CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS
By Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan

Christmas is spiritual life for most people. But isn’t there another aspect to Christmas—self-engrossment? Everyone feels it is for him or her. Isn’t this selfishness? Yes, but there’s another interpretation as well. Behind it all are the Christmas energies—spiritual as well as nonspiritual.

The commercialism ...  the rush, haste, exhaustion ... strained, driven faces in the department stores. But for most of us, Christmas is our main chance during the year to express the unity of all Life. Obeying this Law of Oneness: by giving and thinking of others first, we experience JOY; by relating to others as though they too were obeying the Law―HARMONY results; and GRATITUDE is felt for the benefits received.    

The Divine is the impulse and motivation at Christmas—exercising Itself, honoring one of its special sons. Humanity easily cooperates because the folk aspect of the season is mixed with the religious. So the spirit of Christmas has effectively joined itself with the end-of-the-year Winter Solstice, touching a deep folk chord in humanity while celebrating the birth of a God-Man. Yet it is good that it does so, until the new faith is formed to replace the old, if that is what is meant to be.

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For most Christians, Christ stands as the savior, the atoner, the justifier. For those of us who are seekers of Truth, He has a different message:
Truth… the Self… Oneness. (He came to bear witness to the Truth* … the Truth shall make you free… I am the Truth…). In his life, we see the all-embracing acceptance of everyone, devoid of any condemnation whatever. 

Christmas Reflections

Excerpt from a lecture on Christ by Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan

Christmas—the birth of the Mystic-Savior … that is, more than a man, a savior, a Divine Principle is embodied in the birth of Jesus Christ. It is the Soul... the Divine come to earth to show man what man is like!

During ordinary, crowded hours we are not able to contemplate such a life as Christ’s with anything like an adequate temper of mind, but rather in calm, secret, solitary times we can do so. Midnight, dawn, in the hush of Christmas Eve, of Christmas Night, that fills the Western world—nay, any part of the world where Christ is worshiped—at such auspicious times we contemplate that charismatic night in Bethlehem 2000 years ago … and not only his birth, but his life: all the words, the events, the crises that followed.

As we meditate upon this mysterious existence, we may gradually find ourselves meditating upon the mystery of our own. Wrapped in deepest mystery, indeed, is our own existence—as is the recollection of it as we reminisce, ponder, trace over the strange patterns we have woven together to make up the design of what we call our life. Odd, that in thinking so intensely with such powerful intuitions filling our consciousness, during the stillness of Christmas Eve, of Christ’s appearance, we may find ourselves thinking of our own lives as well, as though the life we have lived is somehow related to the archetypal life that began in Bethlehem, is a part of the same continuing greater life of the Divine in the world of manifested things.

According to Vedanta philosophy, Thou art the Soul in all souls. The heart of Christ is yours, not in a figurative sense but in an actual sense. He belongs to us. He is us. This Vedantic view is supported by Christ’s own sayings: He that hath seen me had seen the Father … Know ye not that ye are Gods, children of the most high… Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect … The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. 

Christ has been called the Savior, but each of us may be one—prophets, all. Burden-bearers. World-supporters. On a smaller scale than his, no doubt, but in principle there is no essential difference. He but does on a world scale what spiritual aspirants are all doing, each in his or her own way, on the little stage of our individual lives, burdened as we are with so many trials, sufferings, tediums, miseries. Each of us is the savior of our family, children, parents, relatives, close friends, who have not yet begun to lead the life of the Spirit as we have. They are always looking, watching, waiting. They depend on our dedication, endurance, perseverance, faith, spiritual practices―our willingness to tread the heroic path to the end. For them we play the role that Christ played for the world—the principle is the same. The same life is in us as in him, only less intensified, less powerful in its vibrations, less commanding in its effect. But not essentially different.

We see, then, that with an act of spiritual imagination we may be able this Christmas to bring Christ closer to us than ever before, make him part of us and we part of him—part of his life, his high destiny—as we realize, in that act of creative imagination, the implications of the ultimate truth of the Upanishads: Thou Art That.

See also: CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS, CHRIST AND VEDANTA, and Words of Wisdom: Christ.

Christ and the Spirit of Christmas
by Paul Hourihan

Although Christ is the topic, Subjectivity is our theme—how we are always coming back to ourselves in all our actions, dreams, reveries, lifetimes. At Christmas we contemplate Christ and end up by contemplating ourselves.

Thou Art That. This aphorism represents the core of the Vedanta philosophy: Thou art the Being in all beings, the Soul in all souls. Every heart beating is your own heart… therefore Love your neighbor as yourself. The same Divine encloses both of you. The heart of God is yours. The heart of Christ is yours, and not in a figurative sense, but in an actual sense. He belongs to us. He is us.

His life is the life of the Soul incarnate. It is the Soul’s drama being enacted in the story of his life. His life is the soul's journey to self-realization, self-conquest, and world-conquest. It is the career of the soul unfolding its natural sovereignty over nature, over men, over time, over all things. He is the Way-Shower.

Christmas is the mystical event. It's the birth of more than a man: a Divine Principle embodied in the birth of Jesus Christ; born into matter, into darkness—that is, into this life and hence, not wanted here, forced to be born furtively and then compelled to flee for its life.

In Christ we see the highest image of what we actually are. He has been called the Savior, but each of us, as well, may be one—prophets, all—on a smaller scale than his, but in principle with no essential difference. He only does on a vast scale what we as spiritual seekers are doing on the stage of our individual lives, burdened as we are with so many conflicts, trials, sufferings, and miseries.

With little difficulty we can relate to the events of Christ's life by exercising the intuitive power of empathy, which the soul projects effortlessly upon all manifestations that mirror back to it some secret of its own nature.

In many of Christ's famous utterances we recognize the voice of the Soul—our soul, as well as His— speaking. “I am the way, the Truth, and the Life ... I am the Resurrection and the Life.” In these and in similar statements it is the Soul speaking. After his resurrection Mary Magdalene exclaimed, “He is risen!” That is to say, the Soul is risen out of the death of the body, and death of the body consciousness. Hence, the “glad tidings of great joy” are that the soul is immortal, that the fetters of mortality are broken once and for all. It is not the body that ascends; it is the soul. The physical body is not resurrected; rather, the body is the tomb out of which the soul is resurrected. 

Christ appearing first to Mary Magdalene is appropriate, for Woman in particular symbolizes the soul in human life, and to her, man must pay homage because of her divine function and nature.

Christ's full perfection, we realize, will come only on the cross. We see in him the same conflicts and hesitations we all have known and in his final victory over all doubt and weakness, we have the assurance that we, too, one day may experience a similar conquest. We, too, one day may be able to say, after our own great struggles and after many a Gethsemane, “It is finished” —the end of the long journey we have taken from outer darkness to the inward illumination of our souls. As he succeeded, we can too, and must.

The hero that was in Christ is in us, the God that was in him is in us too, and it is the same God. His greatness is innate in us as well. We must accustom ourselves to thinking like heroes, to being heroes. The idealistic life, the mystical path, is for heroes and heroes only. Know ye not that ye are Gods, children of the most high.

If we are patient, strong, persevering and keep returning to the battle, eventually we shall break through into the same freedom that Christ experienced.

But what of the commercialization of Christmas? It advances the theme of Christmas for those who have lost or haven’t found the spiritual life directly. By the element of the commercial, people who are ordinarily immune to the Christmas spirit are caught up in it by buying gifts for others, spending money on others, as they never would ordinarily! And so they feel the results of this good behavior in the strange karma that affects and uplifts and briefly transforms everyone at Christmas. In a sense we may see the commercialization as a cosmic necessity, mandated by the Lord as perhaps the only way for those individuals who have no belief or faith to be reminded, indirectly at least, of Christ's life and meaning.
 

Suggested Readings:
Ramakrishna and Christ, The Supermystics by Paul Hourihan, Vedantic Shores Press, 2002
Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta by Swami Prabhavananda, Vedanta Press, Reprint 1991.

See also What is Vedanta?, CHRIST AND VEDANTA, and Words of Wisdom: Christ, Mysticism.
 

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