When Jesus talks about Oneness, what he meant was I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, and we are in each other.
While Jesus claims, “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30) he was also declaring something shared by all humans. There is no separation between humans and God because of this mutual inter-abiding, which expresses the indivisible reality of divine love.
We flow into God—and God into us—because it is the nature of love to flow. Moreover, as we give ourselves to one another, the vine gives life to the branch while the branch makes visible what the vine is. The whole and the part live together in mutual, loving reciprocity, each belonging to the other and dependent on the other to show forth the fullness of love.
No separation between us humans is both powerful and challenging. Jesus exhorted us to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39). If we listen closely to Jesus “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a continuation of our very own being. It is a complete acknowledgment that our neighbor is us. There are not two individuals but two cells of the one great Life! And as these two cells flow into one another, experiencing that one Life from the inside, they discover that “laying down one’s life for another” is not a loss of one’s self but a vast expansion of it because the indivisible reality of love is the only True Self.
John 17:21-23 “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”
