TGU and Thomas, Sayings 64 through 67

Saying 64

64 a Jesus said: A man entertained guests. When dinner was ready he sent a servant to invite his guests. The servant went to the first one and said, “My master invites you,” but he replied, “I have to collect money from some merchants, and they are due to arrive this evening. Therefore I have to do business with them, and I must be excused from the dinner.” The servant went to another and said, “My master invites you,” but he said, “I have just bought a house, and I have to spend a day there, so I cannot come. I must be excused.” He went to the next and said,  “My master invites you.” This one replied, “My friend is about to be married, and I must organize the dinner. I can’t come. I must be excused.” And he went and said to another, “My master invites you.” He replied, “I have just bought a village, and I have to go collect the rent. I can’t come and must be excused. The servant reported back to his master, “Those whom you invited to the dinner are unable to come” The master said, “Go to the roads outside and invite anybody you can find to the dinner.”

64 b Merchants and salesmen will not enter the places of my Father.

This is a familiar parable, and should be clear to you.

It is. The 3D world has a million cares and concerns, and if you let them come first, you can lose your chance.

Perhaps better to say, as long as you let them come first, for there is nothing irrevocable in the invitation, but yes. And it isn’t as if Jesus has anything against commerce; he is warning against taking the 3D world and its concerns as if it were the most important thing in life.

And I can see why this one couldn’t come first among the sayings. He could hardly start there, because as long as people think the 3D world is ultimate reality, they will be unable to make sense of the idea that it is a means and not an end.

That’s correct. Saying 65?

 

Saying 65

He said: A good man had a vineyard that he arranged for tenant farmers to take care of for him in return for a portion of the produce. He sent a servant to collect the grapes. Tenants seized the servant and beat him nearly to death. That servant reported back to his master, but his mater responded, “Perhaps they did not recognize him.” So he sent another servant; the tenants beat him too. Then the owner sent his own son, saying, “Perhaps they will show some respect for my son.” Since the tenants were aware that he would inherit the vineyard, the seized him and then killed him. He who has ears, let him hear.

Can you see that this is at once a continuation of advice for those who would try to awaken their fellows and advice merely on how to live one’s life after awakening? The tenants are concerned only with the tangible products of the land, and did not choose to recognize the rights of the owner. Their greed led them even to murder.

You might think – reading the parable as if it were a story – that the good man was foolish to give the tenants repeated chances to do right, and was superlatively unaware of the danger he was putting his son into. But a parable is not entertainment, but a teaching device. The point is that it is not enough to remind people that the 3D life is not sufficient unto itself: They will resent it, they will suspect that this is an attempt to divert their attention so as to take from them the result of their labors. (This, regardless of the morality or equity of the situation. This is not a legal casebook, any more than it is a police procedural manual or a bit of social commentary. The listeners to the saying would have gotten the point, either on hearing or reading it, or in subsequent discussion, until such time as community learning failed for lack of anyone who truly understood the key.)

So, the point of the saying, in context, is that you can have something of great value; that doesn’t guarantee that others will see that value. Worse, that doesn’t mean they will respond appropriately. They may be motivated to resent the message and the messenger, for the message implies obligations that they may not wish to acknowledge, let alone fulfill.

I see that. Very interesting. Saying 66? Short and familiar from the synoptic gospels also.

 

Saying 66

Jesus said: Show me the stone that the builders rejected. It is the cornerstone.

Why should the stone that the builders reject be the cornerstone? That is, why should Jesus be implying a necessary rather than an accidental connection between rejection and the fundamental nature of the stone?

You don’t mean “fundamental nature,” exactly. More like, “the ability to be the stone upon which the structure may be built.” Conventional theology would probably say that Jesus was talking about himself and his role in founding Christianity, but I doubt it.

No, not in this context. This was about what people need to do to have life more abundantly. Another way to say that would be, how they needed to reshape themselves – what decisions they would need to come to, and bring into reality, and then react to in order to produce lasting third-tier results.[i]

We have to find within ourselves what we have rejected or at least neglected, and build upon that?

Let us pause here. Keep this question open and consider it in the context not only of the preceding saying but of the saying that follows.

All right. Very dense session this morning. Very interesting. Our thanks as always.

 

Saying 67

Jesus said: One who knows everything else but who does not know himself knows nothing.

Surely a way of saying to understand the world in an external way is to have only a superficial understanding? An understanding so superficial as to be so distorted as to be wrong?

There is no way to understand the world as if you were not an integral part of it. There is no way to understand yourself as if you were not a part of the world. They are the same thing, in a sense. It will be easier for you to hear if we say, “They are both a part of the same thing,” but to say, “They are the same thing” is actually not inaccurate, nor exaggerated.

I think you’re going to have to expand upon that.

What was the previous saying?

Saying 66 said that the builders reject what will be the cornerstone. The implication was that they always do.

So connect that with the idea that who doesn’t know himself doesn’t know the world, and vice versa.

That’s what we’re always doing, I guess, rejecting the cornerstone because we don’t recognize its potential.

“Potential” is your word, a little misleading here. It isn’t so much what the cornerstone could become as what it is by nature, rejected or not.

It isn’t any big newsflash to me that we don’t see straight.

Don’t see deeply enough, mostly, and that, being a function partly of attention, may be remedied by anyone interested in clearing their vision. It isn’t only a matter of innate ability; skills are developed by practice.

That’s reason for encouragement, I guess.

It is certainly meant to be such. The 3D world is for effort, for application, for construction of yourself, so to speak. It isn’t designed to induce or condone a state of helplessness. If even someone in conditions as hopeless at Viktor Frankl’s were [in a Nazi concentration camp] can nonetheless use them to deepen himself, where is the need for hopelessness? But, you must do the work; no one can do it for you. And one way to work – one way; very far from being the only way – is to see deeply. Conversely, one who cannot see deeply is not truly living in the 3D present tense. That is one thing Jesus was always saying: Be awake; see; live while you are living. “Live” in this usage does not mean “Be busy; do things; stay active”; it means, “Be aware.”

Now, if someone knows everything but himself, how can he be said to really know anything? It would be like having a building without a cornerstone, or – addressing construction necessities more closely in our analogy – would be like an arch without a keystone. It cannot stand. The keystone is the stone which completes the mutually reinforcing arch of stones that are then kepi in place by their own weight. Without the final stone, everything is entirely dependent upon scaffolding to keep it artificially in place. Remove the scaffolding – drop the body – before the keystone is inserted, and the stones fall. Remove the scaffolding after the keystone is inserted, and the arch functions as designed.

Yes, I hear it [as if they were following this with]. “He who has ears, let him hear.”

More or less.

[i] At some point, TGU divided the results of a given event into three tiers. What one actually experiences is the first tier. How one reacts to the event is tier two. The third-tier is whatever difference in one’s being results from one’s choice of tier-two reaction. Their point, of course, is that we always have a choice, regardless of whether we exercise it.

 

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