Happy Sunday!

I am neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim.  Doing away with duality, I saw the two worlds as one.  I seek One, I know One, I see One, and I call One.  ~ Rumi
This week I finished reading “The Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda, which is a classic best selling spiritual book published back in 1945.  Yogananda was chosen by 3 generations of Guru’s to bring eastern thought in the form of yoga to the west.  He created the ‘Self Realization Fellowship’ in California in 1920, this organization is still in place spreading the teachings he brought from India.
On each page of this book was one amazing revelation after the other.  Yogananda from his earliest memories was able to share the miraculous abilities of the Yogi’s that were just everyday people in his early life.  When I say miracles I am not talking about the little synchronicities or coincidences that we appreciate as proof of God, I am talking about Jesus Christ level of abilities: healings, manifesting in multiple locations, levitating, telepathy, physical appearances after death, living without food, living without aging – just one amazing thing after the other.  I kept saying to myself during the first few chapters “Why don’t we know this stuff?”  Ironically, I told my mother some of the stories from this book and she asked the exact same question.
What I was saying with my question was why are these abilities present in humans who are not called ‘God’ and why doesn’t history record this information for us all to learn about.  If I think about it I guess I can figure out the answer – science and religion.  For centuries we have been told what to think and how to relate to God.  I am glad to live during this period of change.  (In the book Yogananda speaks of the materialistic west and the spiritual east.  I appreciated the cooperation expressed by his Guru Sri Yukteswar  who spoke of Yogananda going to America so east and west can share their knowledge, west needing spirituality and east needing to use materials better to care for their people.)
The experiences of Yogananda’s life support my own thoughts of Jesus being the example to us all of man and spirit.  The name we know him as “Jesus Christ” expresses this clearly.  When I was young I never thought much about Jesus’ second name ‘Christ’, other than to know it was wrong when spoken in frustration.  I become aware through all my reading that the name Christ signifies the greater ‘God’ part of Jesus.  (I must have missed something back in CCD class that I didn’t know this throughout my life.) From a few sources I have read, it is said that Jesus received the Christ energy when he was baptized by John the Baptist; from that time on Jesus contained the Christ energy within his human form.  I learned from this the name Christ represented a change in Jesus – this name represents Jesus in his sacred form.  I related this to the many spiritual religions and traditions where people take on another name when they choose a new faith (ie. Muhammed Ali, Cat Stevens) or are given one as they advance in their faith (ie. nuns, confirmation names, Native American spirit names).
Yogananda, knowing that his book was to speak to a western audience, continually correlated Hindu scripture, the Vedas, with the teachings of Jesus and his disciples. The ancient Vedas taught of the ability of man to overcome the limitations of human life by tying into Cosmic Consciousness – to bring the awareness and energy of the Source into this life.  Yogananda when speaking of Jesus or the Christian saints would use the term Christ Consciousness instead of Cosmic Consciousness.  Both the Vedas and the teachings of Jesus Christ ask us to see past the chaos of this world to our true selves.
This helped me to clarify in my mind what all the saints, prophets, and mystics of all of the faiths of the earth knew, how to dwell in the Christ/Cosmic Consciousness.   It is the connection to the next level of awareness, the Universal energy that connects us all and that our souls are part of.
The message that Yogananda gave to me is that we are all the same in our potential to connect to Christ Consciousness through devotion to God through prayer (west) and meditation (east).  And if we all have the same potential doesn’t that make us equal in the eyes of God?
Here is an excerpt from the last two pages of the book …
“To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.  Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” (John 18:37) In these few words Christ spoke volumes.  A child of God “bears witness” by his life.  He embodies truth; if he expound it also, that is generous redundancy.
Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy, no intellectual insight.  Truth is exact correspondence with reality.  For man, truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature, his Self as soul.  Jesus, by every act and word of his life, proved that he knew the truth of his being – his source in God.  Wholly identified with the omnipresent Christ Consciousness, he could say with simple finality: “Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” (Psalms 46:10)
Thank you Yogananda.
Namaste’