The Nondual Christ
This episode began as a suggestion from a listener in North Carolina. He asked me to talk about the use of the word Christ. The word Christ means different things to different people. The fundamentalist Christ is very different than a liberal Protestant Christ. A Roman Catholic means something different by the word Christ than a Quaker. A Hindu using the term means something different than a Baptist.
The term itself is a title which means Anointed One. It was used in the Old Testament to refer to priests and kings. In time it came to be equivalent to the term Messiah. I use the word Christ to refer to Ultimate Reality expressed in the first century Galilean carpenter known as Jesus of Nazareth. I use it to refer to both the human and the divine dimension of Jesus.
A friend who is the pastor of the Methodist Church we attend here in New Hampshire makes a point of using the terms Jesus and Christ differently. Her uses Jesus to refer to the human being who lived and died in the first century. He uses the word Christ to refer to the eternal Christ, the universal and preexistent Logos.
He is not alone in making a distinction between Jesus and Christ. Some theologies say that the man Jesus became the Christ at some point in his life. Early Christians who believed this were called Adoptionists. They believed that the divine Christ entered into the human Jesus at some point – at his baptism, resurrection or ascension.
I use the word Christ for both the human being Jesus and the eternal Logos or Word. I intentionally do not make a distinction human and the divine aspects, the mortal and immortal, the universal and the particular. Christ is nondual. Once we start dividing up Christ into two parts then we are in the midst of duality. That is where Christian theology took a wrong turn when they started talking about the two natures of Christ in the Chalcedonian Creed in the fifth century. Once we start carving up Christ then we are firmly entrenched in the dualistic mindset.
The nondual Christ is exactly that – not two, not two natures – even if you qualify that double nature as combined in a hypostatic union as the creed says. I know I am sounding all theological here and using two dollar theological terms, but bear with me. This is the end of the theological terms because Christ is not theological. Theology has to do with the ideas in the mind, and Christ is not theology. Christ is experiential. That is where evangelicals get it right – kind of. They talk about a personal relationship with Christ, which is all right as far as it goes, but we can go further.
Personal relationships are dualistic. They are all about the personal ego. A personal relationship with Christ is our personal ego having a relationship with a Heavenly Ego we identify as Jesus Christ. But relationships are by nature dualistic. You have to have two to have a relationship. Reality is nondual. Christ is nondual. One can’t have a relationship with the Nondual. Separate beings can have relationships with other beings, but one can’t have a relationship with Being Itself, the Ground of Being.
Once again let me say that I am not against having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The egoic aspect of me still has a relationship with Jesus Christ. I understand where evangelicals are coming from. But that is only part of the story. There is so much more. We can go so much deeper than a personal relationship. We can become one with Jesus Christ when the ego drops away – when it is seen through. In fact we are now one with Christ.
Christ is experiential but not in a dualistic sense. Christ is experiential in a nondual sense. I use the word Christ to communicate nondual union with God. Traditional Christianity talks about being one with God through Christ, and sometimes I will also use that phrase in preaching to Christians. Traditional Christian theology sees Christ as the mediator between God and humans. But mediation presupposes separation, and in reality there I no separation. Christ a Mediator is just an idea that the mind uses to bridge a gap that it has created between God and human. When one is united with God, one in Christ, there is no gap.
The duality is also seen in how Christians use the name of Christ in prayer. It is thought that if we add the magic words “in the name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen” at the end of a prayer that is kind of like adding a stamp to a letter sent by the postal service. We think that without the name of Christ affixed then the prayer will not be delivered to the heavenly throne room. In reality God is present here now.
God is nondual. Christ is nondual. We are nondual. There is no separation to be bridged or mediated. Christ is the word I use to communicate that unicity. I think the term Christ serves the purpose better than the word God, which is even less well defined.
Christ is the union of human and divine together as one. Essentially, eternally, always one. Divine and human are two sides of a coin. Jesus on one side of the coin and Christ on the other. God on one side and human on the other. There is no such thing as a one sided coin. You cannot have one side without the other side. The two sides are one whole. And you cannot tell where one side ends and the other begins.
In the same way Reality is one. Duality is unicity. There is no divine without human, no good without evil, no high without low, no wet without dry, no light without dark, no saint without sinner. Nondual reality includes all seemingly different opposites. Two sides of reality do not really exist. They are the same coin. I call that coin Jesus Christ. Put Jesus on one side and God on the other if you want. For me the term Christ unites the two into one.
This is the nature of reality, and it is our nature as well. All duality is one Reality. All the dualities that we perceive in the world are just the artificial differences that our minds have created, like the two sides of the coin. All is one. This nondual reality is communicated in those passages in Scripture that speak about Christ being all and in all.
Colossians 3 says, “you stripped off the old self … and have put on the new self, which is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created it, a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free, but Christ is all, and in all.”
The apostle Paul see the eschatological Kingdom of God as being a time when “God will be all and in all.” The Letter to the Ephesians speaks of God as “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” That is the origin of the concept of omnipresence. Omnipresence is just another way of saying that God is equally present everywhere. If that is true, it means that earth and heaven are one. Heaven and hell are one. Try and get your mind around that!
Ideas about God and Christ are just thoughts in the mind. Terms like Jesus and Christ are the way that the ego has to make distinctions were none exist. We want to pin down the meaning of the term Christ, but what we are actually doing is trying to separate Christ from what is not Christ. It cannot be done. Theological and philosophical ideas are just ways that the ego tries to maintain some type of control and some type of individual existence for itself. The term Christ is one of those ideas. In reality all is one. All is Christ. If you want to know what the term Christ means, the only way is to be one with Christ, which in fact we already are. To know that is what it means to be a Christian.