75 The loners and the bridal room

LG75

Jesus said:
Many are at the door,
but it’s the loners
who will enter the bridal room.

This logion is an addition to the previous one, about “the many” who, although standing around the Source, keep their distance. This logion emphasizes ‘the loners’.

We have already seen that the word singling is an almost literal translation of the Latin word individuum, of in = not, and dividere = divide. An individual is therefore not shared, a whole person, a loner.

Not “the many” will enter the bridal room and connect with the Source there, only the whole people, the heals, the loners, the person as an individual. A whole person is originally the meaning of a holy person, a saint. In English we see that in the relationship between “whole” and “holy”. A “saint” is a whole person. Your individuality is your holiness.

Very special and characteristic of the Thomas Gospel is that you must first be a loner before you can enter the bridal room. You must first become an individual, a whole person, before you can coincide with the Source.

Here an important distinction is made with some other spiritual traditions that are strongly focused on selflessness. Egoism plays no role in gnostics. It is not even there as a concept.

For two reasons, Gnostics emphasizes the realization of your personal individuality.

With your true self you are part of the Source, you are a participant in what is, you exist.

Moreover, the realization of this in the practice of life is everyone’s personal destiny, which you fulfill by growing with your individual talents.

There is a beautiful Jewish anecdote about this. He is about Moos who dies and comes to God to be admitted to heaven.

God asks him curiously: “What have you done during your life on earth?”

Moos replies: “Lord, I have studied all sacred texts and done exactly what it says that one must do.”

“Really?” Says God, and his face is somewhat clouded. ‘That was all?’

“Oh no,” says Moos, “I’ve been at the feet of the most important rabbis, and if I couldn’t find what I needed to do in the scriptures, I asked them. I have always done exactly what they ordered me to do. “

Moos looks up proudly at God, expecting to get a prominent place in heaven, very close to God.

But God doesn’t look happy at all.

“You know,” he says thoughtfully to Moos, “I have thought for centuries about the person you were supposed to become and who would be needed at the place and time where you would be born. I have given you an inner knowing of your personal destiny. I have provided you with rich talents to realize that destination. I have filled your heart with a desire to do what you were meant to do. And you have not listened to your heart? You didn’t become Moos? What a shame that you missed your destination. “

And God adds, after being silent for a while: “You know, I am Love, and I cannot help but allow you to enter heaven, for I too must follow my destiny as God. Everyone is always welcome here. That you are welcome is heaven. So there is the gate of heaven. But sometimes, when we look at each other, you will see the regret in my eyes that you have not become the way I intended. And the pain in your heart that you will feel is perhaps what you people call hell. “

40 The error has no root in reality

LG40

Jesus said:
A vine was planted outside the father
but because he does not stand strong,
he will be pulled out and destroyed with root.

The previous logion showed compassion for the scribes as human beings, because the scribes alienate themselves from the Source within themselves in their great zeal. Yes, that’s a shame for them.

This logion is about the sciences themselves, and about the evil that they can do. It is about thoughts, dogmas, etc. that start to lead a life of their own independently of reality, and therefore have no roots in reality. They are planted “outside the Father.”

Thoughts about “the Father” who have started to live their own life, so that they have become detached from the original emotion, are the hallmark of fundamentalism. They have the foundation in themselves, and not in “the Father.” That kind of fundamentalism kills the heart, kills love, and therefore needs to be radically uprooted in order to reconnect life, action in the world, with the source of love, “the Father,” which is present in ourselves.

Who is ‘the Father’ here? In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, the word that is usually translated as “Father” actually means something else. It literally means “Birth giver.” That word is neuter, not masculine or feminine.

You can also translate it as ‘Source of being’. There is a source and all that exists flows from it. Reality flows like a river from a source. That is the image of creation that fits within Gnostics.

We are right here in the middle of the problem of appointment. That Source of Being, so is the Gnostic view, falls outside of every description. The Source is still unformed, the possibility of being that has not yet taken shape, which precedes all forms. So: if we describe reality as a river, flowing from a source, then that is also just a ‘way of speaking’. It is no more than an image. And that image is not reality itself.

The Gospel of Philip (10) says about this:

The names that are used to describe cosmic affairs are often very misleading, because while they derive their meaning from what exists, they focus on what does not exist. Whoever hears “God” does not think of what really exists, but thinks of something that does not exist. So it is with ‘the father’ and ‘the son’ and ‘the holy spirit’ and with ‘life’ and ‘light’ and ‘resurrection’ and ‘church’ and everything else: one does not think about what exists but about what does not exist, unless one has come to know the existing.

So that’s the problem: we try to name the indescribable, and then we start to believe in the words. The story replaces the real thing.

Buddhism has a beautiful expression for this: “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.” But the problem is that people are so easily inclined to think that it is really about the finger, and not about the moon. Then church, faith, and spiritual traditions become more important than what they refer to, and thus “the Father,” the source of all life, becomes invisible.

The scribes mentioned in the previous logion did not enter. They stayed outside.

Going inside is here for: looking for the experience within you. Only in experience can one get to know the really existing.

But, in order to be able to go inside, to know the source of being in your experience, all those images must first be released. The absolute truth of all those images must shatter. The images must become images again and not the truth itself. And you will indeed be shocked, as Logion 2 said, if you see how much those beautiful images can actually keep you from Source. And how fundamentalist scribes, who know the images and stories, but exclude the experience, can keep you from that Source by demanding that you believe in their images and stories, as if those images and stories are reality themselves.

Many stories are told about the Source. And that is not at all wrong. Philip says:

The truth was given many names in the world because it is impossible to know without names. However, the truth itself is one. It manifests itself in many forms for the sake of us being taught in love about this one under many names.

The stories that people tell about ‘the fixed’ are just stories, no matter how beautiful. The literal belief in such a story is called “error” in Gnostics. The vine that was planted outside the Source, that is, the belief in the images and stories that replaces the experience, yes, it must be released. Only in the void of not knowing, yes, even of unbelief, can the Source be experienced. And that could sometimes cause a considerable inner storm of images.

45 Keeping up appearances hurt

LG45

Jesus said:
They do not harvest grapes from thorns
and figs not from thistles,
for they bear no fruit.
A good person brings out of his treasure room
the good.
A bad man brings out of his bad treasure room,
who is his thinking,
the evil forth,
and he says evil things.
Because what his thinking is full of
from it he produces evil.

With logion 39 a new chapter started, as it were. It was said there that the Pharisees had received the keys of knowledge, but they had hidden them, both for themselves and for others. And they no longer knew where. The subsequent logions are about how those keys can be found again.

Logion 40 is about naming. That what matters is beyond all images. Nevertheless you need images to come to the unnameable. The mistake that one can make in this is, however, that one starts to believe in the images, instead of looking for what the images refer to. The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. The map is not the landscape. The cookbook is not the meal.

Logion 41 shows what happens to you if you look beyond the images, or if you get stuck in the images: beyond the images, life itself is, the belief in the images kills.

What attitude should you take in order not to get stuck in the images? “Become passers-by,” says Logion 42. In your memory you make the past an image. Do not look back, otherwise you will become a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife.

The almost ineradicable tendency to chain everything into images, and to hold that true, even applies to the students when they listen to Jesus. They want to understand him, to grasp him intellectually, by catching him in an unchanging image, Logion 43 tells us, and they even want Jesus to provide them with that image. Of course Jesus refuses.

Logion 44 goes straight to the core of gnostics. What you are looking for beyond the images, you must first find that in yourself and then you will also be able to experience it around you. That requires an almost radical allegiance to the compassion of your heart. Infidelity of the compassion of your heart, yes, that is the source of all loss.

This logion, 45, summarizes all of that.

It points to the deceptiveness of images. They seem so true, but they just aren’t.

The fruits of the thistle resembles the fruits of a a fig. Whoever wants to pick these sham figs will be hurt by the thorns. Moreover, these sham grapes will not produce wine, wine as a symbol of the spirit.

The fruits of a thistle have some resemblance to a fig. And this sham also has spines that hurt.

You just have to look around to see what is meant here. Fundamentalism, the belief in unchanging images, always leads to a struggle, for example against alleged apostates, or against so-called heretics who are supposed to be burned at the stake. These are the thorns and thistles of the fundamentalist belief in images that really matter.

Whoever seeks the fruits of a doctrine, the real meaning of the images, will harvest real grapes, pick real figs, the fruits of love.

84 Joy: the profit of losing the images

LG84

Jesus said:
When you see your reflection,
do you take delight in that.
But if you see your original face
that existed before you were there,
and that neither dies nor arises,
how much joy will you experience!

This is a further elaboration of logion 83. There it was about the loss of images. Here it is about the profit that that can yield.

Anyone who believes in images, as described in the previous logion, places the core of his own existence outside himself, namely in those apparently independent images.

Whoever realizes what those images refer to as a sign, will discover that “the light of the father” from the previous logion is present in himself, that all those images are an image of your own core of beings, here called your original face.

Yes, there is something in the person that is independent of time. In the prologue to the Thomas gospel, we called it the Christ nature.

The benefit of losing the images is the joy of discovering the timeless Christ nature as truly existing in yourself.

The Gospel of Philippis says it this way:

The Lord said: “Fortunately the one who already existed before he became. Because he who exists has become and will be. “(57)

No one can see anything of the fixed things without becoming the same as those things. It is not like the man in the world who sees the sun without being the sun and who sees the sky and the earth and everything else without being those things. The truth is different: you saw something of that place and you became like them; you saw the Spirit and you became the Spirit; you saw Christ and you became Christ; you saw the Father and you will become a father. That is why you see everything here and not yourself, but there you see yourself. And what you see, you will become. (44)

Just like the Gnostics from Paul, he is extremely scrupulous about the externalities of religions – ceremonies, holy days, rules and regulations. Like the Gnostics, he says that true Christians become like Christ; “It is given to them to behold the glory of the Lord with an unconcealed face and to be recreated into ever more glorious likeness to him.” (Freke & Gandy p. 206)

91 See what is, instead of a belief

LG91

They said to him:
Tell us who you are,
so we can believe in you.
He told them:
You interpret the signs in the heavens and those of the earth,
but you have not recognized him who is before you
And this moment
you don’t know how to interpret that?

Ah, ah, the students want a faith. They want Jesus to tell them what they should believe about him. They may want to make Jesus a god, unlike themselves, far above themselves, so that they might worship him appropriately.

But then they would place that which is present in themselves outside of themselves, namely in the image that they so much want to make of Jesus.

Jesus is not about faith. Faith makes blind all too easily. Jesus wants to correct that blindness; wants to make the students see, and especially of themselves in their true nature.

Jesus does not want them to make an image of him and to believe in that image and thereby blind themselves to themselves. He wants them to recognize something in him that is also present in themselves, so that they can also say to Jesus: “You are me in a different form.”

If the students don’t want to do that? See the following logion.

97 The empty jar

LG97

Jesus said:
The kingdom of the father is like a certain woman,
who carried a jug on her back, full of flour.
And so, going her way, still far from home, an ear broke from the jar,
and the flour flowed behind her on the road.
She did not notice it and was not aware of any harm.
When she got home, she put the jug down and found it empty.

This logion is of great beauty again. It is a beautiful image of a woman who is on her way, spiritually understood. In Gnostics, women are often the symbol of the human soul, of inner knowing.

This woman carries on her back a jug full of images, dogmas, teachings and everything else. It is a heavy burden, and not exactly the light yoke of Thomas 90.

She was still far from home, says this logion, so she was still separate from herself and from the Source.

Along the way on her spiritual path something happens. The ear of the jar breaks off. The hold that the images, the dogmas and the teachings had on her weakened, and without her realizing it she let go.

And then there comes a moment when she suddenly experiences that she coincides with herself. She has come home, one with the Source. And her jar is empty. So she no longer needs to carry it with her. She is free.

101 Let go of your parents

LG101

Jesus said:
Who does not hate his father and her mother, like me,
can’t become a student of mine.
And whoever does not love his father and her mother, like me,
can’t become a student of mine.
Because my mother gave birth to me,
but my true mother gave birth to me.

 This logion is a continuation of logion 55. It also says:

Who doesn’t hate father and mother,
can’t become a student of mine

Here is added:

And whoever does not love his father and mother, like me,
can’t become a student of mine.

In the explanation for logion 55 it became clear that we can understand the word ‘hate’ as ‘let go’. And then it becomes understandable that you can let go of your parents and love them at the same time. That is what it was all about in Logion 55. So we can also understand that here.

Then that does not explain the meaning of the final sentences of this login:

Because my mother gave birth to me,
but my true mother gave birth to me.

That clearly goes a step further. For the meaning of that we must discover who or what is meant by the two mothers.

It is almost obvious to see the first mother as the biological mother, because he “gave birth to Jesus for death.” Death is a symbol word in Gnostics. That will therefore not be the intention.

This is about the image of ‘the mother’ that you can carry within yourself, but also the image of ‘the father’.

Becoming a free person, a Christ in the Gnostic language, means not only that you detach yourself from your parents in the practice of your life, but that you also have to let go of your internalized parents, the internalized images of your parents. Only then can you really build a free relationship, not only with your parents, but also with yourself.

Then a different kind of parenthood can arise within yourself. In a way, you become your own father and mother. That inner parenting of yourself is no longer connected with your real parents, but with something bigger in yourself, the royal autonomy that was spoken about in Thomas 2, the Christ in you. From that mature, free self-determination you can once again incorporate your actual parents into your feelings of love for your fellow man.

54 The empty consciousness and the inner observer

LG54

Jesus said:
Happy are the poor,
for you belong to the kingdom of heaven.

The statement “Happy are the poor” here of course concerns ‘the poor in spirit’, also mentioned in the New Testament. Those are people without illusion, or at least people who are not trapped in an illusion.

So that has nothing to do with material poverty.

We have already mentioned two forms of consciousness. In personal consciousness we experience ourselves as an individual between birth and death, with everything that goes with it. There is also another state of consciousness in which we experience our connection with all that is. That other state of consciousness is called the Christ consciousness in Gnostics, and in contemporary language the transpersonal consciousness. In that state of consciousness there is no attachment at all to what appears to consciousness.

We always have something of that open consciousness, even in everyday life. And that reveals itself in the fact that we can perceive ourselves, even our emotions.

Usually this will not be experienced as special, but it is still very remarkable that we can be angry and perceive that we are angry, that we can be happy and perceive that we are happy, and so on. There appears to be an inner observer within us who can perceive the state of our mind without being a participant in it, without being attached to it and, above all, without being identified with it.

It is already quite a step on the spiritual path when you realize that there is such a thing as an observer in you. Spiritual growth consists primarily of becoming more aware of the observer in you. You then acquire the ability to perceive yourself from inner freedom.

Sometimes you can immerse yourself fully in what you are doing in the here and now. You can also observe yourself in the position of the inner observer, especially the state of your mind.

The inner observer, also called the inner witness, can see all the movements of your mind without judgment, without merging into it and without fighting it. The inner observer can see that you are angry, without being angry yourself, or perceive that you are happy without being happy yourself. The observer sees that there is anger or happiness, but is completely free from it. That is why it is said that the consciousness of the inner observer is empty or with the symbol word in this logion: poor, poor in spirit. The inner observer is like a mirror that merely reflects, without itself being the reflected reality.

That state of consciousness is completely detached and is called empty or poor, but it is not without its own qualities. You can summarize those qualities of that consciousness under: free, trust, being and goodness.

Free

The inner observer is completely free. It is free, or, with a usual term, ‘freedom of mind’. The inner observer is the inner free. Free is the essence of the inner observer.

Trust

Confidence as a characteristic of the inner observer is the inner condition of a calm and unwavering certainty. It is not a dogmatic certainty, which consists of attachment to outer truths, but more a form of fearlessness, regardless of all circumstances. Trust knows no fear. The inner observer can still detect fear, or any other emotion, in your mind, but is not a participant in it yourself. Perhaps unlike what you would expect, fearless trust even allows you to make any emotional condition happen to you uncensored and perceive in yourself, including fear, but without being attached to it yourself. The inner observer himself is fearless, free from any movement of mind.

That free of the inner observer of his own movements of mind makes one free to choose whether or not to act accordingly. People are not dragged unintentionally by all sorts of emotions, but can freely decide, considering the emotional state of your mind, to sometimes and sometimes not to connect with such an emotion and to act accordingly.

To be

The being aspect is a kind of solid ground under your feet. It is a very characteristic experience that can make you say “I am”. There is the experience of pure and crystal clear ‘being’.

It is like walking on water. That is, the ground under your feet is not hard and immovable, but flowing, creating, happening – a stream of being. And it is precisely that mobility that is, very paradoxically, the solid ground under your feet. Because there is nothing more that you can go under. Logion 50 already says it is a movement and a rest. Life is a movement, like running water, like a rippling and sometimes even turbulent sea, but the calm security of the inner observer does not perish there, how intense the current, no matter how fierce the waves.

Christ, as a symbol of this inner observer, the Christ nature in a human, walks on the water, Matthew tells. Peter, the symbol of a human who first found apparent safety in ‘the boat’, as a symbol of dogmatic security, gets out of the boat and threatens to drown. But the Christ in himself knows how to save him.

Goodness

This is the experience of fundamental goodness. In this logion it is called “being happy,” often translated into Christian texts with “being blessed.”

That goodness is not a moral judgment about the events in reality, but a characteristic of the inner observer. The inner observer is no longer attached to what is observed, but it is precisely that detachment that makes the combative and unconditional submission to reality in the here and now possible.

Precisely because the inner observer is detached, it allows you to be touched conditionally and in total emotional openness in your heart by the events in the world.

So there is a remarkable duality: on the one hand the detached inner observer is in a state of untouchable goodness, on the other hand the inner observer can then censurelessly detect how the circumstances of life can touch the heart, and base the actions in the world on it .

In fact, the detachment of the inner observer can allow you to experience the pain and joy of your fellow creatures as your own pain and joy, without threatening or arousing desire. And you could also call that love.

Here, in this logion, the goodness, that happiness aspect, that is, the salvation of the inner observer, is emphasized. And that is not without significance.

The sense of goodness is an important indicator of unity with the Source. Even though the first three fundamental experiences of freedom, trust and being may be missing, the sense of goodness can also manifest itself. We also experience that sense of goodness when we are accidentally connected to the Source, when we walk in nature or listen to music. So it is extremely important to learn to recognize that feeling and to dare to trust it as a message from your soul that lets you know that this is what life is all about, what really matters to you.

That very special sense of goodness will usually present itself when you do something, when you are doing something.

It is a cosmic pat on the back
that tells you
that it’s good
you are who you are
and
[this] is what you have to do here on earth right now.

With that experience of goodness you are in the kingdom, in the here and now.

69 The willingness to be touched in your soul

LG69

69a
Jesus said:
Blessed are those who are touched in their souls.
Truly, they are the ones who got to know the father.

69b
Blessed are the hungry,
for the belly of those who desire
will be saturated.

Charity [relativeslove, #lit_trans], as is of course known, is a core theme of Christianity. But we know that through the ecclesiastical tradition mainly as a commandment, as a “Thou shalt”, or as a call to imitate. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. Marvellous acts of mercy have been performed following Jesus’ call for charity. And whoever makes the decision to put love into practice, following Jesus, even if that is only an intention, an intention, will discover by doing that there is true love in her or him, as a perhaps unexpected Inner power. That is the way of practical action.

Here, in this logion, it is emphasised that love is not just a moral commandment, no matter how valuable it is to imitate, but that love is at the root of reality. Love exists.

In Gnostics, we have two natures as human beings, personal nature and Christ nature – see the prologue to the Thomas gospel. Personal nature is our appearance in time, our temporary existence between birth and death. If our consciousness is only connected to personal nature, we can experience ourselves as separate from our fellow human beings. I am me and you are you.

He who connects his consciousness with his timeless core, called Christ nature in Gnostics, connects his self-awareness with all reality, with the Source of all being. Then, as said here, you got to know the father. Then there is also the self-evident sense of unity with all that is. Then the separation is lifted. Then charity is a matter of course, because then we will be touched in our soul by everything that happens around us. Then the pain and joy of our fellow man and other creatures is also our own pain and joy. You are me in a different form.

The reverse also applies: if we are willing to be touched in our soul by what is happening around us, then that willingness will bring us to the Source within ourselves. Because if we want to open ourselves emotionally to what is happening around us, that emotional openness will also make us feel an inner desire, a hunger as said here, in ourselves.

In every person lives an inner desire, a hunger, for wholeness, for the connection with the Source. That is a natural desire. We are born with it. If we close ourselves emotionally to the events around us, then we will also not be able to perceive that inner desire.

You cannot selectively close your emotional experiences. You can not only have fun experiences and close yourself to all others. Even if you only want to exclude one emotional experience, you can only do that by locking the entire gate of your soul. This is how the armored personality is created.

If we want to open ourselves emotionally, then that is only possible by allowing all experiences, without any exception, without censorship.

If we are prepared to do so, if we also want to and dare to experience the painful aspects of human existence, without arming ourselves against it with all kinds of judgments, we thereby also open the door of our soul to the experience of love.

A beautiful symbol of this is Mother Mary depicted with empty hands, and the palms of her hands facing forward. That is the moving symbol of the unconditional and unquestioning surrender to reality in its total fullness.

Then there is sympathy with our fellow creatures, in the literal sense of that word: “feeling together,” “sympathy.” (An image of Maria with empty hands can be found here.)

There is then not only sympathy with other people. If we dare to open our mind unconditionally, as in the image of Mother Mary, we will also be able to experience our own inner desire, the hunger for wholeness, in ourselves. That desire will lead us to the Christ nature within ourselves in oneness with the Source. That desire then becomes our inner spiritual guide.

Only in emotional openness can the Christ be born in you. That emotional openness is the mother of the Christ in you. Mother Mary is called ‘mother of sorrows’ for a reason. In her as a symbol, suffering has become legitimate as an inseparable part of life, in addition to the joy of life, also on the spiritual path of Gnostics.

So the gnostic does not promise you a release from suffering. On the contrary, to be able to experience the unity with the Source, this requires unconditional surrender of life in all its facets, represented in the open hands of mother Maria.

83 The unreality of the images

LG83

Jesus said:
People know the images,
but the light that is in them,
remains hidden in the image of the light of the father.
He will be unlocked,
but his image will merge with his light.

This is a warning. You may have believed in an image of God and you thought your image was God himself. That image is only an image; every image is a pretty good-looking counterfeit of something that actually exists.

If you believe in an image as if that image is the real existing self, then you put the real existing in the dark.

If you believe in ‘an image of the light of the father’, then, oh irony, the really existing light will be hidden by the belief in its image. And the light in you will also not be able to shine.

Well, that you can see. As was spoken of earlier.

The warning here is that you ‘must’ be prepared for a painful disappointment on the spiritual path of gnostics. All those beautiful images and stories to which you may have been so attached, in which you sincerely believed, will lose their reality content along the way. And that is the intention. The images and stories will fade in the light of reality, in your own surrender to the real thing.

In another way, those images and stories also regain a new meaning. They do not exist by themselves, but they have become a sign, a reference to something else that can be known in experience. And that is their right to exist, nothing more. But that makes sense. The map is not the journey, but a means to prepare for it. The recipe is not the meal, but teaches you what to do to reach your goal.

The gospel of Philip (67) says it this way:

The truth did not come naked into the world but dressed in symbols and images. The world cannot receive the truth in any other way.

There is rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is definitely necessary that one is born again by the image. What is the resurrection and its image? You need to stand up through the image. What is the bridal room and its image? It is necessary that one enters into the truth through the image – that is the restoration.