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.
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
For a while 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. If it works out I will keep doing it. If not then I will move on to something more helpful. I have chosen the Gospel of John because it is the most nondual book in the New Testament. To start I need to give you a little background information on this gospel.
Even though the Gospel of John is considered by biblical scholars to be the latest of the four gospels, it is perhaps the only book in the Bible that is directly connected to one of the original twelve apostles of Jesus. The other three gospels are not. The Gospels of Mark and Luke do not even pretend to be. Neither Mark nor Luke were apostles. They were traveling companions of the apostle Paul, who was not one of the original twelve apostles. Paul never met Jesus or heard him preach.
On top of that the names of Mark and Luke were attached to these gospels in the second century – one hundred years after Jesus’ death - so we have no idea if they are even accurate. They were probably chosen because even in the second century people did not believe these gospels were written by apostles who knew Jesus. These two gospels have no connection to the original followers of Jesus.
The other gospel has the name of Matthew attached to it, who was the disciple of Jesus also known as the tax collector Levi. But that name was also attached to this gospel one hundred years after the events it describes. There is no external or internal evidence to connect the gospel to this apostle. In fact there is internal evidence to the contrary. The Gospel of Matthew copies most of the Gospel of Mark word for word. It would be strange for an apostle who was an eyewitness to the events to copy the account of a man who was not.
Furthermore it copies verbatim the story of the calling of Matthew/Levi[MD1] by Jesus to be a disciple. It makes no sense that Matthew would copy Mark’s account of his own meeting of Jesus. This was the most important day of Matthew’s life. Why wouldn’t he tell his own story in his own words? Why would he copy and paste an account written by someone else who was not there and never even met Jesus? It makes no sense at all. For that reason biblical scholar believe that the apostle known as Matthew did not write the gospel that bears his name.
Most of the rest of the New Testament books were written by Paul, who never met Jesus and seems unfamiliar with his teachings and ministry. Paul’s message is nothing like the message that Jesus proclaimed. Early Christianity was actually the creation of Paul rather than Jesus or the twelve apostles. Paul turned it into a Gentile Roman religion.
Even the earliest Jerusalem Church – which was mostly likely to retain the original message of Jesus - quickly fell under the influence of Jesus’ brother James, known as James the Just, who became the leader of the church after Jesus’ death. James was not an apostle. He did not follow Jesus or hear him preach or believe in him during his lifetime. But somehow after Jesus died James wrestled control of the new movement from Peter and the other apostles. It probably had to do with the fact he was his biological brother rather than any spirituality.
So early Christianity quickly moved from the Jesus of Jesus and the twelve apostles to become dominated by the message of Paul and James. That includes almost all of the books included in our New Testament. One of the exceptions is the Gospel of John. That is why I have chosen it. It captures the spirit of the teachings of Jesus.
I am not saying that the gospels of Matthew Mark and Luke do not have authentic teachings of Jesus. They do. But the gospel writers simply passed down the oral tradition they had received. John heard Jesus for himself and understood his gospel of nonduality. The Gospel of John is the only gospel that actually says in the book that it is connected to one of the original twelve apostles. This was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James (not to be confused with the other James who was Jesus’ brother.) John is called throughout the gospel “the beloved disciple” or “the disciple that Jesus loved” which shows the closeness of John to Jesus.
We find John mentioned in the final words of the gospel. Let me quote it for you. These are the last two sentences of the Gospel of John. They come right after a story about Peter and John, who were the rightful heirs and leaders of the church, not Paul and James. Speaking of the Beloved disciple it says: “This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.”
These verses give us a lot of information. They tell us that the Gospel of John is based on the writings of the apostle John. “This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things.” It refers to a group of people called “we.” “And we know that his testimony is true.” This “we” is understood by biblical scholars to be the spiritual community that developed around the apostle John in the first century. Early church historians tell us that this community was located in Ephesus in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey and included Mary the mother of Jesus. It is out of this spiritual community that this Gospel of John came.
There is a third person mentioned in the text, who is the actual writer of the finished gospel or at least the final editor of the book. He writes: “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” Did you hear that? He refers to himself in the first person as “I” who is different from John, who is always addressed in the third person. This “I” is presumably part of the “we,” part of the spiritual community that grew up around the beloved disciple that we know as John.
I am saying all this to point out that the Gospel of John is the only one of the four gospels that can be tied to one of the twelve disciples who lived with Jesus and heard him teach. That makes it very important. John was one of Jesus closest disciples. At the Last Supper he is seated right next to Jesus and it says he was actually leaning against Jesus, resting his head on Jesus’s breast. That is a pretty intimate depiction of the relationship Jesus had with Jesus. They were close. They fact that John was seated next to Jesus meant that he had high standing among the apostles. In the other gospels it says that Peter, James and John, were the inner circle of three that Jesus would often take off by themselves to teach.
In the Gospel of John we likely have the best insight into what Jesus actually taught. It captures the spirit of Jesus’ teachings, And it is the most nondualistic of the four gospels. In the Gospel of John Jesus is a proclaimer of what I call unitive awareness or nondual awareness, which in the other three gospels is called “the Kingdom of God.” Here in John’s gospel it is also called Eternal Life or simply Life.
The Structure of the Gospel of John is organized around seven teachings that Jesus gave. All of them beginning with the words “I am.” 1) I Am the Bread of Life. 2) I Am the Light of the World. 3) I Am the door or gate. 4) I Am the Good Shepherd. 5) I Am the resurrection and the life. 6) I Am the way, the truth, and the life. 7) I Am the true vine.
These “I AM” statements are variations on the primary teaching of Jesus in chapter 8 where he says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” This statement “I am” was the central teaching of Jesus. It is hub around which the other seven “I am” statements emerge like spokes on a wheel. When Jesus spoke those words, he was equating himself with God who declared himself to Moses to be “I am” or “I am that that I am.” Jesus was identifying himself with the Divine, and because of that the passage says that the religious leaders picked up stones to stone him – to execute him. This nondual message is why Jesus was executed. It was considered blasphemy.
This “I am” saying is echoed throughout the Gospel of John. As I go through the Gospel I will bring us back to this statement over and over again. This sense of identity with the Divine is the gospel of Nonduality that is the essence of all true religion. Jesus makes it clear in the Fourth Gospel that this awareness of the Divine is what he wants his followers to know as well. This is nondual awareness. This is the gospel of Nonduality. This is the message of the Gospel of John.