Christ
and Ramana
By Banning Richardson
from The Mountain Path, Jayanti
Issue 2001
=============================================
It is a tenet of
Hinduism that all spiritul paths lead to the
same goal. In a broad sense this is true, but also it hides
the
truth. For if one has followed one religion or another, one
Yoga or another, one has still in the end to go through the
process of self-analysis, of inner search and surrender which
is
best described in our time by Sri Maharshi.
In other words the 'goal' is not a goal but a path.
When one has learnt everything that one can from one's
inherited
or acquired religion or spiritual discipline, one has to take
this prized possession and cast it to one side - the most
painful of acts - and, starting afresh, follow the simple,
scientific method that the Saint of Arunachala teaches us.
I have said that this saint is the greatest contemporary
exponent of this age old teaching. This is as true for the
scientific minded Westerner as it is for the Easterner.
Dr. Jung writes, "The identification of a Self with God
will
strike the European as shocking. It is a speciphically
oriental
Realization, as expressed in Sri Ramana's utterances.'
No doubt such identification is shocking to the Western
Christian
or other orthodox religionist, but as I have implied, it is
consonant with Christ's teachings, if they are approached
afresh
without prejudice.
If one examines the New Testament carefully one finds
that Christ is trying to convince a fanatically
monotheistic people that God could inhabit human form for a
special purpose, and that the nature of God was not something
different from man's but that one could see the image of
God in a perfect man.
And he proclaimed himself to be a perfect being who had
presided
over human destiny since the world began. This in itself was
an
overwhelming dose for the orthodox Jew to swallow.
One would not therefore expect that Christ would go farther
and show that this Perfect Being is latent in every man ,
because God is in every man. But in fact he does say this
by implification, and sometimes directly, throughout his
teaching.
Take for instance - "The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation; Neither shall they say, Lo here ! Or lo
there! For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you."
In other words his first lesson was, 'Heaven is within
you and it is a spiritual state, not a material place."
Having made this clear,
he goes on to say, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect.' Thus he was saying in fact, "God
dwells within you; you can become perfect like Him. '
This was a
revolutionary teaching , and its full implications are
understood only if one comes into touch with the teachings of
Ramakrishna or a Sri Maharshi." But Christ went even
farther than this. In verses 33-36 of the tenth chapter of St.
John's Gospel we read - "Jesus answered them(the Jews): Is it not
written in your law,I said,Ye are gods?"
"If he called them gods, unto whom the
word of God came, and the scripture
cannot be broken; say ye of him,
whom the Father has sanctified, and sent
into the world, Thou blasphemest;
because I said, I am the son of God?"
So we might ask today, do you acuse Sri Maharshi of blasphemy
for saying that
the True Man within us is God, when Christ was executed on
the same charge 2,000
years ago? Just because the church has petrified his
teaching, as Judaism before
has petrified the teaching of the Prophets, do you expect
those who feel God stirring
within them to join the mob who cry 'Blasphemy ' ?
And to pursue this argument a little farther in order to
reveal
the basic similarity of Jesus Christ's and Bhagavan
Maharshi's
teachings, one remembers that Christ answered the rich, young
man who came to him and asked, "Good master, what shall
I
do that I may inherit eternal life', by saying "Why
callest thou
me good? There is none good but one, that is God'.
This, taken with the quotations already mentioned, clearly
shows that he believed that God was in all men and that all
men
could attain the perfection that he, Christ, himself
revealed,
through following his path - i.e., actively loving God and
one's
fellowmen , and knowing that the Kingdom of Heaven is
within each one of us.
posted by Viorica Weissman ~ MillionPaths
Truth
has to appear only once in a single mind,
for
it to be impossible
ever
to prevent it
from
spreading universally
and
setting everything ablaze.
~
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Heart of Matter
Posted
by Jani Roxburgh ~The_Now 2
Those who
argue and discuss without understanding the truth are lost
amid all the forms of relative knowledge, running about here
and there and trying to justify their view of the substance
of ego.
If you realize the self in your inmost consciousness, it will
appear in its purity. This is the womb of wonder, which is
not the realm of those who live only by reason.
Pure in its own nature and free from the categories of finite
and infinite, Universal Mind is the undefiled wonder, which
is wrongly apprehended by many.
~ Lankavatara Sutra
From "Buddha Speaks," edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000
‘Lost in the woods I
snapped off a dark branch’
VI From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’
Lost in the woods, I snapped off a dark branch
and, lifted its murmur, in thirst, to my lips:
perhaps the weeping voice of the rain,
a shattered bell, or a broken heart.
It came to me, something out of far distance,
deeply concealed, and hidden by Earth,
a cry, defeated by immense autumns,
by half-opened moistness of shadowy leaves.
But waking out of the wood’s dream there,
that hazel branch sang under my tongue,
and its vagrant perfume rose to my mind
as if suddenly roots I had long abandoned
searched me, the lost domains of childhood,
and held me, wounded by wandering fragrance.
~ Pablo Neruda
posted by Zen Oleary ~ Allspirit
