Overview
Excerpts from The Second Coming of Christ by Paramahansa Yogananda
Communion with Christ Consciousness
Jesus Christ was crucified once; but his teachings are crucified daily at the hands of superstition, dogmatism, and pedantic theological misinterpretations. My aim in offering to the world this spiritual interpretation of his words is to show how the Christ Consciousness of Jesus, free from such crucifixion, can be brought back a second time into the souls of all who make the effort to receive it. Surely, with the dawn of this more enlightened age, the time has come to stop the crucifixion of the Christ teachings as given by Jesus. His pristine message should be resurrected from its entombment by Self-realization, the inner enlightened experience of truth.
In these pages I offer to the world an intuitionally perceived spiritual interpretation of the words spoken by Jesus, truths received through actual communion with Christ Consciousness. They will be found to be universally true if they are studied conscientiously and meditated upon with soul-awakened intuitive perception. They reveal the perfect unity that exists among the revelations of the Christian Bible, the Bhagavad Gita of India, and all other time-tested true scriptures. ...
Threefold Meaning of the Scriptures
All such scriptures have a threefold meaning —material, mental, and spiritual. ...
The material meaning of the teachings of Christ emphasizes their value as applied to physical and social well-being—the eternal laws of right living pertinent to man's personal, familial, business, community, national, and international duties as a member of God's worldwide human family.
The mental interpretation explains the application of Christ's teaching for the improvement of man's mind and understanding—development of his intellectual and psychological faculties, his thoughts and moral values.
Interpreted in relation to the spiritual side of man's being, Jesus' teachings point out the way to the kingdom of God—personal realization of each soul's infinite divine potentials as an immortal child of God, through devout communion and ultimate oneness with the Heavenly Father-Creator of all. ...
The Science of Life
The Bible and the Bhagavad Gita are satisfyingly complete, containing the science of life, the eternal principles of truth and philosophy of living that make life beautiful and harmonious. Philosophy is the love of wisdom; religion, as taught by the scriptural prophets, is likewise devotion to highest truth. The personal realization of truth is the science behind all sciences. ....
Original Christianity and Original Yoga
It was Mahavatar Babaji who, in consonance with the wish of Christ, devolved upon me the tremendous task of properly interpreting for the world the profound meaning of Jesus' words. In 1894 Babaji instructed my guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, to write a comparative study of the harmony between the Christian and Hindu scriptures from the point of view of India's Sanatana Dharma, eternal truth. [The book written by Sri Yukteswarji at Babaji's behest is The Holy Science (published by Self-Realization Fellowship).] Babaji further told my Guru that I would be sent to him to train for my mission in the West: to teach, side by side, original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ and original Yoga as taught by Bhagavan Krishna.
For uncounted millenniums, India has been the spiritual lightland of the earth. It is in India that the divine soul-science of yoga—union with God through direct personal communion with Him—has been preserved. That is why Jesus went to India as a youth, and why he returned to India and conferred with Babaji for the spiritual evolution of the world."' Time will testify to this truth, that they have given to the world through the Kriya Yoga teachings of Self-Realization Fellowship (Yogoda Satsanga Society of India) the techniques of meditation by which each soul can reunite with God through inner realization of the universal Christ-Krishna Consciousness.
The Holy Ghost Explained
The promise of Jesus to send the Holy Ghost after he was gone few in the Christian world have understood. Holy Ghost is the sacred, invisible vibratory power of God that actively sustains the universe: the Word, or Aum, Cosmic Vibration, the Great Comforter, the Savior from all sorrows. Within the Holy Ghost Cosmic Vibration is the all-pervading Christ, the Son or Consciousness of God immanent in creation. The method of contacting this Cosmic Vibration, the Holy Ghost, is for the first time being spread worldwide by means of definite meditation techniques of the Kriya Yoga science. Through the blessing of communion with the Holy Ghost, the cup of human consciousness is expanded to receive the ocean of Christ Consciousness. ...
Christ will thus appear a second time in the consciousness of every devout adept who masters the technique of contacting the Holy Ghost, the bestower of indescribable blissful comfort in Spirit. Those who have spiritual ears to hear, let them hear that the promise of Jesus Christ to send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, is being fulfilled. These teachings have been sent to explain the truth as Jesus intended it to be known in the world—not to give a new Christianity, but to give the real Christ-teaching: how to become like Christ, how to resurrect the Eternal Christ within one's Self.
Attunement with God and Christ
To interpret the words of Jesus, not according to whim or dogmatic emotionalism or theological rationalization, but as he meant them, one must be in tune with him. One must know what Christ was and is; and that can be understood only in rapport with his state of Christ Consciousness.
Identifying myself with the consciousness of Jesus, I have felt what he felt when he spoke to his disciples and to the crowds as recorded in the Gospels. What I have tried to convey are the thoughts and consciousness of Jesus that were behind his words when he uttered them. I commune with Christ and ask him: "I don't want to interpret the Bible from my own views. Will you interpret it?" Then he comes to me.
In attunement with Christ in ecstasy and in spirit, I have taken down his explanations to the best of my ability as they came through me; those revelations are written in this treatise. I do not explain. I see. I do not tell you what I think, but what I am led to say by inner realization. ...
Read, understand, and feel Christ speaking to you through this "Second Coming" bible, urging you to be redeemed by realization of the true "Second Coming," the resurrection within you of the Infinite Christ Consciousness. (xx-xxxiii)
