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Love
If there is one message most closely tied to Jesus, it is love in action. Throughout the gospels, Jesus can be found exhorting his followers to loving and selfless action. In John 13:34 he says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” It is noteworthy that Jesus doesn’t say a belief system defines his followers. Instead, it is love.
In Matthew 5:14-16, it is behavior not belief that is the marker to the world, first as salt, and then as light. Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. …let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” I think if we were to randomly ask for examples of the “salt” of the earth, we’d hear names like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama – names associated with kindness and mercy and the appearance of selflessness, not a particular belief system. We see this emphasis on action over beliefs expressed daily. When a Chicago Blackhawks assistant trainer recently died, captain Jonathan Toewes described him glowingly as, “A selfless person, always thinking about how he could help others.” Notice he didn’t mention belief systems? In Matthew 12:49 (also Mark 3:34 and Luke 8:21), when asked who were his mother and brothers, Jesus responds by saying, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Repeatedly Jesus stresses the inevitability of “good works” and behavioral “fruit” as the natural consequence of Self-lessness. There are Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Atheists who “do the work of the Father” by caring for the homeless, the helpless, the needy. It seems to me that an Atheist who cares for the needy likely understands The Way of Jesus better than a self-identified Christian who unapologetically pursues material prosperity in the name of Jesus.
In John 15:12-13, Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life (psuche) for one’s friends.” This teaching is not limited to friends, family, and like-minded acquaintances. In Luke 6:32-33, Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.” In Matthew 5’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” Here again action denote sons of God, and it is a title bestowed on all who act in accordance with this way. In Matthew 5:38-41, Jesus continues, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” This understanding was exemplified by the early church when faced with torture and persecution [9], as well as martyrs in other religions, like Muslim Sufi mystic Mansur Al-Hallaj whose reported loving forgiveness in the face of incredible torture and death strikes me as profoundly Christ-like [18]. To me, these teachings embody the very antithesis of Survival of the Fittest. Jesus was not alone in teaching that we should love universally, even toward those who hate us. Perhaps most especially towards those who hate us. The Buddhist Dhammapada says, “For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love.” Elsewhere it says, “Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good.” And still later, speaking of a Christ-like selflessness, “Him I call indeed a Brahmana who, though he has committed no offense, endures reproach, bonds, and stripes.” In the Sutra of 42 Sections, another Buddhist scripture, it reads, “the more evil he brings against me, the more good will proceed from me.” The idea of returning kindness for malice is difficult to understand in the face of persecution or death. We as organisms innately wish to survive and thrive, but I think Jesus is teaching that our fixation on personal survival is misguided. Ultimately, it is this non-attachment to even our own survival, this state of Self-less being that I believe Jesus refers to as the “Kingdom of God.” Self-lessness is its own reward as the cares of this world are recognized as illusory in a larger context. Sufi mystic Abu Yazid al-Bistami said, “Anyone whose reward from God is deferred until tomorrow has not truly worshipped him today.” In a recent poll [11], self-identified Christians were 50% more supportive of torture than self-identified “non-religious” Americans. Self-identified “Evangelical Chriatians” have been among the most ardent supporters of Donald Trump’s fear-driven capaign against the poor and dispossessed. How can the broad social construct that we call “Christianity” have wandered so far from the radically loving teachings of Jesus?
Salvation
I suspect one reason could be mainstream Christianity’s focus on the notion of “personal salvation” as its primary objective. As a result, faith in a doctrinal belief is often treated as superseding the unconditional love that I see as the hallmark of Jesus’ ministry. In Matthew 7:20-23, Jesus says of his followers, “…by their fruits, you will know them. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” Jesus loved sinners, cared for the sick, taught the ignorant. He says in Luke 5:31, “Those who are whole have no need of a physician, but those who are unwell. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” I believe Self is the fundamental issue that Jesus is addressing, not morality. One could make a case that being “whole” involves a nondual understanding of Self, akin to Luke 11:34. In Psychology of Religion, Erwin Starbuck writes, “Conversion is primarily an unselfing. The first birth of the individual is into his own little world. He is controlled by the deep-seated instincts of self-preservation and self-enlargement—instincts which are, doubtless, a direct inheritance from his brute ancestry. The universe is organized around his own personality as a centre.” Conversion, then, is “the larger world-consciousness now pressing in on the individual consciousness. Often it breaks in suddenly and becomes a great new revelation. This is the first aspect of conversion: the person emerges from a smaller limited world of existence into a larger world of being. His life becomes swallowed up in a larger whole.”
In John 12:46-47, Jesus says, “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” In Matthew 7:1-2 that abstention from judgement is made universal. Jesus says very plainly, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” This teaching is typically thought to pertain to the way others (or perhaps God) will judge us, but I think it may refer to how we judge ourselves. In other words, if I am in the habit of judging the actions and character of others as “good” and “bad”, I will likely judge myself and my own experiences in this same way. This perpetual judgment of activity in both myself and others is what leads to jealousy, anger, attachment, and discontent in all forms. I believe Jesus may be teaching that our manner of judging others is reflected on ourselves, akin to Matthew 5:7 where he teaches, “blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” Not necessarily from others, but from ourselves. We are not to judge whether those we encounter are “good” or “bad” and adjust our behavior accordingly; rather, we are to love them with equal Self-abandon regardless. Give them the shirt off our back. If they ask for something, give it to them; if they steal something, let them have it. To act in this way without bitterness requires a deep, intuitive rejection of personal survival and prosperity as a primary objective. Self-lessness. This is what I aspire to. As I see it, judgement precludes unconditional love, in that judgement involves the evaluation of conditions. If correct, this view may suggest a different way to understand both salvation and the Genesis creation account. It seems to me that the “knowledge of good and evil” referenced in Genesis may refer not to moral good and evil, as typically supposed, but rather the distinction of “good” and “evil” as knowledge [12]; as qualities or characteristics we attach to objects and actions. This is the process by which we carve the world into “good” or “bad”, better or worse, useful or not. It is our judgment of experience. Perhaps this is “the fall” described in Genesis. Buddhism’s Lankavatara Sutra proposes something similar: “The mind-system which is the source of the evil out-flowings consists of the five sense-organs and their accompanying sense-minds all of which are unified in the discriminating-mind. There is an unending succession of sense-concepts flowing into this discriminating or thinking-mind which combines them and discriminates them and passes judgement upon them as to their goodness or badness. Then follows aversion to or desire for them and attachment and deed; thus the entire system moves on continuously and closely bound together. But it fails to see and understand that what it sees and discriminates and grasps is only a manifestation of its own activity and has no other basis, and so the mind goes on erroneously perceiving and discriminating differences of forms and qualities, not remaining still even for a minute.” As we experience existence, we are perpetually submerged in our own conscious and unconscious judgements of “good” or “bad” when perhaps existence involves neither. Hinduism’s Yoga Sutras of Patanjali teaches, “When pure perception without judicial action of the mind is reached, there follows the gracious peace of the inner self.” Perhaps experiences are analogous to ripples in the ocean; happenings, devoid of inherent value, moral or otherwise. Simply as existence to be experienced. Perhaps this is the nature of existence, the nature of Being. It is. It will be what it will be. In this light, perhaps it is existence itself that is meaningful, beautiful, and divine, not some end or purpose that we aim to achieve in our experience of existence [22].
The Way
If we are not to judge, how then shall we live? How ought our thoughts or actions be guided? The assertion of Jesus that “I am the Way, and the truth, and the life (zoe). No one comes to the Father except through me” makes clear that he, as a representative of the logos, is offering the solution. His life and teachings are pointing out the Way, the path to salvation. “The Way” is a phrase and message that dominates Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist thought as well. “Tao” roughly translates as “the Way”, and Buddhism focuses on an Eight-Fold Path as its solution to suffering (i.e. discontent). “The Way” may be seen as a lifestyle, or an understanding and approach to life that is in alignment with enlightenment (i.e. salvation). In Buddhism’s Sutra of 42 Sections, it says, “Under all circumstances you should free yourselves from attachment to objects; toward them your attitude should be neutral and indifferent. Let neither success nor failure, neither profit nor loss, worry you. Be ever calm and serene, modest and helpful, simple and dispassionate. The Dharma (which also translates as “right way of living” or “path of righteousness”) is non-dual as is the mind also. The Path is pure and above all ‘form.’” To me, this aligns very closely to what Jesus calls the “Kingdom of God.” In the gospels, Jesus seldom speaks of salvation, but rather the “Kingdom of God” or “Kingdom of Heaven.” In John 18:36, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of the world.” Many interpret the “Kingdom of Heaven” as a reference to the reward for personal salvation. Heaven is often imagined in terms of human senses, with spatial and temporal experiences like singing, streets of gold, mansions, reunions, etc (much like the post-judgement afterlife for those “saved” by Osiris in Egyptian mythology). Yet in Luke 17:20, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Look here it is!” or “There!” for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” It is already present! The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas paints an unmistakably nondual picture of Jesus [10], and verse 3 therein offers an even more explicit and extensive exposition of what may be the same teaching. In it, Jesus says, “If those who lead you say, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.” Jesus repeatedly directs listeners to the Kingdom of God by parable and metaphor, likening it to an agent of transformative change, like leaven or a mustard seed. This agent of change, as I see it, involves understanding Self-lessness in a manner that profoundly enlightens and alters one’s conception of existence. The Buddhist Dhammapada declares, “ He who knows that this body is like froth, and has learnt that it is as insubstantial as a mirage, will break the flower-pointed arrow of Mâra (the “deceiver”), and never see the king of death.” In Matthew 5:3, Jesus teaches, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” In John 8: 51 Jesus says, “verily, I say to you, if a man keep my logos, he shall never see death.”
In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus dismisses the value of material concerns, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life (psuche), what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not psuche more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. …So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Again, the Tao Te Ching offers a pithy echo: “Tao is eternal without doing, and yet nothing remains not.” The Tao is described as “Generating and nourishing, generating and not possessing, being effective and not retaining, increasing and not dominating: this is the secret of Life.” As suggested by these verses, a lack of attachment does not mean refraining from life or active engagement. It does not mean nothing is done, for life itself is the process of doing. To be is to do. Instead, it means to engage fully and enjoy existence as existence without undue attachment to the attainment of objectives desired by Self. It is the attachment to purposes, objectives and judgement that I suspect interferes with existential experience of the Kingdom of God. I believe Jesus teaches that recognizing material desires as vain and misguided is critical to understanding The Way. This understanding must reach our core since it is so easily forgotten and rejected in times of duress. In Luke 8:10-18, Jesus seems to be suggesting the importance of planting this counter-intuitive understanding deep in our heart. “The seed is the Logos of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the Logos from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Logos, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life(bios), and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the Logos, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”
The recognition that material form and concerns are fundamentally ephemeral and impermanent seems critical to the Way. Nowhere in the Bible is this stoic view clearer than in the book of Ecclesiastes [14]. I think it relates closely to the role of a Sabbath. In John 8:31-32, Jesus says, “If you abide in my Logos, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I see this truth as being the dissolution of Self; the annulment of attachment to personal objectives. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” What is his “yoke”? I take “yoke” to mean his way of being, his psuche, his mantle, his nature: “gentle, lowly in heart.” That is, without Ego, like those who inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. My father used to say, “that which you own, owns you.” I would take it a step further and say that the concept of ownership is itself a product of Self, and a form of self-imposed bondage. Ownership presupposes and requires a discrete Self to play the role of owner. It seems to me that the early church shared and implemented this view by living communally and making it compulsory to sell all possessions (Acts 2:45, Acts 4:32-35). Mark 10 tells of a rich man who sought to follow Jesus, “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him,’You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’” He goes on to say, “‘How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’” In Luke 12:33, Jesus instructs, “Sell your possessions and give to the needy.” In Luke 14:33, he teaches, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple,” and in Matthew 6:24, Jesus famously declares, “You cannot serve both God and money.” This saying echoes the Buddhist Dhammapada which says, “One is the road that leads to wealth, another the road that leads to Nirvâna” The Tao Te Ching summarizes this indifference to the material beautifully, ““There is no greater sin than many desires. There is no greater evil than not to know sufficiency. There is no greater defect than wanting to possess.”
Conclusion
It was once said, “What then is ‘the good news’? That true life, eternal life, has been found—it is not something promised, it is already here, it is within you: as life lived in love, in love without subtraction or exclusion, without distance… Eternal bliss is not merely promised, nor is it bound up with conditions: it is conceived as the only reality… The results… project themselves into a new way of life, the special evangelical way of life. It is not a “belief” that marks off the Christian; he is distinguished by a different mode of action; he acts differently. He offers no resistance, either by word or in his heart, to those who stand against him. He draws no distinction between strangers and countrymen, Jews and Gentiles. He is angry with no one, and he despises no one.” That understanding of what Jesus taught comes from Friedrich Nietzsche in The Antichristian. However, the philosophical primacy that Nietzsche devoted to Self (his “Ubermensch”) and the “Will to Power” compelled him to reject the doctrine of Self-lessness that he observed in the teachings of Jesus and Buddhism, “slave morality” as he derisively called them. However, Nietzsche also admired Jesus’ detachment from materialism and willingness to live out (to the death) what he taught [23]. He also recognized how the life and teachings of Jesus stand in stark and ironic opposition to much of historical Church doctrine: “The whole history of Christianity—from the death on the cross onward—is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of an original symbolism. With every extension of Christianity among larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the principles that gave birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more vulgar and barbarous—it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the subterranean cults of the imperium Romanum, and the absurdities engendered by all sorts of sickly reasoning… To be a soldier, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one’s self; to be careful of one’s honour; to desire one’s own advantage; to be proud… what a monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and without shame, a Christian! …I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity. The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding—at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The “Gospels” died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the “Gospels” was the very reverse of what he had lived.” I am somewhat sympathetic to that view, though I do not think his cynical hyperbole is entirely warranted. Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed a similar understanding of Jesus: “Is it not time to present this matter of Christianity exactly as it is, to take away all false reverence for Jesus, and not mistake the stream for the source? God is in every man. God is in Jesus, but let us not magnify any of the vehicles as we magnify the Infinite Law itself. We have defrauded him of his claim of love on all noble hearts by our superstitious mouth-honor.” In the minds of many Christians, extracting the consignment of exclusive Divinity from Jesus is blasphemous, as though it would render him irrelevant. But I think this view misses the profundity of what Jesus taught and the symbolic value embedded in the gospel story. Leo Tolstoy rejected the orthodox understanding of Jesus as God incarnate, but found the gospel message profoundly life changing [18]. In The Gospels in Brief, he writes, “I knew not the light, and I thought there was no sure truth in life; but when I perceived that only light enables men to live, I sought to find the sources of the light. And I found them in the Gospels, despite the false commentaries of the Churches. And when I reached this source of light I was dazzled with its splendour, and I found there full answers to my questions as to the purport of the lives of myself and others—answers which I recognised as wholly harmonious with all the known answers gained among other nations, and, to my mind, surpassing all other answers.”
My personal journey over the last four years has centered on the nature of truth. I have come to view truth as unknowable, but well worth tireless pursuit, for the process itself is an end. I love how Ludwig Wittgenstein sums up what I think was a journey into mysticism, of sorts. Near the end of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, after building an edifice of logic (that was used as a foundation by Logical Positivists for decades), he writes, “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)” I believe his point is that logic and rationality can only help us cut away the dreck of logically incoherent claims and create a clearing for truth. Yet logic itself is only a system for determining internal coherence. It cannot make claims of correlative truth, or meaning or beauty. Truth is often paradoxical and beyond logic, beyond rationality. This leaves us with the certainty of uncertainty and requires a sort of mystic leap of faith. If Self-less love is indeed the universal religious message, it requires ultimate faith as Self-lessness contradicts our primary instinct: survival of Self. I believe this leap of love and faith is “The Way” personified by Jesus. In Systematic Theology, 20th century theologian Paul Tillich says, “The Christian claim that the logos who has become concrete in Jesus as the Christ is at the same time the universal logos includes the claim that wherever the logos is at work it agrees with the Christian message.” It seems to me that Jesus taught Self-lessness as a nondual prescription for “The Way” to “The Kingdom of God,” a message reflected across the religious spectrum. Sufi Mystic Hazrat Sultan Bahu describes his mystical experience like this: “Mystics live in this world as Hu personified (Hu means “he,” a reference to Allah). They practice the Name that is the Essence of God. They live in Hu, beyond religion, belief, and unbelief, beyond life and death. If you explore the path within yourself, you will find God nearby. He now lives in me, and I in Him, O Bahu, Not only distance from Him but even nearness to Him has become irrelevant.”
Christianity is my native tongue in spiritual matters, so let me try to translate this nondual mystical understanding into traditional Christian terminology. I think the stripping of Self or Ego can be correlated to the Christian concept of “salvation,” or “enlightenment” as it’s called in Eastern traditions. This Self-less way of being in the world may be called “righteousness” (right standing) in relation to God. Salvation frees us (“saves” us) from our attachment to material concern. “The Law” as exemplified by the Golden Rule is like a set of rules aligned with selfless behavior. To strip away Self fulfills the spirit of the Law without any need for the letter, and living “according to the Law” is like living selflessly without a deeper understanding for the Self-less nonduality expressed through the Law (i.e. genuine enlightenment or salvation). I have come to think “sin” does not refer to a moral code, but to a state of living for Self. Every “moral” sin in the Bible involves Self-centered thought or action. So the notion of “Original Sin” can refer to the intuitive primacy of Self, leading to Self-centered behavior that conflicts with the Law. It seems to me that a nondual understanding of reality that trivializes material concern, leading to internal peace and harmony with Being-itself (God) is what Jesus refers to as the “Kingdom of God.” It is a “peace that passes all understanding,” in the words of Paul.
If nondual Self-lessness is indeed the essential universal message of the holy spirit, then it seems truly ironic that every major organized religion seems to abandon this idea. The Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism may be seen as originating this philosophy, but most forms of Hinduism are filled with ritual and tradition wherein followers seek to improve their standing for the next incarnation of Self-hood. Buddhism, which is perhaps the most explicit in its teaching of Self as illusion, has many sects which are highly ritualized like other religions, encouraging believers to acquire “merit” for their next life while aspiring to a heaven-like version of Nirvana. Mainstream versions of both Islam and Christianity focus their teachings on merit or salvation, respectively, and an afterlife, thus projecting Self-hood into eternity. “New Age” teachers and humanists often turn nondual concepts back into forms of Self-improvement and Self-empowerment. In these ways, it seems to me that even the most profound religious insight, once dogmatized, turns Self-lessness into an organized structure that directs followers towards a particular conception of glorified and improved Self-hood. The reason? Survival of the Fittest. A religion can only thrive and grow if its message has broad appeal. Denying Self is indeed a very narrow path. Hinduism’s Swami Vivekananda makes an amusing observation in Lectures on the Bhagavad Gita, “All priests are not strong. If the people say, ‘Preach two thousand gods,’ the priests will do it. They are the servants of the congregation who pay them. God does not pay them. So blame yourselves before blaming the priests. You can only get the government and the religion and the priesthood you deserve, and no better.” I recently listened to a podcast from an American Zen Buddhist whose teaching sounded exactly like a Christian sermon; he just replaced “sin” with “karma” and “heaven” with “nirvana.” It seemed like a case of social paradigms influencing and determining religious understanding. The relationship between religious understanding and social and scientific beliefs are perpetually asserting dynamic influences on each other. These essays are an example of that, I suppose. It seems to me that an appropriate religious understanding must take honest account of all information that is currently available, and a scientific view should at least consider all that is experienced, including what is outside of the very limited boundaries of the scientific method. I seek this middle way and recognize existence as a profound mystery. But even without rational comprehension of the mystery, I believe the Way modelled by Jesus provides the ultimate model for how to exist. In John 8:51, Jesus says, “ Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my Logos will never see death.” When Self dies (we obey the Logos) there is no Self left to “see death.” In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein expresses the idea of eternal life in a beautifully existential manner: “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.” It is this profoundly existential understanding of the Logos that I see as the good news conveyed by Jesus in the gospels. It is a message that we are to live in a state of Self-less love, unattached, and in the now, trusting God with what will be. This view of Self-lessness provides no grounds for fearing death, since there is no Self to die; only a biological container for “I am.” But this profoundly counter-intuitive view of Self-lessness makes a difficult ontological claim about the nature of Self. Is this skeptical view of Self warranted? The next essay (“Part 6”) will examine that question.
There is another take-away from this view that I find striking. It seems that perhaps the only “reward” for Self-lessness is “enlightenment” itself: the existential posture of experiencing existence without desire, yearning, attachment, concern for Self, fear of death. As I see it now, this interpretation posits no afterlife (though I look forward to investigating this later). It posits no value in the merits of “historical” accomplishment, no punishment or reward for “enlightenment” beyond the peace gained now, in this experience of existence. It isn’t even union with God in a sense, because there is no Self to unite with God. It is like Sultan Bahu said. This view is instead deeply existential, ascribing meaning to Being-itself, because Being is the essence of God. This Way of Being is Self-less, which leads to an understanding of life that is summed up in the Golden Rule. As such, it aligns itself with common morality in most ways when we act Self-lessly. However, if Self remains, nihilistic existentialism results in the ethical stance proposed by folks like Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre. I assume that is why this teaching has traditionally been considered esoteric, not exoteric, in Abrahamic traditions. In the interpretation I am supporting, common “morality” is a consequence, not a cause or command. Even if this thread of understanding that I’ve latched onto is indeed what Jesus and others taught, it makes no demand for obedience. It does not necessitate a belief that Self-lessness is the best course of action. It says only that Self-lessness is the understanding of life prescribed by great spiritual seekers and teachers. It is the Way of the Logos. There is an entirely valid case to be made that the material concerns of Self are what matter most, and life should be lived for the benefit of Self. Obviously, this was the position posited by philosophers like Nietzsche and Sartre. It is Survival of the Fittest. Ironically, I would say this position is also advanced by most mainstream conceptions of religion that focus on improving Self for this life or the next. My conception of God evolved from Part 4 to Part 5, and I hope to further revise or refine my notion of Self in Part 6. The nature of Self is a profound question – perhaps the most profound. “Know Thyself” was the maxim over Delphi. Our presuppositions regarding the fundamental nature of Self precede and thus help determine our conception of how God relates to mankind. I do not know how my ideas regarding the teachings of Jesus will hold up, even in my own mind as they face further scrutiny, but I am happy to have made this effort to re-study the gospels with “new eyes.” Hopefully there will prove to be a useful thought or two in there.