The Tao of Christ

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

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