The Historical and the Mystical Implications of the Coming of Christ

by Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken on Christmas Eve 1989)

The world we are inhabiting can sometimes concentrate itself in nature as well as in human society. The whole of the universe can be pressed into action at any spot in nature or in the world of people. There is something interesting and very intriguing about the power of the universe which, while it appears to be an expanse in space and in time, can also manifest itself as a non-spatial and non-temporal activity at any place and at any time. This becomes possible because of the essentially non-spatial and non-temporal character of the universe, in spite of the fact that it appears to be in space and in time.

There is a transcendent and an empirical aspect manifest in creation, and everything in creation can manifest itself in two ways: as eternity, as well as a process in time. This is something important for us to remember. Everything in this universe can reveal itself as a spot of eternity or as a process of the temporal world. We are ourselves participating in this twofold characteristic. There is an element in us, a spark, as it were, that shines with a light that does not belong to this world and, at the same time, we very much belong to this world.

The restraints, the conventions, the rules and regulations, and every kind of finitude that characterises our personality loudly tells us that we belong to this world. But our aspirations, which do not seem to be capable of satisfaction with anything in this world, point to a destination which is apparently beyond this world—which means to say, beyond space and beyond time. It is possible for the powers that be to remain entire in their transcendent nature and at once manifest themselves under conditions necessary for the purpose of the evolution of the universe.

The coming of Christ has been described as the entry of Logos, the eternal intelligence, or we may call it the archetypal ideal, into the personality of Jesus, so that in Jesus Christ we have man and God combined at one single moment because it is Incarnation. The spirit of Incarnation differentiates itself from ordinary mortals in the sense that it is a focusing point in an apparently temporal personality, this human individual, as it were, of that which is super-individual, superhuman, the Universal Intelligence, God-consciousness. The Universal Intelligence is called Logos, Mahat-tattva or Hiranyagarbha in the language of philosophy or mysticism.

The purpose of the universe is to reclaim itself in its own essential universality. For this purpose, the Central Will of the cosmos, designated in many ways as the Father in heaven or the Supreme Absolute, descends in a manner which is incomprehensible to us, to bring back to its originality all the centrifugal elements that seem to be flying away from the centre—the individuals who look outward through the sense organs in terms of the objects located in space and time, and get bound materially, sensorially, socially, politically, and in many other ways also. They have to be gathered together into the destiny that they have to reach, and in His vigilant circumspect vision, with His unwinking eye, God acts in a super-temporal manner and moves in this world as a God-man, as an Incarnation. He is not subject to the laws and stipulations of human society because the very purpose of the coming of this great Spirit is to break the bonds and the chains that restrain the human soul to finitudes of different types, and in this supernal act of the reclamation of the Spirit bound in the human body, it behaves in a manner that is not always in conformity with the stereotyped regimentations of human law, or even of religious law. This is what we see in the life of Christ and the lives of several other saints and Incarnations. There is an overturning of the tables, as it were, of everything that is considered secure in this world, a withdrawing in a direction totally opposite to the direction taken by the human individual which is socially-oriented, object-oriented, sense-oriented, personality-oriented, and body-conscious.

The action of Christ in this world is an action of God in humanity. Often the terms 'Son of Man' or 'Son of God' are used to describe this great master, indicating that Jesus the Christ embodies the spirit of mankind as a whole, the response of God to the cry of humanity, and he is descended from God. The response of God to the cry of people is called Incarnation. It is not one man's cry, it is the cry of Man, and it is the Son of Man. It is not the son of this man or that man, it is Man as such. The response of the Eternal to the demands of the total of mankind is its Incarnation come for this special purpose. Hence, the combination of the Spirit being the Son of God and the Son of Man at the same time is a beautiful description of the manner in which this great miracle-maker operated in this world—immensely human, immensely compassionate, immensely loving, immensely considerate, immensely capable of entering into the hearts of people. That is the human side of Jesus Christ. Nobody could be more human than he was; no one could appreciate the predicament of mankind, of humanity, of people, or of anyone, better than he. The best of men could be seen in his personality—the essence of Man, the cream of humanity. The totality of mankind produced the essence, as it were, of the true human individual, an emblem, an example of Man as such. So we have in Christ, in Jesus, Man as such, a symbol, an example, a towering stature of what could be expected as the best in humanity as a whole.

Thus, Jesus Christ is the Son of Man, but he is not merely that because the total of mankind cannot equal God. All that man is, in all his stature and all his achievements, all the geniuses of mankind put together, cannot equal God; therefore, while we have to be immensely social, very human and service-minded—which is important, of course—that is not enough because God's centredness is a little different from being merely socially conscious. Any amount of work in this world cannot touch God because God is not work-oriented. It is being-oriented. It is eternity. All activity, whatever be its nature, is a process. It is not being; it is becoming. So here it becomes necessary for an Incarnation of this kind to demonstrate itself as the best of both sides, the best of what we can expect in the process of time, the entirety of human history, towering above all conceptions of the apex of human genius yet transcending even that, transcending even the best that we can imagine in this world. What can be better than the best? Nothing. But there is something. God is better than the best of things in this world. He transcends the world also. Hence, there is a power inside which could be wielded only by That which is not of this world.

The more we try to contemplate this personality, the more also we feel a necessity to bring into the focus of our concentration factors that are necessary for the ascent of the soul to God. All aspects of the best of things, as I mentioned, are found in Jesus Christ. He was an Incarnation; he was the best of men, also a great sadhaka, a singularly austere example of God-oriented living—religious, spiritual aspiration concentrated in the best possible manner. The nature of the sadhaka, the aspirant or the yoga-oriented personality is tapas, austerity, self-abandoning, self-abnegating, self-restraining and subjugating. These qualities are to be found in the best of seekers of God, and are also to be found in this great master. Hence, we can also find in the personality of Christ the best of the seekers of God, and not only an Incarnation of God—God made manifest in flesh. All-round perfection can be seen in this inscrutable personality of Jesus,
or Christ.

Mystical philosophers tell us that the Jesus aspect is the human aspect and the Christ aspect is a diviner aspect. In an Incarnation, it is believed the Universal enters into the particular focusing point, and it works through this focusing point for the purpose for which it has come. Oftentimes it has been seen that when the work of the Spirit that has descended into the personality is complete, it withdraws itself, and the human aspect sometimes manifests itself. The best of saints and sages many a time behaved like human beings, though often they behaved like God Himself. The God element makes them behave like God but the personality, which is the framework in which this God-consciousness has been cast, also has its own say, and often they behave like human beings. The framework is the human nature, and the Spirit that operates this frame is the divine nature. That is the Christ and the Jesus combined—Narayana and Nara, in the traditional language of India, joined together. Narayana is the universal cosmic Logos which enters into the Nara aspect of Arjuna, to speak in the language of the Mahabharata epic. Nara becomes Narayana. The human individual becomes the Incarnation; the Universal assumes total charge over the individual, and whatever that person speaks at that time is not the word of man, it is the word of God. It is word made concrete, substantial—made flesh, we may say, if we so like.

That is to say, the words, the actions and the behaviours of Incarnations and sages of this kind are a teaching by themselves. These great masters teach more by their behaviour, their conduct, their appearance, than by their words. The words that they speak are profound enough, but more profound is the way they behave. Their personality is a greater teaching, their conduct is a better mode of communication or instruction than the words they speak in language. An aura emanates from them. A power is around them always, and the people who go near them get stupefied many a time. They get drawn towards this magnetic personality. They are sucked into them, as it were, and their doubts get dispelled in one second merely because of their juxtaposition with the presence of these people. That is how God works. That is how the God-oriented man works. That is how Incarnation works.

Many of the teachings that we have according to the New Testament as words spoken by Jesus Christ are eternal messages to mankind. I hope many of you had the occasion to go through the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, which is the theme of all teachings in all the religions and spiritual texts of the world. This is the teaching of the Bhagavadgita, as it were, though through the Sermon on the Mount. There is nothing unsaid there. It contains the best of critical teachings, the best of metaphysical indications, and the best of instructions for disciplining oneself for the purpose of the ascent to God. The gradual weaning of the human personality from its involvement in the world, for the purpose of burnishing it into the gold of that spiritual power necessary for marching onwards, is here before us in these golden words of the Sermon on the Mount. Seek God first, and all shall be well in all your endeavours, in all your occupational activities and progress, in every work that you do in your daily life. Even in the humdrum activities of your daily routine, may the God element be taken first. When you get up in the morning, when you open your eyes, may the thought of that Supreme Universal God, who is the Creator of the universe, be there foremost. Next comes the concern for the world, and then you place yourself as the last to be considered. In the process of creation, God stood first, the world came afterwards, and yourself, as a manifested individual, emanated as the third element. Therefore, to give excessive importance to the human personality alone, to give scant respect to the world of people, and to totally ignore God's existence would be to put the cart before the horse and to turn upside down all the values of life.

Let devotees of Christ concentrate themselves in this emphasis laid on God: God is first in all performances, and whatever I do is not done by me but Him. The glory goes to Him who has sent me here, and my words and my actions are His who sent me, and not mine. I stand here as an emblem and instrument of His. This should be the spirit of a spiritual seeker, an instrument of God. This should also be the meaning that we can read in Incarnations. They are ambassadors of the universal Spirit. It is necessary that spiritual seekers should read the Sermon on the Mount every day. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be there. Why are you crying for things in this world, the bread and butter and jam of tomorrow? Think not of the morrow; the morrow shall take care of itself. How profound is this wisdom! Why should you think of the morrow when the morrow may not be there for you? Who bothers about it? When it comes, it comes, and when the morrow comes, it shall take care of itself. There are two things in this world which are beautifully taken care of: the birds in the air and the flowers in the fields. When they are not bothering about bank balances and the morrow, every day is a new day for them and they beautifully sing their song of melody and beauty in the early morning hours, why should you not be as free as that?

Freedom is the birthright of all spiritual seekers, freedom is the nature of God, freedom is the aura that emanates from all Incarnations, and God who is free sent the freest of His kind. The Son of God is the freest, and the freedom which Christ manifested in his life went counter to the traditional norms of the society of those days because religion then had become a means to bind the soul with fetters of a different kind altogether, which were the ritualistic formulations of religious edification: It should be like this and it should not be like that. Those were shackles that had to be broken by the freedom that can belong only to God. Here is the contrast between God and man, or the Christ and the Antichrist, the Universal and the particular. Christ himself faced the opposition of the entire environment in which he had to live.

God, who is compassion, unbounded law and indomitable power, sacrificed Himself, as it were, for the purpose of the redemption of mankind in yajna, which is the sacrifice that God performs in the act of creation. This is portrayed in a beautifully poetic manner in the Purusha Sukta of the Veda, for instance. The first action of God is sacrifice in the form of creation, which looks as an alienation of Himself in space and time, and everything that follows from that first sacrifice also is a kind of sacrifice, until the last sacrifice is performed as the offering of the soul itself for being consumed in the fire of God.

All these indications can be read into the historical as well as the mystical implications that came to be around this great personality, Jesus Christ, whose life has to be read again and again with an eye not merely of the flesh but an eye of insight, the eye of the soul. Such seems to be the message that we can gather from one angle of vision, of course. There are many other standpoints from which we can study this great mastermind, the spiritual hero Jesus Christ. This is a study not merely of a historical personality, of someone who came and went, but it is a study of something that is always with us, always has to be with us, and perhaps is inseparable from us. May this study be our endeavour—the study of the true Spirit in us, the study of the true Christ that is implanted in the hearts of not merely Christians who profess their religion but in the hearts of everyone who has been born into this world.