The Book of Andrew and docetism 21st century style.

An interesting new addition to the modern Jesus literature, connected to A Course in Miracles, has arrived on the scene. The full title is The Book of Andrew: A Past-Life Memoir, by Charles Cale Lehman, edited for print by Bruce Gregory. The interesting details include that Charles Lehman was at one time the partner of Bill Thetford, who with Helen Schucman was responsible for the recording of the Course. Later Bill Thetford and he remained life-long friends. As a child Charles sometimes said his name was Andrew, and when Ken Wapnick met him in the seventies, he had a visionary experience--uncommon for him--of seeing the name "Andrew" on his forehead. Bruce Gregory is a regression therapist, who was recommended to Lehman by Bill Thetford, and who was instrumental in guiding the regressions that ultimately led to the material for this book.

The book is a joy to read, and it is very consistent in content with A Course in Miracles, and in as much as it pertains to Lehman's past life memories of his lifetime as Andrew, a disciple of Jesus, at the same time it reminds me of the docetic paradox in writings such as the Acts of John, which have traditionally befuddled the Christian Church because it thought Jesus was the character in Palestine whose story was reported by Peter and Paul, to the notable exclusion of many of the other apostles. There are interesting discrepancies in the form of the story, which make it clear once again that individual people experience Jesus differently.

Jesus is a what that looks like a who, as long as you think you're a who
That is one of my favorite sayings of Ken Wapnick. It makes the point that we experience Jesus as a person, and we tend to think of him as someone we would recognize. Helen had a dream at one point in which Jesus figured, and she later asked Jesus how come he looked like Bill, and Jesus answered her: "Who else would I look like?" Clearly, Helen's mind was learning to see the face of Christ in all her brothers. Another similar experience was her subway experience. In the acts of John we have the accounts of different apostles all comparing notes and realizing they experience Jesus (post resurrection) in totally different ways. And now, in the form of the Book of Andrew, we have a modern memoir, a past-life recollection of Jesus, and some of the other apostles, which clearly differs from another account that still stands within the Course tradition, namely Gary Renard's Disappearance of the Universe trilogy. Gary's Judas is a drunk, and a very different character from what is described in the Book of Andrew, although Jesus reaffirms in both that Judas is a brother and a Son of God, and thus Jesus stays remarkably true to his Course, as Gary might quip. Mary Magdalen is not in evidence in the account in the Book of Andrew, and the apostle John shows up in a more traditional role as the favorite disciple. In other areas the two books confirm each other. In short, Charles Lehman and Gary Renard differ on the details, though both accounts are consistent in content with the teachings of Jesus as we learn them in the Course.

An interesting twist in the Book of Andrew is that Jesus tells Andrew he would have to write things down later, because Peter and Paul would distort his teachings, which is of course exactly what happened. It is called Christianity. Much like the Buddha was a Hindu, Jesus was a Jew, and neither one ever intended to instigate yet another religion, because they very much recognized that the truth is one. But for the ego, that's too simple, and it always wants to see truth as exclusive not inclusive. Yet Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna were all evidently teachers of a non-dualistic reality that transcends all worldly specifics, for the simple reason that only truth is true and everything else is of necessity a lie, so that any teachings that would proceed from separation and differences would necessarily be untrue. The problem always is that we have to grow up to embrace truth, we have to climb the mountain to get to the level of Jesus, Buddha or Krishna, instead of dragging them into this world to fix our self-created problems for us. If they were to do so, they would merely attest to the reality of problems designed to prove the ego right and them wrong. But Jesus taught his disciples to leave their familiar patterns behind and follow him where he was going.

Familiarity and remembrance
Reading a book like The Book of Andrew, or Gary Renard's Disappearance of the Universe trilogy is not about them learning to hear the voice of Jesus, but about us doing so. The only reason we recognize the voice of Jesus, when we do, without any hesitation is because it is totally authentic, namely because it is the voice of who and what we really are in truth. The more we recognize that, the easier we will let go of our ego, because that scratchy voice is completely false, fake, and not at all who we are. As long as we are identified with our ego, we will feel like we are here, and yet at the same time we will feel shut out, alone and like a stranger, the authenticity of the voice of our inner teacher draws us towards the truth and the love which is what we really are in truth, and in realizing that the world will lose all grip on us and fade away, even while we may still appear to be here for a while.

A Course in Miracles and Christianity: A Dialogue

This little book is practically a classic already: Course in Miracles and Christianity: A Dialogue


A Course in Miracles periodically gives rise to confusion if its use of language is mistaken for Christian. It is not, in the same way that Jesus was not a Christian in the narrow sense, because Christianity was not conceived by him or even during his lifetime, but is an interpretation of him by others who came after him.

A certain amount of confusion has occurred from time to time when statements from the Course get mixed in with Biblical quotes, without clarifying the different context. This books seeks to address this issue, and clear up the confusion by clarifying the profound differences between traditional Christianity and the teachings of the Course. What makes it so valuable, is that the format is one of a dialogue between friends, who obviously mutually respect each other, and undertook this conversation purely to be of service to others, since the evident potential for confusion helps nobody.

However, it would be a mistake to think this book is only for Christians trying to make up their mind about A Course in Miracles. The fact remains that throughout Western culture, we are imbued with the history of Christianity, and the image of Jesus and his death on the cross is ingrained, even if for some that very image, and the presence of suffering in the world, may be part of the reason they rejected the teachings, and became atheists, such as is the case in our day and age with Bart D. Ehrman. The concept of the creator force is the same if we call it God, or Nature, or Evolution. It is the concept where the cause of our life experiences is external to us, and life "happens" to us. Along with this world concept of individual existence and a separate reality, the belief in sacrifice is completely ingrained in the ego's belief system. It is the difference between regarding the universe and the world as an objective, tangible reality, or as "maya," or illusion, a dreamworld caused by the mind, in which we are hoist on our own petard as long as we take that first cause - what the Course calls the "tiny, mad idea" of separation - seriously, but which can also be undone, by learning not to take it seriously any longer, through forgiveness.

A perfect example of taking things seriously is Christianity in all its forms, starting with its redaction of the Bible, and bombarding it into a Holy Book, after selecting just those books that are supportive of the Christian dogma, and discarding, if not burning, the rest. For the purpose of the discussion in this book then, "the Bible" is seen as the instrument of that Christian dogma, and of mostly taking the stories of the Bible quite literally, and granting it a sometimes problematic coherence by regarding it as the Word of God. Outside of the Christian context the Bible could obviously be read in different ways, as is suggested numerous times in the Course itself, a possibility which is also cited in the introduction to this dialogue. Taken at its face value as Christianity does, the Bible is as solid as Newtonian physics, and unreservedly dualistic, granting the physical world reality by declaring that it was created by God. Everything more or less follows from that.

The dialogue in this book represents a very fair and balanced presentation of the differences between this traditional Christian view of the world, which so much permeates the Western world, and the very different view point of A Course in Miracles. The categories which are discussed are basic, and quite conclusive:

• The origin of the world: God created it (Christianity), vs. it's an illusion, a dreamworld projected on the basis of the tiny mad idea of the separation (Course).
• Jesus: Exclusive, and different from us as literally God's only son - the Christ (Christiantiy), or inclusive and same as us, but first to remember Who we really are in truth, and teaching us how we can learn the same thing, in awakening to the Christ Mind where the sonship remembers its oneness. (Course). 
• Crucifixion: Purposely suffered and died sacrificially in an act of vicarious salvation (Christianity), or did not perceive the attack because he knew he was not his body, and did not suffer, but taught only Love and forgiveness (Course);
• Resurrection: Bodily resurrection after the crucifixion (Christiantiy), and the resurrection came before the crucifixion in the form of awakening from the dream and remembering who he was, and doing so before us, so he can now help us, as our older brother and teacher to lead us home (Course). 
• Eucharist: The believers share in Jesus' vicarious sacrifice of his death on the cross, by symbolically partaking of the wine and wafer transmuted into his flesh and blood (Christian), or his followers share in his spirit, celebrating his presence to them in the mind as a demonstration that he did not die, but is alive in them (Course)
• Living in the world: This of course is where the rubber meets the road, and - (very) loosely paraphrasing the book here the alternatives look like:
• Christian style: Jesus, the Word become flesh, God's only son, who suffers and dies for our sins on the cross, and seven days later ascends and goes to Heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father. He leaves us, the adopted children, with the promise that if we lead good and moral lives in this earth, and present our book with green stamps (good deeds), much like the S&H Green Stamps of old, at the gates, we may join him in Heaven after death, when the tally is made up for a game in which salvation can be won or lost based on making meaningful moral choices of free will. Thus our "stamps" are credits towards a hoped for future redemption. Temptation in this model is the doing of evil deeds on this moral field of experience;
• Course style: Jesus as the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, who went before us as our older brother, remembering the way home before we did, who awakened to his true Identity so that he did not suffer when the world crucified his body, but instead only forgave, demonstrating (teaching) only love, for that is what he is and what we are, and who constantly reminds us that in making the same choice with him, and joining with him in the atonement, we are making the choice of hell or heaven in real time.
  The HS Green Stamps (Holy Spirit Green Stamps) in this case are not meritorious deeds collected towards a future stay with Jesus in the balcony seats of Heaven, but rather miracles - a Holy Instant, a momentary view from the balcony seat with Jesus. While we are still too afraid to choose them permanently, the miracle is our experiential confirmation of what it feels like to choose Him as our teacher over the false authority usurped by our jailer, the ego. When at last we become clear that our only fight is with ourselves and not with an angry God who opposes us, and that we only put the jailer in business by continuing to vote him in office, then we are free to learn how every miracle lessens our allegiance until we finally change our vote and join with Jesus in the atonement. We learn to "teach only love" with him, as we accept his love for ourselves. On this path then, our deeds will become more and more loving as we progress in choosing only Jesus as our teacher and guide, but the choices between A, B, or C in the world are seen as only a distraction, and literally a temptation to solve on the physical level what can only be solved by changing our mind ("metanoia" was the N.T. Greek expression for that). Thus in this model the choices are between heaven and hell, freedom and imprisonment, and we experience it as the ability to shift our allegiance from the ego and its separation thoughts, to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, in a joining with Who and What we really are in truth - spirit, and an integral part of the Sonship.
  This life now is a growth path towards spiritual adulthood, by shifting from a teacher of scarcity, slavery and imprisonment, suffering and death (the ego), towards listening to the Voice for God, who is ever present to us within (the promise of the Eucharist), never mind how much we bury him under the worldly drama. He remains the ever present Alternative, the Other Choice. In this model the world simply loses its hold on us, as we choose for freedom. Thus Jesus' living presence to us in the now, is restored to us by our choices, until we fully realize we really are him, for the illusion of a separate free will was the cause of our suffering and pain, and giving that up is no sacrifice at all. Free will then is the freedom to choose the Love of God, in lieu of the incarceration of the ego.
• N.B. This paraphrasing was very liberal indeed - I made up the whole thing about the green stamps, but hopefully it serves as an illustration. I could also add that in the Christian tradition "taking up our cross,"  has been understood as following in Jesus'  footsteps as the suffering servant, in the mold of the passages in Isaiah which describe this. In the Course, "taking up our cross," would refer to taking responsibility for the fact that we chose the ego and crucifixion, simply because we cannot undo the choice until we first take responsibility for it, and recognize we made it in the first place. This willingness to see that we made the wrong choice and would now make another one is what the Course calls the " little willingness," which opens the gate for us to make another choice now.

In short, it becomes very clear in this book why mixing the two models arbitrarily really does not help anybody, because it muddies up either thought system. This little book is extremely helpful in clarifying the issues in a very elegant way. On another level it is a lesson in tolerance, where it simply becomes worthwhile to learn to understand another thought system and understand it for what it is, for that kind of freedom is loving and natural when we have no investment in the world. Whenever we can do these things in such an even handed manner, we will find ourselves where we are able to agree to disagree, and can simply be honestly curious about understanding another, and can enjoy better relations as a result. We learn to live with differences, not in the ego's way of conveniently ignoring inconvenient facts, which trip us up later, but because we have no investment in differences. Norris Clarke certainly represents Christianity in a very appealing way, and amazingly sometimes wanders very close to the Course in his appreciation, but eventually the unbridgeable differences remain.

One thing you will not find here is the perspective of the pre-Christian Jesus tradition, such as the Thomas Gospel, which in recent years has shown us that the traditional Christian point of view is not compatible with the teachings of Jesus either. When properly seen, the study of Thomas and some of the other pre-Christian literature, which was excluded from the Bible - although Thomas was quoted throughout - puts us on an entirely different track, where the Bible falls apart into a collection of books, that we can then appreciate more selectively as literature, and no longer as the monolithic Word of God. Along those lines we would end up placing a lot of "apocryphal" literature on a level with some of the books of the biblical canon, if not sometimes even give them preference as being more likely unadulterated, or closer to the source. In that respect it is worth noting that none of the "Christian" positions and theology as are investigated in this book and represented by Norris Clarke, can trace their origins to the pre-Pauline Jesus literature such as Thomas and Q.

Personally, I have essentially always been inclined to look at the Bible as simply a significant book, and with the respect that is due the holy book of any tradition, but with inconsistent qualities, and particularly have usually ignored Paul in my readings, but I hasten to add that I have also realized more profoundly as I work with the Course how that "Christian"/Newtonian - and would be "Biblical" - model of the world is ingrained in us as part of the ego thought system. So learning to tell the two apart in all their forms is helpful in learning to understand the Course, and learning what it teaches. I have thus come to regard Paul as the exemplar of the ego's strategy of bringing Jesus into the world, or, in the Course's language, bringing the solution to the problem, i.e. trying to fix the world, whereas the Course advocates bringing the problem to the solution, returning to the mind, where Jesus is present to us, and asking for his vision, in lieu of our own mistaken perceptions, as the only possible way out of problems that are of our own making - our own projections.

Again, looking at this purely from a personal standpoint, it boggles my mind when I read Norris Clarke's accounts of what Christians believe, and it really gets kind of funny for me. For most of my life I would have said that I believed in Jesus, but I wasn't a Christian. My understanding of him would have been closer to the symbolic view in ACIM:T-19.IV.C.10, where the birth of Jesus is equated to the beginning of an inner spiritual awakening. As a kid, I was brought up with the notion that the birth of Jesus was just symbolic of the inner events of spiritual awakening. And his baptism in the River Jordan under John the Baptist symbolic of spiritual awakening. By the same token however, until the Course came along in my life, I was never clear on the underlying content of the ego thought system, even though I looked on Christians as a primitive tribe, doomed to die out as they became more and more irrelevant - for in my native Holland people were leaving the churches in droves when I grew up, going from 90% church attendance at the time of my birth to under 10% by the time I emigrated to the USA some 29 years later.

Looking back today, I see how I had taken leave of Christianity, without much clarity about the thought system it stood for or my own subtle investment in it - although I never believed in his dying for our sins, and was taught early on to see that particular theological slight of hand as a sneaky attempt of the ego to have our cake and eat it too, or if you will, to get away with murder. But again, it was not until I met the Course that sorting out the ego thought system began in earnest, and this book is destined to be a classic which untangles the underlying concepts and prevents the confusion that results if people read no further than some superficial resemblances. From that standpoint it is equally helpful to a church pondering if it should include the Course in the liturgy - it should not - to a Course student who is befuddled by the sometimes Christian sounding language - no, this is not your grandfather's Jesus speaking. Regardless of what your faith may be, clarity can only be helpful, and attempts at being inclusive at the price of lost meaning help no one. You can only pour so much water in the wine and still call it wine. After all, " Jeder soll nach seiner fasson selig werden," as the Prussian King Frederick II put it (Everyone should become happy after their own fashion).

Resurrection before or after Crucifixion?

Since Christianity, the well known religion that was founded in the years following the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth in his name, answers this question one way, namely "after," and since they became the dominant tradition, and at least for a while suppressed all other traditions about Jesus' teachings, and ultimately emerged as the Christian orthodoxy, few people are aware anymore of the vivid dialogue that took place in the first two centuries, or the many "Christianities" then in existence. There were any number of hot topics, but the question if the resurrection came before or after the crucifixion, was a big one, and it was bound up completely with the parallel question, if the resurrection was an event of the mind or of the body. Bart D.Ehrman's book, listed above is one of the best sources on the period, and I've discussed it elsewhere on this blog, because it was one of the sources I used in my book. The apostle Paul spent a fair amount of time musing the question, and came down in favor of the notion that this was about a resurrection of the body.

I think Jesus would beg to differ, if the Thomas gospel is any guide, and a lot of it of course did find its way into the synoptic gospels, but managed to largely be ignored over time. Evidently, the Logia speak entirely from the standpoint of an enlightened teacher, an Ascended Master, or what ACIM would call a Teacher of Teachers. This expectation is set right away in the first Logion, which was really meant to be the introduction and not an actual Logion, but is counted as the first one in the texts. Logion 1 says: "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death." That is the central focus of the notion of the Resurrection, the choice for life (of the spirit), and not death (of the ego, or of the world), or as the Course puts it:

There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true. (ACIM:T-23.II.19)

And elsewhere he explains the meaning of the resurrection:

The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey." Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up. Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it. (ACIM:T-4.in.3)

And in the section on the message of the crucifixion he puts it as follows:

The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. I have also told you that the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified then. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher. (ACIM:T-6.I.2)

None of this can be understood if you think we're a body, like Paul did, but it makes perfect sense if you think that what we are is spirit, and the son of God, like Jesus does as he speaks to us from the pages of the Thomas Gospel and the Course. At the same time this also makes it clear why this Jesus is the inner Jesus - the one who is present with us whenever we ask him to - and not some historical figure who died on a cross two thousand years ago. In other words having once awakened to the complete inner realization, true knowing, as in gnosis, that our identity is spirit, and that we are thus still and forever as God created us, we are then no longer dependent on any kind of form, including the body. The crucifixion then, Jesus's ability to experience his body dying on the cross without feeling any pain, and in the full knowledge that it was meaningless, was merely the most dramatic confirmation of that realization that it is possible to have. In our ego identity we always identify with form, which is by definition limitation, and that is the essence of the ego thought, never the whole, always just a part of the whole. Spirit works the other way around, always the whole, and there is only the whole, the all, the Oneness of Heaven. There is nothing else. But as long as we cling to the ego we spend a lot of our life in mourning, because all forms do pass away, whereas spirit is unconcerned with form, because forms will adapt to suit the purpose. Spirit is cause, the form is effect, and knowing that changes our attitude about life forever. That is the change of mind Jesus was talking about. (Metanoia in New Testament Greek is a word that means "change of mind," but under the influence of later Christian theology it has too often been translated as "repentance," and thus reduced to a moral concept, that applies to living in the world, whereas Jesus was indicating with his notion of "change of mind," how we could change our entire frame of reference and follow him to a Kingdom not of this world.

In this context, what's been called the Resurrection, namely Jesus's appearance in the body to the apostles was just that, his appearance in the body. He was awakened already at the outset of his ministry, and in that context the crucifixion was merely the "last useless journey" the physical confirmation of his complete awakening, in a demonstration that he could be peaceful regardless of what happened, and that subsequently, being spirit, he could appear to anyone in whatever form was appropriate.

On Islam -- Happy Father's Day

Surrender is the most difficult thing to the ego to understand, because it is totally invested in what ACIM calls fighting God for His Authorship. We want to be original, and we want to be right, but (un)fortunately we are neither. While formal religions have little appeal for me, and Islam is no exception, I've often found solace with some of the Sufi wise men, from the ridiculous, like Mullah Nasruddin, to the sublime, like Rumi, or Tierno Bokar, and I've sometimes found beautiful and profound verses in the Qur'an (my favorite edition listed hereby). But most of all, the very word Islam is what inspires me, and I recognize in it the first step in the forgiveness process as A Course in Miracles teaches it.

Islam means surrender, and the very first step of the forgiveness process in the Course, is really to surrender the arrogance of the ego, and to open myself up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe Jesus could be right and I could be wrong. As long as I stubbornly maintain that I'm right, I cannot ever take back the projection of guilt on others and ask for help. And the miracle lies exactly in the fact that a shift, a change of mind is possible, by asking for guidance from the Holy Spirit and the right mind, in lieu of from our ego, which got us into trouble in the first place. As a refresher here are the three steps of forgiveness, the way out of conflict any time you see yourself getting stuck (again!):

1. "Would I accuse myself of doing this?" I.e. this means to question the validity of the ego's perception that some SOB out there is making my life miserable, and instead to entertain the notion that I might have something to do with it, and that what I'm accusing the other of is, in some different form, a secret self-accusation. Here is an applicable quote from the Course:
   "Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:
   
   Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself. (ACIM:W-134.17:1-5)
   In other words, at this point I've taken my projection back, and because now the problem is not outside of me (where I cannot change it), but inside of me, so that I can now change it. And the way to change it is with a change of mind, what Jesus calls metanoia in the Greek of the New Testament.
2. Now comes the only decision, the only exercise of free will ever, having raised the ego's guidance to doubt, we are now free to ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and in the process freed ourselves from the ridiculous chains of having to know everything, or, more accurately, having to pretend to know everything, for now we have deferred judgment, and we are asking for Help from the one who does know everything, the Holy Spirit. The point of surrender lies in what the Course calls 'looking at the problem as it is' (ACIM:T-27.VII.2:2) and that passage continues with: 'and not the way that you have set it up.' Thus what we are surrendering is our problem definition, which then opens the way for the solution to arise. The ego would tenaciously hang on to the problem, because this defines its separate identity.
3. Now we leave it to the Holy Spirit. And what we learn subsequently is that it is not a sacrifice to surrender our judgment (or should we say our stupidity?) to Him, but it is the way out of the ego's Hell.

The guided meditation which Gary Renard offers in his workshops and books is also a beautiful way of reinforcing the forgiveness process, by starting and ending your day with a brief meditation in which you visualize a white light (God's Love) which slowly surrounds you, and you lay on the altar as your gifts to him all your childish definitions of what the problems are, and what the answers should be, thus making room for the Answer to show up, instead of continuing to kill yourself with thinking it's my way or the highway. Once you let go of those ego shackles, you can totally submerse yourself in the experience of God's Love surrounding you. This is the way to accepting the sonship, to seeking the second place to gain the first, to realizing that no-one comes to the father but through me - not Jesus as a person, but the manifestation of the Sonship as he realized it, and demonstrated it. The prodigal son, re-becomes the Son, by letting go of his plan for salvation, and accepting anew the Sonship as the only fulfillment possibility. In the end then, it is for the mind to let go of its mistaken belief in the ego, for the ego isn't anything except a mis-thought, a tiny mad idea, that makes us very unhappy as long as we maintain our allegiance to it, and waste our days in justifying it. Happy Father's day.

The Bastards Don't Deserve It... Forgiveness that Is.

That is Gary Renard's frequent joke, and an important one, for just like Logion 13, it is an important lesson in why Yeshua's teachings are not very popular in the world. Never have been. We want to hang on to our identity, and to do so we must maintain conflict, for personality and individuality are thoughts of hate, that must be fed by maintaining a suitable list of enemies. And so the justification of our righteous anger comes so natural, that we really get blindsided time and again, by those seemingly so honest feeling that it is impossible to forgive, and we do not want to know that we're only killing ourselves with it, that it is the choice for the crucifxion. Hence the Course also says:

Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it. (ACIM:T-4-in.3:7-11)

Forgiveness completely flies in the face of our justified anger, and that is also why the temptation is so great to want to improve on ACIM, and become an "important teacher," rather than learning it yourself, and teaching by learning the Navajo way. The only way to do it is to do it. That is the shortcut (with thanks to Ken Wapnick for that remark). In short the way to be an ACIM teacher in reality is to know you don't matter at all, and it's all a comedy.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is. (ACIM:T-pII.1.4)

As a little side note, also the speeches of Dutch Queen Juliana in 1952, including when she spoke to the American congress, on her interest in a way out of conflict on a global level, in the concept of the Third Way, which was on her mind in those days, is an example of how the message of peace, the mere thought of it, is anathema to the world. In her case, it would appear that quite possibly her husband, Prince Bernhard, even hatched a plot to have her dethroned, and put his daughter Beatrix on the throne (then just turned 18), all to the greater glory of Lockheed and mutually assured destruction. He of course more than anyone seems to have turned Holland into a banana republic, or rather, an armsdealing republic. It is a story that has not yet been fully told, but some day it will, and it makes for a nice reflection of what the world does really believe in, and why it is the Course says, that the world was made as an attack on God.

The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone. (ACIM:W-pII.3.2)

And again this ties in closely to another theme that runs through the Thomas gospel materials, namely the notion that these are the teachings which Jesus dispenses privately, he did then, and he does now. For only in the forgiveness moments, in the miracle, do we individually become teachable because it means we surrendered our judgment, and so we listen for the first time in a long time. And then quickly we forget it again, because we are deadly afraid of it. So it has nothing to do with the teachings being secret, or Jesus secretive, but it has everything to do that we remain outsiders of the mystery of forgiveness unless and until we practice it, and therein lies the meeting with the Master, that Internal Teacher, who is available to us whenever we really ask his Help, in complete surrender of our own judgment, and constant urge to be right and know better.

Beyond Awakening & Logion 5

This is a wonderful little book, which for one thing, you could read entirely as a commentary on Logion 5 in the Thomas Gospel, which reads as follows (as per usual, in the Pursah rendering from Gary Renard's Your Immortal Reality):

Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

In parallel, we may also think of the following lines from the Course:

Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. (ACIM:W-188.1)

In short, this is a good reminder that our journey is, in the Course's words: "It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed." (ACIM:T-8.VI.9:7)

In Beyond Awakening - which has nothing to do with the Course - author Jeff Foster speaks of this experience in his own words. As he puts it, it is about the utterly obvious. It is about the insight that the idea of a journey, with a destination, is itself part of the ego's smoke and mirrors deception of thinking that the answers are out there, when the only place where there are any answers. This in and of itself brings notions from the Thomas Gospel like Logion 3 to mind, which is another very strong statement that it isn't out there, be it in the sky, or in the sea, for it is within. Also woven through the book is the notion that whatever I'm involved in right now, is at all times my best learning opportunity, which is another central notion of the Course. It is as lucid an explanation of non-duality as you can find today. It is simple and straightforward and to be recommended highly. More words would hardly add meaning, you'll read it in an afternoon, and enjoy it tremendously. It's a "Duh!" experience in the best sense of the word.

On Giving Birth

What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God and you. In its tiny hands it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to you. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of your brother, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the cross, but to the resurrection and the life. (ACIM:T-19.IV.C.10)

Observant people have often realized that dying is a continual process, that is entirely part of this life. Just look back, how many phases of your life have completely died off, and it feels now as if you were a different person then, and yet, when you lost that job, that relationship, or some other situation, it seemed like death, like a huge loss, like a sacrifice, but the facts prove that it was not, if you learn to forgive and let go. Or, if you want to give in to our sado/masochist tendencies, you can spend the rest of your life beating yourself up about the past and making yourself miserable. We certainly have that option, but it's a choice. Plato discusses the fear of death beautifully in pointing out that we're merely on this side of a door, and cannot see the other side until we pass through, but it's not the end, and he also clearly understand that throughout our lives we pass through such doors of transition in the psychological sense, the death of the body is merely another one of those. Reflecting on this more deeply, we might begin to understand why dying is a psychological process. By the same logic giving birth is a psychological process. It all boils down to the choice between the ego or the Holy Spirit as our teachers, and the choice happens continuously in every moment, except we're not usually aware of it. The essence of the choice is between form and content, between the body or spirit, between manifest and latent, between duality and oneness, murder or love, death or life etc. The point being that forms (Saturn) are constructs of time and space, which only exist temporarily, and sooner or later all waste away, and if we dedicate our lives to preserving form we commit ourselves to dying with them, while the choice for life is the choice for spirit, in which we realize that form does not matter and the Holy Spirit will give us whatever forms to work with that are most useful at the time, until they go and we move on.

In mythology the image of "son" is often used to symbolize the effect of our choices, just like in real life (as any good family therapist will tell you) the children mirror their own choices back to the parents, and this is why children can be so maddening if the parents live in denial in any way shape or form. At some point most parents become aware that children have the annoying habit of learning what you do, not what you say, and to that extent clearly the children are helping the parents grow up, more so than the other way around. The Dutch spiritual teacher J. W. Kaiser (JWK) calls children in this sense our "self of tomorrow," quite in the spirit of "by their fruits shall ye know them." In short, what we experience reflects our choices at this level, and our experience in life in that sense is our son, who reflects back to us what we choose to be. Kaiser's brilliant translation, commentary, and explanation of the Gospel according to Mark, (Beleving van het Evangelie, not available in English). Kaiser understood that what mattered about the story is hardly the manifest content, as Paul and eventually Christianity would have it, but the latent, or inner meaning of the story, which of course merely reflects what is going on in the mind, and which can become clear to us through experience if we ourselves make the inner choice to follow Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, as no doubt he did in order to be able to read the book in the way he did.

The rest is very simple in every situation we have a choice of teacher (in the terminlogy of A Course in Miracles), or "father" in terms of the Biblical myths. Our soul (Mary/Miriam - etymologically meaning "in revolt, in uprising" as per JWK) when it rises up to the dictates of time, and begins looking for "another way" (as did Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford in the developments that led to ACIM- See Ken Wapnick's Absence from Felicity), and in this condition we will realize that we may be "betrothed" to a figure in time (Joseph, again as per JWK), but we are not fulfilled by what the Course calls special relationships, our deepest longing and our life's purpose can only be fulfilled by choosing the Holy Spirit, who thus becomes the Father, of what we ourselves are then becoming, as reflected in the quotation from ACIM above. Forgiveness is the process where this birth takes place, again and again and again, when we choose against the ego past as the father of our life of tomorrow (symbolized by Joseph in the story), and for the Holy Spirit as the father of our "child." And so the way of the spirit is a matter of active choice, choice for content over form, in full awareness that forms come and go, and in letting go of our attachment to them, what is eternal in us will be reborn to us - the theme of Gary Renard's book Your Immortal Reality.

In terms of the Thomas Gospel, there are many sayings which reflect this choice possibility, such as Logion 13, and Logion 42, "Be passersby," which puts us in the position of observer of "our life" so that we can start seeing it, rather than being it, and thereby put ourselves in a position to make another choice through forgiveness, and so letting the Holy Spirit run our life, instead of the ego, which merely wants us to play the hero of the story, and to act on the manifest content, and continue to keep us mindlessly and permanently embroiled in the world. So living in the now in this sense means not responding to situations from the past, but truly approaching every day, and every moment like it is the beginning of the rest of your life, and deciding if you want to continue in ego-hell, which is form first, never mind the content (murder), or choose the Holy Spirit instead, which means content (spirit) first, and leaving the form to Him, and assume the way back to Heaven, where all nice childern (all of us, whenever we're ready) go.

Russian Dolls

The fun of russian dolls seems to be endlessly fascinating, and one way of looking at it is perhaps, that none of them are actually "it." They all point to each other, and the multiple reciprocal references are the explanation of the whole concept more than anyone doll is the explanation of the concept.

I'm working on that kind of an experience in real life, with my weekly workshops at the Theosophical Society in Manhattan, details here: Course in the City, since, starting March 4th, we made a start studying Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe, which is a format we've tried once, with a chapter out of Gary's second book, and it certainly produced an interesting dynamic. So this time we decided to go thorough all of his work in this kind of a fashion. So this is a chance for the members of the group to experience what it might feel like to be an ascended master... or, at the very least to think about it, and to get in touch with our own feelings about this whole story, much more so than if you're just reading it, and it's Gary's story. When you play it out it becomes your story.

At the same time, taking on these roles allows us to be at different times and places, and identify more with the notion that we may in fact have some deeply hidden awareness or experience of being at different places in different times. So the whole thing becomes a discovery voyage about how the mind works, and the results are quite interesting. It is a seemingly innocuous, but very profound way to question a lot about our self concept.

One of the things which presents itself, is perhaps the faintest discovery of our own feelings about where we were at the time of Jesus. People often have quite significant experiences around that issue, when their own relationship with Jesus in the present is being cleaned up, as might happen when they study ACIM.

The Original or a Copy?

The central theme that always attracted me to the notion of the Thomas Gospel was the idea that it was closer to the original, than the later descriptions of Jesus which we know from the New Testament. I always like to make clear that there's nothing wrong with liking Paul's version, but I do wonder did he HAVE to call it Christianity? Why not be honest and call it Paulinity? Oh well, it would be a little late to change that now, so let's just leave that as a joke, which is how I intended it: seriously tongue in cheek. But you get my point.

In the last thirty years or so a small but growing group of people are finding a connection to the voice which the recognize as Jesus' through A Course In Miracles, which saw the light in 1975. And it did not take for too long or the book gave rise to whole shelves full of literature. The vast majority of that literature quotes the book for the author's own purposes, and simply uses Course material out of context. No doubt all of this happens with the best intentions, but that does not guarantee anything. The standout among the crowd of Course literature undoubtedly is Ken Wapnick, who originally helped Helen Schucman to prepare the book for print, and who always had an affinity for teaching this material. His books are the standard, and their forte is that they do not EVER add anything to the Course, but essentially always explains the Course with the Course, Ken just knows it so well, he is always able to pull together related materials and help you deepen your understanding. When he does speak about other things, it is in a manner of re-integrating those from a Course perspective, never mixing up the Course. He is also thoroughly modest, because he fully understands that the very point of his teaching work is NOT to add anything to the Course, but simply help people understand it. This is why he's been heard to say when people ask him to write his biography, that it's irrelevant, and he frequently jokes about his workshops, and why people keep coming back, as he says the same thing all the time.

And then there's Gary Renard, to whose work I owe so much. The series title for his books could have been "A Course in Miracles for Dummies," in the understanding that we're all dummies when we start the Course. Gary's claim to fame is that he explains the Course in the vernacular, and that's fair. But it's also the context of the books that makes the Course more approachable, we the readers are simply identifying with the hero of these adventures, and learning the Course along with him. To make it easy and eliminate all sorts of undesirable associations, he calls Jesus simply "J". His books are very much "real life," really the adventure stories of by now about 20 years of Gary's life, as he is learning the Course. They are irreverent, fun, occasionally almost slapstick comedy, and they offer us all plenty of chances to identify with the hero of the story and learn from his experiences.

The rest of the books about the Course tend to run from outright attempts to argue that the Course says things it does not say, even though the book is of amazing consistency, to books which use ideas and concepts from the Course in the context of their author's own presentation, which is OK, though it can be problematic if there seems to be a suggestion that such books represent the Course, when they clearly do not. Like so many people my initial coming to the Course went via another author, Jerry Jampolsky, whose books I devoured within a month in '91, and by that time I was wondering why I wasn't reading the Course itself instead of the numerous quotes in those books, and then, when I did start reading the Course, I found out that it was saying something very different than the way I had found it quoted in those books. In much the same way, Marianne Williamson brought more people to the Course than anybody else, but she uses it in her own way. I'm personally not too interested in most of that "almost" Course literature, and I get much more about say reading Alan Kershaw's biography of Hitler, as a way of realizing just how the ego mind works, and again, looking at it in a very different light.

But, this current experience is also higly illustrative of what happened in the gap between Jesus and Paul. And it should be emphasized that the thing we know as Christianity was only one of thousands of flavors who all considered themselves Christians. If you actually took the trouble to read Paul's letters, you would find there his gradual development of his interpretation of Jesus. And while Christianity may work for many people, if it's Jesus you're interested in, again, as long as you can get the original, why get the copy? The Germans had a beautiful expression for cheap plastic knockoffs arriving from Hong Kong and Japan in the postwar years, "Ganz wie echt aber viel schöner." (Just like the real thing, but much nicer). That says it all. This ties in with e.g. Logion 113 of Thomas, where Jesus says, as the disciples ask him when the Kingdom will come, "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Behold here,' or 'Behold there.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it." And so the best way for the ego to defend against the Kingdom is to ratchet up the production of knockoffs, so that we should continue not to see it, and be distracted by cheap substitutes of our own making, so much so that the substitutes are wildly more popular. The only difference now is that the Course is widely available, and has already sold millions of copies, not to mention is currently available in 18 languages, although there are knockoffs available too. So if you want to read it, get yourself the 3rd edition from the Foundation for Inner Peace, who are the original publishers authorized by Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford, and fully endorsed by them. Stick to the original.

To come back to Paul one moment, once you start getting it why Jesus is talking about something else altogether, it would also seem understandable why his teaching would get distorted. The gap between Jesus (33CE) and the Pauline letters in itself was only 30 years, and if the Thomas gospel is from 50CE and the letters from Paul starting in 60-65CE, that was 10-15 years out of that total span. The notion of Pursah in Gary's books is by implication that the sayings collection grew from the ca 70/71 she regards as authentic, to the 114 that were found at Nag Hammadi, by picking up extra material that was not originally part of it.
♦

Back to Basics

The other day I posted about the exact issues of how to mentally disentangle the Christian construct of Jesus from the Jesus of the Thomas gospel. This theme is very much in line with my recent discussion of the materials of Stevan Davies, who is a Biblical scholar who has done an incredible job in identifying how the story changed between the Thomas gospel, which dates from the year 50CE, and the later Canonical Gospels, which are dated from ca. 65CE (Mark) onwards. The most significant difference is that in the period 60-65CE, Paul's writings appear on the scene and the influence of his thinking very much sets the tone for the whole New Testament, and so, if you were to put the NT in proper chronological order, the letters of Paul should come first, then Mark, then Matthew and Luke, and then John and Revelation.

If you reordered the books that way, you'd instantly understand why it's such a big difference that the Thomas Gospel was 15 years or so earlier than that: Paul is in between. A simple way of looking at it is that the New Testament reflects the way that Paul said we should look at Jesus. That is a very different thing than the teachings of Jesus proper. The Thomas Gospel has only statements directly attributed to Jesus, and NONE of the interpretations which Paul developed, and which became the basis of Christian theology. Another way of putting it is that Christianity--leaving aside for a moment that there are some 25,000 flavors of it--is merely one interpretation of Jesus, so perhaps more correctly we should speak of one set of interpretations, of him. One way or another Paul looms large in the inception of it, and I think the fair way of interpreting those events is to say that Jesus was a spiritual teacher, and Paul posthumously made a religion out of him. No doubt he had the best intentions, but that does not mean he said the same thing, he interpreted, explained, elaborated, and added on his own concepts.

In order to expand a bit more on some of this basic information, I'm going to do several posts here to discuss some very fundamental stuff that provides the foundation for my book, Closing the Circle--the topic of this blog.

Here is how it all fits together. As I like to point out to people by way of a joke, the first thing to know is, it's not my fault, and the second thing to know is, it's all Gary Renard's fault. So blame him. Complaints in triplicate, press hard, three copies. Without Gary, I would not be in this mess, and I would not have had to write this book. Jokes aside, this is the right sequence of events, but today I want to explain some more details of the chronology.

Whether we are Christians or not, if we grew up in the West, we grew up in a culture dominated by Christianity, and we're all more or less familiar with the chronology, although some of the fine distinctions I'm making about the first 75 years are not generally known, they reflect an insight that has been evolving particularly since the rediscovery of the now famous book collection at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, which dated back to the time (ca. 365 CE) when the young Church was just making decisions as to what books would make up the New Testament, and some monk had the foresight to bury a collection of books the Church did not like. What we found we owe to the foresight of this monk, and the Thomas gospel was probably the most important part of that find.

Now to explain my own relationship to all of this for a moment, let me say first that I was never a Christian, but for some reason I was interested in the teachings of Jesus. Thanks to a Dutch author, Johan Willem Kaiser, who among other things produced an incredibly insightful translation and commentary of the Gospel of Mark, I had an understanding early on that Jesus and Christianity were two different things, and since thankfully I learned to read Greek, I could at least study some of the original material, and filter out some of the theological coloration which has characterized later translations of the Bible, and via that route I tried to come back to an understanding of the original teaching of Jesus. For me the central issue always seemed to be that he was about spiritual experience, not about theology or morality. In short, Jesus was not a Christian.

The Thomas gospel began to appear in translation in the 1950's and slowly the biblical research came in motion which ultimately led to the almost inevitable conclusion I presented above. It predated the other gospels. Personally I saw Jesus as a spiritual teacher, not too different from Buddha, Krishna, Socrates, Lao Tsu, Sri Ramakrishna and Krishnamurti. Their focus was always on learning truth through personal spiritual experience, including the notion that the truth is within and knowable, if we just learn the mental hygiene not to confuse ourselves all the time with other values and thoughts that have nothing to do with the price of beans. For me the Thomas gospel was never an easy read, much of the research and interpretation I found cumbersome and less than helpful, so for a long time I regarded it as merely an interesting curiosity.

For me something changed when I discovered A Course in Miracles in 1991. First of all this book (usually abbreviated ACIM), which was channeled in the late 60's by a Dr. Helen Schucman, who was a Professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in NY, and published in 1975, is attributed to Jesus. And the way he comes across in its pages is exactly that, as a spiritual teacher, with a focus on the experience of truth, not on theology. The book is very profound, highly integrated, and incorporates really a unique amalgam of Western and Eastern thought, including everything from Plato, the Bible, Shakespeare, and some of the premises of Freudian psychoanalysis not to mention some of the therapeutic orientation of Carl Rogers. That list could easily be expanded further. The bottom line is, for me it was intuitively clear that the intelligence speaking to me through the pages of ACIM was Jesus as I sensed he taught originally and for all time. The teacher of Truth. Not a teacher of Christian theology. Just Truth with a capital T. I had studied the Course for 12 years before Gary Renard appeared on the scene, but then the magic started...

In 2003, three books appeared, with the same publication date, Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, Elaine Pagels' Beyond Belief, and Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe. In short, indirectly the Thomas Gospel was in the air, for all three touch on it. The first two were more in the main stream, and they awakened an interest in the Thomas gospel and related materials, Gary's book however was a surprise hit in its own right. He had never been published before, and he was with a very small publisher, and yet before you knew it, he sold 100,000 copies, and the book was acquired by Hay House. It was in Gary's book that the connection was made between the original teachings of Jesus in the Thomas Gospel, and ACIM, and it was in his second book, Your Immortal Reality, (2006), that one of his teachers, Pursah presented her kernel of the Thomas Gospel of just 70 sayings of Jesus (compared to the 114 of the Nag Hammadi text), which she says really sounded like Jesus. Her selection makes a lot of sense, so for me at the moment, I'm totally focused on that collection of 70 sayings from Thomas as being the least suspect kernel of his original teachings, but they are still fragmentary. Thus the greater context for me is provided by A Course in Miracles.

In my next few posts I will talk a bit more about the characters involved, to make the foundation of my work on the Thomas Gospel even clearer.

Love Does Not Condemn

This is the book. The subtitle spells it out. In a way, if Ken Wapnick has a magnum opus, this is it. It is not for the faint of heart, but others will inhale this material, for it puts our entire Western spiritual/religious framework into a completely new perspective.

More than many other authors, Ken has the profound erudition in the Western intellectual tradition to understand the full scope of the intellectual context of the Course. For some, this may appear to be of passing interest only, but for many others this is very relevant indeed as our study of the Course deepens. Seen at an abstract level, the Course appears to be Advaita Vedanta for the West and with one very important twist, namely that the manifest world is not lent credence at all, as it does in Advaita by seeing it as a Divine play, but rather as a manifestation, a projection in physical form, of the "tiny mad idea" of the separation only. In other words, the world is only what the perceiver, who conceives of himself as separate from the all, perceives, and is a reflection of the erroneous thought process, that takes physical form only because of the separation thought itself, and has no external cause. This turns out to be crucial, as in a way this leaves even Advaita Vedanta with a compromise to dualistic thinking, granting some limited objectivity to the world of form - i.e. the world, although being seen as an illusion, and a silly play, is not our illusion, but is conceived in the mind of the godhead, etc. therefore my changing my mind is not enough. The Course is completely radical in seeing that the only source of the world is illusory itself, being only the tiny misthought, which it refers to as "the tiny mad idea," as if anything at all could be separate from God. And so our only problem is the healing of our own misperception, and what is needed is our willingness to find "another way" of looking at this world. And thus for A Course in Miracles, it's all in the mind, and therein lies the rub. With this little introduction, I want to simply highlight some of the exciting historical explorations in this book.

The terms for the subtitle were taken from a seventeenth century version of the Book of Common Prayer, which says the following: "From fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, Good Lord, deliver us." And anybody who has been around the Jewish or Christian faiths, and their institutionalization of guilt, will immediately appreciate how central these concepts are. At least in the tradition of A Course in Miracles, it is clear how we are to be delivered of these evils, namely by relinquishing our investment in their reality, for as with all demons, they are brought to life and kept alive only by our faith in them, while Jesus teaches only forgiveness of our sins. The explorations of this book really deepen the message of the Course, by demonstrating how Jesus in its pages not only offers correction of certain Biblical passages and concepts, or our interpretation thereof, but how at a much deeper level, it deals with a number of themes peculiar to Western spirituality and religion, and resolves many issues where Western thought has been stuck at various times. And it is important to remember that very much in line with the thinking C.G. Jung expressed on this point, that if we were born in the West, it would probably be helpful to resolve our issues in the context of Western traditions, since we can only resolve the issues on the level where they occur. Jung meant his comments as a counterweight to the fashionable flight to Eastern spiritualities. The title of this book sets the tone immediately in line with the thought system of ACIM, in that it is a teaching of love, and non-judgment, non-condemnation, or, to put it positively, forgiveness. The dedication of the book is worth quoting as well:

To all "Gnostics"--past, present, and to come--who seek to know God through understanding this world's purpose, striving to realize, in the words of the oft-qouted Valentinian formula, that "what liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what birth is and what rebirth" (Excerpta ex Theodoto)

Thus in the typical quaint language of that time this highlights a path of inner inquiry, in a spirit we also find in ACIM, expressed in the second century gnostic teacher Valentinus, whose teachings are known to us only in fairly fragmentary form, but bear close resemblance to the Course in some respects. Ken then balances this statements, which a quote from the Course, which explains the title of the book:

The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions.
(A Course in Miracles)

For the rest, while there is no way to truly do this book justice in any reasonable length post, I'll offer an overview of its content with a few hopefully helpful comments. Part I, The Introduction covers the necessary background in Gnosticism, the Platonic traditions, the Early Church, and the gradual development of the antagonism between the church and the gnostics in the second century CE. All of these things are really covered in amazing detail, and their chief importance is again to gain an appreciation of how deeply many of the themes of the Course are a precise counter point to patterns woven into the fabric of the Western tradition, and how the Course properly understood proposes a very sophisticated resolution of many long standing philosophic/religious questions, frequently breaking through all categories. Also interesting is the realization how much e.g. the second century Gnostic teacher Valentinus really prefigured the Course, among other things in the myth stemming from his school saying that Jesus was off on the side laughing under a tree during the crucifixion--emphasizing again the resurrection as a spiritual event, not to mention as something that preceded the crucifixion, as many Gnostics in fact believed. Thus Jesus would have known at the time of the Crucifixion that he was not his body, and that even this violence could not affect who he truly was. Therefore he would not have been the vicarous sacrificial offering to a cruel God the father, but rather a wisdom teacher, demonstrating what he taught by living it, namely that that he was not his body, but spirit. What is clear by the end of this introductory section is that by the end of the 2nd century the free intermingling of "gnostic" ideas within the general budding Christian tradition is ending, with a polarization of the Gnostics, emphasizing inner experience of truth, as the more unruly crowd, who begin to be expelled more and more from the now forming orthodoxy, with the Church emerging as the winner, by every available means including book destruction, etc. In this context the Gnostics became mostly convenient scapegoats, against which the Church could define the right belief (ortho-doxy).

In Section IIa, the book develops the versions of the "creation myth" in Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, showing strands both dualistic and non-dualistic thinking, demonstrating in depth how the more inward focused worlds of Gnostic and Platonic thought intermingled with emerging Christian thought. It is in the 9th chapter, about Jesus, that some of the formational themes in the development of early Christianity get an airing, in particular the principal difference between the Gnostic schools seeing the resurrection as an inner development, and something that preceded the crucifixion, versus the then emerging proto-Christian orthodoxy, which with Paul thinks of the resurrection mostly as a bodily event, which happens only after the crucifixion. It is very helpful for us to understand that these different positions were being widely debated in these early years. Another very important discussion is the one about Docetism, dealing with the question to what extent Jesus was or was not his body, or he only appeared in a body, which includes discussions of such gems as the Acts  of John, where the apostles discuss the differences in their respective experiences of Jesus. Again, exploring all of these precedents would give us a deeper appreciation that the later positions of the Course have deep roots in a long tradition, and address issues that people have struggled with for the last 2000 years, even though for long periods of time certain "orthodox" notions appeared to limit the questioning and the debate. As we can understand with the benefit of hindsight, such periods of quiet meant not that all questions had been answered, just more or less effectively suppressed.

This section concludes with a chapter on "Practical Implications," showing how all these different strains of thinking under the broader umbrella of Christian thought, resulted in widely differing lifestyles, again modeling all of the differing attitudes which we may recognize in students of ACIM to different degrees, if they run off half-cocked with a partial understanding of the Course. To start, it is noteworthy how little currency some dominant points of Christian practice seem to get in Gnostic circles, or at least how different they are in their interpretation, this applies to baptism, anointing. The eucharist barely makes a showing. The theme of The Bridal Chamber as an expression of spiritual "marriage" shows up, which prefigures the notion which in the Course gets the name of the Holy Relationship. This part of the discussion is therefore really about religious rites and symbols, then follows a discussion of moral concepts and behaviors, all resulting from different ways of looking at the world and our position in it, and varying from deliberate libertinism to ascetism to moderation, and some of these are truly interesting, such as the Gnostic libertines who essentially reasoned that since the world was not real, it was their sacred duty to break all the moral norms and act out. Ascetism then is the opposite mistake, instead of acting out because the world is unreal, it reflects a resolve of fighting the world and its hold over us, which of course likewise makes the problem real. Finally there is also a tradition of moderation. Next, in a further exploration of Platonism, Plotinus is perhaps the most interesting, for he focuses on a contemplative life, not on doing good deeds so much as through contemplation to arrive at a position where one cannot help but do good deeds.

The last third of the book addresses the position of A Course in Miracles, providing in fact an integration of all of the strands that were left dangling in these various traditions into a very different and amazingly coherent viewpoint, making the Course an intricate cauda to Western philosophical and spiritual tradition. As addressed at the outset, for the Course it is essential to understand that it's all in the mind, and that the world merely is the stage of our physical experience, but only a projection from the mind, not an objective reality. Thus the idea of separation happens in the mind, and this also makes salvation even possible, for if we made a mistake, and the implication is we can correct it, and the Course's position is that we overcome our futility by realizing we did not commit a sin which is incapable of change, but made a mistake which can be fixed. And the fundamental nature of fixing it is in taking responsibility for having made it, even if we seem clueless about the hows and whys and wherefores. The method of the Course is to experientially put us in touch with the minds ability to change--change our mind, or metanoia in NT Greek--so that it teaches us not mere theory, but a path of experience which helps us reintegrate our real self, instead of the proverbial idol worship which is essentially the world of the ego. For the ego always chases something that is not me, some idol outside of me, and that keeps me completely engaged in the world, oblivious to the fact that I have a mind which is capable of change. The Course says about this: "The secret of salvation is but this, that I am doing this unto myself." (ACIM:T-27.VIII.10:1)

In the Epilogue the book finally summarizes the Course's integration of all these strands of Western spiritual tradition as follows:

A Course in Miracles is such a rewrite of Christian theology (as suggested in a preceding quote from Helmut Koester, reflecting on the impact of Nag Hammadi), in the context of the Neoplatonic and Gnostic traditions, cleansed and expanded by the insights of twentieth century psychology. Thus the old wine of traditional Christianity has been reconstituted in new wineskins, its "old schemes" looked at freshly, and presented anew to eyes and ears receptive to the form of its message. Indeed, the Course can be thought of as the zenith of Western philosophical and religious thought, reconciling the paradox that has virtually imprisoned us in thought systems that reflected our conflicted experience in a world from which we could not truly escape. Holding the key that unlocks this prison door, the Course heals these conflicts of the past, freeing us to build upon its foundation a new beginning, turning the corner on a journey that will carry us ever closer to our God.

That paragraph alone would make it all worthwhile. And while some will not have the patience for this voluminous material, it is important to realize that indeed all these "strands" as I called them before, are somehow present in our spiritual DNA, and that indeed A Course in Miracles is an integration of it all, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. The Course certainly is intellectually very profound, but it does not demand that we become scholars of comparative religion, philosophy, psychology, let alone all three. The present book is a tour de force that manages to do all this, and for those of us who are so inclined, it offers endless exciting vistas into the deep structure of the Course's thought system and its roots in Western thought. We end up with a paranoramic, or maybe I should say symphonic, view of Western tradition, in which the Course now forms the cauda which picks up all of the loose ends, and brings it to a rousing conclusion. And finally of course it all ends in a whimper, when we do accept the atonement for ourselves, and realize that all of this was "much ado about nothing." Gratitude to Ken Wapnick as its author, and the pre-eminent teacher of the Course is certainly in order.

That Was the Week that Was

I admit it, I borrowed that title from a song by Tom Lehrer. Just for contrast, we might remember his hilarious, sarcastic song, National Brotherhood Week. We've come a long way, baby.

In the last 10 days, I've been having flashbacks to how as a 12 year old I would devour the newspapers, and followed the Civil Rights movement blow by blow, while eating up whatever books of MLK that were available in Dutch. I'd lay sprawled on the floor in our living room, always the first to grab the papers (we had no TV when I grew up). So many years later, I just watched MLK's I had a dream speech for the umpteenth time, on the website of ACIM monk, who adds to it a wonderful quote from Ken Wapnick on the meaning of Jesus' teaching. And then I realize that back while I was sprawled on the floor reading about all this, somewhere in Rotterdam, Holland, Ken Wapnick, who was later to become my principal teacher of A Course in Miracles, was there, for he too recognized the greatness and truth which radiated from MLK, and he was able to join in. So somewhere in idea space, paths crossed even then, which later were to cross again in the physical world, long before I had any clue at all that I would be living in the USA at this time, when Barack Obama became the 44th president. And ACIM monk provided us with a brilliant reflection on the inaugural address too, to which I could hardly add anything, so I won't try.

As I've shared here before, MLK led me to Gandhi, and a deeper understanding of non-violence, so that ultimately I became a conscientious objector when the draft came calling. Subsequently my reading wandered on to Krishnamurti, who in retrospect seems to have been a perfect preparation of the Course, just as much as Johan Willem Kaiser pointed me the way towards understanding that Jesus' teaching was about living his truth, and learning by experience what it was he stood for. His look at Jesus was almost exactly the same thing as the quote from Ken Wapnick which ACIM monk put next to the I had a dream video.  Looking back at this now I see the threads running through that carpet of time, which I call my life, in a way that tells me you can't miss it. No wonder then that I should get involved with the Thomas gospel, for from its pages speaks the living Jesus, and if you take your time with it, it is as if he's speaking to you, the reader, directly, leading us to that inner understanding of the experience of truth which he represents, and wants to share with us. And our relationship with him becomes real when we realize it's in the present tense, and not about some figure in history. In that realization lies the resurrection.

On Joining the Y

If it wasn't going to be Closing the Circle, perhaps the title of the book should have been Joining the Y, but while on the one hand the first required a subtitle to avoid confusion with other books with the same title, on the other hand Joining the Y might have been mistaken as a membership drive for a venerable youth institution, so Closing the Circle it is. However, I like the graphical notion of the Y as a symbol for the book, namely that it has two legs, ACIM and the Thomas Gospel, which come together in one Jesus. Just another way of looking at it, but it makes the point that the book is all about realizing that in truth, allowing for different times and places, the voice and the message never changed. This was the real promise of the Last Supper and the ritual that has been distorted as the Eucharist - Jesus promises that he is present to us in our mind whenever and wherever at our slightest invitation, exactly because he is not a body, he is not promoting the cannibalistic ritual Christianity has promoted instead. And the cover represents the one Jesus for all time, who is just the symbol of God's Love in our lives. We got lost, but we have the option of wandering back any time we like, and he comes in at our invitation.

The way it seems to be working out in practice is that the painting, Teach Only Love, on the cover really is the shortcut to the book, and I am gratified to see that it is being picked up by readers who previously did not know much about either ACIM or the Thomas Gospel. The first reports I received from Holland was that the picture practically made the book jump into people's arms. And the longer it is out there, I realize that my collaboration with the painter, Sam Augustin, is really a central feature of the book, and the fact that it's so inviting really is an integral part of the book itself. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the painting is better than any lenghty introduction.

Coincidentally, some people have asked why the two sources of light over Jesus' head in the cover art. Sam answered that in his mind that symbolized the omnipresence of Love, which then was focused in the presence of Jesus. It occurred to me that on some level it could also represent exactly the Y I'm talking about in this post, i.e. the two legs of ACIM and the Thomas Gospel, connecting to the one consistent manifestation of Jesus as the presence of Love.

Closing the Circle, Squared

At least. And there may be more than two... circles that are being closed, I mean.

When picking a name for this book, I quickly noticed that the name that suggested itself to me was not all that original, and that the subtitle would have to clarify exactly what circles were being closed here. Nevertheless the name seemed appropriate, and the publisher agreed, so closing the circle it was.

The main circle that was being closed, and the overt point of the book, was for me the living connection between the Jesus of the Thomas gospel and the protagonist of A Course In Miracles.

Another circle that is being closed by means of this book, starts with my connection with the work of Johan Willem Kaiser, whose work early in life set me on a track of understanding that the issue was not a moral conversion as in the Pauline traditions of Christianity, but the actual following of Jesus as a living reality, i.e. experience. Therefore the issue was not theology to clarify in terms the world can accept what the meaning of Jesus might be, which after all boils down to us telling Jesus what it is he said, but rather, it was to make oneself available to learning what Jesus might have to tell us, which means to accept him as a teacher, and shut up ourselves, until we begin to hear what he has to say. In the end, this historical issue turns out to be merely a special case of the ego's resistance to salvation, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Paul from time to time also wrote some brilliant, as well as beautiful things that seem undoubtedly inspired and inspiring.

The choice however is between the crucified Jesus of Christianity, and the resurrected Jesus of the living spiritual tradition of which for me personally J.W. Kaiser was an exponent and A Course In Miracles is another, for either, the point would be to help us live in a living relationship with Jesus, which they might help facilitate, but hardly define or limit. Not for nothing does the Course say of itself (ACIM:W-189.7:5), "Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." In short it wants to be a conduit to the living experience, and with that its function is over. Kaiser takes a similar position when he says in the dedication of one of his books: "If it [the book] could here or there accompany a lonely Traveler through the desert in his hour of difficulty, then this work of one who had to bend over backwards towards the light, has already fulfilled its function." (In  "De mysteriën van Jezus in ons leven," not yet available in English). In other words again, he can only point us in a direction, and the last thing he would want is for his words to become important and be given meaning in lieu of experience, as opposed to leading us to experience.

To intellectualize spirituality is to pretend spirituality with the ego as our guide, and it is another last-ditch attempt by the ego to prevent us from leading a spiritual life in practice, which is all Jesus ever meant with "following him," i.e. take the risk of living in his spirit in our own lives. Paul is perhaps the prototype of this symptomology, but we see it every day, everywhere, and if we dedicate ourselves to spirituality in our own lives we will see how we ourselves are tempted to remain stuck in such intellectualizations, which prevent us from actually living the reality of spirit, and keep us sound asleep in the dream. The ego values intellectual accomplishments very highly, and the world likewise rewards the study of itself, including its spiritual dimensions, for confining it to an intellectual understanding, as opposed to a living realization, means that it has been reduced to a theory of life, instead of a life. To spirit therefore this is all dead matter, but it sells well, so you can make a career out of it. The effect however is to put the ego in charge of our spiritual development, which may produce an effective stage prop, never any spiritual accomplishment. This is why the Course is so clear that the choice is completely either/or, the Holy Spirit(Jesus), or the ego. There is no other choice to be made.

J. W. Kaiser made me very aware early on about the unbridgeable gap between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Paul (ostensibly about Jesus), the latter of which became Christianity. He was also familiar with much of the debate about Jesus and Paul that had raged in theological circles in the 19th century (Radikalkritik, et. al.), about which he observes that Paul always won out in those circles. He furthermore was very clear that the relationship with Jesus was about inner experience (change of mind), while Paul shifted the action towards morality, confession, and conversion (repentance). Thus Paul represents a typical example of skipping steps in our spiritual development, and underestimating the radical nature of the fundamental change of mind Jesus is talking about. In this way intellectual accomplishment, theology is the meat and substance of this stage prop ("All the world's a stage," after all), and repentance, and contrition in our condition as miserable sinners, ensure that we safely exclude ourselves from the possibility of spiritual achievement.

In Kaiser's time the Gospel of Thomas was just being discovered--the first translations appeared in the 1950s, and he died in 1960--but for the time being its historical significance was not well understood, particularly not that--as is now fairly generally understood--the fact that it must be dated before Paul, which nicely explains why none of the elements of Christian theology even make an appearance in the sayings of Jesus which are in this Gospel. For me, this is definitely the closing of another circle, meaning that it substantially solidifies the record of the pre-Pauline Jesus of Thomas, free of Christian theology, as the teacher I was looking for all along, and who I have found speaking to me in a very authentic way, albeit in a very modern form in the pages of A Course In Miracles. Kaiser in his day suggested in one of his books that the time might come that psychology might enable a movement to abandoning Paul, and returning to the teachings of Jesus. Little did he know that within ten years after his death Dr. Helen Schucman, a psychologist, was to have this channeling experience, the fruits of which we now know as A Course In Miracles. Therefore the early dating of the Thomas Gospel is compelling not only as a matter of literary form, in that sayings Gospels predated narrative Gospels, but it is also compelling because Jesus speaks only directly of spiritual experience in the form of quotations that express his teachings in the parabolic koan style, with which we have now begun to become somewhat familiar, and which are clearly geared to living experience and not to theological ruminations. This is evidently the reason why this little book has caused some mild indigestion at times in Christian circles. It would seem better to deal with it forthright. The fact that the Pauline tradition became historically dominant is hardly proof of its authenticity. The two are simply different and hence totally incompatible.

We might see this in yet a different light by observing that the theological development always follows, and never precedes the spiritual development, and that alone should make us sceptical of the value of intellectualizations as a facilitator of spiritual experience. Within the context of the Course, it is very clear that intellectualizing the work can short-circuit the experience, and thus delays us on the trip. Understanding is helpful only to the extent that it leads to experience, but it becomes harmful if it prevents the experience, and in the Course context this problem is known as skipping steps, i.e. where we act as if we are further along in the process than we are, and thus prevent ourselves from having the experiences we need, and which our ego is always desperate to prevent us from having, such as to "question every value that we hold," which the Course posits as absolutely crucial to our process (c.f. ACIM:T-24.In.2:1). Skipping steps is a nifty way of safeguarding some of our dearest sacred cows and assumptions, meanwhile pretending to accomplishment we don't have. It is at that juncture that often times cults and religions are formed, which pretend to be something different, but always end up being yet another rehash of the ego's thought system, which we do not want to let go in the worst way. A Course In Miracles at least helps us understand the basis of our resistance.

In conclusion, I feel that this second circle that this book closes has to do with Kaiser's comment about why in theological circles Paul always ends up being reasserted, he has to be, because of the inner consistency of the theology of Christianity, which started with Paul, not Jesus. Hence it should surprise no-one that among Paul's disciples, Paul's intellectualizations of the meaning of Jesus will always take precedence over the actual teachings of Jesus themselves. It is merely a cultural stereotype that substitutes intellectualization for living experience.

Jean-Yves Leloup translates the Gospel of Thomas

This book is a gem, and the introduction by Jacob Needleman makes it even more so. Originally published in 1986 in French by Éditions Albin-Michel, it appeared in English in 2005 at Inner Traditions.  The opening paragraph of Jacob Needleman's introduction is a classic, and a wonderful characterization of the Thomas Gospel, but then the rest of it skids on the Gnostic banana peel, first developed by Bishop Irenaeus, and while Needleman seeks to refute the good Bishop, he falls into the trap of characterizing the Thomas Gospel as Gnostic because the Nag Hammadi Library as a whole has that characteristic. However, the mere fact that the Gnostics liked the Jesus of Thomas, does not make him a Gnostic. Even certain turns of phrase which are Gnostic with the benefit of hindsight, can not be Gnostic avant la lettre. But again, Gnosticism, written here with a lowercase "g" in this treatment is not seen as a negative per se, the way Irenaeus characterized it. But by applying the moniker to a book retroactively does not do the clear interpretation of that book any favors. Aside from this issue, Needleman's introduction does contain other gems which make it worth reading. The subsequent introduction by Jean-Yves Leloup is succinct and to the point, and leads up to first a reprint of the Coptic text of Thomas with an integral translation on the facing pages. After that, Leloup provides the sayings a second time with commentaries, which are meant to stimulate our own process in exploring these sayings. Not to put to fine a point to it, but if the "Seek and ye shall find" of Thomas, clearly seen to be a reference to seeking within, makes Jesus a gnostic in this expanded usage of the term, then so is Socrates, at which point the term loses its usefulness from the standpoint of the history of religions to discuss the religious phenomena of Christian Gnosis which flowered in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, and which represented a confluence of much more than just the Thomas sayings. The Gnostic tradition definitely did include some teachers who seem to closely reflect the intent of the Jesus of Thomas, such as Valentinus, who in light of his overal presentation justifiably can and should be characterised as a Gnostic teacher. Or, in yet another way of looking at this, if truth is true - which is a very logical position to take and a central tenet of A Course In Miracles - it can not also be not true, though the mind is capable of denying it, but by its very nature, if we subsequently give up the denial, of necessity we return to truth again, which by this same definition can not ever be lost. Therefore truth is within, except we can deny it as long as we want, but if we do the work with Socrates, or with Jesus -- the forgiveness process asks us that we look with Jesus at the ego's obfuscations and let the light of reason shine on them -- then we cannot fail but to return to truth. In other words, the outcome, in the words of the Course is indeed as certain as God. (ACIM:T-2.III.3:10) The more proper way of looking at this, as the Course would suggest, is that we are within truth, suffering from a delusion, but if it wears off, nothing but truth can be left. So then a useful way to define "gnostic" with a lower case "g" as these authors do, we might say: "He who believes that truth is within, and only needs to be uncovered, and cannot be seen outside, unless and until it is understood within." The introduction by Jean-Yves Leloup is brilliant, and while I evidently do disagree with the ill-defined way he and Needleman use the term gnostic in a very general, non-specific sense, he does do us the favor of defining the way he is using the term reasonably well, and in a way that in and of itself makes a lot of sense, though it could be more explicit as suggested above. He emphasizes how the Gospels canonical and otherwise should all be read side by side, and seen as different ways to hear Jesus, realizing that in this world no-one at least initially "gets" the message completely. This is the beginning of wisdom, as I've argued elsewhere, because it saves us from the arrogant know-it-all attitude of the canonical tradition which simply produced a revisionist Jesus, and proceeded to found a religion in his name, with an exclusive claim to truth, declaring any others to be wrong. However, in the process he sidesteps the likely timeline of the Thomas Gospel, and fails to note how all the theological constructs that really define Christianity as what it is today are not in Thomas, but belong to the so-called canonical tradition, and are thus later inventions. Critical/historical assessment is not Leloups forte, but an open-minded, contemplative approach to the material is. His introduction is also blissfully short, and he then lets the text do its work on us. I love the translation, it flows very well. The choice to use Yeshua in lieu of Jesus is an admirable one, because the name Jesus brings up so much unfortunate Christian baggage for people that were raised in that tradition, and let's face it, even for many who weren't, as Christianity has not always been a good brother to the non-believers in its dogma. It follows a regime of capitalization that I find pleasing (Kingdom, Father, Living One etc.) and its word choices are neutral and inobtrusive. I'm not familiar with Leloup's French version, but evidently the translator did a fine job. For the translation alone this edition merits publishing. Leloup's commentaries are not the strongest element of this book, though they are the bulk of it. I emphasize again that the first presentation of the text is in its entirety, without commentary, followed by a reprint of the individual Logia, with Leloup's commentaries is fortuitous in the sense that you can avoid the commentaries if you so desire. This is a pleasant arrangement, which invites the reader to first form their own response to the text in its pure form. I want to make just a few observations about the commentaries here.  At one point in a footnote, there is reference to Thomas being dated before the canonical Gospels (p. 63, footnote 2), but still not only the introduction, but the book as a whole suffers from the avoidance of discussing the relevance of this dating, which would serve to disentangle Jesus from Christian theology. Leloup's consideration of avoiding this scholarly argument, in order not to burden the reader, and leave us free so we can consider the text in its own right therefore does not hold up and produces the opposite effect. Likewise the development of the usage "gnosticism," broadly as a replacement for "mysticism," "esoteric tradition," or "inner tradition," or even "contemplative tradition," remains in my view fuzzy and undesirable, in that it detracts from clarity about what the Gnostic tradition is, and by implication does not serve to clarify but rather obfuscates who the Jesus might be who is speaking in these sayings. Having said that, there are numerous worthwhile elements in the commentaries, including Biblical references, as well as tidbits from many other traditions. The effect can be a bit Byzantine from time to time, but there are some gems throughout, though it remains a pearl-diving exercise. Some solid points are his repeated observations that the Jesus of Thomas offers a non-dualistic teaching. On the whole however the fuzziness that results from the avoidance of the critical historical discussion, and the unfortunate obfuscating usage of the terms gnosis, gnosticism and gnostic, merely to avoid using certain other words that might lead to misinterpretation, permeate the whole, and leave the reader with a whole patchwork of association, and stream of consciousness ideas, which simply don't add up to a focused whole. Partly of course this is also made difficult because even with the best intentions Thomas is not a nice and coherent whole, and not some spiritual masterpiece, but a somewhat haphazard collection of sayings not all of which seem to be original or free of corruption. Thus in this treatment, even the most seemingly inconsistent sections such as Logion 114 do not elicit even the suggestion of a doubt, but are taken at face value and deemed to be of one piece with the rest of the material.