“I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others’ religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of the world’s religions is a sacred duty.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
The Challenge
“Call themselves?" asked Yama. "You are wrong, Sam, Godhood is more than a name. It is a condition of being.”
– Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
Hindu scriptures and philosophies assert that the experience of enlightenment is accessible to all. When one “clears away the dust and dirt, the Spirit shines through” (words of Swami Vivekananda in his talk, “Christ the Messenger” in 1900 in Los Angeles).
In Psalms 82:6, it insists, “I have said ye are gods and all of you are children of the most High.” And John observes in the fourth Gospel (1:12), “But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God.”
With such literal references, even the Bible declares that becoming the son of God is possible for anyone. Then the question naturally arises, why is it that the church precludes such an unfolding of divinity among its followers and claims that only Jesus was son of God?
The material in this book challenges the notion of exclusivity of the Godhood of Christ (the state of being God). I invite all my readers to have an open mind, read all the way through to the end of the book, and then reflect on my exposition. My deliberations are not meant to destroy, but to fulfill. I attack nobody, and present everything without dogma.
To be sure, the Hindu has nothing against the Christ principle, nor the historical Jesus who was “united with God.” Being united with God when living in the flesh makes Jesus, in the eyes of the Hindu, an incarnation of God (an avatar in Hindu language). It is the monopoly of such incarnations as belonging only to Jesus for all time that is objectionable to the Hindu. To the Hindu, the latter idea contradicts not just reason but also millennia of collective human experience on the Indian subcontinent.
Every Hindu scripture declares that realizing the divine, which is within you, is the highest and only worthy goal that every life should strive to obtain. They reiterate pursuit of this objective in the here and now, while living, not after death.
The Sayings
I’ve selected nine biblical sayings and all of them except one, namely saying 4, derive from the four main gospels. Saying 4 comes from the Gospel of Thomas. Only one from this list of nine, namely saying 1, is extracted from the book of Genesis and not uttered by Christ. All others signify the words of Christ the Messenger.
You may ask, “Why only nine sayings, and why these specific nine?” I wanted to write a short book, so I had to choose which ones to target. I selected these because they appear to pose some special difficulties even to moderate and scholarly Christians. The way I have understood them, they stand with deep spiritual meaning on their own, without the auxiliary historical context that is often used to explain them. Importantly though, these specific sayings also possess a certain transcendent and timeless quality beyond the “local” cultural references of other sayings.
What’s New?
The reader is well within his or her right to ask, “What’s new in this book?” Two ideas are new and different, and both are worth discovering and exploring.
The first is showing direct parallels between sayings in one tradition, the Christian, through direct textual references and sayings in the other, the Hindu. In an easily accessible manner and with supporting stories, parables, and scientific explanations where appropriate, I explain the core ideas behind them through this short synthetic study.
The second is in the treatment of this topic: the two words “believe” and “belief” embody no mention in any explanations or interpretations anywhere in this book. This book is perhaps the first of its kind, namely, one on religion and spirituality, which does not use the word “belief” or its derivatives. Why is this deliberate omission important? Since this is a special topic in itself, I share my reflections on this subject in an essay at the end of the book which appears in its own chapter before the Epilogue: “Belief Versus Experience in the Practice of Spirituality.”
The Goal
With this book, I hope to impart my understanding of these selected sayings of Christ with support from the Upanishads, which have been termed the “perennial philosophy” by the esteemed English philosopher Aldous Huxley. Spirituality is the invisible stream that nourishes the external forms of all religions. As expressed in the Taittiriya Upanishad, “That from which words turn back, and mind cannot grasp…” (“Brahmananda Valli,” Part II, Ch. 4, Verse 1), the experience of enlightenment cannot be communicated with words. It can only be spoken of allegorically and in metaphor, as did Jesus and many masters before him and since. In other words, any scripture can only point the way; the journey and the effort of uncovering the divine within must be necessarily undertaken by the seeker.
Those who seek to drink directly from the refreshing and rejuvenating fountain of spirituality, stripped of all cultural accoutrements, will recognize the figurative words of Jesus immediately in the presented sayings. To help with absorbing his messages, I present some comparisons from Vedantic teachings in this book. I hope it will empower all readers to renew their study and efforts, deepen their existing practices, and provide new and revealing insights on their spiritual journeys. I thus end this section with this benediction: may the supreme Lord enshrined in every heart, in every blade of grass, every speck of dust, and every atom in this Universe reveal Himself in all His glory to all who earnestly seek to know and experience eternal truth!
