In this episode I begin a study of the Gospel of John, interpreting it as a proclamation of the message of nonduality. Last time I gave you some background information on the gospel, and today we are going to get into the text itself. The Gospel of John begins with the beginning. It repeats the famous words of Genesis 1 “In the beginning ….”  But instead of telling a dualistic story of creation, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” it says “In the beginning was the Word….” Instead of a story it has a poem that describes how this present dualistic world came to be, and how it is in reality nondual. Let me read the first few verses for you. In this episode we will be looking at the opening words of the Gospel in John 1:1-5In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

The Tao of Christ

Nonduality and the Gospel of John

I have been thinking about going through one of the gospels in the New Testament and showing how it presents Jesus’ message of nonduality.  People have been contacting me and asking me to do the same. So I am going to give it a try. I have chosen the Gospel of John because it is the most nondual book in the New Testament. In this episode I give background information on this gospel and explain how and why it came to communicate the nondual teachings of Jesus so faithfully, compared to the other writings of the New Testament. 

The Gospel of Nonduality

A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim and a Hindu wake up in the afterlife. 

A Story of Heaven and Hell

I have had listeners contact me when they are at an impasse in the spiritual life, and they ask the question: What can I do? What can I do to experience unitive awareness, to know nondual awareness? What can I do to wake up, to be enlightened or liberated or experience eternal life? In the New Testament the form of this question is normally phrased as: what must I do to be saved or to inherit eternal life or enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Many have been on the spiritual path for a long time – for years or even decades - without a definitive breakthrough, and they ask, “What can I do?” It is a difficult, if not impossible, to answer such a question, because in the final analysis it is a matter of grace. But that does not mean there is nothing we can do. In this episode I explore what I call the threefold path if Jesus. He said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  I also share a bit more about my own conversion to Christianity, my life in Evangelicalism, my journey through the Dark Night of the Soul, and my awakening to Unitive Awareness. 

The Threefold Path of Jesus

In this episode I explore the oft repeated claim that this world is illusory. That it does not really exist. How does the Indian concept of maya jibe with the Christian belief in the reality and goodness of creation? The truth behind the word maya is not that the world does not exist. It is that it is not what it appears to be. 

Is This World an Illusion?

In this episode I explore the idea that is advanced by many nondual teachers that the brain does not produce consciousness. They say that consciousness exists separate from the brain. One person compared the brain to a radio receiver that picks up the radio waves of Cosmic Consciousness. They use out-of-body experiences, Near Death Experiences, and past life memories as evidence that consciousness exists independent of body. Many think that when the body dies there is no significant change in consciousness. We continue to exist as we always have, only without a human body. I disagree. Consciousness is caused by the brain. That is the consensus of medical science, and I have no spiritual reason to challenge it. The human brain along with the central nervous system produces consciousness.  Out-of-body experiences, Near Death Experiences, and past life memories are simply the brain at work producing experiences. They say nothing about the independence of consciousness from the body.The real questions that should be asked is what is the nature and origin of this consciousness that is produced by the human brain - and which is produced in other living creatures as well? Consciousness seems to be a characteristic of matter. As small as you can get into the microscopic world, you would find evidence of consciousness. Probably also at the atomic and subatomic level. I do not pretend of understand quantum physics, but it seems to me that the randomness and unpredictability at that level is an expression of consciousness. Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena can change the result. That seems to imply consciousness even at that level, which may be where all consciousness originates from. Rudimentary consciousness in the earliest one cell organisms did not appear by magic. It was somehow already present in the matter from which they emerged. To me that indicates that matter is consciousness. I would go so far as to say that the universe is conscious or that it is consciousness. Consciousness is the essence of existence. That consciousness is what we fundamentally are. We are consciousness expressing itself through a human organism. It is the nature of Reality to be conscious, and the universe evolves forms of life to produce that consciousness. That is what our human bodies are. They are consciousness producing organisms, which evolved self-consciousness-producing organs called brains. It is likely that consciousness is expressed in a nearly infinite number of ways in this universe beyond life on earth. Together it is one infinite consciousness. That infinite consciousness is our essential nature. As the Upanishads say, “That thou Art.” We are one with and identical to that Consciousness. This consciousness is Unitive Awareness, or nondual awareness, or Cosmic Consciousness. 

The Spiritual Nature of Consciousness

In this episode I explore the effect that nondual awareness has on depression and other emotional and psychological problems. 

Depression and Nondual Awareness

Jesus tells us how to enter into Unitive Awareness, which he called the Kingdom of God. He was a teacher of Nondual Reality and taught how to enter into what other spiritual traditions call Enlightenment, Liberation or Spiritual Awakening. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Jesus is pointing us to the door. 

How to Enter Through the Narrow Gate

This episode explore how to sustain the sense of inner peace in nondual awareness, and how to express that inner peace in peacemaking in the world. 

Seek Peace and Pursue it

In recording these episodes I try to communicate Unitive Awareness. It is not easy. Not only does language seem inadequate to the task of communicating this indescribable reality, but even the process of communication has pitfalls. I have been noticing recently how important it is to pay attention to who is doing the speaking and who is doing the listening. Which “I” is speaking and which “you” is being addressed. As I have said, there are two selves, what Thomas Merton has called True Self and the false self. There is the little human self – the individual personality. Then there is the selfless Self, Universal Being, the One that includes all others, including the little self. Human language is the domain of the little self and is by nature dualistic, and hence the difficulty. Yet language is the only means that the Universal Self has to communicate, if this Self wants to use words. The Universal Self is in fact communicating wordlessly all the time through everything in the universe. It does not need words, but to communicate to humans through humans it has to humble itself to use words.It makes me think of that passage in Philippians where the apostle Paul says that in Jesus the Divine Christ emptied himself and humbled himself, taking the form of a servant. For communication of Unitive Awareness to take place through words, it must be the Divine Christ, the Universal Self speaking and not the individual human self. Not only that, but the Universal Self needs to speak TO the Universal Self in those who are listening. Communication involves a speaker and a listener. It has to be the right speaker and the right listener. Self speaks to Self. Spirit speaks to Spirit. Christ in me speaks to Christ in you. God in me speaks to God in you. God is speaking to God’s Self. You and I as individual egos are in the background while Deep calls to Deep, as the psalm says, encouraging Being to be aware as a human being. 

Deep Calls to Deep

In this episode I explore the relationship between Nondual God and Consciousness.

God and Consciousness

In this episode I explore the two selves – the True Self and the false self. I talk about a strategy to draw attention away from the little self and thereby live out of the Big Self, using the idea of unfriending on Facebook.  In the background you will also hear a guest appearance by my cat Percy, as he meows for attention and plays with a squeaking toy, thereby impersonating the false self. 

Unfriend Your Self

In this episode I explore how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity points to nondual Reality and can usher us into unitive awareness. 

Trinity and Nonduality

The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is well known in Christian circles. But the principle’s real power is found when it is applied, not to doctrines but to Unitive awareness or Nondual Awareness. The Protestant principle is true after all, but applied to Reality and not to ideas. You can call it salvation or eternal life. Other spiritual traditions call it enlightenment or awakening. The Christ called it the Kingdom of God. The Buddha called it nirvana. Zen calls it satori. Here I am calling it liberation, which is a term used in both the East and the West. Salvation or liberation is awakening to our essential unity with Nondual Reality. This Liberation is by grace through faith. Liberation is by grace. That means that there is nothing that we can do to be liberated. There is nothing we can do to facilitate spiritual awakening. It is by faith, which is spiritually seeing what is physically invisible. Faith is trusting spiritual sight. All of us have it. It is a free gift to all. It is just a matter of recognizing it, and using it and trusting it. Instead we tend to ignore it. That is why the ordinary human state is called ignorance as well as blindness. What all spiritual seekers hope for – spiritual liberation, awakening, enlightenment, which is a word which is about seeing the light – is right before our eyes. All we need to do is open our spiritual eyes and trust what we see. That is liberation by grace through faith.   

Liberation by Grace through Faith

You are not who you think you are. You are not WHAT you think you are. French Christian philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Even that does not quite communicate it. It makes it sounds like there are a lot of little spiritual beings having human experiences. There is only one Being, what Christian philosopher Paul Tillich called Being Itself or the Ground of Being. Another word for this is Spirit, and that is what we are. I would phrase it this way: We are not humans having a spiritual experience. We are Spirit having human experiences. This Spirit is that within which all experiences occur. All is One. We are One expressed in what appears to be many. We are Being appearing as human beings. Reality is One. I call that One Reality God. The problem with using the word “God” is that people mean very different things when they say that word. I am not using it as a traditional theist would use it. For that reason perhaps I should not use the word at all. But this is my religious vocabulary. If I can’t call Ultimate Reality God, then what use is the word God? The trick is trying to communicate this Reality, which seems to be nearly impossible to do. That is why the Tao Te Ching says, “He who speaks does not know, and he who knows does not speak.” And yet I speak. It is what I do. I am a preacher, and as the Scripture says, “How will they hear unless someone tells them?” So I speak. This episode is my attempt to express the inexpressible.  

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

The Tao of Christ is a podcast which explores the mystical, intuitive, and contemplative side of Christianity. It explores what has been historically called the unitive life and union with God. I call it Christian nonduality, nondualism, and unitive awareness. God has been speaking since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, long before there were human beings, written scriptures and religious traditions. In this podcast I explore that wider revelation. I interpret the Chinese classic the Tao te Ching from a Christian perspective. I share a book I have written on Christian non-duality, as well as presenting recent teachings. The Chinese word Tao means the Way, which is how Jesus referred to himself, saying, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” It is what the Gospel of John calls the Logos, or the Word, when he writes: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” According to the Book of Acts the earliest Christians called their spiritual path simply “the Way.” This podcast is about this ancient and primordial Way. This is the Tao of Christ.

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The Tao of Christ

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