This is a book summary of Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality by Marshall Davis (Amazon).
Quick Housekeeping:
- All content in “quotation marks” is from the author (otherwise it’s paraphrased).
- All content is organized into my own themes (not the author’s chapters).
- Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.
Book Summary Contents:
- About the Book
- Christianity & Nonduality
- Jesus & Nonduality
- Trinity (Body, Soul, Spirit)
- Crucifixion & Resurrection
- Self-Inquiry & God-Inquiry
Christian Nonduality: Experiencing God Directly by Marshall Davis (Book Summary)
About the book Experiencing God Directly
“This book is about knowing God. It is about recognizing the Unity that we already have, the One ‘in whom we live and move and have our Being,’ as the apostle Paul described God to the Athenian philosophers. (Acts 17:28)”
- “This book is about experiencing God directly. It is not meant to give the reader new spiritual insights or a better understanding of God. It is not trying to communicate theological knowledge about God gleaned from Scripture and expressed in ideas and concepts. It is not about designing a worship service with the right mix of music, words, and symbolism in order to prompt a religious experience of God. It is not about achieving an elevated mental state through spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation. This book is meant to point the reader to direct unmediated awareness of God. Complete, all-consuming, experiential oneness with God.”
- “My life as a Christian pastor has convinced me that most religious people hunger for first-hand experience of the Divine. They are not very interested in religion with its doctrines, rituals, commandments and bureaucracies. They will not settle for church programs, self-help workshops or spiritual novelties. They do not need more spiritual books on their bookshelves or more spiritual insights in their minds. They may put up with organized religion and spiritual teachers, but only if they might lead to a genuine spiritual encounter.”
- “When I learned contemplative prayer, I discovered that this open spaciousness, which I experienced in Nature, was not in the external landscape but the inner one. I had not discovered peace in the wilderness; I had brought it into the wilderness. Openness goes with me, and I can see it anywhere. It is Home. Love. Joy. Peace. God.”
- “I invite readers to recognize for themselves the Reality of which Jesus and the apostles spoke. It is nothing other than God, the One without a second. ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other besides me.’ Isaiah 45:5.”
Christianity & Nonduality
“What is important to understand is that nonduality is not at odds with Christianity.”
Nonduality:
“Both Oneness and Nonduality point to the same Truth. For that reason I use the two terms interchangeably … As I use the word (‘God’), it refers to the one undefinable unnamable Divine Reality … Divine Reality is by nature beyond the reach of human language.”
- “Nonduality is another word for oneness. Oneness makes positive statements about the underlying unity of all Existence … Nonduality comes at it from a different direction. It points to Truth by eliminating what it is not.”
- “Nondual wisdom cannot be seen with the eye, nor heard with the ear, nor conceived by the human mind. It is communicated directly from Spirit to spirit—from Divine Nature to human nature. It cannot be taught in human words, but only taught by the Spirit. It has no content—and hence it is Empty—and yet this Emptiness holds all things within it.”
Christianity:
“In Christian spirituality this experience of Oneness is usually called ‘union with God’ or ‘communion with God.’ (Communion literally means ‘union with.’)”
- “In her 1911 classic work Mysticism: A Study of the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, the great Christian writer Evelyn Underhill called it the Unitive Life. I use a variety of terms, but most often Awareness, the Kingdom of God, or Presence.”
- “The New Testament teaches that everyone already knows God. The apostle John taught that Christ is the Divine Logos ‘that enlightens every man who comes into the world.’ (John 1:9)”
Christian Nonduality:
“Christian nonduality is not an intellectual understanding. It is a direct apprehension of the Divine. It transcends thought and religion.”
- “Nondual Christianity is experiential spirituality. It is an immediate experience of oneness with God, Christ, and all of Creation. It is unity with all that exists.”
- “This is more than a theological doctrine. It is a living awareness available to everyone. Christian theology is practical and not theoretical. Theology is best understood as a description of our experience of God. To say that God is omnipresent is not just saying something about the nature of God. It says something about our experience of God.”
- “The famous shema of the Hebrew tradition says, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) The Holy One of Israel is the Nondual Reality that Jews and Christians call God.”
Jesus & Nonduality
“The awareness of Oneness was supposed to be the distinguishing characteristic of Christians, and the means that would draw people to faith in Christ. Jesus was a proclaimer of nonduality, and he prayed that his followers would experience the same Oneness that he knew … ‘I and the Father are One.’ (Jesus)”
Kingdom of God:
“Jesus was a proclaimer of the nondual Presence of God. He called it the Kingdom of God.”
- “In reality Nondualism transcends all ideas, philosophies and religions. The Kingdom of God (which is Jesus’ term for nondual Reality) is beyond theology. Theologies are only useful when they point beyond themselves to the Kingdom.”
- “The Kingdom is a mystery. It is does not appear by human effort, nor can it be understood by human knowledge. It is a natural process that one day blooms into fullness. Jesus said, ‘To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade.’ (Mark 4:30-32) The Kingdom of God can begin with a tiny insight or flash of intuition. But slowly it grows into full awareness of the Divine.”
- “The Kingdom of God is now. This is why I call God Presence. Presence is only in the present.”
(Omni)Presence of God:
“An even better translation of Kingdom of God for today would be the Presence of God or the Omnipresence of God.”
- “Omnipresence refers to the all-pervading presence of God. God is in all places at all times.”
- “God is omnipresent. Anyone with eyes to see can see God. God is everywhere. You can’t miss God. As Jesus said, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.’ I would add: Whoever has eyes to see, let them see.”
- “In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, ‘The kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.’Â (Thomas 113) The Kingdom of God is present here now but only those with eyes to see can see it.”
Teaching & Parables:
“Jesus’ awakening to his true nature and identity was followed by a time of integration. Jesus immediately retreated by himself into the wilderness. There in solitude he was ‘tempted by the devil.’ Three temptations challenged Jesus’ new identity as the Son of God. In the end Jesus believed the voice of God rather than the voice of doubt. Jesus returned from the wilderness with a clear message, calling others to experience the Presence of God for themselves.”
- “Jesus had a unique style of teaching. He taught ‘as one having authority, not as the scribes,’ (Matthew 7:29) meaning that he spoke from his own self-authenticating experience of God. His teaching was not a secondhand reinterpretation of scripture and tradition. Often he would emphasize the discontinuity between his teachings and traditional religious teachings by saying, ‘You have heard that it was said of old, but I say unto you …..’ One distinctive teaching method that Jesus employed was the parable. Parables are metaphors, similes, or allegories meant to convey spiritual truth. Truth is a mystery that cannot be spoken of directly. It can only be referred to obliquely through the use of illustrations. These ‘pointers to truth’ hide truth as well as reveal it. Only those who are spiritually ready to receive the message could hear it. Others would miss the point completely.”
- “Parables point beyond themselves to a spiritual reality that is not communicable in thoughts or ideas. They are meant to shift the consciousness of the hearer so that they can ‘see that which is invisible’ as the Letter to the Hebrews describes it. (Hebrews 11:27)”
- “To experience this Presence, Jesus calls us to repent. That is another awkward term, which is often colored with moralistic overtones. The word ‘repent’ literally means ‘to rethink.’ Jesus was saying, ‘Think again! God is here. Reach out and touch! See for yourself!'”
Trinity (Body, Soul, Spirit)
“The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures teach that man is one. Like God, humans are understood as trinity: three in one. The apostle Paul wrote, ‘Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless….’ (I Thessalonians 5:23) In New Testament Christianity, a human being is an integrated whole, composed of physical body, personal soul, and eternal spirit.”
“The Trinity is meant to push the Christian believer beyond reason into a direct awareness of Mystery. God is not known with the mind. God is the unknown, and can be apprehended only by unknowing. Like a Zen koan, the Trinity is a puzzle with no logical solution. Christian doctrines like the Trinity are meant to awaken the Christian to what is beyond the mind. It is not meant to convey information about God, but to lead to a direct encounter with God.”
Body:
“The body is temporary. It is born and it dies. Between those temporal end points, the body is continually changing.”
- “Every part of our bodies is constantly being born and dying. Every cell of our body is replaced every seven years. Physically speaking, we are not the same person we were seven years ago, much less seventy years ago. By the time we reach our seventieth year, we have been physically ‘reincarnated’ ten times.”
- “This simple insight into our physical nature reveals that our bodies are not our true nature. Yet we know intuitively that something about us has remained the same throughout the various versions of our physical bodies.”
Soul (aka Psyche, Self, Ego):
“The Greek word for soul is psyche. The soul is best understood as the psychological self … The soul is the human personality, sometimes called the ego. It is our sense of being a personal entity. It is our persona. It is what it means to be a person.”
- “It is gradually formed during the early years of childhood and dominates our adult lives. We are born with genetic attributes that interact with our environment and develop into a unique self-conscious individual. A child forms a sense of a separate self during the first three years of life. From that time on, we identify ourselves with our psyche. This self is given a name and plays roles in family and society. The self is influenced by life experiences and comes to understand itself as having a personal history. For all practical purposes we come to believe that we ARE our self or soul. Nearly everyone identifies themselves by the distinctive manifestations of their self – their thoughts, feelings, desires, and choices.”
- “But upon close inspection it can be seen that this personal self is no more permanent than the body. In fact it is even less substantial than the body. The self is nothing more than a mental fabrication of the brain, which in turn is simply an organ of the body. Therefore the self dies when the brain dies with the body. If we are looking for our essential nature, then it is clear that we are not our soul – our individual, personal, psychological self – any more than we are our bodies.”
- “Humans have mistaken their psyches for their real self, and consequently remade God in their own image. Man’s self pictures God as a supreme Personal Self. Man’s mind imagines God as Divine Intellect. God is seen as Super Man.”
- “God made man as spirit in his own image as Spirit. But man has mistaken himself to be psyche and reimagined God as a Super Psyche. That religious image of God as a Big Self is no more real than the human psyche it was patterned after. It is nothing more than an idol. Consequently most theistic worship is little more than idolatry, the worship of man’s own persona projected upon the fabric of the universe.”
- “For Christians the world is real, and the human self is real. But they are real only in a relative sense. They are not real in an absolute sense. They have no independent lasting existence apart from God.”
Spirit:
“The third aspect of human being is spirit. In Genesis the spirit was breathed into the human body to produce the human soul. At death the body returns to the earth, the soul ceases to exist (since it has no real existence apart from the body) and the spirit returns to Spirit.”
- “What makes us conscious living beings is spirit. Human beings are spirit at the core. If we are looking for the part of human nature that is permanent – which survives death – then the only viable candidate is spirit. The spirit is not born and does not die. It has no beginning and no end. It comes from God and returns to God. In Genesis, the human spirit is ‘the breath of God.’ It is what makes us alive. It is the mystery that we call Life. This is who we are. We are life.”
- “What is spirit? Physically speaking it is nothing. It is literally ‘no thing.’ Spirit has no physical characteristics. Spirit is by definition nonmaterial. It is not matter. Neither is it energy. Matter and energy are different physical manifestations of the same thing. Matter turns into energy and energy into matter, in an ever-changing dance of duality. If spirit were energy, it could be empirically proven to exist by the scientific method. But it can’t. Therefore it does not exist in the normal way of understanding existence. It is not part of this dualistic universe. Spirit is the word given to that which does not empirically exist, and yet is the foundation of all existence. It is Being from which all beings draw their existence.”
- “Being beyond the duality of time and space, spirit is eternal. It is the only part of the human being that is eternally real. The Spirit of God formed everything else ex nihilo – out of nothing. God is the ‘No-thing’ from which everything comes. God is the Nondual Reality that was before the birth of this dualistic universe in the Big Bang. God is that in which all things exist. As Paul says of God, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17:28)”
- “What is true of the spirit does not negate what is true for the soul; it transcends it. Nondual awareness does not negate dualistic awareness. It includes it and fulfills it.”
Crucifixion & Resurrection
“We survive death, but not in the way we commonly think, because we are not who we think we are. There is eternal life, but the egocentric personality does not inherit it. The self must die for us to live. Then what survives death? The spirit of man in union with the Spirit of God … What survives is our true self in Christ.”
Cross / Crucifixion:
“From a nondual perspective, the Cross takes on a whole new meaning. The Cross is seen as the destruction of the body and soul (self) of Jesus and the survival of the Spirit of Jesus.”
- “The Cross of Jesus is truly the way of salvation, the way of liberation from this earthly life to eternal life. The way of salvation is the death of the self and the release of the spirit.”
- “The Cross of Christ depicts the physical death of the body and the psychological death of the self. It reveals that these parts of human nature are only temporary and, in an ultimate sense, unreal.”
- “We die to self in order to live to God.”
- “From a nondual point of view, Jesus’ cry of agony makes perfect sense. It is the death cry of the personal self, which perceives itself headed for extinction. The crucifixion of Jesus depicts the death of the self … This death of the self of Jesus is as important as the death of the body of Jesus. Once the crucifixion had accomplished its purpose of extinguishing the self, the only thing left for Jesus to do was to surrender his spirit to God.”
- “Jesus taught that one can only take as much into the Kingdom of God as will fit through the eye of a needle. That is a poetic way of saying we can take nothing from earthly life into eternal life. That includes the psychological self that we have so laboriously built. We can take with us only what we brought into this world … We did not bring our self into this world, and cannot take our self out.”
Resurrection:
“Ego is hell, and heaven is egolessness! … Heaven is a place without suffering … The source of suffering is the self. It must die for us to live without suffering. Human being is emptied of the human. What remains is Being. Emptiness is filled with the fullness of Christ. This Fullness is eternal life.”
- “The resurrection illustrates the point that liberation is not a disembodied state. It is not something that is attainable only after the physical death of the body. It is possible to live a spiritual life and still be in the body.”
- “The physical nature of the resurrection stresses the fact that one can live a resurrected, spiritually reborn life before physical death, while still having a personal identity as a personal self. Christian salvation is an incarnated spiritual life.”
- “By faith the Christian dies with Christ, is resurrected with Christ, and spiritually ascends to heaven with Christ to be united with God.”
- “Faith is a dimension of nondual awareness. Faith trusts those first glimpses of Oneness. Faith trusts Christ and others who describe the reality of this Oneness. Faith dies to self in order to live to God. Faith trusts that the death of the self is not the end. It trusts that what appears to be death is actually life.”
- “One comprehends the world from the perspective of spirit through the faculties of the spirit. Faith is the human spirit’s faculty of apprehending nondual Reality. One sees by faith what cannot be seen with the eyes or understood with the mind. Faith sees directly and immediately. By faith one knows the true nature of Reality.”
- “When one awakens to the Oneness of God, the world is seen from a different perspective. This is spiritual sight. It is seeing by faith … One sees with spirit, rather than with body or soul.”
- “In Presence all paradoxes are resolved in Oneness that transcends reason.”
- “Consciousness is our true nature. We will be who we truly are now—only freed from the temporal body and psyche. Conscious Joy of Being is eternal life. This is present now. We can enjoy eternal life before physical death. We have Eternal Life now.”
Born Again:
“According to Jesus, being born again means to see the Kingdom of God. Jesus said, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'”
- “Being ‘born again’ is a direct experience of the Presence of God here now. When one is born of the Spirit, one immediately enters the Kingdom of God and sees the Kingdom of God. A door opens before one’s eyes and one’s view of the universe is transformed.”
- “This is a description of nondual awareness. Nonduality is best described in terms of what it is not. In classic Christian spirituality this is known as the via negativa, the way of negation. It is also known as negative theology or apophatic theology (from the Greek word meaning ‘to deny’). Being born again is ‘not this’ and ‘not that.’ If you try to describe it, you are missing it. Nothing one can say about it is true without immediately saying the opposite. Even balancing a statement with its opposite misses the mark, because it makes the truth dualistic, and God is nondual. The Lord is One.”
- “Jesus is saying that being born again is a spiritual reality, not a physical one.”
- “Jesus says it means to be ‘born of the Spirit’ or ‘born again.'”
- “Jesus describes being spiritually reborn in terms of unknowing.”
Self-Inquiry & God-Inquiry
“There are two basic approaches to Divine Truth. One is self-inquiry, relentlessly pursuing the question, ‘Who am I?’ until the answer is experienced directly and immediately. When we see who we truly are, we see who God truly is. The other way is to ask ‘Who is God?’ When we know God, then we know ourselves. The first approach is most commonly used in Eastern spiritual traditions. The second approach is found in Western traditions. An equivalent question asked by Christians is ‘Who is Christ?’ There are two ways of understanding Christ: Christology from below (beginning with Jesus’ human nature) and Christology from above (starting with his divine nature). When it comes to spiritual inquiry, East starts ‘from below.’ asking ‘Who am I?’ West starts ‘from above,’ asking ‘Who is God?’ … The Incarnation combines both the ‘from below’ and the ‘from above’ approaches. Because Christ was a human being, it is an inquiry into human nature. Because Christ is Divine, it’s also an inquiry into the nature of God.”
Spiritual Search:
“‘Know thyself’ was the Greek inscription that greeted ancient pilgrims at the entrance to the temple at Delphi. This admonition is the most basic expression of the spiritual search. Even before one can seek God, one must know who it is who seeks God. When one knows oneself, everything else becomes clearer. Discovery of our true nature opens our eyes to the true nature of God and the world.”
- “If the spiritual search is the quest for what is Real, and if Reality is defined as that which does not change, then the only part of the human being that is real is spirit. Spirit is our true nature.”
- “The spiritual quest is to realize through direct experience who we really are and who God really is. As a child (before what Christians would call ‘the Fall’) we knew this, but we did not know that we knew. We were conscious, but not self-conscious – aware but not self-aware. In childhood humans become lost in the tangle of the psyche. That is the real meaning of original sin. Every human being has eaten the fruit of duality, ‘the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Humans have separated themselves from God and from their own true nature. We have believed our own thoughts. Soul reigns in place of Spirit.”
- “Jesus said that one has to become like a little child to enter the Kingdom of God … A little child has not yet developed the psychological sense of a personal self that separates him from the rest of the world. He is still one. The little child does not experience himself as other than God or God’s creation.”
- “Spiritual inquiry is the search to discover our real self and the Real God. The Christian gospel says that this discovery of true self and True God is made through Jesus Christ. He is the door into what Christians call salvation, redemption or freedom … Christ is the mediator between God and man. In Christ is the union of spirit with Spirit—human spirit with Divine Spirit.”
- “Awakening to the true nature of existence revels the transient nature of the human self.”
Self-Inquiry:
“What is man? Most people perceive themselves to be individual selves with physical bodies. In actuality we are spirit, temporarily expressed as psychological physical beings. As Christian philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, ‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.'”
- “When one makes a careful inquiry into the nature of the personal self, we can see that the ‘I’ is really around only when we think about it, but not when we look directly at it. We assume the ‘I’ is our real identity, our everyday normal consciousness, but upon examination we see that it is just an occasional actor on the stage of our lives. It thinks it has the starring role in life, but it is just a minor character actor who has an exaggerated sense of his own importance. The leading role goes to God. By ‘God’ I mean the real conscious Presence which is living our lives. We are not who we think we are. We are not the self. We are the earthen vessel through which the Divine lives life.”
- “The ‘I,’ the separate self, is just along for the ride.”
- “In my experience, the best way to know God directly is to explore what is not ‘I’ in my consciousness.”
- “My experience of God is that the ‘I’ cannot know God. The ‘self’ dissolves like dew when the Sun shines on it. The personal ‘I’ is darkness, and darkness cannot exist in the Light. The self cannot stand in the Presence of God.”
- “Where God is, I am not. Where I am, God is not. Therefore ‘I’ cannot experience God, but God is experienced.”
God Experience:
“My inquiry into God—like my inquiry into the nature of the self—has led me beyond the human conceptions of God to what Christian philosopher Paul Tillich calls ‘God beyond God.’ The God of religion is nothing more than an idea in the mind.”
- “The God of most theists is an idol. But God is real. The One God that Christian doctrines, icons, scriptures, and words point to is Ultimately Real. But ideas about God are not. We must not mistake the words used to describe God for God to whom they point. There is an old saying: Do not mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself. We must not mistake doctrine that points to Truth for Truth Itself.”
- “True God is without qualities and characteristics. God is without name … I am actually speaking about a non-experience by the no-self of that to which the word ‘God’ points.”
- “When we look for the Absolute in the relative, we are looking in the wrong place … Seeking is an activity done in time. To know God we must transcend time … God is beyond time and space. We can know God only beyond time and space.”
- “God is not an object to be experienced, and there is no experiencer. The two are one in experiencing. This is nonduality or oneness.”
- “Direct experience of Presence is the Way to God. It is the only Way to God because the Way is God … The Path is the Goal. The only Way to Transcendent God is through Immanent God, but both are the same God … To know this conscious Presence of God is freedom. It is salvation.”
- “The True Actor of our lives is the One that we call God … Everything is in God, and God is living in and through every other part of Creation.”
I Am:
“To experience God directly all we have to do is step outside of ourselves for a moment. One way to do this is to cease thinking for a moment. Try it now. For ten to fifteen seconds, let your mind rest from any thought. That which is present when there are no thoughts is Presence. It is not the presence of self, but the Presence of God. It is ‘I am.’ Not the idea ‘I am,’ conceived by the mind, but the simple awareness that I am.”
- “That ‘I am-ness’ is Eternal God abiding in us and through us, outside us and around us. We normally assume that this sense of ‘I am’ is our personal existence, our psychological self, our individual separate consciousness. But upon inspection it is seen that it is not. We can see that the self exists within this Awareness. This Awareness is God living in us and through us.”
- “Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM.’ Jesus was saying that before Abraham was born, and before he himself was born, that his true nature is Eternal. Jesus’ true nature is unborn.”
- “When Jesus identified himself as I AM, he was equating himself with the Eternal God. Throughout the Gospel of John Jesus makes repeated reference to himself as I AM. ‘I AM the Light of the World. I AM the Bread of Life. I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life.’ The self-identity ‘I AM’ is the unifying theme of this gospel.”
- “Jesus prayed for his followers, ‘that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.’ (John 17:21-23)”
- “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
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