Mary the Mother
Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Mathew–4—by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Mathew–4—by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
The Virgin Mary
Now we pass from Saint Joseph to the Virgin Mother, Mary, “out from Whom was born Jesus, He Who is called Christ.”
Mary is the manifestation of the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit, the evolving power. This power does not come from us, ever; it comes only from God. It is not something we can rouse in ourselves, although we have capacities latent within us that must be awakened and developed. Through meditation we will be able to awaken that which lies within–the true kingdom of God. “For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”1 And meditation is the means by which we can answer our own petition: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”2
The Virgin conception and birth
Why was Jesus born only of Mary–not of Joseph and Mary? On the external level, the purpose of the virgin birth was to demonstrate to the low consciousness of the people of Israel the supernatural character of Jesus. Throughout Her life the Virgin was living physical proof that Jesus had been neither conceived nor born in the manner of human beings. That is, She was ever a virgin, as physical examination could reveal.
Krishna, Buddha, and Sri Ramakrishna did not have human fathers, but their mothers had other children before them in the “normal” manner. Since the prevailing consciousness in India was of a much higher level than in Israel, there was no need for their mothers to be virgin as signs of their divinity.
Saint Catherine Emmerich says that when Jesus was in India, the people loved Him and flocked to Him, and there was nothing He could say that they did not fully understand.3 But when He returned to Israel nobody comprehended a word–often not even His disciples–for their consciousness was undeveloped and they had no background. She remarked that Jesus was always moving as an alien in Israel. He was only in His true element in India.
We see how His own Apostles could not even understand the simplest parables or the simplest symbols. Not only that, when He was going to ascend, they asked: “Now will you establish the kingdom of God?” Three years with Jesus, and they did not yet know the nature of the kingdom of God.
The Christ is born of Mary
It is crucial to realize that Christ is born of Mary–the dynamic, living principle of the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit Mother alone that any birth takes place. She has given birth to the universe by manifesting as the universe. Mahashakti is both Jagata Janani and Jagata Palani–She gives birth to the cosmos, and then nourishes, sustains, and guides its growth. It is the Holy Spirit, the Mother Aspect of God, which brings forth the Christ. She is the sole creative principle in relativity and the well-spring of all creativity.
The culture of the various parts of India is incredibly rich and wondrous, yet in Bengal we find the summit in both secular and spiritual life. The greatest musicians, writers, poets, sculptors, painters, scientists, and spiritual leaders of India are Bengalis. Within just the last hundred years Bengal has produced Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghosh, Paramhansa Yogananda, and Anandamayi Ma. Why is this? The worship of the Mother. All of India believes in the feminine forms of God, and worship them, but in Bengal Mother worship is literally a consuming passion. The whole month of October is given over to continual worship of the Mother in Her forms as Durga, Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Kali. Throughout that month, wherever you go the thought of everyone is fixed on the Mother. And since She is the Divine Creative Power, through their continual thought of Her they become creative like Her. (It is interesting that in the Roman Catholic Church October is also devoted to the Virgin–particularly the recitation of Her rosary.)
Mary gave birth to Jesus in the outer world, and the Holy Spirit gives birth to Christ in the inner world of our soul. Through Her our own Christhood is conceived in us, is born, and comes to “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,”4 thereby transforming us into Christs, as well. Before we could ever be held in the arms of our father we first grew within the womb of our mother; and she brought us forth. Then we were sons of our father. But before that we were fully our mother’s.
Without the Mother we cannot know the Father. I remember Dr. Haridas Chowdary, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, telling some students: “Remember, you have to get a passport before you can go to another country. In the same way when you want to go from this country of darkness to the country of light, you also have to get a passport. And Mother is the only one who issues passports in this scheme of things.” Since he was a Bengali, he understood that well.
Wherever we find true mystics and the flowering of spiritual consciousness, there we will find the worship of the Mother.
The Lord Jesus Himself told Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”5 To truly be spirit, we must be born of the Spirit, the Mother. So like Saint Joseph we must prepare the house of our body and mind so the Mother will live there and in time bring forth “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”6 All of this is accomplished through meditation which itself is accomplished through the Holy Spirit.
The Virgin soul
There is a further symbolism to the virgin birth of Jesus from Mary. Christ is conceived and born only in the virgin soul. Like Saint Joseph we must guard that virginity. It is written in one of the ancient esoteric Christian books that the soul came into the earth plane and immediately went around committing fornication with everyone it met. That is, the soul entered into union with external objects and became absorbed in external consciousness to such a degree that it lost all awareness of itself and God. Even worse, it identified with those things and took on their characteristics of materiality, change, decay, and death. And in ignorant religion it is taught that those are the inherent qualities of the soul rather than the truth that they are mere shadows, only delusions, and that we can awaken from their spell and know ourselves as part of the perfect life of God. For this reason Jesus said: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”7 His resurrection prefigured our resurrection into God.
We need to ponder on this some more. Our consciousness is like a mirror; whatever is set it front of it seems to be “in” it. If a painting is set in front of a mirror it will look like a painting. If it is set in front of a window, it will appear to be a window itself. But it is never anything but a mirror, only reflecting what is presented to it. This tells us two very important truths. First, that no matter what actions we may commit or thoughts we may think, they are never “us” and never really change our fundamental nature as sons of God. We may commit sins, but we never become “sinners.” Yet we identify with our sins and say we are sinners and make excuse for our spiritual strayings by saying: “I am…”and filling in the blank with whatever kind of action or attitude dominates us. But that is an illusion, an illusion rather like a gear that, when engaged, moves us in a certain way. If we simply disengage ourselves from it the movement will stop. So we need not be discouraged and think that we are bad people who need reforming. Rather, we simply need disengagement! We need to turn our mirror-mind away from those things and stop our identification with them. And since this identification is rooted in our subconscious, positive or religious thinking will accomplish nothing. Rather, meditation must be practiced to release the inner consciousness and enable it to become objective and see that it is none of the outer reflections which have enthralled it for lifetimes.
Another important truth is that we can identify with our true self, and with God the Self of our self, by fixing our awareness on God. That it is our inherent nature to do so. Fixing the awareness is not mere intellectual juggling of “good thoughts.” Rather, it is the complete polarization of our consciousness toward God. And that is done through meditation–the invocation of Divine Consciousness. Real meditation is an entering into the true state of things, not a creation or manipulation. For that reason Buddha spoke of Right Meditation, for most meditation is as delusive as our present state of mind. Meditation is not becoming something, but the cessation of all “becoming” and a return into what we truly are. This is because nothing really touches or changes us. On the movie screen we can see a hundred people killed, but we do not die. We may see a hundred people drowned, but we do not even get wet. That is why the Virgin Mary said to Gabriel: “I know not a man.”8 Our consciousness is always virgin, and it is only in the depths of our consciousness that Christ is born.
We also need to keep our minds virgin by not letting them be caught by the things of the world, even those that seem harmless. We have to live in this world and must know about what goes on here. But we must not get drawn into it. There is nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves, but behind it all we must know that in God alone is there real fulfillment. How will we manage this? Through meditation.
We leave a mark on whatever we touch, which is why a dog can track us by smell. Conversely, whatever we touch leaves a mark on us. We must learn to prevent that. Saint James, the spiritual head of the first Christian community, tells us that pure religion is to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.”9 If the world touches us we will be spotted, just as anyone with fingers covered with soot will blacken us by the slightest touch. We may be touched and then back away, but we will have been sooted. Our inner Joseph must therefore make sure that its espoused wife is truly an untouched virgin, otherwise it will not bring forth the son of God consciousness in us.
The non-dual Christ
The Lord Jesus’ virgin birth from a single physical parent was to symbolize the principle that Christ Consciousness can arise only in the state of non-duality, that the Christ can be conceived in us only when we experience the One. As long as we remain in the realm of “God is one and I am another” along with the delusion that we are completely different and separate from God, just so long will Christhood elude us. But when through correct meditation we enter into the unity of our own essential being we will perceive our eternal unity with God. And in that state of true oneness we shall hear the divine words: “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”10
Further, we can understand from the virgin birth that Christhood proceeds from the One alone; and to seek another source is futile. Only from Spirit does the consciousness of spirit come. So we must look to God alone for the fulfillment of our destiny as sons of God. No external material situation, person, object, or place can give rise to the Christ in us. Nor can any act of body, thought, or will produce the Christ. “And that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”11 The ways of true religion, especially meditation, are necessary to enter into the non-dual state, but from then on God takes over and does everything. As Saint Paul says, “we are labourers together with God;” yet at the same time we “are God’s husbandry, God’s building.”12
The inner Christ
The turning from duality is the turning toward the Christ within. For another lesson from the virgin birth is the understanding that the conception and birth of Christ are exclusively interior matters. We must become what one Western writer called “interior souls”–that is, our consciousness must ever be polarized within. And this is accomplished only through meditation. Just by being introverted we can become psychological, but only through meditation can we become spiritual. For it is not thought but non-thought that touches the hem of Christ’s garment and heals us.13
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”14
Mary gives birth to Jesus Who is the Savior
Jesus was born of Mary, Saint Matthew tells us. In Aramaic His Name was Yeshua, the equivalent of the Hebrew Yahoshua (Joshua) which means “the Lord shall save.” This is the nature of Christ: Savior. Of Mary (the Holy Spirit) is born That which will save us. The angel told the watching shepherds: “Unto you is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”15
Christ does not come to comfort us, to make us feel happy, to make us feel loved, and such stuff which are totally egocentric low emotional states. Christ comes to save us in the sense of deliverance. He delivers us from sin and ignorance. Especially He delivers us from the root of sin and ignorance: the ego, the anti-Christ. Moreover, deliverance has the connotation of change. Christ the Savior does not make us feel good or tell us how good we are. He makes us good.
“I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”16 Re-creation is the key word here. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [creation]: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”17
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”18 Our saving Mother, the Holy Spirit, produces in us the Savior Who changes us and sets us free. And He does this from within, from the depths of our being, through meditation in which all the levels of our being, our “bodies,” are merged with His consciousness, His “blood.” “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you,Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.”19 This wonderful truth cannot be intellectually comprehended, but it can be experienced and made ours.
Now we pass from Saint Joseph to the Virgin Mother, Mary, “out from Whom was born Jesus, He Who is called Christ.”
Mary is the manifestation of the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit, the evolving power. This power does not come from us, ever; it comes only from God. It is not something we can rouse in ourselves, although we have capacities latent within us that must be awakened and developed. Through meditation we will be able to awaken that which lies within–the true kingdom of God. “For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”1 And meditation is the means by which we can answer our own petition: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”2
The Virgin conception and birth
Why was Jesus born only of Mary–not of Joseph and Mary? On the external level, the purpose of the virgin birth was to demonstrate to the low consciousness of the people of Israel the supernatural character of Jesus. Throughout Her life the Virgin was living physical proof that Jesus had been neither conceived nor born in the manner of human beings. That is, She was ever a virgin, as physical examination could reveal.
Krishna, Buddha, and Sri Ramakrishna did not have human fathers, but their mothers had other children before them in the “normal” manner. Since the prevailing consciousness in India was of a much higher level than in Israel, there was no need for their mothers to be virgin as signs of their divinity.
Saint Catherine Emmerich says that when Jesus was in India, the people loved Him and flocked to Him, and there was nothing He could say that they did not fully understand.3 But when He returned to Israel nobody comprehended a word–often not even His disciples–for their consciousness was undeveloped and they had no background. She remarked that Jesus was always moving as an alien in Israel. He was only in His true element in India.
We see how His own Apostles could not even understand the simplest parables or the simplest symbols. Not only that, when He was going to ascend, they asked: “Now will you establish the kingdom of God?” Three years with Jesus, and they did not yet know the nature of the kingdom of God.
The Christ is born of Mary
It is crucial to realize that Christ is born of Mary–the dynamic, living principle of the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit Mother alone that any birth takes place. She has given birth to the universe by manifesting as the universe. Mahashakti is both Jagata Janani and Jagata Palani–She gives birth to the cosmos, and then nourishes, sustains, and guides its growth. It is the Holy Spirit, the Mother Aspect of God, which brings forth the Christ. She is the sole creative principle in relativity and the well-spring of all creativity.
The culture of the various parts of India is incredibly rich and wondrous, yet in Bengal we find the summit in both secular and spiritual life. The greatest musicians, writers, poets, sculptors, painters, scientists, and spiritual leaders of India are Bengalis. Within just the last hundred years Bengal has produced Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Aurobindo Ghosh, Paramhansa Yogananda, and Anandamayi Ma. Why is this? The worship of the Mother. All of India believes in the feminine forms of God, and worship them, but in Bengal Mother worship is literally a consuming passion. The whole month of October is given over to continual worship of the Mother in Her forms as Durga, Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Kali. Throughout that month, wherever you go the thought of everyone is fixed on the Mother. And since She is the Divine Creative Power, through their continual thought of Her they become creative like Her. (It is interesting that in the Roman Catholic Church October is also devoted to the Virgin–particularly the recitation of Her rosary.)
Mary gave birth to Jesus in the outer world, and the Holy Spirit gives birth to Christ in the inner world of our soul. Through Her our own Christhood is conceived in us, is born, and comes to “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,”4 thereby transforming us into Christs, as well. Before we could ever be held in the arms of our father we first grew within the womb of our mother; and she brought us forth. Then we were sons of our father. But before that we were fully our mother’s.
Without the Mother we cannot know the Father. I remember Dr. Haridas Chowdary, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, telling some students: “Remember, you have to get a passport before you can go to another country. In the same way when you want to go from this country of darkness to the country of light, you also have to get a passport. And Mother is the only one who issues passports in this scheme of things.” Since he was a Bengali, he understood that well.
Wherever we find true mystics and the flowering of spiritual consciousness, there we will find the worship of the Mother.
The Lord Jesus Himself told Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”5 To truly be spirit, we must be born of the Spirit, the Mother. So like Saint Joseph we must prepare the house of our body and mind so the Mother will live there and in time bring forth “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”6 All of this is accomplished through meditation which itself is accomplished through the Holy Spirit.
The Virgin soul
There is a further symbolism to the virgin birth of Jesus from Mary. Christ is conceived and born only in the virgin soul. Like Saint Joseph we must guard that virginity. It is written in one of the ancient esoteric Christian books that the soul came into the earth plane and immediately went around committing fornication with everyone it met. That is, the soul entered into union with external objects and became absorbed in external consciousness to such a degree that it lost all awareness of itself and God. Even worse, it identified with those things and took on their characteristics of materiality, change, decay, and death. And in ignorant religion it is taught that those are the inherent qualities of the soul rather than the truth that they are mere shadows, only delusions, and that we can awaken from their spell and know ourselves as part of the perfect life of God. For this reason Jesus said: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”7 His resurrection prefigured our resurrection into God.
We need to ponder on this some more. Our consciousness is like a mirror; whatever is set it front of it seems to be “in” it. If a painting is set in front of a mirror it will look like a painting. If it is set in front of a window, it will appear to be a window itself. But it is never anything but a mirror, only reflecting what is presented to it. This tells us two very important truths. First, that no matter what actions we may commit or thoughts we may think, they are never “us” and never really change our fundamental nature as sons of God. We may commit sins, but we never become “sinners.” Yet we identify with our sins and say we are sinners and make excuse for our spiritual strayings by saying: “I am…”and filling in the blank with whatever kind of action or attitude dominates us. But that is an illusion, an illusion rather like a gear that, when engaged, moves us in a certain way. If we simply disengage ourselves from it the movement will stop. So we need not be discouraged and think that we are bad people who need reforming. Rather, we simply need disengagement! We need to turn our mirror-mind away from those things and stop our identification with them. And since this identification is rooted in our subconscious, positive or religious thinking will accomplish nothing. Rather, meditation must be practiced to release the inner consciousness and enable it to become objective and see that it is none of the outer reflections which have enthralled it for lifetimes.
Another important truth is that we can identify with our true self, and with God the Self of our self, by fixing our awareness on God. That it is our inherent nature to do so. Fixing the awareness is not mere intellectual juggling of “good thoughts.” Rather, it is the complete polarization of our consciousness toward God. And that is done through meditation–the invocation of Divine Consciousness. Real meditation is an entering into the true state of things, not a creation or manipulation. For that reason Buddha spoke of Right Meditation, for most meditation is as delusive as our present state of mind. Meditation is not becoming something, but the cessation of all “becoming” and a return into what we truly are. This is because nothing really touches or changes us. On the movie screen we can see a hundred people killed, but we do not die. We may see a hundred people drowned, but we do not even get wet. That is why the Virgin Mary said to Gabriel: “I know not a man.”8 Our consciousness is always virgin, and it is only in the depths of our consciousness that Christ is born.
We also need to keep our minds virgin by not letting them be caught by the things of the world, even those that seem harmless. We have to live in this world and must know about what goes on here. But we must not get drawn into it. There is nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves, but behind it all we must know that in God alone is there real fulfillment. How will we manage this? Through meditation.
We leave a mark on whatever we touch, which is why a dog can track us by smell. Conversely, whatever we touch leaves a mark on us. We must learn to prevent that. Saint James, the spiritual head of the first Christian community, tells us that pure religion is to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.”9 If the world touches us we will be spotted, just as anyone with fingers covered with soot will blacken us by the slightest touch. We may be touched and then back away, but we will have been sooted. Our inner Joseph must therefore make sure that its espoused wife is truly an untouched virgin, otherwise it will not bring forth the son of God consciousness in us.
The non-dual Christ
The Lord Jesus’ virgin birth from a single physical parent was to symbolize the principle that Christ Consciousness can arise only in the state of non-duality, that the Christ can be conceived in us only when we experience the One. As long as we remain in the realm of “God is one and I am another” along with the delusion that we are completely different and separate from God, just so long will Christhood elude us. But when through correct meditation we enter into the unity of our own essential being we will perceive our eternal unity with God. And in that state of true oneness we shall hear the divine words: “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”10
Further, we can understand from the virgin birth that Christhood proceeds from the One alone; and to seek another source is futile. Only from Spirit does the consciousness of spirit come. So we must look to God alone for the fulfillment of our destiny as sons of God. No external material situation, person, object, or place can give rise to the Christ in us. Nor can any act of body, thought, or will produce the Christ. “And that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”11 The ways of true religion, especially meditation, are necessary to enter into the non-dual state, but from then on God takes over and does everything. As Saint Paul says, “we are labourers together with God;” yet at the same time we “are God’s husbandry, God’s building.”12
The inner Christ
The turning from duality is the turning toward the Christ within. For another lesson from the virgin birth is the understanding that the conception and birth of Christ are exclusively interior matters. We must become what one Western writer called “interior souls”–that is, our consciousness must ever be polarized within. And this is accomplished only through meditation. Just by being introverted we can become psychological, but only through meditation can we become spiritual. For it is not thought but non-thought that touches the hem of Christ’s garment and heals us.13
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”14
Mary gives birth to Jesus Who is the Savior
Jesus was born of Mary, Saint Matthew tells us. In Aramaic His Name was Yeshua, the equivalent of the Hebrew Yahoshua (Joshua) which means “the Lord shall save.” This is the nature of Christ: Savior. Of Mary (the Holy Spirit) is born That which will save us. The angel told the watching shepherds: “Unto you is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”15
Christ does not come to comfort us, to make us feel happy, to make us feel loved, and such stuff which are totally egocentric low emotional states. Christ comes to save us in the sense of deliverance. He delivers us from sin and ignorance. Especially He delivers us from the root of sin and ignorance: the ego, the anti-Christ. Moreover, deliverance has the connotation of change. Christ the Savior does not make us feel good or tell us how good we are. He makes us good.
“I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”16 Re-creation is the key word here. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature [creation]: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”17
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”18 Our saving Mother, the Holy Spirit, produces in us the Savior Who changes us and sets us free. And He does this from within, from the depths of our being, through meditation in which all the levels of our being, our “bodies,” are merged with His consciousness, His “blood.” “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you,Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.”19 This wonderful truth cannot be intellectually comprehended, but it can be experienced and made ours.
1) Luke 17:21
2) Matthew 6:10
3) Tapovan Maharaj, a spiritual Master of twentieth century India wrote that in his wanderings in the Himalayas he observed that thousands of completely illiterate Hindus, men and women, could discourse intelligently and insightfully on the profoundest and subtlest points of Vedantic philosophy, employing the Sanskrit terms correctly and citing relevant Sanskrit texts which they knew by memory. I, too, found this to be the case among all classes in India. Some of the most exalted ideas were spoken to me by simple people in both city and countryside. This is the real glory of India: the pervasive consciousness of God and Truth.
4) Ephesians 4:13
5) John 3:5,6
6) Colossians 1:27
7) John 10:10
8) Luke 1:34
9) James 1:27
10) Psalms 2:7; Acts 13:33; Hebrews 1:5, 5:5
11) Ephesians 2:8
12) I Corinthians 3:9
13) “When the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased; and besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.” (Matthew 14:35,36)
14) Matthew 6:6
15) Luke 2:11
16) Revelation 21:317
17) II Corinthians 5:17 [Go back]
18) John 8:36 [Go back]
19) John 6:53,54,56,57 [Go back]
Copyright Atma Jyoti Ashram ©2004
1 comment:
Thanks for the post Alan. I'm finishing a two volume set by Paramhansa Yogananda called the"
"Second Coming of Christ".
It is a very extensive interpretation
of the King James version of the HB.
It's a very satisfying read that eases the conflict within me, between what I grew up with and what I've come to know.
My Presbyterian friend/pastor, and nearly all established Christian leaders, still cling to the separation. Separation of God and what came from God.
There is a lot here to contemplate. The inclination of us all to anthropomorphism, is difficult to alter, but to me, it is key to understanding.
What you and I call God is so much more than a Grandfather image of a King. Christians and other organizations similar, would do well to contemplate the nature of God, rather than fighting about who He favors. When fighting stops. Thought can begin.
Peace my brother.
Bake
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