The Christ ideal is unexplainable in words. The omnipresent intelligence which is in the rock, in the tree, in the animal, and in man, shows its gradual unfoldment; it is a fact accepted by both science and metaphysics. This intelligence shows its culmination is the complete development of human personality, such as in the personality of Jesus Christ as recognized by his followers. The followers of Buddha recognized the same unfoldment of the object of creation in Gautama Buddha, and the Hindus saw the same in Sri Krishna. In Moses the followers of Moses recognized, and maintained their belief for thousands of years. The same culmination of the all-pervading intelligence was recognized in Muhammad by his followers.

No man has the right to claim this stage of development, nor can anyone very well compare two persons recognized by their followers as the perfect spirit of God. For a thoughtless person it is easy to express his opinion and to compare two people, but a thoughtful person first thinks whether he has arrived at that stage where he can compare two such personalities.

No doubt a question of belief is different. Neither can the belief of the Muslim be the same belief as that of the Jewish people, nor can the Christian belief be the same as that of the Buddhists. However, the wise person understands all beliefs, for he is one with them all.

The question whether a person was destined to be a complete personality may be answered that there is no person who is not destined to be something. Every person has his life designed beforehand, and the light of the purpose that he is born to accomplish in life has already been kindled in his soul. Therefore whatever be the grade of a person's evolution, he is certainly destined to be so.

Discussion of the lives that the different prophets have lived, as to the superiority of one over the other, seems to be a primitive attempt on the part of man. Not knowing the condition of that particular time nor the psychology of the people at the time when the prophet existed, man is ready to judge that personality by the standard of ideas which he knows today; this does not do that personality justice.

When a person compares one particular teaching of a prophet with the teaching of another prophet he also makes a great mistake, because the teachings of the prophets have not always been of the same kind. The teaching is like the composition of a composer who writes music in all the different keys and who puts the highest note and the lowest note and all the notes of different octaves in his music.

The teachings of the prophets are nothing but the answer to the demands of individual and collective souls. Sometimes a childlike soul comes and asks, and an answer is given appropriate to his understanding. And an old soul comes and asks and he is given an answer suited to his evolution. When two teachings are brought together, a teaching which Krishna gave to a child and a teaching which Buddha gave to an old soul, it is not doing justice to compare. It is easy to say, "I do not like the music of Wagner, I simply hate it." But I should think it would be better to become Wagner first and then to hate it. To weigh, to measure, to examine, or to pronounce an opinion on a great personality, one must rise to that development first; otherwise the best thing is a respectful attitude. Respect in any form is the way of the wise.

There are simple people who hear about miracles and who give all the importance to what they have read in the traditions of the miracles performed by the great souls. But that is to limit the greatness of God to a certain miracle. If God is eternal, then His miracle is eternal; it is always there. There is no such thing as unnatural, nor such a thing as impossible. Things seem unnatural because they are unusual; things seem impossible because they are beyond man's limited reason. Life itself is a phenomenon, a miracle. The more one knows about it, the more one lives conscious of the wonderfulness of life, and the more one realizes that if there is any phenomenon or miracle it is man's birthright. Who has done it? It is man who can do it and who will do it. But what is most essential is not a miracle; the most essential is the understanding of life.

The soul who realized before he claimed to be alpha and omega is Christ. To know intellectually that life is eternal, or that the whole life is one, is not sufficient, although it is the first step in the direction towards perfection. The actual realization of this comes from the personality of the God-conscious soul as a fragrance in his thought, speech, and action, and proves in the world as incense put on fire.

There are beliefs such as that of salvation through Christ, and the man who is agitated against religion closes the doors of his heart before having the patience to understand what it really means. It only means that there is no liberation without an ideal before one. The ideal is a steppingstone towards that attainment which is called liberation. There are others who cannot conceive the thought of Christ's divinity. The truth is that the soul of man is divine, and when with the unfoldment of the soul it reaches the point of culmination, it then deserves to be called divine.

There is a great difference in the beliefs and opinions of people about the immaculate birth of Jesus. The truth is that when the soul arrives at the point of understanding the truth of life in its collective aspect, he realizes that there is only one father, and that is God; this world out of which all the names and forms have been created is the mother. The son, by recognizing the mother and father, by serving his mother and father, and by fulfilling the aim of creation, deserves to be the Son of God.

Then comes the question of the forgiveness of sin. Is not man the creator of sin? If he creates it, he can destroy it also. If one cannot destroy, his elder brother can. The one who is capable of making is capable of destroying. He who can write with his pen can rub it with his eraser from the surface of the paper. When he cannot do it, then that personality has not yet arrived at completeness, at that perfection to which all have to come. There is no end of faults in man's life, and if they were all recorded and unerasable, life would be terrible and impossible to live. The impression of sin, in the terminology of metaphysics, may be called an illness: a mental illness, not physical. As the doctor is able to cure illness, so the doctor of the soul is able to heal. If people have said that through Christ sins are forgiven, that can be understood in this way: that love is that shower by which all is purified. No stain remains.

What is God? God is love. When His mercy, His compassion, and His kindness are expressed through a God-realized personality, then the stains of one's faults, mistakes, and wrongdoings are washed away, and the soul becomes as clear as it has always been. For in reality no sin nor virtue can be engraved or impressed upon a soul; it can cover the soul. The soul in itself is divine intelligence, and how can divine intelligence be engraved either with sin or virtue, or happiness or unhappiness; when these clouds are cleared from it, then it is divine in its essence.

The question of the crucifixion of Christ, apart from its historical aspect, may be explained that the life of the wise is on the cross all the time. The wiser the soul becomes, the more it realizes the cross. It is the lack of wisdom which causes the soul to do all actions, good or bad. As it becomes wise, the first thing is that its action is suspended. The picture of that suspension of action becomes a helpless picture, the hands and the feet nailed. Neither can he go forward, nor can he go backward, nor can he act, nor can he move. This inactiveness outwardly may show helplessness, but in point of fact is the pleasure of perfection.

There is another question: that Christ gave his life to save the world. This only explains sacrifice: no man in this world going toward the goal will escape from the test to which life will put him. That test is sacrifice. At every step towards the attainment of the final goal, he will be asked a sacrifice, which will be a greater and greater one as he continues on the path. He will arrive at a point where there is nothing, whether his body, mind, action, thought, or feeling, that he keeps back from sacrifice for others. Thus man proves the realization of divine truth. In short, the Christ-ideal is the picture of the perfect man. The explanation of the perfect man, and the possibility of the perfect man, can be seen in the verse of the Bible: "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven."