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.
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.
Life Abundant and Eternal
In the Gospel of John we have a parable spoken by Jesus about Nondual Reality. He tells us how to enter into unitive awareness, 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 Gospels say that Jesus was a carpenter, but I wonder if in his growing-up years he had friends or family in Nazareth who were shepherds. Perhaps the young Jesus went with them into the fields on occasion to tend the sheep. He certainly knows a lot about shepherds and sheep and uses them often in his teachings. He even calls himself “the good shepherd” in our story.
In chapter 10 of the Gospel of John Jesus gives us a picture of a sheepfold that a shepherd would have used when he had to spend the night outdoors with his sheep. It is not like it is pictured on the Christmas cards with the stars shining and the sheep spread out across the fields. If they had done that they would have lost sheep to predators or by wandering off during the night. Shepherds kept sheep in a sheepfold for the night. Sheepfolds are enclosures made of stone walls, much like the stone walls we have everywhere in New Hampshire, including around the perimeter of our property.
When I first went to Israel in 1983 I remember thinking that those sheepfolds looked exactly like the town pound in our little village just down the street from my house. It was built back in the 1770’s to house stray animals. It is not used any longer for that purpose, but it is preserved for historical purposes with a sign identifying it. It is just a square stone wall enclosure with a gate. That is the way sheepfolds were in Palestine.
In connection to this parable of the sheepfold Jesus gives three of his famous I AM statements, as well as a couple other famous sayings. He says “I am the gate [or the door] to the sheepfold.” He says, “I am the Good shepherd.” Finally he says bluntly “I am the Son of God.” In the process he gives these two other famous sayings, “I came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly.” And “I and the Father are one.”
What is Jesus trying to communicate? The sheepfold represents the Kingdom of God, which I call unitive awareness. He is talking about how to enter into this nondual awareness. The only way to enter into this awareness is through him. “Truly, truly I say to you, the one who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.” Then he says, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”
Jesus is speaking here and everywhere in this Gospel as the Eternal Christ, the Divine I AM. He is not saying that you have to be a Christian to enter the sheepfold. Jesus makes that clear when he says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice; and they will become one flock, with one shepherd.” He is referring to people of other religions. All faiths are part of his sheepfold, but they all have to come through the I AM. That is why he has more I AM sayings here than any other chapter. To come into the Kingdom of God we come through that nondual awareness known as I AM.
That is what he means when he says “I am the good shepherd.” The shepherd was literally the door to the sheepfold. When the shepherd was spending the night in the field with his sheep, the shepherd would lie down in the entrance to the sheepfold. He was literally the gate to the sheepfold. Nothing was getting in or out without going through him.
Several times here Jesus make reference to his role as the shepherd saying, “I lay down My life for the sheep.” The door to unitive awareness is through laying down one’s life. It means death of the self in order to enter into the bigger identity of the I AM. That is what the Cross is all about as well. It is a proclamation that the way to Eternal Life is through the death of the personal individual self.
This parable of the sheepfold has echoes of the Garden of Eden, which is pictured in Genesis as a walled garden with an entrance at the east, just like the temple. The Temple was a symbolic Garden of Eden. Eden symbolizes the Nondual Reality that was ours before we developed the sense of separation. In the Eden story, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden after they became self-aware.
Genesis says a cherub with a flaming sword stood guard at the entrance to the garden to prevent anyone from entering and eating of the Tree of Life and living forever. The cherub was the gate. To get into Eden you have to go through him, which means you have to die. You have to lay down your life. Jesus is being an example to us that we are to lay down our lives, just as he lay down his life, if we are to enter the sheepfold of the Kingdom of God.
When one contemplates the image of a sheepfold as Nondual awareness, a walled sheepfold or garden can sound a little confining. Until you hear Jesus say these words: “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” We are not confined to the sheepfold. We go in and out. In other words the gate is open, just like the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation, the doors always stand open. This is describing openness and spaciousness.
I was on a zoom talk recently with a group that was studying one of my books. We were talking about the sense of self and the body, and a woman said that she felt like she was in her body. She asked me what I experienced. I said that I experienced the body being in me. I was being quite honest. I no longer think of myself as localized inside a body. The body is here, but it is not me and I am not in it. I am not going to cease to be when the body is not. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” This is what Jesus called abundant life. “I came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly.” Abundant means overflowing all containers and boundaries. My cup runneth over. There are no limits to Eternal Life.
Some people talk about God being in us, and that is true, but it is only half of the truth. Jesus says, “the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” God is in me, but I am also in God. The boundary is porous. To get back to the sheepfold image, the gate is open and we go in and out. We are not contained by boundaries.
This brings me to the last section of this chapter. After Jesus tells this parable he gets into an argument with the Pharisees, who are actually picking up stones to stone him for blasphemy, because he said “I and the Father are one.” When asked by Jesus why they are stoning him they said, “We are not stoning You for a good work, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.”
Then Jesus says the most startling statement he has ever made. I explored this in another episode entitled “The Blasphemous Spirituality of Jesus” but I need to mention it here also. Jesus quoted from the Hebrew Bible saying, “Has it not been written in your Law: ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be nullified), are you saying of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
The scripture he was quoting is Psalm 82, and it actually says in Hebrew something much more controversial. It says to humans, “You are Elohim,” which is the Hebrew name for God. It was saying, and Jesus was saying, that humans were one with God, just like Jesus was claiming to be one with God. He said that everything he taught and did was “that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.”
Jesus is talking about identity with the Divine. That is the I AM Awareness. Jesus tells the parable of the sheepfold to teach people about his true nature and their true nature. And it was successful. They got it, but they did not like it. In fact they thought it was blasphemy and wanted to get rid of him and his teaching. Things have not changed. Traditional Christianity still calls this blasphemy and want to get rid of the teaching and those who teach it. This is what I am teaching. This is Eternal Life. This is life abundant and eternal. Jesus said, “I came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly.” This life is yours. It is who you are.