A Prayer of Nonduality

In the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John we have one of the best descriptions of nonduality in the Bible. It comes in a prayer Jesus offered on the night he was arrested. 

Transcript

A Prayer of Nonduality

In the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John we have one of the best descriptions of nonduality in the Bible. It comes in the prayer Jesus offered on the night he was arrested. The other three gospels describe Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. There it is a prayer of agony with Jesus sweating blood and asking God that he not die, and finally surrendering to God’s will. In John’s gospel it is very different. The prayer occurs before they depart for the Mount of Olives, and it is a prayer of inner peace and describing unitive awareness. 

This prayer can be broken into three parts. First Jesus prays for himself, then he prays for his disciples, and third he prays for future generations of disciples who would believe in him through the testimony of his disciples. 

The theme of the first section is eternal life. The key word is glory. The word glory or glorify is used six times in five verses. Jesus begins by saying, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, so that the Son may glorify You.” He ends the section by saying, “Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world existed.” 

He is talking about his departure from physical life to resume the glorious existence that he had before he was born. This is a reference to this true nature as the Eternal Word, the Logos, the I AM, Being Itself. To be glorified is to return to that glory which he always was and is. To be glorified is to dwell in his true nature without the physical body. 

It is the same with us. This is glory for us as well. As we follow in the footsteps of Jesus we realize who we truly are, which is who Christ really was. That is why this is often called Self-realization. It is to experience what we are before birth and after death without a physical body. It is to be fully aware of this timeless nondual reality now. 

The future aspect of eternal life is often emphasized by Christians. In popular Christianity this is usually pictured as going to heaven at death. As the gospel hymn says, “When all my labors and trials are o'er, And I am safe on that beautiful shore, Just to be near the dear Lord I adore Will through the ages be glory for me. Glory for me, glory for me! When by His grace I shall look on His face. That will be glory, be glory for me!”

Eternal life is pictured dualistically, which is the only way that the mind can picture it. But the reality is nondual awareness. We are not just near the Lord and seeing his face, we are one with the Lord. As the Pauline letter to the Colossians describes it as “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The timeless nondual awareness of Christ in us now is the basis of the hope that when our earthly existence ends in time, this - our true timeless nature - does not end. Eternal life is now.

Jesus defines eternal life in this chapter, saying, “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” This says that eternal life is knowledge – knowledge of God and Christ. This is the basis of gnostic Christianity. Gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge, which is the word used here in this passage. 

Gnostic Christianity was not originally a heresy, as it was later declared to be in the second century. It was part of the rich diversity of earliest Christianity. Spiritual knowledge is at the heart of the Gospel of John.  In traditional Christianity it is not about knowledge but about faith and believing. Here in Jesus’ definition of eternal life he says eternal life is knowledge. Hindu spirituality calls this jnana, the way of knowledge, one of the traditional Indian paths to liberation. 

This is not intellectual knowledge. This is not dualistic knowledge about God and Christ. This is not holding the doctrinal knowledge that can be contained in creeds and expounded in theological tomes. This is spiritual knowledge. This is firsthand awareness, knowing our true nature and knowing God’s true nature, which is the divine name I AM. This is unitive awareness in which there is no division between knower and knowing and known. All is one. 

Jesus communicated this knowledge to his disciples, which is the theme of the second section of the prayer. Jesus prays, “I have revealed Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have followed Your word.” The Name Jesus is referring to is the eternal Name of the Divine, I AM. The Word that he is referring to is the Eternal Logos, his true identity. Logos is the Greek word used in this verse. 

Jesus goes on to pray for his disciples saying to God, “all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. I am no longer going to be in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are.” Jesus is saying that after his death, his disciples will be in the Name – the I AM – and will be one with him and God. This is nonduality.

The high point of the prayer comes in the third section, where Jesus prays for those who become Christians through the testimony of the disciples. This is one of the greatest passages in the Bible, and one of the best descriptions of nonduality ever taught. 

Jesus prays, “I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, so that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfect in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and You loved them, just as You loved Me.”

Jesus is describing a perfect mystical unity of the believer and Christ and God. All are one, Jesus says. “You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us.” Jesus says that we are one with God in the same way that he is one with God. “So that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfect in unity.”

Traditional Christian theology has a lot to say about Jesus’ oneness with God as God the Son. In fact it took most the first four centuries and numerous church councils to work out the exact language of this oneness. The Nicene Creed uses the words “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” 

But traditional Christianity ignores the fact that Jesus says that we have the same oneness with God as Jesus. Jesus said he was giving us the same glory that he has. “The glory which You have given Me I also have given to them, so that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity.” These phrases of the Nicene Creed used to describe Jesus also describe us! 

Of course saying such a thing is considered heresy in traditional Christianity today. Yet that is exactly what Jesus is saying. Today Christianity describes humans in terms of fallenness and sin and mortality and judgement and condemnation. Lots of negative language. At best it will talk about us creatures made in the image of God, but never use the same words that are used for Christ. This is how far Christianity has drifted from the original gospel of Jesus. 

We are in God and God is in us. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. We have the glory that Jesus had and has. We are one with the divine. Jesus calls it perfect unity. If that is not nonduality, I do not know what is! In the final words of the prayer Jesus describes this as divine love. He prays to God, “I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

This is the nondual gospel of Jesus proclaimed to us and through us. This is the unitive love that is being proclaimed in the Gospel of John. This is Christian nonduality.