The Second Birth of Man

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within You)

"The undreamed-of technical advances in civilization made possible by the splitting of the atom and the harnessing of subatomic energies will ultimately bring all peoples into such close proximity in travel and communication that humanity will have to reevaluate its attitudes. Either persistence in ignorant intolerance will spawn mass suffering, or an openness to the common spiritual link of souls will presage a global well-being of peace and amity. This is a clarion call that the time has come to separate truth from spurious convictions, knowledge from ignorance. The teachings of Jesus as understood in harmony with the revelations of the Great Ones of India will revive the practical methods of the intuitive knowing of truth through Self-realization. Realized truth and scientific knowledge are the sure means to combat the shadowy doubts and superstitions hedging humanity. Only a mighty flood of the light of truth through actual communion with God can dispel the gathered darkness of the ages." - Paramahansa Yogananda

The Second Birth of Man—In Spirit

(Dialogue with Nicodemus, Part I)

"True religion is founded
upon intuitional perception
of the Transcendental Reality

All bona fide revealed religions of the world are based on intuitive knowledge. Each has an exoteric or outer particularity, and an esoteric or inner core. The exoteric aspect is the public image, and includes moral precepts and a body of doctrines, dogmas, dissertations, rules, and customs to guide the general populace of its followers. The esoteric aspect includes methods that focus on actual communion of the soul with God. The exoteric aspect is for the many; the esoteric is for the ardent few. It is the esoteric aspect of religion that leads to intuition, the firsthand knowledge of Reality.

The lofty 'Sanatana Dharma' of the Vedic philosophy of ancient India—summarized in the Upanishads and in the six classical systems of metaphysical knowledge, and peerlessly encapsulated in the Bhagavad Gita—is based on intuitional perception of the Transcendental Reality, Buddhism, with its various methods of controlling the mind and gaining depth in meditation, advocates intuitive knowledge to realize the transcendence of 'nirvana'. Sufism in Islam anchors on the intuitive mystical experience of the soul. [1] Within the Jewish religion are esoteric teachings based on inner experience of the Divine, evidenced abundantly in the legacy of the God-illumined Biblical prophets. Christ's teachings are fully expressive of that realization. The apostle John's Revelation is a remarkable disclosure of the soul's intuitional perception of deepest truths garbed in metaphor.

The elite traditions of Western philosophy and metaphysics laud the intuitional knowing power of the soul. The Greek mystic, philosopher, and mathematician Pythagoras (born c. 580 B.C.) emphasized inner experience of intuitive knowledge. Plato (born c. 428 B.C.), whose works have come down to us as a primary foundation of Western civilization, likewise taught the necessity for supersensory knowledge to apprehend eternal truths. The Neoplatonist sage Plotinus (A.D. 204-270) practiced Plato's ideal of intuitional knowing of Reality: "Often I have woken to myself out of the body, become detached from all else and entered into myself," he wrote, "and I have seen beauty of surpassing greatness, and have felt assured that then especially I belonged to the higher reality, engaged in the noblest life and identified with the Divine." [2] He died exhorting his disciples "Strive to bring back the god in yourselves to the God in the All." [3]

The Gnostics (first three centuries A.D.); the early Church fathers such as Origen and Augustine; great Christian luminaries such as Johannes Scotus Erigena (810-877) and Saint Anselm (1033-1109); the monastic orders founded by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) and Hugh, Richard, and Walter of Saint Victor (twelfth century)—all practiced intuitive contemplation of God.

Illumined Christian mystics of medieval times—Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224-1275); Saint Bonaventure (1217-1274); Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293- 1381); Meister Eckhart (1260-1327); Henry Suso (1295-1366); Johannes Tauler (1300-1361); Gerhard Groote (1340-1384); Thomas a Kempis (1380- 1471), author of 'The Imitation of Christ'; Jacob Boehme (1575-1624)— sought and received ultimate knowledge through the light of intuition [4]. Christian saints through the centuries—Juliana of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and many more known and unknown—partook of soul intuition in their attainment of divine realization and mystical union with God.

British poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Traherne, and Pope aspired to intuit and write about the all-pervading Spirit. Emerson (1802-1882) and other American Transcendentalists sought personal experience of immanent spiritual reality through intuition. The German Idealist philosophers Hamann (1730-1788), Herder (1744- 1803), Jacobi (1743-1819), Schiller (1759-1805), and Schopenhauer (1788-1860) emphasized it; and the great modern French philosopher Bergson calls intuition the only faculty capable of knowing the ultimate nature of things. [5]

Jesus' esoteric teachings reveal the universality of religion

The "second birth," the necessity of which Jesus speaks, admits us to the land of intuitional perception of truth. The New Testament may not have been scribed with the word "intuition," but it is replete with references to intuitive knowledge. Indeed, the twenty-one verses describing Nicodemus' visit present, in condensed epigrammatic sayings so typical of Oriental scripture, Jesus' comprehensive esoteric teachings relating to the practical attainment of the infinite kingdom of blissful divine consciousness. These verses have been largely interpreted in support of such doctrines as baptism of the body by water as a prerequisite for entering God's kingdom after death (John 3:5); that Jesus is the only "son of God" (John 3:16); that mere "belief" in Jesus is sufficient for salvation, and that all are condemned who do not believe (John 3:17-18). Such exoteric reading of scripture engulfs in dogma the universality of religion. A panorama of unity unfolds in an understanding of esoteric truth.

Truth is one: exact correspondence with Reality. Divine incarnations do not come to bring a new or exclusive religion, but to restore the One Religion of God-realization. The great ones, like waves, all bathe in the same Eternal Sea and become One with It. The outwardly varying messages of the prophets are part of the necessary relativity that accommodates human diversity. It is narrow-mindedness that creates religious bigotry and divisive denominationalism, constricting truth to ritualistic worship and sectarian dogma; the form is mistaken for the spirit. The essential message of actual contact between man and Maker is diluted with ignorance. Humanity drinks of the polluted waters, understanding not at all why its spiritual thirst remains. Only pure waters can quench a vexing thirst.

The undreamed-of technical advances in civilization made possible by the splitting of the atom and the harnessing of subatomic energies will ultimately bring all peoples into such close proximity in travel and communication that humanity will have to reevaluate its attitudes. Either persistence in ignorant intolerance will spawn mass suffering, or an openness to the common spiritual link of souls will presage a global well-being of peace and amity. This is a clarion call that the time has come to separate truth from spurious convictions, knowledge from ignorance. The teachings of Jesus as understood in harmony with the revelations of the Great Ones of India will revive the practical methods of the intuitive knowing of truth through Self-realization. Realized truth and scientific knowledge are the sure means to combat the shadowy doubts and superstitions hedging humanity. Only a mighty flood of the light of truth through actual communion with God can dispel the gathered darkness of the ages."

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within
You) Volume 1, Discourse 13, pg. 240-243
Paramahansa Yogananda
Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881
ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1
ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

NOTE: If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the sites listed below where this topic or related issues are discussed in detail to promote global peace, religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:

www.adishakti.org/
www.al-qiyamah.org/
www.adi-shakti.org/  — Divine Feminine (Hinduism)
www.holyspirit-shekinah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Christianity)
www.ruach-elohim.org/  — Divine Feminine (Judaism)
www.ruh-allah.org/  — Divine Feminine (Islam)
www.tao-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Taoism)
www.prajnaaparamita.org/  — Divine Feminine (Buddhism)
www.aykaa-mayee.org/  — Divine Feminine (Sikhism)
www.great-spirit-mother.org/  — Divine Feminine (Native Traditions)

"Now, the principle of Mother is in every, every scripture - has to be there." Shri Mataji, Radio Interview 1983 Oct 01, Santa Cruz, USA