Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness - Part 2

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Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness - Part 2

 

(p.159) All prophets of God during their earthly incarnations were tested and

had to overcome the human frailties of mortal embodiment in order to attain the

final state of mergence in Cosmic Consciousness. A master's striving to regain

finality while on earth sets an ideal pattern for other advancing souls.

 

The ordinary man's encounter with " the Tempter " is primarily as subjective ideas

subtly luring him through prenatal and postnatal bad habits and the come-hither

attraction of his material environment. To obstruct the highly advanced, Satan

may take objective form and use vibratory voices in his desperate last attempt

to dissuade the Godward-fleeing master.

 

How Satan tempted

Jesus to forsake his

unconditioned divine

state

 

Great masters approaching final liberation can distinctly see Satan and his

legions of evil spirits take personified forms to mount a decisive resistance

against the masters' liberation in Spirit. Satan mysteriously tries great

devotees of God with various temptations that come unpredictably into their

lives as they advance spiritually. These alone are often sufficiently effective

to achieve Satan's purposes. But when devotees are very near God, Satan then

forsakes his subtleties and from his hiding place openly appears to defy the

Lord's saints. Buddha was confronted by Mara who appeared to him in the shape of

dancing-girls, tempting him to give up his divine bliss for sensual pleasure and

comfort for his body emaciated by ascetic discipline. When Buddha remained

unaffected, final liberation came to him. (p.160) Similarly, when Satan saw a

resurgence of spiritual power in Jesus, sundering the incarnating bonds of

'maya', he took an objective shape, talked to him, and promised him the temporal

happiness which all his evil patterns of life could afford if Jesus would only

forsake God.

 

During Jesus' forty days of fasting and self-denial, his consciousness remained

on an exalted plane of spiritual duality: On the one side blessed by Spirit, and

on the other cajoled by the Adversary. When he returned fully to incarnate

consciousness, he was renewed in spirit, but felt the hunger of his mortal body

deprived of its accustomed nourishment.

 

As souls, individualized sparks of unconditioned Spirit, children of God are

immortal, free from any dependence on materiality. The cells of flowers, plants,

animals, and human beings were intended by God to live recharged by Cosmic

Energy and not by cruelly feeding on one another. It is only when the soul is

identified with the Satan-desecrated human body that man feels the hunger of

dependence on nature's store. The Cosmic Delusive Force has led body-conscious

man to believe that without physical sustenance his existence would be

terminated. In turning to earth-products for nourishment (breath and " bread " ),

man remains earthbound, forgetful of his true nature that lives solely by the

Cosmic Energy and will of God.

 

Satan wanted Jesus to forget his divine state of unconditioned existence. He

began to tempt the Christ Consciousness of Jesus by playing upon the primal need

of the human body to satisfy its hunger. Satan worked through the mind of Jesus,

expressing a tempting proposition: " Why don't you use your divine power to

change stones into bread? "

 

Jesus--being one with the Divine intelligence that has vibrated Itself into

solids, liquids, and gases, and is holding them in balance by magnetic,

electrical, and thermal laws--had the power to manipulate those principles to

convert stones into bread by changing their rate of electronic vibration. But he

recognized Satan's delusively plausible suggestion as a ruse to encourage the

mortal habit of catering to the psychology of physical hunger, which in that

instance would have been a betrayal of the realization that as an immortal, he

lived by God's Infinite Energy. This does not mean that after this experience

Jesus foreswore human sustenance. He partook of simple foods, and of feasts

prepared by loving hosts; but he did it as a God-man, and not as a deluded human

subject to the body's habit of physical hunger.

 

(p.161) So Jesus answered the metaphysical Satan with a great vibratory force of

thought within himself, refusing to misuse his divine powers: " Man shall not

live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. "

Jesus quoted the scriptural truth, not theoretically as do theologians, but from

his own realization of the mystery and origin of life, experienced in his fast

and intense meditation: " I have found the divine way of living by God the Father

through the Holy Ghost as the fountainhead of all life, " he signified, " and will

not again acknowledge dependence on physical bread. "

 

Man is not sustained only by " bread, " the limited relative energies derived from

the solids, liquids, and gases of the physical sources that nourish life, but

primarily by " every word " (unit of unlimited Cosmic Energy vibrating from the

Holy Ghost--the great 'Aum' or Amen) descending into the human body through the

" mouth of God " (medulla oblongata). To consciously experience this truth, as did

Jesus, is to realize the eternal link between the human and divine, matter and

consciousness--the irrevocable oneness of the Self with the Creator.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 8, pg. 159-161

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7