Knowing God as Jesus Did

Bernadette Roberts

"Though the human Jesus knew God in a subjective way as being inseparable from himself, this knowing is highly analogous to the knowledge of our own union with God. When God is revealed as the divine center of our self we can truly say that God is our deepest, truest self. After all, if God's existence did not underlie and sustain our own, we could not exist at all. So how, then, in his humanity, was Christ's knowledge of this union different than our own? 

"As I see it, the main difference is that in the incarnation Jesus was born directly into the unitive state; born with this knowledge from the beginning, while the rest of us only come gradually to the unitive state – and then, by way of a difficult and painful Dark Night. It is only after this, the first contemplative movement, that we meet up with the human Christ and share his own subjective knowledge of oneness with God. In this unitive state we identify with Christ in the words of Paul, "No longer I, but Christ lives in me." Thus our true self is hidden with Christ in God, inseparably one with God through Christ. Yet beyond this union there still lies death and resurrection, and not just for Christ, but for ourselves; for after coming to this union, nothing again can ever separate us from Christ. So the rule of thumb is this: as it went for Christ, so it goes for us." 

The Experience of No Self