Who Was–And Is–Jesus? In Vedic religion it is believed that the human race had more than one set of foreparents. It appears from the accounts given in Genesis that the inhabitants of the Mesopatamian and Mediterranean areas as well as those regions to their north were the descendants of Adam and Eve. These are the very people that, without exception, became Christians in the first centuries after Christ. The reason is evident: their profound ancestral link to Jesus. (See Robe of Light.) The Nishmath Chaim (Fol. 152, col. 2), a book contemporary with Jesus and the Apostles which would have been studied by Saint Paul, says: “The sages of truth remark that Adam contains the initial letters of Adam, David, and Messiah; for after Adam sinned his soul passed into David, and the latter having also sinned, it passed into the Messiah.” He who was Jesus of Nazareth was Adam. When Adam “fell,” he was in Paradise, the astral plane immediately above the physical creation. But the alteration in consciousness which resulted from his transgression rendered him unable to function in that subtle world, so he sank back down into the physical plane, through which he had already evolved before entering Paradise. In Genesis we read: “And for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them” (Genesis 4:21). Although many now take this to mean that they were given clothes as the cavemen are depicted wearing, Christians originally understood that the real meaning of this verse was that God created physical bodies–the human organism–for Adam and Eve to inhabit, and thus they continued in the cycle of life, death, and rebirth upon the earth. The Old Testament is the account of Adam’s evolving to become the Christ. Adam evolved through life after life as Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Elisha, and Isaiah. Ascending to and evolving beyond higher and higher worlds, at last he passed through the final barrier of the angelic (cherubic) planes and attained perfect union with the Father/Son aspect of God. From this point the soul normally passes into total union with the pure, transcendent Being of the Father, ending the evolutionary cycle, but it was not so for Adam. He was in debt: a debt owed to all of his descendants, one of such magnitude that it could only be paid by one of infinite consciousness–which Adam now was. So Adam returned, of necessity, to our earth plane in his ninth earthly incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ (Messiah)–not only paying the debt, but showing and opening the Way to the Father for his children, many of whom were, through rebirth, by that time scattered throughout the earth. When Jesus told his apostles to make disciples among all nations he was not meaning that the whole world was to be converted to Christianity, but that they should seek out those who in past lives had been his descendants and been negatively affected by the fall of Adam. He was referring to them when he had told them: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold [of Israel]: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). He did not mean that the entire human race was to become Christian. When Saint Paul speaks of Jesus as being the “second man [Adam]…from heaven” (I Corinthians 15:47). he speaks quite literally, and not figuratively. He also speaks literally about Adam paying his debt: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Corinthians 15:21, 22. This subject is covered in greater detail in Robe of Light). Does this mean, then, that Jesus is only a man, and not the Son of God? No. Jesus positively is the Son of God. And so shall we all be Sons of God like him. But first he was a man–one of the foreparents of the human race, as we have said. Then he ascended to divinity, attaining perfect union with God. The real good news (which is what “gospel” means) is that as Adam passed from fallen ignorance and sin unto perfect Divinity, so shall his disciples do the same through him. Jesus affirmed this when he told the Apostles: “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Later, to his Beloved Apostle John, he said: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Revelation 3:21). As it was with Jesus, so shall it be with us. The passage from humanity to divinity–to Christhood–is the real essence of Saint Thomas Christian belief. The life of the Lord Jesus as given in the four Gospels is also a symbolic mystery drama showing how the soul of each person becomes a Christ–an anointed of the Lord. Again, we are saying that Jesus the Christ was once a human being just like us, but is now in the status of Son of God, just as we shall be. Saint John wrote: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2). That is, when we “see” God (the Father) through union with him, we shall be perfectly transmuted into his image and likeness and thus truly become the sons of God, hearing the words: “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (Psalms 2:7, Acts 13:33, Hebrews 1:5, 5:5) in mystic vision. This is the very thing that happened to Adam/Jesus, which is why he is called “the first-fruits of them that slept” (I Corinthians 15:20). What is Jesus to the Saint Thomas Christians? Saint Thomas Christians worship only God, to Whom Jesus has pointed them. Therefore they love and revere him without reservation in the way that other sampradayas, such as those of Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhavacharya, honor and even venerate their founder-acharyas. But they remember Saint Paul’s plain statement that Jesus is “the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). That is, he is our Elder Brother. “For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Hebrews 2:11 ). Because we and Jesus are “all of one”–that is, of one nature as individual souls, we are his brethren. In India the eldest brother is given respect almost equal to the father of the household. Saint Thomas Christians therefore give supreme honor to Lord Jesus, but they do not mistake the son for the Father. He himself has also told us that we are his friends (John 15:13, 14), and that “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15). For it is his intention that we should become exactly what he is. That this is possible, the Beloved Apostle makes clear when he says: “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.…He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous” (I John 2:6, 3:3, 7). The Lord Jesus is to the Saint Thomas Christians brother, friend, teacher and guide. He teaches them not only through his recorded words, but through the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God in which he now shares. This being true, Jesus is the Master of each Saint Thomas Christian. For Jesus is ever present with and within them as an ever-living Presence. Each Saint Thomas Christian is as fully a disciple of Jesus as was Saint Thomas. Hence Jesus is verily the Way, the Truth, and the Life of each Saint Thomas Christian in his journey back to the Father (John 14:6). The Goal and the Way Saint Thomas Christianity holds out only one goal to its initiates: the realization and manifestation of their innate Christhood. Jesus the Christ of Nazareth came to earth to reveal the Christhood which is the destiny of every person. It is our own personal Christhood that is our Savior, as Saint Paul said: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” But this inner Christ must be awakened and developed unto perfection. This is accomplished by the means of empowerment and spiritual enlightenment known as the sacraments, and especially by the practice of meditation. In the opening of his Gospel, Saint John wrote: “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). “In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). Jesus became like us in all things, and through the sacraments and meditation we are empowered to “grow up into him in all things, ” (Ephesians 4:15), becoming like Saint Thomas his “twin” in all things. For that is what it means to be a “Saint Thomas Christian.” We become interpenetrated with the Christ Consciousness of Jesus and assimilate It into our own consciousness. This accomplishes the following five things within the individual disciple: It frees him from negative psychic bonds. It deeply cleanses him from the negative energy patterns (“sins”) which have been stored up in his physical and psychic bodies from his past lives as well as the present one and that have hitherto obscured his spiritual vision. All of his bodies are infused with positive energies, attuning and enlivening them for his conscious spiritual growth. Every atom of his physical and psychic makeup is clothed in the divine creative Light that is the Holy Spirit, empowering them for the fullest degree of evolution. An entirely new dimension is added to his being in which he can begin to function in the higher worlds while yet on the earth plane. Such a process is both a rebirth and a re-creation. “Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened” (Matthew 13:33). Consciousness begins to pervade all the levels of our being to awaken our own consciousness and transmute us into Christs, which is exactly what being a Christian is all about. What is needed is for us to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Matthew 13:33) - See more at: ocoy.org/original-christianity/esoteric-christian-beliefs/#sthash.c4CJQZ61.dpuf
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 14:07:24 +0000