The Atma Jyoti Blog

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was thus. After His mother Mary was promised in marriage to Joseph, before they came together as husband and wife, she was found to be pregnant, the source of that pregnancy being the Holy Spirit.”

All the details of the Lord’s birth should interest us because they are symbols of the elements that produce Christhood. Nobody is conceived haphazardly–it happens in a very exact way. If a single element is omitted there will be no conception. Here, too, there is a precise order of things. Even though each birth is unique, each one is also alike.

The first element of the birth of Jesus was the birth of His Mother. In Paradise Adam and Eve were to produce children in a manner unknown on earth. By an act of will they were to project light from their bodies. This light would combine, and the two polarities would amalgamate to produce a fully-formed body for a soul that would instantly inhabit it. And that would be the birth into Paradise.

The Virgin Mother of Jesus was conceived in just this manner. As Saints Joachim and Anna stood in the passage beneath the place of the Ark of the Covenant the astral light of their auras merged, and a ray of light that was the soul of Mary came from the Ark above. In that instant the New Eve was conceived. All other conceptions are of the animal kind–Mary was conceived in the manner intended for human beings. (The scriptures of India give instances in which great sages and their wives conceived children in this way during meditation. Remember, humans are not even meant to be in physical embodiment upon the earth, but should be in Paradise.)

Undivided consciousness

After the Lord Jesus’ ascension, the Apostle James the Great became the spiritual head of Christianity and the bishop of Jerusalem. Some years later he wrote a letter to the Christians of the Mediterranean world, for they were all his spiritual children. In that letter he told them: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.…Wherefore purify your hearts, ye double minded.” (James 1:8; 4:8) He had heard Jesus Himself say that “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)

If we divide our consciousness between God and anything else, the conception of the inner Christ cannot come about, for we are engaging in spiritual adultery. One of the books in the Nag Hammadi Library speaks of the soul falling into material existence and going around committing fornication with all it met. The idea is that the soul enters into union with material objects and either identifies with them or has its consciousness utterly shaped by them. For that very reason, severe as it sounds, Saint James further wrote: “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” (James 4:4) These are words addressed to genuine aspirants, of course, but the assumption is that we all are aspirants to higher consciousness.

From that soul which has no contact with anything else but God, which lives touching nothing but God, in that soul the conception of the Christ takes place. Does this mean that to bring forth Christ we must see, hear, touch, taste, or smell nothing? Both Yes and No. It means that we maintain contact with God and experience all things objectively, not allowing ourselves to be seized and controlled by that experience. Rather than getting stuck up in the tar baby of external life we keep ourselves “stuck” to God alone. How? Through meditation centered on the consciousness of spirit.

We must ourselves be like the icon of the Virgin Mary known as The Sign of Salvation. She has Her hands raised–both in prayer and to indicate that She is “touching” no earthly thing. Within the center of Her breast is the Christ Child, blessing. We, Her children, shall become like Her if we persevere.

Spiritual conception

No man, angel, archangel, or any of the great Bodiless Powers made the Virgin Mary pregnant. God, the Holy Spirit alone did so. Similarly, nothing in any of the many realms of existence can conceive Christ in us. Only the Holy Spirit, overshadowing us through meditation, is capable of doing so. No good deeds, or “spiritual” acts can produce the Christ in us. No worship, pilgrimage, study of holy books, or even association with holy people can engender the Christ in us, because they are outside us in the world. We should believe Jesus when He tells us that the kingdom of God is within.

One of the favorite activities of spiritual butterflies in India is to challenge a spiritual teacher, saying: “We have visited so many mahatmas [great souls] and listened to their words, and yet we do not have peace of mind.” The teacher then says some silly platitude about perseverance, faith, or some such. Really they should say: “Of course you are not gaining peace of mind. Your mind is inside and the mahatmas and their words are outside. Until you turn within yourself and forget external sources, peace is impossible.”

Read more of the spiritual interpretation of Christmas in The Birth of Christ.