The Great Christ

There are two great hospitals in Tokyo, Sei Roka (St. Luke’s) and Sei Bo (St. Paul’s). They are both run by Christian nuns. The Japanese law in days past was that there must be Japanese doctors at the head of foreign hospitals but the matrons in St. Luke’s were fully trained Western doctors in their own right.

But what if such an organisation has to close? The Yoga view is not that this is a great tragedy. It will have created a rent in the mass veil of what is technically called cosmic ignorance. That rent in the veil lets light through and that will continue to come through in different forms. It would not be that it is passed now, over and finished. We ourselves can contribute to keeping this aperture open, so as to speak, by our gratitude and memory, remembering those who have gone before us, and by our meditations. This is our service.

The Gospel to the Hebrews has been lost, but a few fragments are quoted by the early church fathers such as Jerome. We know also that gospel went to India. The early church historian, Eusebius, reports that when a Christian missionary went to India he found this gospel was already there. The phrase is from Christ: ‘He who is near me is near the fire’. Shankara, quoting on the Gita, almost seems to be quoting this phrase from the gospel: ‘I, the Lord, am like fire.  Just as fire does not protect from cold those who remain at a distance from it, but it does protect from cold those who go near to it, so the Lord bestows His grace on his devotees’.

There is a saying of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Thomas: ‘You see Me in yourselves, as in a clear mirror’. St. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians expands on this saying. ‘Knowledge springs up in man on the destruction of their sins. When the divine Self is seen in the self, as in a clear mirror.’ Christ says ‘You see Me in yourselves, as in a clear mirror’ – a mirror without a veil.  The man’s face is without a veil, as in a clear mirror.  There are a number of passages in Paul on this: ‘To this very day, every time the Law of Moses is read, a veil lies over the minds of the hearers. But, as the scripture says of Moses, whenever one turns to the Lord the veil is removed.’ ‘Now the Lord of whom this passage speaks is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; and, because for us there is no veil, we all reflect – as in a mirror – the splendour of the Lord. Thus we are transfigured into his likeness, from splendour to splendour. Such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit.’ Christ said, ‘You see me in yourselves, as in a clear mirror’; and the Mahabharata, ‘The divine Self is seen in the self, as in a clear mirror.’

One of the important points of the yogic interpretation of the New Testament is to emphasise the great Christ.  The Gita says that it’s another incarnation, the incarnation Krishna speaking, ‘Fools despise me, clad in human form. Not knowing my higher state, the great Lord of the beings’. The ‘higher state’ – for instance, Paul writes this of Christ, ‘In Christ everything in Heaven and earth was created. Not only things visible but also the invisible orders of sovereignties, authorities and powers. The whole universe has been created through Him and for Him. He exists before everything. All things are held together in Him.’ In the great Christ, Palestine and Galilee and Jerusalem and Pontius Pilate are all held together – in the great Christ. The Gita says the same thing, ‘The highest Spirit is spoken of as the supreme Self – the indestructible Lord, who interpenetrates and sustains the three worlds.’ This passage is almost identical with Paul in Colossians, ‘The whole Universe has been created through Him and for Him. All things are held together in Christ.’

© Trevor Leggett