JESUS AS A
TEACHER OF
ADVAITA
(non-duality)
Non-Duality
•
Non-duality "points to the idea that the universe
and all its multiplicity are ultimately expressions or
appearances of one essential reality”[1]
(1)Espín, Orlando O.; Nickoloff, James B. (2007), An Introductory Dictionary of Theology
and Religious Studies, Liturgical Press
Non-duality
•
Non-duality is taught in the Wisdom Traditions of the
East as Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, BuddhaNature/No-Self in Buddhism, and Taoism.
•
Non-duality is taught in subsets of the Abrahamic
traditions because the Abrahamic religions primarily
teach that God is separate from man. The Abrahamic
subsets that suggest that God and man are One are
Sufism in Islam, Kabbalah in Judaism, and Mysticism in
Christianity.
•
Non-duality is also taught “non-spiritually” in modern
physics.
Non-duality in
Spirituality and Physics
Both explain the non-dual nature of the
universe as one, infinite, non-divisible
Entity from which “formed” things (called
mass) instantaneously arise and
disintegrate.
To better understand the
non-dual teachings within
Christianity, let’s first see
how those non-dual
teachings are taught
elsewhere.
Hinduism’s explanation
of non-duality
1. Brahman is the Only Reality. Nothing
else exists but the non-divisible Brahman.
2. Brahman comes together in infinitely
constantly changing forms known as
Atman. They are illusory forms because
they are not permanent.
3. The constantly changing atman forms
of Brahman are formed by the Energy of
Brahman known as Shakti.
Non-duality in “nonspiritual” terms
‘Non-spiritual” non-duality is taught as
Quantum physics (quantum mechanics).
This is the science of the very small: the
body of scientific principles that explains
the behavior of matter and its
interactions with energy on
the scale of atoms and subatomic
particles. (Wikipedia)
“Non-spiritual” Nonduality
Modern physics teaches that all mass
(Atman) is constantly changing and is
formed from infinite energy (Brahman) as
Energy =Mass x the Speed of Light
squared (Shakti).
Mass forms when Higgs Boson particles
are dragged through a field of energy.
Their slowed speed generates mass.
A Higgs Boson particle
being dragged through
an energy field,
generating mass.
Quantum Physics
Explanation of Nonduality
Christianity’s nondualism
1.
God the Father is the only reality
(Brahman/Eternal Energy). (God
replied to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM,"
and then said, "Tell the Israelis: 'I AM
sent me to you.” [Exodus 3(14)]
2.
God the Sons (and all illusory forms in
the universe) are the illusory forms
(Atman/mass) of the manifestation of
God the Father.
3. God the Holy Spirit is the Energy form
(Shakti/Higgs-Boson particles) that
emanates from God the Father that then
forms the illusory forms of the Sons.
The Bottom Line
Whether we approach non-duality from
a Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, JudeoChristian or Quantum Physics
perspective, if we train ourselves to shift
our identity of self from our human form
into “All That Is”, (via meditation, mantras
and renaming of reality from “things and
people” to “me”) we conclude that:
We conclude that:
1.
All that there is is the infinite One.
2.
We are Infinite.
3.
Our realized True Nature is that of
health, balance and wellbeing.
So what does Jesus
have to do with this?
Who was Jesus?
Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph
•
Born in Bethlehem, part of Ancient Judea, in either 1BC or
4BC.
•
Grew up in Nazareth, part of Ancient Galilee.
•
Spent his first 30 years in Galilee, where he first started
teaching.
•
His last teaching weeks are spent traveling towards
Jerusalem in Galilee.
•
Last week of his life was in Jerusalem.
Jesus- an educated carpenter’s son
•
Galilee was a very cosmopolitan area, because it lay on
the Silk Road.
•
Silk Road = For thousands of years, a vitally important
conduit of human travel and commerce between the
lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and Central
Asia/China.
Jesus- an educated carpenter’s son
1. Jesus was able to read and
write. In Luke 4:16, he reads
from the scrolls of the words of
the Prophet Isaiah.
2. He was most likely exposed to
Eastern teachings (remember
the Wisdom traditions?!)from
merchants and travelers from
the East who were moving
along the Silk road running
through his land.
Jesus- an educated
carpenter’s son
He spoke Aramaic, Hebrew,
and most likely Greek.
He also spoke Latin, as
demonstrated by his verbal
exchanges with the Roman
Pontius Pilate.
1.These facts about Jesus
are important because
the concepts of nonduality are nonAbrahamic.
2. Understanding non-duality
also requires quite a bit of
deep reflection, which can
be hard to achieve if one is
a starving peasant (which
Jesus was not).
Records of the Life and
Teachings of Jesus
1. Known as Gospels.
2. "Many scholars doubt that the Gospels
were written by eye-witnesses as their
attributions seem to suggest that there is
too much evidence of the reworking of
oral traditions”.
Riches, John (2000). The Bible: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-19-285343-1.
JESUS AS A TEACHER OF
ADVAITA (non-duality)
1.
Canonical Gospels = The Gospel of
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
2.
St. Iraneus (130-202AD), an early
church founder, insisted that only
these four gospels be a part of
church’s teachings (“canons”) within
the New Testament).
Gnostic Gospels
1.
Gnostic Gospels - a collection of
about 52 ancient texts discovered in
Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945.
2.
Felt to have been buried for safe
keeping by early Christian monks who
were wary of the dangers of
possessing non-canonical gospels.
Gnostic Gospels
1.
Based upon the life and
teachings of Jesus, written from
the 2nd to the 4th century AD.
2.
The Gospel of Thomas, compiled
circa 140AD, may include some
writings even older than parts of
some of the four canonical
gospels of the New Testament.
JESUS AS A TEACHER OF
ADVAITA (non-duality)
Jesus’s non-duality teachings are most
evident in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas,
but are also present in the canonical
Gospels.
In the parlance of
Jesus: Kingdom of God
= Heaven = Nondual
Realty
Jesus used many
metaphors to explain to
the very “dual reality
based” members of his
society what a nondualistic state of identity
was all about.
He attempted to teach
them to let go of their
identity of self as a
separate, finite body that
can die and decay and
instead view themselves
as the Infinite, Non-Dual
Reality of the universe,
which he called God’s
Kingdom.
It is very hard to explain
non-duality to hard core
dualists, especially those
that are busy all day just
trying to survive, as most
people were in ancient
Judea.
Jesus had a tough audience!
The Gospel of Thomas
Consists of 114 brief “logions”, which are
defined as “communications of divine
origin”. (Wikipedia)
Jesus is referred to as “Yeshua,” which is
the Hebrew word for Jesus.
(http://www.gotquestions.org/Yeshua-Jesus.html)
The Gospel f Thomas
Logion 1
“I who write this am Thomas ,the Double, the Twin.
Yeshua, the Living Master spoke, and his secret
sayings I have written down.
I assure you, whoever grasps their meaning will not
know the taste of death. “
“I who write this am
Thomas ,the Double,
the Twin.”
Scholars feel that the twin refers to his “double
identity” as Thomas the man and Thomas the
Eternal Oneness.
“I assure you, whoever
grasps their meaning will
not know the taste of
death. “
If we assign self to be All That Is, we are
Infinite and can never die.
The fact that the Gospel of
Thomas starts with this
fundamental teaching
underscores the fact nonduality of self identity was
the sole message of Jesus.
The Canonical Gospels
are filled with Jesus’s
teaching of shifting the
identity of self from finite to
infinite with eternal life.
Gospel of Matthew
(19:16-19)
Just then a man came up to Jesus and
asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I
do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is
good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One
Who is good. If you want to enter life,
keep the commandments.”
“Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not murder, you
shall not commit adultery, you shall not
steal, you shall not give false
testimony, honor your father and mother,
and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The commandments that
Jesus refers to is how we
act and think when we
define ourselves as the
Eternal One
Jesus taught that when
self is identified as Nondual Oneness, our
consciousness shifts into a
profound state of peace
and happiness, which he
refers to as “the Kingdom
of God”, or “Heaven”,
which he taught is
“within”.
The Kingdom of God
(Nirvana)
“And when he was demanded of the
Pharisees, when the kingdom of God
should come, he answered them and
said, “The kingdom of God cometh not
with observation. Neither shall they say,
Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the
kingdom of God is within you”. Luke 17:20-21)
(
The Kingdom of God
(Nirvana)
This is a state of consciousness in which
our identity is All That Is so that we live
our lives caring for everything around us
because Everything Is Us.
The Kingdom of God
(Nirvana)
In this state, we have no hatred for any
enemy because that enemy is us.
We grieve for the “us’ that is feeling such
hatred and aggression, and is not in the
perfect state of peace that comes from
knowing that he (the aggressor) is the
Infinite One, completely perfect and
magnificent, and that everywhere he
looks, all there is is Him.
”You have heard that it was said,
‘You shall love your neighbor and
hate your enemy.’ But I say to you,
Love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you, so that
you may be children of your Father
in heaven, for he causes his sun to
rise on the evil and the good, and
sends rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous.” [Matthew 5(43-45)]
In non-dual reality, there is
no righteous or
unrighteous, and no
enemies or saints! It’s All
One!
Remember: We create the world of
opposites when we define ourselves as
separate beings. If there is only One Entity of
Reality, there can be no opposites!
The Kingdom of God
(Nirvana)
In this state, we drop all fear of death
because it is meaningless; it is simply the
shedding of this coat of bodily form.
Actually, our bodily forms are constantly
changing every nanosecond (remember
the discussion of quantum physics earlier
in this presentation!)
The third logion of the
Gospel of Thomas
summarizes all of this
well.
The Gospel of Thomas,
Logion 3
“Yeshua says,
If your spiritual guides say to you,
“Look, the Divine Realm is in the sky,”
well then the birds will get there ahead
of you.
If they say, “It is in the sea,”
then the fish will precede you.”
The Gospel of Thomas,
Logion 3
(continued)
“No, Divine Reality exists inside and all
around you.
Only when you have come to know your
True Self will you be fully known- realizing
at last that you are a child of the living
One. If, however, you never come to
know Who you truly are, you are a
poverty –stricken being, and it is your
“self” which is impoverished.”
The Gospel of Thomas also
reports that Jesus taught
the nuts and bolts of
achieving a non-dual
identity, telling his followers
that they must want to
achieve that state, or else
they would not be able t
do it.
The Gospel of Thomas,
Logion 2 (first part)
“Yeshua says,
If you are searching, you must not stop
until you find.”
It’s also in the canonical
Gospels!
The Gospel of Matthew
(7,7-8)
“Ask,
and it will be given to you; seek,
and you will find; knock, and it will be
opened to you. For everyone who asks
receives, and he who seeks finds, and to
him who knocks it will be opened”.
In order to achieve the
state of consciousness that
is the Kingdom of God, we
first have to figure it out
rationally, then make the
changes deep with us.
Using either the spiritual approach, or the
quantum physics approach, or a combination
of the two, just keep on trying to figure it out,
and you will!!!!
The requirement of
desiring to achieve this
non-dual state of identity
actually has neural
plasticity basis!
The brain is a pleasurebased organ and is
malleable.
If you tell your brain you
can experience a more
pleasurable state, it will
rewire itself to achieve
that state (that process is
called deep learning, and
it takes a lot of
determination,
concentration and
repeated refocusing!)
That process of brain
rewiring with deep
learning has many names:
meditation, prayer,
mindfulness, etc.
Back to the Gospel of
Thomas. Remember how
he was talking about the
importance of searching
(for your true identity) until
you find (your true
identity)……
The Gospel of Thomas,
Logion 2 (second part)
“….When you find (your true identity),
however, you will become troubled. Your
confusion will give way to wonder. In
wonder, you will reign over all things.
Your sovereignty will be your rest.”
Remember the rich
man from the Gospel of
Matthew?
As Jesus was starting out on his way to
Jerusalem, a man came running up to
him, knelt down, and asked, “Good
Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal
life?”
Jesus said “Keep the
Commandments”.
“All these I have kept,” the young man
said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be
perfect, go, sell your possessions and
give to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven. Then come, follow
me.”
Jesus was talking about
giving up our most
cherished possession:
our self identity.
When the young man heard this, he
went away sad, because he had great
wealth.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell
you, it is hard for someone who is rich to
enter the kingdom of heaven….”
Jesus is telling us that we
must give up our cherished
self if we want to be
always at peace….
”Again
I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for someone
who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
[Matthew 19(24)]
Jesus taught that he knew how
hard it is to give up our old idea of
self in exchange for the Identity of
the Absolute, but he promised that
it is worth it!
“I tell you this: there is no one who has
given up home, wife, brothers, parents or
children for the sake of the kingdom of
God, who will not be repaid many times
over in this time, and in the time to come
[will] know eternal Life.” Matthew, Gospel Of, 19:16
20
But we aren’t really giving
up our selves…we are just
trading in how we define
self from this body to All
That Is.
And once we have given away
everything, we enter the state of mind
that Jesus called the Kingdom of God.
But that means giving up
EVERYTHING….including
our biographical stories!!!!!
We must give up our self story of being a
son, daughter, man, woman, father,
mother, artist, banker, Buddhist,
American… we must let go of all of the
stories we have been telling ourselves all
of our lives, and replace it with the One
Truth.
No wonder Thomas wrote
that Jesus said “You will
become troubled”, but
also remember he told us
“Your confusion will give
way to wonder”.
Jesus taught that:
1. We can trade our definition of self
as this corporal human body that
suffers addictions and attachments,
anger and aversion, will grow old
and die.
2. And instead replace it with the
definition of self that is All That Is:
Everything, Everywhere, Non-dual
Infinite Oneness, Always Perfect.
Not a bad trade off!!!
Jesus did encourage his
followers to know that it is
indeed possible to make
this reassignment of our
self identity.
“I tell you this,” he said to them; “there
are some of those standing here who will
not taste death before they have seen
the kingdom of God already come in full
power.” Mark, Gospel Of, 9:1)
(
Further, Jesus taught that
experiencing the Kingdom
of God (aka Our True
Identity) is not achieved
by throwing oneself into
the external trappings of
organized religions.
Instead, he taught that this
shift in self-identity comes
instead come from going
deep into ourselves
through quiet, deep self
inquiry and
meditation/prayer.
And, as he sat among the orthodox religionists
in the Jewish temple, he said, “You say that He
is your God, yet you have not known Him. But I
have known Him.” 3 Ibid., 8:54
When Jesus said “I know
him” (last slide), he meant
the internal knowing of the
Absolute.
“When you pray, you are not to be like
the hypocrites; for they love to stand and
pray in the synagogues and on the street
corners so that they may be seen by
men. Truly I say to you, they have their
reward in full. But you, when you pray, go
into your inner room, close your door and
pray to your Father who is in secret. Matthew
6(6))
(
Jesus was often frustrated
that people didn’t seem
interested in going deeply
into their inner beings and
knowing Who they really
are.
“O righteous Father, the world has not
known Thee, but I have known Thee.” [John
17(25)]
Jesus spent a great
deal of time trying to
tell people that who
they are is the Oneness.
He prayed about the people: “May they all be
one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You.
May they also be one in Us, so the world may
believe You sent Me”. [John 17(21)]
Jesus knew it was radical
to teach about a
reassignment of self
identity, so he took it
slowly, first using himself as
an example.
“If you knew who I am,” he said, "you
would also know the Father. Knowing
me, you know Him; seeing me, you see
Him. Do you not understand that I am in
the Father and the Father is in me? It is
the Father who dwells in me doing His
own work. Understand me when I say
that I am in the Father and the Father is
in me."
[John 13(40)]
Jesus frequently tried to
describe to his followers
the non-dual nature of
Reality, as well as how to
train their minds to turn
towards that state of
consciousness.
“Yeshua replied, "When you are able to
make two become one, the inside like
the outside, the higher like the lower, and
when a man is no longer male, and a
woman female, but male and female
become a single whole; you make the
male and the female into a single one,
then you shall enter the kingdom.“ (Gospel of
Thomas, portion of logion 22)
And:
“So the last will be first, and the first will
be last.“ [Matthew 20(6)]
“
Jesus had one message: non-duality
•
“Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is
single, your whole body is full of light; but if it is
hurtful, your body is full of darkness”. (Luke 11:34)
Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (“The
Beatitudes”) was all about non-duality
•
“Blessed are the poor in spirit (poor of body-self identity),
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 5(3)]
•
Blessed are the pure in heart (pure in Oneness identity),
for they will see God. [Matthew 5(8)]
Jesus reminded folks to not to sweat it if they
were not understood when they decided to
live their lives with an identity of Infinite
Oneness.
•
“Blessed are you when people insult
you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil
against you because of me (“me” meaning my
teachings about non-duality). Rejoice and be
glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for
in the same way they persecuted the prophets
who were before you”. [Luke 6(21-23)]
I could go on and on, but I am already at
slide #86, and I know you want me to end!
The bottom line is that Jesus only taught one
message: We need to replace our identity of self
as a physical body which is finite and prone to the
suffering of attachment, aversion and ignorance
and replace it with the knowledge of our True
Identity: Infinite Non-Duality.
•
Once we make that shift, we move out of
hell and into heaven, out of samsara and
into nirvana, out of finiteness and into infinity,
out of death and into life.
We can start living out our days in the perfect
happiness and peace of what Jesus called
“the Kingdom of God”.
Let’s just do it !!!!!!!