Your Thoughts on: The only way to the father is through me
 

I would not call myself Christian as such. I have however come to realize that many of my spiritual feelings do coincide with Jesus. I am a follower (for want of better word) more of Eckhart Tolle, and Mooji.

This phrase that Jesus says: "The only way to the father is through me..." I often concluded as something else. I do not perceive Jesus as egotistical. I therefore do not think he was saying: "Worship me, or else!"

So I ended up seeing it as, something (I am being somewhat facetious) along the lines of: "You do not have an internet connection, therefore you will have difficulty finding anyone else nearby who will help you, like Eckhart Tolle."

I think I was wrong. I think I understand it in a different way now. He is saying he is one with universal consciousness (the father/ God). The only way you can get to "the father" is through "me". I do not think he means "me" as in Jesus. I think he means me, as in: "I am one with the father! We are one in the same thing." Also, he is not saying, "worship me." He is saying be as one with the father, as am I.

It is Advaita. When Jesus says, "me", he means simultaneously, "YOU". Not "you" as in ego. "You" as in, "true self", the universal consciousness.

Diff take than most, I know
 

..that you can not reach the Father with your ordinary consciousness..
you must have the same awareness or consciousness, purity as he has and is.
Who is 'me', ('through me')?...that very Christ consciousness...that is him.
Get to that place in your heart and soul - that is the way to our Father.

Maybe an easier way to say it is - by being just like him...which is saying a lot, and yet not impossible at all! :)
Yes, I think you get it, che che.

Another approach is to consider the human being as a triplicity of Spirit (Being), Soul (Consciousness) and personality (everyday identity).

So God the Father would correspond to Being or the Self.

Jesus would correspond to the Soul or the Christ Consciousness within.

And personality is simply the everyday identity which we bring to this journey.

So when Jesus says: "The only way to the father is through me..." this is really stating that the only way for us to realise the Self is through awakening the Christ Consciousness within.

As Miss H. said.

Peace

I interpret Jesus / Christ saying: follow the path I'm showing you. Jesus also says: do it how I do it, get in touch with your inner-side, and through it with the inner-world, get in touch with your inner Christ-like guidance.

There is no advaita involved. There is no conflation between "me" and "you". There are selves, but none of them is "false", all of then are "true"; they are "you" in various states of consciousness. Neither you are, nor any part of you is the universal consciousness, but you're one of the infinite number of identities that the consciousness is made of. Consciousness is the fabric of reality, the material reality is made of, structured in an infinite number of gestalts on infinite number of levels of evolvement.

The way I see it: Jesus was the Son an incarnational personality, God is Jesus' reincarnational entity, Holy Ghost is the Christ-entity that is Jesus' inner-guidance. Jesus channeled Christ. Christ talked through Jesus; other times Jesus put in words what he got directly from Christ. Jesus is/was no God. God is the entity that "had begotten" Jesus.

Some of what Jesus said was distorted by his personality's beliefs, but what we have now is a much more distorted version of the original message. That message was on purpose symbolic, to withstand the inherent distortions.

What we have now can, and should be intuitively interpreted, with inner-guidance help, so that the original message be extracted from the symbolism. That message should differ from one person to another, according to their individual needs and possibilities.

Invalan: ……….but what we have now is a much more distorted version of the original message.

I totally agree with that.

@Miss Hepburn and @IAMTHAT (I missed the other 2 replies so I will read them now or later)

I think we have probably all said more or less the same thing. Wording things can be awkward for all of us, even if it is our own language. The fact that wording can be awkward gives me an appreciation of people who speak more than one language fluently (I can do a tiny bit of Spanish).

I think one the of most important things is not to see it as an egotistical statement.

People like, and appreciate other spiritual teachers. I do not think it is a direct statement that, "no one else can help you", but it could be construed that way by some people. He really is saying, find that within yourself that is unity with "the Father" (God, universal consciousness, Brahman).

That definitely is something I would be inclined to agree upon. The interesting thing is that Jesus is venerated in most major religions/ spiritual beliefs, including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, but not so much Judaism (as far as I know). Islam at least is somewhat different to Christianity, but they hold Jesus in high regard (much more so than Judaism).

With reference to distortion, again there is this issue with language, and what things mean, and how we interpret meaning in words. I agree that we do indeed exist, but we are transient. The "constant" being that which most refer to as God.

Another perspective given by certain teachings is that Jesus (the man) was an incarnated initiate of a certain degree. At a certain stage of his life he was "overlighted" by the Christ-consciousness, which was that of a more advanced Master. Hence Jesus is sometimes known as Jesus the Christ. Christ comes from chrism which refers to holy oil used for anointing, so Jesus was also known as the Anointed One.

Thus Jesus became the vehicle for the Christ and he began teaching.

Peace

My point is that, I believe that, the symbolism is intact and can still be interpreted intuitively, and with support from your inner-guidance. This is because it was originally designed to withstand distortions.

The way I understand, and do, this kind of interpretations, you basically use a myth, quote, event, dogma, as a conduit to access the actual meaning directly from your inner-guidance. What you get is the deepest interpretation that meets your current needs, at your current level of evolvement as an incarnational personality.