While high priests, kings and presidents, may stake their claim to top avataric rankings, each one of God’s children can silently strive to become avatars or true sons and daughters of God, says OSWALD PEREIRA
Since time immemorial, the common man has been sidelined ― by the king, the president or the high priest. These gentlemen in high places have anointed themselves as the ones that rule, and it is taken for granted that the common man quietly follows and obeys them without questioning.
Are the high and mighty doing God’s will? Was it God who crowned the king, appointed the president, and ordained the high priest?
Not really! God created us all as equal, built in His image. We are all children of God. Before God, no one is king, president or high priest. He is Supreme and transcends all these shallow temporal positions.
When Jesus Christ descended on earth as an incarnation of God or avatar, as the only begotten Son of God, he was part of His Father’s plan of redemption of mankind. Jesus on earth was fulfilling God’s wish; He was a God-appointed avatar.
It is written in the Bible, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).”
Christ did his karma on earth as an avatar, silently, showing the world by example; not merely preaching but practising his teachings with good deeds, healing the sick, and comforting the sorrowful.
His avataric assignment never went to his head and he was so humble that he never ever claimed exclusivity, or said, “I am the only Son of God.”
In fact, he encouraged everyone to be sons of God, like him. Indeed, he said quite emphatically to his followers, “It is written in your own Scriptures that God said to certain leaders of the people, ‘I say, you are gods!’” ꟷ John 10:34.
However, over the centuries, the top leaders of the Christian churches ― the various high priests, bishops and popes ― sought to play down this teaching of Jesus Christ, as that would erode their hierarchy and authority.
The great yogi and sage Paramhansa Yogananda made it his mission in life to present to the world the correct interpretation of Christ’s teachings. Yogananda asserted that “while Jesus is the Son of God, we all have it in us to become Sons of God.”
Indeed, it was the guru’s sense of fair play and equality among all humans in the world that prompted Yogananda to make this assertion an important part of his religious philosophy.
As Yogananda explains in his book, The Divine Romance: “When St John said, ‘as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become Sons of God,’ (John 1:12) he meant that anyone who could receive that Christ Consciousness, who could increase the capacity of his consciousness, to hold that infinite ocean of truth, would become as Jesus did, a Son of God ― one with the Father.”
The great sage Sri Ramakrishna, who was believed to be an incarnation of Vishnu, was vociferous in his belief that humans have it in them to reach higher states of consciousness and divinity.
Dhan Gopal Mukerji in the book, Sri Ramakrishna — The Face of Silence, quoted a pundit, whom he did not name, as saying: “Men and women are asserting with unique pride that each one of them is a Son of God. Men do not wish to bend the knee any more to avatars and masters. They themselves will be avatars.”
The pundit, an authority on Ramakrishna’s teachings said: “Ramakrishna was a galloping torch that came to earth to light other torches — souls of men and women — so that each one of them would become God. He wanted every one of us not to find a religion, but be a religion. He set us that example.”
Swami Nikhilananda in his biography of Vivekananda said that Ramakrishna could be put in the “category of Rama and Krishna, who are recognized by orthodox Hindus as two of the Avatars, or Incarnations of God.”
Nikhilananda adds: “One of the main doctrines of Vedanta is the divinity of the soul: every soul, in reality, is Brahman. Thus it may be presumed that there is no difference between an Incarnation and an ordinary man. To be sure, from the standpoint of the Absolute, or Brahman, no such difference exists.”
So, while high priests, kings and presidents, may stake their claim to top avataric rankings, each one of God’s children can silently strive to become avatars or true sons and daughters of God.
Oswald Pereira, a senior journalist, has also written eight books, including The Newsroom Mafia, Chaddi Buddies, The Krishna-Christ Connexion, How to Create Miracles in Our Daily Life and Crime Patrol: The Most Thrilling Stories. Oswald is a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, and practises Kriya Yoga.
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