What does Salvation really mean?

If we want to understand the meaning of salvation, I think it is important first to understand what it is that is being saved. And to do so we need to ask of ourselves a very fundamental question:

What are we?

There's a simple thought experiment which I believe will help us.

Hold your hand up and look at it. Examine it front and back. Now imagine that you no longer had your hand - perhaps you lost it in some horrific accident.

Are you still you?

Of course you are.

Imagine the same for your foot.

Your arm.

Your leg.

Maybe even your eyes or an internal organ.

If you lose these parts of your body, are you still you?

Without a doubt, you are.

So, if you are not your body, what then are you?

Awareness.

Or to put another way, you're consciousness.

You may be familiar with Rene Descartes' famous line "I think, therefore I am." Which he later changed to "I am, I exist."

If we know nothing else of this world, we can be certain that we exist. And if we have knowledge that we exist, we have consciousness (or awareness).

So, in our essence, that is what we are - consciousness.

If you look at the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church, and find your way to chapter 15, he teaches about the resurrection. This is really the core of the gospel message for Paul, the resurrection to eternal life. For in 1 Corinthians 15:19 Paul writes, "If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

In the Corinthian church, there had apparently been some doubts about the possibility of resurrection. It sounds like that doubt was being sowed from other teachers who didn't believe in the resurrection and therefore denied eternal life as well.

Paul writes to encourage the believers and help them understand the nature of the resurrection as he understood it.

He draws a distinction between Adam and Christ. Adam represents the flesh or physical nature. Christ represents the spiritual or eternal nature. But both natures are present in all of us. The body and consciousness.

Paul goes on to explain that the resurrection is not of the physical body, but it is the resurrection of the immaterial aspect of ourselves.

Addressing a hypothetical question about what type of body one will have in the resurrection, he writes (rather abrasively) in verses 36-37, "You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel."

He's telling his readers, you have two aspects of your nature. One temporal, one eternal. One physical, one immaterial. You have a body and you have consciousness. The consciousness is what goes on to eternal life. The body is left behind.

In verse 42 he writes, "What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable."

He continues, "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, 'The first Adam became a living being', but the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (v.44-45)"

The "last Adam" being referenced here is the Christ. But it is also you. The you at your essence. The consciousness that is you. He writes in verse 49, "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven."

You are physical, but you are also non-physical. You are a temporal body and you are eternal consciousness.

Growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical church, I was taught that salvation was the act of "giving your life to Jesus" or "asking Jesus into your heart" or "admitting that Jesus died for your sins and asking him for forgiveness."

It was stated a variety of ways. And they're kind of right, but also have become so cliche as to lose their meaning.

Salvation is simply this:

A process of awakening.

It is awakening to your true nature as an eternal, conscious being.

It is growing in the shared consciousness of G-d. This is what traditionally is called the Holy Spirit. But if you read the Bible and view the Holy Spirit as the Consciousness of G-d, there's not much difference, if any at all, in the meaning or function. It's actually clarifying, in my opinion.

Jesus tells us in The Gospel According to John, that we need to be reborn, or "born again."

Paul writes in Romans 12:2 that we are to "be renewed in the spirit of your minds."

This is what they're talking about. The rebirth of your consciousness into the universal Consciousness of G-d.

Jesus says in John 14:15-17, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you."

Salvation is the process - or for some perhaps an event, a moment in time - where we move from the lower nature of our minds into the higher consciousness of G-d.

When he says "the world cannot receive [it]" it is because they are not aware of their eternal nature. But for those who are going through the process of salvation (or enlightenment, or awakening, whatever you would like to call it), they are aware of their true nature and the source of their nature, which is what we call G-d. The source of consciousness and life.

Eternal life is the continuation of your consciousness within the Consciousness of G-d.

It is rebirth into pure consciousness.