Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness - Part 6

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

In Part 8, the topic of 'stigmatism' comes up, which usually has at its focus

the suffering of Christ on the cross. Shri Mataji told us She was the Mother of

Christ in that incarnation, and that She cannot stand the thought of the

suffering of Christ, that it happened to her beautiful Son. She never wanted to

talk about the suffering of Christ, to dwell on that. It stands to reason, for

what mother could stand that? No mother could. Yet many Christian saints have

put their attention on the suffering of Christ.

 

However, as Sahaja Yogis, we do not put our attention on the crucifixion, but on

the Resurrection. Shri Mataji says that people have suffered enough - that we

need to be resurrected now! And not endure Christ's suffering on the cross,

which he has done. She says we should not now have to suffer anymore on account

of that. After all, didn't Christ also say: " It is finished! "

 

Shri Mataji says that the reason He allowed himself to be crucified, was to

prove that the Spirit does not die. His dying and rising again, showed that. He

demonstrated that. Christ dying on the cross does not automatically take away

the sins of the world, as Christians seem to claim. If that were the case, the

sins of the world would already be gone and nobody would have to do anything

about that.

 

Christians can't just say that 'i believe in Christ' and 'therefore i am saved'.

Salvation comes by becoming Christ-like ourselves - by imbibing the Christ

Consciousness that was in Jesus, which is why He became called 'the Christ'.

Jesus the Christ is a spiritual fore-runner for human beings to follow. He

showed the Way, the Truth, and the Light, so we could follow his example.

Through his resurrection, he takes His place at the Narrow Gate, at Agnya. He is

in our own Being, there. He stands at that Gate. Now, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

stands at the Sahasrara to receive us, just as Christ stands at the Narrow Gate

to allow entry into the 'Heaven Within'.

 

For all these reasons and more, Sahaja Yogis have been given the divine task to

resurrect others to become their Spirit. We do not focus on the crucifixion, but

on the resurrection of Christ Jesus and the en-masse resurrection of the whole

of the humanity!

 

love to all,

 

violet

 

 

 

Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness - Part 6

 

Will power draws

Cosmic Energy into

the body

 

(p.165) Will is the operator of the switch that controls the flow of energy into

the body. Every movement requires an act of will to empower it with energy.

Merely to lift one's hand is to inject energy and consciousness into the entire

system. When one is unwilling to do a task, he is tired from the beginning; but

when he is willing, he is full of energy. One who does everything with

willingness and interest finds that he is able to draw unceasingly from the

reservoir of cosmic power. To remain apathetically passive and not use the will

in a face-off with every duty and challenge in life - as some misguided

dogmatists interpret Jesus' words: " Not my will, but Thine, be done " - is to

shut off from the body the reinforcing free flow of divine currents. It is when

the will to live becomes paralyzed, by overpowering disease or other

difficulties, that the death of the body ensues.

 

By will power alone man can recharge his bodily cells, which are nothing but

electrical globules. One who judiciously fasts for a long time will notice that

he feels less and less need for food, that something else sustains his body. The

currents of energy locked up in the brain and cells are drawn upon by the mind

and will, which are capable of converting man's body from a " wet battery " to a

" dry battery. "

 

A wet battery is dependent on replenishment of its water supply to generate

electricity. [1] A dry battery, however, is sustained by its own internal

reservoir of energy recharged solely by electricity. (p.166) By developing his

will power, man can gradually lessen his dependence on chemical atomic energy

from gross food, and instead learn to sustain and revitalize his flesh and

mental faculties from increasingly finer mediums of Cosmic Energy. He can draw

more of his sustenance from oxygen, or from sunlight. Ultimately, saints have

shown that it is possible to live by the Word of God alone.

 

Saints who live

without eating

 

In a book entitled 'Amanzil', about Therese Neumann, the peasant girl of

Konnersreuth, Bavaria, taken from an address of Right Reverend Joseph Schrembs,

D.D., Bishop of Cleveland, delivered February 12, 1928, we find striking facts

about Therese Neumann's life relative to living by divine energy. [2]

 

1. " She possesses the wounds of the crucified Savior. The wounds remain always

the same. They neither fester nor heal. "

2. " She goes through the Passion of our Lord each Friday. "

3. " She repeats the Aramaic words spoken by Christ. "

4. " She divines the innermost secrets of the heart. "

5. " She takes neither food nor drink. Has eaten no solid food since 1923, except

water or a little fruit juice. "

 

" But on Christmas Day of the year 1926 she ceased entirely taking any food or

any drink, so that almost for two years now, this girl has neither eaten nor

drunk anything except to receive Holy Communion every morning....The verdict of

all the doctors from the University of Berlin, from Prague, from Frankfurt, from

Munich - doctors without any faith - is this: 'Deception and fraud are

absolutely out of the question in the case of Therese Neumann.' She is not

emaciated, despite lack of food since Christmas 1926, and is as healthy looking

as anyone around you. On Fridays she loses about eight pounds. Six hours after

the vision of the Passion is over, she is again back to her normal weight of one

hundred and ten pounds. "

 

When I saw Therese Neumann in Bavaria in 1935, she had lived without food for

twelve years, but she looked as fresh as a flower. [3]

 

In the case of Therese Neumann we find one of God's many anomalies, a divine

nudge to keep man's complacency humbly off center. (p.167) She is moderately

active, enjoys sunshine and tending her garden, her heart and circulatory system

and breath work normally, but she does not live by edible solids nor liquids.

Therese Neumann's life demonstrates in this age the teaching of Jesus that the

body does not live by " bread alone. " As she expressed it to me, " I live by God's

light. " The saintly stigmatist lives by her will drawing on Cosmic Energy from

the ether, sun, and air; and by the Cosmic Consciousness of Christ. [4]

 

The Bengali woman saint Giri Bala had lived without eating for more than

fifty-six years when I visited her in 1936. She told me that ever since her guru

had initiated her into a technique that frees the body from dependence on

physical food, she has been able to live entirely on Cosmic Energy. In all these

years of noneating, she has never been sick or experienced any disease. Her

nourishment is derived from the finer energies of the air and sunlight, and from

the cosmic power that recharges the body through the medulla oblongata.

 

I asked her the purpose of her having been taught to live without eating. " To

prove that man is Spirit, " she replied. " To demonstrate that by divine

advancement he can gradually learn to live by the Eternal Light and not by

food. " [5]

 

The atypical lives of saints such as Therese Neumann and Giri Bala are used by

God to demonstrate man's essentially incorporeal nature. In higher evolutionary

ages it will be the norm for food to consist primarily of oxygen, sunshine, and

etheric energy. Extracting nutrients from gross foodstuffs is such a roundabout

way of getting at the encased energy for repairing the decay of bodily tissues.

Drawing energy from oxygen and sunshine is far more efficient. And to tap

directly the unlimited supply of free Cosmic Energy is to restore the soul's

natural power to sustain its bodily instrument by the Vibratory Word of God.

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 8, pg. 165-167

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

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

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] When Paramahansa Yogananda put forth this hypothetical metaphor, it was

necessary to add water regularly to wet batteries to replace that which was lost

in evaporation. The more recently developed sealed batteries, common to most

users today, require no such water replacement. ('Publisher's Note')

 

[2] 'Amanzil' was reprinted from the 'Catholic Universe Bulletin', Cleveland,

Ohio (eleventh edition).

 

[3] In 'Autobiography of a Yogi', Chapter 39, " Therese Neumann, the Catholic

Stigmatist, " Paramahansa Yogananda relates in detail his meeting with this

modern-day mystic and his personal experience of her ecstatic vision of Christ's

Passion. Therese Neumann passed away in 1962. ('Publisher's Note')

 

[4] Among other Christian saints who lived without eating (they were also

stigmatists) may be mentioned Saint Lidwina of Schiedam, Blessed Elizabeth of

Rent, Saint Catherine of Siena, Dominica Lazarri, Blessed Angela of Foligno, and

the nineteenth-century Louise Lateau. Saint Nicholas of Flue (Bruder Klaus, the

fifteenth-century hermit whose impassioned plea for union saved the Swiss

Confederation) was an abstainer from food for twenty years.

 

[5] See 'Autobiography of a Yogi', Chapter 46.