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This short logion is a riddle, its meaning is certainly hidden, and at first sight the flower presents itself to us as tightly closed. The tools of the rational mind simply cannot get a hold of it. However, context helps and as soon as we recognise that this is another of many logia concerning the Real self and the ego, discriminating between what is truly ours and that which is false, we can begin to grasp something. A constant theme of Jesus in the Thomas Gospel — in harmony with Gnostic and Indian thought, but absent from Christianity — is the struggle between the domain of the Real Self and the domain of ahankara (a word for which there is no English equivalent, but which I may refer to as the ego). From the innocence and Oneness in which we are born, we cannot prevent the ego from growing like a protective, assertive, outwardly defining shell without which we cannot survive in this reality. But we must learn to observe it and its workings, discern and resist its wiles, keep it quenched as we would a smouldering fire; and when we are ready we must find the right way to minimise it and create an emptiness — maybe a painful emptiness, maybe a blissful emptiness, — which can be filled with the Light. So, coming back to logion 70, can we take a step closer? — ‘When we are ready to bring forth our true being, our true self will support the bringing forth – but if our true self has been overrun by ahankara, the invasive ego, it is that alien side of us which will finally prevent the realisation of our being and the return to Oneness’. Such a facile paraphrase is but a stage of unfolding, and as with all of these sayings we came to see there is no substitute for steady contemplation leading perhaps to an intuitive personal comprehension which by- passes the mind, and words and communication. Both the stratagems of the ego, and the ways by which it may be kept in check, may come to us in many forms, and Jesus uses parables to illustrate these. The invasions of the ego are likened to robbers creeping into a man’s house and the man’s knowledge of where and when this will happen enables him to prepare for action. Jesus uses the same analogy of the house metaphorically to illustrate the conquering of ego by entering forcibly on to its domain, binding the hands of its occupier and only thus being able to gain control of the house (logion 35).
Here – Logia 97 and 98 – are two contrasting parables on the diminishing or extinguishment of the ego, both introduced by this expression ‘The Kingdom of the Father is like…..’ which we have seen points us towards a state of being. In Logion 97 we have a story at first deceptive and hard to grasp, but which well illustrates how when the hidden meaning is unfolded there is a profound teaching. At first sight the flour is something precious to life whose losing, especially without even noticing it, would seem a cause for regret, criticism and penance: this is the surface story. But it seems to lack conclusion, so we are required to think again. By rejecting our first assumption and recognising the flour to be a deceptive value, we arrive at a greater truth: the woman toiling a long road thereby gradually loses her ego – others may have observed it happening, but she does not until she reaches her home, becoming One. The next saying, Logion 98, by contrast, shows a man testing his hand and his sword before slaying his ego with one blow. Logion # 61. Two will rest there on a couch: one will die, the other will live. Salome said: Who are you, man? Is it even as he from the one that you came to my couch and ate at my table? …. This Logion 61 is, for me at least, a very compelling one – in part because it is one of the very few in Thomas which pictures a real event, here one of great humanity, intimacy and ambivalence. It is not a parable. Salome, a close follower of Jesus (not to be confused with the ‘other’ Salome ….), is pictured in this Logion as a woman wholly alert and spiritually aroused: she shows herself prepared with the whole of her being for what Jesus may initiate, and asks the ‘overwhelming question’ with extraordinary directness: Who are you, man? Is it even as he from the one that you came to my couch and ate at my table? She knew, in esoteric terms, what she needed to know, and Jesus’ reply leads to her absolute surrender: I am your disciple. He then says: Because of that, I say this: When he is emptied he will be filled with Light; but when he is divided he will be filled with darkness. Salome needed only this to become truly emptied of ahankara, to be flooded with light. We witness a defining and pivotal moment in a person’s life as if we were in the same room. But two other sayings may be contrasted with this story: both are of extreme brevity, both are enigmatic but can unfold with corresponding power. Logion 67.
He who understands the All, but lacking himself, lacks everything. Metanoia comments as follows: “Supreme Reality, the All, cannot be lived without abandoning the ego: the price for it must be paid. Men are frightened only at the thought of the ego— less condition, when in fact it is the ego, as long as it reigns as undisputed master, which is the cause of their miseries. To detect it in order to disconnect it does not come about without a long work of introspection in which the quality of attention plays an essential role: When you know yourselves, then you will be known (Log. 3.9— 10). This understanding through vanishing of the ego can be obtained here and now; it is the liberation of Consciousness or the realisation of the self. He who is ‘lacking himself’ cannot work on himself ….”. Logion 42 is enigma at its most tightly compressed: its opaqueness is not by accident because it is the only one on this vital subject to contain a direct command from Jesus. It is a play on the two selves: ‘Become the Real you as the other you passes away’ or to follow Metanoia: ‘Become (the Real) you, passing (from duality to Oneness)’ Hugh Ross observes: “Jesus distils and crystallizes the very heart of his Teaching in this tiny saying – its brevity precludes dross, as pure gold from the refiner’s fire. Jesus might well have given it to his closest disciples as a mantra” . This duality between the Real self and the ego is the most recurrent and fundamental aspect of duality in the Thomas Gospel, and that which links most directly with the concept of the return to Oneness, the return to original innocence. |
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