All this however is not the personal journey which I have taken as my title, nor is the ‘unfolding’ of Thomas any kind of description of his travels or experience. Quite the contrary. I am no teacher, and no specialist on the matters I have chosen to speak of: I simply dare to try and share with you my personal experience, in a small group of six people over the past two years, studying the Gospel of Thomas. Our journey is not finished – indeed it will never be complete, — and there are stages of it which we have not yet come to. But as we have become more familiar with the sayings we have experienced at times a slow and wonderful unfolding of meaning below the words on the page which we first encountered. The journey is for all of us a personal one – one might say a search for soul, — a journey through rich territory only recently discovered and largely untrodden. In this way it has an element of novelty, freshness and adventure which I hope you will be able to share.

Our little group has been extremely fortunate to have Hugh McGregor Ross—of whom more in a minute—as our mentor and guide from the start of this process, and I make no apology for drawing on his guidance in much of what I say. The other source which has been an inspiration to us is the commentaries of Emile Gillabert and others who published in French in 1985* a set of profound insights on all of the sayings, which I shall refer to as ‘Metanoia’. Both Hugh, and in all probability the Metanoia writers, have themselves had a long exposure to the advaita tradition of the Vedanta which Hugh considers has enabled important insights into the spiritual meaning of the Thomas Gospel.

Some of the 114 sayings, or logia, are a mere two lines long, some much more. They are in no apparent order or sequence. They were clearly set down for those few with sufficient initiation or experience to be able to understand them, and one may speculate they might have served as an ‘aide memoire’ for ministers or teachers well-versed in their meaning to use as cues for sermons, training of novices and such like. A characteristic they all have is brevity, precision and homogeneity—hallmarks of a Master. It is perhaps worth reflecting how, in our civilisation, we have come to say more and more about less and less. These sayings remind us of the opposite: they are highly distilled and many contain spiritual truth of a high order. They utilise metaphors and parables, images and paradoxes, and sometimes outright ‘assaults on the rational mind'— which explain why Thomas refers to them as the hidden logia. I hope to put before you a few examples.

* Emile Gillabert et al Evangile Selon Thomas – Metanoia (Dervy-Livres 1985).

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