As a person who was raised a Southern Baptist in the Bible Belt but later gravitated to a more Eastern and eclectic approach to spirituality, my perspective on Christ and the historical figure of Jesus has undergone many shifts and transformations through the years. I’m sure I’m not alone in that regard, among the many Westerner-turned-yogi readers here. Like it or not, for most of us, Christ and Christianity are our primary historical and cultural context.

However much the pendulum of “Jesus Christ to me” has swung between blind faith or skepticism, I have always regarded him as significant to both myself and humanity. How could we not? The influence of this single figure has outweighed any other saint, emperor, conqueror, or character of any kind, in terms of sheer numbers. The nearest contenders would have to be Abraham, Buddha, or Mohammed; to deny the relevance of Jesus Christ to our psyche and our history would be, well, simply denial.

So, this Easter, I’d like to share with you a perspective on Jesus and the Easter story that has been incubating in my mind, for some time. I believe it is ready for germination.

One of the spiritual emissaries of Yoga from the East who has touched many hearts deeply in recent times is Paramahansa Yogananda, and Yogananda also spoke and wrote a great deal on the subject of Jesus. In fact, he devoted a much larger volume to Jesus than he did to his own classic Autobiography of a Yogi, and it is entitled The Second Coming of Christ. In it, he wrote:

“Of all the miracles performed by Jesus, none was equal to that mightiest miracle of the spiritual victory of divine love over evil: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ (Luke 23:34) These words have created in human hearts an everlasting monument to Christ-love.”

I have often reflected on the power and import of this singular moment in the Easter story, as well. In a sense, it encapsulates the entirety of Jesus’s message, even the conventional belief that he died for mankind’s sins, etc. At a moment when Jesus had given his life to healing, teaching, and redeeming, in spite of his demonstrated miraculous abilities, he renounces the use of his power for retribution or even defense, allows the selfish and spiritually blind to nail his wholly innocent arms to the cross, opens his heart to them, and pleads their ignorance and absolution from divine judgement.

This moment has obvious symbolic import for the stern focus upon divine law and justice of the Judaic worldview, whose culture forms the biblical context of the traditional Judeo-Christian view of Jesus. On the other hand, if we view Christ’s message to bear meaning beyond what’s attributed to him by the church, we can also apply the core idea to a much broader concept of divine justice shared among most people of the world, which of course in the Vedic traditions of India takes the form of Karma.

Widely misunderstood, especially by Westerners, Karma is defined by the Vedic texts and saints to be nothing more than a process of cause-and-effect, rooted primarily in the impressions left at the deepest levels of mind by the experiences our souls have in the transitory world of Maya. Or, as Ram Dass states more plainly, our Karma is our mind. In a sense, this is a more naturalistic perspective of divine justice, more like a simple law of behavioral soul-psychology, if you will, than something imposed from an authority on high.

The gist of it is: Each time we incarnate into a body and live a life, the impressions it leaves cause us to be attracted to yet another life, in a long, drawn-out, mostly unconscious race to balance out our previous experiences and actions. To make an argument for the reality of reincarnation and Karma is outside the scope of this piece, but suffice it to say, there is roughly at least as good evidence or better for reincarnation as there is for any other explanation of the afterlife, or lack thereof. Personally, I accept it as a working hypothesis.

Given that Jesus is a figure that can’t be ignored, it may serve those of us who favor the Vedic over the Abrahamic version of reality to ask ourselves: What does Jesus’s life and message signify for humanity’s journey towards Awakening and God-Realization?

If we view humanity as a seething mass of souls swimming through a sea of flesh in a seemingly endless loop of eye-for-an-eye blindness, and we accept that highly evolved souls incarnate on Earth at certain points in history according to a strategic plan (i.e. Avatars), then why did Jesus come at the particular time that he did, with the particular message that he did? I believe the answer lies in the introduction of a new pattern into the collective psyche of Humanity, one which is directly related to Karma, and which was conveyed not only by words, but by the actual story of his life, itself. As they say: “Show, don’t tell.”

Karma is understood to be what keeps us on the wheel of reincarnation, diving into the muck and mire of various kinds of human misery again and again, until we finally begin to spiritually awaken, and emerge into the daylight. We hear from various saints how difficult it is, and how many times we typically reincarnate before finally beginning the process of extricating ourselves from our predicament. Buddha once compared it to the length of time it would take a bird to erode a mountain down to nothing, by dragging a scarf over the peak of it once a day.

However, this is also why the great beings come, why we have the Buddha, Krishna, Patanjali, Yogananda, and Jesus. They come to serve as beacons and catalysts, to stir up this awakening in us all. Without them, who knows where we might be.

On another level, this whole thing is a dream in the infinite consciousness of God, or the Vedantic Brahman. To use a contemporary metaphor, the Karmic Wheel is comparable to a video game, in which God is playing all of the characters and even the environment itself, in varying degrees of amnesia. The game has challenges, obstacles, and requires intelligence and skill to overcome them, as any good video game does. The goal is to fully realize that you are not the game character, but the player (God), which you’ve forgotten, as part of the game.

Using this metaphor, what if there were a game-changer, a “hack,” “cheat code,” or, dare I say it, an “Easter Egg” which would allow more players to overcome the obstacles more quickly, and reach God-realization more easily?

If the engine of reincarnation is Karma, and one of the primary fuels of Karma is a perpetual loop of guilt and justice, then what better “cheat code” for the game than radical forgiveness, as Jesus taught and exemplified? If getting people to fully understand the truth of the causes of human suffering is extremely difficult, since most people aren’t able to understand advanced spiritual teachings, maybe it was determined that a more effective way to get the masses a step further out of the muck would be to teach them radical forgiveness, especially that they themselves are forgiven.

The best part is, they might not necessarily even have to realize that their ideas of guilt were never true in the first place, since most of them are apparently unable to. This hypothetical plan is one that would work even for those who haven’t evolved to the point of being able to make that realization. In fact, it may well get them there, in time.

This recognition of the falsity of guilt is encapsulated in Jesus’s statement, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and also, “For as you judge, so will you be judged.” Over and over, throughout the Vedantic philosophies, a central tenet is that wrongdoing is the result of ignorance and delusion, and nothing more. If we knew our true identity as Soul, or God dreaming if you like, we would not engage in evil or harmful acts. Furthermore, if we knew the true nature of actions, we would not believe in judgement or guilt, for action would be seen for what it is, a dance of illusion being witnessed by God-Consciousness. We actually are not the doer, only an omnipresent witness to doing.

However, to fully understand that concept is beyond the philosophical sophistication of most people even today, not to mention from the time Jesus walked the earth, and on. In Matthew 13:13, Jesus said “That is why I speak to them in parables, because looking they do not see, and hearing they do not listen or understand.” Therefore, I believe that masked in an over-simplified parable of an only-child blood sacrifice to appease a judgemental father-God, Jesus’s life is in fact a way for God to show a humanity so blindly focused on human concepts of right and wrong that Grace can transcend the game, rescuing us from the specter of our imagined judgement into the inherent purity of our Soul.

One of my most profound realizations has been: Forgiveness is understanding, even when you don’t understand. In other words, without knowing the details of why someone did what they did, you can understand that there are reasons, because there always are, and if you knew those reasons, you would no longer blame them; therefore, engaging in blame or judgement is merely a result of your own ignorance about particulars of the situation. If you knew everything, you wouldn’t; if God knows everything, God doesn’t. True forgiveness is a wisdom which supersedes lesser, factual ignorances.

In fact, if one truly recognizes this on a deep level, blame and judgement are seen as nothing more than the same ignorance that produced the actions being blamed for, in the first place. That’s the karmic loop. The whole affair is a dance of delusion, in which it takes two to tango. If you knew the two to be One, the delusion would dissipate, and the dance would become a joyful one.

Forgiveness recognizes that actions are merely links in a mostly hidden chain of cause and effect, and the moment I blame or judge someone, that unconscious chain merely continues unconsciously in me, and is passed on to the next semi-conscious person. When I forgive, I break the chain, or perhaps forge a new chain by which we can lift ourselves out of this mess, together. I believe that’s what Jesus was teaching us to do, but since most people can’t understand that, he taught forgiveness in a way they could understand. For those who demand unnecessary sacrifice because of their imagined guilt, God provided the ultimate sacrifice, with infinite love and compassion for their ignorance and blindness.

So, is Christ’s radical forgiveness a Karmic cheat code? Of course, that is for you to decide, depending on whether you are open to a more Universal Christ concept, or not. I merely offer it as an idea for us to considered by our digital Satsang. Either way, happy Easter, and swift awakenings.