The Woman of Samaria - Part 1

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The Woman of Samaria - Part 1

 

(p.293) " The meeting of Jesus with the woman of Samaria was not a chance

encounter, but a divinely devised guru-disciple reunion. "

 

(p.295) Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the

parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there.

Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it

was about the sixth hour.

 

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, " Give me to

drink. " (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)

 

Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, " How is it that thou, being a Jew,

askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? " for the Jews have no dealings

with the Samaritans.

 

Jesus answered and said unto her, " If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it

is that saith to thee, 'Give me to drink'; thou wouldest have asked of him, and

he would have given thee living water. " (John 4:5-10).

 

 

The redemption of a

fallen past-life disciple

 

The meeting of Jesus with the woman of Samaria was not a chance encounter, but a

divinely devised guru-disciple reunion. The Samaritan woman was a morally lost

disciple of a previous incarnation whom Jesus wanted to redeem.

 

As with many great masters, Jesus had among his following a number of disciples

from past lives. The guru-disciple covenant they had established in previous

lifetimes drew them together again by the unseen magnetism of divine law. These

were not only the twelve who had qualified themselves in past incarnations to be

among the inner circle of Jesus' disciples; others were there as well. (p.296)

Jesus recognized those disciples who were continuing the relationship they had

begun with him in a former life as distinguished from those who were coming to

him for the first time for enlightenment. However, even a close associate or

past-life disciple of a great master may not be a perfected devotee, as was

demonstrated in the ignominious betrayal of Jesus by his disciple Judas. It is

for the sake of the unredeemed that the guru must come back to earth: By taking

human incarnation or by appearing in vision to guide and bless those who are in

tune--or sometimes even by using the instrumentality of another qualified

master--the God-ordained savior continues to help his disciples when their own

efforts permit him to do so, until all are finally liberated. No matter what

their degree of advancement, disciples once accepted by a true guru hold a

secure place in that relationship as they gradually progress, and ofttimes

falter, incarnation after incarnation.

 

The woman of Samaria was one such disciple. It appears that during his trip from

Judea to Galilee Jesus purposely planned this meeting, waiting alone at Jacob's

well where the woman would be likely to encounter him while the disciples went

into the city to obtain food.

 

 

Jesus shunned the evils

of racial prejudice and

caste consciousness

 

Contrary to the prevailing attitude at that time, that Samaritans were shunned

by the Jews as " low-caste, " Jesus engaged the woman in conversation and asked

her to draw water for him. The Samaritan's astonishment at Jesus' request to her

highlights the differentiation observed by the people in the time of Jesus

between the Jews and the Samaritans; the Jews being considered of a higher

religion and race as compared to the Samaritans, [1] even as the Brahmins in

India are held by an artificial standard to be high-caste and spiritually

superior to the lower castes of society.

 

Christ did not see people in terms of their race, creed, or social position. He

saw the Divine in all. It is ego consciousness that prejudicially discriminates

among God's children, creating boundaries of exclusivity. (p.297) Thus the

ordinary human being relates to and identifies with his family first; then his

neighbors, or persons of his own caste or social position, or members of his own

religion; then his race; and finally his nation. There his consciousness

stops--his ego imprisoned in concentric barriers, cribbed in an isolated corner

of its insular world, cut off from the universality that Jesus and the great

ones lived by: " God hath made of one blood all nations. " [2]

 

In India, rigidified caste consciousness has been productive of many evils. [3]

In America and other lands, bigotry based on color and national origin has

created injustice, hatred, and racial conflict. And throughout the world, blind

assertion of the superiority of one religion over all others has perpetuated

misunderstanding, fear, and hostility. The Christian missionary calls the Hindus

heathen; with equal disdain the Brahmin priests of India permit no Westerners to

defile with their presence the holy temples of Hinduism--though all love the

same one God.

 

So long as any form of arrogant, intolerant consciousness will remain, war and

great miseries will continue to visit the earth. The most powerful ammunition

for the guns of war, and the cause of so many other forms of mass destruction

and suffering, are selfishness and the limiting race consciousness of egoistic

human beings. The Heavenly Father is the progenitor of every race; His children

are duty-bound to love their whole family of nations. Any country that goes

against that principle of love for humankind will not long prosper, for lack of

international harmony and mutual cooperation puts a nation in conflict not only

with its neighbors but with Divine Law, the Organizing Principle of the cosmos.

Through evolutionary coaxings of the Christ Intelligence, with Its cosmic

heartbeat of coalescent love, God is trying to bring unity in the universe.

Those who are in tune with this cosmic beneficence, as was Jesus, have love and

understanding that embraces the totality of humanity, setting the standard for

all of God's children to follow.

 

To Jesus no one was a stranger; he loved unconditionally, and gauged individuals

solely by their inner qualifications: their spiritual sincerity and receptivity

to Truth.

 

Thus, despite the woman of Samaria's expectation that Jesus would shun her as a

racial outcast, he asked her to share with him the water she drew from the well,

a gesture of friendliness through which she could become acquainted with him.

Having perceived that as a fallen disciple of past lives she had the potential

to be resurrected spiritually, Jesus had created this opportunity, during the

absence of his other disciples, so that without disturbance he could give to her

the everlasting elixir of divine awakening. When he said, " If thou knewest the

gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, " Jesus was hinting to the woman

that God had blessed her in previous incarnations with the greatest of all

gifts, a divine savior (guru) who had followed her to this life to redeem her.

Jesus sought to stir her dormant memory of the past; thus he intimated that if

she but knew that it was her God-given guru who was asking for the drink, she

would hasten to ask him for the living water of God's contact, without which no

human being can quench his spiritual thirst. [4]

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 17, pg. 293; 295-298

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] Sychar (or Shechem), where Jesus' encounter with the woman of Samaria took

place, was located about twenty-five miles north of Jerusalem, at the foot of

Mt. Gerizim. Samaria, the district between Judea and Galilee, was home to a

people of mixed ancestry. Centuries earlier, when Palestine was conquered by the

Assyrians, the Jewish population of that area intermarried with foreigners who

were sent to colonize the land, and who adopted some of the Jewish religious

beliefs. The Samaritans were the descendants of this cultural medley. Being of

mixed race, they were viewed with contempt by most full-blooded Jews.

 

[2] Acts 17:26.

 

[3] Caste demarcations developed in India in a higher age of Vedic wisdom as a

natural form of social organization that honored and gave place to each

individual according to qualifications and the capacity to serve society as a

whole. Those whose innate qualities made them fit to be spiritual teachers or

clergy were called Brahmins; others, whose nature suited the duties of soldiers

and rulers, were called Kshatriyas; those inclined to business were known as

Vaishyas; and persons whose chief contribution to society lay in manual labor

belonged to the fourth caste, that of Sudras. As the spiritual understanding of

humanity declined, caste divisions began to be based not on individual merit but

on heredity. Thus evolved the manifold injustices and evil divisiveness that

Mahatma Gandhi and other saints of India down the centuries worked tirelessly to

abolish. ['See God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita', commentary on 11:31. -

'Publisher's Note']

 

[4] " O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, and

they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have

forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters " (Jeremiah 17:13). See also

Discourse 50, " out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. "