Paramahansa Yogananda may be best-known today for his classic text, The Autobiography of a Yogi. After a rigorous training in God-consciousness, Paramahansa left his native India in the days before aeroplanes to become guru to the West. He founded the Self-Realization Fellowship, an organisation that continues to this day. His view of the nature of Christ Consciousness as God-consciousness and of the ’Second Coming’ as the time when many people awaken to God consciousness, is encapsulated in the following Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paramahansa_Yogananda#The_Second_Coming_of_Christ_.282004.29
Also in this link is an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times, giving Paramahansa’s interpretation of that difficult saying of Jesus, that no-one comes to the Father except through him. Paramahansa understands this simply to mean that God consciousness is the only way to God.
One Comment
When reading John 14:6 – this verse that implies Jesus is the only way has two aspects to consider.
First is peripheral knowledge of Guru-disciple relationships[once connected there is only one way] This holds true for devotees of Krishna , Buddha, Yogananda etc. There are and always have been many valid paths to salvation.
Another important matter is keeping quotes in context[ it is a forever terrible ongoing habit of Christians to never quote the context belonging to John 14:6] which of course is 14:10 and the rest of that chapter!
Upon doing this, Jesus says he is not the “only way.”
This in turn agrees with the rest of that 14th chapter and also
is in full agreement with global religious history.
Because there never was “only one way.”
Pluralism is winning the day and bringing
peace to this world as exclusivism never could.
The Lord has left his divine words with many
cultures and none is superior to all others.
It is true indeed that “Christ Consciousness”
is the only way to Cosmic Consciousness” ,
Self-Realization, Salvation.