19-Gospel of Thomas – Act 4

19-Gospel of Thomas – Act 4

In the 4th Act of Thomas, the narrative continues on from the 3rd Act. Thomas has completed his business in the country with the dragon and the slain young man, and is now traveling toward the city. Coming from the opposite direction, an ass’ colt approaches him and SPEAKS to him. The donkey says he has been sent to carry the Apostle into the city. At first Thomas refuses, but the donkey persuades him. Thomas rides the donkey to the gates of the city, and, when he dismounts, the donkey dies right there in the road.

Today we will discuss two main points that are suggested to me by this story; they concern:

1. the general idea and significance of miracles, and
2. the resonance, in the collective unconscious, of certain archetypal symbologies, in this case, "Donkeys".

 So let's get into the text and see how some of this reads.

Now, even in New York, a talking donkey on the street might raise an eyebrow; so when the donkey first speaks, Thomas is understandably amazed; but he immediately recognizes the activity of the Holy Spirit being expressed through the donkey, and thus entreats the donkey to speak words from God:

“And Judas said: It is not without the direction of God that this colt has come hither. But to thee I say, O colt that by the grace of our Lord there shall be given to thee speech before these multitudes who are standing here; and do thou say whatsoever thou wilt, that they may believe in the God of truth whom we preach.”

And thus the donkey spoke:

“Thou twin of Christ, apostle of the Most High and initiate in the hidden word of Christ who receivest his secret oracles, fellow worker with the Son of God, who being free hast become a bondman, and being sold hast brought many into liberty. Thou kinsman of the great race that hath condemned the enemy and redeemed his own, that hast become an occasion of life unto man in the land of the Indians; for thou hast come, against thy will, unto men that were in error, and by thy appearing and thy divine words they are now turning unto the God of truth which sent thee: mount and sit upon me and repose thyself until thou enter into the city.”

 
This first speech of the donkey sounds a lot like many of the messianic sermons that came out of the mouth of Jesus. Clearly we are NOT meant to assume that the donkey is the messiah; and yet, we may witness the Christ Impulse speaking words of truth out of the mouth of a donkey. Clearly, we have here an example of the Holy Spirit, which possessed the body of Jesus and came through Him to the rest the world, coming also through the mouth of a lower animal. Thus may the same spirit, this Holy Ghost, come through anyone who is willing to make of himself an open channel.

Thomas' next big speech, in the Act, is a prayer of praise; runs thus:

"O Jesu Christ (Son) that understandest the perfect mercy! O tranquillity and quiet that now art speakest,  by  brute beasts! O hidden rest, that art manifested by thy working, Saviour of us and nourisher, keeping us and resting in alien bodies! O Saviour of our souls! spring that is sweet and unfailing; fountain secure and clear and never polluted; defender and helper in the fight of thine own servants, turning away and scaring the enemy from us, that fightest in many battles for us and makest us conquerors in all; our true and undefeated champion; our holy and victorious captain: glorious and giving unto thine own a joy that never passeth away, and a relief wherein is none affliction; good shepherd that givest thyself for thine own sheep, and hast vanquished the wolf and redeemed thine own lambs and led them into a good pasture: we glorify and praise thee and thine invisible Father and thine holy spirit and the mother of all creation."

This next part is really fun:

“And the apostle stood a long time as it were astonished, and looked up into heaven and said to the colt: Of whom art thou and to whom belongest thou? for marvelous are the things that are shown forth by thy mouth, and amazing and such as are hidden from the many. And the colt answered and said: I am of that stock that served Balaam, and thy lord also and teacher sat upon one that appertained unto me by race.”

Notice that when Jesus asks the colt where he comes from, the donkey refers to his lineage of the house of Balaam, and the story in Numbers of the donkey who was similarly possessed, and also SPOKE in the service of God.

[Sidebar: The following are comments on, and interpretations of, the story of Balaam, taken from Wikipedia. To begin with, about Balaam the Sorcerer it is said:

"Though other sources describe the apparently positive blessings he delivers upon the Israelites, he is reviled as a "wicked man" in the major story concerning him. Balaam refused to speak what God didn't speak and would not curse the Israelites, even though King Balak of Moab offered him money to do so. (Numbers 22–24). But Balaam's error and the source of his wickedness came from sabotaging the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land. According to Numbers 31:16 and Revelation 2:14, Balaam returned to King Balak and informed the king on how to get the Israelites to curse themselves by enticing them with prostitutes and unclean food sacrificed to idols. The Israelites fell into transgression due to these traps and God sent a deadly plague to them as a result (Numbers 31:16).

The main story of Balaam occurs during the sojourn of the Israelites in the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan River, at the close of forty years of wandering, shortly before the death of Moses, and the crossing of the Jordan. The Israelites have already defeated two kings on this side of the Jordan: Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan.

Balak is the king of the Moabites and he’s feeling threatened by the Hebrew people who have come out of Egypt and are heading for his land. So he calls on Balaam, who is a shaman, to put a curse on the Hebrews. God tells Balaam not to do this, but he heads out to do it anyway. That’s when the Lord sends an angel to interfere, and this story ensues:

Balaam sends back word that he can only do what YHWH commands, and God has, via a nocturnal dream, told him not to go. Moab consequently sends higher-ranking priests and offers Balaam honours; Balaam, in his covetousness, continues to press God, and God finally gives him over to his greed and permits him to go but with instructions to say only what He commands."

[Sidebar: In the Gospel of Thomas we have already seen several examples, (and will soon see several more examples), of desperate deal-making. In this scene, Balaam is playing "Let's Make a Deal" with God, and he is soon to pay for his impertinence. We are reminded of the kind of deal-making that many of us engage in all the time. It is natural, when you want something from someone, that you should try to offer something in return (as if any one of us had anything that God didn't have already!). One of Kubler-Ross' five stages of death is: "bargaining"; if I'm good, give me more life (or something like that); spare me and I will work overtime at the rehab center, etc. So Balaam works out a deal with God, they come up with an agreement--but because it was a compromise, outside the perfect will of God, the result was flawed. The prizes you get on "Let's Make a Deal" are always smaller than they look.

Going on with Wikipedia:]

"Balaam thus, without being asked again, sets out in the morning with the princes of Moab and God becomes angry that he went, and the Angel of the Lord (Numbers 22:22) is sent to prevent him.

At first the angel is seen only by the donkey Balaam is riding, which tries to avoid the otherwise invisible angel. After Balaam starts punishing the donkey for refusing to move, it is miraculously given the power to speak to Balaam (Numbers 22:28), and it complains about Balaam's treatment.

At this point, Balaam is allowed to see the angel, who informs him that the donkey is the only reason the angel did not kill Balaam. Balaam immediately repents, but is told to go on."]

Here is the text from Numbers:

Numbers 22:22-35 


"22 But God was very angry when he went, and the angel of the Lord stood in the road to oppose him. Balaam was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him.
23 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, it turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat it to get it back on the road.
24 Then the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow path through the vineyards, with walls on both sides. 25 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot against it. So he beat the donkey again.
26 Then the angel of the Lord moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left.
27 When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat it with his staff. 
28 Then the LORD opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"
29 Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now."
30 The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?" "No," he said.
31 Then the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.
32 The angel of the LORD asked him, "Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me.
33 The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If she had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared her."
34 Balaam said to the angel of the LORD, "I have sinned. I did not realize you were standing in the road to oppose me. Now if you are displeased, I will go back." 35 The angel of the LORD said to Balaam, "Go with the men, but speak only what I tell you." So Balaam went with the princes of Balak."

Back to Wikipedia:

"First of all we have to admit that this is one of the most entertaining stories in all of Scripture. The comic element is delightful with the proud prophet and the poor dumb donkey. No doubt this story would have been told with great hilarity amongst the Hebrews.

As such it is a folk tale. It is no doubt based on a historical story of a Gentile shaman who had a misbehaving donkey. The tale was passed down from one generation to another in oral form. In this process did one of the storytellers, for extra color, add in the bit about the donkey actually talking? Could be. Funny stories about wise talking animals are pretty commonplace. In the folk tales, like Aesop’s fables, the animals talk and make a point the humans can’t otherwise see. Same in this story.

However, what about animals talking to people? We must remember that this is a very ancient story from a primitive culture. Many primitive cultures have tales of animals communicating with people–especially with shamans. Do they actually talk with the shaman or does he communicate with them in some other extrasensory manner? That’s what they claim–or at least that is what they claim in their ancient folk tales.

Maybe animals communicating with humans is not simply a folk tale. Then again, you could simply say, “Hey. It’s a miracle. Believe it or not. Take it or leave it.” Then again, let me suggest another idea which readers may find even more entertaining and intriguing. It’s the  story of the time a bird spoke to me.

Here’s what happened: I was walking along to church one evening and as I was walking I was praying. I was therefore in a somewhat altered state of consciousness. I was praying about an appointment I had that evening to help with a healing service for a women with a blood disease and I doubted that I could do this. As I walked along a bird hopped along the hedge next to me and it was chirping. As the bird chirped I heard in my head a Bible reference–it had the same rhythm and pitch in my head as the bird chirping. It was as if the bird was saying, “Mark 8:44, Mark 8:44″ When I got to the church I opened the Bible and Mark 8:44 was the verse in which Jesus heals a woman with an issue of blood. The bird didn’t talk to me, but in my mind I heard the bird talk to me and it gave the right message!

So did the donkey talk to Balaam? The story says he was a shaman–so presumably he was familiar with being an an altered state of consciousness. Did he hear the donkey speak to him the way I heard the bird speak to me? If so, the miracle was not in the donkey actually talking, but that Balaam perceived her to be talking.

This opens up a curious way to consider miracles. How much of the miracle is a real physical miracle and how much of it is our perception of the miraculous?"]

As I mentioned at the outset, this kind of story, involving talking animals, automatically invites a discussion of miracles. What truly is a miracle, and what impact does it have on the spiritualism of the devotee? Perhaps we are so convinced and convicted by miracles, because, unlike faith which is the evidence of things unseen, a miracle is when an actual manifestation of spiritual power over matter may be tangibly, materially perceived, vividly seen.

The tragedy is that, somehow, miracles are thought of in the same way myths are are thought of: namely, that they are not real, that there is something far away and sort of made up about them. They are fiction, pretty lies. Worse than that, Jesus' ability to perform miracles has often been made into the primary index of His divinity. I find this to be dumb. MANY saints in history have performed dramatic miracles, and we all, in Christ, have performed little miracles. It is not the miracles of Christ that are important, it is the MESSAGE of Christ. To be sure, the miracles of Jesus are a big apart of the package, but they are not the biggest part, nor are they the main part.

But as you will recall, when I filled out my application for Anchorage Christian School, I told them that the I was not interested in the miracle of "creation in seven days", because my whole life was a constant sequence of little miracles, little events in which heaven reaches down with angelic fingers, and touches the earth.

So getting back to the question of whether Balaam heard the voice of God coming through the donkey with his ears or with his mind. I say, "Who cares?" A big miracle or a little miracle, it's all the same. In fact now that I think about it, you really can't have a little miracle--they are all big. A little miracle would be like a little love.


Returning to the issue of the Thomas' donkey's genetic lineage, remember that, in this church, we have had cause to mention, on many occasions, the issue of bloodlines. Jesus and Mary are of the house of David, certain other races descend from Seth, and so on. Much personal information about an individual, including his personality, propensities, and memories reside in the blood. It has been suggested in certain New Age material that the human DNA might be the gateway of spirit into flesh; therefore the composition of blood is not a trivial consideration. I think it's charming that this text traces the bloodline of a donkey. There must be something to it.

Now, continuing with the story from Thomas. After the donkey mentions his lineage, he continues with the details of his mission:

"And I also have now been sent to give thee rest by thy sitting upon me: and that I may be confirmed in faith, and unto me may be added that portion which now I shall receive by thy service wherewith I serve thee; and when I have ministered unto thee, it shall be taken from me. And the apostle said unto him: He is able who granted thee this gift, to cause it to be fulfilled unto the end in thee and in them that belong unto thee by race: for as to this mystery I am weak and powerless. And he would not sit upon him. But the colt besought and entreated him that he might be blessed of him by ministering unto him. Then the apostle mounted him and sat upon him; and they followed him, some going before and some following after, and all of them ran, desiring to see the end, and how he would dismiss the colt.

41 But when he came near to the city gates he dismounted from him, saying: Depart, and be thou kept safe where thou wert. And straightway the colt fell to the ground at the apostle's feet and died. And all they that were present were sorry and said to the apostle: Bring him to life and raise him up. But he answered and said unto them: I indeed am able to raise him by the name of Jesus Christ: but this is not by any means expedient. For He that gave him speech that he might talk was able to cause that he should not die; and I raise him not, not as being unable, but because this is that which is expedient and profitable for him. And he bade them that were present to dig a trench and bury his body and they did as they were commanded."


I love it how Thomas refuses to bring the colt back to life. It's a very cosmic perspective on life and death, a perspective which I welcome.

The answer to my prayers about my death anxiety, has been the instruction to: "Become more spiritual." Well, duh. This directive could mean so many things to so many different people--but, to me, becoming more spiritual means: to fix my conscious attention on higher-vibratory levels of life, more often. I do this all the time already--I do it with my will, and I do it with my imagination. (In this case I do not mean "imagination" in the sense of making something unreal, but the in the sense of "MAKING AN IMAGE FROM NON-MATERIAL ENERGY".) As I say I can do this when I concentrate--but I simply MUST do it more often. "Pray unceasingly", Jesus says. Unceasingly create living thought forms of Heaven, expressing themselves in perceptible, tangible forms.

My favorite line in the Credo (Nicene Creed) is Et incarnatus est. "And was made flesh." These words are often given very eloquent and poignant musical settings. It is easy enough to think of a thought form as an image, an imaginative reality, so it is almost as easy to conclude that: creating spiritual reality is ONLY possible through the imagination--that the thought forms of imagination are our only link to higher dimensions. The answer to my prayer is: "Although I do this all the time, I need to do it more."

Remember Steiner's comment on the Christ impulse:

"The second stream is the Christ stream itself that will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality."

It is interesting that the Christ impulse is characterized, by Steiner, as leading to RIGHT ACTION by way of aesthetic feeling and insight. I, myself, would tend to summarize the aesthetic response as:

a response to order and sense--to the divine intelligence manifested in divine forms.

My point here is that the creation of an AESTHETICALLY pleasing FORM is as much a part of the resonance of a miracle as its supernatural content; that is to say, like the bird quoting scripture, the IMPLICATIONS of the miracle are as important as the FACT of the miracle. So, taking charge of the form of my thoughts, gives me power to direct those thoughts to higher abstract levels.

The good thing is that: this sort of discipline is much easier in Alaska than in other places, because there are so many fewer distractions here. Indeed, the spirit of the land rises up to meet me whenever I hold out my hand; and we dance along the highway like elves. Becoming more spiritualized means getting beyond and above the material manifestations that obstruct our vision of the true reality.

We arrive, here, at the old, "true knowledge is no knowledge" paradox. We never fail to appreciate the irony of the dumbest being the smartest, the poorest being the richest, etc. In many religions the village idiot is the most sacred man in town. Indeed, it is no accident that the part of "innocent fool savant" is here played by a donkey, because the donkey has long been considered the dumbest of the dumb beasts. The dumb donkey as a symbol of "divine idiocy" is important because the symbolic elements of a parable are sometimes the most active components--having, as they do such a powerful resonance in the unconscious; the unconscious, the experience of which, in dreams and visions, may be the closest we can ever get to a kind of spiritual understanding. Also, consider the idea that "divine idiocy" is not unlike being absorbed into the inarticulate Cloud of Unknowing, where all articulate verbal definitions dissolve into higher mind!

Remember also, on the subject of archetypal resonance of myth, we have suggested, many times, that the resonance of spiritual energy in history creates what we call "myths". Joseph Campbell has declared that myths are merely:

"Writings that explain the God Power within you. Writings that explain inner spirit with words."

One internet author suggests that there is an equivalence between spirit and electricity; for "spirit" he substitutes the word "photon". There exists, elsewhere, a fairly eclectic theory that: DNA is the entry point for angelic energy to be transposed into physical manifestation. Perhaps the entry of spirit into the physical, transposed from frequency to frequency, through the DNA, happens in the space of a photon:

"Image words must be used, because there are no text words to explain nothingness.

THIS SCRIPTURE SPEAKS OF NOT TALKING
TO THE BRAIN
BUT TALKING TO THE PHOTON
WHICH OPERATES THE BRAIN

1 Corinthians 2:6:
"We speak wisdom among them that are perfect. Not the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of God in a mystery even the hidden wisdom."

TO THEM THAT ARE PERFECT MEANS
TO THEM THAT IN MEDITATION CLOSE DOWN ALL THOUGHTS
WITH NO STAIN OF THOUGHT
THE MIND BECOMES PERFECT

1 Corinthians 2:10:
"God revealed them unto us by his spirit"

BY HIS SPIRIT MEANS
ELECTRICITY, PHOTON

1 Corinthians 2:13:
"not in the words mans wisdom teaches but which the Holy Ghost teaches comparing spiritual things with spiritual"

THE THINGS THAT COME ARE NOT THOSE
YOU WERE TAUGHT
THEY ARE YOURS AND THEY BELONG TO NO ONE ELSE

1 Corinthians 2:14:
"The natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God. They are foolishness. neither can he know them. Because they are spiritually discerned."

Thus, divine truth is articulated through symbols which have become mythologized, imbued with spirit. 

Furthermore, on the symbolic significance of donkeys, specifically, Wikipedia has this to say:

Religion, myth and folklore

"Jesus rode on a donkey in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Due to its widespread domestication and use, the donkey is referred to in myth and folklore around the world. In classical and ancient cultures, donkeys had a part. The donkey was the symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra.

In Greek myth, Silenus is pictured in Classical Antiquity and during the Renaissance drunken and riding a donkey, and Midas was given the ears of an ass after misjudging a musical competition.

Donkeys (or asses) are mentioned many times in the Bible, beginning in the first book and continuing through both Old and New Testaments, so they became part of Judeo-Christian tradition. They are portrayed as work animals, used for agricultural purposes, transport and as beasts of burden, and terminology is used to differentiate age and gender. In contrast, horses were represented only in the context of war, ridden by cavalry or pulling chariots. Owners were protected by law from loss caused by the death or injury of a donkey, showing their value in that time period. Narrative turning points in the Bible (and other stories) are often marked through the use of donkeys — for instance, leading, saddling, or mounting/dismounting a donkey are used to show a change in focus or a decision having been made. They are used as a measure of wealth in Genesis 30:43, and in Genesis chapter 34, the prince of Shechem (the modern Nablus) is named Hamor ("donkey" in Hebrew).

According to Old Testament prophesy, the Messiah is said to arrive on a donkey: "Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey!" (Zechariah 9:9).

According to the New Testament, this prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on the animal (Matthew 21:4-7, John 12:14-15). Jesus appeared to be secretly aware of this connection (Matthew 21:1-3, John 12:16).

In the Jewish religion, the donkey is not a kosher animal. It is considered avi avot hatuma or the ultimate impure animal, and doubly "impure", as it is both non-ruminant and non-cloven hoofed. However, it is the only impure animal that falls under the mitzvah (commandment) of firstborn ("bechor") consecration that also applies to humans and pure animals. In Jewish Oral Tradition ( Talmud Bavli), the son of David was prophesied as riding on a donkey if the tribes of Israel are undeserving of redemption."

Besides Mr. Ed the most famous talking HORSE was Roman de Fauvel; from Wikipedia:

"The Roman de Fauvel is a 14th-century French allegorical poem by the French royal clerk Gervais de Bus and Chaillou de Pesstain. It tells of Fauvel, a curry- or fauve-colored horse who has risen to prominence in the French royal court.

The Roman de Fauvel is laden with allegories and political satire. The antihero's name, which when broken down forms fau-vel, or "veiled lie", also forms an acrostic in which each letter stands for a sin: Flatterie (Flattery), Avarice (Greed), Vilenie (Guile), Variété (inconstancy), Envie (Envy), and Lâcheté (Cowardice).

Fauvel, an ambitious but foolish horse, decides that he is unsatisfied with his residence in the stable and moves into the largest room of his master's house. Upon moving there, he changes it to suit his needs and has a custom hayrack built. Dame Fortune, the goddess of Fate, smiles upon Fauvel and appoints him leader of the house. Subsequently, Church and secular leaders from many places make pilgrimages to see him, and bow to him in servitude, symbolizing Church and state rulers quickly bowing to Sin and corruption.

Upon receiving Dame Fortune's smile, Fauvel travels to Macrocosmos and asks for her hand in marriage. She denies him, but in her stead she proposes he wed Lady Vainglory. Fauvel agrees, and the wedding takes place, with such guests present as Flirtation, Adultery, Carnal Lust, and Venus, in a technique similar to that of the Morality plays of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Finally, Dame Fortune reveals that Fauvel's role in the world is to give birth to more iniquitous rulers like himself, and to be a harbinger of the Antichrist."

Clearly Roman de Fauvel is not a sacred idiot, but he warns us of the dangers of our own stupidity. Not quite as stupid as a donkey, and not quite so innocent.

Another internet commentator offered these reflections on the historical literary donkey: 

"The Ass in the Lion’s Skin is a fable attributed to the Greek slave, Aesop (famous also for the Tortoise and the Hare, the Ant and the Grasshopper, etc). The story is about an ass that dresses in the skin of a lion so that he can go around scaring the other animals. His trick works until he tries to talk to a fox, who, upon hearing him bray (he doesn’t say anything specific) instantly realizes that he’s not a lion but, in fact, an ass dressed in lion’s skin. The moral of the story is that you can never tell a fool by the way they dress, but you always can tell once they open their mouth. So true!

The donkey in the fable was directly alluded to, and given much more of a voice, in the book The Last Battle, the seventh and final book of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, which features the talking donkey, Puzzle. Puzzle is noted for being courageous and humble, but also very naïve. He is tricked by his friend, Shift the Ape, into retrieving a lion’s skin from the frigid Caldron Pool, dressing himself in it, and then using it as a disguise for Aslan the Lion, in a ploy to gain control over Narnia. This pretense is eventually betrayed by Shift himself, but in the end Puzzle is pardoned by the real Aslan.

It is impossible to overstate the sheer beauty and brilliance of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, although many have certainly tried. It is, simply put, a timeless wonder; a phenomenon that has inspired at least one opera, one ballet and five modern films. And it all starts with Bottom (the fool who becomes enchanted by fairies and get himself adorned with an ass' head). After all, it’s Bottom who dreams the dream, or as he calls it, the “most rare vision,” and any high school teacher could tell you the most important role in any Shakespeare comedy is the fool."
 

In summary: the Fourth Act of Thomas provides us with opportunities to contemplate the significance of miracles, and to consider the significance of the sacred symbols expressed in archetypal language. We must remember the story that I've told before about the Russian village idiot who is discovered to be playing his tuba in tune with the Angels. Indeed, if God has so wonderfully blessed the inarticulate tongue of the fool, how much more might He endow our inarticulate sounds with meaning and resonance. Or is it that we are all just fools waiting for the Holy Spirit to animate our minds with the transforming power of spiritual truth? Could it really be that simple?

Let us pray: Jesus we thank you for these messages of encouragement and wonder, and invite you to invade our material bodies with photons of spiritual understanding. Amen.

18-Gospel of Thomas Act 2-3

Sunday, October 19, 2014

18-Gospel of Thomas Act 2-3

18-Gospel of Thomas Act 2-3

Last week we were introduced to Thomas, the apostle Jesus sent on an evangelical mission to India. In the first two acts, we saw miracles of prophecy, and the storing up of treasures in heaven, in this case treasures of heavenly real estate, created in heaven for King Gundaphorus, and his brother Gad. It will be noted, I believe, that the primary interest, of the 1st and 2nd Acts of Thomas, is in the symbolic significance of the narrative activity, whereas the primary interest of this Third Act of Thomas is in the doctrinal principles and the pure sacraments of praise expressed in the long prayers offered by the apostle. This 3rd Act is filled with prayers and poetry, which present principles and images very like the wisdom of the Vedas.

Now, going on from where we left off:

After Thomas gains the sympathy of the King and his brother, who acknowledge that a mansion in heaven is better than a mansion on earth, they go out into the forest, to get away from everybody. The following speech occurs at the end of a very magical scene in which Thomas, Gundaphorus, and Gad all enter a bath in order to be baptized. The scene appears in conjunction with a Eucharistic ceremony; at this ceremony Thomas prays a beautiful prayer over them:

"26  . . . .  And the apostle said unto them: I also rejoice and entreat you to receive this seal, and to partake with me in this eucharist and blessing of the Lord, and to be made perfect therein. For this is the Lord and God of all, even Jesus Christ whom I preach, and he is the father of truth, in whom I have taught you to believe. And he commanded them to bring oil, that they might receive the seal by the oil. They brought the oil therefore, and lighted many lamps; for it was night: and the king gave orders that the bath should be closed for seven days, and that no man should bathe in it: and when the seven days were done, on the eighth day they three entered into the bath by night that Judas might baptize them. And many lamps were lighted in the bath.

27 And the apostle arose and sealed them. And the Lord was revealed unto them by a voice, saying: Peace be unto you brethren. And they heard his voice only, but his likeness they saw not, for they had not yet been baptized. And Judas went up and stood upon the edge of the cistern and poured oil upon their heads and said:

"Come, thou holy name of the Christ that is above every name.

Come, thou power of the Most High, and the compassion that is perfect.

Come, gift of the Most High.

Come, compassionate mother.

Come, communion of the male.

Come, she that revealeth the hidden mysteries.

Come, mother of the seven houses, that thy rest may be in the eighth house."

[Sidebar: Note that several passages in this gospel have an Old Testament resonance with pre-Christian Gnosticism, which makes, fairly consistently,  reference to a mother God.

Also, the presence of numerology, as witnessed by the catalog of "seven houses", "the eighth house", and "the five members" (below) etc., literally reeks of pre-Christian cosmology. Now, one gateway to appreciating biblical arithmetic, which abounds with mathematical metaphors, must be the theories of Pythagoras--Pythagoras (500 B.C.) who not only divided the universe into coherent proportions, but found precise personal analogs in mathematical relationships, which are, after all, very abstract, highly mental forms of consciousness.


Going on:]

"Come, elder of the five members, mind, thought, reflection, consideration, reason; communicate with these young men.

Come, holy spirit, and cleanse their reins and their heart, and give them the added seal, in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Ghost."

[Sidebar: This speech of Thomas has some interesting sidelights. There's clearly the Gnostic tendency toward God in everything, and there is also this remnant of the Buddha age, which divides the universe into discrete blocks and divisions and levels. Once again the type of enumeration presented above,

("Come, elder of the five members, mind, thought, reflection, consideration, reason;"),

is a very Old Testament Way of talking about truth, and it affirms and reinforces the interpretation Rudolf Steiner has placed on this period of history. I don't mind reiterating a Steiner quote I offered last week:

"In our period of evolution two streams of spiritual life are at work. One of them is the stream of wisdom, or the Buddha stream, containing the most sublime teaching of wisdom, goodness of heart and peace on earth. To enable this teaching of Buddha to permeate the hearts of all men, the Christ impulse is indispensable. The second stream is the Christ stream itself that will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality."

It is interesting that the Christ impulse is characterized, by Steiner, as leading to RIGHT ACTION by way of aesthetic feeling and insight. I, myself, would tend to summarize the aesthetic response as:

a response to order and sense--to the divine intelligence manifested in divine forms.

To be sure the word God, (omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, limitless, unfathomable) is slightly at odds with the idea of "form", a concept which necessarily refers to the limitations, restrictions, and boundaries of an articulate, fathomable, defined, material reality.  In the pantheistic world, God is in everything, the earth the sky, the stars; but now, through the incarnated Christ impulse, the omnipresent God has a personality which He extends to us as a model and a mold. Moreover, as the two historical eras pass each other in the night, the ancient karmic law of pantheism is supplanted by a new age of GRACE.

This Note by Professor F. C. Burliitt, D.D. appears as a footnote in the Gospel of Thomas:

"In the Acts of Thomas, 27, the apostle, being about to baptize Gundaphorus the king of India with his brother Gad, invokes the holy name of the Christ, and among other invocations says:

'Come, O elder of the five members, mind, idea, thoughtfulness, consideration, reasoning, communicate with these youths.'

What is the essential distinction of these five words for 'mind', and what is meant by the 'elder'? We turn to the Syriac, as the original language in which our tale was composed though our present text, which rests here on two manuscripts, has now and then been bowdlerized in the direction of more conventional phraseology, a process that the Greek has often escaped. Here in the Syriac we find:

'Come, Messenger of reconciliation, and communicate with the minds of these youths.'

The word for 'Come' is feminine, while 'Messenger'  is masculine. This is because the whole prayer is an invocation of the Holy Spirit, which in old Syriac is invariably treated as feminine. The word for Messenger is that used in the Manichaean cosmogony for a heavenly Spirit sent from the Divine Light: this Spirit appeared as androgynous, so that the use of the word here with the feminine verb is not inappropriate. It further leads us to look out for other indications of Manichaean phraseology in the passage. But first it suggests to us that [presbuteros, elder] in our passage is a corruption of, or is used for, [presbeutes], 'an ambassador'.

As for the five words for 'mind', they are clearly the equivalents of [hauna, mad'a, re'yana, mahshebhatha, tar'itha], named by Theodore bar Khoni as the Five Shekhinas, or Dwellings, or Manifestations, of the Father of Greatness, the title by which the Manichaeans spoke of the ultimate Source of Light."

A brief review of Mancheism seems appropriate at this point, generously supplied by Wikipedia:

"Manichaeism was a major Gnostic religion that was founded by the Iranian prophet Mani (c. 216–276 AD) in the Sasanian Empire.

Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process which takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian gnostic and religious movements.

Manichaeism was quickly successful and spread far through the Aramaic-Syriac speaking regions. It thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to Christianity in the competition to replace classical paganism.

Manichaeism survived longer in the East than in the West, and it appears to have finally faded away after the 14th century in southern China, contemporary to the decline in China of the Church of the East – see Ming Dynasty. While most of Mani's original writings have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived.

An adherent of Manichaeism is called, especially in older sources, a Manichee, or more recently Manichaean. By extension, the term "manichean" is widely applied (often disparagingly) as an adjective to a philosophy or attitude of moral dualism, according to which a moral course of action involves a clear (or simplistic) choice between good and evil, or as a noun to people who hold such a view."

Going on with Thomas:

"And when they were sealed, there appeared unto them a youth holding a lighted torch, so that their lamps became dim at the approach of the light thereof. And he went forth and was no more seen of them. And the apostle said unto the Lord:

"Thy light, O Lord, is not to be contained by us, and we are not able to bear it, for it is too great for our sight."

And when the dawn came and it was morning, he brake bread and made them partakers of the eucharist of the Christ. And they were glad and rejoiced.

And many others also, believing, were added to them, and came into the refuge of the Saviour. . . .

"Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Remember also that word of him of whom I spake: Look at the ravens and see the fowls of the heaven, that they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and God dispenseth unto them; how much more unto you, O ye of little faith?"

[Sidebar: notice that the image here, of the ravens, is almost identical to parallel speeches appearing in Matthew and Luke, to whit:

Matthew 6: 25-30

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

Luke 12:27-28

"27 “Consider how the wildflowers grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! 28 If that’s how God clothes the grass, which is in the field today and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow, how much more will He do for you—you of little faith?"

This is not the only story in Thomas or, indeed, some of the other Gnostic Gospels, which is precisely analogous to passages in the accepted Gospels.

Going on:]

"But look ye for his coming and have your hope in him and believe on his name. For he is the judge of quick and dead, and he giveth to every one according to their deeds, and at his coming and his latter appearing no man hath any word of excuse when he is to be judged by him, as though he had not heard. For his heralds do proclaim in the four quarters of the world."

[Sidebar: We, at the Basin Bible Church, have proclaimed this principle more than once--that IGNORANCE IS NOT AN EXCUSE! Jesus often said, "ye with ears to hear", as an invitation to look around and get a load of what's going on! This warning: "at his coming and his latter appearing no man hath any word of excuse when he is to be judged by him" is worth heeding in any philosophy. And if the trumpets play as loud in heaven as they do on earth it is going to be hard to miss that message.

Going on:]

"Repent ye, therefore, and believe the promise and receive the yoke of meekness and the light burden, that ye may live and not die. These things get, these keep. Come forth of the darkness that the light may receive you! Come unto him that is indeed good, that ye may receive grace of him and implant his sign in your souls."

I believe that too much emphasis is placed on the authenticity of these ancient texts, on EXACTLY WHO wrote WHAT. It is easy to imagine that a speech as memorable and pithy as the "lilies of the field speech" might be sustained in pristine form, for some length of time, by oral tradition--certainly long enough to be written down by some Gnostic author, 200 years after the fact. Therefore, if analogous passages to the accepted Gospels appear in the Gnostic gospels, why should we doubt the legitimacy of other more obscure and difficult passages, if they ring true? For me, the question was never "were these words written and spoken by the people we are told wrote and spoke them, but : "do the words ring true?"

I have a truth meter inside me which I turn on when I'm assessing the quality of a piece of music. The meter turns itself on automatically, and I keep the instrument focused down to a very fine sensitivity resolution. I can tell the truth of a piece of music pretty reliably. So too, can we all learn to turn our own philosophical truth meters on, to assess the truth of the words we read in whatever language, from whatever culture. The super intelligence of Jesus is an umbrella over-arching all these cultural and linguistic differences, merging them all into a single essence of truth, a truth whose light radiates outward from whatever source it comes from; moreover, since it comes from all sources, we can experience the truth radiating abundantly all around us and through us, if we only pay attention.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The 3rd Act of Thomas is the story of The Young Man and the Demon. The story begins with Thomas sleeping among his followers, at the camp that was chosen for the King's baptism. In a dream, Thomas is directed to go to a certain other spot, some distance away. He does this, and discovers the body of a young man lying dead in the road. Immediately he prays this prayer:

"O Lord, the judge of quick and dead, of the quick that stand by and the dead that lie here, and master and father of all things; and father not only of the souls that are in bodies but of them that have gone forth of them, for of the souls also that are in bodies thou art lord and judge; come thou at this hour wherein I call upon thee and show forth thy glory upon him that lieth here. And he turned himself unto them that followed him and said: This thing is not come to pass without cause, but the enemy hath effected it and brought it about that he may assault us thereby; and see ye that he hath not made use of another sort, nor wrought through any other creature save that which is his subject."

Here Thomas refers to "the enemy", whom we immediately identify as Satan; but he also sort of implies some ground rules for the following encounter--by saying the enemy has not done this "through any other creature save that which is his subject," he is saying that Satan has dominion over a certain kind of entity. The implication, realized momentarily, is that Thomas also comes armed with the weapons of HIS master, Jesus Christ.

As Thomas considers the various options available to him, out of the bushes comes an ugly stinky Dragon. Thomas questions the dragon, and, at first the dragon attempts to justify his murderous deed with karmic logic:

"I will tell before thee the cause wherefore I slew this man, since thou art come hither for that end, to reprove my works. And the apostle said: Yea, say on. And the serpent: There is a certain beautiful woman in this village over against us; and as she passed by me (or my place) I saw her and was enamoured of her, and I followed her and kept watch upon her; and I found this youth kissing her, and he did other shameful acts with her: and for me it was easy to declare them before thee, for I know that thou art the twin brother of the Christ and always abolishest our nature (Syr. easy for me to say, but to thee I do not dare to utter them because I know that the ocean-flood of the Messiah will destroy our nature): but because I would not affright her, I slew him not at that time, but waited for him till he passed by in the evening and smote and slew him, and especially because he adventured to do this upon the Lord's day."

[Sidebar: It's interesting that the demon, even with the fruits of his labor lying dead in the road, attempts to justify his murderous act with Old Testament logic. Remember that the most brilliant of all intelligences is that of Satan--he maintains,

"it is only fair that wrong is answered with wrong, that an eye is given for an eye, and the death is the just consequence of an insult."

These are all trains of logic which Satan is very familiar with, and with which he will attempt to ensnare us every time.

The next section of the dragon's speech is highly dramatic and highly rhetorical, and looks forward to the famous speech of Satan, in Paradise Lost by John Milton. Notice, at the beginning of this long, involved, violent Satanic monologue, the spirit first speaks of himself as the son of Satan, (he never uses the name Satan but we infer it from the narrative bits that follow); but about halfway down, we begin to hear Satan himself speaking through the demon, now a mouthpiece for the greatest deceiver. It is not precisely accurate to say that the voice of the demon is replaced by the voice of Satan, because it clearly says that it was sent by his father--however, it does say he speaks with his father's voice. This is clearly an example of how demons may actually possess each other. We saw an example of this in C.S. Lewis' Perelandra, where the body of the evil scientist carries the intelligence of Satan, incarnate, to a distant planet.

Going on:]

"And the apostle inquired of him, saying: Tell me of what seed and of what race thou art."

32 And he said unto him:

I am a reptile of the reptile nature and noxious son of the noxious father: of him that hurt and smote the four brethren which stood upright, the fours elements. I am son to him that sitteth on a throne over all the earth that receiveth back his own from them that borrow: I am son to him that girdeth about the sphere: and I am kin to him that is outside the ocean, whose tail is set in his own mouth:"

[Sidebar: This is where the transition from minion to Satan himself is effected:]

"I am he that entered through the barrier (fence) into paradise and spake with Eve the things which my father bade me speak unto her:

I am he that kindled and inflamed Cain to kill his own brother, and on mine account did thorns and thistles grow up in the earth:

I am he that cast down the angels from above and bound them in lusts after women, that children born of earth might come of them and I might work my will in them:"

[Sidebar: I'm sure that Al Rothfuss will appreciate the foregoing comment about women, because it clearly suggests a picture of fallen angels mating with earthly females and producing infernal offspring.

Going on:]

"I am he that hardened Pharaoh's heart that he should slay the children of Israel and enslave them with the yoke of cruelty:

I am he that caused the multitude to err in the wilderness when they made the calf:

I am he that inflamed Herod and enkindled Caiaphas unto false accusation of a lie before Pilate; for this was fitting to me:

I am he that stirred up Judas and bribed him to deliver up the Christ:"

[Sidebar: Notice that this detail, contrary to the Gospel of Judas, upholds the conventional wisdom that Judas was a traitor. So many versions of the story--which to choose? which to choose?

Going on:]

"I am he that inhabiteth and holdeth the deep of hell,

but the Son of God hath wronged me, against my will, and taken them that were his own from me: I am kin to him that is to come from the east, unto whom also power is given to do what he will upon the earth."

After listening to this speech Thomas pulls out the Jesus card, and commands the Dragon to put its teeth back in the poor boy and withdraw the poison that he injected into the boy to kill him. At first the demon refuses, but somehow Thomas gets him to do it, and, when he does, the boy comes back to life and the demon explodes like a burst bladder.

"33 And when that serpent had spoken these things in the hearing of all the people, the apostle lifted up his voice on high and said: Cease thou henceforth, O most shameless one, and be put to confusion and die wholly, for the end of thy destruction is come, and dare not to tell of what thou hast done by them that have become subject unto thee. And I charge thee in the name of that Jesus who until now contendeth with you for the men that are his own, that thou suck out thy venom which thou hast put into this man, and draw it forth and take it from him.

But the serpent said: Not yet is the end of our time come as thou hast said. Wherefore compellest thou me to take back that which I have put into this man, and to die before my time? for mine own father, when he shall draw forth and suck out that which he hath cast into the creation, then shall his end come.

And the apostle said unto him:

"Show, then, now the nature of thy father."

And the serpent came near and set his mouth upon the wound of the young man and sucked forth the gall out of it. And by little and little the colour of the young man which was as purple, became white, but the serpent swelled up.

And when the serpent had drawn up all the gall into himself, the young man leapt up and stood, and ran and fell at the apostle's feet: but the serpent being swelled up, burst and died, and his venom and gall were shed forth; and in the place where his venom was shed there came a great gulf, and that serpent was swallowed up therein.

And the apostle said unto the king and his brother:

"Take workmen and fill up that place, and lay foundations and build houses upon them, that it may be a dwelling-place for strangers."

I love this picture of Thomas ordering the demon to suck out the poison from his victim, which then causes the demon to explode. It goes back to the principle of the Armor of God. The Armor of God has not only the power to protect us from demonic influence, but it can become a sword of God, to attack and defeat the minions of Satan who always crowd around us whenever we do anything good. Remember also that Thomas is not Jesus--Thomas is not the Messiah, but he does share in the Christ consciousness and therefore is able to share in the Christ power to defeat evil. The demon's weapons are infernal, and wield the power of the fallen angel, but Thomas' power comes from God, clearly the stronger power. It just goes to show that, in the battle of good against evil, it does not pay to join up with the weaker side.

In conclusion, it can readily be seen that this act of Thomas is laced with nuggets of insight and comfort. We have the beautiful prayer of baptism, elevating the ceremonial resonance of that event to a very high level by invoking the Divine Presence:

"Come, thou holy name of the Christ that is above every name.
Come, thou power of the Most High, and the compassion that is perfect.
Come, gift of the Most High."

(In this prayer we encounter a worthy model for all prayer, equivalent to the Lord's Prayer); we have the reiteration of the "lilies of the field speech", which, historically, has demonstrated such magnificent staying power over the minds of Christian initiates; and we have insight by way of a comparison between Infernal Power and the Armor of God, or, in the case of the apostle's power over the demon, the SWORD of God. 

I find these insights, and these fresh stories of Apostolic Miracles, to be energizing. I love what I perceive to be a kind of internal innocence in these texts. The joy of discovery seems to radiate great beams of wonder onto my mind; and my heart is warmed and reassured as I receive this spiritual food, and, in Holy Communion, join in this sacrament of praise.

Let us pray: Jesus, we are blessed by these stories of the Christ impulse surging through the world of then and the world of now. We thank you for the blessings which come from You, only You, and kiss the Face, the articulated Face of God. Amen.

17-Introduction to Thomas - Act 1, Act 2

Monday, September 29, 2014

17-Introduction to Thomas - Act 1, Act 2

17-Introduction to Thomas - Act 1, Act 2

I was made aware that there would be visitors here this morning, so I felt it necessary to do a little catch-up review. In my recent sermons I have presented certain principles, in long chains of logical sequences, creating a certain point of reference; therefore, an understanding of some of the things I will be saying today, depends on a familiarity with some of these previously presented concepts. To whit:

About two months ago, having gone through some major philosophical digressions about ecstasy and death, I had just decided to get back to the Bible, and embark on a survey of the Acts of the Apostles; however in the very first chapter, I noticed a discrepancy: in Acts, Judas' death is described as taking place in a field, where his guts burst open. Of course, we know that, in the Synoptic Gospels, Judas hangs himself. Whassup wit dat? So, I got curious about Judas. Then I stumbled onto this whole big a library of so-called Gnostic Gospels, not all of which are actually Gnostic, but all of which are texts which were either rejected by the 4th century Nicene Authority, or that were discovered within the last 150 years most of them in the 20th century and some of them as recently as 2007.

As I familiarize myself with the Gnostic Gospels, and the principles of Gnosticism, I have come more and more to realize what we are actually talking about: we are talking about an intersection between the Historical Jesus and the Mythologized Jesus. Although it is well understood that the very moment in which Jesus shed His blood upon the ground for all mankind--that very instant--was a turning point in history; a moment too short to name, but which, nevertheless, changed the flow of events down the river of time forever. The pantheism of primitive man became doomed to extinction, and a God with a Human face was born. The ancient wisdom, which deplored earthly life and looked forward to the life everlasting as the ultimate spiritual goal, was replaced with a new idea--the idea of heaven on Earth. Jesus inaugurated this idea, here nicely expressed by Rudolf Steiner:

"When the apparently worthless in our existence is taken hold of by the spiritual, it is resurrected in a degree more perfect than before and is spiritually embodied. Nothing in existence is really worthless because it rises again if the spirit has entered into it aright."

Indeed, God is in everything, the earth the sky, the stars, but now the God has a personality which He extends to us as a model and a mold. As to the passing by of two historical eras, Steiner says this:

"In our period of evolution two streams of spiritual life are at work. One of them is the stream of wisdom, or the Buddha stream, containing the most sublime teaching of wisdom, goodness of heart and peace on earth. To enable this teaching of Buddha to permeate the hearts of all men, the Christ impulse is indispensable. The second stream is the Christ stream itself that will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality."

Thus, the Christ Consciousness, experienced as a MORAL impulse, is the power that can transform Hell into Heaven. Now, even though the essential change was instantaneous, it took several centuries for this change to gather momentum, in the minds of the people, and influence the culture to a degree to which an appreciably different quality could be discerned in the collective unconscious. During this time of growth, those two to three hundred years, many things happened to translate the History of what happened into the Myth of what happened, and, hence, into a Literature of culturally held Philosophic/Religious principles.

As we know, history never happens in stepwise motion, it always evolves in gradual, slowly morphing, circular transitions, from one state to another. So, the charm of the Gnostic gospels, and of Gnosticism in general, especially Christian Gnosticism, is in its paradox: the apparent contradictions between certain dogmatic items in the two philosophies. At first glance, these contradictions threaten to cancel each other out, but, on closer inspection, we find that the disagreements are not fundamental, they are incidental--furthermore they are disagreements in transit. By this I mean: the Christian Gnostics represent an historical blending of two philosophies as the older, primitive, pantheistic philosophy morphs into the newly enlightened Christian age, in which the incarnation of God, as the Christ, becomes available to us, to enrich our lives, and to help us along a path toward ever more defined person-ness, and higher, ever higher, levels of consciousness.

As we study the Gnostic Gospels we witness the primitive, pantheistic, inarticulate Gnostic God, infusing Himself with the newly transformed personality of the Christ. Indeed it is fair to say that during the 200 years after Jesus' death (sic), there was a kind of a passing of the torch from the old to the new. Several general characteristics of the Gnostic Gospels consistently exemplify this idea, for instance: many of the things in the Gnostic Gospels, certainly in the Judas gospel, include Genesis-like descriptions of the beginning of the universe, and so on, which are not precisely in sync with our normal Old Testament readings. Heavenly hierarchies are described in majorly Old Testament language, which clearly look backwards, toward an older, more primitive world view.

Additionally, the Gnostic Gospels tend to portray the character of Jesus in unprecedented ways; the Gnostic portrayals of Jesus are mostly consistent with the synoptic Gospels, but they also contain reports of occasional outlandishly-eccentric behaviors, the like of which do not appear in any of the accepted gospels. Examples of Jesus' outlandish behavior include His laughter,  (nowhere in the accepted Bible does Jesus laugh--He weeps, but He doesn't laugh), His disapparition, (He comes and goes mysteriously, disappearing sometimes in the middle of a conversation), and, (the most outlandish action of all), at one point, He actually sells Thomas into slavery. These, if not shocking, are certainly surprising behaviors, which parallel some of the actions of Krishna, in the Mahabarata.

Thus, as the ancient idea of earthly life as a veil of tears from which we gladly escape, morphs into something new, with Jesus' message of Heaven on Earth, we witness, throughout Gnostic Gospels the growth of an idea, planted and watered by Jesus, (as mentioned in Judas), flowering into an era of hope, discovery, and worldly celebration.

A scene illustrating the passing of one era into another, appears in  C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. In this scene a temple is described in which are situated two statues, representations of a lower and a higher goddess. The lower goddess, Ungit, is a great, round stone, of no particular shape; as the blood offerings trickle down its sides, the observer may see a face, or faces, or no face in the uninflected gray. The higher goddess is a white marble Grecian statue, beautiful, articulate, focused. A peasant woman has just come in and said prayers to Ungit, the lower goddess, and, as she is leaving, the the onlooking queen stops her:

    "Has Ungit comforted you, child" I asked.
    "Oh yes, Queen" said the woman, her face almost brightening, "Oh yes. Ungit has given me great comfort. There's no goddess like Ungit."
    "Do you always pray to that Ungit," said I (nodding toward the shapeless stone), "and not to that?" here I nodded towards our new image, standing tall and straight in her robes and (whatever the Fox might say of it) the loveliest thing our land has ever seen.
    "Oh, always this, Queen," said she. "That other, the Greek Ungit, she wouldn't understand my speech. She's only for nobles and learned men. There's no comfort in her."

The representations in this temple are very different faces of a single goddess, different phases (note the word "phases")--I say, the representations in this temple are very different faces of a single goddess, different phases of a single identity. Although the outer forms of these two opposing representations are quite unlike each other, they both tend toward the same spiritual essence, even though it must be emphasized that the ARTICULATED form is the one that is finally accessible to all who embrace the new age. Some people need the old gods for comfort; they don't know what they are missing.

So, with these words, let us now proceed to the Gospel of Thomas.

This is the most popular, and longest of the Gnostic Gospels. It is also more like the Synoptic Gospels than the other Gnostic Gospels, with some significant differences. This is taken from an internet article, Where did the Gospel of Thomas come from?

"The spirituality in the Gospel of Thomas is a form of early Christian mysticism. It was a contemplative type of Christianity that grew in Syria as well as Alexandria. The idea was that each person had the choice to grow into God's Image or to remain stunted due to Adam's decision. If the person chose to grow, then the divinization process was gradual and included not only ritual activities like baptism and eucharist, but also instructional and contemplative activities. Part of the process then was living as Jesus lived - it was imitative. The other part was contemplating who and where Jesus was. This contemplative life led to heavenly (or interiorized) journeys and visions of God. Eventually the faithful would become like Jesus, replacing their fallen image with the image of God. This contemplative Christianity is not heretical, but an early form of eastern orthodoxy! . . .

This gospel understands Jesus to be a charismatic figure.  By this I mean, Jesus continues to live in their community even after he has died.  His spirit continues to speak to this community of faithful, and they continue to record his teachings.  They do not appear to have made any distinction between the "historical" Jesus before death and the "spirit" Jesus after death, at least in terms of authority or historicity of his words.  The Jesus that emerges in the Gospel of Thomas is not entirely foreign to the New Testament portrayals, particularly as we see him emerge in the Gospel of John - but also, as we see him in Mark, teaching publicly to the crowds and privately his mysteries to a few close followers." 

[Sidebar: In the accepted Gospels, Jesus is OCCASIONALLY depicted with a single disciple, off to the side, giving personal, exclusive, advice and insight. In the Gnostic Gospels Jesus is nearly ALWAYS depicted that way. Each Gnostic Gospel's author seems to have been singled out by Jesus for some distinct quality or other, and given an anomalous, personal message. This action may violate our democratic sense of fair play and equality, however, it is not untrue that all men are UNequal. The hierarchical division of the cosmos into levels, in the Gnostic Gospels, is paralleled by the idea that every created soul inhabits an absolutely unique place in the cosmic hierarchy.

Back to Where did the Gospel of Thomas come from?:

"His message is either similar to the New Testament Jesus, or contiguous with him.  He teaches against carnality and succumbing to bodily desire.  He's an advocate for celibacy.  He preaches that the Kingdom of God is here, that people must make a choice whether to enter it or not, that this choice requires an exclusive commitment to him and God, that the going is tough and few will be able to make it.  He demands a lifestyle of righteous living, promises rewards including personal transformation and revelation."

 So, the book is called the Gospel of Thomas, though it is sometimes called the Acts of Thomas, or The Acts of Judas Thomas. The Acts of Judas Thomas, are a group of tales--each act is a discrete story, which may have one or two miracles involved in it. Today we will explore the first two acts.

The first act is a two-part story, so beautifully told, in the book, I really hate to vulgarize it with a prosaic summary; but I just can't read out the whole thing, it would take too long, so, in order to focus on the more spiritually meaningful sections, we must sacrifice some of the elegant, narrative details.

The thing begins with Jesus: the Jesus who hung around after His resurrection to give the Apostles some final instructions before sending them out into the world with the Good News. There are many people who think that Jesus remained physically incarnated and physically active for some time after his resurrection, and continued to teach and direct the disciples into their various missionary objectives. In just such a missionary assignment, Thomas was chosen to go to India. Thomas didn't want to go, he refused to go, so Jesus simply sold Thomas, as a slave, to this merchant who was in the market for a carpenter capable of building a palace for his master, a king of India. So Thomas, kind of like Jonah, found himself on a boat bound for someplace he didn't really want to go.

So, the ship travels around the horn, through the gulf of Aden, into the Arabian Sea, and lands in a coastal city of India. The King of that city has just proclaimed that there will be a great marriage feast, because his daughter is getting married. Everybody in town is expected to attend this big party, and Thomas and his new master, the Merchant, decide to go to the feast, so that the King will not be offended.

At the wedding feast Thomas is just sitting there, stoically, not doing anything, when this busboy comes up and slaps him in the face, because he is not doing anything, eating, or drinking, or celebrating. Thomas takes this the slap in the face, then he says,

"My God will forgive thee in the life to come this iniquity, but in this world thou shalt show forth his wonders and even now shall I behold this hand that hath smitten me dragged by dogs."

Of course, he was speaking the Hebrew language, and nobody there understood what he was saying, except this flute player. There was this girl flute player, entertaining at the party, going from group to group, playing for them; she happened to be standing next to Thomas when the cup-bearer struck him. Since she was also Jewish, she understood the Hebrew that Thomas spoke, so she understood what happened later. The plot thickens:

Presently, this cup-bearer goes outside to the well, to get more water, and there he encounters a lion; the lion tears him to pieces and leaves him lying on the ground, where the town dogs fight over his flesh. One of the dogs picks up a severed hand in his teeth, and walks into the marriage ceremony, like dogs do, saying, "Look at me! Look at the prize I've got in my mouth! Yummy!"

So when the flute player sees this, she announces to the party at hand that Thomas has performed a miracle of prophecy. Some of them believe that he has, and some don't. But, in any case, word of this reaches the King, and the King sends for this doer of miracles to pronounce a blessing on his daughter on her wedding night. Thomas follows, it says, unwillingly.

I'm interested in the detail that mentions that Thomas goes to see the king unwillingly. One wonders why he was unwilling. Perhaps he just didn't want to be told what to do, and thus be diverted from his mission to go with the merchant to build a palace for this OTHER King; or it may have been something like when Jesus turned water into wine--remember He chastises His mother for making Him do what it wasn't quite time to do, ("Woman My hour is not yet come."); perhaps Thomas was unwilling because he knew that the truth of what he had to say might change the children's lives, and cause the father to take revenge on him, or detain him, which almost happened.

How many of us are unwilling witnesses? How often do we allow ourselves stick out, in a society in which spirituality is not openly spoken of, in which spirituality is not part of normal daily conversation? How many times have we made reference to it, in informal conversation, and watched the conversation freeze in embarrassment, or in a paroxysm of complex of emotional responses. Certainly, in the academic world, mention of anything spiritual, or even nonscientific, is expressly taboo. It is the rare person who is willing to take the risk of speaking out, in a social context in which the word "religion" may ignite a tinder box of preset prejudicial reactions. So, an unwilling witness is really a hero, because nobody wants to stick his neck out, but we know we must be willing to do it anyway. Let us not forget that the unwilling witness is the most effective proselytizer of them all, because he witnesses only when the Spirit is present and decrees, through divine intervention, that an act of primordial significance must be performed.

Going on.

When Thomas meets the bride and groom at their home, he speaks the following prayer; the prayer is a song of praise to God in His manifold manifestations, and it has a structure and poetic feel similar to that of the Rig Vedas:

"'My Lord and MY God, that travellest with thy servants, that guidest and correctest them that believe in thee, the refuge and rest of the oppressed, the hope of the poor and ransomer of captives, the physician of the souls that lie sick and saviour of all creation, that givest life unto the world and strengthenest souls; thou knowest things to come, and by our means accomplishest them: thou Lord art he that revealeth hidden mysteries and maketh manifest words that are secret: thou Lord art the planter of the good tree, and of thine hands are all good works engendered: thou Lord art he that art in all things and passest through all, and art set in all thy works and manifested in the working of them all. Jesus Christ, Son of compassion and perfect saviour, Christ, Son of the living God, the undaunted power that hast overthrown the enemy, and the voice that was heard of the rulers, and made all their powers to quake, the ambassador that wast sent from the height and camest down even unto hell, who didst open the doors and bring up thence them that for many ages were shut up in the treasury of darkness, and showedst them the way that leadeth up unto the height: l beseech thee, Lord Jesu, and offer unto thee supplication for these young persons, that thou wouldest do for them the things that shall help them and be expedient and profitable for them.'

And he laid his hands on them and said: The Lord shall be with you, and left them in that place and departed."

The story goes on:

"And the king desired the groomsmen to depart out of the bride-chamber; and when all were gone out and the doors were shut, the bridegroom lifted up the curtain of the bride-chamber to fetch the bride unto him. And he saw the Lord Jesus bearing the likeness of Judas Thomas and speaking with the bride; even of him that but now had blessed them and gone out from them, the apostle; and he saith unto him: Wentest thou not out in the sight of all? how then art thou found here? But the Lord said to him: I am not Judas which is also called Thomas but I am his brother. And the Lord sat down upon the bed and bade them also sit upon chairs, and began to say unto them:

"Remember, my children, what my brother spake unto you and what he delivered before you: and know this, that if ye abstain from this foul intercourse, ye become holy temples, pure, being quit of impulses and pains, seen and unseen, . . ."

[At this point there is a long diatribe against carnal knowledge, and the many disastrous consequences of having children.

Going on:]

"But if ye be persuaded and keep your souls chaste before God, there will come unto you living children whom these carnal blemishes touch not, and ye shall be without care, leading a tranquil life without grief or anxiety, looking to receive that incorruptible and true marriage, and ye shall be therein groomsmen entering into that bride-chamber which is full of immortality and light."

And when the young people heard these things, they believed the Lord and gave themselves up unto him, and abstained from foul desire and continued so, passing the night in that place. And the Lord departed from before them, saying thus: The grace of the Lord shall be with you."

After this, the bride and the groom are so moved by Thomas' sermon, and the first-hand experience of Jesus the Christ, that they decide not to get married and to remain celibate. They both make speeches to the king:

 "And the bride answered and said: Verily, father, I am in great love, and I pray my Lord that the love which I have perceived this night may abide with me, and I will ask for that husband of whom I have learned to-day: and therefore I will no more veil myself, because the mirror (veil) of shame is removed from me; and therefore am I no more ashamed or abashed, because the deed of shame and confusion is departed far from me; and that I am not confounded, it is because my astonishment hath not continued with me; and that I am in cheerfulness and joy, it is because the day of my joy hath not been troubled; and that I have set at nought this husband and this marriage that passeth away from before mine eyes, it is because I am joined in another marriage; and that I have had no intercourse with a husband that is temporal, whereof the end is with lasciviousness and bitterness of soul, it is because I am yoked unto a true husband."

[Sidebar: Reflection on celibacy:

Celibacy affirms a basic principle of Gnosticism, in its favoring of the spiritual body over the physical body. In the speech to the bride and bridegroom Jesus makes reference to "foul desires". Foul desires can only mean what Freud called primitive consciousness, and what the Hindus would called lower chakra consciousness. So celibacy is one more article in the Gnostic doctrine which denies the reality of a Heaven on Earth; it says Heaven is not possible if earthly desire is part of the package, even though earthly desires occupy most of us most of the time.

Many religious disciplines promote celibacy, for instance the Catholic Church; notice that the comments of the bride sound a lot like the type of vows that a nun might make on entering a convent. Catholic priests, nuns, and monks are supposed to be celibate, (although of course many of them aren't); the purpose of celibacy is to enable the devotee to give him-her-self totally, mind and body, to God.

In kundalini yoga, celibacy is demanded, because the life force of kundalini is intimately related to sexual impulses, or, that is to say, primal energy. It is thought that wasting this precious life force on sex, when you could be directing it toward achieving enlightenment, is a sin against your own spiritual progress. Remember that boxers don't have sex before a fight, because sex drains them of the power to go the distance. The total celibacy so uncompromisingly  spoken of here, is not a new recommendation; indeed, it must be remembered that this recommendation is for the special Elect of God, and not necessarily for the layman, whose responsibility it is to replenish the earth.

In the preceding paragraph I made reference to the "Elect of God". Is there such a thing, or is this a choice we all make--whether to be included in the Elect of God or not, to go the distance or not? Can it really be said that any one of us is not the Elect of God, or would choose NOT to become the Elect of God. Can there actually be levels of religious devotion acceptable in the sight of God? As we have seen, in ALL the gospels, Jesus' ministry to His disciples was very personalized--each disciple received his own special insights, and his own special blessings. Can it possibly be that Jesus accepts each one of us, each of us having ever, ever, ever so slightly different graduated niches in the hierarchy of the cosmos? We must admit that upward and downward mobility in this hierarchy is a feature of its construction, but the idea, that each one of us might be on a different plane, is somewhat mind-boggling, but also somewhat clarifying.

Jesus' commentary on celibacy sounds a lot like Shakespeare. As such, it is not only suggesting a strongly Gnostic perspective, it is also very rhetorical. This rhetorical aspect is one of the things that weakens the impact of the message here, in terms of making us believe that Jesus would actually say this. To me, this section does not sound as much like Jesus, as lots of the other places in the Gnostic Gospels. That may be because I'm not especially in favor of celibacy, but it also might be because this section, more than other sections in the Gospels, seems to be preaching a dogmatic principle, an action which is at odds with the typically free-and-unfettered-through-grace philosophy of Jesus. If He were a teacher of Kundalini yoga, as many people think He was, then he might be preaching absolute celibacy for all worthy travelers on the spiritual path. Nevertheless, as I was saying, the rhetorical aspect makes Him seem more like a character in a play, especially if we think of the character participating in the "Play of the Prince and the Princess". Also, once again perhaps this whole speech should be thought of as a personal message to those two kids, a message which may not be intended to be universally applicable. At least that's what I would like to think.

This speech of the bride to her father is of interest, not only because it expounds the many virtues of celibacy and the deplores evils of carnal reproduction, (to say the least), but because it also includes a rhapsodic love song to God. Perhaps this humble bride is a good example for all of us; perhaps there is a lesson here about where we all should be placing our most high affections.

The bridegroom has this to say:]

"And while the bride was saying yet more than this, the bridegroom answered and said: I give thee thanks, O Lord, that hast been proclaimed by the stranger, and found in us; who hast removed me far from corruption and sown life in me; who hast rid me of this disease that is hard to be healed and cured and abideth for ever, and hast implanted sober health in me; who hast shown me thyself and revealed unto me all my state wherein I am; who hast redeemed me from falling and led me to that which is better, and set me free from temporal things and made me worthy of those that are immortal and everlasting; that hast made thyself lowly even down to me and my littleness, that thou mayest present me unto thy greatness and unite me unto thyself; who hast not withheld thine own bowels from me that was ready to perish, but hast shown me how to seek myself and know who I was, and who and in what manner I now am, that I may again become that which I was: whom I knew not, but thyself didst seek me out: of whom I was not aware, but thyself hast taken me to thee: whom I have perceived, and now am not able to be unmindful of him: whose love burneth within me, and I cannot speak it as is fit, but that which I am able to say of it is little and scanty, and not fitly proportioned unto his glory: yet he blameth me not that presume to say unto him even that which I know not: for it is because of his love that I say even this much."

These speeches of the bride and the bridegroom are a manifesto of dissatisfaction with earthly relationships, and set up a very high spiritual goal for the soul. Now, it must be admitted that there is, lurking in the background of this speech, a very Gnostic idea: the bride and the bridegroom both appear to be affirming the superiority of spiritual existence, and degrading earthly experience. This would be a typical Gnostic interpretation of life, and, although we, as Christians, want to place our highest value on eternal things, we still, I reiterate one more time-- we still strive to experience and realize the eternal within the confines of the earthly realm.

When all this comes down, the King sends out a group of soldiers to bring Thomas back to the city, to receive the thanks of the King; but Thomas has already set sail for India.

The concluding scene in the first in the first act is very touching, because we find the flute girl (the girl who introduced Thomas to the men at the party, and through them the King), we find the flute girl lamenting. She is very sad because Thomas did not take her with him to India, but she goes to see the bride and the bridegroom, and they speak together of the message of Thomas, and through Thomas, Jesus, and they sort of begin the first Christian community in India. They successively bring in the father King, and then the rest of the town.

It's a lovely story in the about the power of the mission, and it shows that you that an idea is like a virus--that the truth can be catching, and can spread through the minds of men like a wave. the message for us is one of witnessing. We should learn that, by standing our ground in social situations, where it might be embarrassing to proclaim our Christianity, we should, instead, stick to our convictions, and hold forth on some point or other which might bring the mediator ship of Jesus to the forefront. This might turn out to be an aggressive action pregnant with possible good ramifications.

The second act of Thomas is a very charming story indeed.

Thomas and the merchant arrive at the city of the employer of the merchant, The King who needs a palace built. Thomas goes to the King, and the King interviews him for the job--asks him about his qualifications. Thomas says, "Out of wood I can make pulleys, and plows, and yokes, etc., and I can make columns and palaces out of stone."  The king hires Thomas for the job.

So they go out in the country to this beautiful place where the palace should be built, and the King leaves Thomas there, and goes back to the city to wait for Thomas to build the palace.

While Thomas is at it, he prays this elegant prayer:

"I thank thee O Lord in all things, that thou didst die for a little space that I might live for ever in thee, and that thou hast sold me that by me thou mightest set free many. And he ceased not to teach and to refresh the afflicted, saying: This hath the Lord dispensed unto you, and he giveth unto every man his food: for he is the nourisher of orphans and steward of the widows, and unto all that are afflicted he is relief and rest."

So the King gives him a huge pile of cash for building the palace, for workers and materials, and such, and Thomas goes out into the countryside, performing miracles and distributing the money among the poor. The King sends again, "How's it going on the palace?" and Thomas says, "Almost done, just have to put on the roof." So the King sends more money, and it is once again distributed among the poor. When the King finally comes to the place, to see the palace there is nothing there. The King questions Thomas thus:

"Hast thou built me the palace?
And he said: Yea.
And the king said: When, then, shall we go and see it? but he answered him and said: Thou canst not see it now, but when thou departest this life, then thou shalt see it. And the king was exceeding wroth, and commanded both the merchant and Judas which is called Thomas to be put in bonds and cast into prison until he should inquire and learn unto whom the king's money had been given, and so destroy both him and the merchant."

So the king is getting ready to flay Thomas and the Merchant alive when this subplot sneaks in:
At the same time all this palace-building is happening, the King's brother falls ill, and on the very same night that Thomas and the Merchant are locked up, the sick brother dies. He goes to heaven and the angels show him around looking for a place to live. During this tour of heaven, the brother comes upon the magnificent house that Thomas has built for the King and, immediately, he desires it. The angels say he can't have it, because it belongs to the King. Thomas has built the palace the King asked for, but he has built it in Heaven not on Earth.

The brother instantly becomes enchanted with his house and wants it for himself, so, instead of dying  he goes back, his body wakes up,  says to his brother, "I want to buy this house that Thomas has built for you." When the King gets the idea, he refuses the brother's request:

"Then the king considering the matter, understood it of those eternal benefits which should come to him and which concerned him, and said: That palace I cannot sell thee, but I pray to enter into it and dwell therein and to be accounted worthy of the inhabiters of it, but if thou indeed desirest to buy such a palace, lo, the man liveth and shall build thee one better than it."

At the end of the episode, Thomas prays this prayer:

"And the apostle, filled with joy, said: I praise thee, O Lord Jesu, that thou hast revealed thy truth in these men; for thou only art the God of truth, and none other, and thou art he that knoweth all things that are unknown to the most; thou, Lord, art he that in all things showest compassion and sparest men. For men by reason of the error that is in them have overlooked thee but thou hast not overlooked them. And now at mv supplication and request do thou receive the king and his brother and join them unto thy fold, cleansing them with thy washing and anointing them with thine oil from the error that encompasseth them: and keep them also from the wolves, bearing them into thy meadows. And give them drink out of thine immortal fountain which is neither fouled nor drieth up; for they entreat and supplicate thee and desire to become thy servants and ministers, and for this they are content even to be persecuted of thine enemies, and for thy sake to be hated of them and to be mocked and to die, like as thou for our sake didst suffer all these things, that thou mightest preserve us, thou that art Lord and verily the good shepherd. And do thou grant them to have confidence in thee alone, and the succour that cometh of thee and the hope of their salvation which they look for from thee alone; and that they may be grounded in thy mysteries and receive the perfect good of thy graces and gifts, and flourish in thy ministry and come to perfection in thy Father."

In conclusion, these two acts of Thomas convey truths which are important for us to remember today, and which are consistent with any traditional interpretation of Christian doctrine. The idea of the unwilling witness is important; the responsibility of the initiated to witness, constitutes the brunt of the weight of the cross each one of us must bear. But, by far the most important point to remember is made in both of these first two Acts of Thomas: the story of the celibate devotee, saving his/her sexual energy for transport to God, and story of the palace built in Heaven for the life to come, are both glorifications of the spiritual, and remind us of the sentiments exposed this morning's call to worship:

Matthew 6:19-21

"19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

So once again, as we speak of the Gnostic Gospels bridging the gap between the historical Jesus and the mythologized Jesus, we are reminded of an eternal principle which surely has dominated man's spiritual strivings since time immemorial, then and now, principles which are very consistent with every principle taught by the accepted Gospels: we must put God first. Now, there's a thought.

Let us pray. Jesus thank you for this testament to universal values. Thank you for appearing to us and yet more magnificent character portrayals, and thanks especially for passing on your knowledge and your power into the hearts and bodies of those who put their faith in you and rely on you for guidance and strength. Amen.

16 Intro to the Gospel of Judas - 3

Sunday, September 7, 2014

16 Intro to the Gospel of Judas - 3

 16 Intro to the Gospel of Judas - 3

As I familiarize myself with the Gnostic Gospels, and the principles of Gnosticism, I have come more and more to realize what we are actually talking about: we are talking about an intersection between the Historical Jesus and the Mythologized Jesus. Although it is well understood by all Christians, and especially by me, (via the Theosophy of Rudolf Steiner), that the very moment in which Jesus shed His blood upon the ground for all mankind--that very instant was a turning point in history; a moment too short to name, but which, nevertheless, changed the flow of events down the river of time forever. The essential change was instantaneous, and yet it took several centuries for this change to gather momentum, in the minds of the people, and influence the culture, to the degree to which an appreciably different quality could be discerned in the collective unconscious. During this time of growth, those two hundred years, many things happened to translate the History of what happened into a Literature of culturally held Philosophic/Religious principles.

As we know, history never happens in stepwise motion, it always evolves in gradual, slowly morphing, circular transitions, from one state to another. So, the charm of the Gnostic gospels, and of Gnosticism in general, especially Christian Gnosticism, is in its paradox: the apparent contradictions between certain dogmatic items in the two philosophies. At first glance, these contradictions threaten to cancel out one another, but, on closer inspection, we find that the disagreements are not fundamental, they are incidental--furthermore they are disagreements in transit. By this I mean: the Christian Gnostics represent an historical blending of two philosophies as the older, primitive, pantheistic philosophy morphs into the newly enlightened Christian age, in which the incarnation of God, as the Christ, becomes available to us, to enrich our lives, and to help us along a path toward ever more defined person-ness, and higher, ever higher, levels of consciousness. Levels of consciousness, indeed, will turn out to  be the ultimate theme of this sermon, although we will touch on many other side-issues along the way.


Now, the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus articulated an  historical turning point, does not necessarily mean that, before the crucifixion, God was unavailable to, or invisible to, primitive man; (I say it does not NECESSARILY mean that); but it does appear to affirm a certain scenario, which I have encountered in a lot of new age philosophy--it has to do with the idea of spiritual identity:

Consider the question of whether or not dogs have souls--Aristotle says, no--so does C.S.Lewis. Some say animals are reincarnated, and are graduated up the spiritual path, just like humans. But, some say that, although the spirit of a dog has no specific individual personal stamp, it does have an essential identity, i.e. "dog": hence, when the dog dies, the spirit of the dog goes back to this kind of pool of dog consciousness, all mixed up into one, big, undifferentiated vat of DOG.

We human beings deplore the idea that we have no personal consciousness; indeed, it is a frightening, but not-impossible- to-believe thought, that I, myself, might some day disappear into an inarticulate vat of MAN GOO. Jesus has assured us that this will NOT happen, if we believe on Him. How so? Perhaps it is this: that Jesus' ceremonial sacrifice created the possibility that human beings might become individuated-- that Jesus' sponsorship of the world, made it so that all the followers who shared in His Christ-Consciousness, could, vicariously, (and eventually), come to share in His God-Consciousness: thus, making it possible for them to live out their future spiritual lives, on Earth and in Heaven, with the same static identity, the same personal quality, the same memories, the same distinctly articulated essence. This MIGHT be the precise meaning of the word "salvation": that, through Grace, we are allowed to continue to exist as a discrete focus of God-Consciousness, instead of returning to the fiery pit of chaos. To imagine that, before Jesus, all human souls disappeared, at their end, into an indiscriminate void, is the most frightening image of death I can think of; the thought of losing my individuality sends waves of panic down through my entire frame. And yet, with this terror looming before them, we suspect that nonbelievers, the people who choose not  to call on Jesus, are condemning themselves to an eternal anonymity. Perhaps His sponsorship is the only passport to Eternity? Something of this is touched on in the passage taken from the Gospel of Judas, below:

"The next morning, after this happened, Jesus appeared to his disciples again. They said to him,

“Master, where did you go and what did you do when you left us?”

Jesus said to them,

“I went to another great and holy generation.”

His disciples said to him,

“Lord, what is the great generation that is superior to us and holier than us, that is not now in these realms?”

When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to them,

“Why are you thinking in your hearts about the strong and holy generation? Truly I say to you, no one born of this aeon will see that generation, and no host of angels of the stars will rule over that generation, and no person of mortal birth can associate with it.”

When his disciples heard this, they each were troubled in spirit. They could not say a word.

Another day Jesus came up to them. They said to him,

“Master, we have seen you in a vision, for we have had great dreams in the night. We have seen a great house with a large altar in it, and twelve men—they are the priests, we would say—and a name; and a crowd of people is waiting at that altar, until the priests receive the offerings. But we kept waiting.”

[Sidebar: The dream goes on to describe a group of men committing obscene and immoral acts, killing their own children and wives and whatnot. Jesus tells the disciples that this group of men in the dream represent the lower minds in themselves; this upsets the disciples, but then He refers to the appearance of the generation of stars, finally saying:

“Stop struggling with me. Each of you has his own star."

We are heading toward a most important point: as mentioned above:

"To imagine that, before Jesus, all human souls disappeared, at their end, into an indiscriminate void, is the most frightening image of death I can think of; the thought of losing my individuality sends waves of panic down through my entire frame. And yet, with this terror looming before them, it may be that the nonbelievers, the ones who do not call on the aid of Jesus, are condemning themselves to an eternal anonymity."

We must accept the possibility that, as unfair as it sounds, before the coming of Jesus, generations of men walked the earth and then simply ceased to exist when their bodies died. Even Moses. Is there any other interpretation? Is there a Pre-Jesus/Post-Jesus quality of soul? Perhaps our definition of "existence" is too narrow? As we will read below, an important component of Jesus' Cosmography is "hierarchy". Jesus flatly states that some of these disciples will not be permitted to enter the House of God which they have seen in their vision,  (apparently, Judas will), but that doesn't mean they will not be accepted SOMEWHERE ELSE. The final sentences of Jesus' interpretation of the dream are a very strong indicator of the idea that there is a celestial hierarchy. It also begins with an affirmation of Grace over GoodWorks:]

“Stop sacrificing over the altar, since they are over, your stars and your angels, and have already come to their conclusion there."

[Sidebar: that sounds like pre-destination to me.]

"So let them be ensnared before you, and let them go. A baker cannot feed all creation under heaven."

Jesus said to them,

“Stop struggling with me. Each of you has his own star, and everybody who has sprung from the tree of this aeon. The Son of Man is here for a short time: He has come to water God’s paradise, and the generation that will last."

[Sidebar: Let me read that again, it is such a happy thought that Jesus has come to tend the Garden, and plant the seeds of OUR immortality:]

"The Son of Man is here for a short time: He has come to water God’s paradise, and the generation that will last, because He will not defile the walk of life of that generation, but will live for all eternity.”

[Sidebar: I have spoken many times about the many different levels of consciousness in which God and Man may manifest; in this regard, Jesus' interpretation of the disciples' dream, about seeing but not being allowed to enter the ultimate house of God, means that, because of their various sins, they fall short of attaining entry, but they might possibly attain this consciousness level later down the road of spiritual evolution. Thus, rather than the idea that Judas is, exclusively, made privy to an ultimate state of consciousness while the other disciples are not, I rather think it is more likely that the text means this: certain spiritual levels attract certain spiritual identities and not others, such that, far from being the single saved disciple of the twelve, Judas simply happens to be the first to ascend to a higher level in the hierarchy, (of which there are many more levels), while the other eleven disciples temporarily remain below, harboring the hope that they may someday rise to some of those higher levels--that is to say the generation of stars.

Now on to another passage, from the Gospel of Judas, which clearly represents a blending of the pantheism of Gnosticism with true Christianity:

THE SPIRIT AND THE SELF -GENERATED

"Jesus said, “Come, that I may teach you about secrets no person has ever seen. For there exists a great and boundless realm, whose extent no generation of angels has seen, in which there is a great invisible Spirit, which no eye of an angel has ever seen, no thought of the heart has ever comprehended, and it was never called by any name.

“And a luminous cloud appeared there. He said, ‘Let an angel come into being as my attendant.’

“A great angel, the enlightened divine Self-Generated, emerged from the cloud. Because of him, four other angels came into being from another cloud, and they became attendants for the angelic Self-Generated. The Self-Generated said, ‘Let him come into being,’ and he came into being."

[Sidebar: I find the numerous ramifications of the term "self-generated" to be quite tantalizing. Clearly, in a pantheistic world, God-in-everything would certainly manifest in a self-generated entity. However, there are two parts to this expression: the "generated" part, and the "self" part. SELF-GENERATED. Again, for the past few weeks, I have been making a distinction between purely Jesus-based Christianity, and the Gnostic Christianity: this distinction concerns the issue of the Person of God. The pantheistic aspect of Gnostic philosophy attributes a God-Consciousness to all things--but Christianity brings to humanity the Personality of God, through Jesus the Christ. To be sure, only a bogus quality of God-consciousness can possibly manifest in the physical, because this focus of consciousness MUST be compromised by physical limitations; and yet, the miracle of the Christ consciousness, the Word Incarnate, is that, so limited by carnal illusion, it is still imbued with an infinite range of dynamic and spiritually transforming possibilities. The Person of the Christ is the dimension of God-Consciousness which is able to become human, address the human, and transform the human. Again, Jesus has always been seen as a mediator: a mediator between the unfathomable Person of God and the fathomable Person of God.

Back to Judas:]

"And he created the first luminary to reign over him. He said, ‘Let angels come into being to serve him,’ and myriads without number came into being. He said, ‘Let an enlightened aeon come into being,’ and he came into being. He created the second luminary to reign over him, together with myriads of angels without number, to offer service."

[Sidebar: It is of some interest that: several times in this section the expression "without number" is used. This expression calls to mind the distinction we have previously made between the terms "everlasting" and "eternal". Remember that "everlasting" refers to a sequence of time moments which are numberless, and which must therefore be considered to be infinite, whereas, the "eternal" moment is an infinity outside time.  It is interesting to me how many subtle shades, gradations, and modes of time there are.

Indeed, of central importance, when comparing the Gnostic gospels with the Synoptic Gospels, is the cosmic view of the Primitive Universe compared to the somehow CIVILIZED view of the Christian Universe. As we know, the Nicene priests exerted their own prejudices in choosing the gospels that they chose to accept, and rejecting the gospels they chose to reject. But the fact that the early church fathers had a problem with magic, doesn't mean there is no longer any magic in the world. The Gnostic Gospels remind us that there is a mystery out there beyond all mysteries, and this mystery has many faces.

Back to Judas:]

"ADAMAS AND THE LUMINARIES
“Adamas was in the first luminous cloud that no angel has ever seen among all those called ‘God.’ He created the image of Man after the likeness of this angel. He made the incorruptible generation of Seth appear."

[Sidebar: I have always been curious about this mention of Seth. I looked it up in Wikipedia, and found a connection between Seth and the Gnostics:

"The Sethians were a Christian Gnostic sect who may date their existence to before Christianity. Their influence spread throughout the Mediterranean into the later systems of the Basilideans and the Valentinians. Their thinking, though it is predominantly Judaic in foundation, is arguably strongly influenced by Platonism. Sethians are so called for their veneration of the biblical Seth, who is depicted in their myths of creation as a divine incarnation; consequently, the offspring or 'posterity' of Seth are held to comprise a superior elect within human society."

I mention this because, in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus clearly indicates that certain races of human beings are superior to other races; the Sethians considered themselves to be direct descendants of the third, most righteous Son of Adam, and therefore the most viable candidates for celestial ascendancy.

Back to Judas on the subject of hierarchy:]

"He made seventy-two luminaries appear in the incorruptible generation, in accordance with the will of the Spirit. The seventy-two luminaries themselves made three hundred sixty luminaries appear in the incorruptible generation, in accordance with the will of the Spirit, that their number should be five for each.

“The twelve aeons of the twelve luminaries constitute their father, with six heavens for each aeon, so that there are seventy-two heavens for the seventy-two luminaries, and for each of them five firmaments, for a total of three hundred sixty firmaments. They were given authority and a great host of angels without number, for glory and adoration, and after that also virgin spirits, for glory and adoration of all the aeons and the heavens and their firmaments."

This section is very biblical, in its use of all sorts of numbers in groups of hierarchical orders, and its use of numerical proportions; it's like the "begats", or the dimensions, in cubits, of an Arc, for instance. It sounds like a rewrite of an earlier Old Testament text. Again, with the Gnostic Gospels, we encounter of phase of history where an old tradition is meeting a new tradition, and, there, morphing into a new consciousness. Knowing, as we do, that the Gospel of Judas is written by a Gnostic author, (certainly not by Judas himself), it is very reasonable to suggest that this Gnostic writer might be quoting some earlier theology from an earlier book; in fact, he might possibly be quoting an Old Testament writer whose work would have been retained only by oral tradition--written down for the first time in the Gospel of Judas. It's just a thought.

My Favorite part is Judas' vision of his own martyrdom:

3: Judas recounts a vision and Jesus responds:

"Judas said,

“Master, as you have listened to all of them, now also listen to me. For I have seen a great vision.”

When Jesus heard this, he laughed and said to him,

“You thirteenth spirit, why do you
try so hard? But speak up, and I shall bear with you.”

Judas said to him,

“In the vision I saw myself as the twelve disciples were stoning me and persecuting me severely. And I also came to the place where following after you. I saw a house, and my eyes could not comprehend its size. Great people were surrounding it, and that house had a roof of greenery, and in the middle of the house was a crowd of men, and I turned to you saying,

‘Master, take me in along with these
people.’”

Jesus answered and said,

“Judas, your star has led you astray.”

He continued,

“No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen, for that place is reserved for the holy. Neither the sun nor the moon will rule there, nor the day, but the holy will abide there always, in the eternal realm with the holy angels. Look, I have explained to you the mysteries of the kingdom and I have taught you about the error of the stars; and of the twelve aeons.”

[Sidebar: It is charming how we get the feeling that Judas has merely followed along behind his master into Heaven, and then Jesus turns around and sees him standing there. Nevertheless, Jesus must reiterate to Judas what He had previously told the other eleven: that entry into that great heavenly house is forbidden (even though, later, it turns out that Judas actually does end up entering  that great house). Also of interest is Jesus' curious remark about "the error of the stars". It is tempting to get involved in the various possible interpretations of this, but I think I will go with the idea that spiritual evolution is outside time, and is therefore unaffected by the "sun nor the moon". This, then, leaves the door wide open to all sorts of developments in spiritual time which have no precedent in physical time. Thus, the possibility of upward or downward mobility on the spiritual ladder is introduced, in mythological time, well ahead of Jacob and his vision at Bethel.

I'm not sure what interests me more, the idea of Judas being stoned by the Eleven, or his vision of the heavenly house. Many of the abstrusely sinister remarks Jesus makes in all the Gospels, (about how it would be better if Judas had never been born, for instance), are made bright as day when the ultimate fate of Judas is factored into the narrative. On the other hand, the description of the heavenly house, so similar to the house in the dream of the Eleven, (possibly on the same night?), has much to say about the role of Jesus as savior, meanwhile offering a possible description of the spiritual structure of the Universe. The next section brings these two issues together when Judas asks about his own future:

JUDAS ASKS ABOUT HIS OWN FATE
"Judas said,
“Master, could it be that my seed is under the control of the rulers?”

[Sidebar: The "rulers" mentioned earlier in the text, to whit:

THE RULERS AND ANGELS
“The twelve rulers spoke with the twelve angels: ‘Let each of you bring forth a new generation of angels’:
The first is Seth, who is called Christ.
The second is Harmathoth.
The third is Galila.
The fourth is Yobel.
The fifth is Adonaios.
These are the five who ruled over the underworld, and first of all over chaos."

So, by inquiring about the "rulers" Judas is, in a way, asking about his fate, and ultimately about his subjection to the rule, not only of a choir of angels, but of the stars:

Back to Judas:

"Jesus answered and said to him,

“You will grieve much when you see the kingdom and all its generation.”

When he heard this, Judas said to him,

“What good is it that I have received it? For
you have set me apart for that generation.”

Jesus answered and said,

“You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations—and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the holy generation.”

In this last sentence, Jesus is clearly prophesying the ascent of Judas into the ranks of the "holy generation". It is worth noting that, in spite of the simple message of "love thy neighbor", there is a mind-boggling complexity of cosmic structure described by Jesus in this gospel. There is nothing democratic about this heavenly hierarchy. Grace and Karma battle for supremacy as the prime mover of all things, and the Jesus of the Gospel of Judas does not give us any simple answers. Nevertheless, there is one absolute truth we MUST glean from this book: that spiritual progress is a process that takes place on many levels of consciousness, and in many modes of time. With this in mind, I will close with this insight that came to me while I was studying this gospel:

I have always defined love as "the connection between people". I have recently come to the realization that Love is not the connection between people, it is the process of discovering the connection between people. And without Jesus in our corner, we could never participate in that process.

Let us pray: Jesus thank you for the knowledge that passionate people have passed down to us. Thank you for the knowledge that has been gathered from the truth of history, and thank you for the truth of the heart, which transforms the greatest history into myth. Amen.