Who or What is This?

A person who has had a moving experience of the Divine, what some Christians would describe as a salvation experience, might spontaneously exclaim, “This is it!” putting the emphasis on “THIS.”

And by THIS a Christian might either be referring to the Christian religion in general or Jesus in particular. Let’s say the person means Jesus. THIS means that Jesus is the only way to have this experience of the Divine. This, however, would be a grave mistake, a mistake countless Christians have made and are still making.

I can assure you, this is not of God. It is a misinterpretation of one’s experience and it reveals that one’s experience is to shallow, that it rests on mere feeling and emotion, and so understanding is distorted. The heart has not been fully opened and touched by Divine love.

When one’s heart is filled with Divine love, one knows intuitively and intrinsically that God’s love is unconditional, all-inclusive, all-accepting, and all-embracing of everyone and everything and that there are many ways a person can come to know and experience such immense and infinite love.

When one insists that Jesus is the only way into such love, it is evidence that such a person has never truly experienced that love in the core of his being, in the center of her heart.

When one has deep, primal, personal experience of Divine love in the depths of one’s inner being, the emphasis changes. It’s not THIS is it. Rather it is this and this and this and this . . . is IT. The IT being the Absolute, the Source of all that is, the Ground of all being, the IT that is also a WHO and a THOU – that is, infinite personal Presence and Divine Consciousness whose essence is love.

When one says, “THIS is it,” it shows that the ego is still exercising its control and power, keeping one stuck – thinking there is only one way to know God. The ego persists in this claim and defends it forcefully because it gives the ego a special feeling of being chosen and privileged over others, and thus a sense of superiority, though the ego can’t admit of face this. So the ego resorts to quoting Bible verses or religious doctrine to defend itself.

Jesus is one way to know God’s love. But there are myriad of ways to enter God’s love. The only necessary thing that is essential to all these ways of knowing Divine love is an open and receptive heart to receive love from others and to express love to others (see Rom 13:8-10; 1 John 4:7-21). God IS love. To know love is to know God.

The Johannine community knew this and this made its way into the Christian scriptures (1 John 4:8, 16), but you don’t need any sacred text to tell you so. Just open your heart to a deep, immense, all-forgiving, and all-accepting LOVE, and you will know it in your heart and soul. And that is the only kind of knowing that matters.