Gnosis Pure and Simple

One of the more confusing things about the Book of Thomas is that it has been associated with the gnostic religions of the 2nd century, simply because the book was found in a collection of fairly gnostic texts, and maybe because of certain themes that seemed "gnostic" to some. I have written about this issue in Closing the Circle, noting that even the word itself was at first a plain old word, indicating "knowing" versus "unknowing," with knowing signifying the kind of deep intuitive knowledge that provides total certainty, whereas the knowledge of things can only make one somewhat better informed, but provides no wisdom and no true knowledge, because theirs is inherently a partial, piecemeal view.

With A Course in Miracles as a guide,  this element of Jesus' teaching, and of perennial wisdom, really, becomes much clearer. And by going back to basics, we can untangle the Book of Thomas, and much else that Jesus said, from the colorful gnostic theologies of the second and third centuries CE, which often times go well beyond the intentions of the original teachings, and accordingly we can read it in its original sense.

What becomes clear is that to quote a Biblical tradition, "to those outside the Kingdom" it all comes in parables--we who are identified with duality, who think we are separated individuals, and outside Heaven, the Kingdom, or the Oneness of the Mind, of necessity perceive the world in those terms, and perceive individual identities around us. That is the state of unknowing, where we see others as we see ourselves, because we project the separation thought, and the realm of perception is merely designed to confirm that projection and make it real. It is when our false self sees naught but false selves, and deems that reality.

The state of knowing (knowledge in the Course) means to know ourselves to be as indeed God created us, as spirit and one with Him, which goes hand in hand with seeing the face of Christ in all our brothers, for now we recognize our true Self in everyone we meet and we operate in Love and from Love. This is the state of knowing, knowledge, gnosis.

In short, all the theological explanations of the word gnosis in the end go back to a very simple and basic concept that Jesus taught from the beginning. It is the core of a non-dualistic thought system for only in complete oneness does the concept of total certainty exist, that certainty is gnosis. The knowledge of the world deals in degrees of "certainty," but never in total certainty, and therein lies the rub. More information can reduce uncertainty, but this is a limiting function, and "certainty" can never be reached, because it is not in the perceptual domain by definition. It is not of this this time/space continuum. That is why Jesus said: My Kingdom is not of this world. Some of the Thomas Logia may now be clearer:

J said, "If your teachers say to you, 'Look, God's Divine Rule is in the sky,' then the birds will precede you, 'It's in the sea,'then the fish will precede you. Rather, God's Divine Rule is within you and you are everywhere. When you know yourself, you will be known, and you will understand that we are one. But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." (Logion 3)

I stood in the world and found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. They came into the world empty, and they seek to leave the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, they will open their eyes. (Logion 28)

J said, "Let one who has found the world, and has become wealthy, renounce the world." (Logion 110) 

The disciples said to him, "When will the Kingdom come?" He said, "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." (Logion 113) 

Each one of these expresses the contrast between the world of ten thousand things, and the oneness of the Kingdom, the contrast between knowing many things, or pure knowing, gnosis. To be drunk on the knowledge of a great many things would prevent you from knowing yourself, and thus having gnosis.

ACIMExplained Interview by Ken Bok

This was a very nice interviewing experience, it flowed naturally like a dialog, and hopefully this gives people another way of looking at the book, Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles and helps clarify the position of the book of Thomas in the overall scheme of things a bit further.





If there was anything I would have liked to have added, that might be the consideration that whereas Thomas Jefferson (and many others) certainly had a point historically in fingering Paul as having distorted the teachings of Jesus, Jesus does not take any issue with Paul, just as much as he does not take issue with Judas, because his teaching is forgiveness, not judgment. In the Course, Jesus corrects many Christian theological terms and notions and clarify what the original meaning of his teachings was, and at times he even quotes from Paul's work where he does offer more right-minded statements.

Meanwhile you can order the book here:


Meanwhile, you can find more of Ken Bok's wonderful stuff here: www.acimexplained.com and/or you can find his various video interviews on YouTube here http://www.youtube.com/acimexplained he is building up quite an awesome collection of materials on A Course in Miracles.

Saul, Paul, and how Jesus survived Christianity

How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you. (ACIM:T-5.IV.8)

In Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles, I paid quite a bit of attention to the issue of the transition that takes place in the traditions about Jesus, between the teachings of Jesus, of which the Thomas gospel seems to be the most authentic record, and Chrisitianity, named after him, but never 'founded' by him in any meaningful sense of the word, but merely ascribed to him by others and given his name, after his death. Because of the profound intertwining of the Jesus tradition with the orthodoxy of Chrisitianity as it solidified in the next 300 years, for a long time it was the "canonical" books of the New Testament that appeared authoritative.
Only with the re-discovery of the Thomas Gospel, once one understands the timeline of how and why it emerged before the gospels of the New Testament collection, does it become insightful where the break occurs - with the introduction of the theological foundations of Christianity, including the exceptionalism about Jesus as God's only son, to the exclusion of the rest of the sonship as 'adopted sons,' the interpretation of the crucifixion, resurrection (bodily, as Paul assures us), the second coming (the puzzling idea of his returning to the world he claimed to have overcome), the Eucharist etc. All of these concepts were features of Pauline Christianity, and there were many other schools of would-be Christian thought which did not have them, or had entirely different notions. Among other things there were many vocal debates about the idea that the moment of the resurrection was really the moment of the Heavens opening up in the story of the baptism in the River Jordan, under John the Baptist. That particular story would be closer to what is reflected in the Course today. The fact is Pauline Christianity won, because it rendered itself palatable to Caesar, and as a result eventually what we now regard as Roman Catholicism. The fact that it was most successful in stamping out other views, and gained the upper hand politically is no recommendation.

After those original debates died down, Christianity went through a consolidation phase, and then a splintering again. With Vatican II the most obvious attempts at mind control were starting to be relinquished, allowing such an oxymoron as Catholic Bible Scholars, or in general Catholic Bible Studies to exist, just when the first serious translations of the Thomas Gospel began to gain currency, while at another place on the planet the dictation of A Course in Miracles got under way.
Since the time of the enlightenment, thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson in the US had become suspicious of the Pauline material, and smelled a rat. Jefferson likened his efforts to cull Jesus' teachings out of the Biblical materials to salvaging 'pearls' from a pile of 'manure.' Paul he called a 'dupe' and a 'fraud.' This was all very perceptive, but name calling does not solve anything. Jefferson's positive contribution, which was only published posthumously as the 'Jefferson Bible' -- he had called it The Life and Morals of Jezus of Nazareth -- however is a powerful turning point and came very close to anticipating the re-discovery of the Thomas Gospel almost 125 years later.

The interesting thing about A Course in Miracles no doubt is that in it Jesus quotes some of Paul's inspired writing on numerous occasions, while at the same time forcefully correcting the fundamental constructs of the Christian theology of which Paul was the principal architect. In other words, the Course shows also in that regard, what forgiveness means -- the mistakes and the messes are cleaned up and corrected, and only the inspired, 'loving' thoughts are remembered. To that extent then it is never useful to pursue this type of critical scholarship of the tradition, unless it also helps us to see how we all make the mistakes Paul made, and forgive him and ourselves in the same breath. Here, the text of the Course is our guide, as the opening quote shows.

TJ and Thomas, and Jesus: Deja vu all over again

With the publication this year of the facsimile of the so-called Jefferson Bible, there has been new attention to his very personal awareness of his relationship with Jesus, which is evidenced in his personal legacy by his lifelong attempts to rescue the pearls of Jesus' real teachings from among the 'manure' that surrounded it. Now the story has gone mainstream, with coverage in Newsweek: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/andrew-sullivan-christianity-in-crisis.html

Meanwhile, Gary Renard has acknowledged on the DU list that he agreed that this event, the new publication of the facsimile edition of the Jefferson Bible, is in fact the fulfillment of the words of Arten on page 218 of The Disappearance of the Universe,  where he reports that it was not published by Jefferson during his lifetime, but that "it will be made available soon for those who want to see it." At the time when DU was published in 2003, this particular statement seemed confusing since of course the text of the Jefferson Bible had been available in book form for quite a long time already. In retrospect, this particular statement referred to the original that was about to be restored, and become available for public viewing again. It had been too fragile to be able to be viewed. Thankfully, the Smithsonian published a facsimile edition at the same time, so that now anyone can have access to this material in its original form.

The conclusions of Andrew Sullivan in his article are interesting also, that Jefferson's point was simply to leave Christianity aside, and to go back to the teachings of Jesus as best as he could cull them out from among the rubble. The rediscovery of the Thomas gospel in and of itself represents the same opportunity, in as much as it gives us back some of the original teachings, not the embellished literary versions of the later synoptics, which all suffer from editorial influences that trace back to Paul. No wonder then that Jefferson's selections should have close correspondence to the Thomas material, because the later evangelists were likely quoting from Thomas at least in part. He saw Paul's influence as a major distortion, and based on what we know today that was a very accurate way of viewing things.

Given the title I chose for my book, Closing the Circle, I have a certain sympathy for this closing of yet another circle. In terms of the national dialogue it seems to certainly put paid to the repeated attempts by the Christian right to hijack the US constitution and the country on behalf of later forms of evangelical Christianity, which evidently would be completely antithetical to everything Jefferson stood for, even if he wisely kept it to himself at the time. Now it is out in the open.

I myself had been contemplating for a long time to start rewriting my book at first in Dutch, and somehow these developments give me a good basis for a revised and updated new edition. Later, in a few years time, it will then hopefully also see a new edition in English, that will be based on the upcoming rewrite in Dutch. Certainly the 'event' of the publication of the facsimile of the Jefferson Bible, and the sort of public attention it seems to be getting is a development that I am going to incorporate in an updated version. At the same time I feel that both my personal work with ACIM, as well as my work on the translation of the work of Margot Krikhaar, whose first book is soon to appear in English as Awakening in Love, would lead to a substantially new and improved version of the book eventually.

Meanwhile Annelies Ekeler in Holland, who runs Inner Peace Publications, and wants to publish the book in Dutch, and has suggested a new title, which I will adopt at least in Dutch: How Jesus Survived Christianity. That is a remarkable story indeed, given the massive effort that is known as Christianity, which clearly did everything in its power to make sure these original sayings would be lost, including book burning on a fairly significant scale. That story is only par for the course of how the ego deals with challenges, including 'if you can't beat them, join them,' which is in the end how it dealt with the teachings of Jesus: co-opting him, all the while making sure that it would be its version of events that would survive, and that its theology would supplant the original taching. That story is now increasingly coming in the open. Our thanks should go to the monks at Nag Hammadi who buried a collection from their library and helped it escape the destruction.

Our job remains to forgive all the images our ego made of Jesus, for they all get in the way of our real relationship with him. In other words, to accept that living relationship in our lives simply requires the abandonment of all of our own misconceptions about how it is supposed to work and what it is supposed to look like.

Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God. (ACIM:C-5.5)

The Jefferson Bible - Facsimile Edition

I've blogged here before about the Jefferson Bible, and of course I dealt with it extensively in my book, Closing the Circle. My earlier blog on the Jefferson Bible referred to a specific edition of it, that edited by Forrest Church which I think is more or less the standard at this moment.

Now, however, the Smithsonian is publishing a facsimile edition of Jefferson's original, which will be quite interesting to see.

At the same time, it makes me wonder if it was this re-publication of the original which actually might have been alluded to in Gary Renard's narrative in The Disappearance of the Universe, on pages 218-219. That was written and published at a time when the Jefferson Bible one one edition or another had been continuously available, and yet it refers to its not being available with the following somewhat befuddling statement: "Of course he [Jefferson] couldn't make it available to the public at that time without being accused of terrible things, but it will be made available soon for those who want to see it."

It is particularly the phrase "want to see it" which intrigues me - because again the text has been continuously available, but seeing a facsimile of Jefferson's actual, manual product is something else altogether. The reason I have any inkling is because in the Forrest Church edition of the "Jefferson Bible" there are three facsimile pages from the original, and you can't help but visualize Jefferson at his desk, communing with Jesus as best he understood him, and with scissors and glue pasting together, guided by intuition and common sense, that which he considered to be authentic and lopping off all the circumstantial stuff which he considered ballast. It is a completely fascinating image.

The image is all the more intriguing because it is a prototype of the process we all go through at some point in time if we turn inside and try to understand what it is Jesus teaches, and make at least a start with developing our own relationship with him. In the process we have to liberate him out of the dustbin of history, and forgive him, as he alludes to in several places in the Course, for not being the idol that we have made of him. To the ego, Jesus is terribly offensive, which is an entirely reasonable position, because Jesus pulls the rug out from under the ego thought system. Hence it is necessary, if we want to turn to him with an open mind, to first forgive him for not being any of the things we are prejudiced to think he is.

I am made welcome in the state of grace, which means you have at last forgiven me. For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die instead of you. To the ego sin means death, and so atonement is achieved through murder. Salvation is looked upon as a way by which the Son of God was killed instead of you. Yet would I offer you my body, you whom I love, knowing its littleness? Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart? Mine was of no greater value than yours; no better means for communication of salvation, but not its Source. No one can die for anyone, and death does not atone for sin. But you can live to show it is not real. The body does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get you what you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will also believe that it can bring you pain. To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would have calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your life complete. This is completion as the ego sees it. For guilt creeps in where happiness has been removed, and substitutes for it. Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body. (ACIM:T-19.IV.A.17)

and

Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God. (ACIM:T-5.5)

 In Jefferson's day of course this whole issue was somewhat more acute than it is even today and Jefferson for that reason avoided publishing his effort. That only happened posthumously, but in his private correspondence he minced no words. Now, almost 200 years after Jefferson produced this gem, we are in a much better position. We now have the Thomas Gospel, which re-established the primacy of original Jesus sayings over the embellishments of Christianity, and not only that, we now have A Course in Miracles, and the DU tradition to close the circle, if the reader will pardon my pun.

Stop it!

There is a funny Bob Newhart skit on YouTube called Stop it!

Jesus is a little more gentle in the Course, when he says:

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? 2 Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? 3 How soon will you be ready to come home? 4 Perhaps today? 5 There is no sin. 6 Creation is unchanged. 7 Would you still hold return to Heaven back? 8 How long, O holy Son of God, how long? (ACIM:W-pII.4.5)

Or, to put it differently, the problem is always the same, it is our belief in the tiny mad idea of separation, which keeps us in the self-destructive pattern of choosing the crucifixion (being buried alive in a box?!) over the resurrection, of choosing the body over the spirit, of choosing form over content. The wheel of Samsara, the ego's hamster mill is to keep making the same dumb choice over and over again, and expecting a different result. Jesus in the Course is perhaps the better choice for a therapist, because he does not just tell us to stop it, but he teaches us forgiveness, which brings us back to the mind, so that we can change our mind, and step off of that wheel of repetitious justification of our one bad decision. He also says: "Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." (ACIM:T-21.in.1:7) He had the same focal concern in his original teachings, teaching us to change our mind, "metanoia" in Greek, meaning a change of mind, not just repentance in the moral sense as it was misunderstood later.

Much like every good lawyer knows that the best way to thwart a law is to satisfy the letter of it, and do what you want anyway. This is the ego's strategy - to kill the spirit by choosing the form. Jesus constantly reminds us not to, most famously in the New Testament in Mt 16:11 where he tells the apostles (again): "Don't you still get it that I was not speaking to you of breads?"  I.e. he was speaking of the content, not the form, while they keep asking for the form, not the content. This IS the tiny, mad idea at work, this is to say I prefer the specific "something," over the everything of the Kingdom. Thus the ego asserts it is right, and ensures we will not be happy.

In passages like Mark 4:2, Jesus tells us that to those outside the Kingdom, it all comes in parables. In other words, as long as we're joining with him, looking at things from "above the battleground," from the mind level, or the Buddhic plane, we look with him at content not form, and thereby we can change our mind, which changes everything. Again in Mark, in 4:34 he makes it clear that when we join with him, he explains everything. This is the essence of the forgiveness process in the Course. Particularly if you read Mark in the original with Thomas beside it, you could start to hear these original teachings quite clearly.

There is more as you go along. There are numerous references to eyes that do not see, and ears that do not hear, as well as interactions where Jesus restores sight and hearing. Or, in Mark 5:36 Where Jesus "overheard"  the meaning of the words, and clearly is not confused by the form. Evidently he "overhears," as much as he wants us to "overlooks" the ego, because he hears and sees through the form to the content, as would we if we join with him, which is the essence of the miracle as A Course in Miracles presents it: taking back the projection and thereby empowering ourselves to change our mind by now choosing Jesus or the Holy Spirit, our Right Mind. As long as we see the problem in form, in the world, changing our mind is impossible, which is the very purpose of the world. Only once we realize that our mind is projecting the problem (as long as we are choosing the ego), can we take the projection back, and do something about the cause of the problem, in our minds, by turning to a different teacher.

The point is, Jesus always was, and always is teaching from a non-dualistic perspective, about his Kingdom, not of this world (the world being dualistic), the Kingdom that our unseeing eyes don't see, and our un-hearing ears don't hear, because "the world is too much with us." (Wordsworth) And he was clearly always teaching about projection, as the teaching of the splinter and the beam should make clear. However, as the world inevitably distorted his teachings, particularly in Matthew, Luke and Acts, the teachings are increasingly diverted to justify the formation of religious communities, to bring people together in religious gatherings, and evolve into the church in the literal sense, instead of the promised joining with Jesus which is the message of the Eucharist, and so the church eventually becomes a worldly influence. What we do with his teachings is to pull them into the world more and more, to bring the solution to the problem instead of the problem to the solution, as the Course would say. So, if we bring him down into the world, to fix the problem where it can never be fixed, we are recruiting Jesus in the service of Caesar, which is exactly what happened.

In that context now, the Bible emerged as a very political document, which is dressed up by theological opinion and given the authority of being God's word, and the world seems to quickly forget how much the inconvenient aspects of Jesus' teachings were edited out in the selection process of canonical versus "apocryphal" books. This "Bible" becomes the justification of the founding of the Church, and Christianity as a religion, and it is taken very literally, to justify the most convenient reading of it. Subtle distortions and interpretations creep in, all the way to the "Heavenly bread" of the Lord's Prayer, which gradually evolves into our "daily bread," and Jesus becomes the spokesman for the Wonderbread account. Only if we start hearing the freshness of the original documents again, and avail ourselves of some of the literature which was excluded from it, can we restore some of the freshness of the original impression of Jesus, and can we start to hear him differently. A Course in Miracles is another path which brings us back to these original teachings of Jesus, by focusing us on content, not form. Its message of the Simplicity of Salvation ultimately revolves around the very basic insight that once you really see the ego for what it is, would you want it? When that stark choice becomes clear to us, through our incremental practice of forgiveness, what else is left to do but accept the Atonement?

In a variety of ways the Course provides a clear and explicit contrast to "the Bible" as a tool of Christian theology and dogma, there are also numerous allusions to the notion that the same stories could be read very differently, if we read them with the Holy Spirit. However the increasing attention to some of the apocryphal literature is advance the cause further, to a more independent reading of the Jesus literature.

The Thomas Gospel in particular, because of the total absence of a story line to dress up the various Jesus quotes, very clearly uses imagery to make a point, and clearly not to try to tell a story in the historical sense. In it we find Jesus pretty much as the teacher of nondualism, of choosing his Kingdom over this world of time and space.

In the synoptic gospels the sayings are framed in stories, which to the modern reader creates an impression of literal story telling, but it is doubtful if the reader in Jesus' time would actually hear them that way, when they are seen in the context of the rich mythological traditions of the Hellenistic world in which these stories unfolded. Moreover, even in the synoptics - as noted above, Jesus frequently admonishes us that it all comes to us in parables.

But in process of the birth of Christianity as a religion, there was an increasingly strong tendency to take these stories literally, and not as parables, and eventually the whole framework is adapted to justify the founding of what would become the church, and Christianity, and causing them to be read more as history than anything else, and construed in a moral sense to form the basis of that faith.

The symbolic reading of the stories as parables has been traditionally shunned by the emergent church and a more psychological/mythological appreciation, such as could be found in Philo of Alexandria and others was shunned. But even such a heavily interpretive approach was hardly reflective of the way Jesus taught, if we listen to the Thomas Logia. Even the Gospel of Mark still has a very abstract quality, which is very different from the story tellers of Matthew and Luke who purposely try to weave the Jesus story into Jewish tradition in the first case, and justify the formation of the Church in the second, turning the stories more and more in to would-be histories, with moral points. The Gospel of John however reverts again to a heavily symbolic and mythological framing of the story, which could not possibly be confused with the more narrow story telling of Matthew, Luke and Acts.

The more inner directed, and experiential way to relate to all this which was prevalent in the mystery religions of the Hellenistic world was completely blotted out by the emergent church, but there is no doubt it was around in great volume, but it just fades into the background in the face of the overwhelming "success" of the Christian religion which comes to replace Jesus' teachings. Eventually thousands of " Christianities" are either rooted out or forgotten or both, as the one dominant Catholic religion emerges under the sponsorship of the later Roman Emperors. Thus we end up with a literal church, a real estate empire, and gathering individuals in religious meetings, as well as proselytizing and missionary work, which shift the focus of the teachings from changing our mind to converting others, from inner change, and following Jesus, to a confession to a formal faith in an external Jesus, and from inner change to a moral philosophy and regulation of worldly affairs.

As the Bible emerged as the monolithic Holy Book of Christianity, and supposedly the Word of God, this literalistic, fundamentalist reading became the norm, and Jesus' original teachings were fairly effectively edited out of the book. The world had successfully replaced his very threatening teachings with an idol of him, a "bitter idol,"  as the Course calls it, for in the world's version Jesus died on the cross, and we can be none to certain that we'll rejoin with him after death. Throughout A Course in Miracles we find entirely the same theme, and there is ample opportunity at times to distort the Course by taking it literally, which leaves nothing but the empty form of knowing, let alone interpreting the Course, in lieu of practicing what it says, and turning to Jesus or the Holy Spirit as our teacher.

Above the Battleground

In the gospels Jesus is frequently quoted as asking the apostles to follow him, which is another thing which has been most often distorted by taking it literally, and in some absurd forms at times as in when early Christians thought that the imitatio Christi meant to get yourself crucified like him, when evidently the opposite was the case.

Jesus speaks clearly of a Kingdom not of this world. In the Course the first step in that direction is frequently expressed as the view from above the battleground, i.e. to join with Jesus in non-judgmental observation of the movie that is your life and forgive all the actors in it, including the character who plays you. In the previous post about Ken Wapnick's book on the Course and the Bible, I referred to the difference in the choices we face as they are presented in traditional Christianity - very much an egoic thought system - namely deliberate choices between good and evil, and between real alternatives in the world, seeking to make a difference.

In contrast to the above the Course exhorts us: "Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world."  (ACIM:T-21.in.1) We should note also that even in the canonical literature of the NT Jesus constantly refers to a Kingdom not of this world, and again joining him in the view from above the battleground is the first step towards learning to see things his way.

Lionardo da Vinci, who must have known enlightenment also, just like Shakespeare, wrote:

" Noi tutti siamo esiliati entro le cornici di uno strano quadro. Chi sa questo, vive da grande. Gli altri sono insetti."  (As quoted by J.W. Kaiser in Four Open Field Books, p. 81), alternatively the quote is given as:
‘Noi tutti siamo asiliati, viventi entro la cornici di uno strano quadro. Chi sa questo, viva da grande. Gli altri sono insetti,’ in that form it apparently comes from a correspondence with one Gabriele Piccolomini and one wonders if that is a fictional character? After all Gabriel means " God's Strength"  and "piccolomini"  would mean something like "little littleness," (think: "a tiny mad idea.")  It all sounds like Leonardo might have been writing to his decision maker: If you chooses who you really are, you are God's strenght, but as the ego you're but a little fart.

The english rendering would be approximately: "We are all banished between the corners of a square frame. Whoever knows, lives grandly. The others are insects." That conveys the point exactly, for when you contemplate all those heavy choices in the world, a, b, c, d and e, and God only knows what else, and you then go inside to look at it all above the battleground, suddenly you might realize as you're holding Jesus' hand in the balcony seats there, that you're looking at reruns from something called "Rogier's Life" (fill in whatever name you wish) which is this movie you were watching, and which a minute ago seemed so real if not terrifying at times.

As I was writing this, my dear friend Annelies Ekeler, occasional co-author on this blog, researched the provenance of this quote from Leonardo, and it may not be attributable to him at all... the only connection seems to be a Dutch author, Godfried Bomans, who quotes the presumed letter from Leonardo, as if it were fact in his book Erik of het kleine insectenboek (Eric or the book of small insects). Bomans would be perfectly capable of making up such a story, with names that seem real enough (apparently there was a real Piccolomini family in Siena, but nothing is known about their ties to Leonardo). In all the point is valid as is Leonardo's real life motto: "Oh, poor mortals, open your eyes." Evidently he wasn't kidding, and people promptly forgot the most important thing he ever said. Such is life.