God's Love Gave to the World His Only Begotten Son - Part 2

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God's Love Gave to the World His Only Begotten Son - Part 2

(Dialogue With Nicodemus, Part III (Conclusion))

 

(p.273) " For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that

whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God

sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through

him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that

believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of

the only begotten Son of God " (John 3:16-18).

 

The confusion between " Son of man " and " only begotten Son of God " has created

much bigotry in the community of churchianity, which does not understand or

acknowledge the human element in Jesus--that he was a man, born in a mortal

body, who had evolved his consciousness to become one with God Himself. Not the

body of Jesus but the consciousness within it was one with the only begotten

Son, the Christ Consciousness, the only reflection of God the Father in

creation. In urging people to believe in the only begotten Son, Jesus was

referring to this Christ Consciousness, which was fully manifest within himself

and all God-realized masters throughout the ages, and is latent within every

soul. [1] (p.274) Jesus said that all souls who lift their physical

consciousness (Son of man consciousness) to the astral heaven, and then become

one with the only begotten Christ Intelligence in all creation, will know

eternal life.

 

Jesus never meant that

he was the only savior

for all time

 

Does this Bible passage mean that all who do not accept or believe in Jesus as

their Savior will be condemned? This is a dogmatic concept of condemnation. What

Jesus meant was that whoever does not realize himself as one with the universal

Christ Consciousness is condemned to live and think as a struggling mortal,

delimited by sensory boundaries, because he has essentially disunited himself

from the Eternal Principle of life.

 

Jesus never referred to his Son-of-man consciousness, or to his body, as the

only savior throughout all time. Abraham and many others were saved even before

Jesus was born. It is a metaphysical error to speak of the historical person of

Jesus as the only savior. It is the Christ Intelligence that is the universal

redeemer. (p.275) As the sole reflection of the Absolute Spirit (the Father)

ubiquitous in the world of relativity, the Infinite Christ is the one mediator

or link between God and matter, through which all matter-formed

individuals--irrespective of different castes and creeds--must pass in order to

reach God. [2] All souls can free their matter-confined consciousness and plunge

it into the vastness of Omnipresence by tuning in with Christ Consciousness.

 

Jesus said: " When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am

he. " [3] He realized that his physical body was to remain on the earth plane for

only a little while, so he made clear to those for whom he was the savior that

when his body (son of man) was gone from the earth, people would still be able

to find God and salvation by believing in and knowing the omnipresent only

begotten Son of God. Jesus emphasized that whosoever would believe in his spirit

as the Infinite Christ Incarnate in him would discover the path to eternal life

through the meditative science of interiorized ascension of the consciousness.

 

" That whosoever believeth in him should not perish. " The forms of nature change,

but the Infinite Intelligence immanent in nature is ever unchanged by the

mutations of delusion. A child who is temperamentally attached to a snowman will

cry when the sun rises high in the heavens and melts that form. Likewise do the

children of God suffer who are attached to the mutable human body, which passes

through infancy, youth, old age, and death. But those who interiorize their life

force and consciousness and concentrate on the inner soul-spark of immortality

perceive heaven even while on earth; and, realizing the transcendent essence of

life, they are not subject to the pain and suffering inherent in the incessant

cycles of life and death. [4]

 

Jesus' majestic words in this passage were meant to convey a divinely

encouraging promise of redemption to all humanity. Instead, centuries of

misinterpretation have instigated wars of intolerant hatred, torturous

inquisitions, and divisive condemnations.

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 15, pg. 273-275

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] The writings of many gnostic Christians from the first two centuries A.D.,

including Basilides, Theodotus, Valentinus, and Ptolemaeus, similarly express an

understanding of the " only begotten Son " as a cosmic principle in creation--the

divine 'Nous' (Greek for intelligence, mind, or thought)--rather than as the

person of Jesus. The celebrated church father Clement of Alexandria quotes from

the writings of Theodotus that " the only begotten Son is 'Nous' " ('Excerpta ex

Theodoto' 6.3). In 'Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts' (Oxford, England:

Clarendon Press, 1972), German scholar Werner Foerster quotes Irenaeus as

saying: " Basilides presents 'Nous' originating first from the unoriginate

Father. " Valentinus, a teacher greatly respected by the Christian congregation

in Rome around A.D. 140, held similar views, according to Foerster, believing

that " in the Prologue to the Gospel of John, the 'Only-begotten' takes the place

of 'Nous'. "

 

At the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), however, and at the later Council of

Constantinople (A.D. 381) the church proclaimed as official doctrine that Jesus

himself was, in the words of the Nicene Creed, " the only begotten Son of God,

begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true

God, begotten not made, 'homoousios' ['of one substance'] with the Father. "

After the Council of Constantinople, writes Timothy D. Barnes in 'Athanasius and

Constantius': 'Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire' (Harvard

University Press, 1993), " the emperor enshrined its decisions in law, and he

subjected Christians who did not accept the creed of Nicaea and its watchword

'homoousios' to legal disabilities. As has long been recognized, these events

marked the transition from one distinctive epoch in the history of the Christian

church and the Roman Empire to another. " From that point on, explains Richard E.

Rubenstein in 'When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During

the Last Days of Rome' (New York: Harcourt, 1999), the official teaching of the

church was that to not accept Jesus as God was to reject God Himself. Through

the centuries, this view had enormous and often tragic implications for the

relationship between Christians and Jews (and later, Muslims, who regarded Jesus

as a divine prophet but not as part of the Godhead), as well as for the

non-Christian peoples in the lands later conquered and colonized by European

nations. ('Publisher's Note')

 

[2] See Discourse 70: " I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto

the Father except by me " (John 14:6).

 

[3] John 8:28 (see Discourse 51).

 

[4] " The heavens shall be rolled back, and the earth unfurled before your eyes.

The one who has life from the Living One sees neither death nor fear. " --Gospel

of Thomas, verse III. ('Publisher's Note')

Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (11:40) speaks thus about the yoga

science: " Even a tiny bit of this real religion protects one from great fear

(the colossal sufferings inherent in the repeated cycles of birth and death). "