The Light of All Mankind: A Nondual Reading of John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1: 1-5, NIV)
Understood through a nondual lens, these verses describe a reality where consciousness is the singular source of all existence, and form is its expression.
God in this context is formless, timeless consciousness, the unmanifest potential for all experience. This is the absolute reality, prior to the body-mind and therefore prior to the experience of space and time.
The Word (Logos) represents consciousness expressed as form in the realm of space-time. It is the dynamic principle of manifestation, the creative impulse or divine unfolding that brings unmanifest potential into the realm of the world and the body-mind, where this potential can be expressed and experienced.
The statement, “The Word was with God, and the Word was God” signifies that the expression of consciousness is consciousness itself, not a separate consciousness with its own separate reality or existence. The potential for experience (God) is eternally present with the expression of experience (the Word). The manifest form is not separate from the unmanifest source; the form is the source expressing itself. In the same way, the wave is not separate from the ocean; the wave is an expression of the ocean.
“Through him [the Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” In other words, without the expression of consciousness, there can be no experience of the world. All things are made by and through this dynamic unfolding. The universe is not a collection of independent objects, but a manifestation of the Word, the very presence of consciousness in form.
Consciousness, then, is literally “the light of all mankind.” It is the awareness that illuminates any experience, any perception, any understanding.
The verses also affirm, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This speaks to the unwavering, ever-present nature of consciousness, the awareness of being, or the foundational “I am.” Even in periods of profound ignorance, suffering, or apparent separation (the metaphorical darkness) awareness remains. Consciousness is not diminished by ignorance; consciousness is the knowing in which ignorance appears.
From a nondual perspective, the opening of John’s Gospel is not a theological account of a distant creator, but a description of the fundamental reality of consciousness. It is an invitation to recognize that the Word, the divine expression, is inseparable from the source, and that we, as expressions of the Word, are inseparable from God.
The divine light of awareness shines through all forms, revealing the seamless, unified reality in which we live and move and have our being.