ON LOVE; PART CDLXXXIX
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.
(109) Jesus says: “The kingdom is like a person who has a hidden treasure in his field, (of which) he knows nothing. And [after] he had died, he left it to his [son]. (But) the son did not know (about it either). He took over that field (and) sold [it]. And the one who had bought it came, and while he was ploughing [he found] the treasure. He began to lend money at interest to whom he wished.“
(110) Jesus says: “The one who has found the world (and) has become wealthy should renounce the world.“
(111) Jesus says: “The heavens will roll up before you, and the earth. And whoever is living from the living one will not see death.” Does not Jesus say: “Whoever has found himself, of him the world is not worthy“?
(112) Jesus says: “Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul. Woe to the soul that depends on the flesh.“
(113) His disciples said to him: “The kingdom – on what day will it come?” “It will not come by watching (and waiting for) it. They will not say: ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.“
(114) Simon Peter said to them: “Let Mary go away from us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said: “Look, I will draw her in so as to make her male, so that she too may become a living male spirit, similar to you.” (But I say to you): “Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.” 14
We ended the last essay by repeating the twenty second saying from the Gospel of Thomas as it this plus the combination of the third and the one hundred thirteenth that we discussed in the last few essays, where we may find the reality behind this one hundred fourteenth saying which we must remember IS a parabolic saying that where the Truth is hidden behind the outer appearance as IS True for most ALL parabolic sayings. In the common language of the physical man, the carnal man, there IS NO way for a woman to make of herself a man as our current saying says and we should KNOW that this saying IS NOT in reference to sex change at ALL. We should KNOW as well that it IS contrary to the very idea of Christ that any part of the human family be separated and held apart; His teaching on Love precludes this. And, considering these things there IS NO way that the end part here can be understood as it IS written, that the woman who IS such physically, can be kept out of the Kingdom. This is how that we read this part that says that “Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven“; for us this makes the converse True as well and, of course this act IS impossible to conceive anyone doing except perhaps in that highest state of being where we see the Christ taking on that ability to appear as He wished after His resurrection.
For the purposes of achieving the Kingdom, of being accounted worthy, there can be no physical properties involved as the physical is merely the vehicle for the expression of the divine aspect of the True man, the Soul. There is likewise no change necessary in the psychic part of one’s physical presence in the world which we understand as the emotions and the mind; there is only the need to change what IS expressed by these and it is here that we can find the True reality of this saying. This IS much like the Master’s saying that it matters not what goes into the body but what comes out, what IS expressed, and we read this clearly in these words to the Apostle Peter saying: “Do not ye yet understand , that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man” (Matthew 15:17-20). While this may seem unrelated, there is a link here for our understanding; it is the heart of the man that expresses whatsoever he IS as any time, be it the self in the world or be it the Soul, and if we can put the ides of womanhood in this list, not as an evil but as an example, we can see then the same thing: that the heart of the woman, her consciousness in the world, expresses womanhood or manhood or any thing of the self until such time as the Soul, the Love and the Power of the Soul, is expressed; it is here that one is accounted worthy and this works the same way for the man or for the woman.
This IS the greater reality; it IS when the person, man or woman, in the world can come to express the Love and the Power of the Soul that one can be seen as accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God. And here, in this place of expression, ALL things works by degree and we DO NOT KNOW at what degree one attains the Kingdom of God but it IS on this Path that this IS accomplished; the Path of expression of the True man, the Soul. Here we should understand that there IS NO sex, NO differentiation of sex, as Souls there are only Souls who can and do take upon themselves physical forms which are either male or female; it IS ONLY here in this physical world that sex becomes an aspect of Life. We can see this in the Master’s words to the Sadducees and the Pharisees regarding ‘the resurrection’ as He tells them that: “Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven” (Mark 12:24-25). In addition to the right understanding of ‘the resurrection’ the Master offers a picture here that IS missed by most; that there is no marriage because there are no sexes nor need for this particular type of union and that ALL “are as the angels which are in heaven“. This obscure language has the deeper meaning that there IS no sex in the Life of the Soul but that they ARE as they were ‘created’ which the Master tells us IS “as the angels” and which IS as we read from Genesis; that: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” Genesis 1:27).
We closed yesterday with the twenty second saying which we repeat here in part to show the Master’s ideas according to Thomas; we read: “Jesus said to them: When you make the two into one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below – that is, to make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female” (Thomas 22:4-5). Here we should see that same sense of unity of which we ofttimes speak, the Unity of the Soul and his expression. This IS NOT the same as it appears in the text where one can assume the subject is the union of the Spirit with the flesh and the Apostle Paul gives us this Truth in equally cryptic language that must be discerned as He says: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:50). The Master’s words here are revealing the idea of expression, that when the Soul and his expression ARE one, when the outside is expressing the qualities of the inside, and when the Wisdom from Above is expressed by the psyche below, which clearly expresses our idea here of expression, of what comes from the heart. And this theme then continues to the idea of “to make the male and the female into a single one” which idea IS explained in the next phrase that “so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female“; it is here that we should see the reality that to enter into the Kingdom of God these expressions, ALL of them, are required as stated in the twenty second saying and that when these things are accomplished, “then you will enter [the kingdom]“.
As we opened today’s essay we mentioned three other sayings that can help us to understand this one; the twenty second above and the third and the one hundred thirteenth which we repeat here:
- His disciples said to him: “The kingdom – on what day will it come?” “It will not come by watching (and waiting for) it. They will not say: ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it” (Thomas 113)
- Jesus says: “If those who lead you say to you: ‘Look, the kingdom is in the sky!’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you: ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fishes will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the children of the living Father. But if you do not come to know yourselves, then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty” (Thomas 3).
Both of these reference the Kingdom of God; in the one hundred thirteenth we see that the Kingdom is “spread out upon the earth” and that at the same time that “people do not see it“. This NOT seeing is a combination of two factors; the first is that it IS NOT visible, it IS NOT a place that IS here or is there, and the second is that the Kingdom IS a state of being that is seen and appreciated psychically by the man in the world and this by degree as he comes to be accounted worthy of that Kingdom by his expression of its qualities through his Life here in form. The reality of this idea that the Kingdom IS a state of being is found in the third saying as we read that “the kingdom is inside of you, and outside of you” which IS an expansion of the words we read in Luke’s Gospel that simply say that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). It is of course in the idea of within that we can see this Kingdom as a state of being and not a place and Thomas does remind us that the Kingdom is the very Presence of God as it IS in this view the Kingdom is outside as well. Here in this third saying we also have another way of seeing the ideas above of Unity and this IS in the idea of coming “to know yourselves“; when the man in the world has the realization that he IS the Soul and begins to express this in his Life, is when one will understand the Master’s words saying that “you will realize that you are the children of the living Father“. Here in the final words of this saying we should see then the opposite; if the man remains the outer, carnal man, the man below who is either male or female, that he will “exist in poverty” which IS to exist as one focused upon the self in this world.
Here then, in the combination of these sayings, we should be able to find the reality of the Master’s message in our current saying; that “Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven“. That it IS in the True expression of the ‘sexless’ Soul that one can achieve the Kingdom and while this may be a hard thing to accept by the man in the world, this is only because he IS a man in the world who IS NOT aware of the “the power of God” as this IS expressed in the saying above from Mark’s Gospel. We must remember here that we are speaking about the Kingdom and that these words are quite parabolic and obscure by design and the intent here IS that one can realize these Truths as he approaches the Kingdom and its Truths. We KNOW from the Master’s words that these things are hidden and that it IS only they that “hath ears to hear” that can Truly hear; and we KNOW as well that much of this is obscured from His disciples and apostles as well and for the same reasons, so that the Truth of the words IS ONLY revealed to those who get such revelation from above; in that Wisdom from above of which the Apostle James speaks and in the fruit of the Spirit that flows through the man who is focused upon the things of God. We should remember here His words:
- “And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables” (Mark 4:11). This shows us the nature of His words to the masses, that the inner Truths are hidden behind the outer words and this IS not only in the stories that have come to be KNOWN as parables but in the parabolic tone of ALL His teachings as we read: “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them” (Matthew 13:34). And from Mark we read this which, while in a slightly different tone, has the same meaning and more: “But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples” (Mark 4:34). Here we should understand that in the Master’s expounding “all things” to His disciples that there IS NO affirmation that they understand and we should be able to see this in both their general attitude throughout the gospels as well as in the reality that sometimes the explanation of the parable is still parabolic as we find in the ideas of the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Tares.
- And we should remember that Jesus tells His disciples that the mysteries of the Kingdom, the Truth of God, are offered to them in this same way as we read: “These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father” (John 16:25). We should note here that this IS said very near the end of His time with them and that although they say that they understand which we read as: “His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God” (John 16:29-30), we KNOW the greater Truth from the remainder to the gospels, that even after His resurrection they DO NOT truly understand.
The point here is that the revelations of Truth and the realizations of divinity are extremely personal enterprises; NO one can instill these in another….these MUST come from within. These are made available then as the expression of the Inner man, the Soul, the Christ and the God Within at such time when these ARE the content of his heart, his conscious awareness. So while we may not understand these ideas of the Kingdom and the Truths behind the Master’s words here that reflect the idea of the sexes in the Earth, we DO NOT understand them by design. It IS in our focus upon the Good, the Beautiful and the True that these Truths will be revealed to us as men in the world; it IS when our focus IS upon the things of God that our expression becomes that of the Soul.
As for Peter’s question to the Master here in this saying, we should try to see this same reality as we see have here above. Peter DOES NOT yet understand these deeper Truths, they have not yet been revealed to him by his own Soul; he still sees men and women and such in the world. We should of course see this as the Interlinear portrays it and as we discussed in the last post; first as the Life which is the Life of the disciple and not just Life as in the translation above. And second as that Jesus says that He will lead her in the understanding that she must forgo her Earthly womanhood and take on the mantle of the disciple which is framed as that she would “come to be also her(self) a spirit ()living, ()resembling you(pl) male(s)“. Here in the idea of “spirit living” we should see our idea of expression and that in the whole phrase we can see the Master’s saying that He will ‘lead her to be able to express the qualities of her own Soul and in so doing she will resemble any male who can accomplish this same thing‘. And we should try to see that this leading IS from the Christ Within; even as it may be from God, it IS ever from Within.
And so we are finished with our work on the Gospel of Thomas and it is likely because of sayings like this last one that this gospel is considered as heretical. Here we should understand that these sayings are viewed through the eyes of Christian doctrine which also DOES NOT see many of the similar Truths expressed in the accepted gospels. In the end we have come see that these words that are purported to be from the Master CAN BE viewed as such as the hidden Truths here ARE NOT unlike those from the other gospels and the epistles of the the apostles when these are rightly discerned. Here, as we say that we have this right discernment, we are not making claim to be of any higher status than any other; we are simply saying that by our focus upon these things that what have heretofore been hidden, these ideas seem to be revealed and it IS these revelations that we share with you in our blog. And it IS in this focus that we take upon ourselves this service of writing these things for the benefit of others who may be encouraged through our words to change or enhance their own focus upon the things of God and to lessen at the same time their focus upon the self and the self in the world. And we should note here that in our experience that these revelations and these realizations can be fleeting and we can only hold them through our continued focus upon the Good, the Beautiful and the True, our continued focus upon the things of God. We should ever remember His words that:
“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
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.
This is the Prayer of Saint Francis which we repeat again from a previous post as our Quote of the Day. If we were all to accept these ideas as guiding Lights in our lives, we would be expressing the Love and the Faith that the Master teaches. It is attributed to the 13th-century saint Francis of Assisi, although the prayer in its present form cannot be traced back further than 1912*. Regardless of the True authorship, the sentiments revealed in this prayer are genuine and are in keeping the intent of the teachings of the Master and His apostles. We should note here that the dying is not necessarily the death of the body but the death of the carnal man in the world when one is born again. In this context we read this about Saint Francis: Francis was the son of a wealthy foreign cloth merchant in Assisi, and he lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man, even fighting as a soldier for Assisi. While going off to war in 1204, Francis had a vision that directed him back to Assisi, where he lost his taste for his worldly life**. Here is the antithesis of the rich young man of the gospels. While he may not have authored this prayer, many do attribute it to him and in reading about his Life one can easily see these ideas in his heart.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
This is a prayer that is Truly in line with the teachings of the Master and the ideals encapsulated in this should be those that govern our lives and our prayer should be that ALL can see Life in this same way. We should try to see the reality of these words in the verses above regarding feeding and visiting the least of His and our brethren; in these words is a deeper meaning, as clearer expression of Love and, we should look at the Master’s words above as an expression of Love and not merely in the terms that He presents as this is the intent of the entirety of His teachings.
Additional background information on Saint Francis of Assisi can be found in a rather lengthy article in the Catholic Encyclopedia; a link to this is provided below.†
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/
- † Link to New Advent http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm*
- * Wikipedia contributors. “Prayer of Saint Francis.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 24 Jan. 2013.
- **Wikipedia contributors. “Francis of Assisi.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 24 Jan. 2013.
