Many devout Christians believe so. It is a different matter though, Jesus never claimed that he is God! He almost always addressed himself as ‘son of man’ or at most as ‘son of God’ but not as ‘I am God’.
Since Christianity is a devotion-based religion, where there is a creator and also the created beings, for the sake of discussion, let us equate the Upanishadic concept of Atma to the religious word ‘God’.
Now the question is whether Jesus was God? Adversaries of Christianity, like the Muslims for example, refuse to accept Jesus as God, even though they regard Jesus with high esteem. They consider Jesus only as a great prophet, but neither as a son of God nor the least God himself.
But there are two magic words in the old versions of the Gospel, which many people interpret as Jesus’s claim to Godhood. These two words are ‘Ena na’ – which literally mean ‘I am he’ in the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus. They point to several places in the Gospel where Jesus utters these two words. These people say that the pronoun ‘he’ in this context actually refers to God.
But others disagree. They say that Ena na is just a reply which could have been an answer to the simple question ‘Are you so and so?”. So, all that Jesus meant was “Yes, I am Jesus”. According to them, these words have been simply stretched out of context and interpreted to mean something which Jesus would have never meant. How could he equate himself to God? That would be sacrilegious according to them!
Not if you see from an Upanishadic background. You come across many Upanishadic sages who uttered the very same words – ‘Soham’, ‘Soham asmi’ which both mean exactly the same - Ena na – I am He! It is clear in the Upanishads that these two words mean declaration of identity with Atma, the Upanishadic concept of God. Upanishads do believe that each one of us is really that Atma in the ultimate sense.
So, it is not just Jesus, all of us can say ‘Ena na’. But saying some words without actually realizing their implication doesn’t mean much. We need to attain that state before we can utter those words. Jesus probably attained that state of oneness with God and so he could easily say that he is God.
But did that realization make any difference to Jesus? Did he cut himself off from the world? No. He continued to behave as an ordinary worldly man. He showed concern for the suffering masses. Advised them to come out of their limited identities by first realizing that all of them are also sons of God. He often used the words “Our father in the heaven”, meaning - all of us are sons of God.
Even during the short span of 2 years during which Jesus was in touch with the masses, he was busy wiping the tears of the helpless people. He pulled them out of their miseries but never claimed that he did what he did. He always gave credit to God.
He did not preach them any high philosophy, but tried to uplift them from the abyss they have put themselves into. He spoke against the oppressors. All that was needed, since not all were at his level of realization. They were deeply mired in the conditioning that their minds had got them into. The need of the time was compassion and freedom from human suffering and not high philosophy.
And finally, when he was harassed and tormented by his adversaries, Jesus never exhibited his Godly powers to free himself. He rather lamented ‘Oh my father, why have you forsaken me?’. His last words on the cross were ‘Oh lord, forgive them; they know not what they are doing’. That is the way an accomplished actor plays his role! His realization does not make him transgress the limits of the role he is into.
On the Indian side, Krishna is believed to be a person who was always aware that he is a form taken by the Atma. He even declared that on many occasions. That is why Indians consider Krishna as a ‘Poornavatar’ – a completely realized form, though there were many other realized forms.
But even Krishna abided by the rules of the game most of the time. He lived the life of a simple cowherd. Avoided wars with his arch enemy Jarasandha to minimize bloodshed. Acted as an emissary of the Pandavas to put an end to the war that could result in large scale violence on innocent people. He even served as a humble charioteer to Arjuna. He sought advice from all his elders like Bhishma. And finally, he died like an ordinary man, all alone in a forest. That is how an accomplished actor would play his role. But when the circumstances demanded, he even transgressed the role he played. Transgress the script only when some other actor violates it and messes up the drama.
I am narrating all these stories to impress upon the fact that no realized master ever squirmed from his responsibilities thinking that this world is an illusion. Nor did even Sankara, considering his efforts to revitalize Vedic culture in a short life time that he actually lived. He did everything to guide people to what he thought was right.
But there are hardcore Advaitis who insist that the so called ‘real life’ that we talk about is no more than a dream or an illusion! But that assumption makes any discussion meaningless like the old Sanskrit saying that goes – ‘it is like a person who has no fingers piercing holes in the beads, a blind person threading all those beads to make a nice necklace, and finally a person without a neck wearing such a nice necklace!’
Throughout my discussions I appear to have made certain assumptions about the forms taken by the Atma. Are there any sentences in the Upanishads that support those assumptions? Let us see them one by one in the subsequent episodes. Probably then I am justified in my rejecting the concept of Maya.
Please do join me in the next episode for a closer relook into some of the Upanishadic sentences that I feel suggest my assumptions.
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