Introduction
by Yogacharya David Hickenbottom
Jesus and Babaji are at the head of this lineage. Jesus requested that Babaji send a yogic master (Paramhansa Yogananda) to the West to re-awaken original Christianity: the knowledge that the kingdom of heaven is within you, and there are means by which you may realize this great heaven of spiritual qualities while you yet live in a physical body.
This kingdom of heaven is a universal experience; it will be the same for any person anywhere in the world, regardless of the individual’s race, culture, or religion. A God who is the Creator of all cannot but be the Father of all and therefore all are the children of the one, infinite, divine Source; religions are many, but truth is one.
Ultimate truth cannot be expressed in words; words are but reflections of real Truth. Therefore, scriptures are the author’s best attempt to tell of the kingdom of heaven: an outer shell that indicates the fulfilling nut hidden inside.
This universal truth can be realized and there are many who have had glimpses of absolute truth, but very few have complete realization in its universal nature. Jesus took incarnation to teach the real nature of universal truth. Of his followers, there were a few who fully comprehended his meaning: some partially received all that he came to reveal, and others missed much of what the spiritual master came to teach. Down through the years, many of the great truths and the means to realize these truths were distorted and/or deleted.
Since his incarnation, Jesus has continued to be a savior; he continues to bless and guide those who attune themselves to his Cosmic Consciousness. Like all truly realized masters, he communes with those who are also helping humanity to evolve. Babaji, the great Master of India, is also a Mahavatar, as is Jesus. A Mahavatar (a supreme avatar) is an avatar (descent of Spirit into flesh) who is pre-eminent over other spiritual masters; together, Jesus and Babaji are working for the spiritual evolution of this world.
At the time this world entered into a new age (in 1900 we moved fully into the Dwapara Yuga), the Master Jesus deemed the time was ripe for the West to rediscover the universal truth he had come to reveal so long ago. Jesus and Babaji worked through Sri Yukteswar to prepare Paramhansa Yogananda to come to the West.
Mother Hamilton, as a preeminent disciple of Yoganandaji’s, continued this work of joining East and West. During her journey to Realization, many inner truths of the Christian scriptures were revealed. Raised as a traditional Catholic, Mother was amazed as God continued to show her the inner truth, hidden for two-thousand years. Over the thousands of years since the life of Jesus, the Christian teachings became, with some exceptions, empty of the inner esoteric truths that inspired its origin.
When I met Mother, I was able to see, through her teachings, the missing pieces in orthodox Christianity that were actually embedded in the teachings of Jesus. This knowledge gave me a new affinity for the great Master, Jesus.
I feel great love for Jesus, this perfect Master. I am a follower of Jesus in the deepest and most profound way; I follow him as he asked us to through following the way of the cross; surrendering body, mind and soul to the way of becoming a Son of God.
Becoming a Son of God means you realize your oneness with your heavenly Father and enter into the kingdom of heaven. In the gospel of John, the promise is made:
As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12,13)
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Quotes from Mother’s Talks on Jesus
In everything we teach, we teach the true teachings of the Christ, and they are identical with the teachings of yoga, which means “union with God,” plainly and simply. Yoga means to yoke, or to join with. It is the same thing as Jesus said when he said, “I and my Father are one.” But because the word yoga comes from the Sanskrit (it is in a different language), then we find it difficult sometimes to accept that any other faith except that in which we have been raised would have the same truth.
DATE: 751126 TITLE: THE INNER AND OUTER REALM OF THE MIND
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Every single human being has these two poles within himself. The magnetic pole is in the brain, and the projecting pole is at the base of the spine, in the coccyx. You have these two forces within yourself, constantly one trying to go away from the other, and the other one constantly trying to take it back. But because we, in this world of duality, think of these two poles as two, we think of the projecting pole as the opposing pole, that which goes away from God, and the magnetic pole as that which comes back to God or draws back to God. This is a very simple statement of a very, very great truth.
Man has come to think of these two poles within himself and within the world, because whatever is in the universe outside is also within man. Man is a complete universe within himself. He has everything within himself that is in this outer universe. He is the microcosmic or the individual part of the macrocosmic or the universal. And so, good and evil came into existence in the consciousness of man. In the story of the Christ and the Crucifixion, we have these two forces depicted as the two thieves on the cross. For the purpose of clarification, in those days for those who could not understand otherwise, they drew Jesus, the son of man (for that is what he was born) on a wooden cross. They drew the wooden cross first, which is in the form of man’s body. And upon that they drew this picture of the man being crucified on his own cross. This is the son of man, or the human ego, that which must go or be crucified in order that man might become the Anointed One, the Christed One, the Son of God.
Jesus was the great one who came to show the way to all men, because he said that he was not the only one, that he of himself did nothing, that it was his Father who did the works. “I of myself am nothing. It is my Father who doeth the works. And all of these works that I do, ye may do also,” he said. “And even greater works than these that I do, ye may do.” So he didn’t say he was the only one. He said he of himself was nothing, and he came to lead everyone to the conscious realization of his oneness with the Father. This was his purpose, this was his plan. In order to clarify this, they also drew two other crosses, one on each side of the son of man, the Savior. And they said this one was the good thief and that one was the bad thief. In other words, it is the projecting force and the magnetic force again, because the projecting force wants to keep us from realizing our oneness with God and going away from Him, and the magnetic force is constantly trying to bring us back, and that one is the good thief who wants to go with the Savior to paradise on that day.
DATE: 741009 TITLE: CREATION
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Jesus made this statement that the kingdom of heaven was within. He also said to seek God and His kingdom first, and then all of the other things would be added unto you. Immediately, because we (particularly in the West) are so materially minded [that we] think of the things that we want, the possessions that we want to obtain. We think of the wishes of our hearts, the desires, the dreams. And we think of those being fulfilled. We think of all of this as an expression of those wishes, those hopes, those dreams. But it means more than that because, in the spiritual sense, if you seek God first, then all of the mysteries of His kingdom, of all of the planes of consciousness, of all of the worlds, is revealed to you. It’s not just the material things, but the spiritual things, the knowledge. If you would become a master at any particular level, for instance, in the psychic, the occult, the clairvoyant—any of these things—if you want to know about things, then seek God first because He is the Source, the Creator, the Fountainhead of Spirit, and from Him all of these things are made manifest. So it is natural to realize that if we seek Him first, the Head Man who is our everything, then having sought Him, He will open up all new worlds to us, and He will show us all of the things of the kingdom of heaven and of the kingdom of earth.
Now, the mind in the beginning is very prone to reach out for these things. We like to demonstrate. We like to experience expressions of God in visions: to listen to what we hear in our inner ear; to be uplifted; and to have something that we think no one else has. These things are very, very enticing. It is very interesting when visions are shown to you. It is interesting when you get these pictures and then they are fulfilled. It becomes prophecy fulfilled so that you know whatever is given to you is the truth. But you should not seek those things; you should seek God, first. You can become a master, an adept, on any one of these various planes on the way up. “You can get God‑realization,” as one master put it to me many years ago when I was in India. I sat before him, and he knew how badly I wanted God‑realization. And he said to me, “I can give you God‑realization if you don’t care what hotel you stay in.” I thought this was a very peculiar thing for him to say, and I sat and meditated upon that for a while and asked God what his true meaning was. All of a sudden, He told me that He could give me God-realization at a certain level of consciousness. In other words, if I didn’t care to get all the way to the top, I could settle for Mr. In‑between.
DATE: 740417 TITLE: CHANTING