I suspect that Jesus himself was fully aware of his divine nature from the beginning. Rather, he was happy to be a normal man who worked, ate, slept, got tried, and laughed like any of us. But, at the same time, in his deepest heart, he felt certain desire to long for something bigger than he could imagine. He might try hard to understand what it was and yet failed to name it again and again. Finally when he decided to leave home to seek the truth, the stir in his heart moved him strongly to be determined not to come back until he became fully awakened. And as the time came to him baptized by the saintly man John, he became quite free to let go of his restless heart to grasp what his yearning meant. He simply submitted himself to God and suddenly he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
It was the inauguration of Jesus as the man of God. He attained the enlightenment to understand who God and he were and what the Creator wanted him to do with his life. Through the baptism, the ordinary man became the extraordinary son of God because Jesus took the message from God, “You are accepted. You are accepted.” It was the baptism into which he had to die and from which he rose to new life. Like the Buddha, he submitted himself to the unknown and the grace raised him up to more than he could imagine.
But that was not the end, rather, it was a beginning, as Jesus assured, “You need to be born again to enter the kingdom of God.” In fact, the baptism never ends; it actually happened again and again as Jesus was immediately led to the desert after the baptism to be tempted by the Satan, as he greatly suffered by his contemporaries, as he was hung up on the cross, as he seemed to be abandoned by his Father, Jesus had to be baptized again and again to hear, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well please.”
The same thing happens to us. We need to be baptized again when we find ourselves beginning to ask, ‘Why this happens to me? Where is God?’ We need to be born again and again and again. We need to be born again to the world, and born again to God, and born again to ourselves, to never forget, “You are accepted. You are accepted because you are my beloved sons and daughters, with you I am well pleased.” This is the enlightenment that the Buddha and Jesus tasted and held on to the end.