By Satyananda Stokes
As I see it, Sri Krishna, The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Guru Nanak and all the great jagad-gurus were the wonderfully-attuned radio instruments, especially fitted to ‘pick up the wave’ of the Atman – the one and only ‘broadcaster’. That is why we hear through the mouths of all of them phrases, the gist of which is, “Only through Me – only in Me – can you find salvation”; “I am the Way; no man cometh to the Father but by Me”; “I am the path and the Supreme Goal.”
I the Atman – not ‘I the Christ’ or ‘I Krishna’. I the Atman – the great Deep – am calling to the deep in you. In finding what you are – tattvatah – you will find Me; in finding Me you will know what you really are, and the infinite richness within you that remains for you to realize in terms of your own individuated personality. … So you see, I am no follower of Krishna, or Christ, or Nanak or Buddha; I am profoundly grateful for these wonderfully-attuned radio instruments of the spirit because through them I can hear the Atman calling – Atman, completely manifesting itself personally as God, as Father – and calling to the Atman in me, revealing Myself to me. This is what I find in the Gita.
{Excerpts from Stokes’ reply to Prof. J B Pratt’s letter of June 1933, as supplied in Asha Sharma’s book, AN AMERICAN IN GANDHI’S INDIA published by Indiana University Press, 2008.}
[Samuel Evans Stokes, Jr., son of a prominent Philadelphia family of Quaker heritage, was just 21 years old when he arrived in India in 1904 to work in a home for lepers. He soon became disillusioned with the foreign missionary community and began a new spiritual quest, adopting Indian dress, forgoing the privileges of a Westerner in colonial India, and founding a mendicant religious brotherhood. Later he married a Rajput Christian girl, converted to Hinduism and adopted a new name. Stokes became a leader in Gandhi’s independence movement in the 1920s, and was the only American jailed by the British for this cause. He is most often remembered in India, however, as the man who introduced American Delicious apples to the Himalayas.]
