The Kingdom of God – Part Two

Five centuries after the “Light of Asia” had spread his message of compassion and freedom to all those tormented by suffering, a son was born to a young couple in Judaea.

The boy’s name was Jesus, and he was raised in Nazareth near the Sea of Galilee, where his father was a carpenter. Little is known of his early childhood, but the boy expressed a strong interest in the religious beliefs of his people.

At the age of twelve, when his parents went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the annual feast of the Passover, he was found in the temple, listening to learned scholars and asking them questions. He showed a precocious grasp of spiritual matters that amazed his elders.

“And all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.”  (Luke 2:47)

Nothing further is recorded in the Bible of his progress until about the age of thirty, when he travelled from Galilee to the river Jordan, to be baptised by a desert prophet by the name of John.

When Jesus had been baptised by John, he retreated into the wilderness, where he fasted for a period of forty days and nights. During this time he was assailed by the same inner conflict which had challenged Gautama in his meditative repose beneath the Bodhi tree.

Gautama had been tormented by Mara, the Tempter, who had offered him the prize of worldly gratification and power, if he rejected the call of Brahma Sahampati, to sacrifice his identity in the universal source of all being. Likewise, Jesus was tempted by Satan, who offered him undreamed of wealth and worldly power.

In rejecting this glorification of the personal self, Jesus emerged from the wilderness as a being transformed, radiant with transcendent understanding. He was no longer Jesus the man, but the “Christ”, the “Anointed One”.

He was no longer a man born in time and limited to a particular face and form. He was the Absolute itself – eternally present, beyond space and time. As Jesus later announced to those Jews who ridiculed him because he claimed that Abraham had rejoiced to see his day:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.”  (John 8:58)

Like the Buddha before him, the Christ preached a message of joy and freedom to all who would listen. His message was the gospel, or good news, that men and women could overcome the bondage of pain, suffering and death, and live a life of eternal freedom. As his disciple John later recorded of his mission:

“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”  (John 10:10)

Speaking on the Mount of Olives, Jesus told the throng that had assembled around him:

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  (John 8: 32)

Jesus ministered to a very different society than had the Buddha. There was no long tradition of subtle philosophic thought in Israel at that time, as there had been in Asia.

The Jews were a hardy people, dominated by the rigorous demands of life in subjection to a foreign power. For this reason, Jesus conveyed his gospel by means of parables, simple stories which could easily be understood by untutored people.

For Transcendental Reality, Jesus chose the metaphor of the Kingdom of God. In its immanent aspect, as the unmanifest source of all, which the Rishis had called Brahman, Jesus used the symbol of the Father.

In its manifested aspect, resident in the heart of all creation as the “I am” principle, which the Rishis had called Atman, Jesus adopted the symbol of the Son. These twin, or complementary, aspects of God were fused together in Jesus into one indivisible whole.

In Jesus, the Father and the Son were united in a mystic “at-one-ment.”  As he was to announce to those who came to hear him preach: “I and my Father are one.”  (John 10: 30)  There could no longer be any possibility of the Son acting independently of the Father. For, as he challenged those who doubted:

“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?  The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”  (John 14: 10)

In uniting his former individuality with the Absolute Reality, Jesus had not only conquered all forms of material limitation, but physical death as well. Having attained the Kingdom of God himself, he was the living proof that it could be achieved by others.

But this Kingdom of God was not some remote state which lay beyond the portals of death. It was the Atman, or “I am” principle, which existed in the heart of every person.

So when the Pharisees wanted to know where the Kingdom of God that he spoke about was located, Jesus replied that this was not something that could be seen or experienced outwardly, but was rather something that existed inside every person.

“And when the Pharisees had demanded of Him when the Kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, ‘The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show’. Neither shall they say, ‘Lo, it is here!’ or ‘Lo, it is there!’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”  (Luke 17: 20,21)

Anyone was free to achieve this union of the individuality with the Absolute. However, there was one condition that was essential to its attainment. The person had to be “born again”. For as Jesus explained to Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin:

“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God“. (John 3: 3)

Each person had to conquer their individual ego and renounce desire. For those who would follow Jesus and attain the Kingdom of God, it was necessary to follow the path that Jesus himself had taken.

Those who chose to direct their lives according to the desires of their own hearts would be doomed to die. In order to reach the Universal State, one had to be willing to surrender one’s own individual desires, and submit to the will of the Father. As St. Matthew recorded:

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.”  (Matthew 16: 24-25)

Yet in spite of the fact that it was necessary to sacrifice one’s personality upon that cross before one could attain the Kingdom of God, this was to Jesus a goal that was to be prized above all other things in life.

He likened it to a treasure hidden in a field, “which, when a man hath found, he hideth; and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field.”  (Matthew 13 : 44)

Or again, it was like “a pearl of great price” that was worth selling everything in order to possess it. The nature of this Transcendent Reality, the Kingdom of God, was resplendent beyond all imagining. It was “that peace which passeth all understanding.”

The force of the words spoken by the Rishis of old, by Lao Tzu, Gautama the Buddha and Jesus the Christ, is undiminished, notwithstanding the long centuries that have unrolled since they trod the earth.

Yet our understanding of their simple message has been clouded by a host of conflicting translations, and a multitude of different interpretations of their words. The result has been that followers of these faiths have been split into numerous different sects and factions, with each one emphasizing some particular aspect of their teachings, and with each believing that they alone have captured the true essence of the message.

There is one sad footnote to the gospel of Jesus. Despite the passage of almost two thousand years, there is no record in the history of Christianity of a single person achieving this Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about, while still retaining human flesh. In other words, Christianity has so far failed to produce another Christ.

Yet within the history of the religions of the East, this has happened many thousands of times. In India, such has been the vitality of the religious culture of the nation, and such the passion with which Indians have continued to seek these lofty goals, that new Rishis have been crowned in every generation. And each new enlightened being has served to validate and interpret anew the ancient wisdom of the Vedas.

Every succeeding Sage has been both a witness to the divine nature of man, and an example of the mystical union that can be won, regardless of the prevailing circumstances of the times. And as social conditions have changed, so has the guidance which these new Sages have dispensed to their own generation of seekers.

Enlightened masters have walked the soil of India in the twentieth century along each of the paths laid down by the early Rishis. And while there have been some liberated Sages who have avoided publicity and remained obscure, there have been others who have lived their lives in the full glare of worldly fame.

They have attracted vast legions of followers from every part of the earth, as we shall see in the following instalment.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 27th, 2014 at 1:04 pm and is filed under The Kingdom of God. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.