What is Christian Nonduality?

In this episode I define and explore the meaning of nonduality or non-dualism as perceived from a Christian perspective. Referencing Christian contemplatives like Richard Rohr and Evelyn Underhill, I make the case that non-duality is the core of the Christian faith, going back to the very beginnings of Christianity. It is not theology. It is not philosophy. It is an experiential and intuitive awareness of union with God, Christ, and all there is. I then explore how it is related to Christian theology and my own Christian experience. 

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Transcript

What is Christian Nonduality? 

Welcome to the podcast The Tao of Christ. This is a place to explore an alternative type of Christianity with a decidedly mystic slant. So far on this podcast I have been reading some of my books. I began by reading my Christian version of the Tao Te Ching, entitled The Tao of Christ. I went on to read from my book Experiencing God Directly: the Way of Christian Nonduality. Then at the suggestion of my wife I took the podcasts in a different direction and read my updated version of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress in a set of episodes entitled “The New Pilgrim’s Progress.” I just finished reading that last time.

Today instead of reading books, which can sound rather stilted and formal, I am going to be more informal and share my thoughts about spirituality more casually. So this is not going to have the feel of a book being read, but instead it will be me sharing my ideas on spirituality and in particular on Christian nonduality. This is still going to be a monologue for now. Later on I might find a way to connect with listeners, either by answering questions sent to me in writing or actually engage in an online dialogue. We will wait and see about that. That is somewhere down the road. For the time being it is going to be just me talking. Not preaching. Just talking about my awareness of the Spirit that I call Christian nonduality.

Christian nonduality is not a term that is well-known. Probably the best known Christian who talks about this is the Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr. Strangely enough until recently I had read or heard very little of what he has to say. I have just started reading his book The Universal Christ recently, and just started getting his daily meditations by email. So I am starting to get familiar with him. But my approach is different than his and my approach became established before I ever heard of him.

First I guess I need to define the term nonduality. Different people mean different things by it, so it is important that listeners know what I mean by it. For me it is equivalent to what the great Anglican historian Evelyn Underhill identified as the unitive life. In her book Mysticism, which I first read back in the sixties as an undergraduate religion major, she makes it clear that this experience of union with God is a core part of the Christian faith that goes back to the beginnings of Christianity. Christianity has never been without this dimension. The Eastern Church preserved it perhaps better than the Western Church, but it has been present in both branches of Christianity. It is even present in Protestantism, although rationalism seemed to have prevailed in the Protestant branch of Christianity.

In any case when I talk about nondual Christianity or Christian nondualism, I am not talking about something foreign to Christianity. I am not importing some form of Eastern mysticism into Christianity. In fact I think nondualism is the heart of Christianity. But somehow the church has forgotten it and become heartless. This is especially true of conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist forms of Christian. The exception is Richard Foster, who from a Quaker background wrote books on the contemplative life back in the 70’s embraced by evangelicals for a time. I have used his books in study groups in evangelical churches I have pastored for decades. But unfortunately Evangelicalism has moved in a different direction and been hijacked by fundamentalists who see the contemplative life and mysticism as dangerous heresies. 

To get back to my definition of nonduality. For me it means the awareness of our essential union with God. It is not a theology. It is not a philosophy. It is not even a worldview. It is experiential in nature. It is the constant awareness of my life. As I talk about it further I will make it clear that it is not even an experience. It is more basic than that. It has more to do with intuition and a deep consciousness of the divine. Nonduality is the same as oneness in my vocabulary. But the word nondual is slightly better than oneness because oneness could imply twoness and Threeness. Unity implies disunity or duality. Nondual makes it clear that there is no two to be distinguished from one. The two and the three and the ten thousand things, as Chinese philosophy puts it, are all included in the one. Reality is One. There is only one, and that One is what we call God. 

I am not presenting a form of monism or pantheism. Those are philosophies and I am not advocating a philosophy. I am talking about a spiritual awareness of union with God in which we as individuals cease to exist. If you want to understand it as a mystical experience, alright. It that label helps you get a handle on it. But it is deeper than experience. Experiences come and go. This does not come and go. This is the substratum of all experiences. It is the divine space in which experiences appear. In which the universe appears. This unitive awareness is self-authenticating.

It is what Jesus meant when he said that “I and the Father are One.” He was not making a Christological statement for theologians to unpack. He was describing his awareness of the Divine, whom he called Father. Because Christian Nonduality is not a theology or a philosophy, it is therefore compatible with Christian religion and theology. You can be a theological Christian and know union with God.

Until recently I would have called myself an Evangelical. I do not use that term to describe myself that any longer because the meaning of the term has changed in American culture. It has become equivalent to Christian fundamentalism and the Religious Right and even Trumpism. I am not any of those. So if I used the term to refer to myself I am immediately misunderstood and have to spend a lot of time explaining to people the original meaning of the term evangelical, what it used to mean a few decades ago before it was hijacked. For that reason for clarity’s sake I no longer use the term. 

But I do use the term Christian. I am unapologetically Christian. For some people that term also means evangelical. People tend to think I am a literalist or a creationist or some such thing, so I still have to do some explaining to people sometimes, but not as much. I am a Christian. I am a follower or Jesus. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. Not just the historical personage known as Jesus of Nazareth, but the living Christ, the risen Christ, the Christ who is the Word before the man Jesus was born, the Cosmic Christ, the Universal Christ. Before Abraham was I am, he said. Nondualism as I use the term is not inconsistent with being a Christian. In fact I would say it is essential to being a true Christian. 

As a Christian I have a conversion story, like so many evangelicals have. I have surrendered myself to the Lordship of Christ. The Living Christ dwells in me. I could use terms like saved and born again. Although I tend not to use those terms much either because they have also been hijacked by fundamentalists. They no longer mean what the terms meant in Scripture. Furthermore I have no quarrel with traditional Christian doctrine. I can see all Christian doctrines as pointing to union with God. So I try not to argue about theology or doctrine because I think it is pointless. They are just ideas in the mind and have nothing to do with the spiritual Reality of Christ and the Kingdom of God except to point us toward that Kingdom. 

I can repeat the Apostles Creed during worship in good conscience. But it is just theology, which is just words and ideas, which are a mental way to point us to God. Doctrines are like boats meant to carry us across the sea of unknowing that separates us from God. They are useful for that purpose. That they are useless when we reach the other shore. Carrying them with us after they have served their purpose is like passengers carrying a cruise ship across land once it has arrived in port. Once you know that to which the doctrines point then the doctrines are no longer needed. In fact they become a hindrance and an unbearable burden that can interfere with our freedom in Christ.

It is like what Jesus said to the Pharisees about their traditions and rules – the traditions of the elders - that they bind to their followers back and make them unbearable burdens. Doctrines are meant to bring us to God. They are means to an end. Not an end in themselves. They are signposts to truth, not Truth in themselves. They cannot spiritually satisfy us any more than a printed menu can feed a starving man. Doctrines are poor descriptions of Truth that bear little resemblance to the Reality of Truth. When the teaching and propagation of doctrines become an end in themselves, then they are harmful to the spiritual life. They become substitutes for God. Mental idols that we worship in place of God.

Words and thoughts and doctrines are by nature dualistic. They separate us from what we are talking about. They push the thing we are trying to describe away so we can examine it and dissect it. In this way theology, doctrines, dogma by their nature separate us from God. That even includes ideas and doctrines like the atonement, which is intended to bring us into relationship with God. So I embrace the doctrines of traditional Christianity – from the incarnation to the resurrection – but I do not see them as descriptors of truth. I see them as tools meant to bring a person to Truth - into union with God. 

Back again to what I mean by nonduality. It is union with God. It is union with Christ, who is in union with God. It is union with God’s Creation, which is the Word of God, according to Genesis 1. It is the dissolution of our self in God. As the apostle Paul says, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” That is my favorite verse and expresses the core of the Christian gospel. It is the death of self. As Jesus said, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” It is to be crucified with Christ. To die to self and live to God. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Nonduality is when we are no longer separate entities alienated from God, but are aware of our essential nature as one with God. This is a birthright for everyone as children of God. Especially Christians, but unfortunately that is not the case. Christians who have believed in Christ all their lives, live their lives unconscious of this spiritual Reality. And traditional Christianity seems to reinforce that sense of sinfulness and separateness and duality when it should be proclaiming the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Embrace it. That was Jesus’ message. More about that in another episode. For now this is my nondual awareness of God and his Kingdom.