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 a localized activity of thinking and perceiving without its own agency independent from God’s being, then the need for salvation disappears.
From the nondual point of view, feelings of lack and the yearning for salvation are expressions of the illusory separate self. They are the ego's way of perpetuating its existence by creating a narrative of incompleteness and seeking external validation or rescue. This seeking, this striving for a better self, is driven by a 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 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 of God’s being in us.
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, and the illusory nature of lack begins to recede.
Here, salvation is not fixing a broken self. Salvation is the revelation of our true nature as the shining reality in which all being is known.