Jesus' Prayer In John 17-21:26 Has Been Misinterpreted for Millenia — Here Is What He Actually Meant

John 17:21–26 is traditionally understood as part of what is called The High Priestly Prayer.

In modern interpretation, this passage is framed as a moment of profound intimacy, occurring just before the Passion, in which Jesus assumes the role of an intermediary between God and humanity — consecrating himself on behalf of his followers in order to enable the world to believe in his mission.

For millennia, the words of Jesus have been read, recited, translated, translated again, translated again and institutionalized under the assumption that their meaning has been accurately grasped, yet the persistent fragmentation of interpretation across cultures and denominations suggests otherwise.

Entire theological systems have been constructed upon is sayings, particularly those found in John 17, where Jesus speaks repeatedly and with unmistakable emphasis on UNITY.

“That they all may be ONE; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be ONE in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be ONE, even as we are ONE

I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in ONE…”

John 17:21-26, The High Priestly Prayer

So how is it that Christianity is so disunited? How is it that the unity of Jesus’ message has been divided into over 47,000 denominations of Christianity worldwide — all with their own interpretations of what he meant?

If the meaning were self-evident, such outcomes would not persist, and if the language were merely metaphorical, its endurance across millennia would not carry the same weight of authority.

Jesus speaks of unity as something precise, inherent, and universal.

The cause of this problem, therefore, lies within a long-held wrong meaning of the word: UNITY

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AXIOM

The REALITIES of life are BALANCE. LOVE. TRUTH. ENERGY and the LAW. This is what God IS. These are the QUALITIES of MIND which you cannot SEE. You can only KNOW them. The unrealities of life you can alone SEE, for they cannot be KNOWN.
The REALITIES are QUALITIES of Mind at rest.
The UNREALITIES are QUANTITIES of sensed bodies of matter in motion.

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According to the above axiom, what can be sensed with our senses belongs to the unreal—not in the sense of being false, but in the sense of being transient, temporary, and constantly changing.

God is the only reality — and being reality, it must be unchanging and eternal.

In other words, when Jesus entered The Kingdom of Heaven, he became aware of the UNITY of his Mind-SELF and GOD and that it was the eternally still and motionless FULCRUM from which his sensed-body — along with the entire material universe — extended.

Just like a seesaw, your Mind, is the still fulcrum which commands your body. It is impossible for a lever to move without its fulcrum.

The fulcrum of Your Mind-SELF is the eternal YOU.

Your body is the transient instrument which your Mind-SELF uses to express the qualities of what it is, and just as it is impossible for a lever to move without its fulcrum, so too is it impossible for you to move your body without commands from your Mind-SELF.

Your body expresses the qualities of its Mind-source in an almost infinite amount of expressions. Your body expresses balanced stillness while recharging during a night of sleep in order to express energy through motion upon waking. You express balance by standing up straight, and also by dividing that balance rhythmically in order to walk. You express love by giving a helping hand to you neighbor, caring for a sick child or giving words of encouragement to the downtrodden.

The above quality of Balance is God’s LAW unexpressed. The quality of BALANCE expressed is accomplished through Rhythmic balanced interchange — which is exactly what walking expresses, along with your breathing cycle and heartbeat.

God’s LAW of Rhythmic Balanced Interchange, when applied to human relations, is known as:

THE GOLDEN RULE

The foregoing has eluded to an as-of-yet unknown Truth which leads us to the right meaning of what Jesus meant in The High Priestly Prayer:

God is Mind and therefore is the only Reality.

There are no separate Minds.

There is only ONE Mind.

And you are ONE with that Mind just as Jesus is.

When Jesus speaks of His Unity with God and Ours, he is not consecrating himself on behalf of his followers in order to enable the world to believe in his mission, and he is most certainly not using it as a metaphor.

He is using it literally. Jesus was ONE with God not because his body was divine, but because he had full conscious realization of his UNITY with the God-Mind.

He realized that there is only One Mind and we are all that ONE Mind.

The true meaning of his prayer, therefore, was:

for the desire that we come into the same awareness that he had already attained — that we recognize our unity with the One Mind which God is, and in doing so, recognize our unity with him and with each other.

Jesus' illumination into full god-awareness as Mind, was misinterpreted by early thinkers who heard Jesus’ story via word-of-mouth. The misinterpretation by primitive and superstitious thinkers was that the mortal body of Jesus was divine, instead of His immortal Mind.

This error — whether intentional or not— has led many intelligent, well-meaning people who know basic physics, to believe that Jesus’ physical body could phase through the walls of a tomb.

Thus, when Jesus says:

“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…”

“…that they may be one, even as we are one”

and

“I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one”

— he is not describing a relational hierarchy between separate entities, but a UNITY OF BEING in which the distinction between oneself and other collapses at the level of CAUSE.

And that CAUSE is within you at the very CORE OF WHO YOU ARE.

“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.

Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Luke 17:20-21, Jesus of Nazareth

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