The Atma Jyoti Blog

A Commentary on the Inner Meaning of the Gospel of St. Matthew

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, by another road they [the wise men] went back to their country.”
(Matthew 2:12 – Wuest’s translation)

“By another road they went back to their country.” We came from God and we return to God; but the paths by which we leave and which we return are not the same. One is the taking on of illusion and the other is the divestment of illusion. One is the downward-going lefthand path of increasing involvement in ego and material consciousness and the other is the upward-going righthand path of decreasing involvement in ego and material consciousness. One is the path of unconscious evolution and the other is the path of conscious evolution. Both are necessary–first the lefthand path and then the righthand path–but they are mutually exclusive of one another, antithetical to one another. We cannot have one foot on the lefthand path and the other on the righthand path, for they lead in opposite directions. “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)

Now that is the part that sometimes unsettles and pricks us, but there is another aspect to the matter that is so wonderful, hopeful, and positive that it takes away all the discomfort we may be feeling. And that aspect is the wonderful truth that there really is a “road” that leads back to our country–back to God. That our return to God is not haphazard or whimsical (on the part of either us or God), but is a definite, precise, and methodical route to divine consciousness. That is why, when preparing to return to the Father, Jesus told His disciples: “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” (John 14:4) To know the way to God–what a wonderful thing! To no longer wander in a vague search, either not knowing the way or thinking that a false way is the true way. When He had been the prophet Isaiah, Jesus had prophesied of “the way of holiness” that would be a spiritual “highway” to the Infinite. (Isaiah 35:8)

Another road

The return of the wise by another way is a symbol of the fact that all the “good” in us which brought us to the point of meeting our inner Christ must become “baptized in Christ.” That is, these inner powers, however helpful they may have been heretofore, have got to be transmuted–spiritualized–before being made again operative in our life. They, too, must be “renewed” in order for us to be able to “walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4) “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5) “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (II Corinthians 5:17) This is very important, for since we are in the grip of ego we like to hold on to the past “good” of which we are proud, and want to keep running in the same tracks as before. It seems virtually impossible for most people to realize what a total revolution is required before we can begin to hope of real spiritual attainment–and even more impossible for them to get busy and start renovating themselves from A to Z.

All our faculties which enable us to function intelligently must also be “returned” to their correct orientation of spirit; they must be taken from their present status of serving our ego and given back to their rightful owner–our divine spirit.

It is evolution from life to life on this earth that has brought us to this point. And that was good. But now we must disdain any further terms (lives) on earth and aspire to evolve henceforth into the higher realms of being. The blind, haphazard seeking that we engaged in through past lives was not without benefit; but now it must be abandoned; from now on we must seek in a careful, intelligent, and systematic manner.

Our own country

The very purpose of finding the Christ within is to enable ourselves to return, like the wise men, into our own country–the place of our origin. This is a most important fact, for when we realize that we are going back to where we came from–that it is our nature to be there–our perspective on the matter is greatly affected, for we realize:

1. We do not need to become something other than what we really are–we do not need to make ourselves into something else. So all the struggle that we see virtually all religions engaging in is absolutely unnecessary–even detrimental to attainment of the true goal. By misapplied understanding and application religion binds us and keeps us from knowing our true selves just as much as any of the other evils of the world. (Yes, I mean that implication: erroneous religion is one of the evils of the world.) For we only need to reclaim our eternal status, praying: “O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5)
2. We do need, however, to stop being what we are not. Once we do that, we shall automatically become what we are. When we endeavor to stop the delusion, though, we discover that we are not passively in ignorance. Instead, we are frantically applying all our energies to create and maintain our ignorance and illusion. Since this is not a conscious process on our part we do not realize what we are doing. Authentic meditation reveals this situation to us right away, however, and we go on from there. Meditation, then, is not a doing but a stopping. This fact reveals that nearly all meditation being engaged in is invalid for spiritual realization–that is just a tool for perpetuating our illusions.
3. Since self-realization is our nature we need not doubt the possibility of our return. For “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven.” (John 3:13) The very fact that we can ascend means we have first descended. We have already done half the journey!
4. Our return is inevitable, having been eternally predestined for us. “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)

It is also necessary for us to realize that spiritual experience or awakening is not the goal: it is only the beginning. The wise men did not stay with Jesus in Nazareth. They had to go back home. It is the same with us. No matter how wonderful our spiritual awakenings and experiences may be, we have to turn from them and be about our “Father’s business” (Luke 2:49) of return.

The wise went home, and we, if we are wise, will also go home. We must understand that true religion is not just pleasing or placating God, or even this emotional idea of loving God; it is returning to God. It is getting up and getting out of here. As it says in the Constitution of the Apostles: “May grace come to us and may this world depart from us.” We do not belong here; we never have.

We must know that we came from God, and then we must use every waking moment of our life to return to God, otherwise we are not wise, but foolish. We have to get away from the land of Herod, away from the land dominated by the alien powers of the Romans, and go back to where God is the heart of everything.

Read more commentaries on the inner meaning of the Gospels, and the teachings of Jesus.

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