TRUTH IS ETERNAL, BUT PRESENTED ACCORDING TO TIMES AND CLIMES AND THE MIND OF MAN
The teachings of many teachers may be alike, and in the likeness of these teachings, the same eternal truth is forever propagated. Truth being one, it cannot be altered; it can only be told in different ways, and it is being told in different ways for one purpose, and the purpose is to suit the time and the clime and the mind of man.
During the time of Christ, when he preached to the peasant folk, it was very easy to say, believe. Today, if you tell someone to believe, they will not take your word for it. Today, you tell them to believe in such a way that would be pleasing to their minds. You will find a peasant mind more apt to believe. A peasant’s mind can sometimes be like a child’s mind. When you tell a child, with all its innocence, to believe in something, it will believe, and we all do that when we tell our children the story of Santa Claus. We all do that; when we tell our children these stories, they believe them. But if you tell a grown-up person with a more sophisticated mind that Santa Claus comes down the chimney at Christmas time, the sophisticated mind will not accept that story. But if you tell the sophisticated mind how the presents originate and where they come from, and who has to work for them, and who has to buy them, then the sophisticated mind will start believing. So, the difference in the message from those times to our times is just in this manner of presentation.
So, every teacher that comes into this world teaches the same old truth, and the difference is in how it is to be presented and to whom and what for. The “what for” always remains the same. The “what for” is for the enlightenment of the human being, to lead the man towards becoming a God-man; and from the stage of God-manhood to Godhood, where, as Christ would say, “I am and my Father and One.” That is the whole purpose and the aim.
AVATARS AND THE UNSPOKEN DIVINE IDENTITY
An Avatar is a person who not only attains self-realisation in this life, but who has already achieved self-realisation. But he takes birth by choice. He is beyond the propulsion of natural laws, all the laws of evolution; he is beyond this propulsion. When an avatar or Incarnation takes birth, he does so with a special purpose: to enlighten man. He does not need to take birth, but because he has this mission to fulfil, he takes birth. And such people who have taken birth are Krishna, Buddha, and Christ.
The choice is entirely his, but the Avatar, the Incarnation, is also controlled. His choice, although free, also has some form of control. The mechanics of that control work like this: in the world (we will use the word world for our present case), a certain tension and atmosphere build, so that the Avatar’s choice is drawn. Even the Avatar, although having free choice, is drawn or pulled down by this magnetism created by the atmosphere and conditions of the world. So, here is a need. The magnetism could be interpreted as a need. And the need, combined with the free will of the Incarnation, comes together to make a Krishna, a Buddha, or a Christ take on life on this planet Earth.
You will always find that a Krishna, Buddha, or Christ will never say from his own lips that I am that; and if he should use those words, “I am that,” He will always use it in the third person, never referring to his own body, or his own little personality. He will speak from the angle of the Supreme being that is within himself. If the personality of the person of the Buddha or the Christ is found to be one with the universal spirit he represents, then that recognition must come from the people around him. He will never proclaim, Christ never proclaimed, Buddha never proclaimed, Krishna never proclaimed; Christ said, “I am the Son of God.” He never said, “I am God.” Yet to his closest disciples who understood him, he would say, “I and my Father are One,” equating the Son and the Father on the same level. Because, as we have discussed before, the abstract has to be concretised so that it can communicate. The impersonal has to be personalised so that it can communicate with another person. But the Impersonal God that is now personalised will never say that I am that Personal God. He will never say that. But when years pass, perhaps centuries pass, his words and acts and deeds will be judged by man, and then man will say, “Ah, there was an incarnation.” And they always say that too late. Always. They always say it too late. And we find it in the lives of these personages, of these incarnations.
THE TRUE PURPOSE OF THE TEACHER
If people had recognised Christ when he lived in his time, he would not have been crucified. He would not have been crucified. He could have proclaimed his Divinity; he could have proclaimed it in no uncertain terms, but he preferred to remain quiet. So, a real Teacher, his teaching, his one teaching only, is to make man realise, and not to tell them that this is your realisation. Krishna, Christ, or Buddha can only be appreciated if man realises for himself that I am now face to face with that eternal spirit, even if that eternal spirit is embodied. And all these teachings that teachers give are not the universal spirit, but about the universal spirit. He takes you on a merry-go-round and tells you everything about it. He tells you everything about the flower, the beautiful petals, its softness, its velvetiness, the green leaves, the sap, but he wants you to smell the fragrance yourself. Then only is it worth it. Then only is any teaching worth its salt, otherwise it remains no teaching.
It is very easy to tell a person that such-and-such a thing is true. Some might believe that, and some might not believe it, but how much better it is when we ourselves can realise that this is the truth? You hear the story of a woman that you are in love with. The whole world will tell you that she is a good woman, a wonderful woman. You can take people’s word for it; she is a good woman, a wonderful woman, but how much better when you experience her goodness yourself. The one is belief, the other is knowingness, that you know; and that is the purpose of a teacher, it is to lead you to know what truth is, to know what Divinity is. That is the purpose.
Therefore, it is unfair to ask a question such as, “Are you Christ?” Even if Christ were here in person, he would never tell you that he is Christ. He would never do that because the whole purpose of the teaching would be defeated. The whole purpose would be lost. It would be a waste of time. But he can tell you so much about Divinity and awaken the Divinity within you, for you to come to your own conclusions and your own recognitions, and your own realisations, not in belief, not in faith, but in knowingness. It is easy to believe; it is easy to have faith, the mind is capable of that. The mind is capable of believing, the mind is capable of having faith too, but the mind is not capable of knowing. That comes from within.
WISDOM IS BEYOND INTELLECT
That is the difference between knowledge and wisdom, for example. Knowledge can be acquired; you can read books and books and books, and you can have so much knowledge, yet you might not have an iota of wisdom. We have a very good chela in Cape Town, a very brilliant young man, very brilliant, he is like an encyclopaedia. If I am preparing an article and I want to know about something, I pick up the phone and ask him about any historical data, any data, or what a certain philosopher said. And just like that, he will tell me on the phone. Fantastic retentive memory. I am speaking about Harrish. But he says, “Guruji, I am like a donkey, with a load of books on my back.” Yes. That is acquired knowledge. Wisdom is a sense of knowingness. Wisdom is a sense of cognition. Direct cognition where immediately a communication takes place, and you just know, you just know what is, and all the amount of books, and all the amount of studies cannot take you there. Many times, all studies and books can lead you to greater confusion, where you will study one philosophy and another philosophy, and a third one, and a fourth one; and most of them might not be complementary but contradictory to each other. Then the mind is bewildered. What must I believe? Shall I believe what Kant says? Or Descartes says? Or Hegel says? Or Spinoza says? What must I believe? What is convincing to my mind? Today, Descartes might appeal to me, and tomorrow Schopenhauer will appeal to me. So, we are forever revolving, whirling around in the world of the mind.
But to know Divinity, such intellectuality is not necessary. If intellectuality or the power of analysis were necessary, then the poor, uneducated, illiterate man would have no hope. And yet there is not a single Scripture that would say that there is only hope for the learned and no hope for those who are not learned. There is hope for everyone, because recognition does not depend upon intellectuality. Recognition does not depend upon analytical power. Recognition does not depend upon study. Recognition does not depend upon how many PhDs you have.
Recognition depends upon the purity and the clarity of the heart, and in our systems, the aim is to purify the heart, to expand the heart, to create that sensitivity of the heart that could in its sensitiveness expand and embrace the entire Universe; and in the entire Universe, knowing the entirety, the recognition would dawn, what is Christ consciousness, what is Krishna consciousness. So, by that dawning upon us, we just know. There is no halfway measure. We know, or we do not know. The mind says, “Look, this could be so.” But that is still not it. Even if you are two yards away from walking the full mile, you have still not walked the full mile; you are two yards away. It is, or it is not. You know, or you do not know. That is the whole gist of it. So, in our system, we are systematically led to the area of knowingness where the mind is not necessary. Does the Bible not say that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you have to become childlike? And the heart is the medium whereby that childlikeness is attained. By childlikeness, we mean that primal purity, and when that primal purity is attained, we find that oneness, we find that Christ-consciousness, we find the Krishna-consciousness. We find the personage on the Earth that reflects that consciousness the most. And therefore, the one that reflects that consciousness the most, we regard him to be closest to the Divine, and he that is closest to the Divine is, for our purposes, practically the Divine.
THE AIM OF OUR TEACHING
That is how it works, and claims are never made, and they should never be made, because those who claim are unworthy of the claim they make. An artist must be recognised, not by the person of the artist, but by the art he has produced. The poet must be recognised not by what a handsome man he is, but by the poem he has produced. Likewise, man must be judged not by what kind of car he drives around, or what business he possesses, or what wealth he has, or what beautiful lecturing ability he has; man is judged by his deed. Man is judged by what he is, what he really is, and how he reflects the inner Divinity externally and to all those around him. And if he projects that and if it is picked up by those that receive it, the receiver will know in what presence I am. We can find, as I said the other day, that Christ might walk down the road; we might pass him and will not even have a second glance. It is not the fault of Christ walking down the road; it is our fault, our density.
So, all our teachings are aimed at clearing away the density, clearing away the fog, fixing up the radio so it can tune in properly to the power emitted by this pure consciousness, which is eternal and universal, immortal, beginless, and endless. Man is born, develops, and dies, but the energy that is there that he could exhibit, that he could live, is beginless and endless; and that is possible.
This has been demonstrated throughout the history of the world where men have been produced, men have come about in the times of need; that is because this need forms such an attraction that a personage that have reached beyond the realms of birth and death, beyond the need of reincarnating himself, by this force of working out his karma has gone beyond karma, he comes back to help those still enmeshed in the karmic wheel.
He comes not to lift off the burden, but he comes to show how to lift off the burden, and that is why we say, Christ saves. He saves not by taking away your sins, but by showing you how to take them away. He can show you how you can lighten your burden. No one can lighten your burden for you, because you have created the burden, and it is you who has to lighten it yourself. Only the way can be shown, and when the way is shown, life is shown. When life is shown, love is shown; when love is known, God is known. Simple, very simple!
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1977 – 22
