A couple of paragraphs from Adi Da about:
Christianity
The popular Christian cult is a system of beliefs oriented toward the convention of religious salvation. It is quite a different system of religious understanding and processes than the esoteric teaching at the origin of Christianity. In the popular Christian cult Jesus, the individual, is the dominant offering or message. Salvation or reunion with God and the advantages that come from that union are offered as a process wherein one accepts Jesus and the drama of his apparent life as the means of salvation, or a positive personal destiny in which one is among the elect, those who are rewarded at the end of time, at the second coming or beyond it, in heaven, or even during this life. The goods of life, the blessings of God, come to those who believe.
The basic message of this exoteric cult is that Jesus is God, that Jesus has always been God, that Jesus is in fact the God who spoke to Moses and who is described in the Old Testament. He is simply God, who, at one point in human history, incarnated in human form. The teaching of Jesus, apart from his moral message, is not of any great significance within the exoteric cult. Rather, what is significant is that he is God and appeared on Earth, that he survived his death and returned to his God-state and that in the process of dying and resurrecting and returning to the God-state he paid for the karmas-or in Western parlance, the sins-of mankind.
Therefore, in order to become associated with God, to be free of the condemnation that comes from one's sins, or karma, or accumulated tendencies, one must accept that there is God, that Jesus is God, and that Jesus has paid for your sins, thereby rendering unnecessary your suffering now and in the future. One who simply accepts this dogma can be born without ultimate negative consequences. One need only believe that Jesus performed the ceremony of birth, death, resurrection, and ascension that has saved you.
This is the basic exoteric message of the popular Christian cult. It is not a message about life in the Spirit or any higher form of life. It is a message to egos, to born beings, that if you will believe in Jesus, you will be granted a very high destiny that may be revealed to some degree while you are alive. In other words, by believing in God, by feeling yourself close to God and therefore to God's blessings while alive, you can probably expect good things to happen to you.
Namaste!
Jim |
