Seán ÓLaoire, a mystic Catholic priest, tells a story that would make most pulpits nervous: he was preparing talks, reading the line from John's Gospel where Jesus says "I am the way, the truth and the life," and in a powerful vision Jesus was in the room with him. In his telling, Jesus confirmed the words, explained that the way, the truth and the life are all love, and then added that the Buddha is the way too, because the Buddha is compassion. From there ÓLaoire argues that Jesus was never claiming to be the only route to salvation, that people must develop what he calls Christ consciousness, and that Jesus himself was a work in progress who came to be imitated rather than adored. He backs this with a Gospel story he calls one of his favorites, a nightly prayer, and a reincarnation theory he says has gotten him into trouble in the church. The clip, drawn from an Aubrey Marcus Podcast episode released October 30, 2024, runs only a few minutes, but it packs a whole theology of the inner life into the space of a conversation.
The scene matters, because ÓLaoire frames everything that follows as something he experienced rather than something he argued. He describes preparing for a set of talks, a passage open in front of him, and a presence he identifies as Jesus. He asks a direct question: did you say this? The answer, as he tells it, is yes, and the reasoning is what turns the line inside out.
"Because the way is love and the truth is love and the life is love. There is no way to the Father except through love. And then he spontaneously said, and the Buddha is the way, the truth, and the life because the Buddha is compassion." (Seán ÓLaoire, Aubrey Marcus Podcast, 0:04–0:30)
Notice the grammar of that answer. ÓLaoire does not swap Jesus out for the Buddha. He keeps the sentence's structure and changes the noun. "Way" becomes love, "truth" becomes love, "life" becomes love. Then the sentence accepts a second subject, because the qualities being named are not owned by one historical person. If the path is compassion, then anyone who embodies compassion is walking it. That is the logic of the vision, and it is why he says the word "except" in John's line no longer means what it seems to mean on the surface.
ÓLaoire's answer is no, at least not in the exclusive sense that has divided Christians and other religions for centuries. He says plainly that Jesus "wasn't claiming that I, Jesus of Nazareth, am the only way in which people can be saved." The point, in his reading, is not a membership card. It is a transformation.
He describes that transformation with a phrase that recurs throughout his teaching: Christ consciousness. The idea is that you do not reach the divine by reciting a formula about Jesus but by becoming a certain kind of person. In his words from the same clip, "you have to develop Christ consciousness and that, you know, you have to be loving beings. You have to be like the Buddha. You have to be compassionate beings." He adds that there is "no other way to access your inner divinity" except by making compassion your truth and your life purpose.
This is a radical reframing, and it is worth being precise about what it claims. ÓLaoire is not saying all religions are equal in every detail. He is saying the destination, which he calls inner divinity, is reached through a shared quality, and that Jesus and the Buddha both point to that quality. For a Catholic priest to say this out loud is what he himself suggests is provocative. Whether a reader finds it liberating or heretical will depend on how literally they hold the exclusive reading of John's line, and that is the tension the clip leaves open.
The most vivid teaching in the clip comes from a story ÓLaoire says is one of his favorites, from Matthew's Gospel. He sets the scene with care: Jesus is exhausted from preaching non-stop across Israel and wants a break. His companions cross into Syrophoenicia, north of Israel, and in a village a woman recognizes him as a wonder worker. She begs him, calling him son of David, to heal her seriously ill daughter.
Then Jesus says something that most readers find jarring. He tells her he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She keeps asking. He then says it is not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. The woman answers that even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. Jesus praises her faith and tells her to go home, because her daughter is fine.
ÓLaoire's reading is what makes the story useful to him. He says the Father would have set Jesus straight, insisting "there are no dogs. I don't create dogs in that sense of the word." In his view, Jesus was learning, and he was learning in public. Jesus, in this telling, had to deal with prejudice at that stage of his life, and then grow beyond it.
From that moment ÓLaoire draws his central conclusion: Jesus was "a work in progress, you know, as all are we all." He connects it to the forty days in the desert, asking why Jesus would have needed to grapple with his own darkness if he had come out, in his phrase, "as a fully baked cake." The point of the desert, in his reading, is that Jesus had to look into his own shadow material, one piece at a time, and grow through it. Whether one accepts that the Gospel writers intended this reading, it turns a famous moment of apparent harshness into something closer to a human encounter, and it gives Jesus a developmental arc that many readers never see.
If Jesus was growing, then the relationship a believer should have with him changes. ÓLaoire names what he sees as the central error of the Christian churches: they "think Jesus is the only son of God meant to be adored." His correction is blunt: "Christ did not come to be adored. He was a prototype. He came to be imitated."
The practical implication is that Jesus becomes a model of what a person can do once they recognize who they are. ÓLaoire puts it simply: "This is what you can do when you realize who you are... be who you are." He ties this message to the Buddha and to what he calls "all the real mystics." In his account, those who have touched this recognition are protected by it, because they are acting from their true nature rather than from fear or obligation.
For a reader, the shift from adoration to imitation is the clearest takeaway. It moves the question from "What must I believe about Jesus?" to "What would it look like to live the way he lived, including the parts where he was still learning?" That question works whether or not you share ÓLaoire's theology.
ÓLaoire offers a concrete practice. Each night before sleep, he says a prayer that identifies the self with divine qualities rather than with failure or fear. It runs as a series of declarations:
- I am love residing in the sacred heart of my Father.
- I am light residing in the sacred heart of Mother Mary.
- I am logos residing in the sacred heart of Jesus.
- I am life residing in the sacred heart of the Holy Spirit.
- I am laughter residing in the sacred hearts of the awakened ones.
He explains the purpose in plain terms. Saying it is a way of "identifying this is who I really am." He admits he forgets it sometimes and screws up, but says he knows at core that this is who he is. The prayer is less a request than a reminder, a way of returning to identity when the day has pulled you away from it.
What makes this useful is that it is portable. You do not need to share ÓLaoire's Catholic framework to try the structure: name your deepest qualities, place them in a sacred context, and repeat them before sleep. Notice that the list ends with laughter, which is an unusual addition to a devotional text and a small clue to the tone he brings to his faith.
The clip closes on what ÓLaoire calls his most dangerous idea. He says he is a big believer in reincarnation, and that this belief has gotten him into trouble in the church more than once. His theory is specific: the character known as Jesus of Nazareth, living about 2,000 years ago, was a reincarnation of Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, who lived roughly 550 years earlier by his reckoning. He goes further: "this Jesus spirit has been on the planet many times."
It is important to present this accurately as his theory, not an established fact. ÓLaoire offers it as personal belief, and the material here does not include historical evidence for it. What the theory does, however, is complete the logic of the vision. If Jesus and the Buddha share one spirit, then the claim that the Buddha is also the way is not a metaphor. It is an identity. Whether that identity is literal or symbolic is the question his listeners must decide for themselves.
ÓLaoire's teaching asks three things of anyone who takes it seriously. First, read the great sayings for their quality rather than their exclusivity: if the way is love, ask what love asks of you. Second, treat the Gospels as a record of a person still growing, not a finished statue. Third, practice the identity you want to return to, rather than waiting to feel worthy of it.
He is also a teacher who expects to be contested. He says the reincarnation idea has drawn rebuke from church authorities, and he does not pretend his reading of John or Matthew is the only one available. The clip is a short window into a mind that wants to find shared ground across traditions, and it leaves the hard theological work to the viewer.
If this clip opened a question for you, the best next step is the full conversation. The Aubrey Marcus Podcast episode "Mystic Catholic Priest On Jesus, Evil, Reincarnation, Sexuality, Abortion & War," with Fr. Sean O'Laoire, released October 30, 2024, extends each of these threads at much greater length, including topics this excerpt only touches. Read the passage ÓLaoire quotes from John's Gospel in its full context, and read the Syrophoenician woman's story in Matthew with his reading beside it, then decide for yourself whether Jesus was the only way or the first to show a way. Start with the nightly prayer, because it costs nothing to try. Then notice what changes in how you read the words you thought you already knew.
