‘The second spiritual law of peace, my son, is that ‘repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation are preconditions for grace to take roots and bear fruits in our lives. ‘The light of sun and the grace of God are freely available to all. But if the windows and doors are closed, the light of the sun cannot enter the room. Similarly, if our hearts and minds are closed, the grace of God cannot enter into our lives. Repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation are the keys to open the doors of our hearts and minds to divine grace….
‘Through repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation we also humble ourselves. Humility opens our hearts and minds to the grace of God. ‘Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.’ This was the call of Sadguru Jesus Christ to humanity…
‘Repentance is turning away from sins and turning towards God. It is an essential prerequisite for the light of grace to shine forth in one’s heart and life. We have already seen that without divine grace there can be no lasting peace and happiness in one’s life…
‘An unforgiving mind is the breeding ground of many human problems. Much of our ailments today are psychosomatic in their origins….
‘An unforgiving person is prone to psychosomatic sicknesses. The World Health Organization, WHO, estimates that more than 60% of sicknesses in the present world are psychosomatic in their origins…….
‘The term ‘Kingdom of God’ implies a grace-filled existence. It is within us and among us. It begins within one’s own self, here and now. ‘Begin with self and begin within self’ has to be the methodology of anyone who seeks the Kingdom of God. This is a truth upheld by almost all religions and their enlightened saints and sages….
‘One of the major tragedies of India and of the modern world is lack of forgiveness and reconciliation. India is a deeply wounded country; wounded by her own caste and class prejudices and exploitations, wounded by communal conflicts and violence, and wounded by external aggression and foreign subjugation. India needs forgiveness and reconciliation to be healed from within…
‘Without forgiveness there can be no reconciliation, and without reconciliation there can be no inner healing, and without inner healing, there can be no peace. Without peace there will be no development, growth and happiness. The nation will continue to suffer from poverty, illiteracy and sickness and other evils, even if it has the best of political leaders to rule….
‘Religions and religious communities in India have to learn and promote the art and science of forgiveness and reconciliation…
‘Forgiveness needs repentance. One needs to be really sorry about one’s wrong deeds, about the falsehood one was party in spreading, and about the damages one has done to others knowingly or unknowingly…
‘Love is the source of forgiveness. It is also the inspiration for forgiveness…. We have seen that true love is always forgiving. It does not keep an account of the wrongs done by others. Without love, forgiveness is impossible…..
‘Our ability for love comes from the divine love that we receive from God, the source of love. We need the grace of God even to forgive ourselves and others. It is here one can experience the importance of God’s universal ‘atonement’ in, with and through the Christ-Spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation….
‘As we have seen earlier, this Christ-Spirit and Christ-Consciousness has its ‘divine standard’ in Jesus of Nazareth. But this Christ-Consciousness is neither confined to Jesus of Nazareth the Christ nor is it limited to Christian Churches. It is available to anyone anywhere anytime who seeks, knocks and asks for it, irrespective of his or her religious affiliations…
‘I myself am a living witness to this truth. I was never a ‘Christian’. I do not belong to any ‘Church’. Yet, I could experience this Christ-Consciousness in my life. God’s free gift of His Christ is often misappropriated and made a saleable commodity by Christian Churches….. Liberating Christ from these narrow sectarian Christian Churches is an urgent need of the era. The world need Christ not Churchianity….
‘Sri Paramahamsa Yogananda, a great Hindu saint who was sent by his guru to America to serve as a ‘spiritual link’ between Christianity and Hinduism, had a deep insight into this distinction between the Christ-Consciousness and Jesus the Christ….
‘He wrote in his book ‘Man’s Eternal Quest’: “I am glad that Christianity was not called ‘Jesusism’ because ‘Christianity’ is a much broader word. There is a difference between Jesus and Christ. Jesus is the name of the little human body in which the vast Christ Consciousness was born. Although the Christ Consciousness manifested in the body of Jesus, it cannot be limited to one human form. It would be a metaphysical error to say that the omnipresent Christ Consciousness is circumscribed by the body of one human being.”…. This beautiful book is also there in our library…
‘You can also read the book ‘One Christ and Many Religions’ by Dr. S J Samartha so that you can understand well this difference between Jesus of Nazareth and Christ, the eternal Word of God…..
‘Christ-Consciousness enables one to forgive one’s offenders and bless them just as Jesus the Christ was able to do from the cross, rising above the agony of his own suffering death. India needs this Christ-Consciousness, not Christianity, to be healed of her inner and historical wounds and to be made whole and healthy. What India needs is not the western Christian religion, but the eastern Jesus the Christ, and the Christ-Consciousness embodied by him…..
‘Forgiveness is the key to health, happiness and peace. For India, this is very important. We need to forgive and forget what happened in the past and look ahead with hope and confidence. History does not march backward, but forward… No individual, no religion and no nation can ever achieve greatness by fighting over the wrongs committed in the past. This is where India’s spiritual hospitality and heritage have to play an important role. A spirituality of peace is also a spirituality of love and forgiveness. Mother India has to draw strength and vitality from her deep spiritual resources and treasures in this historic task.….
Excerpts from Integral Revolution
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