Water Into Wine: This Beginning of Miracles.... - Part 3

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Water Into Wine: " This Beginning of Miracles.... " - Part 3

 

Did Jesus support the

drinking of wine?

 

(p.219) A so-called convincing argument made in support of drinking wine is that

Jesus himself drank wine and even produced it as one of his miracles. In that

arid land, even the scant resources of water were often polluted, with no

knowledge at that time of purification methods; the juice of fermented grapes

provided supplemental liquid for the body, and was even considered hygienic as

well as sacramental. Notwithstanding the invalidity under different

circumstances, people are quite opportunistic to imitate those actions of a

master that justify their own inclinations, while they are wanting in equal

fervor to emulate his spiritual example! First become like Jesus--drink the wine

of his inspiration, the wine of God-consciousness, which placed him above

worldly compulsions.

 

Great masters throughout the ages have talked against the use of intoxicants.

Their effects are very bad; they dull man's most precious endowment, his fine

instruments of consciousness. One who indulges in drink finds all awareness of

God obliterated. The temptation of drink, which provides a temporary euphoria,

was created by the satanic force to divert man from seeking true bliss in God.

The soul's need for refreshment in transcendence, which becomes degenerated

under the influence of delusion, has induced every culture to develop its

spurious forms of escape in inebriation, producing instead a pernicious

enslavement. God-consciousness is a thousand times more intoxicating than

drunkenness, and elevates the spirit of man rather than degrading his potential.

Jesus' disciples on the day of Pentecost were as if drunk; but with the wine of

God-consciousness. One who is inebriated with God needs no other palliative to

ease whatever woes befall him. So the great ones enjoin man to sit quietly and

go deep into meditation. After the resisting restless thoughts have been

stilled, the devotee finds his " cup runneth over " with an ecstatic divine elixir

of joy.

 

Jesus performed his first public miracle not to sanction intoxication by the

social use of wine, but to demonstrate to his disciples that behind every

diversity of matter is the one Absolute Substance.

 

To Jesus wine was not wine. It was a specific vibration of electrical energy,

manipulatable by knowledge of definite superphysical laws.

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 11, pg. 219

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

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

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7