In this episode I answer a question that a listener asked me a few weeks ago. I had a Zoom conservation with a young man who is a Christian who has had a spiritual awakening, and he asked me what my first thought was when it happened.
No one had ever asked me that question. I have never asked myself that question. I thought about it for a minute and answered him briefly. The question has been returning to my mind every once in a while ever since, so I thought I would give a more complete answer.
In this episode I answer a question that a listener asked me a few weeks ago. I had a Zoom conservation with a young man who is a Christian who has had a spiritual awakening, and he asked me what my first thought was when it happened.
No one had ever asked me that question. I have never asked myself that question. I thought about it for a minute and answered him briefly. The question has been returning to my mind every once in a while ever since, so I thought I would give a more complete answer.
It has been over a month since I posted my last podcast and video. I have had quite a few people email me to make sure I was alright. So I want to start by saying that I am fine. The main reason I have not recorded any episodes is because I have been working on my new book. It is taking much longer than I expected. And it is going to take even longer. I am almost finished with the initial draft, but it will take a lot more work to get it in a form that is worthy of publication.
By the way, the new working title of the book is “The Nondual Gospel of Jesus.” I was going to call it “The Gospel according to Jesus,” but that title has been used by other writers. I did not want there to be any confusion, and I wanted something unique. Not only have I been working on the book a lot, but I have been posting more often on my blog. I am using it to talk more about nonduality than I have in the past.
Anyway today I am going to answer a question that a listener asked me a few weeks ago. I had a Zoom conservation with a young man who is a Christian who has had a spiritual awakening, and he asked me what my first thought was when it happened.
No one had ever asked me that question. I have never asked myself that question. I thought about it for a minute and answered him briefly. The question has been returning to my mind every once in a while ever since, so I thought I would give a more complete answer.
First of all, there was no thought that came to my mind, which is probably why I never considered the question before. There was thoughtlessness. It was awareness beyond thought. No thoughts or words came to mind because no thoughts or words could come close to describing this reality. But sometime later I did begin to think about it. The first thought that came to my mind was: “I am not going to die.”
That was true in two senses. If you have heard my story, you will know that unitive awareness was prompted by a diagnosis by a doctor – which turned out to be a misdiagnosis – of pancreatic cancer, which is particularly deadly and painful form of cancer. So when that diagnosis was later reversed a week later and I was told I only had a bad gall bladder, which was quickly removed, then I thought “I am not going to die.”
But that is not the meaning of those words that I am talking about. Before I found out the doctor was wrong I realized on some deep level that I was not going to die. Who I really am was not going to die because it cannot die. It all matters how you use the word “I.” Either as one’s mortal self or immortal Self. This physical body is going to die and the I as human ego/self with it. In that sense I am going to die. Jesus’ physical body died. Your physical body will die. You – in the sense of your body and psyche – are going to die.
But your true identity – your true nature, your real Self – is not going to die. That was my first thought when I finally came to the point of being able to have a thought. Who I really am cannot die. So I can say – and I did say on that Zoom conversation – that my first thought was Eternal Life. That is a term that Jesus used also.
At the graveside of his friend Lazarus, where he talked about death with Lazarus’s sisters, Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus was talking about spiritual awakening, about waking up to deathlessness. Jesus was hearkening back to his own spiritual awakening at his baptism, when he realized his oneness with God and his true immortal identity as the Son of God.
That teaching of Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb has been misinterpreted – just like the term born again – has been misinterpreted by evangelicals because they have added religious tradition and baggage to it. They say that “believes in me” means believing all sorts of doctrines about Jesus. But Jesus does not say that. He would never say something like that! Jesus never talked about doctrine.
Or they will say that believing in him is about “inviting Jesus into your heart.” Jesus never talks about inviting him into your heart. Or they will say it is about having “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Jesus never talks about having a personal relationship with him. Those are all later religious interpretations of Jesus’ words.
Read Jesus’ words in context. He says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” He makes it clear who is speaking. He is speaking as “the Resurrection and the Life.” To believe in him is to believe in the Resurrection and the Life. By the Life he means Eternal Life. When he calls himself the Resurrection he is referring to transitioning from death consciousness to life consciousness.
To believe does not mean to accept a bunch of fantastical doctrines without evidence. To believe means to trust. To believe in Christ as the Resurrection and the Life is to trust that this spiritual transformation that we call awakening or spiritual birth is real.
The second thought I had after I thought “I am not going to die” was: “Is this real?” If you know my story, you know I am a skeptic. I question everything. My spiritual journey involved deconstructing my Christianity. I question religious doctrines and I question religious authorities and experiences and religious interpretations of religious experiences.
So my second thought was “Is this just another religious experience which I am interpreting as eternal life?” The overwhelming sense was that this is real, more real than anything else in my life. It was self-authenticating, you might say. So I trusted it. That is faith. That is believing in the Resurrection and the Life.
I need to say a further word about resurrection. It so happens that right now in my new book I am writing the Easter story, the account of the resurrection of Jesus. Telling it from Jesus’ point of view. I have had to reexamine what resurrection means. I have done it before, but I am doing it again. Is it the physical resuscitation of a corpse? Of it is something else or something more?
As I am translating the resurrection story into a nondual gospel, I am picturing it as something much more than resuscitation. Jesus did not say, “I am the Resuscitation and the Life.” He did not use the word for biological life but spiritual Life. In talking about the resurrection in the 15th chapter of I Corinthians the apostle Paul makes it abundantly clear that resurrection is much more than resuscitation. It is spiritual transformation.
Resurrection is the completion of the transformation that begins in spiritual awakening – which Christians call spiritual rebirth. Spiritual awakening is the beginning of resurrection. It participates in resurrection but does not exhaust the meaning of resurrection. Jesus was born of the Spirit at his baptism, but on Easter the process was fulfilled and completed.
When we wake up to who we really are – when we are truly born of above or born of the Spirit - and realize that who we really are is not going to die, that is the beginning of a process that continues throughout our lives, and through death, and after death. The transformation after death is what Christians call resurrection.
In the Christian tradition resurrection is more than the spirit leaving the body at death and reuniting with our primordial nature. Jesus did not just die on the cross and spiritually ascend to heaven – end of story. The gospel story continues, and that is what makes the Christian story unique. It says that he rose from the dead. Exactly what that means is difficult to discern.
Is it a visionary experience like Paul had on the Damascus Road? Is it a physical experience like Luke and John’s Gospel say? Is it an empty tomb experience only like in the Gospel of Mark? I think it can be any or all of those experiences. In some way the risen Christ bridged the gap between physical life and death and revealed his eternal nature and his completed reality to his disciples in the days, weeks, and in Paul’s case even years after he died.
Resurrection points to the fact that there is to be a realization of the oneness of all creation sometime in the future. That is what the Second Coming and the New Heaven and New Earth also point to. Time and space may be illusory in a physical sense, but they will be fulfilled in a spiritual sense in the Kingdom of God, which is both here and now and yet to be.
In any case this means I am not going to die when this body dies. Though I die, yet shall I Iive. The same with you. For we are one with the Father, one with Christ, one in the Spirit, one with the All who is God.
That is it for today. Grace and peace to you.