For many human beings, Christ is synonymous with the historical person called Jesus or Yeshua. Others view Christ more as a universal presence. Many aspire to reach the level of awareness termed Christ Consciousness. Great beings like Babaji, who is sometimes called the Yogi Christ of India, have been said to embody the Christ. Some say that the Christ lives within us as the essence of our true nature as souls.
Which is the ultimate definition of Christ? All the above descriptions contain facets of the truth. To understand the Christ, we must define God. Many traditions speak of God as triune in nature. Think of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the the Judeo/Christian traditions or the threefold aspects of divinity known as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in the Hindu religion. The three aspects of the Divine often refer to the Father, Mother and Son/Daughter.
The first aspect -- Father or Creator, also called Brahma in the Hindu world -- is transcendent and absolute, the overlighting presence and source of everything in existence. The third aspect is God manifest or imminent as all of Life, the divine Mother or feminine aspect of the One. The second aspect, the Son/Daughter, is the offspring or union of the Father and Mother facets of God. It is the Source experiencing itself from inside its many individuated aspects of itself, or souls, made manifest through matter (Mater/Mother). It is also referred to as the Universal Oversoul, or Paramatman.
The Christ is the full realization of our true nature as a soul. He is the finished work, the ultimate completion of the soul's journey. As the first being to fully merge with the Godhead while in a human form, Christ Jesus became the Planetary Christ. He is our savior in the sense that he is offering his realization to us through grace. It is done. We don't have to re-create the journey. We can merge with him and realize our oneness with the Christ, which is our truest nature, the spark or flame of the One in the core of our souls. Through the grace of cross-resonance, just as one struck tuning fork causes others to vibrate sympathetically, Christ Jesus can catalyze the awakening and realization of the Christ in us.
The Christ flame burns within the sacred core of every one of us, and now, at the advent of the Second Coming, it is time for that divine spark to awaken and radiate ever more strongly. We all experience Christ consciousness to varying degrees as love, compassion, clear knowing of truth, higher intelligence, and deep peace, among other divine qualities. Souls such as Krishna, Zoroaster, and Buddha realized extraordinary levels of Christ consciousness. Jesus was the capstone on the pyramid of divine realization for humanity and stood on the shoulders of all the God-realizers who came before. All their realizations were included in that of Jesus. The being Jesus was the first soul to fully realize, completely and perfectly, his union with the Godhead: "I and the Father are One." All differentiations between the personage of Jesus and the all-encompassing beingness of God dissolved, allowing him to manifest the qualities, characteristics and capacities of Source: "I have been given all power over Heaven and Earth." Thus, Jesus became the first and perhaps the only fully Christed soul to inhabit human form, and he continues to be known as the planetary Christ.
When Jesus Christed, his realization became available to us all, for we are truly all one. Beyond the outer illusion of our separation from one another and the Divine, all souls, while they are unique flowers in the garden of Life, remain one in God. When we remember the ultimate truth, we know that the Christ is omnipresent, available everywhere through every soul.