Preparations for a Booksigning Party

It all started with Sam painting the painting for the cover of my book, a painting which we titled: "Teach Only Love" with a quote from the Course. Sam is a Brooklyn resident, and a native of Haiti. A French ACIM (UCEM) study group we had for a few years, started in his basement/studio. I live in the Bronx myself. Somewhere along the line Isma, another Brooklyn resident offered to help organize a booksigning, not to mention Bernice (also from Brooklyn) who is also helping with the same.

Then I was on the phone with Sam and he told me that he has an artshow coming up with his work and some Haitian artists to raise money for Haiti in the aftermath of the storms--four hurricanes in a row. What organization to donate to? Enter my friend Peter (see www.tr-ac.net.com), who knows his way around in these things, and we selected Fonkoze. The artshow opens on 9/25/08, and from memory I thought that was the official publication date of my book, which however seems to actually be September 26th, but who cares. We're having the book signing party at the opening of the art show, organized as a fundraiser for Fonkoze. The event is at Artisan Gallery, owned by Mery, who is a native of Senegal. Mery and Sam were brought together by one Percy Thomas, who is quietly orchestrating various parts of the program.

So we are having a suitably international event, typical New York, the city where at last count some 120 languages are spoken. And the coming together of this event in a very serendipetous and spontaneous manner is one of those experiences which sometimes makes people say: "Only in New York!", though we should not forget that spontaneous living is really our birthright, regardless of where we live-even in New York-if we only get our egos out of the way. The pictures above are of Mery and Sam discussing the planning for the event on September 16th.

Empty Space

...as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? (ACIM:T-28.III.5:2-4)

One of the reasons for picking the title Closing the Circle for my book is contained in the above paragraph. For once you really tune in to the consistency of the Jesus of the Thomas gospel and the Jesus of  ACIM, the whole magnificent theology in between evaporates into nothing, for Jesus said the same thing before and after, as if nothing ever happened. To look at it from this point of view, you begin to realize how and why the ego must always push Jesus, Yeshua, J, out of the way, and yet it can never succeed, for in the end only truth is true, and all else is a lie. As I have argued elsewhere, the emergence of Christianity as a solid, coherent religion, was a victory for the Church, and a brainchild of Paul, but it is the choice for the murder of Jesus, and perpetuates the psychological mechanisms for keeping him out of the way, i.e. the expectation of the Second Coming as some sort of future event in the time/space framework is an expectation, which detours the mind around the presence of Jesus in the now, keeps us blind to him, and now dependent on the emerging Church as our only hope to ever bring him back.

In the meantime, never mind how badly distorted Jesus's teachings were in the course of Christianity, undoubtedly some always found their way to him. For even with only the Biblical account to go by, we are free to lift Jesus out from the editorials around his words, as in fact Thomas Jefferson attempted quite amazingly. But many saints and mystics, many of whom were never known, have found the way.

The image that emerges then is of how the teachings of Jesus in the form he taught in Palestine 2000 years ago, began to fade into the background almost immediately, with the Thomas gospel and perhaps the Q tradition as the purest traditions, which are fading into the background almost immediately, and the narrative gospels taking their place. The ego always uses cooptation as one of it's most powerful strategies, which is also referenced in the Course as follows:

The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decision, much as a higher court has the power to reverse a lower court's decisions in this world. The ego's decisions are always wrong, because they are based on the error they were made to uphold. Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does the ego cite Scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets Scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing in the ego's judgment. Perceiving it as frightening, it interprets it fearfully. Being afraid, you do not appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment would also be against you. (ACIM:T-5.VI.4)

Ultimately it is because of this development  that the Thomas gospel, and the things Jesus says there, to not sound like Christianity at all. This is what came as such a shock when they were first rediscovered. Not only that it has taken fifty years since that discovery before we are beginning to notice what he really might be talking about, and that it is not the Pauline theology that was invented twenty years after his death and on. This meeting really is the central point of Gary Renard's work. The experiences he had, break through the veil of obfuscations of these teachings, and free us up to hear them anew with their original freshness. Therefore that particular circle began to be closed with the re-discovery of the Thomas gospel, and is now emerging into public consciousness, among other things because of Gary's work describing his own experiences in the vernacular.

Meanwhile the dynamic of the ego as being the choice for the murder of Christ is powerfully spoken of in the Course, and makes complete psychological sense, but there is a curious book I want to mention here, by Wilhelm Reich, titled The Murder of Christ, which explains the whole process in a very curious way. Reich was the disciple who Freud chose over Jung in the end, as a defense against Jung's interest in spirituality. Freud literally said to Reich, that they must protect the world against the "rising tide of occultism," which was exactly where Jung's interest led him, and which upset Freud no end. To Reich, like to Freud the body was the foundation of our reality in this world. Reich was faithful to Freud to the extent that for him all issues were centered in the body, and seen most clearly in our difficulties with healthy sexuality. But you can read that as a parable, that just happens to be Reich's way of expressing the issues, once you see through that, he identifies perfectly how and why, as long as we deny who we are in truth, we are absolutely committed to the continuing murder of Christ. To see through the whole thing, all you have to do is to grasp that the point is not re-becoming sexually liberated bodies, which was Reich's way of understanding our true creativity, but to re-become spirit, which really is the only place of our creative identity, when we re-identify with what we truly are as the Son of God. All the power in Heaven and earth was indeed given to us, for we have the option to choose against the ego.

On the stage of history the re-discovery of the Thomas gospel, and the ensuing renewed focus on the deeper meaning of Jesus's teachings, is certainly one way of closing the gap over 2,000 years of obfuscation of his teachings, which in a way was only empty space, once you see how silly it really was.

Anything Rather Than The Love Of God

They said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you."

He said to them, "You examine the face of Heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine the present moment."
(PGoTh, Logion 91)

In Lesson 196 we find the following: The thing you dread the most is your salvation. (ACIM:W-196.9:4) The central theme here is that Jesus teaches us in this saying as well as throughout the Course that our problem is that we are slamming the door in his face, or to put it more formally, we keep choosing the separation now.

To paraphrase it in a different way, he is present to us, always, but we prevent ourselves from seeing him while we keep seeking in the world outside, and in the past, for the explanation of who he is, instead of accepting his presence. Thus the ego's motto in slightly different words is: "Anything rather than the Love of God." The Course may not use quite those words anywhere, but the theme plays throughout, as in here:

It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. (ACIM:T-4.II.1:1-3)

And again this is also the essence of what has been misinterpreted in Christianity as the Eucharist--he is sharing his mind with us, and is present to us whenever we remember him, that is the power of the resurrection. The power of the Course as a path lies in the fact that all of this points towards our responsibility for a behavior in the mind which we can stop. Jesus is outside the door, and it is up to us to stop slamming the door in his face, as he will be glad to come into our mind at our invitation. The ego's problem is we keep looking for him as a body, i.e. outside, and that sets us up for defeat, which played itself out in early Christian history as the constant adjustments about the prediction of the Second Coming, which then became enshrined in various apocalyptic theologies over time. Meanwhile, we safely keep him outside the door, by denying his reality, and through our addiction to conflict we keep him far away from us.

Thus, we indeed do not know how to examine the present, for we are sound asleep in the ego's dreams, unable to be awake to his presence--think also of the apostles asleep in the garden. And here is where the Course is so practical and helpful, for it helps us to learn to see the silliness of our resistance, and how we're causing our own pain. And the practice of forgiveness helps us to let go of the defenses that are designed to keep us in misery.

I know, I was there!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Thomas Effect

It has been clear to me that one of the roles my book may play is simply to help people familiarize themselves more with the Thomas sayings, and even during the preparation of the book for its release this summer/fall, it is now becoming clear to me that this is already happening. In spite of the many editions on the market it is not as yet well known.
Somehow the imagery of the Thomas gospel does not come natural to today's readers for a variety of reasons. Many of us are not familiar with the popular culture of Palestine 2,000 years ago, and today we don't see people store flour in earthenware jars, let alone run down the street with them, as is the case in one of the Logia. So it takes us a bit of time to familiarize ourselves with these images. Undoubtedly this is also why Pursah is quite specific that the 22 sayings that are quoted in DU, are in effect a selection that is easy on the ear of the modern audience.

Having said that, I'm noticing now that repeat exposure is in and of itself opening peoples ears for these sayings, and I have gotten some interesting reactions from my proofreaders for the book. One of them feels the urge to send me quotes from the book, and the other waxes lyrical, and is hearing symphonies, but both of them seem to feel like the Thomas sayings are opening up to them purely by virtue of the repeat exposure. This is a very interesting development and it really makes me feel hopeful that Closing the Circle could help people close the circle of understanding the continuity and oneness of Jesus across time and space.

In short, for many people this version may become the first version of the Thomas Gospel they knew, which is not a bad thing, for the inner contradictions within the collection with the sayings Pursah has left out is much harder to appreciate, exactly because of that lack of agreement. In the process of preparing the book I've found myself losing mostly all interest in those sayings which Pursah leaves out.

Back to the Gospel according to Mark

Some years ago, in the aftermath of a post of mine about Thomas on the DU group on Yahoo!, which Gary later used in Your Immortal Reality, someone made a comment that I should write a book about Thomas. I figured Gary's work was enough, besides I was working on a translation of the Gospel according to Mark, and advised the party of such. To which I got a reply that nobody would read my book about Mark anyway, but everyone would read a book about Thomas. I felt hurt and insulted for about a week, but then I turned around and realized that perhaps I should listen to this suggestion. Shortly we will start finding out, as the book is due out in late summer, and in fact I received the very first advance order the other day.
Meanwhile, I have come to realize during the work on the book about the Thomas gospel, that in reality it was an invaluable preparation for the book on Mark, exactly because it forced me to really sort out my notions of what happened in those early years, and how Thomas clearly comes before the influence of Paul, whereas the canonical gospels all come either contemporaneously (Mark) or clearly after Paul.

Meanwhile, working on the problems of the tradition in the context of the Thomas story, has brought it much more clearly into focus for me just how many levels of distortion are really at play. Evidently, in the earliest, living teaching, if there is any real connection to the teacher at all, and a living awareness of the content (meaning) of the teaching as opposed to the form, being true to the spirit, would allow the apostles to use any kind of example (parable) at all to make a point, as long as they were in the living awareness of serving the same truth Jesus did, and thus were saying the same thing in spirit, even if the form might have been different. Yet, even at that level distortions would creep in almost immediately, for, just as much as we do not understand the non-dualistic teaching of A Course In Miracles for a long, long time, until we begin to fathom it experientially, similarly the apostles, still rooted in their roles in the world, were only rank beginners in understanding Jesus. Hence we end up looking at the accounts, canonical or otherwise, not as consummate expressions of realized truths, but as the first tentative accounts of truths which the writers of these accounts barely had begun to fathom, except they knew it was important enough to write down.

And, in the event, there also are some circumstances which now make it easier for me to work on the Gospel according to Mark, and share some of that work with the readers. As of recently, I have set up an account at www.GreekBibleStudy.org and linked it to my Facebook account. The best way to hook up to this is actually to find me on Facebook, and to click on the "B" symbol on the left hand side under "applications" and then to join the Greek Bible study site from there, the point being that within Facebook you can actually read my notes, along with the English text, while on the Bible Study site, you get more columns of text, including the Greek text, but you cannot (yet) get access to my notes. Therefore at this moment the only way to access my notes is through Facebook. Once you know, it's easy. (Note: As of 12/19/09 this has not been working for a while, but I will reflect it here whenever the site completes their upgrade, so it can work with Facebook again.)

The focus of my notes on Mark will be on seeing that whole book from a right-minded perspective. The foundations for the notes I will develop there will be based mostly on Jan Willem Kaiser's book Beleving van het Evangelie (Experiencing the Gospel), on the Course, and of course the Thomas Gospel. I now realize why I had to write Closing the Circle before going on with the Mark project. All going well the Mark project will result in two books: my own fresh translation of Mark with some added materials from J.W. Kaiser, most notably his Introduction to the Study and Interpretation of Drama.

The major shift is to completely appreciate that then as now the teachings came in a dualistic form, representing a non-dualistic teaching, or as Kaiser would put it, a message of Eternity clad in the images of Time. The imagery was simply different then, than what we now have in the Course, but the range of misunderstanding is the same, starting out with taking things literally. So come and visit me on Facebook if the idea of taking a different look at one of the Gospels is appealing to you. My own foundation in this regard comes from J.W. Kaiser, but nowadays Eckhart Tolle also has some interesting observations about the real meaning of Jesus in the quotes we know of him, and his observations closely parallel the work of Kaiser.