Can Creator comment on the practice of “Baptism?” What exactly happened when John the Baptist baptized Jesus? Was this sacrament/ritual actually “necessary” for Christ to fulfill his divine mission?

Ritual has an important place in the practice of spirituality by many religions and has great value for this. The use of ritual has many beneficial attributes. It creates a formality and seriousness and it engages multiple sensory modalities of the worshiper in many cases. This keeps the focus squarely on the intention at hand and puts a more powerful intention behind the objective. Any additional expenditure of energy adds to the meaning of the whole and the power being devoted to reach whatever goal is in mind. The formalization in adopting and following a ritual regularly through repetition reinforces the execution in all respects from expectation through the delivery of the intention, and then a return to a balanced state and letting go to proceed with the next activity. In the process, many things can happen as a result of the human intention and the expectation with a formal request, in most cases, to have participation by the divine in the experience. So this is a very powerful and effective way to enlist divine help and have it count. We can only do what humans ask of us. The more effectively they conduct the outreach, the greater the energy, focus, and power of intention, and heartfelt desire involved in the process, the greater our response can be to bring a greater degree of divine energy to act on the request, and the more effective will be the outcome. Baptism incorporates all of these criteria by being a whole-body experience in the case of older individuals. It has, in addition, most typically the presence of multiple individuals taking part in the process, if only as observers. All will become entrained energetically in the desire for a divine expression to take place. This will create the effects similar to a communal prayer and will strengthen the meaning and consequence of the ritual. It has deep emotional recognition to a number of common principles and ideas and associations, for example, the benefit of being washed clean. The act of being submerged and then emerging from beneath the water to take a breath recapitulates symbolically, the birth experience coming in anew as a fresh participant and experiencer in starting out a new life. So this constitutes symbolically, a rebirth with the new inner conviction to follow a more divine path. All of the combined energetic benefits of the trappings of the ritual, empower what takes place and enable the greatest measure of divine love to be imparted to the individual taking part in the rite, so every aspect of the ritual has a purpose and a benefit. It is very effective in forming a closer bond to the divine and a solid partnership that can last a lifetime, and that is the ultimate meaning and end result of the Baptism ritual itself, to symbolically turn oneself over to the divine to be a part of life as a divine instrument, and to carry forth the divine message and intentions for humanity as a representative of the human family, and an agent for the divine as well. Jesus Christ started his ministry with this ritual, and this has deep meaning as well. Part of this, is the creation of an association of the ritual of Baptism with Jesus being an example himself undergoing the procedure, in effect, as a kind of endorsement, as well as teaching by example the benefits of Baptism. All of these purposes and goals were achieved, as the later history has amply demonstrated, as not only his name lives on but the Baptism ritual lives on as well, and is present uniformly in churches of today.