Consciousness and Yeshua--Part III

In the Axial Age, the Divine Reality is understood not just as a “super-being” in some far-off heaven, but primarily as Consciousness. For the prophets of the Abrahamic world that consciousness is a Presence understood as an immediate and personal “I Am” in the same way that each of us can say, “I am…” and know that we are engaged with another person.

When we think about consciousness, the deep awareness that makes us aware of ourselves as alive and present, we perceive it as being distinct and unique to each being who possesses it. There is “my consciousness,” and there is “your consciousness,” and they are different. We would say that each is “owned” by (or belongs to) each separate being, as though each person generates his or her own consciousness out of their own brains. We assume, of course, that there is similarity between us, but that consciousness itself resides individual and distinct “in” each person. That is our perception.

Yeshua appears to under it differently. For him, consciousness is something that he shares with the Father (Abba). Oneness is not simply the singularity of God (God is One and there is no other), but in the intimacy that he knows with the Divine, consciousness itself is shared—or is one. To say “I am,” then, is actually to experience the consciousness that is I AM. In other words, the sense of being an “I am” is a gift that does not originate in us, but flows through us. To finally know the true Source of one’s own sense of I am, and know that it is a shared experience with the divine—that in effect we are sharing the same I AM consciousness—is another breakthrough. It is, however, not only made in Christianity, in the awareness of Yeshua, but it is also made elsewhere, in Hinduism and Buddhism for example. It seems now, for the first time, to appear in the Abrahamic tradition in the awareness of Yeshua.

The same breakthrough can be made by any human being. Each of us can move from a position of being isolated in our own individual consciousness to the realization that we are aware because that gift of awareness is like an electric current flowing through us constantly, and that same current flows through and is shared by all sentient beings. This seems to be implicit in the teachings and prayer of Yeshua (John 17).