Krishna Consciousness / Hare Krishna: “A preacher of God consciousness is a friend to all living beings. Lord Jesus Christ exemplified this by teaching, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ But the Christians like to misinterpret this instruction. They think the animals have no soul, and therefore they think they can freely kill billions of innocent animals in the slaughterhouses. So although there are many persons who profess to be Christians, it would be very difficult to find one who strictly follows the instructions of Lord Jesus Christ…Christ can take the sufferings for the previous sins of his devotees… Similarly, when you commit sinful activities, you must suffer—not Jesus Christ. This is God’s law…He wanted to deliver God consciousness…Of course, the message that Christ preached was just according to his particular time, place, and country, and just suited for a particular group of people…He is our guru. He is preaching God consciousness, so he is our spiritual master… Actually, anyone who is preaching God’s glories must be accepted as a guru. Jesus Christ is one such great personality…Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, and Christos is the Greek version of the word Krsna…
So when we address God as ‘Christ,’ ‘Krsta,’ or ‘Krsna,’ we indicate the same all-attractive Supreme Personality of Godhead. When Jesus said, ‘Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,’ that name of God was Krsta or Krsna. ‘Christ’ is simply another way of saying ‘Krsta,’ and ‘Krsta’ is another way of pronouncing Krsna. Therefore, the Christian clergymen should cooperate with the Krsna consciousness movement. They should chant the name Christ or Christos and should stop condoning the slaughter of animals. This is not some philosophy that I have fabricated; it is taught in the Bible. If the Christians follow these principles, the world situation will improve. If they simply stop killing animals and chant the holy name of Christ, everything will be perfect. The Bible also demands this. So the Christians should cooperate with us and chant. Actually, it doesn’t matter—Krsna or Christ—the name is the same. The main point is to chant the name of God. The easiest way is to chant the maha-mantra: Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.”1
[I wrote a response to this at this link]
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – Transcendental Meditation:
“Be still and know that you are God.”2
“Our goal is to create Heaven on Earth, and we are taking practical steps to accomplish it.”3
Paramahansa Yogananda – Self-Realization Fellowship: “In the great saints we see combined the ideal masculine and feminine qualities. Jesus was like that; so were all the masters…
[God] manifests Himself in whatever way He pleases. He appears before His saints in the form each of them holds dear: a Christian sees Christ, a Hindu beholds Krishna or the Divine Mother, and so on. Devotees whose worship takes an impersonal turn become conscious of the Lord as an infinite Light or as the wondrous sound of Aum, the primal Word, the Holy Ghost…
Krishna, like Christ, is a title signifying the spiritual magnitude of the avatar—his oneness with God… Christ center: The center of concentration and will in the body, at the point between the eyebrows. Seat of Christ Consciousness and of the spiritual eye…
Christ Consciousness: ‘Christ” or ‘Christ Consciousness’ is the projected consciousness of God immanent in all creation. In Christian scripture it is called the ‘only begotten son,’ the only pure reflection of God the Father; in Hindu scripture it is called Kutastha Chaitanya, the cosmic intelligence of spirit everywhere present in creation. It is the universal consciousness, oneness with God, manifested by Jesus, Krishna and other avatars. Great saints and yogis know it as the state of samadhi meditation wherein their consciousness has become identified with the intelligence in every particle of creation; they feel the entire universe as their own body.”4
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh:
[Bhagwan Shree means Sir God]
“When you call Jesus, really you have called me. When you call me, really you have called Jesus.” 5
Baba Ram Dass – Hanuman Foundation / Lama Foundation:
“Avatar:—(lit. to come from without) an incarnation of the Supreme Lord in human form, e.g., Christ, Krishna, Rama, Zoroaster, Buddha.”6
Daheshism:
“Jesus Christ is rejected as God Almighty. The underlying essence of all religions is the same. All of God’s Prophets (Jesus Christ, Moses, Mohammed, Gandhi, Buddha, Dahesh, and others) are accepted.”7
Krishnamurti – The Theosophical Society: Krishnamurti stated “that neither Buddha nor Christ had claimed divinity or wished to found a religion; it was their followers who had done so after they were dead.” Asked, “Are you the Christ?” Krishnamurti answered, “If I say I am the Christ, you will create another authority. If I say I am not, you will also create another authority.” Krishnamurti said, “A reporter asked me if I was the Christ and I said, yes, in the true sense but not in the traditional, accepted sense of the word.” The Theosophical Society taught, “Lord Maitreya, the World Teacher—the Christ in the West, the Bodhisattva in the East…The Lord Maitreya, they maintain, had twice taken possession of a human body in order to bring to the world a new teaching at a period of dire need—first that of Sri Krishna in the fourth century B.C. and then that of Jesus. The time would soon ripen when the Lord Maitreya would once again take possession of a human vehicle and give a new religion to the world.”
Krishnamurti “explained what he meant by ‘the World Teacher’: I hold that there is an eternal Life which is the Source and the Goal, the beginning and the end and yet it is without end or beginning. In that Life alone is there fulfillment. And anyone who fulfills that Life has the key to the Truth without limitation. That Life is for all. Into that Life the Buddha, the Christ entered. From my point of view, I have attained, I have entered into that Life. That Life has no form as Truth has no form, no limitation. And to that Life everyone must return.” 8
ECKANKAR: “A very new member of ECK…did the Spiritual Exercises of ECK every day during her first two months of studying the ECK discourses. These are monthly lessons in the spiritual works that the Mahanta, the Living ECK Master usually sends to ECKists for the expansion of consciousness… The Light of God filled her Spiritual Eye, and a few notes of music (the Sound of God) followed. Then came the sound of rushing air or wind. She was moving in her true spiritual form, the Soul body. But suddenly doubt and fear filled her heart. A former Pentecostal, she immediately called out the name of Jesus. Things started to go in reverse. Where once she had moved forward, she was now traveling backward in the spiritual worlds…
[she] told herself that she would put her complete faith and trust in the Mahanta. Again she moved forward. The lesson gained from this Soul Travel experience was that if she placed her trust in anyone other than the Mahanta, she would indeed regress instead of moving forward spiritually.” 9
“Call Him anything you like, Love, the Christ Consciousness, the Nazarene, the Logos, the Bread of Life, but it makes no difference. He is anything that you can think of and more too. However, do not put Him in a Special category, for ALL Saviors and prophets who came to earth to help mankind did their part and passed on the glory of the heavenly kingdom.”10
Elizabeth Clare Prophet – Church Universal And Triumphant:
“Saint Germain, Kuthumi, El Morya, Afra, Mother Mary, Saint Teresa of Avila, Archangel Michael, Moses, Godfre, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Kuan Yin and Jesus…These immortal spiritual beings are known as ascended masters. They won their eternal freedom, the ascension, by embracing the path of love, cultivating their innate divinity, mastering their karma and serving others. They walked the earth as great mystics and were innovators in religion, government, science, art, education and other fields. We knew them in past lifetimes as our friends, family, co-workers and leaders.”11
“Jesus gave a mantra to his disciples when he pronounced the fiat ‘I AM the resurrection and the life.’ This was a formula of the Word given to him by his guru, Lord Maitreya, who holds the focus of the Cosmic Christ. By repeating it, you realize the resurrection and the life of the God flame within you. By this mantra and other sacred formulas of the law, Jesus proved the victory of life over death. He expected his disciples to do likewise. To assist Jesus and the masters of the East in the training of their disciples, the hierarchy of ascended masters who comprise the Great White Brotherhood have set forth their mantras for western chelas on the path of the Christ and the Buddha…Those who pronounce them with devotion to the fiery blueprint of creation merge with the Electronic Presence of the I AM THAT I AM.”12
“Jesus-the Son of God. The Light, the Son, is also known as the Word and the Universal Christ. The Universal Christ is individualized for each one of us as our Higher Self. You can think of your Higher Self as your Inner Christ. Your Higher Self represents your potential to realize God and to become one with him. As the apostle Paul wrote of Jesus, ‘in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.’ But there is not one incarnation of Christ. Incarnating the Christ is in reality the goal of the mystics of every religion, whether or not they express it in these terms; for all mystics seek the direct experience of and union with their Higher Self. Most of us cannot yet say that we are ‘the Son of God,’ with an uppercase S. But we can say we are sons and daughters of God, with a lowercase s and d, who are in the process of fully developing our divine potential. The term Son of God is therefore a title that all can earn by merit. None can lay claim to this title on the grounds that he is a born Jew or a reborn Christian. Sonship is not automatic, for it is written: ‘God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.’
Jesus – the Avatar of the Piscean Age. While there are other Sons of God in heaven, we can all claim a special relationship to Jesus Christ because he was and is the archetypal Christ, or avatar, for the 2,150-year period known as the age of Pisces… The age of Aries brought the awareness of God as Father, as Lawgiver… The Piscean age brought the awareness of God as the Son and was marked by the coming of Jesus Christ as the representative of the Son… Today we are entering a new age. It is the age of Aquarius. This age will be marked by a universal awareness of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Mother… Out of all the Sons of heaven, God chose Jesus to incarnate on earth to be the avatar of the Piscean age. In this role, Jesus has borne the weight of the sins, or negative karma, of the world for the past 2,150 years, both prior to and after his birth. He has shielded us from the full consequences of our misdeeds. Nevertheless, we are still responsible to atone for that sin, that karma… By taking upon himself the burden of our sin, Jesus bore the sins of the world so that we could come of age spiritually and bear our own burdens. In effect, he ‘pardoned’ our sin for the duration of the Piscean age. But his pardon did not cancel the debt: it only postponed our payment of it…
Thus Paul taught that ultimately ‘every man shall bear his own burden.’ He warned, ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Paul also taught that each of us must work out our own salvation in fear of the LORD and with humility.
Jesus – the Exemplar of Christhood…He came to demonstrate how to achieve union with the Higher Self so that we too would know how to become one with the Christ and realize our own Christhood after his example. In the Book of John, Jesus promises at the Last Supper: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me [the Christ], the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father.’ Here it is apparent that Jesus intends each of us to do the same works he did and to walk our own path of personal Christhood. Although this is not the portrait of Jesus that orthodox Christians have chosen to paint, there is plenty of evidence to support it. The Book of Matthew records that Jesus urged us to strive for perfection. ‘Be ye therefore perfect,’ Jesus said, ‘even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’ Paul taught the Galatians, ‘I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you…. I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ Likewise Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘We have the mind of Christ,’ and to the Philippians, ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.’… The Gnostics claimed to possess an advanced teaching that had been secretly handed down to them from Jesus and his close circle of disciples…Because the teachings of the Gnostics threatened the unity of the growing orthodox Church, Church leaders banned, suppressed and almost totally destroyed Gnostic scriptures. The few Gnostic texts that have survived teach that a true disciple imitates his teacher in order to become equal to him or even surpass him. An early collection of wisdom sayings found at Nag Hammadi, called the Sentences of Sextus, instructs: ‘A good man is the good work of God… A man who is worthy of God, he is God among men, and he is the son of God.’ In the Apocryphon (Secret Book) of James, Jesus says, ‘Verily I say unto you, no one will ever enter the kingdom of heaven at my bidding, but only because you yourselves are full…. Become better than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit!’ The Gnostic Gospel of Philip describes the follower of Jesus who becomes ‘no longer a Chris-tian but a Christ.’ It says: ‘You saw the spirit, you became spirit. You saw Christ, you became Christ. You saw the Father, you shall become Father.’ In the Gospel of Thomas, which claims to record the secret sayings of Jesus, the Master tells his disciples, ‘Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out….
Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.’
The Universal Christ. The bubbling spring that Jesus speaks of is the fount of the Universal Christ. Jesus promises that when with love and gratitude you have drunk and assimilated those waters of everlasting life, ‘You will become like me, like the Christ. I myself, the incarnation of the Christ, shall become you.’
The mystical paths of the world’s religions bear witness to the universal truth that whoever drinks from the fount of the One Source will become one with that Source, whether we hear ‘You can become one with Brahman,’ ‘You can become one with the Tao,’ ‘You can become a Buddha,’ ‘You can cleave to Ein Sof and the sefirot’ or ‘You can become the Son of God.’”13