This is a continuation of our extracts from Yogananda’s The Second Coming of Christ
articles that originally appeared in East-West, Inner Culture, and Self-Realization magazines.
Man is a combination of body, life force, and consciousness. His consciousness is a reflection of Christ consciousness. His life force is a reflection of cosmic energy. His body is condensed cosmic energy and life energy. Consciousness, life, force, and the body are the different rates of conscious, cosmic vibration.
Life force vibrating more finely becomes cosmic consciousness, and life force when it vibrates grossly, changes into electrons, atoms, molecules, and bodily flesh. After all, the human body, life force, and consciousness, being three different vibrations, are held together by the nucleus of ego and soul. Man is condensed miniature vibration. In order to free the soul from the cage of the threefold vibrations of body, life force, and consciousness, it has to be baptized or united with the original cosmic vibration of “Aum.” When the wave feels itself isolated from the sea, then the boundaries of the wave must be expanded until they take on the shape of the sea.
In the same way when the soul feels itself confined in the physical, astral, and ideational bodies, it should be taught how to detach itself consciously from these three bodies and become expanded into spirit. By the highest meditation the body loosens its atomic vibrations and becomes life force, and by deeper meditation, the astral body becomes elaborated into the ideational body. Then by wisdom the ideational consciousness becomes expanded into Christ consciousness.
But it must be remembered that when the student meditates, his mind is diverted from the physical impressions of matter outside his body to the vibrating awareness of his flesh. Then his consciousness is diverted from the vibrations of the body to the vibrations of the astral body. Then his consciousness moves from the vibrations of the astral body to the vibrations of consciousness in all atoms. Then the consciousness of the student becomes aware of the vibrations of the Holy Spirit within all atoms.
This is the way that ordinary consciousness should be baptized or expanded into Christ consciousness through the expanding power of the Holy Spirit. However, this is not done by trying to make it happen, but is a natural consequence of faithful deep meditation practiced throughout the student’s life. As the lotus unfolds naturally in the sunlight, so the consciousness of the meditator unfolds and expands into infinity (eternity) just as naturally–without intention or will.
So the “word” vibrating in all atoms is called the Holy Spirit or the Sacred Vibration. As said above, when by the practice of meditation one is able to shut out sounds of matter, his consciousness passes through the awareness of the body and through the astral body to the “cosmic body” that is the Holy Spirit. Thus, feeling within his consciousness the cosmic vibration in all finite vibrating matter, the soul of the meditator becomes one with the Holy Spirit or Holy Vibration.
Jesus the Savior, having met His teacher of former lives, Saint John, was baptized by this omnipresent vibration, and He also saw with it the spiritual dove, or the Light that is vibrating creation, Christ consciousness, and the transcendent Spirit as well.
Baptism by Christ Consciousness
This voice of the Omnipresent Vibration of the Holy Spirit signified “Thou art My Son.” Jesus felt His consciousness attuned to the Christ consciousness or the only begotten reflection of God the Father’s Intelligence in the Holy Vibration. In other words, Jesus first felt His body as the entire vibratory creation in which His little body was included. Then feeling His cosmic finite body, He felt that within the cosmic body of all creation there was a Christ or Universal Intelligence. This Christ is the Only Begotten Son, because it is the only active reflected intelligence of the indirectly active, transcendental (lying beyond creative vibration) God the Father, in vibratory creation. As the husband is reborn in the wife as the son, so God the Father (transcendental Intelligence) is reflected in the womb of the Virgin Mary (the Virgin Creation), as the only begotten Son, or Christ Consciousness.
The Unmanifested Spirit
Just as the sun is bright and spherically spreads its rays in space when it stands by itself without any surrounding creation, so the Spirit is called the Unmanifested Absolute.
When Nothing Was, Spirit Was
When no goblin nebulae breathed and glided in the space body, when no fire-eyed baby planets opened their eyes in the cradle of space, when no star-rivers ran across the tracts of infinite space, when the ocean of space was unpeopled, uninhabited by floating island universes, when the sun and moon and planetary families did not swim in space, when the little ball of earth with its dollhouses and little human beings did not exist, when no object of any kind had come into being–Spirit existed. This Spirit in its unmanifested form cannot be described except that it was the knower, the known, and all the objects known which existed as one. Its being, Its cosmic consciousness, and Its powers were all one without differentiation in It.
The Spirit Is Ever-Existing, Ever-Conscious, Ever-New Bliss
It could be described as the ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new, joyous spirit.
Spirit is ever-new Bliss. There was even no space, for the Spirit did not exist in space or time; It was everything that there was, is, or is to be. Space and time are categories of objects; as soon as a human being sees a planet hanging in the sky, then he conceives that the planet is occupying dimensional space and is existing in time. But when there were no finite objects in creation, neither was there space nor time, but only the Blissful Spirit existed.
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