Jesus talks a lot about children. I have not done a comparative study, but I would not be surprised if he talks more about children then any other spiritual teacher. Furthermore his comments concerning children are positive. In contrast, when the apostle Paul talks about children it is usually in a negative manner. For example Paul says in the famous love chapter: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” He says in the next chapter: “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking.”
In the same book he uses a child as an example of spiritual immaturity. He writes: “Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly — mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly.” 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. He says in another letter (Galatians) “when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe.” The only time Paul uses the word in a positive manner is when he refers to us as children of God.
But Jesus lifted up children as models of spirituality, as having something that we do not. According to Jesus children have something to teach us. On one occasion the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus called a child to him, and put him in front of his disciples and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Then he goes on to say: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Jesus is saying that these little ones already believe naturally. And it is adults who lead them astray.
In the following chapter it says, “Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people; but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he laid his hands on them and blessed them.” Here we see the difference between the disciples’ attitude toward children and Jesus' attitude. They wanted nothing to do with kids, seeing them as a nuisance, but Jesus lifted them up as examples of the Kingdom of God.
These verses I quote are just in two chapters of one gospel. There are a number of others. In Jesus’ teaching children represented the Kingdom of Heaven, which in other spiritual traditions is called enlightenment, awakening, nirvana, liberation, self-realization or any number of other terms. Children know naturally what adults have forgotten.
I am reading a book now by Bill Lindley entitled Truth on the Run, subtitled Christian Advaita. There is so little written about nonduality by Christians that it is a real blessing when I find a good one. A listener recommended this book to me, and I even though I am 150 pages into it, I can recommend it for those who are coming at nonduality from a Christian background. Lindley was a Christian mystic and a former Anglican monk. The book is a collection of blog posts that he wrote in 2010-2011 shortly before his death.
In one post about Mr. Rogers, he related this story. He writes: The story is told of a three-year-old who has just had a new baby in the house. One day the parents found the three-year-old curled up in the baby’s crib with the newborn. “What are you doing?” the child was asked. “I was just sitting with the baby”, the child said. “I was trying to remember. I had forgotten so much.”
When we are born we abide in nondual reality naturally and effortlessly. All is one experientially to a newborn. Then we forget. We slowly learn to differentiate between us and our environment, us and others. By the time we are two years old or so, the separate self is becoming our primary way of being. At that point we have not forgotten everything we knew when we were born, but we are on the way.
We are in two worlds when we are young. We still intuitively know the oneness that was – and is – our true nature, but we are beginning to identify with our new separate personality that is being developed by our brain as it learns how to relate to our physical environment and our social environment. In time we have completely forgotten what we once knew.
The spiritual life is about remembering what we have forgotten when we were little children. It is becoming a child again. That is what Jesus was talking about in his famous conversation with the Pharisee leader Nicodemus. It is what Jesus meant when he aid that we must be born anew or born again. Jesus said, ““Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He was not referring to an evangelical conversion experience. He was not talking about baptismal regeneration. He was talking about becoming a child again spiritually - having a second naiveté.
So Nicodemus was not so off base when he responded, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus is often ridiculed for taking Jesus literally, but he was on the right track. It is just that Jesus was talking spiritually and metaphorically rather than literally. The way into the Kingdom of God is to go back.
That is one meaning of the biblical word “repent,” which Jesus used when he said, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” It means to turn around, to do a 180 degree turn. It has other meanings also, which I have explored before. But one meaning is to backtrack. The problem becomes when we do not backtrack far enough. We need to go all the way back to the beginning. Not to just when we became conscious of sin, but when we became conscious of ourself. To when we chose duality over nonduality.
That is the meaning of the Garden of Eden story. The primordial humans ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That is the Tree of Duality. Good and evil are the archetypal symbols of all dualities. We fell into duality, and we need to return to nonduality. We have to get back to the Garden, as Joni Mitchell wrote and as Crosby, Stills and Nash sang. “We are stardust, we are golden, We are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.” That is what the “child of God” said in the song Woodstock.
In the Genesis story Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, and a cherub with a flaming sword is set by God to guard the gate to the garden, so they will not eat the tree of life. What is usually missed in interpreting this ancient myth is that the Tree of Life was not originally forbidden to humans. To get back to the garden and get back to the tree of Life they have to go through the cherubim with the flaming sword. I see that as saying that we have to die. Not die physically but die to our separate self. We go through the fire, we die to self and return to what we were before in order to eat of the tree of Life.
Becoming a child again is remembering. The word remember means to come back together again. Dismember means to be separated, and remember means to be united again. In other words we become one again. But in fact we were never not one. We simply forgot. To become one is to remember what we have always been but have forgotten.
That is what Jesus meant when he said that little children are of the Kingdom of God and that we must become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God. That is what he meant when he said that we must be born anew, born from above, and born of God. We return to the Garden, to the Womb of God and are born again. Then we wake up and can see the Kingdom of God.