In plain words
What they came to know they proclaimed to the whole world. What did they proclaim? We have come to know that God, that great Puruṣa, the form of supreme radiance; we have known Him. Where did we come to know Him? ‘We have known the great Puruṣa who stands beyond the Ajñāna called tamas,’ they said. In us today it is all tamas. Only when we cross this tamas does it turn into tapas. So we must move as far as we can from the Ajñāna of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, and try to recognise the truth: ‘All is I.’ This is what Jesus proclaimed in the Bible in many ways. For some time He did sādhana. He said, ‘I am the messenger of God.’ ‘I am the envoy of God,’ He said. He was a messenger only, God’s servant. ‘I am a servant, I am a tool, I am an organ of sense’: so He went on thinking. Little by little, by putting all the power in Him to good use, after some time He said, ‘I am the son of God.’ He recognised the truth, ‘I am the child of that God.’ Son of God means father and son. Between father and son some closeness of bond comes about. But as long as one is the son, one must obey the father’s command, mustn’t one? ‘By what path do we two become one?’ He went on inquiring. For twelve years He sat in the deserts. Coming to recognise the bond between the two, father and son, father and son, at last He said, ‘I and My Father are one.’ He entered this Advaita, which is oneness. Only then, the Holy Ghost. In this way He came to attain such divinity. The Muslims too have said the same thing. I am living as an atom in the power of God. Within the radiant light, I am living as a worm. I live in His radiance, but I do not exist by myself. That is why they said, ‘I am in the light.’ For some time: I myself am living in this light. ‘I am living in this light, but to be in this light there must be light in me too, surely’: so a kind of inquiry began. The Prophet Muhammad tried to recognise the Tattva of this clearly. After some time had passed He recognised the truth, ‘The light is in Me.’ That light in Him, Himself in the light: holding both, and bringing in the sameness of the two, of both, ‘I in God, God in Me’, He said, ‘I am the light.’ The point here is that every religion, to recognise its own goal, has shown the truth that though the paths differ, the goal is one. But because the hearts of men today are very narrow, and because they are filled with selfishness and self-interest, mere religious strife has grown, and they have set about regarding God as a kind of party leader.