Source: Happiness and The Art of Being By Micheal James

 

Throughout the history of Christianity, most ordinary Christians have believed that true salvation can only be attained through the person of Jesus Christ,and that atheists, agnostics and the followers of other religions can be saved only by converting to Christianity. They have justified this unreasonable and arrogant belief by their dualistic interpretation of Christ’s saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14.6).

Because of their dualistic understanding of his spiritual teachings, they interpret the words ‘I am’ and ‘me’ that he used in this passage to denote only the individual person Jesus Christ, who was born at a certain time in a certain place called Bethlehem.

However, Christ did not mistake himself to be merely an individual person whose life was limited within a certain range of time and place. He knew himself to be the real and eternal spirit ‘I am’, which is unlimited by time and place. That is why he said,“Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8.58).

The person who was Jesus Christ was born long after the time of Abraham, but the spirit which is Jesus Christ exists always and everywhere, transcending the limits of time and place. Because that spirit is timeless, he did not say, “Before Abraham was born, I was”, but, “Before Abraham was born, I am”.

That timeless spirit ‘I am’, which Christ thus knew to be his own real self, is the same ‘I am’ that God revealed to be his real self when he said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3.14). Therefore,though Christ appears to us to be a separate individual person, he and his Father God are in fact one and the same reality, the spirit that exists within each one of us as our fundamental consciousness ‘I am’. That is why he said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10.30).

Therefore, when Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14.6), by the words ‘I am’ and ‘me’ he was referring not merely to the time-bound individual called Jesus, but to the eternal spirit ‘I am’, which he knew to be his own real self. The inner meaning of his words can therefore be expressed by rephrasing them thus, “The spirit ‘I am’ is the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the spirit ‘I am’,which is the Father or source of all things, but by this same spirit”.

WU HSIN

The piling on of more concepts, this acquisition of additional knowledge, is not the solution. Adding to the known can never take one beyond the known.

At every moment of your life you know what you need to know. Take it to be sufficient. True knowledge comes via direct apperception and this cannot be forced. It arrives in its own time Now, be still

RAMANA MAHARSHI

“The Real is ever-present, like the screen on which the cinematographic pictures move. While the picture appears on it, the screen remains invisible. Stop the picture, and the screen will become clear. All thoughts and events are merely pictures moving on the screen of Pure Consciousness, which alone is real.”

RUMI

'When I run after what I think I want, My days are a furnace of distress and anxiety; If I sit in my own place of patience, What I need flows to me, And without any pain.

'From this I understand that What I want also wants me, Is looking for me And attracting me'

SRI RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHANSA.

**The truth established in the Vedas, the Puranas and the Tantras is but one Sat-cit-ānanda (Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss. Supreme reality). In the Vedas it is called Brahman, in the Puranas it is called Rama, and in the Tantras it is called Shiva. One Sat-cit-ānanda is called Brahman, Rama and Shiva **

Papaj

Happiness is permanent. It is always there. What comes and goes is unhappiness. If you identify with what comes and goes, you will be unhappy. If you identify with what is permanent and always there, you are happiness itself.

From Darkness to Light BY **By Nithin Sridhar

**Deepavali or the festival of lights is not only about lighting the external lamps, it is also about an individual’s inner journey from a state of darkness of ignorance to a state of light of knowledge and freedom. **

The correlation between light and knowledge on the one hand, and between darkness and ignorance on the other, is very deep in Hindu consciousness and pervades the entire corpus of Hindu scriptures, starting with the Vedas. Rigveda, for example, begins with a hymn dedicated to Agni, the source of divine illumination on earth. There are a large number of verses in the Vedas, including the Upanishads dedicated to Surya- the very embodiment of light and divine knowledge. Then, we have the famous Sandhya Upasana and Gayatri mantra, which is all about appealing the divine to illuminate our minds with the light of knowledge. The celebration of Deepavali, is thus, a manifestation, an externalization of the inner realization that darkness of ignorance is removed only through the light of knowledge. And hence, it becomes imperative that we make an attempt to understand this inner journey from darkness to light

Paramahansa Yogananda

"Do not think of yourself as the body,

but as the joyous consciousness

and immortal life behind it."

MT MIND

 

RIBHU GITA