An exploration of the universal pattern woven through humanity’s sacred narratives
Prologue: The Story That Tells Itself
Before there were books, before there were temples, before humanity had words sophisticated enough to argue about theology, we gathered around fires and told each other the same story.
We didn’t know we were telling the same story. The shepherds on the Judean hills didn’t know that priests in the Nile delta had been telling it for millennia. The devotees singing to Krishna in Vrindavan didn’t know that, centuries later, fishermen in Galilee would recognize the same pattern in their rabbi’s life. The Mithraic initiates descending into Roman caves didn’t know that Christians meeting in catacombs nearby were celebrating the same mystery in different words.
Yet the story persisted. It adapted, it clothed itself in local garments, it spoke the language of each people—but its bones remained the same.
This is that story.
Part One: The Promise in the Darkness
In every telling, the story begins the same way: the world has fallen into shadow. Something essential has been forgotten. Humanity wanders in a darkness it can no longer name.
In Egypt, Set has murdered his brother Osiris, scattering his body across the land. The green god of life lies dismembered, and the world grows cold.
In Persia, Ahriman the Destroyer wars against the light, and humanity struggles beneath the weight of cosmic conflict.
In India, the Kali Yuga descends—the age of darkness, of forgetting, when dharma walks on one leg and righteousness becomes a distant memory.
In Israel, the people cry out from beneath the heel of empire, remembering ancient promises, wondering if God has forgotten them.
The darkness takes different names in each tradition, but it carries the same weight: separation from the Source, exile from the garden, the long wandering in the wilderness of matter and forgetting.
And yet, in every tradition, the darkness is not the end of the story. It is the womb from which the light will be born.
Part Two: The Virgin and the Light
The light does not enter the world through ordinary means. Every tradition recognizes this. Whatever is about to happen requires a doorway that is not of this world—a passage through which spirit can pour itself into flesh without being entirely bound by the laws of flesh.
In Egypt, Isis conceives Horus not through ordinary union but through magic and divine will. Osiris is dead, yet somehow his essence enters her, and she carries the child of light.
In Persia, the Saoshyant—the savior to come—will be born of a virgin who bathes in a lake where Zoroaster’s seed has been preserved by divine angels.
In India, Devaki does not conceive Krishna through ordinary means. Vishnu himself transfers the divine embryo into her womb, and she carries the Supreme Being in human form.
In the Buddhist telling, Queen Maya dreams of a white elephant entering her side, and from that moment carries Siddhartha—he who will become the Buddha—in a womb untouched by ordinary generation.
In Greece, Semele is consumed by the fire of Zeus’s divine presence, yet Dionysus survives, sewn into the thigh of the god, born twice—once of woman, once of the divine.
And in Bethlehem, Miriam—a young woman pledged to a carpenter—receives the message that the Ruach ha-Kodesh, the Holy Spirit, will overshadow her, and she will bear a son called Yeshua: “God saves.”
The virgin birth is not merely a biological claim. It is a recognition that what enters the world in these moments comes from beyond the world. The ordinary chain of cause and effect is broken. Something new is being inserted into the weave of time—a thread that connects back to the Source itself.
Part Three: The Birth Among the Humble
The divine child is never born in a palace.
Krishna comes to Devaki in a prison cell, where his parents are held captive by the tyrant Kamsa. His first bed is among cowherds, his first companions the simple people of Vrindavan.
Horus is born in the marsh reeds of the Nile delta, hidden by Isis from the murderous Set, raised in obscurity until his power can be revealed.
Mithra emerges from a rock, witnessed only by shepherds who bring offerings of their flocks.
Jesus is born in a stable, laid in a feeding trough, announced first to shepherds watching their flocks by night.
The pattern is consistent: the light enters through the lowly places. The palaces of power, the centers of empire, the halls of official religion—these are not the locations of the divine birth. God slips into the world through the cracks, among the forgotten, in the places that power overlooks.
This is not accidental. It is the nature of the teaching. The Kingdom is not of this world. The values of spirit invert the values of empire. The last shall be first. The meek shall inherit. The pure in heart shall see God.
Part Four: The Tyrant’s Fear
In almost every telling, a ruler receives word of the birth and trembles.
Kamsa, king of Mathura, has been warned by prophecy that Devaki’s eighth child will destroy him. He murders seven infants. When Krishna is born, divine intervention allows his father to spirit the child away in the night, across a river that parts for his passage, to safety among the cowherds of Gokul.
Herod, king of Judea, learns from the Magi that a king has been born. Unable to locate the child precisely, he orders the massacre of all male children under two in Bethlehem. Joseph, warned in a dream, flees with Mary and Jesus to Egypt.
Set hunts Horus through the marshes, seeking to destroy the heir who will avenge Osiris and restore order to the cosmos.
The Python pursues the pregnant Leto across the world, trying to prevent the birth of Apollo, the god of light.
The pattern reveals a truth: the darkness recognizes the light. Power recognizes the threat to power. The systems of control can sense that something has entered the world that will overturn them. They cannot stop it—the child always escapes—but they can make the world bleed in their fear.
Part Five: The Hidden Years
Then comes silence.
We know almost nothing of Krishna’s childhood beyond miraculous tales—the lifting of Govardhan mountain, the taming of the serpent Kaliya, the play of the divine child among the simple villagers.
We know nothing of Jesus between his presentation at the Temple as an infant and his emergence at about thirty years of age, save for one brief story of his teaching among the elders at age twelve.
The Buddha’s early life is a sheltered mystery, hidden within palace walls until his great departure.
What happens in these years? The traditions are largely silent. Perhaps the divine incarnation must grow into its power gradually. Perhaps the human vessel must mature before it can hold the fullness of what it carries. Perhaps these are years of preparation, of quiet transformation, of the deep work that happens out of sight.
Or perhaps the silence is the teaching: that the spiritual life is mostly hidden. The dramatic moments—the miracles, the confrontations, the great revelations—are brief punctuations in a life mostly lived in obscurity. The kingdom grows like a seed in the earth, like leaven in bread, in the dark, in the quiet, unseen.
Part Six: The Teaching Begins
At some point, the hidden becomes manifest. The teacher steps forward. Disciples gather.
Krishna reveals himself on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, speaking the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna—a teaching on duty, devotion, knowledge, and the eternal nature of the soul. “Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”
The Buddha takes his seat beneath the Bodhi tree and attains enlightenment, then rises to teach the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path to those with ears to hear.
Jesus emerges from the wilderness after forty days of fasting and begins to proclaim: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He gathers twelve around him—fishermen, tax collectors, ordinary people—and teaches in parables that overturn worldly wisdom.
Mithra gathers his twelve companions—often depicted as the twelve signs of the zodiac surrounding the central sun—and establishes the mysteries that will spread throughout the Roman world.
The teaching in each case is both simple and inexhaustible. Love. Compassion. The unreality of the ego. The eternal nature of consciousness. The path of return to the Source. Each tradition clothes these truths in its own vocabulary, its own metaphors, its own cultural forms—but the core transmission is remarkably consistent.
Part Seven: The Miracles and Signs
The divine presence cannot be contained. It overflows in signs and wonders.
Krishna lifts mountains, multiplies himself to dance simultaneously with countless devotees, reveals the entire cosmos within his mouth to his astonished mother.
The Buddha works miracles—though he downplays them, pointing always beyond the spectacular to the quiet miracle of liberation.
Jesus heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, walks on water, multiplies loaves and fishes, raises the dead. “The works that I do, you shall do also,” he tells his disciples, “and greater works than these.”
Dionysus transforms water into wine—a miracle John’s Gospel will deliberately echo in the wedding at Cana.
Mithra performs the tauroctony, the cosmic sacrifice of the bull from whose body all life springs—a miracle of death and generation.
The miracles serve multiple purposes. They authenticate the teacher. They demonstrate the power of spirit over matter. They provide symbols for interior transformation. And they point toward what is possible when consciousness fully awakens to its nature: the laws of the material world are not final. Something greater moves through them and, when needed, transcends them.
Part Eight: The Gathering Opposition
The light illuminates, but it also exposes. And what it exposes does not always wish to be seen.
In every telling, opposition gathers. The religious authorities feel threatened. The political powers grow uneasy. Those invested in the current order recognize that this teaching, if taken seriously, will overturn everything.
The Pharisees and Sadducees challenge Jesus, trying to trap him in his words. Judas conspires with the chief priests. Pilate washes his hands of responsibility but signs the death warrant nonetheless.
Kamsa sends demon after demon to destroy Krishna, each one defeated, until finally the divine child comes to Mathura to fulfill the prophecy.
The Buddha faces Mara, the lord of illusion and death, on the night of his enlightenment—an opposition both external and internal.
The pattern is not merely historical. It is psychological, spiritual, eternally recurring. The ego opposes the Self. The darkness opposes the light. The small and frightened part of us opposes the infinite nature we carry. This opposition is not a mistake in the story. It is essential to the story. Without the night, we would not recognize the dawn.
Part Nine: The Passion
Now we come to the heart of the mystery.
The divine one must die.
Osiris is murdered by Set, his body dismembered and scattered across Egypt. Isis searches, weeping, gathering the pieces, reassembling what was torn apart.
Dionysus is torn to pieces by the Titans, consumed and destroyed, only to be reborn.
Attis is killed—some versions say by self-mutilation, some by a boar—and his devotees mourn him each spring in rites of lamentation before celebrating his rising.
Tammuz, the shepherd god of Mesopotamia, descends to the underworld, and the women of Babylon weep for him, as Ezekiel observed with disapproval even in Jerusalem’s temple.
Odin hangs himself on Yggdrasil, the world tree, pierced by a spear—his own spear—for nine nights, dying into wisdom, learning the runes, returning transformed.
And Jesus is handed over to the Romans, scourged, crowned with thorns in mockery, and crucified on a hill called Golgotha—the skull—between two thieves, dying as the sun darkens, crying out in the words of the Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The death is essential. In every tradition, something must be surrendered, something must be given up entirely, before transformation can occur. The seed must fall into the ground and die; otherwise, it remains alone. The ego must be crucified; otherwise, the Self cannot rise.
This is not mere metaphor. It is the structure of reality. Every genuine spiritual transformation involves a death—the death of who we thought we were, the death of our attachments, the death of our illusion of separation. The cross is not merely a historical event; it is an eternal pattern, enacted once in time but eternally true.
Part Ten: The Descent
In many traditions, the death is followed by a descent.
Inanna, the Sumerian goddess, descends through seven gates to the underworld, surrendering a garment or ornament at each one until she arrives naked before Ereshkigal, the queen of the dead. She is killed and hung on a hook for three days before being rescued and restored.
Persephone is taken down to the realm of Hades, and her mother Demeter’s grief brings winter to the world until the daughter’s return.
Orpheus descends to reclaim Eurydice, learning that the underworld can be entered but that its powers cannot be cheated.
Jesus, according to the Apostles’ Creed, “descended into hell”—the harrowing of hell, in which he liberates the righteous dead who awaited his coming.
The descent represents the completion of the incarnation. The divine does not merely visit the surface of human experience; it goes all the way down. It enters the depths—the places of shadow, of loss, of death itself—and illuminates them from within. Nothing is outside the reach of the redemption. No darkness is too deep for the light to penetrate.
Part Eleven: The Resurrection
And then—
After three days—
The stone is rolled away.
Osiris rises, not to resume his earthly life but to reign as Lord of the Underworld, judge of souls, the god who dies and lives, dies and lives, in the eternal cycle of the Nile’s flooding.
Dionysus returns, the twice-born, the god of ecstasy and transformation, his devotees tearing apart the sacrificial animal and consuming it raw in identification with his death and resurrection.
Attis rises on the third day after his death, and his followers celebrate with jubilation after their period of mourning.
Mithra, in some traditions, dies and rises, ascending to join the sun in its eternal circuit, promising his initiates that they too will rise.
And Jesus—the tomb empty, the grave clothes folded, the angel announcing to the grieving women: “He is not here. He is risen.”
The resurrection is the vindication of everything that came before. The darkness did not win. Death is not final. The light that entered the world cannot be extinguished. Whatever was given up in the passion is returned, transformed, multiplied, glorified.
More than this: the resurrection is a promise. “Because I live,” Jesus says, “you shall live also.” The pattern enacted in the divine life is available to all who participate in it. The death we die to self is followed by a rising into new life. The consciousness that seemed bound by matter discovers its eternal nature.
Part Twelve: The Ascension and the Presence
The risen one does not stay.
Krishna, after his earthly mission is complete, allows a hunter’s arrow to strike his heel—his one vulnerable point—and departs for his celestial abode, Goloka, where he reigns eternally.
The Buddha, after forty-five years of teaching, enters Parinirvana, passing beyond the world of form while his dharma remains to guide seekers for ages to come.
Jesus, after forty days of appearing to his disciples, teaching them the things concerning the kingdom, ascends from the Mount of Olives, taken up in a cloud, promising to return, sending the Spirit to remain with them always.
Elijah ascends in a chariot of fire. Enoch is taken up without seeing death. Romulus disappears in a sudden storm and is afterward worshipped as the god Quirinus.
The pattern suggests that the divine incarnation was never meant to be permanent in physical form. The teacher comes, accomplishes the work, opens the way, and then withdraws—but withdraws only in visible form. The presence remains. The Spirit remains. The teaching remains. The community remains. The door that was opened does not close.
Epilogue: One Story or Many?
What are we to make of these parallels?
Some have argued that Christianity borrowed from earlier traditions—that the Christ story is essentially Egyptian, or Persian, or Greek, dressed in Jewish clothing. This view has the virtue of taking the parallels seriously but the limitation of assuming that similarity implies derivation, and the greater limitation of reducing the traditions to their most superficial narrative elements.
Others have argued that these are all independent inventions—that the human mind naturally produces such stories because of our psychological structure, our experience of the seasons, our need to make meaning of death. This view has the virtue of taking each tradition seriously on its own terms but the limitation of explaining away the patterns as mere projections.
Still others—and this is the view of the perennial philosophy, articulated by thinkers from Aldous Huxley to Huston Smith, and embodied in teachers like Paramahansa Yogananda—argue that the parallels exist because all these traditions are pointing toward the same truth.
Yogananda spoke of “Christ Consciousness”—not as the exclusive possession of Christianity but as the universal consciousness of the divine presence in all things. Krishna and Christ, in this view, are not competitors but collaborators; not different gods but the same infinite consciousness appearing in different times and places to different peoples, speaking their languages, wearing their cultural garments, accomplishing the same work of awakening.
“Jesus Christ was crucified once,” Yogananda wrote, “but his consciousness is being crucified every day in the thoughts and actions of those who call themselves Christians.” And Krishna’s consciousness is being crucified in those who call themselves Hindus but do not practice the yoga of love he taught. The external religion is the husk; the inner transformation is the kernel.
If this view is true, then the story we have traced is not many stories but one story—the story of consciousness itself. The One becomes many. The many forget the One. One of the many awakens and remembers. That one teaches, demonstrates, dies into the full depths of the forgetting, and rises to show that the forgetting was never final, that the separation was never real, that the light was shining in the darkness all along even when the darkness could not comprehend it.
And the promise implicit in every version of the story is this: what happened in him can happen in you. The Christ is not only Jesus; the Christ is the potential in every human being. The Buddha nature is not only Siddhartha’s; it is the nature of all consciousness. The Atman that is Brahman—the individual soul that is the universal soul—is not only Krishna’s secret; it is the open secret of all existence.
The story that humanity has been telling itself around ten thousand fires is not ultimately about gods and heroes. It is about us. It is about you. It is about the light that you carry, the death you must die, and the life you are invited to rise into.
The myth is not an escape from reality. It is the deepest reality, told in the only language adequate to its depths.
“The Kingdom of God is within you.” — Jesus
“You are the Self, the eternal witness.” — Krishna
“Look within. You are the Buddha.” — Siddhartha
“Truth is one; sages call it by various names.” — Rig Veda
Light Being ॐ 
Leave a comment