On Being a Sinner and the Need for Salvation
The concept of being “saved” implies a separate entity that is in danger or in need of rescue. It suggests an individual who requires an external force or a transformative experience to become whole or complete. But if the separate self is ultimately an illusion, a localized activity of thinking and perceiving without agency independent from God’s being, then the need for the concept of salvation disappears.
From the nondual point of view, the feeling of lack and the yearning for salvation are themselves expressions of the illusory separate self. They are the ego's way of perpetuating its existence by creating a narrative of incompleteness and the need for external validation or rescue. The seeking, the striving for a better self, is driven by this fundamental misunderstanding of our true nature.
“The yearning for salvation is another way the ego perpetuates its existence by creating a narrative of incompleteness and the need for external validation or rescue.”
But if we are already whole, already complete, as the very consciousness within which all experience unfolds, there is no separate self to be fixed. Perceived flaws and limitations are simply aspects of the temporary manifestation.
The experience of recognition, then, is a shift in identification from the limited, egoic perspective to the aware presence that we truly are. In this recognition, the need for salvation dissolves. The separate entity who felt the need is understood to be illusory, ultimately.
This doesn't mean that suffering ceases immediately, or that the patterns of the ego vanish overnight. However, the fundamental understanding of what is real and what is unreal creates a significant shift in perspective. The illusory foundation of lack begins to erode.
Here, salvation is not fixing a broken self. Salvation is the revelation our true nature as the shining reality in which all being is known. ⬚