Reinterpreting the Symbols of Christianity

It is important to see that the teachings of Jesus are essentially about the struggle against natural desires and about self-willing toward the desire-free state of the Soul-Within, or the Father-Within, where dying to oneself is salvation.

Miracles are a way of speaking about the transformation of a person who finds a new life, symbolized by the dead resurrected, or by turning water into wine. Miracles are stories about finding the Father-Within. The “bread” Christ fed the multitude was his own teachings. Destroying the Temple symbolizes the temple of the body, which is the temple of the Soul. Blindness healed is Soul-blindness healed, everyone is born blind to the Soul-Within. This defines the Involutionary Inward Path in the Theoevolutionary Church.

The virgin birth is a spiritual birth, not a birth of the flesh, the child of God in the Soul is reborn. The Son named Emmanuel means God is within us. Jesus was both God and man in being a man in the flesh who lived completely absorbed in the Father Within, the God of the Soul. “Christ” is the Father Within.

The cross is the supreme symbol in Christianity for dying to oneself in the Inward Path. This is a central teaching of Jesus. As Ravi Ravindra put it in “The Yoga of Christ,” the way of Christ is the way of the cross, the way of the crucifier of the flesh.

“Sin” in the Inward Path means missing the mark of the Soul, the Father Within. The Greek word for sin is “amartia,” missing the mark.

Baptism in the Inward Path is to die to ourselves and to take up the cross, the old self passes, the old self is crucified, so that the Father Within can enter.

“I Am” is the name of the bliss state, the Father-Within, this is what Jesus meant when he spoke of the “I Am” of the Father.

“Son-ship” cannot be seen as exclusive to Jesus, it comes with every person who attains-accepts the Father-Within. Jesus made this state possible for the West, and others, for example, Krishna and Buddha, did much the same for the East, where the Father Within is “Atman.” Each mystic follows a path according to their own need and capacity, and the culture they are born into.

When Mary Magdalene saw Jesus in the empty tomb it was her Soul-Mind that was seeing. It is the Soul at the Zenith of the Mind (Psyche) which has the so-called “extra-sensory” perception, but it is more super-sensory, the highest point of the mind. In works much the same way when people see or talk to departed loved ones three to forty days or more after they have past away, it is the highest point of their mind, the Soul, which is seeing.

In the Evolutionary Outward Path it is the Spirit-Will, not the Soul, not the Father Within, which is the extra-individual or supra-individual aspect of man and of life, it is the Spirit-Will that is the animator of the body and the activator of evolution. It is the Spirit-Will that is carried on through millions of years of evolution and survival and reproduction. It is the Spirit Will which carries the body and the Soul and the Spirit-Will to Godhood through material and super-material evolution. The Inward Path of the Revealed Religions first saw the God-Within, which we must now reach for and attain in the Outward Path. This is the Twofold Path of the Theoevolutionary Church.