Why Christianity lost its Way right at the Outset
‘(Presence) cannot be taught but is continuously shared. Because it is our inheritance, no one can lay claim to it. It need not be argued, proven or embellished, for it stands alone simply as it is and can only remain unrecognised and rejected, or realised and lived.’ Tony Parsons
Let’s start with a disclaimer.
I am the grandson of a priest, cathedral canon and former missionary in India. I spent my formative years living in a vicarage, which is to say, I have some experience with the church and those who make it their home.
And what I found, as the great psychiatrist M Scott Peck tells us in one of his books, I suspect People of the Lie, is that evil most often hides beneath a veneer of good.
I am not going into detail here but it is true to say that good and evil live in all of us and, just as you may be witnessing in the world today, both can rise together.
We should never be surprised that a holy person often possesses an elongated shadow and that most Christians do not actively work on their own psychology.
Neither, if I may be so bold, do they truly understand the words of their saviour.
One simple mistake in fact has wrought worlds of confusion, wars, torture and millions dead.
We have simply looked at Christ in the wrong way, aided and abetted by a Catholic church which omitted the more mystical books from the Bible, tried to eliminate references to reincarnation, and tied the burgeoning church to merchants, traders and politicking, the very stuff that belongs to another sort of god entirely.
It’s an unholy mess which great numbers of sincere ordinary people have managed to wrest something finer from.
Why did Jesus nearly get stoned on more than one occasion (and I’m not talking about getting high with the disciples).
Because he said things the dualistic mind could not possibly comprehend. He was forever frustrated at this, constantly at pains to say, ‘I am telling you the truth’.
It’s no different to how many of us feel trying to get people to see what is happening in our world today.
We know he resorted to parables to get the message across but still people couldn’t grasp it.
Why? Because the human being, then and now, sees himself as a body and a mind with God someplace else.
It didn’t matter much that Christ said, the kingdom of Heaven is within you. Because the ‘I’ or ego, which is all most know themselves as, is subjective, it can only envision life as a series of objects and experiences.
Of course then, ‘I and the Father are one,’ sounded blasphemous enraging many, all under the spell of seeming separation as now.
Christ was talking about his understanding of the truth of the non-dual state. There is only God, appearing as many.
But it is impossible to see that until you begin approaching a higher state of awareness when the real picture comes into view.
‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,’ is the key statement that confuses so many, I believe.
Such statements are very common among enlightened beings, but they are not speaking of themselves from their human perspective, rather from their realization of their oneness with God (consciousness).
Of course it would be a ridiculous inflation to claim one’s ego as God, but that is what the haters in their woeful human limitation believed.
No wonder they wanted him dead and the state became frightened of his power.
I suspect a mistranslation, but he was speaking of the I Am in that one quote that has done more damage than any other utterance he made. Consciousness is the way, the truth and life and I am that.
This is no different to God telling Moses, I am that I Am.
Elsewhere, in another dangerous episode, Jesus claimed, ‘Before Abraham was born, I Am’. (I thoroughly recommend everyone reads the Gospel of John, simply heart-meltingly beautiful.)
But what can this mean and why did he not say, ‘I was’. Because again he is referring to the timeless I Am which at base we all are and which is ever present.
The consciousness that upholds the world was always there and we can have continued access to it, if we ‘remain in my love’.
In other words, if you don’t stay close and do the practice (what Christ called staying attached to the vine) you will inevitably drift into imagination, the la la world of the mind, which is not even real.
Now, try telling this to all those who instead of understanding the message, hold out an elevated Christ on a podium to say, just this man no other.
That is not to say Jesus did not have a unique place in history, that should be self evident.
But no bona fide teacher would ever claim dominion for themselves as an ego, and the good ones do everything they can to stop their numbers from doing so, often without success. If only Christians could recognize and quit their ludicrous projection.
You will hear the language of ‘Come to Me’ everywhere in the spiritual world; it just doesn’t mean what we think.
Jesus knew the truth, he was one with the Father, but it is doubtful he would ever label himself as Christian as that is a concept and his world, the real world, can never be conceptual. We might say I Am is the first concept and rises before all others, ideas of God, and the world.
The cross represents the destruction of the individual, the price for God or Self realization. Again, the ignorant will view Self realization through their own ego projecting egoic motives on to others where often there are none. The Self does not mean me, the individual.
I have no doubt that Christ surrendered his whole life completely. That is what we are all called to do.
The great Indian masters, again misunderstood by the west, say it is one’s sacred duty to rid oneself of the ego-I and rest in the I Am, beingness or presence.
Resurrection is to become free of the original sin of identifying with the body. This is what it is to be born again.
Why have churches been failing for decades and have now laid themselves open to vicious attacks from the woke left?
It is surely at least in part because they had a diamond in their hand which through misunderstanding they threw away.
Again, through more misunderstanding, they arrogantly claimed it’s my way or the highway. They thought they had the evidence; they did but they could not understand it; instead it was corrupted.
Christ does have the right way but had the grave misfortune of being failed by those looking through the wrong lens.
He knew his way, the way of non-duality as the essence of all religions, I have no doubt.
You can’t blame people for not seeing the truth because for truth to be revealed the person has to disappear, at least to some extent.
That’s the real message of Christ, the true centre of all religion and where one day we will all wind up.
Now, if that message had been preached to me as a boy and if I had seen those around me walk their talk, I would have happily remained in church.
But what I saw, of course, were flawed human beings acting out their own unresolved psychology, shamed egos unable to be honest.
This is the point where Christians will tell me, yes but we are all poor, flawed sinners. True, but you don’t have to be, that’s Christ’s message.
If there was as much emphasis on inner transformation as worship, all would be well.
Ramana Maharshi, the Indian sage, has some interesting things to say about Christianity and the arrogance of seeing life through the eye of the individual.
In this case, whether you are subject or object, seer or seen, you lose.
What a terrible and tragic waste despite which still many have been saved by grace as the divine takes pity on our foolishness but sees the heart of the true devotee and rewards it.
I know many people who have turned to Christ these past few years as the world descends into chaos and darkness.
That can only be a good thing, so long as the true message is sought not the mind’s version which has already deceived so many.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
