Biblical Advaita

"You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape..."
~Deuteronomy 4:15

We mistakenly assume that Advaita, the message of non-duality, is a modern message, or an Eastern message. But Advaita is also the soul of the Bible.

The essential text at the heart of the Bible is Exodus, chapter 3, and its commentary in Deuteronomy, chapter 4. Here Moses encounters God on Mt. Horeb (Sinai), the revelation in the burning bush. Moses asks God, "Who are you?" And God answers, "I Am that I Am." Then God says, "I Am is my name forever."

This is pure advaita. Moses looks for God, but God tells him to look for God in no-thing but the one who is looking: the I Am. God says, "In the fire I Am you saw no form; therefor never make a form, an idol of me." This becomes the first commandment: no idol, no God but God, which is also the central commandment of Islam: La ilaha illallah.

Jesus taught this same advaitic message. He constantly identified himself with the I Am who spoke from the formless fire on Mount Horeb. Jesus did not invite us to worship him, but to follow him. He leads each of us to who I Am, the divine Self in all. That is why, in the garden on Easter morning, when Mary Magdalene reaches out to grasp him, Jesus says, "Nolle me tangere: do not touch me." He wants his true devotee to let go of the outward I, and surrender to the inward fire of Am.

This is why Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I Am." And he says, "I Am the way, the truth, the life." He does not mean that a man with a beard in a pair of sandals, walking down the dusty roads of Galilee in the first century, is the only way, the only truth and life. He is referring to the one who is always right here, nearer than any form, more intimate that this very breath : I Am.

The Psalmist sang: "Be still and know that I Am God." When the seeking mind becomes still, awareness rests in the divine Self. If I cannot see God in who I Am, I will never see God in an other, not even in Jesus. For God is what sees.

Every human who declares "I Am" reflects the image and likeness of God. You and I are none other than the infinite light of the formless Lord. We are each refracted beams of the same Self-luminous Godhead who spoke to Moses from the burning bush.

How can we interpret the Biblical symbol of the burning bush? In Sanskrit, the word for "nerve" is "nara." God is called Narayana, the one who presides over the nervous system, irradiating it with the fire of consciousness. The burning bush is the sacred Life Tree of our brain, spine and nervous system, on fire with awakened consciousness.

The most sacred name of God in Hebrew is the great four letter name, called the Tetragrammaton, which is actually a verb, a declension of "I Am." There is no need to translate it into English or any other language - though it has crudely been tried as "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" - for this name is not a meaning but a sound: the two-syllable sound of our breath, moving in and out.

The Biblical divine name is a mantra: the vibration of life-breath in the human nervous system. Through this vibration, awareness returns to the Creator, the luminous Self residing in the hollow of our nerves. In Biblical revelation as in Vedic science, God's identity is intimately bound to the sound of God's name, and the practice of mantra meditation.

What we have in the story of Moses and the burning bush is not only the teaching of advaita, but the way, the sadhana, to experience God as the light of pure consciousness.