Suffering: Jesus and Prahalada, in Hindu mythology

"Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego. The man on the cross is an archetypal image. He is every man and every woman. As long as you resist suffering, it is a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you accept suffering, however, there is an acceleration of that process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. You can accept suffering for yourself, or you can accept it for someone else, such as your child or parent. In the midst of conscious suffering, there is already the transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness."
Eckhart Tolle: "A New Earth"

"Suffering cracks open the shell of the ego".
Eckhart Tolle: "Stillness Speaks"


In Hindu Myhtology, Prahalada is an ardent devotee of the Lord (Vishnu)/'the light of consciousness'. His love for God, fueled flames of hatred in his demon king and father, Hiranyakashipu (the ego). Hiranyakashipu wanted himself to be worshipped. The demon king sent his son to be persecuted, only to see his attempts fail a number of times. The boy held on to his love of God. Repeating the name of the Lord, he accepts every suffering inflicted upon him through all his tials of persecution. In thus frustrating the demon king (the suffering experienced by the humans), the Divine or the 'light of consciousness' in the form of his chosen God Vishnu appears before Prahalada, symbolically tearing apart and destroying the demon.

Jesus was sent to be persecuted. After willingly undergoing the final suffering of persecution on the mount of Cross, the light of 'Chirst Consciousness' pierces back into the world in the form of His resurrection.

In looking for the symbol, the light of 'Christ Consciousness' tore upon and destroyed the King Herod - the ego - of His times; in one of Gary Zukav's work he says that Jesus's life and his suffering on the cross discharged the collective human negativity - the King Herod - that was present in His times.