I’ve been reading I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj and while reading page 15 where he says:
All there is is me, all there is is mine. Before all beginnings, after all endings — I am. All has its being in me, in the ‘I am’, that shines in every living being. Even not-being is unthinkable without me. Whatever happens, I must be there to witness it.
the following thoughts started flowing. They carry on where what I posted here leaves off. These are rough thoughts and were written while drinking coffee and feeding my daughter her lunch. As such they may not be very eloquent or complete but that’s ok. Anyway, here goes …
Don’t you see that Jesus had to portray God as being “out there”? He had enough troubles claiming that he was God’s Son and, therefore, God himself. Imagine if he started saying “Oh, and so are you!” His ministry wouldn’t have lasted three days let alone three years. He was talking to Jews, afterall, who had some real issues with “blasphemy”.
Ravi Zacharias, in the Introduction to Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message, talks about Deepak Chopra “who teaches a doctrine … woven into Vedic teachings, karma, and self-deification.” And the inference is that self-deification is bad because only God can claim to be God. But Zacharias’ version of self-deification is saying “I am the God of the Old Testament. I am the God whose name cannot be pronounced. I am the God who cannot be looked upon or else you will die.” But that’s not what the eastern religions are saying. There is no notion of the God of the OT — there’s no valid comparison between “I am God” said by a westerner and an easterner.
So, Jesus portrayed God as out there but he didn’t stop there. Now, I don’t know where the Jesus and Holy Spirit pieces of the Trinity were in the Old Testament but they were not a big part of it. But they are in the New Testament and this is the evolution I talked about the other post. Let’s see what they are in the NT.
Jesus is the way to God. And we are to be like Jesus. We are called children of God — just as Jesus was the son of God. The Holy Spirit is God in us. God is in us. God is part of us. The character of Jesus is the character in us that points us to God. The Holy Spirit is that part of us that is God.
So, Jesus starts with the bordering-on-blasphemous idea of his being God. He showed us God in human form. This is exactly what we needed. We needed a way to God. This is through Jesus Christ. But if Jesus was the son of God and we are children of God, then isn’t Jesus that part of us that points to God?
That’s all I’ve got … for now.
One of the authors (non-physical, but that’s another story) I read said that Jesus was one of three (along with Paul and John the Baptist) who came “to tell the God-story in our little corner of the universe”. John the Baptist did his job in foretelling the coming of Jesus, Jesus did his job (didn’t come to die nor did he); but Paul, who was to continue telling the story, tried to protect it from all the heresies at the time and so created an institution and took Christianity down the path of exclusion/exclusivity(?) [rules, admonitions, don’ts, etc.] Jesus represented the inner self of man, all men, that which is in everyone; and his apostles represented 12 aspects or facets of man’s personality. So when Jesus would say I am the Way, the Light and the Truth, the Son of God…he was referring to that which we all could say. People of the time could only understand the concepts of father, child etc. By the way, it’s Paul who will come back as the second coming to correct the error that he made. The message was to look within ourselves for answers. (This is also how I interpret the concept that we are ‘made in the image and likeness of God’. God is not separate from, or other than, us.)