I know, I was there!

That was the phrase Gen. George S. Patton frequently wrote in the margins of his books, when he had a comment about a historical battle, of which he had particularly vivid past-life recall. (see Carlo d'Este, Patton, a Genius for War)  Increasingly it feels to me as if the Thomas gospel may be evocative of those kinds of memories for lots of people. Somehow these little sayings, particularly in the form of the compact kernel Pursah has given us through Gary Renard's work, have an effect that reminds me of the passage "The Forgotten Song," in the Course.

Listen,–perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you.
(ACIM:T-21.I.6)

It appears to me that while there can be some initial getting used to process, because some of the imagery is evocative of Palestine 2000 years ago, in the end it appears that the very sparseness of detail evokes a recognition of what Jesus might have sounded like, which by far transcends the particulars of the time and place. To the extent that we can just learn to listen to these statements, Pursah's words  in The Disappearance of the Universe may gain some poignancy, for in her introduction of this material, she lays much emphasis on that her rendering of these statements are what Jesus really sounded like, except that he would have said them in Aramaic.

I have already reflected in an earlier note here on a growth process with this material which I have begun to observe in my workshop and with people who collaborated on the book with me. There comes a time when the strangeness wears off, and the familiarity comes back, and with it the possibility of our holographic reality may seem more present also, for the deep recognition that seems to reach across the ages in reality has naught to do with history or a historical Jesus, but with a letting go of fear, when we can let something come close to us which once seemed distant and far away. Allowing ourselves to bring far away times and places close to us in a somewhat meditative state can be very helpful, and puts us in a position to begin to appreciate the whole story of Jesus on a more personal level. Particularly also, we can see a reflection of our own struggles with the teachings of the Course, by seeing the apostles as our brothers, and recognizing in their stumbling and fumbling, and continued failures in faith and trust and their misunderstandings of Jesus. One of the central points of the Course is that we need to come up to Jesus's level, we need to bring our problems to the answer, not to compromise the answer by making our problems good and real, this is what he means with following him, this is what he means with the idea that the Kingdom is not of this earth.

And so, letting Jesus's voice ring out across the ages from the sayings in the Thomas gospel, and allowing our mind to travel to Palestine, 2000 years ago essentially involves a letting go of fear, in which the initial seeming strangeness of his expressions can flow into an awareness of living presence, and letting ourselves be with him there and then, becomes the same as letting his presence be with us here and now, as our memory of him newly comes to life. Surely that is the real meaning of the story of the Last Supper-"Do this in the remembrance of me." In the Course he says it thusly:

(7) The injunction "Be of one mind" is the statement for revelation-readiness. My request "Do this in remembrance of me" is the appeal for cooperation from miracle workers.  The two statements are not in the same order of reality. Only the latter involves an awareness of time, since to remember is to recall the past in the present. Time is under my direction, but timelessness belongs to God. In time we exist for and with each other. In timelessness we coexist with God. (ACIM: T-2.V.A.17)