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Date Posted: 10:21:45 02/27/04 Fri
Author: NoEric - 5 Jan 2004
Subject: SRF, do not publish Master's Second Coming of Christ! - Eric Dwight Ben-Meir

Here are some questions:

1) Are the words in the New Testament Christ's in the first place? Which ones are and which ones are not? What are some ways to tell the difference when the New Testament was written over so many centuries?

2) If Yogananda is commenting on it from English, is he not commenting on a book that is already an interpretation since the act of translating perforce requires interpretation? Whose translation "commentary" are you reading when you read Yogananda's commentary? Whose commentary on Christ's life are you reading when you read any version of the New Testament, considering the number of hands it went through in the centuries after his demise?

3) Why must we be so tenacious to the Christian form Master taught in when the form may be distancing people from Master's path? Are the SRF Board of Directors delusional into thinking that the world, which is full of intellectual people, are going to blindly swallow an interpretation of the New Testament regardless of the fact that they know Yogananda is interpreting the words of ignoramuses and power hungry religious authoritarians?

4) What will the Second Coming add to Master's work? All the SRF Service Readings contain excerpts of the Second Coming because of Master's efforts during the services he gave to combine the "original Christianity with the original Yoga." What did they add to his services? What was the purpose of juxtaposing the Gita with the New Testament, though they say very different things? Since he could have easily given the same message in his services without the New Testament references, what does the reference add? Is it not just a form that his largely Christian audience could easily accept? And if so, do not forms change over time in order to accommodate the spirit? Which is more important, spirit or form? Might it be that in the SRF Board holding onto the form they are undermining Master's spirit, which is to get the teachings out to the public in a form that the public can accept? Is that not the example Master himself gave when he made so much effort in adapting his teachings to a form that would be acceptable in the religious environment he was working in? And if he went through that effort to reach people, why shouldn't we? Is SRF not confusing his form (Christian-based writings) with his spirit (the message he gave through those writings?) Indeed, it seems to me that his spirit, displayed in his example, stands for reaching your audience.

5) Is the Christ that Master communed with the same Christ that St. Francis communed with? If so, why didn't St. Francis teach what Master taught? Did they both commune with the same Christ depicted in the New Testament? If so, why didn't Master teach of an eternal hell, speaking in tongues, converting the world in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, vicarious atonement, eternal heaven, etc, only son of God? If he taught these things, why did he so need to reinterpret them when the original meaning of these things in the New Testament was not so noble and universal as he made them out to be?

6) Instead of everyone claiming to represent Christ, is it not honest to represent the New Testament as the historian portrays it, leave it alone, and then honestly say: "These are my teachings. They may or may not agree with your interpretation of the New Testament, but since no teaching must rest on the authority of the teacher, and all teachings must be accountable to reason and unbiased investigation, the truth of a teaching must ignore who said what and instead focus on what is being said." (?) In other words, who cares what Christ or the New Testament or any book says? Nothing is true simply because Christ said so or any author says so. Nothing can stand true simply on the authority of someone. That would be a fraud. The only people who care what Christ said are the Christians who think the New Testament is the Word of God. And they think that because they have been told that for centuries by the very people who were busy writing the New Testament. There is no teaching in the New Testament that can't be had from a hundred other places. Reason alone can lead one to the conclusions of the Sermon on the Mount, and it has done so in countless philosophers before and after Christ. That book is only important because of two thousand years of people telling humanity, parents telling kids, that it is important. But Christians open the book and turn off their discrimination and reasoning. And that leads to violence, religious wars, and oppression. So, why is Yogananda interpreting it other than because people care what Christ supposedly said only because Christ supposedly said it and Christ supposedly is unique to Christians? Is Yogananda not playing on the Christian's reverence for a particular book?

7) Lastly, the true intent of Christ's words as they were not written in the New Testament is something Master has given us. He gave it to us in the things he said and wrote, but more than that he gave it to us in his example. And for that, he can just as easily ignore the New Testament. That he did not only means to me that he, since he is not a scholar, does not give a darn what the New Testament is really saying. All he cares about are the teachings of his Masters getting to the humanity that he loves.

Here I will paraphrase "Christ:"

The Second Coming was created for those who still needed it.
Those who no longer need it were not created to read the Second Coming.


Sankara Saranam

Read this essay in context at http://www.pranayama.org/message.html

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