Jesus was the man, the human form, the male person who lived in the Middle East some 2000 years ago. Christ is the realization of oneness with God, Source, Universe, Reality, in and through all of life, love, goodness, and truth. I perceive it is synonymous with Buddha-nature in Buddhism, and the Atman in Hinduism.

In Christianity, the shift from dualism to nonduality is the recognition that the Cosmic Christ is what Jesus realized that caused him to be called “Christ,” and this is the very same Cosmic Christ that we are to realize too.

We are not realizing Jesus, the person, but the Cosmic Christ, and in the process we realize our Oneness with all existence just as Jesus realized his Oneness with it. Seeking to worship Jesus, the man, I think often misses the mark, and turns things into a “personality cult,” and idol worship. It remains dualistic.

We are to seek the same oneness that Jesus realized, in the Cosmic Christ. We follow Jesus, we don’t worship him as God. We might adore God as manifested in and through him, but this can often take the form of worshiping the man, the human form of Jesus.

We realize God as One in us, just as Jesus realized God as One in him (John 17). This realization is the Cosmic Christ in us. When we realize the Cosmic Christ, we don’t see Jesus, but our Self, the ground of our Being, as One with all things, all beings, all of reality, including Jesus and all beings who have ever lived or ever will live.

Jesus is an exemplary symbol of the Cosmic Christ, a man who embodied the Christ in a remarkable way (not unparalleled). But as the angelic Jesus said to John, “Don’t worship me! Worship God!” (Rev. 19:10; 22:9).