Exploration of the Gospel of Thomas

Originally Posted by ketzer

Your perspectives are not so far from my own. As I see it, at the moment, is that though in one sense it is true that there is no separation, there is the perception of separation within the individual (I suppose some perception is necessarily implied in the term individual to begin with). Ultimately, all that is experienced is that which is perceived and so for the individual who perceives the separation, it is real to them. There is always of course connection as well, as man is never truly completely separated from God at the core of his being, not even in perception. Life, IMO, is at least a part of the journey of "experiential discovery" of the realization that the two are also one.

I think perhaps that life is the path of the seeker, whether they seek or not, whether they practice a discipline or not. I am no longer quite so convinced that if one disciplines themselves and follows a spiritual practice one is any better or worse off then one who simply lives life as it comes to them. The monk may look at them and see aimless wandering lost souls, yet the monk cannot know what the soul within is taking from their experience of life. Perhaps it is they who are sucking out all the spiritual nourishment from the marrow of life that the monk is abstaining from.

Seeking can carry with it the danger of restricting one's peripheral vision and perhaps alter one's eyesight to filter out that which one is not seeking as distractions from one's goal. One may go to the church to find God, but leave disappointed and disillusioned. One may go to the forest to seek but not find God there either. One may go deep into a trance and search for God to no avail. One can go all about seeking yet never find God. In the meantime they can miss all the wonder and beauty there was to experience along the way. It is there in everything and every situation, but one must be open to experiencing it, else it will just pass by unnoticed.

Of course God was in all of those places the seeker visited, they only needed to look inside themselves to see God. Perhaps if the seekers had known this, that God was within them, that they are the sons of the father, that they are the sons of man, they would have been able to visit all of those places and see God in all of them, see themselves in all of them, and recognize the wonder, beauty, and perfection in it all. Yet if what they expected God to be, did not look or feel like what they saw and experienced, then perhaps they will have wandered right past, as they rejected it and continued seeking what they were looking to find.

The kingdom of heaven is both inside of you and outside of you. But perhaps one must find it within oneself before one can recognize it outside of oneself, or perhaps the other way around, or perhaps one must see it in both at the same time, IDK. But maybe until one learns to see it in both, they dwell within poverty, and they are that poverty.

“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly with
out desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonder”
- One of countless imperfect translations of the first verse of the Tao Te Ching.

If I'd answered yesterday, I'd have a lot to say. Today, I can only acknowledge and nod.

Thanks

Originally Posted by janielee

(70) “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

I think that this is very true...anyone else experience it?

jl

Absolutely. Years ago when I was a young punk, we would get someone to buy us a whole bunch of cheap beer and then sneak down to the river and build a fire and drink it. Sometimes before the night was over I found I had to bring forth what was within me or it felt like it would destroy me.
Glad now that I am an old punk I don't do that anymore.

[sky]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Absolutely. Years ago when I was a young punk, we would get someone to buy us a whole bunch of cheap beer and then sneak down to the river and build a fire and drink it. Sometimes before the night was over I found I had to bring forth what was within me or it felt like it would destroy me.
Glad now that I am an old punk I don't do that anymore.

That couldn't have come from anyone else but you

Btw did you ever fall into the river

[sky]

Originally Posted by janielee

(70) “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

I think that this is very true...anyone else experience it?

jl

I think it refers to our false sense of ' Self ' and our ' True Self '....

Originally Posted by sky123

That couldn't have come from anyone else but you

Btw did you ever fall into the river

We did! But not because of what was within us, well....not beer anyway. It was because the guy who insisted on sitting in the back of the canoe because he was so "good at steering", had an idiot within him... I suppose we all had an idiot within us to be going canoeing on a river swollen with spring snow melt. Anyway, luckily despite the foot of snow left in the woods, it was a rather nice spring day. So we hiked back up stream, collected all the gear we had tossed on shore as we sped by in the stream, dumped the water out of the canoe and finished the trip. It all goes to show you we were foolish to waste all of our money on that beer as we were perfectly capable of being stupid idiots without it. Live and learn.

[Molearner]

When presented with the Gospel of Thomas there is much to be considered. Perhaps it is ignored somewhat due to the fact that it is not accepted as canon.
But we have to remember the words of John 21:25...."Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." This invites us to consider that this gospel of Thomas is one such book.

The brevity of the Gospel of Thomas(114 verses) is no longer than about 2 chapters of many of the books of the Bible. This is beneficial for it brings a focus to what the author deemed of significant relevance and importance. I become dismayed when readers of the Bible approach the Bible as a historical document and labor to prove that certain things simply happened in a historical context.....unwittingly robbing it of current relevance for us. If anything the Gospel of Thomas by encouraging us to focus on what is important....assuming we come to understand it.....can return to the Bible in its entirety and adapt the same approach to gain a much deeper understanding of the Bible as we know it.

IMO the author was clever and organized. The very first verses(1 & 2) are motivational in nature, dangling the carrot of eternal life and gaining mastery of the world. As I mentioned in a previous post v. 17 provides a key to abandoning our normal way of thinking and our senses and implies that it is necessary to access the Spirit. I am drawn to this things that are mentioned in some way in multiple verses.....children for example.....and body and soul(vs. 87 &112)….especially 112 because it is very close to the conclusion.
Originally the Church recognized the tri-partite constitution of man(body, soul and spirit)…...it metamorphized into bi-partite(body and soul). This IMO is a dangerous transition and should encourage us to examine the reasons that soul and spirit should be differentiated and understood.

Just a few thoughts for consideration.....:)

[sky]

Originally Posted by ketzer

We did! But not because of what was within us, well....not beer anyway. It was because the guy who insisted on sitting in the back of the canoe because he was so "good at steering", had an idiot within him... I suppose we all had an idiot within us to be going canoeing on a river swollen with spring snow melt. Anyway, luckily despite the foot of snow left in the woods, it was a rather nice spring day. So we hiked back up stream, collected all the gear we had tossed on shore as we sped by in the stream, dumped the water out of the canoe and finished the trip. It all goes to show you we were foolish to waste all of our money on that beer as we were perfectly capable of being stupid idiots without it. Live and learn.

Wish I was there

Originally Posted by ketzer

Absolutely. Years ago when I was a young punk, we would get someone to buy us a whole bunch of cheap beer and then sneak down to the river and build a fire and drink it. Sometimes before the night was over I found I had to bring forth what was within me or it felt like it would destroy me.
Glad now that I am an old punk I don't do that anymore.

Thanks to you and sky123, I am laughing loudly.

Originally Posted by Molearner

When presented with the Gospel of Thomas there is much to be considered. Perhaps it is ignored somewhat due to the fact that it is not accepted as canon.
But we have to remember the words of John 21:25...."Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." This invites us to consider that this gospel of Thomas is one such book.

The brevity of the Gospel of Thomas(114 verses) is no longer than about 2 chapters of many of the books of the Bible. This is beneficial for it brings a focus to what the author deemed of significant relevance and importance. I become dismayed when readers of the Bible approach the Bible as a historical document and labor to prove that certain things simply happened in a historical context.....unwittingly robbing it of current relevance for us. If anything the Gospel of Thomas by encouraging us to focus on what is important....assuming we come to understand it.....can return to the Bible in its entirety and adapt the same approach to gain a much deeper understanding of the Bible as we know it.

IMO the author was clever and organized. The very first verses(1 & 2) are motivational in nature, dangling the carrot of eternal life and gaining mastery of the world. As I mentioned in a previous post v. 17 provides a key to abandoning our normal way of thinking and our senses and implies that it is necessary to access the Spirit. I am drawn to this things that are mentioned in some way in multiple verses.....children for example.....and body and soul(vs. 87 &112)….especially 112 because it is very close to the conclusion.
Originally the Church recognized the tri-partite constitution of man(body, soul and spirit)…...it metamorphized into bi-partite(body and soul). This IMO is a dangerous transition and should encourage us to examine the reasons that soul and spirit should be differentiated and understood.

Just a few thoughts for consideration.....:)

Thank you, Molearner. These are my perspectives in many ways. Your post is so insightful and so important that I have created a new thread in this forum. I hope that is ok, and that we can discuss further there, as appropriate.

In my opinion, the Gospel of Thomas, upon review, contains great inner truths and brings to great esteem in my mind the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, with kind thanks for this offering.

The Gospel was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius declaring a strict canon of Christian scripture.

JL

Originally Posted by janielee

(70) “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

I think that this is very true...anyone else experience it?

jl

One theory.

I think perhaps this has more of an eastern twist to it. Like Jesus we are all both man and God. Part of the function of the life experience is to help us bring forth that spark of divine nature within us and make the two one. When we make the two one, “we shall say to the mountain, move, and it shall move”. Jesus represented the evolution of man, the “son of man”, as one who had both natures within him, yet had evolved to the point where he had brought forth the divine nature and merged it with his man nature, making the two one (man being more of a metaphor for a limited being more generally, just in human form in that particular incarnated state of being). This is why Jesus could work miracles that others could not. He had achieved full enlightenment, and could see through and was no longer bound by the spell of Maya, the illusory nature of reality that we, believing we are just a limited man, remain held spellbound within.

In the eastern doctrine of Samsara we see a pattern of repeated incarnation until the soul achieves liberation. We also hear that Atman is Brahman, and it is greeted with Namaste. The soul is engaged in Samsara, until it can bring forth the divine “what”, that is within, and achieve realization that Atman is Brahman, realizing (making real) that the two are one. Once this is achieved the soul is liberated from Samsara, it no longer tastes death as the cycle of death and rebirth are no longer needed, and its onto ….IDK, ?bigger and better things?. However, if one does not bring forth what is within, and make the two as one, then death and rebirth will occur once again, and the man identity is destroyed to be recreated to continue the cycle of Samsara, death, birth, suffering and learning and growing, and death again....rinse and repeat.

Jesus was able to face his torment and torcher without succumbing to hate, because though his man nature felt the pain and fear, the divine nature within him was one with the man, and so he did not fail. This is how and why he conquered death. Yes he apparently died on the cross, but not to go into yet another cycle of samsara, he was now able to come and go as he pleased, as he demonstrated after the crucifixion. Given the latter fact, does one say he actually died, tasted death? Not in the same sense that we do anyway. In Islam, although the details of what took place differ somewhat among clerics and traditions and sects, they do not hold the Jesus really died. I think if pressed, I would not necessarily disagree.