ON LOVE; PART CCCLXXXIV
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
GoodWill IS Love in Action
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
The Gospel of Thomas
These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke. And Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.
(26) Jesus says: “You see the splinter that is in your brother’s eye, but you do not see the beam that is in your (own) eye. When you remove the beam from your (own) eye, then you will see clearly (enough) to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
(27) “If you do not abstain from the world, you will not find the kingdom. If you do not make the Sabbath into a Sabbath, you will not see the Father.”
(28) Jesus says: “I stood in the middle of the world, and in flesh I appeared to them. I found all of them drunk. None of them did I find thirsty. And my soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their heart, and they cannot see; for they came into the world empty, (and) they also seek to depart from the world empty. But now they are drunk. (But) when they shake off their wine, then they will change their mind.”
(29) Jesus says: “If the flesh came into being because of the spirit, it is a wonder. But if the spirit (came into being) because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has taken up residence in this poverty”14
In the days that Jehovah brought the Israelites out of Egypt by the hand of Moses we find a people who had been in bondage for four hundred years, as foretold to Abraham by the Lord, and who were likely both relieved and terrified by their release which, according to the story, comes at the end of a grand display of spiritual Power from the hand of Moses. The idea of the Lord speaking to and through Moses should be no different than the idea of His speaking to and through the prophets nor and different than the Father speaking through the Christ; the dynamic is largely the same except that in Moses there is a man of great Power and in the Christ as Jesus a man in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The Ten Commandments set forth for these people had the intent of setting them in order, in a new order where their relationship as a nation with Jehovah was of paramount importance and the words of these Commandments reflect this as the first Five are in this regard. As we read earlier in the writing of Alexander Maclaren and in our own words as well, these people are a superstitious and a barbarous people who are being taught through the words of Moses the reality of the ONE God and their proper action toward Him and we should see these Five Commandments as demanding that the people change from the ways of the Egyptians and their multitheistic culture to the new way of the One God. We should understand here that it is in the superstitions that the multiplicity of gods is created in most every culture and this IS NOT wrong per se as each god is intended to accommodate an Aspect of God as seen by man in the world. The new way is however the understanding of the ONE God which is an idea that is likely not of such great importance in the days of the Patriarchs where God is referred to as “the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6) in varying stages and even by He Himself through the words of Jehovah.
It IS in this new era of monotheism that that these Five Commandments are set forth and the fifth of these is of course the Sabbath and the commandment is worded in this way: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-11). And so the institution of the Sabbath continued through much of Jewish history and it survived the wars and the captivity and is again seen in force in the days of the Master where there is now a written set of rules as to what one could or could not do on this ‘holy’ day. Here then we can likely understand the ideas of why this day is set aside and we should understand that this was put in place in a lesser way before the Ten Commandments when, in the days of wandering in the desert at the time of the manna from heaven, the Jews were instructed also regarding the Sabbath. And we should also understand also that in the implementation of these rules, the first Five Commandments there, are penalties and for breaking the Sabbath the penalty was death. Now these ideas are difficult to understand from the perspective of the death penalty as it was the punishment for a variety of offenses and there is likely much here that we just do not understand; this lack of understanding is especially True when we try to understand the words of the Master who tells us:
- “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass , than one tittle of the law to fail” (Luke 16:17).
- “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17-18).
Now the Master does not speak about putting any to death and it is likely that under Roman rule and the various empires that preceded this, these things were not done as had been prescribed. However, the law is the law and the Master’s words being such should say that these words on the penalty of death should continue and for us to understand this we must at the same time understand that there is again the idea of levels of the law and of the instructions of God. Here we should perhaps see the penalty of death as we see it in the story of Adam and Eve where Adam is told that “thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Here we KNOW that Adam does not die a physical death but has rather succumbed to the ways of the world which is expressive of his spiritual death. Can we see this same in SOME of the penalties of death in the Old Testament as well? We KNOW that the Master changed the intent of several of the current laws to accommodate the reality of the spiritual life over the carnal, to expand the laws from the physical to the psychic and to create a reality that it is what IS in the heart, the consciousness, that matters. And this IS NOT a new thing, it goes back to the beginnings of the Law where we read in relation to circumcision that the Jews should “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked” (Deuteronomy 10:16) which is the spiritual reality behind the outward symbol of circumcision. We KNOW that there is a spiritual reality behind so many of the precepts of the the law and the teaching of the Master, and many of these Jesus speaks on in the gospels but so much of this is missed even yet today by the Christian world; there is little difference between the Truth of baptism and the Truth of the Sabbath as we finally defined it in the last essay where to honor the Sabbath is to come into His rest, as based in the reality of keeping His words. Can we see here how this idea of baptism takes the place of the Sabbath in this new dispensation? not the day or the practice of either but the spiritual reality behind them; the immersion of the self into the ways of God.
Just before the saying above from Luke’s Gospel regarding the law we find these words from the Master who, speaking to the Jewish rulers says: “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it” (Luke 16:15-16). Can we see the new reality here? Can we see that the law is not aborted but the approach to it is changed from doing this and that so as to avoid the punishment and the curse, to doing ALL things righteous because it IS the right thing to do. In Jesus day the Jews do not Truly understand this reality even though it is given to them buried in the law as we see regarding circumcision above and in the presentation of the law in Moses words saying: “If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul” (Deuteronomy 30:10). Here the idea of the law is seen by the Jews but the reality of their willingness to “turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul” IS lost to the many much the same way as the similar sentiments are lost yet today to the Christian world.
So then again we should see in these words from Thomas’ Gospel the reality of the Master’s message on the Sabbath, that the disciple should “make the Sabbath into a Sabbath” or that he should see the True meaning in this idea of Sabbath, the same idea as IS in Baptism; that these ARE NOT the outer rituals and practices but they are the inner spiritual Truth of His rest, being in His rest, and immersion in His Ways, the Ways of God. And we should remember the many good works that the Master does on the Sabbath and see in this His example and we should remember His words also that tell us “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:27).
The next saying, the twenty eighth, is much in line with our understanding of Life and the Kingdom but it is also one that is likely among the more contrary sayings from Thomas’ Gospel for those who can understand it; that is it is contrary from a doctrinal perspective. There are two apparent thoughts here; first that He came among us from His own place in relation to the world and second is the idea that they ARE NOT thirsty. As we will see the commentary misses both of these points which are the more important from our perspective as we KNOW that this idea of drunkenness IS the reality of the ideas embedded in the Apostle Paul’s saying that “the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20) which shows us the reality of those great human intoxicants: illusion and glamour. The available comments include:
- Robert M. Grant and David Noel Freedman write: “In the synoptic gospels Jesus expresses appeals not unlike this one; cf., Matthew 11:25-30; 23; 37; Luke 13:34. Drunkenness is likened to ignorance of God in 1 Corinthians 15:34. In 1 Timothy 3:16 we read that ‘he was manifested in flesh.’ But as a whole this saying is closer to the description of the revealer given in the Hermetica, semi-Gnostic theosophical literature of the second or third century.” (The Secret Sayings of Jesus, pp. 147-148).
- F. F. Bruce quotes a parallel saying from the Corpus Hermeticum 1.27, attributed to Hermes the prophet of God: “I have begun to proclaim to men the beauty of piety and knowledge: ‘O ye peoples, earth-born men who have given yourselves over to drunknness and sleep and ignorance of God, sober up and cease to be intoxicated and bewitched by irrational sleep.'” (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 126).
- John Dart writes: “The Jewish Wisdom of Proverbs, too, came down to the world and attempted to present truth and knowledge to a largely unmindful mankind.” (The Laughing Savior, p. 96).
- Stevan Davies writes: “Thomas is replete with sayings contrasting the condition of people who do and who do not apprehend the world through the primordial light of the beginning. Those who do are full; those who do not are empty (Gos. Thom. 28).” (http://www.misericordia.edu/users/davies/thomas/jblprot.htm).
- Joseph A. Fitzmyer writes: “Though there is no direct parallel to this saying in the canonical Gospels there is nothing in it that prevents it from being regarded at least as substantially authentic.” (Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, p. 396).
- Funk and Hoover write: “In this miniature discourse, Jesus speaks in highly theological terms about himself. He depicts himself as the redeemer who descends to earth and ascends to heaven, in terms very similar to those in the old hymn recorded in Phil 2:5-11 or in the prologue to the Gospel of John 1:1-5, 9-14, 16-18. However, here there are specifically gnostic twists: the spiritual state of humanity, according to numerous gnostic texts, is stupefied with passion and drunkeness, blind to any spiritual understanding. The savior comes to awaken such persons to their true origins. This complex, accordingly, is a summary version of gnostic redeemer myths that depict the human condition and the possibility for salvation.” (The Five Gospels, p. 489).
- R. McL. Wilson writes: “At most, it may be a development in a Gnostic direction on the basis of an authentic saying. The exposition provided by Jeremias must give pause to any who would claim it as entirely spurious. The striking feature is, however, the statement in this gospel that Jesus ‘appeared in flesh,’ since as Doresse observes the Coptic version elsewhere absolutely rejects the flesh. This must be held to support the theory of Puech, that the document was not originally Gnostic, although he himself has noted other possibilities, such as a Docetic interpretation of the words in question, or an orthodox revision of an originally Gnostic work.” (Studies in the Gospel of Thomas, p. 42).
In this first part where we read above that “I stood in the middle of the world” we note some variation in the translation of these words as others render in the middle as the the better idea of “in the midst” and the idea of stood is also rendered as “I took my stand” (Patterson and Meyer) and even “I took my place” (Lambdin). There is a Greek fragment for this saying which is translated as “I s[t]ood in the midst of the world” while the Interlinear renders this as “I stood to my feet in the midst of the world” where this idea of to my feet is likely incorporated into the idea of stood in other translations. The idea of being in the midst of the world is an obscure one from a physical perspective but not so obscure from a spiritual view where the Spirit is ever in the midst, it IS within ALL things. This idea would bring us to thoughts of where is heaven? and that the Master IS there before He is incarnate. Where is the bosom of the Father? Our view here is that He IS in the midst of the creation as the Christ before He is incarnate as Jesus and this is not unlike the view of the Kingdom Within and the Christ Within and the Soul Within the form of the man. In this we should try to understand that He IS the Christ of the whole Earth and see this idea as it is presented by the Apostle John who tells us in the Prologue to his Gospel:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-14)
We post the entirety so as not to lose the ideas as they are presented but for our purposes here we only need refer to the ideas in bold type as this is the Master in the midst, with God, active in creation itself and then “made flesh“.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
| Aspect of God |
Potency |
Aspect of Man |
In Relation to the Great Invocation |
In relation to the Christ |
|
GOD, The Father |
Will or Power |
Spirit or Life |
Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN |
Life |
|
Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Soul or Christ Within |
Heart of God |
Truth |
|
Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Life Within |
Mind of God |
Way
|
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
O Thou Who givest sustenance to the universe,
From Whom all things proceed,
To Whom all things return,
Unveil to us the face of the true Spiritual Sun
Hidden by a disc of golden Light
That we may know the Truth And do our whole duty
As we journey to Thy sacred feet.
As with any ancient manuscript from a foreign land, there are many interpretations and translations of The Gayatri available. The version that appears here comes to us in every day English and without the need to have a Sanskrit reference as a key; it is constructed so that all can understand it and use it.
The Gayatri is really quite simple and straightforward in the form that we have here. It begins, as does the Lord’s Prayer, with an acknowledgement of the Majesty of God as the Giver of all Life and as our Source of all things. We ask only one thing in this prayer; that the true spiritual light of God be unveiled to us so that we may see it clearly. The Sun is the giver of light and life to our planet and all that is on it and, just as each of our forms veils the Spirit within, we ask to see and to know the Light that is behind the Sun that which we see.
In saying this we believe that by seeing the true Spiritual Light that we will be able to see and to know the Truth that is in that light. This is the Light that the Buddha and then the Christ brought to us through their lives on Earth. This is the Light that shines in our hearts from our own spiritual selves, the Christ Within.
We close by acknowledging that we have a duty to God, to our brothers and to His Plan and it is this duty that we will perform when we realize the truth as we journey back to God.
Others have said about this prayer that “The Gayatri is one of the oldest invocations, or mantrams, know to man. It carries the power of purpose, the plan of love and the light of truth. It reveals human relationships as vertical alignment with the source of all Energy and horizontal service in the right use of energy. It is a potent tool for use with the inflow of new age energies” (from The Gayatri prayer card of World Goodwill; NY, NY).
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 14 The Gospel of Thomas; Translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson; http://gnosis.org/
