The Tao of Christ

In this episode I explore death in the context of the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. This is a symbolic story that looks at how three people – Mary, Martha, and Jesus respond to death. It culminates in Jesus statement: I am the resurrection and the life. This statement points to the reality that death is conquered now in the realization that one’s true nature does not die. Resurrection is another term for spiritual awakening.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In the Gospel of John we have a parable spoken by Jesus about Nondual Reality. He tells us how to enter into union with God, which he calls Life Abundant and Eternal Life. It is the Parable of the Sheepfold. It is undoubtedly drawn from his own experience watching shepherds in Galilee. The sheepfold represents the Kingdom of God, which union with God. He is talking about how to enter into this nondual awareness. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I interpret Christmas as a proclamation of nonduality. There is a lot in the Christmas story that speaks of nonduality. I deal briefly with three aspects of the story: the Virgin Birth, the Visit of the Wise Men, and the doctrine of Incarnation.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Before they were called prophets or Christ (anointed one) or buddha (awakened one) or jnani (knowing one), or arhat (worthy one) they were called seers. The Hebrew Scriptures say that was the term used in the time of the prophet Samuel. It reads, “the prophet of today was formerly called the seer.” Such people were able to see with spiritual eyes what could not be seen with physical eyes. Jesus called this being “born again.” He said, “unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” This spiritual sight is what I am talking about today. In this episode I am looking at a story found in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John. It is the story of Jesus healing a man born blind. On the surface it is about physical sight and physical healing, but Jesus makes it clear that it is really about spiritual sight and spiritual healing. It is not about being visually impaired but being spiritually impaired.The first thing this story addresses is psychological barriers to seeing the Kingdom of God, particularly guilt. Seeing the Kingdom of God, of course, is just another term for spiritual awakening or enlightenment or liberation or salvation. Then Jesus deals with is spiritual practices. Jesus then turns to the Pharisees and offers an indictment of traditional religion – what we might call today the institutional church or organized religion. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I deal with the most important verse spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of John. Everything so far has led up to this verse, and everything after it is based upon it. It is the pinnacle of the gospel found in the eighth chapter. They are words that Jesus spoken in response to repeated inquiries by people as to who he was, whether he was the Messiah or the Prophet or someone else. Jesus responded, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”To explore that saying properly I need to put it in context and mention briefly what led up to it in chapters 7 and 8. These chapters center on a discussion of the identity of Jesus, explored in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles.We find that Jesus is not just talking about himself. He is speaking as the Son of Man, which he called himself a few verses earlier, as representative of all humans. Jesus is teaching about human nature. He is teaching about our nature. What Jesus said of himself, every person can say of themselves. That is because we are not separate individuals. We are one with Christ. Each one of us can say with Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”This saying of Jesus is equivalent to a Zen koan. A famous koan says, "Show me your original face before you were born." Or “Show me your original face before your mother and father were born." Jesus’ saying “Before Abraham was, I AM” is pointing to the same reality. These koans are meant to direct our attention to what we truly are apart from our physical human manifestations.In this episode I make this very practical and lead the listener to experience this. What were you before you were you? What were you before you were born? Better yet, before you were conceived? Before your parents were born? What were you before the universe was born? If you know that, then you know what you are. This is what this saying is all about.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of what I call unitive awareness, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God. Also called Holy Communion or the Eucharist, this Christian ritual is a symbolic proclamation of nonduality. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In chapter five of John’s Gospel, we find a story that teaches us an important truth about nonduality. It is the story of Jesus healing a man at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. It is much more than just a miracle tale. Like all the stories about Jesus in the Gospel of John, this is intended as symbolic. It is proclaiming the ultimate healing that comes about by realizing one’s true Self and waking up to the Truth of Eternal Life.On the surface this is a physical healing story, but it is really a parable about being made whole in a spiritual sense. I use the phrase “being made whole” in a literal sense. We are not little isolated parts of the whole, tiny psychological entities encased in human bodies of flesh. We are the whole. To wake up to the Kingdom of God is to realize that we are already whole. It is just a matter of recognizing this. It is also a matter of intention. Jesus asks the man in this story, “Do you want to be made whole?” The intention of the man is the key. The Buddha called it “right intent.” Most people do not really want to be made whole. They have gotten used to the way things are. Most people have no true desire for liberation, freedom, salvation or enlightenment. We prefer bondage and spend our lives escaping from freedom, as Erich Fromm phrased it. People convince themselves that there is something basically wrong with them. They see a fundamental dis-ease in their souls. Different spiritual traditions use different words and concepts to explain what is thought to be wrong. Hindus call it ignorance or bondage. Buddhists call it suffering. Christians call it sin and original sin – we are born this way, they say. Calvinists call total depravity. Christians see the whole world as fallen and we with it. We have fallen from our primordial paradise into a condition of lostness, sin and death and condemnation. It is a dark view of the human condition.But Jesus does not accept this diagnosis or prognosis. Jesus sees the man’s innate wholeness and calls him to act upon it. Jesus tells him, “Rise, take up your bed, and walk.” And the man does exactly that. It does not say that Jesus healed him. Jesus simply tells him to get up. All it took was someone to point out to him that he was already whole and tell him to trust it! View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Every chapter of the Gospel of John proclaims nondual reality. Today I am going to deal with one of the greatest chapters in the gospel, but one that does not get the attention it deserves. Chapter 4 has the story of Jesus meeting with a Samaritan woman at the well. It is a powerfully symbolic story. This story is filled with dualities. It is like a living illustration of the Yin Yang symbol. Here is a man and a woman, a Jew and a Samaritan, two different races and two different religions. They come together at an ancient and deep well which had been dug by Jacob, the forefather of Israel. The well is more than physical water, but what Jesus calls “living water,” which symbolizes the single Source from which all religions draw their inspiration. Their conversation is about how Truth is both deeper than and transcends religious, cultural and racial barriers. In the story the well is the symbol of nonduality. Jesus says that those who drink from the waters of religious duality will thirst again. They will have to come back again and again through religious rituals and spiritual practices to be refreshed. Jesus offers another way. He says, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”Jesus is talking about a spirituality that comes from within versus external religion. When one has living water welling up from within oneself, one does not need the drinking vessels, which symbolize the externals of religion.  True spirituality is within us. Jesus says elsewhere, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It is not found in outside religious beliefs and practices. Those can be expressions of the inner reality, seeking to express the inexpressible. But dualities can never adequately express nonduality. The Living Water of Nondual awareness is seen by looking within. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I look at the most famous verse in the Bible. I interpret John 3:16 as a description of unitive awareness or nondual Reality. The verse is not a call to evangelical Christian conversion but a call to spiritual awakening. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

Nonduality has more to do with spirituality than religion. Nonduality is represented in the mystical branch of every religious tradition, but it tends to be relegated to the periphery of the religion. It is sometimes branded as heresy and persecuted by the religion’s powerbrokers, especially in Western religions. That was the case in Jesus’ day. He was opposed by both the temple priests and the synagogue leaders of his own faith. Jesus was a disrupter of what we would call today organized religion or the institutional church, especially the type that is in bed with worldly powers. Most western Christians do not see this antireligious theme in the ministry of Jesus and Gospel of John because establishment Christianity is still in bed with economic and political authorities. In this episode I look at the story of Jesus Cleansing the Temple found in the second chapter of the Gospel of John. In that symbolic act Jesus was not just condemning the corruption of religion. He was attacking transactional religion, whether that be the temple sacrificial system or Christian sacrificial theology. Jesus was symbolically ridding his own religion of such dualistic thinking. In place of temple religion Jesus proclaimed that humans are temples of God. This nondual incarnational spirituality is the gospel of Christ.  John 2:13-25View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU