One Source, Many Windows

The Unity Behind Revelation and the Place of Christianity

Among all the world’s great traditions, three streams stand out for their profound influence on the inner life of humanity: the Indic, the Abrahamic, and their meeting place in mystical experience. My own lifelong exploration has taken me across these streams, always returning to one fundamental intuition:

All revelation flows from the same Source - the Universal Consciousness that breathes wisdom into the human spirit.

If the Source is one, then convergence is not accidental. It is inevitable.

Where traditions diverge, it is not in essence but in expression of the divine message through human understanding. Such expression has been filtered through:

• culture
• language
• historical conditions
• symbol systems
• and the psychological needs of the communities they addressed.

Remove the filters, and what remains is the same perennial truth.

Yet for many years I struggled with one gap: integrating Christianity within this universal pattern, especially when comparing the spiritual evolution depicted in the Dasāvatāra and the Abrahamic Prophetic line, as I did in this article.

• In Hindu thought, evolution manifests outwardly (physical form) and inwardly (spiritual attainment).
• In the Abrahamic tradition, the Prophetic sequence reflects the inner evolution of human consciousness: from moral law, to wisdom, to compassion, to unity.

But Christianity, although a key element in the Abrahamic progression, was harder to place, not because its ethical message was alien, but because its doctrinal formulation diverged sharply from the pattern shared by the Vedas/Upanishads and the Qur’an (when read with clarity).

And yet, when we look closely, the teachings of Jesus himself align beautifully with those perennial truths. They are clearly from the same source.

1. The Jesus of the Gospels: A Teacher of Inner Transformation

When we read the actual words of Jesus, setting aside later theological layering, we find teachings that fit perfectly into the Indic-Vedic window:

• Love as the highest realization - This echoes the Upanishadic “Where there is love, there is the Self.”
• Compassion and non-judgment - Mirroring the Buddhist and Jain ethic of ahimsā and metta.
• “Die before you die”: ego death - The heart of Advaita, Sufism, and Yogic transformation.
• “The kingdom of Heaven is within you” - A non-dual declaration if there ever was one.
• Rebirth through inner awakening - Not physical resurrection, but transformation of consciousness.

This Jesus, the mystic, the reformer, the awakener, fits seamlessly into the continuum of universal revelation.

2. The Difficult Point: The Doctrine of Jesus as a Saviour-God

What troubled me, and what may trouble some thoughtful seekers within Christianity itself, is not the teachings of Jesus but the claims made about him by later followers.

By Jesus' own recorded words:

• he never once asked to be worshipped
• he did not speak of himself as God
• he did not claim to be a divine sacrifice in order to save souls.

Instead, he:

• called himself “son of man”
• taught complete surrender to the One God
• pointed always beyond himself to the Source

The doctrines of incarnation as God, vicarious atonement and exclusive salvation only through belief do not arise from Jesus’ own voice. They emerge from post-crucifixion interpretation; sincere, heartfelt, devotional, but historically mediated through Paul’s letters, later church councils and the needs of a growing religious community. Such natural evolution is seen in all religious traditions.

This clarification does not diminish mainstream Christianity. It simply places it within the very pattern we see everywhere: The teachings of a realized master become a religion after his departure; and religions always reflect the cultures that preserve them.

3. How Christianity Fits the Universal Pattern

If we return to the core of Jesus’ message and not the later doctrine, Christianity becomes not an outlier but a jewel in the same necklace.

• Jesus reflects the “Bhakti” stage of spiritual evolution
• He embodies unconditional love, forgiveness, surrender, and the softening of the heart.
• He represents the blooming of compassion within the human spiritual journey
• He mirrors the symbolism of divine love through an incarnation (Krishna).

His teachings are entirely consistent with Advaita when interpreted inwardly

• “I and the Father are one” becomes a statement of realized unity, not ontological exclusivity.
• His call to ego-death mirrors the Sufi and Upanishadic Self-realization process
• The cross becomes a symbol of the dying of the lower self so that the higher Self may live.

Thus Christianity absolutely fits the evolutionary Abrahamic arc, not through doctrinal literalism but through the mystical heart of Jesus’ own words.

4. The goal of this essay

None of this diminishes the devotion of Christians who see Jesus as divine. It simply recognizes that the divine can manifest in:

• many forms,
• many cultures,
• many languages,
• while still pointing to the one Reality.

A Christian who reads the Gospels with openness is unlikely to be offended by this view. In fact, many Christian mystics (Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila) have independently reached the same non-dual understanding of our relationship with the Source.

What this essay offers is not criticism, but integration:

• Jesus’ teachings join the great river of universal revelation.
• His message aligns with the Vedic, Yogic, Buddhist, and Quranic streams.
• His compassion and inner wisdom are indispensable to humanity’s spiritual evolution.

Revelation is one. Forms are many. Truth is indivisible.

Does Mind precede Matter?

The following chain of events began with a question posted in Substack which I could not resist.
"What are you made of - Mind or Matter? Which comes first?"

Applying what I had learned previously from the Upanishads about the 4 layers of the mind, I suggested the following:

The physical part of the mind, which forms as the brain develops, can only exist because of the brain. Therefore matter must precede mind.

But the awareness or consciousness, which is what survives the death of the body, already existed before the body was formed. Therefore that part of the mind surely precedes matter.

I thought I was being quite clever.

Gabriel, who had posed the question in the first place, came back with the following response.

"Agreed. Though I would go so far as to collapse the distinction. Maybe matter is the image of the localized mind?"

That was a startling thought which took me into exploration of an entirely different concept.

Is the world of maya that we live in really only a construct of our own mind? What are the implications for our day to day activities and in our interactions with the other beings we encounter in our maya?

I have examined the idea in my Blog essay for this week.

Read more

Saturn's Daughter

After posting last week's article about a wounded woman speaking her truth and splitting the illusion, I pondered about woundedness in general. My stunted observation had been that, while men appeared to shrug off woundedness, women were deeply affected by their wounds. This led me to wonder, do deeply wounded souls incarnate as women in order to be able to process their woundedness?

I posed the question to several women in my life. My daughter came back with a sharp rebuttal: "Do you think men are not wounded?"

That led us into an animated discussion which culminated in this week's article about woundedness and incarnation. The discussion also reminded my daughter that she had a library of thoughts filed in her mind awaiting release. They had not been published yet because they were not appropriate for her web pages which were work related. This event was the trigger for her to initiate a philosophical presence on Substack as Saturn's Daughter

She has given me permission to mirror her Substack posts in my Blog. So join me in welcoming Shanee Singam as my second invited Guest Author.

Guest Authors

Saturn's Daughter

Woundedness and the Choice of Incarnation

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Reflecting upon last week's post about the wounded female speaking out and splitting the illusion, a thought occurred to me: Are all females wounded?

Or, more precisely, does a wounded soul choose to incarnate in a female body in order to process its pain? It was a question not meant to generalize or discriminate but to probe the deeper logic of embodiment - why we take birth as we do.

My daughter’s response was immediate and grounding: “All humans are wounded. You think men don’t carry wounds?”

That answer turned the key. Of course woundedness is universal. It is not gendered. But how that wounding expresses and is processed may differ depending on the vessel - male, female, or otherwise.

Each incarnation is an experiment in balance. Souls seem to oscillate between polarities, tasting the full range of human experience: activity and receptivity, assertion and nurture, reason and feeling, order and flow.

Gender, in this sense, is less a binary, more a tuning fork - each lifetime resonates to a slightly different set of frequencies along the multi-layered masculine–feminine spectrum. The body is simply the instrument through which the soul works out its harmonics.

Ancient mystic traditions often recognized this. Many cultures regarded the androgynous, the gender-fluid, or those born with either both or no genitalia as spiritually significant - as if they held within them the blueprint for integrating both halves of human duality. Perhaps, as my daughter suggested, such beings take on the complex task of healing both lines, masculine and feminine, within the collective psyche.

Wounds are not only personal; they are civilizational.

In patriarchal societies, the feminine, in both women and men, has been suppressed: the intuitive, the emotional, the relational, the earth-honouring. The result is centuries of psychic imbalance, producing both wounded women and wounded men - the former through oppression, the latter through emotional amputation.

In a matrilineal or egalitarian society, the reverse might occur. The masculine drive for independence, conquest, and identity could become the neglected pole. Every culture, in its extremes, generates its own shadow.

Thus, incarnation may be the soul’s way of participating in a larger evolutionary balancing act, to experience firsthand the side of the human story it once ignored or injured. The “black sheep” in every family or tribe might then be seen as the corrective agent, the soul assigned to heal the unhealed generational line.

If men and women appear to handle pain differently, it may not be because one feels more deeply than the other but because each is conditioned, biologically and socially, to process pain through different channels. The feminine psyche tends to turn inward, metabolizing sorrow through empathy, expression, and relational healing. The masculine psyche often turns outward, diffusing pain through action, humour, logic, or distraction.

Neither is superior; they are complementary mechanisms within the same species, and sometimes, within the same soul, across lifetimes.

Over time, the soul learns to blend these: to act with compassion, to feel with clarity. When the vessel (the feminine) and the oar (the masculine) move in rhythm, healing becomes wholeness.

In the end, woundedness may not be a flaw but the very engine of reincarnation, the friction that polishes the soul. As my daughter wisely said, there is no one way or another, just a sustained ebb and flow until resolution. The soul, tired of the machismo of one life, might next choose the open vulnerability of the feminine; and having healed that, return to embody the masculine with newfound tenderness.

Perhaps the goal is not to escape the wound but to understand it, to become the healer of both halves of humanity within oneself.

If incarnation is a dialogue, in this instance between wound and wisdom, then gender would be its syntax, the way the story gets told.

Each lifetime adds a new paragraph to that grand narrative, moving the collective toward integration, where masculine and feminine, strength and softness, vessel and oar, become one rhythm - the rhythm of the Whole healing itself through the individuals.

Truth Splits the World Open

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A couple of days ago, my niece shared with me a poignant extract from a poem that had inspired her. In the poem “Käthe Kollwitz” from her The Speed of Darkness collection, Muriel Rukeyser had said:

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”

There is a quiet power in that image — the world splitting open under the force of truth. I have often thought that truth, when spoken from the depth of one’s being, doesn’t just reveal; it rends the veils we have so carefully woven around ourselves. It lets in light, and for a brief, trembling moment, everything false falls away.

Illusion wraps around us in many layers.

What we call reality is, to begin with, māyā (illusion). Yet within that vast illusion, each person builds further illusions of their own: comforting fantasies, self-serving narratives, curated lives, beautiful lies to mask the disarray beneath. It is a hall of mirrors, reflections within reflections, and soon we begin to mistake the shimmering for substance. The collective noise of these overlapping illusions floods our senses and drowns the quiet truth that lies buried within.

But for the one nursing grief, that noise offers no solace. The world’s chatter cannot drown the ache that demands to be heard. Pain has a brutal clarity; it refuses to participate in illusion. So when someone, weary of pretense, dares to speak the truth — unadorned, unvarnished — it is a shock of relief. The world splits open, and for a while, we breathe.

Yet that moment passes. Even truth, once spoken, can harden into another story, another identity, another illusion. The only lasting relief lies in seeing through it all, in realising that everything we perceive, every drama and disguise, every joy and despair, unfolds within māyā.

This realisation is not an escape from life but a deep reconciliation with it. To know that all is illusion is not to reject the world, but to hold it lightly, to dance with it without becoming entangled. Those who learn to live with māyā as one might live with a dream, aware, awake, yet participating, find a quiet fulfilment.

Otherwise, we are tossed endlessly by the tumults of illusion in all its variegation — chasing shadows, grieving phantoms, mistaking reflection for truth. But once even one person tells the truth, and the world splits open, perhaps we begin to see: the light that pours through the crack was always there.