October 10: Yogananda on Jesus’ teaching / Identity and mission

David Vishanoff

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015

Assignment

Read Yogananda, The Yoga of Jesus, part 2, “‘One Way’ or Universality?” (pp. 41-72).

• Which aspects of Yogananda’s interpretation of Jesus could be affirmed by a traditional Christian?
• Which could be affirmed by a Christian who understands Christian stories and teachings about Jesus metaphorically?
• Which would not be affirmed by any Christian?
• Why did Yogananda choose to express his own philosophy through an interpretation of the Gospels?

Read Yogananda, The Yoga of Jesus, part 3, “Jesus’ Yoga of Divine Love” (pp. 73-112).

• When interpreting the beatitudes Yogananda finally gets into ethics. Do his interpretations here point to moral truths that you would recognize as Christian, or as universal, or as personally inspiring? Or do they seem foreign and puzzling?
• Does Yogananda’s description of meditative practice seem like a reasonable interpretation of Jesus’ teaching that “the Kingdom of God is within you,” or does it stretch the limits of respectful interpretation of someone else’s scripture?
• Let’s spend some time thinking about the morality of Yogananda’s depiction of Jesus: is it harmful or beneficial, does it show enough respect for the “owners” of Jesus, is it everyone’s right to put their own interpretation on Jesus, …?

Finally, write a first draft of your gospel’s explanation of Jesus’ identity and mission. Perhaps this has been implicit in your Gospel so far; now can you make Jesus explain who he is and what his mission is? Is he going to claim to be related to God in some special way, or emphasize his humanity or his Jewish identity? Is his goal to teach ethics, to help people escape their bodies and return to the realm of spirit, to reveal God to humanity, to die…?

Notes from class

In addition to clarifying Yogananda’s view of the soul’s descent into the body, and its ascent to recognition of its union with the all-pervading Spirit through yogic meditation leading, we reached several conclusions about Yogananda’s project:

• He is transposing the canonical gospels into his own very Indian (and specifically non-bhakti, nondual/advaita, yogic) framework, thus giving them a dramatically new meaning.
• Some of this reinterpretation seems wild but might have appealed to hippies in the 1960’s, like his view of the cosmos, the spinal pathways, and mediation.
• Some of it might appeal to contemporary New Age Americans, like the interconnectedness of all reality and the non-judgmental mercy of God.
• Some of it might even appeal to traditional Christians, like the spiritualizing of the Sermon on the Mount, which is already suggested by Matthew, though other parts go against traditional Christian beliefs.
• Overall we find his interpretation far fetched, yet pretty coherent, and a natural thing for him to do.
• His goal is not to criticize rival views of Hinduism, as some Hindus did (and as Muslims used Jesus to criticize worldly Muslims).
• Rather, his goal is to preach his own very Indian message to American Christians (or former disillusioned Christians), using the Gospels and Jesus to draw them in.
• He doesn’t want to convert them to Hinduism; he thinks people can remain in any religion and achieve enlightenment; but he does want to convert them to his very Indian nondual view of ultimate reality and his yogic method of meditation, which he thinks is necessary for enlightenment in any religion.
• He is also criticizing the revivalist institutional Christianity that he witnessed in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, and which his audience (and indeed many Christians today) may also be disillusioned with.

We noted that our own gospels are doing something similar, recasting Jesus in our own frameworks, which are somewhat different from those of the Gospel writers. Some of us, though, are also concerned not to let our gospels become simply reflections of ourselves; we want to remain true to what we see as essential in the canonical gospels.