Logion # 77. I am the Light that is above them all. I am the All. The All comes forth from me and the All reaches towards me. Cleave the wood and I am there; lift up the stone and you shall find me there.

The Light , the All and the Kingdom, according to Hugh Ross, may be seen as largely synonymous, and used according to whether the audience was Jewish or Greek. They may be taken as pointing to states of being – as I mentioned before. Metanoia tells us that ‘the All’ expresses the Gnostic idea of that which emanates from the Father and must return there: Because the perfection of the All is in the Father, it must be that the All returns towards him (Nag Hammadi texts).

The proposition of ‘Life independent of death’ calls into question our deeply ingrained ideas of linear time, of beginning and end, of origin and destination, of cause, consequence and meaning. In two arresting logia – 18 and 19 — , Jesus offers us a key to escape from this captivity.

Logion 18. The disciples said to Jesus: Tell us in what way our end will be. Jesus said: Have you therefore discerned the beginning since you seek after the end? For in the place where the beginning is, there will be the end. Happy is he who shall stand boldly at the beginning, he shall Know the end, and shall find Life independent of death.

and Logion 19. Jesus said: Happy is he who already was before he is … For you have five trees in Paradise, which are unchanged in summer or winter and their leaves do not fall away. He who knows them shall find Life independent of death.

The promise of finding life independent of death, or life without tasting death as it may be translated, occurs in five places in the Thomas Gospel: we saw right at the beginning that this promise is also made to those who find the inner meaning of these logia – although it may be Thomas who wrote this logion (Logia 2). In these two logia 18 and 19 however the nature of time and our relation to it is tackled directly, and I can best rely on Hugh Ross’ guidance:

“ (Several logia) reiterate that in our beginning we come from the Light; it is inherent within us, and by seeing it we come to the Life in the here and now that is independent of the death of the body. Thus to know rightly the beginning and the end leads to living in the present, and concern about death does not arise. These two sayings (logia 18 and 19) deal with the happiness of knowing that one’s true identity exists throughout life. It is there at the beginning … and extends to the end. However it is more than a continuity within time; more specifically the Real Self is independent of time. Such life is not merely immortal, but rather it is outside of the concept of time, and so is independent of death”.*

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