Biblical Stories of Awakening: Isaiah Artwork

The Tao of Christ

The Tao of Christ is a podcast which explores the mystical roots of Christianity, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, which church historian Evelyn Underhill called the Unitive Life, which Richard Rohr calls the Universal Christ, and which I refer to as Christian nonduality, unitive awareness, or union with God. This is the Tao of Christ.

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Biblical Stories of Awakening: Isaiah

October 19, 2024 • Marshall Davis

I continue my series exploring biblical stories of spiritual awakening. There are so many wonderful ones! Today I examine another of my favorites, the story of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is considered one of the greatest prophets of the Hebrew scriptures. In the sixth chapter of his book he describes his opening to spiritual reality firsthand in detail. Often this passage is called the call of the prophet, but it is also the spiritual awakening of the prophet.

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He dates the event to the year that King Uzziah died, which was 740 BC. That immediately tells us something. It says that for some people spiritual awakening can be such a decisive event that it can be dated. For other people it seems to be more gradual. For nearly everyone there is a process of continued awakening that happens after an initial shift in perspective.

For some people the initial opening happens in a religious setting. That was the case with Isaiah. The former Trappist monk and nondual teacher Francis Bennet dated his spiritual awakening to 2010 in the middle of Catholic mass, while partaking of the Eucharist. There was what he called “a radical perceptual shift in consciousness.”

The prophet Isaiah also had such a shift in a religious setting. For him it was in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Presumably he was worshipping at the temple. During worship earth opened up to heaven. You can call this a vision if you want. I see it as stepping through the veil of time and space. I understand it as Isaiah seeing the Kingdom of God.

In Isaiah’s imagery heaven appeared as the throne room of God. He writes, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.” He continues: “Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!’”

He saw the holiness of God. He saw that divine holiness fills the whole world. This is a perfect description of nonduality. The Hebrew word for holy is qadosh, which means separate. This is separation and duality. This is a middle Eastern monarch type of deity sitting on a throne “high and lifted up.” The traditional transcendent theistic deity.

Then in the next breath it says that this God’s glory filled the whole earth. This is divine immanence. So we have both transcendence and immanence in one picture. This is nonduality. The image that comes to mind is the yin-yang symbol of unity in duality. Opposites are one. Transcendence and immanence are one. Samsara is nirvana. Brahman is maya. Seeming duality is seen as a greater unity. Everything is holy.

Peter Mayer wrote a song entitled “Holy Now.” I have mentioned it before. Here are the lyrics:

When I was a boy each week, On Sunday we would go to church, Pay attention to the priest. And he would read the holy word, And consecrate the holy bread And everyone would kneel and bow. Today the only difference is Everything is holy now. Everything, everything, everything is holy now.

When I was in Sunday school, We would learn about the time Moses split the sea in two, And Jesus made the water wine. And I remember feeling sad, Miracles don't happen still, And now I can't keep track Cause everything's a miracle. Everything, everything, everything's a miracle.

When holy water was rare at best It barely wet my fingertips. Now I have to hold my breath Like I'm swimming in a sea of it. It used to be a world half there, Heaven's second rate hand me down. Now I walk it with a reverent air, Cause everything is holy now.

There are more verses and a refrain, but you get the point. If I had to choose an anthem for Christian nonduality, this would be it. Everything is holy now. That is what Isaiah saw. The holiness of the transcendent Hebrew deity not only filled the temple but the whole world. That is what was symbolized when the veil of the temple was torn in two at Jesus’ death, letting the holiness out of the temple into the world. Everything is holy.

Nondual awakening is seeing firsthand holiness and wholeness. Heaven and earth are one. With that realization comes another insight. Because all is one, we cease to exist as separate entities. That is what Isaiah experienced. in response to this wholeness and holiness, he cries out:

“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”

I love this verse! He says, “I am undone.” He feels like he is coming apart, falling apart, ceasing to exist. The Hebrew word used here dama literally means to cease to exist, to perish, to be destroyed. This was my experience in spiritual awakening. I ceased to exist as a separate entity. The apostle Paul knew this. He wrote: “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

What I thought I was – a separate human entity - is seen as an illusion - in the presence of Divine Reality, Ultimate Reality. Isaiah was undone as a separate person. He fell apart. He realized that he was not. Not only does the divine Presence fill everything, but nothing stands apart from Reality.

Then in this story of Isaiah’s awakening, two more things happen. One is that all sense of sin is taken away. He writes: “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.’”

Sin is another word for separation, a sense of being separate from the divine. It is accompanied by guilt that compounds the sense of separation. That sense of sin and guilt was completely taken away in spiritual awakening. I do not understand why so many Christians want to hold on to this sense of separation. Actually I do understand it, but it is unfortunate. It keeps us from union with God.

The second thing that happens is the need to try to communicate this experience. Issiah writes: “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I! Send me.’ And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’”

The divine commission continues, but this is the gist of it. God is saying that Isaiah is to communicate this Reality that he has seen firsthand. But when he tries to do this, people will not get it. They will hear but not understand. They will see but not perceive. In Jesus’ words, they have ears but do not hear, eyes but do not see.

This is talking about the impossibility of communicating Nondual Reality in words. It is the problem I face every time I do one of these episodes. This cannot be communicated in words or thoughts or ideas. This is not a philosophy or a theology or a worldview. This is direct apprehension of Reality without distinction between that is seen and the one seeing and the process of seeing. All is one. All you can do is use analogies and metaphors.

Isaiah replies, “How long am I to proclaim this?” And God replies, “Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, The houses are without a man, The land is utterly desolate....” In other words keep doing it until there is no one left to listen. That is the plight of nonduality. Proclaiming a gospel that people will not understand or believe. And I guess that is all I can say about it today.