The Tao of Christ

In this episode I look at the famous story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee and interpret it as an expression of nonduality. It is symbolic of the transformation from seeing this world as duality to seeing it as nonduality. This story is a symbolic reenactment of the creation story with Jesus playing the role of the Source or Word of creation. John 2:1-11 View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

One day John the Baptist was with two of his disciples, and he saw Jesus walk by. He exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God!” I can imagine Jesus saying under his breath, “Give me a break, John. Will you stop saying these things?!” Anyway John’s two disciples follow Jesus down the road. Jesus turns around and says, “What do you want?” They answer, “Rabbi ,where are you staying?” Jesus responds “Come and see.” That response “Come and see” is more than just an offhand comment. It is his approach to the spiritual quest, not only in the Gospel of John but in the other gospels as well. When it comes to the question of his identity, Jesus simply says, “Come and see.” This is direct inquiry. Nonduality talks a lot about self-inquiry – knowing who we are. We certainly have that in the Gospel of John. John the Baptist goes into self-inquiry big time. But here it is more about Christ inquiry or God inquiry. The gospel of nonduality is not about accepting what other people say about God or Jesus. That is secondhand faith. It is about coming and seeing for oneself. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In this episode I look at a person who is mentioned repeatedly in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: John the Baptist, not to be confused with John the apostle. I call him “the man who did not wake up.” We could call him the unChrist or the unBuddha. He was a popular preacher in his day and even considered a prophet by many including Jesus. But he never saw the Kingdom of God, which was Jesus’ term for nondual awareness.I see him as an example of a spiritual seeker who never reached the spiritual goal that he sought, which was the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ term for nondual awareness. According to Jesus, John never made into the Kingdom. Jesus says of John “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”He also is an example of a devoutly religious person of today who approaches religions from a dualistic perspective.  John is a like the devout Christian who knows there is something more but has not found it yet. As the prologue says, John understood himself as not the Light but bearing witness to the Light. That is a good description of the traditional dualistic theistic Christian path where the Christ and the Christian are separate. In the Kingdom of God, the two are One.  View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

In these episodes I am interpreting the Gospel of John as a gospel of nonduality. In this episode we look at John 1:9-14 :The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. The first thing this passage John 1:9-14 says is that this Word, the Primordial and Eternal Christ, enlightens every human being. It says, “The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.” Another translation says, “The true light was that which enlightens everyone who comes into the world.” In other words it is saying everyone is enlightened! What am extraordinary thing for this apostle to say! The Word has been enlightening people long before the Word became flesh in Jesus. This statement of John’s Gospel is extraordinary in its universalism and inclusivism. It is also extraordinary in saying that the goal of spiritual enlightenment, which is sought after by so many spiritual pilgrims and seekers, is already reality for every person in the world. We are already enlightened or saved or liberated or awake or whatever term you want to use. Yet this passage says that people did not recognize this. John uses three different words for recognizing the True Light: knowing, receiving and believing. Life and Light – Enlightenment and Awakening – was present, but people did not know it. They did not receive it. They did not believe it. They were living in spiritual darkness and ignorance. It is the same today. In this episode we explore the meaning of these concepts and discover what it really means to be born again and to receive Jesus. It is speaking of union with the Divine.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

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.View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

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. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

A Christian, a Jew, a Muslim and a Hindu wake up in the afterlife. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

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. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

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. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU

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. View Marshall's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marshall-Davis/author/B001K8Y0RU