Q. Master, when Christ was asked “What is the truth?” he turned his back and walked away, yet he also said that he was “the way, the truth and the life.” Is there any contradiction in this?
A. First of all, Christ did not turn his back and walk away; he just kept silence before Pilate. The one who turned his back and walked away was the Buddha Shakyamuni.
Undoubtedly, when Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” it was not the human person who said it, but the Inner Christ. Unquestionably, the one who works upon his own self and advances in that way, will on some day among many be assisted by the Inner Christ. The Christ in itself is the truth and the way, yet Christ is not a human or divine individual. Christ is a force just as the force of gravity or electric energy or universal cohesion.
Christ emerges from within, not from without. Therefore, those who await the second coming of Christ from without are very mistaken. Christ will come from within, from the Spirit, from the Consciousness, from within the depths of our own Soul. When we incarnate Christ, he then enters within our temple (which is the physical body) in order to help us in our psychological work. He then takes possession of our mental, volitional, sexual, etc., processes. Christ becomes a human among humans and fights in order to disintegrate all of the undesirable elements that we carry within our interior; yes, he fights against our own egos as if these were part of his own self. In other words, not being a sinner, he will look like a sinner; not being an indweller of darkness, he will look as if he is one; he will become a person of bones and flesh in order to liberate us. Then, one day among many, he will have to climb to the Golgotha of supreme sacrifice in order to give his life so that other can live. Finally, within the heart of the one who has him incarnated, Christ must die, because with his death he kills the death. Thereafter, Christ resurrects within that human being and the human being resurrects within him and glorification arrives.
Resurrection must be attained, now, in bones and flesh, alive, here and now. Those who think that the Resurrection is in a remote future are mistaken; those who think that the Resurrection is for all the human beings are very far from the truth, since Resurrection is not for everybody, and can only be attained if we truly decide to psychologically die within ourselves here and now. Again, Christ comes to us from within and when we are very much ahead in this very difficult psychological work.
