The Mind's Christ Concept

Say the word "Christ" and most of us immediately picture Jesus. We almost never use the term any other way. Yet the life and death of Jesus is not where the idea of "Christ" begins and ends. The teaching of unconditional love that he gave runs through other cultures and faiths too, and when you look closely, the Christ stories carry hidden meanings that a person can put to work in their own life to reach abilities they didn't know they had.

The messages left by everyone who has ever been called "Lord and Saviour" can be read as instructions for ourselves. What happens when you actually apply them points to something specific: the title Christ does not name a single individual. It names an office, a role, a state of mind that any of us can step into. Choosing that path opens possibilities that let us change our corner of the world for the better, and you don't have to be religious to draw on it. Read as metaphor and esoteric symbol, certain episodes in the Bible take on fresh meaning.

Consider the forty days and nights Jesus spent in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. That whole sequence maps onto a stage of our own inner journey.

The wilderness temptation stands for the period right after we discover new principles to live by. Some kind of awakening tells us we need to change. The moment we set higher expectations for our own character and start trying to live up to them, we run into a run of trials and tests. That's to be expected: old habits are breaking, new ones are forming, and the process can be brutal. The wilderness itself carries the feeling of isolation, of barrenness, of having nothing to feed on. We get stretched to our limit during stretches of change and self-discipline. But Jesus was only there forty days, which says the stage ends. He was also fasting, and that stands for the fact that at this point we aren't chasing material gain or physical pleasure. The attention is on the spiritual side of things.

The devil's first move was to tell Jesus to turn stones into bread. Jesus was starving and refused. Read as symbol, this is the pull we feel, once we're focused on the spiritual, to spend our energy and power on material gain instead. Jesus shows that at this stage we may need to pass up material advancement so the spiritual work can grow.

The second temptation was a dare to prove God. The devil told Jesus to throw himself down so the angels would catch him and settle the question. Jesus refused. This is the urge, once spiritual power starts flowing, to show off with it, to prove something to other people, or just to test it for its own sake. Jesus makes the point that higher powers shouldn't be spent on pointless display.

Last, the devil spread out all the land as far as Jesus could see and offered it in exchange for worship. Again Jesus refused. The lesson: we shouldn't bow to what we know is wrong in order to pile up power and possessions. We shouldn't strike the kind of bargain that gave us the phrase "a deal with the devil."

The crucifixion holds its own esoteric charge. Beforehand, Jesus was sold out by one of his own friends for money. That betrayal stands for the way people we counted as closest may not grasp or respect our spiritual path, and some of them will try to wreck it.

In the garden of Gethsemane, knowing what was coming, Jesus sweated blood. This tells us that real pain and real stress can hit us on the spiritual road, and feeling that way is not proof we've gone wrong. What matters is that, whatever the weight of it, we keep doing what we judge to be spiritually right, the way Jesus walked on toward the cross.

Pontius Pilate tried him, found no guilt, and sent him to execution anyway because of how the crowd reacted. The warning in that is plain: even when people recognize we're right to live out our spirituality, we may still be treated unfairly. We can't lean on authorities, religious or civil, to decide correctly on our behalf.

The crucifixion itself marks one of the strongest stages of a person's spiritual life. It stands for the complete surrender of ego and physical self to a spiritual destiny. This is the peak of Christ consciousness, the point where all selfishness has been spent. By now we've poured our time and effort into shaping a life that serves the world. It is the ego finally dissolving into the Divine Mind: the death of "Self" in mind, heart, and spirit.

Reading the Bible this way lets its teaching reach into ordinary life. The life of Jesus works as a blueprint for our own progress. We can make ourselves into the "Son of God" and gain the same power to lift up and restore humanity.

- Iman Mohiki