Message of the Gospels

by Bhadra Sena

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire […]

Revelations 3:18

The Holy Bible occupies a unique place among the scriptures of the world. It contains gems of Spiritual Truths veiled and encrusted though they might have become by lapse of time and linguistic changes. One has, therefore, to decipher the correct import of what Christ meant when He gave His message about a couple of thousand years ago.

Great religious teachers come with a direct commission from above and speak like one having authority. Their purpose is to raise humanity in the scales of higher values in life. Their appeal is not sectarian but universal to all mankind. They address the multitudes and the masses as they come in their way. They take man as man apart from all kinds of distinctive labels – formal and traditional, territorial and sectional, tribal and racial, national and international. They try to draw man out of the level of the senses – senses roaming into the fields of sense-enjoyments in the world without and in all that is worldly.

Christ began His teachings among the galileens, most of whom were money-changers, tax-gatherers, pharisees and scribes, who worshipped diverse gods of unknown origin coming down to them from their forefathers. They were hard of heart and given over to all sorts of weaknesses to which an average man gets addicted.

Christ came down to carry out His commission and He declared :

I do nothing of myself; but as my Father has taught me, I speak these things.

St John 8:28

His philosophy may be summed up in three simple words – Love, Light and Life – which significantly signify three aspects of Godhood. God is loving and living Light running through eternity from the beginning of time. He is enlivening His creation with His Love and Light. There is no wonder then that Jesus, permeated as He was with the ever-existing Christ-Power, declared that He was the Light of the world (St John 8:12), and as He saw the self-same Light in others as in Himself, addressed them in much the same strain – Ye are the Light of the world (St Matthew 5:14). He promised everyone the Light of Life in the bewildering darkness prevailing on the sensual plane, and assured:

He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the Light of Life.

Christ never intended to found any new religion nor He ever professed to do so nor at any stage He claimed prophet-hood for Himself.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

St Matthew 5:17

Such were the sweet, simple and unsophisticated words in which He expressed His mission.

What was the law to fulfil which He had come? It was no other than that of His Father’s – the Law of God, already existing from time immemorial. It is wrought in the very pattern of all that exists and in which we live, move and have our very being though, conditioned as we are, we may not be conscious of the same. He came to wake up mankind to the reality of God’s Law which, in the vortex of the world, often gets lost, time and again. As we get more and more existentialists, we grow more and more insensitive, nay impervious, to the healthier and holier influences of the God-Power in us. The more we drift away from the centre of our being towards the circumference of our existence, the more we get far removed from the Self in us and from the Law of God. The result, more often than not, is that like seaweeds we begin to float on the surface of the sea with no roots stretching inwards. This being the case, we are unwittingly carried away by the tides of time for lack of moorings to steady our frail barque in tumult of life. Yet in this hopeless and helpless state, the merciful and loving Father though long suffering to usward cannot for long remain a silent spectator. His inherent compassion moves him to the prime need of the hour to save His floundering children. As man is to be the teacher of man, He puts on the vile attire of flesh so as to be like us and comes as His own Messiah with His message of hope, redemption and restitution of such as are prepared to listen to and act up to His advice.

When the Lord came in the likeness of Master Jesus, He held out hope to everybody, even to the most reprobate and the worst of sinners – hope for the Kingdom of God. It was the common heritage of all and not a preserved sanctuary for people professing faith in one or the other religious creeds or social orders. He prepared the people for this glorious state of the mind – the mind transformed by renewing – and invited them to take a befitting and honourable place in one of the many mansions in the house of His Father (St John 14:2).

The redemption of mankind, Jesus declared, was the purpose and plan of God. What in man had to be redeemed? The human spirit or soul. And from whom? The mind – the carnal mind born of the corruptible seed.

And why,

For to be carnally minded was death, but to be spiritually minded was life and peace.

Romans 8:6

Jesus could not bear the sight of the creation groaning and travailing in pain and writhing in agony for adoption. So as a good shepherd, Jesus moved from place to place to seek and find the lost sheep, wherever they could be found. ‘The prodigal children’ of God had to be gently persuaded and won over and brought back to the Home of the Father with joyous greetings (St Luke 15:ll-32).

The next step after redemption was restitution or restoration – restoring the spirit to her lawful place in the Kingdom of God. The spirit is spoken of as a high born lady – born of the royal blood. ‘God is Spirit’ and so is the soul.

They that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in Truth.

St John 4:24

One has, therefore, to be transformed into spirit to taste of the Spirit and Power of God and to dwell in His Holy Hill – the land of uprightness.

All these things meant to Jesus the fulfilling of the Law – the Law of God to save His children wandering like babes in the wilderness of the world. And for all this, he had to wearily trudge the hard and tortuous path of self-abnegation and suffered untold humiliations and inhuman indignities just for the sake of suffering humanity.

The advent of Jesus into the world was heralded with the angelic song –

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

St Luke 2:14

And when He came to earth in human flesh, He declared:

I delight to do Thy Will. Thy Law is within my heart.

Thus we see that the Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them (St Luke 9:56). Herein we see the plan and purpose of the Godman in fulfilling God’s Law – to seek and to save that which was lost (St Luke 19: 10).

Now as to the means employed by Jesus for working out the will of God. Love is the key-note in the teachings of Jesus. In unmistakable words, He proclaims the essence of God’s nature as Love, and obedience to God and His law as Love-in-action.

He emphasises:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind; with all thy strength and with all thy soul.

This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments hangeth the whole law and the prophets.

St Matthew 22:37-40

Lest there may still be the least shadow of doubt on this vital issue, Jesus goes on to explain:

Ye have heard that it hath been said: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use, and persecute you; […] For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? […] And if ye salute your brethren only what do ye more than others? […]

St Matthew 5:43-48

The apostles after Christ elaborated this theme. St Paul, addressing the Romans, said:

Let Love be without dissimulation. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore Love is the fulfilling of the law – the Law of God.

And then to the Galatians:

By Love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this.

St Peter, in lucid terms, said:

See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.

1 Peter 1:22

Love is both the means and the end in God-Realisation. As Love flows directly from God, it has, therefore, to be known and understood in the Holy Hill of God in the human body, before it can rightly be practised in the work-a-day world. One must first be moved by an intense Love and longing for God to gain admission into the human laboratory for taking His lessons in Love in its fullness.

Without this there is no way out. This is the first essential on the Godway.

St John has aptly said:

He that loveth not (God for God’s sake), knoweth not God; for God is Love.

1 St John 4:8

Love for God and the Kingdom of God is the basis of all virtues.

Love ye the Kingdom of God and all things shall be added unto you.

St Luke 12:31

Love in its efflorescence brings forth the flowers and fruits of all that is noble and divine in life; to wit, truthfulness, chastity, humility, non-injury, selfless service and sacrifice.

Having laid the foundation of His teachings on Love beginning from the Love for God and culminating in the Love for man – Jesus goes on to raise the superstructure of His edifice of the Kingdom of God by means of the two-fold principle of the Light of God and the Life of God and invites all to enter into it and enjoy Life Eternal.

As to the Kingdom of which Jesus held the keys, He tells us plainly:

My kingdom is not of this world.

St John 18:36

His Kingdom is the Kingdom of God of which it is said:

The Kingdom of God cometh not by observation; the Kingdom of God is within you.

St Luke 17:20-21

As to who can enter into the Kingdom of God and see God, Jesus tells us:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,

and again:

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

St Matthew 5:8

He then goes on to explain:

Verily, I say unto you, it is hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.

St Matthew 19:23-24

And why?

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

St Matthew 7:14

Finally, the position is clarified succinctly and beautifully:

Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven.

St Matthew 7:21

Further the Gospels provide certain pre-requisites which have to be fulfilled for the life of the spirit in heaven:

Except a man be born again, he can not see the Kingdom of God.

St John 3:3

Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

St John 3:5

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.

Corinthians 1:47

When a person qualifies himself thus, then he walks not after the flesh but after the spirit. He, as enjoined and instructed, daily takes up his cross after the fashion of Master Jesus and accompanies him through the valley of the shadow or death undeterred; swallowing up death in victory like St Paul who delighted to die daily as we read in the Corinthians.

Thus we see that the problem resolves itself into one of transformation from being in flesh to being in spirit. It is the spirit alone that can pass through the strait gate which is no bigger than the needle’s eye and tread the narrow path leading to salvation and Life Eternal – narrower than the hair and sharper than the sword’s edge. One has, therefore, to be in the spirit, like St John the revelator, to have the Kingdom of God revealed to him. The spirit must come over the tabernacle of flesh as the Saint tells us emphatically by so often repeating the words he that overcometh in His Revelations. To rise above body consciousness is a must in order to have an out-of-body experience as it is. St Plutarch likens the experience of the soul initiated into the mysteries of the beyond to that of actual death.

How this transmutation comes about? God is great and His Power is greater still. One must learn to know the will of God and to understand His Law. The Law of God is perfect, holy, just and good' for it is of the spirit and hence spiritual (Ro. 7:12-14). It is writ in the heart of each one of as, but we, being in the body, are not conscious of it. But when one ‘overcomes’ or comes over the body, he begins to learn of it by actual experience as the spirit peeps through the needle’s eye. This transcension or transcendence is nothing but transhumanisation of the human in man. Whosoever becomes a spirit, complete in himself,

He gains Life Eternal and is not hurt of second death.

Revelations 2:11

Jesus tells us in so many ways of the Spirit and Power of God and tries to establish a conscious contact with Him. God absolute is an abstraction with all His powers of omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, omniecstasance and omnirefulgence completely involved in Himself. In this unmanifested state He can neither be seen nor heard.

How can we believe in One Whom we have not seen or heard ? But when He becomes God-in-action, He comes into being and manifests Himself in His creation, endowing everything with His Light and Life in varying degrees at different strata of existence, but fully in man created in His own image and with, His breath of life, quickening him with the living soul.

God and the law of God, the Gospels tell, are revealed to man in His own Light and Life which St John figuratively calls the Word – the Holy Word or the Holy Ghost – ‘the great Comforter’ or ‘the Spirit of Truth.’ It is this Word which descended like a dove when Jesus baptised those who came into His fold for being saved. Baptism by the touch of a Godman or by transmission of His Life-Impulse through His eyes which pour out the Water of Life on the disciple works as a process of Inner Sanctification enabling the Godman to uphold with His right hand, the spirit in man, to give some esoteric experience of the astral world or the world of the spirit.

What is this Light of God and what the Life of God? And how the spirit experiences them in the sanctuary of the Lord? The Word of the Most High – His Spirit and Power – as it revolves in space and out of space, in the process of creating and sustaining vast universes, produces Light and Sound by His self-vibratory motion. This is the Light of God and the Voice of God – His Life Breath – which Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, 400 B.C., called the Music of the Spheres. Similarly, S.T. Coleridge (1772–1834) speaks of the One life within us and abroad which is soul of all motion and appears as:

A Light in Sound, and sound-like Power in Light.

This then is the Spirit and Power of God – the Light and Life of God – that can at once be seen and heard, not by the eyes and ears of the flesh which are but outer instruments as aids in the phenomenal world; but by the subtle senses within, the essential features of the noumenon. True Knowledge or the experience of Truth is an action of the soul, sure and perfect with mathematical precision without the senses.

The Law and the Will of God was declared and made manifest as a direct revelation of the Word – the Light of Life – by Master Jesus to those who accepted Him and put their faith in Him. In the Gospels, God is described as,

the Father of Lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

St James 1:17

St John, conveying the message he had heard said:

God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

1 St John 1:5

It means God is Sovereign Light, the Light of Lights, pure and immaculate, uncreate and shadowless. It is this Heavens’ Light that guides aright. The immortal flame of this shineth in each one of God’s children on earth. We all live by His Light. And it is His Light that lighteth everything.

It is the True Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The Light shineth in darkness (the darkness of the grave-like tabernacle of the flesh), and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

St John 1:5,9

St Luke sounds a note of stern warning:

Take heed therefore, that the Light which is in thee be not darkness.

St Luke 1:3

And as to where this light is and how it can be kept on untarnished, it is said:

The Light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of Light.

St Matthew 6: 22

So the matter is one of developing the Single Eye in the body, to witness the Glorious Light of God and to live eternally therein.

Now we have to see what the Gospels tell us of the Life of God. God is a Life-Principle or the audible Life-Stream continuous and unbroken. As in His Light so in His Life, there is no variableness. It is the Power of God as Holy Light is the Spirit of God. Both taken together, constitute the Word of the Wordless and the Name of Nameless – the Name greater than whom no name exists.

‘The Word of God runneth swiftly’ from end to end carrying out the plan and purpose of God. Together they form the substratum of all that exists. St John the prince among mystics, begins his Gospel with a beautiful revelation about the mystic Word:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that hath been made. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.

Whosoever ascends to the Holy Hill and stands in the Holy Place, the Word of God – His Light and Life – open up the Inner Eye, the Single Eye, referred to above and unstop the Inner Ear to receive instruction and guidance directly from the Power of God. About the Power of the Word it is said:

Take ye heed according to the Word, the ‘Word of Truth.’

Quicken yourself by the Power of the Word. In Him is the Light of Life (Light emanating from the audible Life-Stream).

We live because the Word upholds us. The Word helps the soul to escape as a bird out of the snares of the fowlers – the mind and the senses –, breaking the snares right through, making the soul quiet even as a weaned child. In the presence of the Word the night shineth as the day, making the darkness and the light both ablaze.

‘His Word sendeth forth commandments upon the earth’ and whosoever listens to the Word, everything becomes known, the past, the present and the future like an open book. It is the open-sesame that flings open the portals to Divine Wisdom, knowing which all becomes known and nothing remains to be known.

The Word of God is very pure and true from the beginning of time.

Blessed is the Name of God. And blessed are the people who know the joyful Sound for they walk in the Light of His countenance. It is an eye-salve that lightens the eyes lest one may sleep in death. Whosoever hears His voice, even the dead – dead spiritually – is awakened into Life Spiritual and begins to sing praises of the Lord from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof.

Jesus was not a mere theorist, nor a philosopher nor a theologian. He was essentially a practical teacher who had learnt life by digging hard at the roots of life. He was well versed both in the theory and the practice of the Science Spiritual. Whatever theology he had, was not a dogmatic theology based on the authority of organised bodies. It was neither speculative in character, springing from human thinking nor was it systematic, depending on any rationalised system or school of thought. It was purely a positive theology that rested on revelation or direct and immediate personal experience within in the cave of transfiguration where transmutation was wrought by contacting the Spirit and Power of God, converting soul into a living soul, as master in the house.

Jesus was a Living Embodiment of the audible Life-Stream – Word made flesh – and as such called Himself the Bread of Life and the Water of Life and freely invited all to partake of the same. His path was one of self-analysis, of freeing the soul from the tentacles of the flesh and the carnal mind, enabling the soul to journey on the Inner unearthly Planes clothed in celestial mystical bodies as distinct from bodies natural and terrestrial which are crossed over in the process of transformation (1 Corinthians 15). The natural man was of the earth and earthy, while the Inner Man awakened into righteousness became a living spirit as from God, all changed and renewed. Hence the exhortations:

Learn how to die that you may begin to live.

Die completely to self and rise instantly above it.

He wanted the people to perceive and understand the Reality rather than merely ‘see and hear’ of it for that would not give them the gift of salvation or Life Eternal (St Matthew 13:14). He gave his disciples actual mystical experiences within; which many prophets and kings desired to have, but could not (St Luke 10:24).

And then commanded them:

What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in Light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

St Matthew 10:27

We have on record instances of direct esoteric experiences of the Kingdom of God to his choosen vessels like Peter, James and John who were taken up in spirit into a high mountain – the point of intersection between the two worlds, the physical and the spiritual –, and brought them face to face with the ancient Masters like Moses and Elijah. (St Matthew, Chapter 17; St Mark, Chapter 9 and St Luke, Chapter 9)

Again, on the day of Pentecost, He gave them an experience of the Sound coming from heaven, filling all the house where they were sitting and then there appeared into them tongues of fire – Heavenly Light –, sitting upon each of them and filling them with the Holy Spirit (Acts, Chapter 2).

Last but not the least, the Book of Revelation by St John the Divine, abounds with graphic description of the wonderous vision, he beheld on the Inner Planes, when he was in the spirit on the Lord’s day and of the sealed wisdom that was disclosed to him by the Voice, coming as the sound of many waters, or as dulcet Music as if from the harpers with their harps.

God wants man to be immortal so as to enjoy Life Ever-lasting but it is for man to seek for it (Romans 2:6-7). It has to be sought for and achieved right here and now. If it is not done in the living present, there is no promise of it in the hereafter.

What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.

St Luke 8:36

The very essence of soul is life for ever more. If one loses his soul, what would remain ? Nothing, but the way to devolution or going down in the scale of creation. God has, therefore to be revealed in the human flesh and the soul must make the most of it, in finding the source and fountainhead of life. This revelation comes through the instruction and guidance of some Godman, capable of manifesting the Will and the Law of God as disclosed in communion with the Word. No amount of prayers will do any good if one turneth away his ear from hearing the Law (Proverb 28:9). The only way to save the soul is by diligently hearkening to the Voice of God.

About this, Jesus says :

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them Eternal Life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

St John 10:27-28

God is the God of living and is not willing that any should perish – (2 Peter 3:9).

Speaking of His commission, Jesus says:

As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.

St John 9:5

And, yet a little while is the Light with you.

Walk while ye have the Light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have the Light, believe in the Light that ye may be the children of Light.

St John 12:35-36

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.

St John 3:8

We have, therefore, to seek one born of the Spirit.

May God-Power guide us all to the Man of the Spirit, wherever He may be and whatever His lineage and mode of life, but He must be One Who may make us know only True God and befit us for the Kingdom of God.