TGU and Thomas: Saying 3

 

Saying 3 a. Jesus said: If your leaders say to you, “Look! The kingdom is in the sky!” then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside of you.

I don’t know why this saying should be considered one saying divided into a and b, rather than two sayings. It may say, on the facing page [of commentary], but I am not re-reading the commentary before consulting the guys, lest I cloud the conversation. One might think I could lean on the commentary (cheat, so to speak), but it would be just that much interference with the process. We can get my interpretation at any time, but that isn’t what we want here. So, to work. Gentlemen, your take on this?

It is only in transcribing this and noticing the last line that you see the significance in terms of the 3D/non-3D relationship that we are saying is central.

I don’t feel that we got it quite right, saying “3D/non-3D relationship.” Try again?

Well, you know what we’re driving at. We have said that Jesus was showing human life’s relationship to the 3D (as both central and not central to human purpose). This saying cut one way for his contemporaries and a different way for his far descendants – your generation, but of course not only your generation.

I took it to mean, the kingdom of Heaven is not a geographical place but a state of being, and took that to be its entire meaning, until I noticed just now “within you and outside of you.”

Yes. Only, let us sketch our meaning a little more fully, then look at the implications. Proceed and we will comment.

I get that people hearing him were probably thinking of the Kingdom of Heaven as a place. Not a physical place, of course, but nonetheless a place “elsewhere,” as though the non-3D and 3D were separate and not contiguous, or rather, separated somehow, rather than “right here.” Rita and I did a whole book around the theme that it’s all right here, that there isn’t any two worlds, but one world. So – until that last line struck me – I thought that is what Jesus was saying here.

And so he was. But that wasn’t all he was saying.

No. I guess he was saying the external isn’t separate from the internal, and it isn’t somehow of lesser value.

Yes. That’s our point here. It is easy for people “on a spiritual path” to devalue the 3D world they are living in. You should know. But it is a mistake, because as you consider things, you should realize that if inner and outer worlds are the same thing experienced differently, how could either side be of more intrinsic value than the other? So you could say that Jesus was saying, your kingdom ( “your,” not “his,” because he was intending to bring them to fuller realization of who you are, not glorifying himself as something special and apart)

Sentence got too long. Jesus was saying –

Saying, your kingdom is not the 3D world you see around you, but the 3D is not to be disregarded as irrelevant or inferior, either. You will see, upon reflection, how difficult it would be – and still remains – to enable people to see this.

The little I know of the history of various heresies that sprang up through the ages shows how hard it was (and yes, I suppose “is”) for people to absorb the message without distorting it by logical deductions made from their unconscious assumptions about reality they never questioned.

Exactly. If one assumes that 3D is perverted or degenerated or is the fruit of the work of evil (devil), the conclusions one will be logically forced to will be radically different from the conclusions that will follow assumptions that God created the heavens and the earth and looked at his work and found it good. So you can see that the former interpretation and the conclusions that stem from it would be easily seen to be a misunderstanding. What would not be so evident is that concluding that 3D is good without realizing that 3D is part of oneself, rather than “merely external” is a different but still not trivial misunderstanding.

Yes, I get that. It is a mindset that sees things as “objectively out there,” rather than external yet internal.

To clarify the situation, Jesus would have had to entirely redefine the human existence and the logical consequences that followed. How was he to do that? So he went about it by revolutionizing the human heart. Jesus attacked the problem not by logic or commandments but by emotional logic. He said “love one another,” which is a way of speaking to people’s attitudes and behaviors even while being unable to more clearly show them that they were all one thing. He wasn’t out to teach biology or cosmology or any “ology.” He was out to be a spark that would bring people to a new level of being. Obviously (perhaps not obviously, obvious to us, at any rate), not everybody would be ready to hear the message. That is, not everyone would catch the spark, and it could not be caught by an act of will.

By what was called the grace of God, instead.

Yes, only as you see, that language is misleading, as it seems to imply an arbitrary decision: “Yes, I’ll let this one in on the secret, no, this one, no.” In truth, though, it was that only those who were ready could be set afire. Only those with ears for the message could hear it.

Emotional logic, you said.

Another way to say, catching the spark. Some illiterate fisherman – or, more commonly, some woman – would get it. They wouldn’t “get it” by a process of reasoning, or of associating what they had studied and then concluding that he was right. They would suddenly be struck by the meaning of what he was saying, and would open up. And of course he would know that, just as he would sometimes know of someone’s ripeness for the message before the person would know it.

I slightly erred in transcription, didn’t I, in writing “the meaning of what he was saying”?

Yes. That was a natural phrasing, but really they weren’t so much struck by the meaning of what he was saying, but by what he was saying, and, often enough, how he was saying it, or rather, by the feeling that came over them as they were in his presence. This is something that after he was gone could not be sparked by a physical 3D presence, but still may be, and is, by awareness of his non-3D presence.

I thought we’d get through both a and b, but here our hour is nearly up. It is always very interesting, to think I understand something and then see how much I had been missing. More today, or enough on this one?

You might think in terms of the other gospels – that is, you might keep in mind what you glean from this one as you consider the others, because this will illumine not only what they say, but also the state of mind of the evangelists themselves, who will have experienced this, and will be speaking to those associates who will have experienced it. Only with the passage of time did it become initiate (so to speak) teaching the uninitiated, and then, imperceptibly as the original spark was lost but the externals were retained, it became the uninitiated teaching the uninitiated, and persecuting anyone not sharing their own misunderstanding of what it was all about.

Beyond that, enough for the moment.

 

Saying 3 b. When you understand yourselves you will be understood. And you will realize that you are Sons of the living Father. If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty.

 

Looking at that straight off, the first sentence is opaque to me, the second seems clear, and the third seems at least arguable. So it will be interesting to see if I know more in an hour or so. Guys?

There would be little point in examining what was already clear to you.

Of course. I’m only saying I’ll be interested to see what we come up with. And this is a provoked sentence, isn’t it? [That is, I sensed that they wanted me to say the first sentence of this paragraph.]

Well, it is useful to point out that these operations are a “we” and not one side asking and the other receiving, although it commonly seems that way. Let people remember that they themselves are an intrinsic part of the process of receiving information. They flavor what they receive. To a degree, they select, if only by what they will not allow through their filters, but more commonly by how what they receive mingles with their existing mental structures, pre-consciously. This is why two honest sincere inquirers may receive radically different answers to the same questions. It is why discernment must always be part of the process; why you must always hesitate to follow someone wishing to overawe you by the presumed authority of the message or the source of the message. If the message do not commend itself to you, it is not true for you, and cannot be true for you until it does.

“When you understand yourselves you will be understood.” Surely the statement poses the question: Understood by whom?

Yes it does.

Surely by not-yourselves, only all is one.

Okay, here’s what I get as you say that. Another part of what we are, different from the 3D-oriented self that we are more or less self-identified with. So, in a sense, the non-3D parts of ourselves.

You are in the right direction, but you have a way to go. And to answer your unasked question about process, it will mean more to you if you argue it out than if it is handed to you.

This one in particular?

Some things are a greater stretch than others. The wider the gap, the more work you need to do. Narrower gaps may be leaped by a spark in an instant.

We will be understood when we understand ourselves. The process is the same, in a sense. So I suppose we could say there is identity on each side. No, I don’t get it, not really. All I am doing is trying to force it.

Can’t be done that way. Then let us untangle the rest of the saying, and see where we go. You will remember that this saying is coupled with the one previous which you understood. So why – or rather, how – are they coupled?

Now, that’s interesting. As soon as I see the kingdom is inside us and outside us, I seem to see a connection.

That’s the idea.

Understanding and being understood are in a way equivalent in viewpoint to inner and outer worlds.

Correct; that is the key here.

So when we realize who we really are, what would it mean, that the outer world also realized? I don’t think it is a matter of reputation. Could it be the key to charisma?

Keep on.

I think it is Jung who said that as one attains greater wholeness, one becomes an attraction to other people. That is, the wholeness glows, in a sense; it not only can be seen but perhaps cannot be hidden. It conveys authority. I have taken that effect to be connected with us gaining in “authority of being,” call it, by the fruits of our work on ourselves, which means, the widening of the connection with the rest of our being.

Now go on to the rest of the saying.

Yes, I see the connection. Very interesting.

You are tempted to leave off and perhaps move on to the next saying, because this one is now plain to you. But perhaps it is as well to write out your new understanding, since later it may not be as clear to you as it is at the moment.

Why should it not be?

It depends on one thing: whether, while the idea is at hand, you make it a part of you, or you allow it to remain an idea you experienced. If the former, then it is with you even after you have forgotten it, because it has changed you and become part of you. If the latter, you are carrying it as in your briefcase, and you may put down the briefcase and lose it, or the papers may be scattered in the wind, so to speak.

All right, when I transcribe this, I’ll copy saying 3 a and 3 b together, and we’ll see how they look.

Jesus said: If your leaders say to you, “Look! The kingdom is in the sky!” then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside of you.

When you understand yourselves you will be understood. And you will realize that you are Sons of the living Father. If you do not know yourselves, then you exist in poverty and you are that poverty.

I see that I was forgetting to keep my eye on the ball. This series of conversations [with TGU] is about Jesus explaining our place in the world, showing the ways the 3D world is central to our existence and the ways in which it is not.

That’s right. So, your summary.

What he is calling the kingdom of heaven is right here, as we have said. The kingdom is not in the non-3D only, because for one thing, the non-3D is not separate from the 3D. But we make a mistake if we think of the kingdom of God as not external to ourselves as well as internal. It isn’t a private fantasy, or even a private reality. But neither is it a reality external to us. It is both, in that the distinction is artificial and only somewhat true. Deepening the connection between what we experience as conscious and what we experience as unconscious means that the connection is more evident, more effective, from both ends. And this in turn means that what we are and what we can do is infinitely expanded.

Not “what you are,” but “your knowledge of what you are,” is what is expanded.

Yes, I see that.

And that is what is to be gleaned from this saying. Now bear in mind what the first two sayings conveyed, and again ask yourself specifically, what does this imply for the conditions of existence; what does it argue that you should do to live as one ought?

I take it you are not by this implying that the sayings are arranged in a particular cumulating order that can only be experienced consecutively as printed.

Why rearrange what has been carefully arranged? It is true that the totality is not the sequence, but there is no need to rearrange.

All right. So in other words, recapitulating the sum of what we read, as we go, will help us to keep it in one context. I’d say so far it is clear enough. We should strive to understand our true position in reality. I was going to write “in the world,” but I want to avoid the implication that I would mean only the 3D. The more we realize who we truly are, the more our power will be revealed to us. To put it inversely, the less we will feel helpless in the world, or lost, or meaningless.

And that will do for the moment.