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)
According to the nondual view, these verses describe a reality where God’s being is the singular source of all existence, and form is its expression.
God’s being 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. (For more on how space and time are created through the lens of the mind, see this article.)
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 sensorial and perceptual experience.
The statement, “The Word was with God, and the Word was God” signifies that the expression of being is being itself, not a separate being with its own separate reality or existence. The potential for experience (God’s being) 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 with separate existences, but a manifestation of the Word, the very presence of consciousness in form.
Consciousness or God’s being, then, is literally “the light of all mankind.” It is the awareness that illuminates all experience, all perception, all understanding.
The verses also affirm, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” This speaks to the ever-present nature of consciousness, the awareness of being, the foundational “I am.” Even during periods of psychological suffering stemming from the belief in separation (the metaphorical darkness), awareness remains. Consciousness is not diminished by ignorance; consciousness is the knowing in which all ignorance appears.
The opening of John’s Gospel is not a theological account of a distant creator, but a description of the fundamental reality of God’s being in this very moment. 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. As it says in Deuteronomy, “The Lord is one.”
The divine light of awareness shines through all forms, revealing the seamless, unified reality in which we live and move and have our being.