The Disciples of Christ
A disciple of Christ is anyone who is seeking to emulate Christ in any measure. A disciple of Christ, by gradations, can be one of the 12 apostles or Mary, the Mother of Christ, or Joseph, or Mary Magdalene, or St. Paul, who was headed to Damascus to kill Christians. When Jesus knocked him off his horse and said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”…he became a really good disciple after that!
We don’t often merit such direct intervention from the guru but the guru is love. Christ’s love is always offered to us. It’s offered to everyone in the world or through other masters. There are stories of Christ appearing to Indian saints. One among them being Ramakrishna. [He told] Rama Krishna to help one of Jesus’ former disciples to attain liberation in that life. So, the guru-discipleship relationship is always there, here, and available.
As many as received Him, to them, he gave the power to become the sons of God, sons and daughters, and nonbinary children of God, because the Christ consciousness is offered, and we come to that consciousness through Aum—through the creation, preservation, dissolution of this world.
We turn our attention to the Christ consciousness. We seek to reclaim it. We seek to renew it. We seek to remember it and we seek to come out of the material duality—and to seek is to be a disciple. The degree to which we pursue—that is the degree of our discipleship at any moment in time and it is under our complete control.
We can always accelerate—improve our discipleship. We can always go to sleep at the wheel. We can move backward. We can veer off in our discipleship and be re-enamored of materialism, of anger, greed, racism, sexism, and fill in the blanks. There are all sorts of -isms to be aware of and to be watchful for, but discipleship is the movement toward the Christ Consciousness and Self-realization.
Open your heart to Me and I will enter and take charge of your life. That’s the Guru’s promise. We can at any moment become more like Christ. And the more we actively pursue attunement with that Christ Consciousness, by study of the scriptures, by opening our hearts to Divine Love, by giving gifts at Christmas—by Christmas shopping for our friends, by singing Christmas carols, by celebrating the winter solstice, by repeating the names of the Buddha…
There’s no one way to be a disciple of the Christ Consciousness and that’s why there’s so many sects of Christianity. That’s why there are so many true paths to God. That’s why there are so many shamans in the world, because each people, each culture, each time, each nation is and has access to the Christ Consciousness to the Divine nature.
God’s chosen people have always been those of every race and nation who with deep love, choose Him. So, it’s a question of following and moving towards the Christ Consciousness, but the end discipleship is to be one with the guru. The end of discipleship is to be a Christ. That’s something that mystically the yogis emphasize.
A lot of sects of Christianity aren’t there in their teachings, and that’s fine because their job is to take people from where they are and move them forward and directionally. I think everyone in the world could be a better disciple but it’s for each of us to find our footing, to find our direction day by day. One day at a time, as the saying goes. Just be more Christ-like, more Mary-like, more Mary Magdalene-like, [and] more John-like, St. John the Apostle.
The saints are the true custodians of religion. So to tune in to the saints, the gurus—the men and women who have exemplified in one way or another to some extent, discipleship to Christ… And that would take us to our leaders… I, as a young man, was taken by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s example of Christian living to bring about political and social reform. Gandhi,…fill in the blanks. Every country…Nelson Mandela…and all the other men and women who bring us towards Christ Consciousness.
Christ Consciousness being a perfect reflection of the Father’s consciousness within this creation—we move towards love, joy, brotherhood, acceptance, forgiveness, and a whole list of other Christ-like qualities and the life of Christ. There’s one saying in the Bible at the end. I think it was St. John — If all the things that Jesus did were written down, all the books in the world couldn’t contain it. So, there’s plenty to emulate in the life of Christ, the masters, and saints of every religion.
You can also watch the video What Does It Mean to be a Disciple of Christ?
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