Vedanta declares that the Atman, or the Divine Self in each individual, is all that exists, has become everything. The self-realized soul should, therefore, not only know but be this divine self. Christ is that living embodiment of the Divine Essence of the Vedanta philosophy.
In all of Jesus Christ’s teachings, it is the Realized Soul that speaks:
I and my Father are one means not that a man is one with God—but that man’s essence is one with Divine essence, soul with the Soul of the universe.
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. When Christ says that “I” am the Truth, he is speaking from that condition, that spiritual reality, which he has known and become. Indeed, when one identifies with Pure Spirit or Soul, and a total disregard and indifference toward the body and its work results, one is in total attunement with God—who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Know ye not that ye are Gods? The Christ-consciousness is our destiny also: to realize within what He experienced, which is the principle of universal oneness, and wholeness. That will be the experience of the Truth we have heard so much of, the Truth that is the foundation of our being. As Jesus Christ says, You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
I am the Resurrection and the Life. It is the completely awakened consciousness in Him that is the Resurrection and the Life—resurrected out of the tomb of its previous body-consciousness.
Before Abraham was, I am reminds us that the soul antedates the first man, and the last; its timelessness transcending past and future alike.
Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world assures us of the eternal life of our true being, ever sustaining us to the final end of mortal life—and beyond.
And so with all his other mystical utterances.
Christ is the soul in total identification with the Divine Self. He is one of the supreme instances of personality becoming transformed into Divine Principle, of the individual into the cosmic, of man into God. His life is the soul’s journey to self-realization; it is the career of the soul unfolding its natural sovereignty over nature, over men, over time, over all things. All his acts become symbolic, all his words allegories. Interpreted thus, He belongs to the whole world.
Note: The above quotations are from the King James version of the Holy Bible.
Suggested Readings:
Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta by Swami Prabhavananda, Vedanta Press, Reprint 1991.
Ramakrishna and Christ, The Supermystics by Paul Hourihan, Vedantic Shores Press, 2002
See also What is Vedanta?
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