Listeners who come from Christian backgrounds sometimes have a difficult time with nonduality because it feels like it is an abandonment of Christianity. One man on a Zoom meeting I was having with a church labeled it as occult. Occult is from the Latin word occultus, which means hidden or secret. There is nothing hidden or secret about nondual awareness. This is not secret knowledge. This is as open and obvious as it can possibly be. It is hidden in plain sight.
Others note that I often quote other spiritual traditions, especially the Hindu Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching and the teachings of the Buddha. They think I am importing Eastern religious ideas into Christianity, and thereby compromising the purity of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” to quote the Letter of Jude. I am not compromising the gospel. This is the gospel of Jesus.
All spiritual traditions point to the same Ultimate Reality. When Ultimate Reality is seen, one notices that. That is why I quote other spiritual traditions. One sees references to it everywhere, not only in religious texts but in poetry and literature. Aldous Huxley refers to it as the perennial philosophy, but it is not really a philosophy. It is a direct awareness of Reality that is expressed in a variety of ways in different cultures and religious traditions.
Is nonduality non-Christian or unchristian? No! It is deeply Christian. It is the essence of the gospel of Christ that is also found in other spiritual traditions.
Is Nonduality Unchristian?
Listeners who come from Christian backgrounds sometimes have a difficult time with nonduality because it feels like it is an abandonment of Christianity. One man on a Zoom meeting I was having with a church labeled it as occult. Occult is from the Latin word occultus, which means hidden or secret. There is nothing hidden or secret about nondual awareness. This is not secret knowledge. This is as open and obvious as it can possibly be. It is hidden in plain sight.
Others note that I often quote other spiritual traditions, especially the Hindu Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching and the teachings of the Buddha. They think I am importing Eastern religious ideas into Christianity, and thereby compromising the purity of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” to quote the Letter of Jude. I am not compromising the gospel. This is the gospel of Jesus.
All spiritual traditions point to the same Ultimate Reality. When Ultimate Reality is seen, one notices that. That is why I quote other spiritual traditions. One sees references to it everywhere, not only in religious texts but in poetry and literature. Aldous Huxley refers to it as the perennial philosophy, but it is not really a philosophy. It is a direct awareness of Reality that is expressed in a variety of ways in different cultures and religious traditions.
Back to the question at hand. Is nonduality non-Christian or unchristian? No! It is deeply Christian. It is the essence of the gospel of Christ that is also found in other spiritual traditions. Of course conservative Christians do not see it this way. They see the world as divided into competing religious worldviews. Christianity versus other religions and secular philosophies.
For them anything that is not evangelical Christian is false and deceptive and probably even Satanic or demonic. For them acknowledging the possibility of truth in any other religious tradition is dangerous. They see it as starting down the slippery slope to heresy and hell. That is why so many Christians have a hard time with nonduality. They have been taught to fear anything outside of their tradition.
In a sense they are right. Truth is dangerous to manmade religion. When Reality is seen it can never be unseen. That is why it is dangerous to traditional religion. It is like Neo taking the red pill. When you are unplugged you can never go back to being a coppertop again. When you see Truth, it sets you free. You will never see Christianity in the same way. You see that it is not about believing the right ideas about Jesus or even having a personal relationship with Jesus. It is about being one with Jesus and God. That is nonduality.
The best way to see nonduality’s relationship to religion is Jesus’ teaching on the subject in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was not just a reformer; if he was perhaps the religious leaders would have tolerated him. He was considered to be a heretic and a blasphemer by both the Pharisees of the synagogue and the Sadducees of the Temple. Those two Jewish sects did not agree on much, but they agreed that Jesus and his teaching were dangerous and needed to be eliminated. Jesus appeared to speak against the Temple and against the Law and that was intolerable. That is like speaking against the Church and the Bible today. It seemed like he was undermining thousands of years of scripture and tradition. Jesus addressed this in the Sermon on the Mount. He said:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
People accused Jesus of teaching things that were opposed to Holy Scripture. The phrase “Law and the Prophets” was shorthand for the Bible in Jesus’ day. The rest of the books of the Old Testament – called the Writings – would not be canonized until after Jesus’ death. So the Law and the Prophets were the Bible of Jesus’ day. Jesus said he did not come to abolish the Bible but to fulfill it.
He then goes on to make his point even stronger. He said that not the tiniest letter would be omitted from the Bible. The KJV says “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” By jot he was referring to the yodh, which is the smallest Hebrew letter. By tittle he was referring to the tiny extension on the end of some Hebrew letters.
Jesus had Hebrew fundamentalists in mind, who believed that every word and letter was divinely inspired. Just like the Christian fundamentalists today. Jesus was saying that his message of the Kingdom of God did not abolish the Bible but fulfilled the Bible.
I am a Christian. I worship in church weekly and preach in Christian pulpits. I love the Bible and have studied it my whole life. I preach it. The message of Christian nonduality that I proclaim, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, is not in opposition to the Bible. It is not in opposition to Christianity. It is a fulfillment of it. It is what the Bible points to. It is what Christian doctrines and creeds point to.
The problem is that most people within traditional Christianity do not see that any more than those in traditional Jewish religion of Jesus day saw it. Those in the Church do not see it any more than those in the synagogue or temple saw it. In Jesus’ day they saw the message of the Kingdom of God as a threat and that is how traditional Christians see nonduality today.
When one awakes to the Kingdom, then everything is seen as the Kingdom and pointing to the Kingdom. The universe is sacramental. All nature sings God’s praises. The rocks in the road praise God. The heavens declare the glory of God. All religions are seen as expressions of the Kingdom of God. All faith traditions are pointing to the same Reality. All religious traditions are fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.
The religious landscape is not seen as rival religious ideologies competing for turf and souls. Religions are seen as expressions of One Truth. That Truth was incarnated in the man Jesus who declared, according to the Gospel of John, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” When Jesus goes on to say, “No one comes to the Father but by Me” he was not speaking as the founder of one particular religion, staking out his turf in opposition to other religions. He was speaking as the Eternal One, who enlightens every man who comes into the world, as the prologue of John says.
Nonduality is not secret knowledge or a special experience. It is the natural awareness of all humans. It is present here and now for all to see. Jesus saw it and proclaimed it. It is not a philosophy. It is not a religion. It is not a worldview. It is Reality available to all, not just special initiates or prophets or members of a certain religion who are lucky enough to be born in the right place and time and have access to the right Scriptures or hear it from the right preachers.
This is the innate awareness of every human being. The only way we cannot know this is if we “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” as the Apostle Paul phrased it. The only way we do not see this reality is if we deny our own nature. All we have to do is stop and notice what is here now. Notice the Kingdom of God spread across the earth. Notice the Kingdom of God within us and outside us. Notice the Kingdom that is at hand, within arm’s reach. All we have to do is pay attention.
Is Nonduality non-Christian? No. It is the teaching of Christ. Can the teaching of Christ be non-Christian? If it is, then we have to redefine Christian. All Christian doctrine and tradition points to this, although sometimes it points very crudely. The Kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in a field, Jesus said. Sometimes it is like an archeological dig that takes a lot of uncovering of centuries of Christian tradition to uncover the treasure buried at the original level of Jesus. But the jewel of the gospel is there. When it is uncovered and seen, it shines as brightly as it ever.