Resonance of the East in Christ's teachings

Dec 21, 2009, 12.00am IST
Swami Kriyananda.

Does the concept of samadhi or union with God, agree with the teachings of Jesus Christ?



Most Christians get no hint in churches that the Bible promises them anything like cosmic consciousness. The best they hope for is eternity in Heaven, in a body similar to the one they now inhabit.


No one, however, has a 'corner' on Christ's teachings. God's revelation through Jesus Christ is common property, for it is truth itself, and it belongs to no church. Many times progress occurs in our understanding when one civilisation is exposed to the insights of another's. Religion, today, stands at the threshold of such an opportunity. Teachings from the East have already had a strong impact in America. It has reminded people in there of dormant traditions in their own faith. For example, the practice of meditation, which was once a part of Christian practice, is now being revived under the influence of teachers from India.

A visitor once asked Paramhansa Yogananda, "You call your temples 'churches of all religions'. Why, then, do you place special emphasis on Christianity?" "It was the wish of Babaji, Yogananda's guru, that i do so," he replied. "He asked me to interpret the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, or Hindu Bible, and to show that the teachings of both are basically the same. It was with this mission that i was sent to the West."


By his example as much as by his teachings, Paramhansa Yogananda turned agnostics into deeply believing Christians. His mission, indeed, was not to convert anyone to Hinduism, but to revitalise the Christianity of Christians. He taught, as he himself put it, "the original Christianity of Christ".

What, then, of our original question? What do the Christian saints say about their experiences of oneness with God? Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said of souls that are merged in God, "By grace they are 'God with God'." "I, who am infinite," wrote St Catherine of Sienna, "seek infinite works that is, an infinite perfection of love." St Bernard wrote, " So it will inevitably happen that in saints every human affection will then, in some ineffable manner, melt away from self and be entirely transfused into the will of God."

St Simeon felt that a man who has attained the final degree of perfection is dead and yet not dead, but infinitely more alive in God... He is inactive and at rest, as one who has come to the end of all action of his own. He is without thought, since he has become one with Him who is above all thought. Of St Simeon's experience of samadhi, his disciple Nicetas Stathos wrote that once, while offering up a pure prayer to God to be drawn into intimate converse with Him, he had a vision: Behold, the atmosphere began to shine through his soul... Quite outside himself, as he gazed with his whole soul at this light that had appeared to him, it increased bit by bit...and he felt himself taken, with his whole body, away from the things of earth.

Do not these observations suggest persuasively, the state of oneness with God, which is known to Indian yogis as samadhi? It would be instructive for Christians to meditate on Jesus's parable of the mustard seed, which he likened to the Kingdom of Heaven. The mustard seed, he said, though tiny, grows eventually to become a tree, "so that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches" (Matthew 13:32). Even so, the soul in communion with the Lord expands to embrace the infinity of consciousness that is God.

Adapted from the writer's The New Path: My Life With Paramhansa Yogananda, Ananda Sangha. Contact: 9899267698.