What Is Christ Consciousness? What Does "Christ" Mean?
Nayaswami Ananta answers a question that many of us have about Christ Consciousness: Is it accessible by everyone, and is there a difference in the eyes of the various religions and spiritual traditions in the world?
Nayaswami Ananta is a founding member of Ananda Village in California. He and his wife, Nayaswami Maria, directed our Ananda community in Sacramento for over 20 years. They returned to Ananda Village in 2009 and serve the community in a number of ways including running the Ananda Farm and training new members.
Transcript
Question: What is Christ Consciousness? What does Christ mean?
Nayaswami Ananta:
The Christ means the anointed One, if you translate from the Greek, but the Christ is the Consciousness, which is the perfect reflection of the Father within creation.
Jesus would say, I and My Father are one. And, of course, he was speaking the truth. Most people of his time, and I am afraid most people of our time, would not understand what he was talking about. But the Christ is the second part of the Trinity, both in Hinduism and in Christianity. The Father is in him. The Sanskrit is Sat, truth. The Son is Tat, or that referring to the Christ Consciousness, and the third part of the Trinity is AUM or Holy Spirit.
But the Christ Consciousness is the consciousness which does pervade the universe, but is exemplified by the life of Jesus, and all the avatars and all liberated beings, in that they express, not ego consciousness, not a separate, diluted, or divided consciousness, but the unitive consciousness of the Divine Father, and that is the Christ.
Jesus, the man had the Christ Consciousness. So Christ was the title of Jesus, Jesus Christ, Jesus the Christ. But he would share that with Krishna, and Buddha and all the avatars, all the Masters and all really, all enlightened beings, who are liberated, would be able to be living Christ.
The Christ Consciousness Is Accessible to All Human Beings
We all have chakras. We all have the potential to reflect the Christ Consciousness, live the Christ Consciousness, and realize the Christ Consciousness. As Rajarsi Janakananda said, there is no difference between one master and another master because they've attained the Christ Consciousness.
It's a very high state. And so it's not unusual that Jesus was not understood when he said, I and My Father are One. He was eventually tried for, and crucified for expressing that truth. But it is, in fact, the truth and the goal of our human existence is to lift our center, our consciousness, our awareness to the Christ center, and to expand our hearts with Christ's love, so that we can see the world from the vantage point of Christ Consciousness.
In that, we would see or do see Christ Consciousness in everyone, and pervading nature, as own pervading all the animals, the natural experiences, and seeing human behavior as ideally Christ Consciousness, but the Christ Consciousness filtered by the ego, by desires by the veil of materialism and yet still originating in Christ Consciousness. We have a Soul Memory of the unitive consciousness of the Father.
And we are striving. We are drawn. We are making efforts to attain that and regain that in our lives. Some people attempt by accumulating wealth, by accumulating worldly power, by accumulating human love. But really, there is a memory of the Father Who encompasses eight aspects of perfection, Divine Love, Divine Power, Divine Peace, and Divine Joy. These aspects we're striving for because we remember them. When we see the life of Christ, the Buddha, Krishna, the other avatars, and masters, we feel in our hearts that that is the reality that we're seeking.
A Standing Ovation for Mother Teresa
I'll tell you one quick story. We went to a movie in Sacramento, California, many years ago, but a group of us went, and it was a movie about Mother Teresa. And it was just a movie theater. We just paid our movie fee, and we went in and watched a movie, but the movie was a movie about Mother Teresa a documentary. And so we all sat there, everyone, the full house sold out, and everyone watched the movie. And then the movie was over, and the lights went on.
And everyone in the theater stood up and gave it a standing ovation. Because everyone recognizes the Christ Consciousness. We could recognize it in this movie because Mother Teresa was channeling Christ Consciousness from her Guru, Jesus Christ, her being a Christian nun. But there was no one in the theater that...
Mother Teresa wasn't there. None of the Sisters of her order were there. It was just an empty movie theater, but everyone just stood up and gave it a standing ovation because everyone loves the Christ Consciousness, only they don't know it as much as they need to.
