to say about other avatars that PY is talking about.
PY continues in his beautiful language that such intercession is necessary “lest his ( God’s) benighted children be lost forever in creation’s delusive labyrinths, the Lord comes again and again in God illumined prophet’s to light the way”.
This bit of “again and again” clearly goes against what is stated in the Bible. Drawing a contrast between the High Priest in Old Testament times repeatedly offering sacrifice, the writer to the Hebrews says, “Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.(Hebrews 9:26).
Though at variance with the Bible in this aspect, I find an unwillingness on the part of PY to let go of Jesus altogether. Thus, even when he is alluding to avatars he refers to “the glory of Christ in the form of Jesus made visible the Invisible Light that leads to God.”
How close is this statement to what we see in the Bible as “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” ( 2 Cor.4:6).
When you are sitting in a fast moving train and looking out of the window quite often you see a set of tracks running parallel. But now and then quite clearly those tracks move away. After running elsewhere for a while, they might become parallel again or they might not.
In my understanding, this picture quite clearly describes the harmony (or lack or it) between the truth of the gospel as recorded in the Bible and the ancient yogic science of religion prevalent in India. This view is in accordance with the maxim that Rev.Sunder Krishnan propunded. This being the case I do not know why PY and his gurus were so intent on preaching harmony. Knowing the truth of the Bible for themselves (having been in communion with Christ), were they trying to make Jesus palatable to the Hindu mind by arguing that there is a great deal of similarity between the two streams?
I wonder.
Let us get back to PY in Discourse 1 and note further divergences; he goes on (and I quote): “Because the periodic recurrence of divine incarnation is a part of God’s creative enterprise, signs of such a birth are imprinted in the Grand Master Plan.
From a biblical point of view, one must disagree with this statement. Let me explain.
It is not clear what the Grand Master Plan is. Secondly, Jesus is the only divine incarnation but PY speaks of periodic recurrence and indeed goes on to give examples which we shall see. Signs of Jesus’s birth are given in the Bible, yes and PY himself quotes Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel“. While the birth of others like John the Baptist are also foretold, they are not divine incarnations.
PY (quote) : “Divine intercession to mitigate the cosmic law of cause and effect, by which a man suffers from his errors was at the heart of the mission of Lord Jesus came to fulfill”.
My parsing: For some curious reason PY is shy of using the word sin which lies at the heart of man’s original fall in the garden of Eden; here he uses the word errors. Are we talking about errors or their cousins mistakes when we are referring to man’s falling short of the standard (or mark) set by God? Is (an unfeeling) Cosmos worried about man’s errors? Isn’t the question about sin, something which a holy God cannot countenance? Wasn’t that that the reason redemption was planned “before the foundation of the world” by an omniscient God (Rev. 13:8) – to defeat sin and accept sinners? Paul captures all of these wonderfully when he says that “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners “(1 Timothy 1:5). Yes, that was the mission of Jesus – not to address some indeterminate cosmic effect caused by man’s error!
The well read PY goes on (and I quote): “Moses brought the law from God to man emphasizing the awful justice that befalls willful heedlessness. Jesus came to demonstrate the forgiveness and compassion of God……. Similarly Jesus was preceded by Gautama Buddha the enlightened one, whose incarnation reminded a forgetful generation of the Dharma Chakra,the ever rotating wheel of karma – self-initiated action and its effects which make each man, and not a Cosmic Dictator responsible for his own present condition.”
Again, I think the Cosmic Dictator PY speaks of, is better known as Satan or as the devil!! It is interesting that the Bible also uses more or less the same language: “prince of this world”(John 14:30), the word “world”of course standing for the “universe or cosmos” as elsewhere explained by PY himself. But is it all self-initiated action? Does not the devil play a part? Is he not opposed to all of God’s divine plans? Didn’t he approach Eve slyly as she stood transfixed by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden and sow a seed of doubt in the woman’s mind by asking:
“Did God really say”? (Genesis 3:1)
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