The further we get into the Gospel of John, the closer we come to the core of the John’s gospel of nonduality. The structure of the gospel up to this point has been seven I AM sayings of Jesus, accompanied by seven teachings that Jesus gave. In the 15th chapter we have the last of these sayings. He says here, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” Then a couple of verses later he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
In fleshing out this metaphor Jesus talks a lot about “abiding.” Some translations use the word remain or dwell, but I like the word “abide” because it means to make one’s home in, as in the word abode. It means to live in. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” This is my awareness of Christ. I abide I Christ and Christ in me.
There is an oft- repeated evangelical mantra: “It is not about religion. It is about relationship – a relationship with Jesus Christ.” When I hear that I respond, “It is not about religion or relationship. It is about reality.” There is more to spirituality than relationship with God understood as a divine person. There is the Reality of the universe that is nondual.
It is not about religion or relationship; it is about identity – identity with God where there is no longer two. As Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” This is a quantum leap beyond relational Christianity. I know because I have experienced both. What I am talking about here is union with God or “abiding in Christ.”
A dualistic relationship with Christ is nothing compared to being one with Jesus Christ. In Christ we are one with God and with all of creation. In this union there is no distinction between us and not us. In unitive awareness the individual self that appears to be in relationship with God ceases to exist. The self dissolves. It is seen through as a psychological fiction, which means that its relationships are fiction.
Instead there is only one, which can be called Reality but there is really no good name for this. I use the word God, but it is not the theistic concept of God. Meister Eckhart calls this the God beyond God or the Godhead. It includes the personal God, but is beyond God to the same degree that an idol made of stone is beyond the theistic God. Paul Tillich calls this Being Itself or the Ground of Being. This is what we really yearn for when we desire a closer relationship with God.
Abiding in Unitive Awareness
The further we get into the Gospel of John, the closer we come to the core of the John’s gospel of nonduality. The structure of the gospel up to this point has been seven I AM sayings of Jesus, accompanied by seven teachings that Jesus gave. In the 15th chapter we have the last of these sayings. He says here, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” Then a couple of verses later he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
In fleshing out this metaphor Jesus talks a lot about “abiding.” Some translations use the word remain or dwell, but I like the word “abide” because it means to make one’s home in, as in the word abode. It means to live in. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” This is my awareness of Christ. I abide I Christ and Christ in me.
In our local newspaper there is a regular religious column written by an evangelical and political conservative. The title of his most recent article was “Turned off by Religion.” In the article the author repeated the evangelical mantra, “It is not about religion. It is about relationship – a relationship with Jesus Christ.” When I hear that I respond, “It is not about religion or relationship. It is about reality.”
A relationship with God and Christ is fine. I was an evangelical for decades, so I know all about that and preached it. Until I went beyond relationship and found there is no I to have a relationship. A relationship is by nature dualistic. To be a relationship there has to be at least two. But in reality there isn’t. It is one – nondual. Devotional religion and pietism are all relationship with God, and that is fine as far as it goes. It is a genuine path to God. It is one of the paths acknowledged in Hindu spirituality, called Bhakti.
But there is more to spirituality than relationship with God understood as a divine person. There is the Reality of the universe that is nondual. It is not about religion or relationship; it is about identity – identity with God where there is no longer two. As Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” This is a quantum leap beyond relational Christianity. I know because I have experienced both. What I am talking about here is union with God or “abiding in Christ.”
A dualistic relationship with Christ is nothing compared to being one with Jesus Christ. In Christ we are one with God and with all of creation. In this union there is no distinction between us and not us. In unitive awareness the individual self that appears to be in relationship with God ceases to exist. The self dissolves. It is seen through as a psychological fiction, which means that its relationships are fiction.
Instead there is only one, which can be called Reality but there is really no good name for this. I use the word God, but it is not the theistic concept of God. Meister Eckhart calls this the God beyond God or the Godhead. It includes the personal God, but is beyond God to the same degree that an idol made of stone is beyond the theistic God. Paul Tillich calls this Being Itself or the Ground of Being. This is what we really yearn for when we desire a closer relationship with God.
The insufficiency of the traditional evangelical gospel is why so many evangelicals end up leaving the fold and abandoning Christianity. This exodus from traditional Christianity is an epidemic. If a relationship with Jesus was really as fulfilling as evangelical preachers say it is, then no one would ever abandon it. Yet there are growing numbers of deconversions to atheism and drop outs from the church by people to describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” The politicizing of evangelical Christianity is only accelerating this trend. Christians are outgrowing evangelicalism.
There is a wannabe evangelical megachurch in our area I refer to as a starter church. It is a good place to get people started in Christianity, but it is elementary level spirituality. It is very helpful for those who are beginning the spiritual life, but that type of religion can only bring people so far. When people start to grow, then they end up leaving the church because the church cannot bring them any further. It is like a child leaving home. This is a good thing. The church thinks these people are falling away or backsliding, but in fact they are outgrowing that type of Christianity.
Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” God prunes our lives. He prunes it of dead religion. Dead wood has to be trimmed, and even good wood needs to be pruned back to produce fruit to eternal life. This can be a painful experience, but it is necessary. Growth and fruitfulness demands pruning.
This process is called the Via Negativa. The negative way. It is the way of removing everything that is not God. One discovers True God by removing from one’s life all forms of fake God. Like the layers of an onion, there are layers and layers of fake God in traditional religion. God peels back the layers from our lives and throws them away. God removes the idols. When the last layer is removed, nothing remains. Then we see that everything is God. I know that sounds contradictory, but it is real. God takes away everything, until nothing is left and what remains is God … or the True Self.
Spirituality is abiding in that True Self, which is called Christ. It is abiding in Christ. A healthy spirituality is not content or finished until this happens, until the ego is no more and one is united with God, so that there is no separation between us and God. There are no boundaries between who we are and who God is and what the universe is. All is one. This Reality is simply what is. This is unitive awareness, which some spiritual traditions call liberation or awakening or enlightenment or satori or moksha or nirvana or a dozen other terms. It is oneness. Nondual awareness. Union with God.
This is what Jesus calls abiding in him. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” In reality there is no difference between the vine and the branches. They are one. You cannot tell where one ends and the other starts. So it is with God and us.
In the very next verse Jesus says, “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” That has traditionally been interpreted as a warning about being thrown into hell. But that is not what this is about. This is not a threat. This is a promise. It is the casting off of ego. Everything that is not God must be thrown out. Even Paul knew this. In Philippians he lists everything about his previous spiritual life. Then he says:
“But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things loss in the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him….” The original text is actually stronger than that. The word translated “rubbish” actually means excrement. You heard me right. Paul used the S word from the pulpit. He flushed religion down the toilet in order to abide in Christ.
The spiritual life is a process of elimination – pun intended. We search for what we really are and what God really is. We examine our lives carefully and discard everything that that is not eternal. This is called Self-inquiry or God inquiry, depending on whether you are approaching the spiritual search by looking for God or looking for one’s true self. It ends up being the same search and the same destination, but it can be approached from either direction. In my case from both directions at once. It is kind of like digging a tunnel from both ends until they meet in the center. At that meeting in the center one sees one’s true self or God. At that moment of seeing, illusion falls away and one is face to face with reality.
Jesus then talk about the results of this union. He says, “you will remain in my love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” He also says there are costly consequences to this spiritual union. He speaks of religious persecution. He says, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world … the world hates you. …. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well…. All these things they will do to you on account of My name, because they do not know the One who sent Me.”
This message of abiding in Christ, union with the Divine, oneness with God, is not received warmly by the institutional church. According to the Gospel of John, they are the ones that got Jesus executed on the charge of blasphemy. Jesus says in the opening lines of the next chapter, “They will ban you from the congregation. An hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think that he is offering a service to God. These things they will do because they have not known the Father nor Me.”
So do not be surprised if this gospel of nonduality is not received well by your evangelical friends or even those in traditional mainline Christianity. This is the way it has to be. It is the way of the Cross, which Jesus will talk about shortly. It is the way it has always been, and will be until the Kingdom of God is realized on earth as it is in heaven.