The lost Gospel according to Thomas, discovered "by accident" in an Egyptian cave in 1945, couldn't have appeared at a more opportune moment in history, or with a message that speaks more directly to our condition and needs. In this early apocryphal Christian text, the living voice of Jesus comes down to us directly, bypassing all that men have been saying about him and doing in his name. It comes across distinctly, high above the confused roar of two millennia of Christendom, so-called. It's as if he himself had planted this beneficent time bomb in the cave at Nag Hammadi, carefully setting the fuse to delay its explosion till the world would be ready for the impact. It's as if, so tragically far ahead of his own time, he knew when significant numbers of quite ordinary men and women (as distinct from highly specialized and disciplined saints and sages and seers) would at last be capable of catching up with his vision of the Light, his experience of what he calls the Kingdom.
* I can't do better than begin by citing a number of the typical sayings, or logia, from this Gospel:
* Let him who seeks not cease till he finds. And when he finds he will be astonished, and when he is astonished he will marvel, and will be king over all.
* You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you don't know what's where you are. And you ignore the present moment.
* The old man will not hesitate to ask the infant of seven days about the place of life, and he will live.
* The heavens will fold and the earth before your eyes, but he who lives from the One will experience neither death nor fear.
* Many stand before the door, but it is the Alone who enters the bridechamber.
* I am the Light which is over everything. I am the All. From me the All has gone forth, and to me the All has returned. Split the wood and I am there. Lift the stone and you will find me.
* He who knows everything except himself, lacks everything.
* We come from the Light, from the place where the Light comes into existence through itself alone.
* I stood in the middle of the world and I appeared to them in the flesh. I found them all drunk. I found none that were thirsty. And my soul was troubled for the children of men, for they are blind in their hearts, and they do not see that they came empty into the world.
* There is a Light in the Light-man and it lights up the whole world.
This fifth Gospel, or God-spell, is very different from the four canonical Gospels. It is a collection of the sayings or logia of Jesus, some of which echo his sayings in the other gospels, and some of which are unique to Thomas. It contains no miracles or tall stories, no walkings on the water; no raisings from the dead, no immaculate conceptions or ascensions into heaven or descents into hell: nothing at all to strain our credulity. Certainly it's a later compilation than the canonical four. Nevertheless some scholars believe it may draw on earlier sources than they do, and therefore offers us what might be called a de-mythologized Jesus. Be that as it may, the question before us now is the value and truth of these sayings, no matter how authentic they are historically, how far they are the words of Jesus, or of his followers and interpreters.
The Gospel begins with a warning, a challenge, and a huge promise. The warning is that these sayings of Jesus aren't just for reading. There's work to do on them. Their significance doesn't lie on their surface, their secret has to be dug into and exposed. The challenge is to persist in this work till the secret meaning is secret no longer, but obvious. And the reward for making this discovery is nothing less than eternal life and kingship.
Thus encouraged let's get down to work at once. If we are in earnest about it we are at once faced with some practical questions about how to proceed -- questions of where, and how, and what. Exactly where are we to look for this good news, this treasure of treasures of treasures? Exactly how shall we seek it, in what spirit shall we address this most promising of searches? By what marks shall we recognize it when we have found it?
Happily our Gospel itself answers these procedural questions for us. It hands us a great bunch of keys for unlocking the treasury.
First take the question of where the saving truth, the secret of secrets, is to be found. The answer leaves no room for doubt. The kingdom -- the place of Life, of Knowledge, of Rest -- isn't above or beyond or beneath. It is within. It is right where I am at this present moment, nearer to me than myself, than anything else. It is the Home I never really left, the focus and midpoint of what is at once my world and the world, forever here and never there. Which can only mean that all books -- including of course the one you are now reading, and indeed the Gospel of Thomas itself -- are literally beside the point by some 12 inches. Out there, they are of no value except as pointers to their Reader, to the one who is zero inches from himself or herself. In effect, Jesus insists that you turn your attention round 180 degrees and simultaneously look at what you are looking out of and what you are looking at. It's as simple as that, and as easy as winking, if only we will cease pretending it's complicated and difficult and reserved for very special people. Whoever you are and just as you are, it is here, and here alone, that you will find the Pearl, the buried Treasure, the Deathless, the Kingship that is your very own. Here at the Center, you are the key, you are the secret of these sayings of Jesus.
The second question that our Gospel poses is how we are to go about looking for the Treasure. In what manner and what spirit shall we undertake this great work that is really so effortless, if we are to succeed? Again, our text is quite definite. We must come to this adventure with inspired naiveté, in the direct and accepting spirit of a child, even of an infant. The Kingdom is invisible to grown-ups, as such. We have to be unprejudiced and attentive enough to set aside what we think we know and start looking all over again, as if we had never looked before, and trusting what we find. In this investigation our learning, our belief systems, our religious formulae, our common sense (so-called), our tangled web of opinions -- all these are so many layers of a cataract blinding us to what is quite obvious to the clear eye of the young child. In other words, what we have to do is set up shop trading concepts for precepts, and make our fortune.
The third question asks what exactly it is that we are seeking. How shall we recognize this Kingdom when we come to its frontier? How shall we be sure it's our Homeland? What is the climate, the distinctive topography, or this Promised Land? By what signs shall we know that we have unearthed the real secret of Thomas, not just some notion we have of it? Well, the clues -- metaphors and similes and straight descriptions -- scattered throughout our text are plentiful, varied, homely, telling, and often beautiful. This Dear Country of ours, our native Land, is a place of paradox and profound mystery, yet its air is clearer than broad daylight, and broader than the widest sky. According to Thomas it is empty yet full of the All. Empty for filling with whatever happens to be on offer, we might say. It is where the opposites -- inside and outside, up and down, male and female (to name but a few) -- come together and are one and the same. Here is the One not born of woman, whom no eye sees or ear hears or hand touches. Here is the Being of all beings, that remains when all beings pass away. Here is the Stillness in which all moves are made. Here is the Light within the Light-man that lights up the whole world. Thus speaks the Jesus for our time.
And now you and I know precisely where to look, and precisely how to look, and precisely what we are looking for, there's only one thing left to do -- and that's to LOOK. You look for your Self, I look for my Self, as if for the very first time. Yes, please do so at this very moment, without putting this book down. Dare to look at the very spot you occupy and see whether it is in fact occupied -- stuffed full of anatomy -- or, as Jesus says, empty. Empty, just now, for these printed words. Why not stop being eccentric and out on a limb -- to say nothing of out to lunch? Why not be where you alone are and where you are Alone, the sole discoverer of and the sole expert on and the sole resident in this Place of places? The solitary Columbus of this Ever-new-World -- the Kingdom Within, your kingdom?
Jesus had a rough passage. It was no joke to be so ahead of his time and place. How can we make amends? I remember a couple of lines of a hymn we used to sing as small children:
What can we do for Jesus' sake,
Who is so high and good and great?
Well, there's one thing we adults can do right away, so that his labor and agony shall not be in vain, and that is -- not to believe this teaching of his in Thomas, but to test it, sincerely verifying (and falsifying) the scriptures by our experience instead of our experience by the scriptures. For instance, he tells us:
If those who guide you say to you
"Lo, the Kingdom is in heaven,"
Then the birds of heaven will get there before you.
If they say to you
"It is in the sea,"
Then the fish will get there before you.
But the Kingdom is within you.
Dear Reader, if not for the love of Jesus then out of respect for him, or out of interest in what he alleges you really are, or at least out of a blend of courtesy and curiosity, look and see if he knows what he's talking about. Put his words to the test by carrying out the following simple experiment. Just reading my words is worse than useless.
Point up to the sky now and perhaps birds flying. Or, if you are indoors, point up to the ceiling, and observe that your finger is pointing at something or other, and certainly not at the emptiness which is the Kingdom. Next, point outwards to those hills and trees and houses, or at the wall and door and furniture on the opposite side of the room, and notice that you are pointing at a collection of distant objects. Next, point at the ground or the floor. And then, slowly and with great attention, at your feet, then your lap, then your trunk, and note how in every case this thing you call your finger is indicating another thing, and there's a distance between them. And certainly, once more, the Kingdom is neither a thing nor distant from anything: on the contrary, it's all-inclusive. Finally, point to your "face." Now what, on present evidence, is that finger pointing at?
Is it pointing at a smallish, opaque, colored, textured, moving, complex, clearly outlined thing? Or, at an Emptiness which, though packed with all classes of things and qualities, is in a class by itself, is quite unique? Look for yourself! Isn't it immense, transparent, colorless and textureless, still, simple, plain in both senses -- and keenly aware of itself as all this? Going by what's given, dropping imagination, importing into the situation nothing foreign to it, are you not at this moment Capacity or Space for the whole scene, from sky to Earth, from Earth to feet, from feet to neckline -- Aware Space for it all to happen in? I'm in no position to tell you what it's like being you at this moment. Only you can say. Please go on looking at what that finger is pointing at, and make up your mind on this essential subject -- which is yourself as Subject -- once and for all.
Surely the good news is true,,, and the Kingdom is indeed within you.
In another Logion of our Gospel, Jesus sadly complains that humans are drunk, are so blind drunk that they can't see their Emptiness. You and I, at least, have sobered up enough now to notice that we don't live inside small, tightly packed boxes, peeking out of the dark and sticky interior through two tiny holes at a distant world. No, we are out, out and about, up and away. Clearly we see how wide open we are, openness itself, at large, huge, extending right up to and embracing the Sun and stars. How refreshing, how liberating it is to be a small lit-up thing no longer; but instead the Light that lights all the things in the world. And this shining Immensity that you really are -- how could this be born of any earthly mother; or (for that matter) be born at all? Is this the sort of thing that any funeral director could handle, or that requires his services? You who consider such questions are their answer: You know, you see, you are the secret of the Gospel of Thomas. Baffling you and me with no fairy tales, going easy on religious controversy and pious propaganda, it demands that we take nothing on trust. But try it out, and at once it makes perfect sense. It lays bare our splendor; and shows us how to live.
Running counter to the resurgence of fundamentalism (what a misnomer!) and superstition of every kind, a great simplification is going on. It is a movement away from the outward forms of religion -- from their magical observances, their dogmas as incredible as they are ingenious (but still cruelly divisive), from massive ecclesiastical machinery creaking and stalling -- a movement, away from all this obfuscation, towards the beatific vision that lurks at the core of the great religious traditions, towards the simple, patient, strongly beating heart of them all. Here is a transparently honest and antisectarian spirituality founded on direct experience instead of dogma and hearsay.
I suggest that it's no accident that the cave in Nag Hammadi held onto its treasure for some seventeen hundred years, and only gave it up when men and women had -- in sufficient numbers to change history -- become skeptical and sober enough to crack its secret code, revealing what is, after all, perfectly obvious. In any case, thanks partly to the Jesus of Thomas, it's becoming more and more difficult to deny that we are the very opposite of the little, opaque, unluminous perishers we appear to be.
The cat is out of the bag. The saving truth is the most open of secrets. The Kingdom has come, and the people are beginning to notice it.
