Your Divine Spark

            Ancient Tibetan manuscripts say that Jesus spent 17 years (age 12 to 29) in the East as both student and teacher. He mastered Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, learned to heal and to cast out devils, and prepared for his Palestinian mission.

            "To me the great discovery of these texts is that Jesus did not claim that he was born a god," Mrs. Prophet says. "He saw himself as a disciple. He studied and learned. He became a great adept. Jesus is our Saviour who saved us so that we could walk the same path of discipleship that he walked."

            The fundamental principle of the teachings of the Ascended Masters is that all sons and daughters of God have a divine spark which is their potential to become, or realize, the Christ within and ascend to God as Jesus did.

            This concept is at the heart of the major religions, East and West. And it was part of Jesus' original teachings to his disciples which were either destroyed or obscured by Church Fathers.

            Jesus never said that he was the exclusive Son of God. When in John 3:16 he spoke of the "only begotten Son," he was referring to the universal Christ, whose Body is individualized (broken) for each of us as our personal inner Teacher. This Teacher we address as our beloved Holy Christ Self--"the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," as John wrote.

            The word Christ comes from the Greek Christos, meaning "anointed." Hence the 'Christed one' is one who is annointed with the Light of the LORD, the "I AM" Presence. This is the I AM THAT I AM (the Yod He Vau He) witnessed by Moses which God individualized for each of his sons and daughters.

            The early Christian Gnostics, whose writings were suppressed by orthodoxy, taught the same principles. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip describes the follower of Jesus who walks fully in his footsteps as "no longer a Christian but a Christ." In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, "I am not your Master. . . . He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he."

            The understanding that each soul has the potential to externalize his divine nature is also found in Buddhist texts that speak of "the Buddha-Essence" which is "in all beings at all times."

            Mrs. Prophet say, "The concept of the incarnation of the Light of God, the Inner Buddha and the inner Christ, is what has been taken from us in the West in church, in synagogue, in mosque, in temple."

            The culmination of the path of Christhood is the initiation of the ascension, a spiritual acceleration of consciousness of one's lifetime when the soul returns to the Father and is freed from the round of karma and rebirth.

See The Lost Years of Jesus

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