Hello all!
Haven't been here in a few months. I hope everyone is well.
For those who are interested, I would like to make a contribution to the subject in question, that of Jesus Christ, by way of some links to material I feel is relevant to the subject and may be useful to some here in that regard, along with some introductory remarks.
The below links are excerpts from
"Essays on the Gita" by Sri Aurobindo.
As I often preface when recommending Sri Aurobindo, he is not an easy read for most, but at the same time his writings can be well worth the required effort for the depth and clarity of knowledge that is available. In his discussion on each chapter, Sri Aurobindo explains both the surface meanings, and the deeper import of the original passages in a way that can be useful not only as commentary, but in its own right as instruction/illumination for the contemporary seeker. Also, aspirants who have not read the Gita should not be discouraged from investigating this material by Sri Aurobindo, as it may even serve as a cogent and authoritative introduction to a text that many Westerners (and Christ followers) sometimes avoid as being too exotic or even irrelevant to their seeking. However, as the below may ultimately demonstrate, there may be much more available than mere surface appearance suggests.
For those not familiar with the Gita (or Bhagavad Gita - Celestial Song), it is widely considered one of the greatest works of world spiritual literature. It is an instruction containing the colloquy between Godhead as personified by Krishna, and the world disciple or aspiring Humanity as personified by Arjuna. Basically, each chapter is a progressively built teaching as to the nature of reality, the intrinsic problems without, and different solutions within. (note to AK members: in some places there are occasional instructions on the process of death/dying). The Gita itself is contained within and a very small part of the much larger Mahabharata epic, but that is literally (npi) another story entirely....
Getting to the original intent in providing the links are the specific chapters below dealing with the appearance of an Avatar or "Incarnation" on Earth - - the what, why, how, when, etc., which Krishna reveals to Arjuna in the Gita.
Although the Gita is ostensibly about the specific appearance of Krishna as He was the Avatar of the era in which the Gita takes place, so too the Christ was a manifestation of the same phenomenon in a later time, also embodying the universal Truth, and indeed Sri Aurobindo mentions the Christ/Christianity illustratively in his commentary at least two dozen times in the 3 chapters linked below regarding such divine manifestations. The commentary therefore has the potential to provide a deeper understanding of the concepts, meanings, significance, the Reality of Jesus Christ as an Avatar
in this exposition that, to the open minded reader may be quite unique, inspiring, and expanding on currently held beliefs, Christian or not. I can honestly say that this has been abundantly true in my case. Included in these essays are also found discussions on various common conceptions, misconceptions and refutations of the premise and reality of avatarhood, since as is characteristic with Aurobindo's writings, he is is generously thorough in managing to quite often interpose "the reader's" own questions and views as a basis for explanation and comment.
Of course, beyond these few chapters which here are out of the contextual flow of both the "Gita" itself, and "Essays On...", I would also recommend the entire texts of both/either as very possibly enlightening and rewarding, certainly moreso together, but the material referenced below will give a good introduction nevertheless.
If anyone would be interested in pursuing this further and wants a recommendation on (imo) a good version of the Bhagavad Gita - beware, there are many, many bad versions, some quite atrociously and unintelligently translated and therefore a waste of time for the contemporary Western seeker - I have posted my recommendation here:
http://afterlife-knowledge.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1234119926/0#0 in the "Religions" forum as a good-will gesture vs here in this thread, as I feel that even this post alone, relevant as it is, perhaps is pushing the limits of some members' tolerance in a thread that is
supposed to be all about Jesus.
Such being the case for those most comfortably ensconced the "Judeo-Christian Ghetto" (as one Padre PazzoFurioso2 might put it), references to such "heretical texts" may be considered inflammatory.
Be that as it may.....
...as always, I hope this may be enlightening and helpful.
- u
Selected excerpts followed by the links.
excerpt from Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Chapter 15, The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
Quote:For to the modern mind Avatarhood is one of the most difficult to accept or to understand of all the ideas that are streaming in from the East upon the rationalised human consciousness. It is apt to take it at the best for a mere figure for some high manifestation of human power, character, genius, great work done for the world or in the world, and at the worst to regard it as a superstition, – to the heathen a foolishness and to the Greeks a stumbling-block. The materialist, necessarily, cannot even look at it, since he does not believe in God; to the rationalist or the Deist it is a folly and a thing of derision; to the thoroughgoing dualist who sees an unbridgeable gulf between the human and the divine nature, it sounds like a blasphemy. The rationalist objects that if God exists, he is extracosmic or supracosmic and does not intervene in the affairs of the world, but allows them to be governed by a fixed machinery of law, – he is, in fact, a sort of far-off constitutional monarch or spiritual King Log, at the best an indifferent inactive Spirit behind the activity of Nature, like some generalised or abstract witness Purusha of the Sankhyas; he is pure Spirit and cannot put on a body, infinite and cannot be finite as the human being is finite, the ever unborn creator and cannot be the creature born into the world, – these things are impossible even to his absolute omnipotence. To these objections the thoroughgoing dualist would add that God is in his person, his role and his nature different and separate from man; the perfect cannot put on human imperfection; the unborn personal God cannot be born as a human personality; the Ruler of the worlds cannot be limited in a nature-bound human action and in a perishable human body. These objections, so formidable at first sight to the reason, seem to have been present to the mind of the Teacher in the Gita when he says that although the Divine is unborn, imperishable in his self-existence, the Lord of all beings, yet he assumes birth by a supreme resort to the action of his Nature and by force of his self-Maya; that he whom the deluded despise because lodged in a human body, is verily in his supreme being the Lord of all; that he is in the action of the divine consciousness the creator of the fourfold Law and the doer of the works of the world and at the same time in the silence of the divine consciousness the impartial witness of the works of his own Nature, – for he is always, beyond both the silence and the action, the supreme Purushottama. And the Gita is able to meet all these oppositions and to reconcile all these contraries because...
excerpt from Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, chapter 16, The Process of Avatarhood
Quote:...that the Lord of all existence thus takes upon himself the human birth.
This doctrine is a hard saying, a difficult thing for the human reason to accept; and for an obvious reason, because of the evident humanity of the Avatar. The Avatar is always a dual phenomenon of divinity and humanity; the Divine takes upon himself the human nature with all its outward limitations and makes them the circumstances, means, instruments of the divine consciousness and the divine power, a vessel of the divine birth and the divine works. But so surely it must be, since otherwise the object of the Avatar's descent is not fulfilled; for that object is precisely to show that the human birth with all its limitations can be made such a means and instrument of the divine birth and divine works, precisely to show that the human type of consciousness can be compatible with the divine essence of consciousness made manifest, can be converted into its vessel, drawn into nearer conformity with it by a change of its mould and a heightening of its powers of light and love and strength and purity; and to show also how it can be done. If the Avatar were to act in an entirely supernormal fashion, this object would not be fulfilled. A merely supernormal or miraculous Avatar would be a meaningless absurdity; not that there need be an entire absence of the use of supernormal powers such as Christ's so-called miracles of healing, for the use of supernormal powers is quite a possibility of human nature; but there need not be that at all, nor in any case is it the root of the matter, nor would it at all do if the life were nothing else but a display of supernormal fireworks. The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical suffering he must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, – as did Christ, – secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, – as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, “If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross,” or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, – as a dog dieth, – knows not what he is saying: for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.
The question then arises, and it is the sole real difficulty, for here the intellect falters and stumbles over its own limits, how is this human mind and body assumed? ....
The following links are the full chapters from which the above excerpts originate in "Essays on the Gita", by Sri Aurobindo
Chapter 15, The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood
http://sriaurobindoashram.info/Content.aspx?ContentURL=_staticcontent%5csriaurob...Chapter 16, The Process of Avatarhood
http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org.in/Content.aspx?ContentURL=/_staticcontent/sri...Chapter 17, The Divine Birth and Divine Works
http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org.in/Content.aspx?ContentURL=/_staticcontent/sri...
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