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Aside from the Beatitudes (the Buddhist-like lessons given via the Sermon on the Mount), the Gospel of Thomas is as close as it gets to the original teachings. As much as modern Christians might deny it, the four Biblical Gospels themselves were already part of the so-called “Great Apostasy,” which is the turning away of Christianity from the original spirit of Christ’s messages. They were propaganda pieces aimed at Jews, Greeks, Pagans, and Romans in order to hijack a burgeoning spiritual movement. Christianity became a weapon to bring diverse cultures under the control of a single political monster hiding behind the cross. Meanwhile, the original teachings of Christ propagated onward in secret until one version was set down in writing by the scribes of the Nag Hammadi, from which the Gospel of Thomas emerged into modern light.

At their core, the teachings of Christ are highly dualistic, apocalyptic, prophetic, and gnostic. Christ was not strictly concerned with getting us to live better lives here, or countering the karmic mind-traps that Yahweh installed in his people, but helping us get ourselves out of here. His primary mission was to end the World Dream and bring his spiritual kin home, to redeem the Fallen. So while modern scholars and theologians interpret the Gospel of Thomas from the viewpoint of generic spiritual wisdom we can apply in our everyday lives, make no mistake that Christ had more in mind than giving fortune cookie platitudes.

According to the teachings, humanity is comprised of the spiritually Living and the spiritually Dead. The Dead are products of this world, subject to its rules, obedient to its standards. They sacrifice spiritual priorities for personal and material pursuits. Meanwhile, the Living are in this world but not of it, they contain an inner quality that transcends worldly factors. We become more one or the other depending on where we place our priorities.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the original home of the Living, from which they fell and to which they will hopefully return. It is not a location within spacetime, but a higher realm surrounding and interpenetrating the physical world. It is all around us but invisible to the five senses. The Kingdom of Heaven has already come, but it has not yet been widely perceived. It is also within us but unrecognized by the everyday conscious mind. To transition into the Kingdom of Heaven externally, one must transition into the Kingdom of Heaven inwardly, for it’s through an internal conscious and spiritual shift that we experience the corresponding external shift. The Kingdom is both a state of existence and a state of mind. In modern lingo, the Kingdom of Heaven is higher density positive existence, both as a mode of being and realm of habitation.

Whereas the World operates on the principles of cunning, calculation, physical power and determinism, the Kingdom of Heaven acts via synchronicity, nonlinearity, and nondeterminism. That is how the Kingdom of Heaven destabilizes the control system and lends support to its own: not through sheer force, but through unfathomable elegance and subtlety. It employs the butterfly effect to leverage the smallest nudges into the greatest of outcomes, the ultimate form of spiritual jujitsu.

The World is an impermanent illusion, an ouroboros condemned to consume itself into nothingness. Therefore its epiphenomena, the Dead, likewise lack permanence in the greater framework of Eternity. The Living are immortal in that they continue existing even if the World ceases to exist, whereas the Dead would disappear along with it. Like with dissolution of the physical body, one must possess spirit to consciously survive death. The Dead have no probable future extensions, no existence outside the World Dream, they are but hollow memories waiting to be forgotten.

The goal of spiritual discipline and training is to activate and build spirit within us. Spirit is not a product of the physical world, therefore it has permanence beyond the lifespan of the World. In building up everything associated with spirit, we translate ourselves into the Real World, the Kingdom of Heaven, and overcome death and dissolution.

The World as we know it will come to an end through a great revealing. A time will come when the Living have their spiritual eyes opened. This will occur when they succeed in being filled and activated by the same wisdom and intelligence that illuminated Jesus (and other avatars like Buddha). This is the so-called Second Coming of Christ. For the Living, it has already begun with a gradual opening of awareness and building of wisdom and intuitive perception. In the end, it will result in full etheric activation combined with harmonization with the Logos, whom Christ called the Father. Those who are activated will be able to see and recognize what was formerly hidden by worldly deceivers and the five senses. Secrets will be exposed, pretenses revealed, and illusion will fall away. They will finally see and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Presently we are controlled through our investment in illusions. We are attacked through gaps in our awareness. All our willpower and energy are useless if we lack the awareness of where and how to direct them. Thus awareness and vigilance are crucial. As long as we are here, we must be wise and discerning. The biggest illusions are those that employ false dichotomies; the World is spun from these. They can be as basic as the seeming separation between inner and outer. In reality, there is no separation, and in knowing this we can change the outer by changing the inner.

When you recognize an illusion for what it is, that illusion ceases to hold power over your choices. Thus to overcome the world, one must recognize the world for what it is and implement that higher understanding. In doing so, one steps away from the World and toward the Kingdom. The closer one approaches the Kingdom, the more one comes under its jurisdiction, the more one lives by its principles, which override those of the world. As an example, the power of synchronicity easily trumps the forces of determinism. Worldly limitations and concerns that apply to the Dead may not always apply to the Living.

False opposites must be reconciled and transcended before a person can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. One cannot cling to illusion and leave the realm of illusion at the same time. To completely enter the Kingdom, one must therefore achieve non-dual consciousness in the sense of being permeated by an awareness that sees through false dualities and recognizes the higher truth beyond them. It is not just a superficial intellectual understanding, but a higher state of consciousness. In this state, one is not divided within oneself, rather there is total sincerity and complete unity with the heart, subconscious, higher mind, and other aspects of our being that are normally compartmentalized away during mundane waking consciousness. In this state, one acts with singular purpose and knowing, as Christ did. This state cannot be achieved by convincing yourself into seeming certainty, rather it must flow naturally from transcending the mortal mind and merging with your higher mind.

This non-dualism is not an endorsement of indiscriminate mindlessness, however. A higher kind of objective dualism is called for, one that discriminates between the World and the Kingdom and between the standards of the Living and those of the Dead. Thus the role of Christ is not to unify the World but to bring total division between the Living and the Dead, not to bring peace but initiate total war between the World and the Kingdom. The role of false dichotomies is to distract us from this higher dualism, to keep us busy making false or irrelevant choices instead of the one that truly counts.

When the great revealing occurs and the Living fulfill their potential and increasingly see the Dead for who they are, there will be no alternative but polarization at every scale. The same way we observe our own dark side and leave it behind, so will this happen on a collective scale. The role of Christ is to separate the weed from the crops, harvest the crops and burn the weeds. Only at the time of the great revealing will it become absolutely clear what is weed and what is crop. Until then, each grows among the other unchecked.

Christ unifies the Living, but divides them from the Dead. The Living must recognize and love each other, for they are one in purpose, essence, and origins. They must cast off what does not belong to them: the fetters of social and biological programming, ego-based impulses, emotional addictions, material obsessions, illusory fears, and mortal personality. In the end, they will be stripped of these and will stand spiritually naked before the World, unassailable in their strength and purity, thousands of Christs holding torches to the framework of our sham existence.

Tom Montalk

http://montalk.net/gnosis/220/9-the-end