Thomas, Sayings 67 and 68

Thursday July 4, 2019

6 a.m. I guess I’m ready to resume, after taking a day off. 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 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 it they were following this paragraph with]. “He who has ears, let him hear.”

More or less. Saying 68, then.

68  Jesus said: Blessed are you when they hate and persecute you. No place will be found where they persecuted you.

The first sentence seems to carry the theme smoothly of the keystone being rejected. But what can the second sentence mean?

Don’t skip too quickly over the first sentence. Assuming, as we do assume, that the sayings were ordered carefully, why the progression from internal understanding to external understanding or lack of understanding?

Well, I hadn’t noticed. I suppose I was subconsciously assuming that the Sayings alternated between personal and public, I mean between things they needed to know for their own growth and things that dealt with their forthcoming public ministry. But I didn’t put any time into considering it.

Rather than thinking of them alternately, given that internal and external at least reflect each other, if not mirror each other exactly, why not consider them as applying to both, regardless of which aspect they seemed to reflect? Richer that way, for one thing.

“When they hate and persecute you.” Who is “they”? A generalized catchall, the editorial “we”?

Go deeper.

The only way I can make sense of this as an internal reference is as discordant, even malign, members of the internal community that is ourselves. That is, looking at the community aspect of ourselves, a community living together in 3D as a new individual, we can see that some elements may not fit together; may hate what other aspects are and what they wish to do; may obstruct as best they can so as to hinder what they regard as malign development. In such case, if it is not too fanciful, any efforts made by the 3D Will (the 3D individual-in-construction, call it) may meet opposition that amounts to hatred and persecution.

Yes. Hatred and persecution from the “external” world are a reflection of forces much closer to home, though it does not seem that way. Hence, the seeming towering injustices of the 3D world are not accidental, nor are they “ordered by God” or even “permitted by God.” They exist because the contending forces within so many nascent souls exist. The 3D world is contention because that is according to its  nature. That is what it is there to enable, and it is good. The suffering and contention in 3D is but a shadow of the suffering and contention in the larger world – the 3D/non-3D – and is a mitigation, a working-through, of it. Thus the second sentence in the Saying.

Did I get that last bit right?

Yes. It doesn’t quite seem right to you because it moves into unfamiliar ground. We remind you of the vast impersonal forces that play through the 3D world. What we have called the vast personal forces are, more or less, past impersonal forces that have: become/taken on/attached themselves to, specific 3D individuals, for their later working-out.

Karma, so to speak?

Only roughly. More like, what shall we call it, soul heredity. Not something to be atoned for or compensated, so much as a problem to be worked, a potential to be made real in one way or another depending upon your decisions.

So “no place will be found” means no 3D location? In other words, it was never 3D to begin with?

No, more like, the roots of the persecution were never 3D really, but were a reflection in 3D of the real roots; also, the battle was not really fought in 3D except insofar as men’s souls can be thought of as in 3D, a partial truth at best. You can see what a struggle it was for Jesus to communicate, when practically everything had to be explained and interpreted. Thus he depended upon conveying it by the spark leaping from one to the next, and then he advised love; he did not advise study and logic and metaphysics.

Enough for now.

Thanks as always; very interesting.