A few
people of today have time and will to seek for the purposes and aims of life in
any other than in its most formal and natural form. People are interested in
the welfare of their own and of their close relations, maybe of their possibilities
of getting wealth and honor. They leave life after physical death – if they
still believe in it – as a faraway headache.
As to “the endgames”,
many people seem to rely on the idea that a Christian baptizing, confirmation
and a socially decent lifestyle give shelter against the kind of condemnation
or destruction about which the Christian belief is talking.
It is very
likely that the ideas of both good and bad endings – heaven and hell – have
been overemphasized by leaving out all possible places, spaces or locations
between these two extremes.
In their
minds, people have developed a fantastic image of heaven where they could live happily
as separate persons (not connected with God). Hell is performed as an
everlasting place of torture – in spite of the fact that Gospels are talking
about destruction – in other words – fading of individual consciousness.
***
The Gospel
of Thomas (99) says:
The disciples said to him, “Your brothers and
your mother are standing outside.” He said to them. “Those here who do the will
of my father are my brothers and my mother. It is they enter the kingdom of my
father.”
It is quite
clear that doing or filling the will of God requires full and direct knowledge
of the will, which is eternal in nature – so that it contains no worldly
distortions.
***
Matthew 23:25
states:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but
within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thomas (89)
conforms the same:
Why do you wash the outside of the cup? Do you
not realize that he who made the inside is the same one who made the outside?
Both of
these texts emphasize the idea that conquering or transcending the ordinary
human nature requires a process of inner change. Of course, it is necessary to
establish some outer discipline, so that the most unrefined sensuality and
desires do no longer dominate in one’s mind.
However,
one must remember that by forcing the mind into some mode does not usually lead
to any deepening of understanding nor to inner peace. There is a warning in
Matthew 5:39.
“But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.”
This
request is not meant to apply in every case. Probably it points at a state of
mind in which hate or any other defensive behavior have room and power no more.
This advice
fits well to inner processes – so that it is not wise to use excess force to
oneself against one’s own nature. In fact, there is a danger that the mind does
a nasty trick by bypassing the controlled gate of vices and using an unguarded
one (as is the case in the celibacy of some catholic priests) instead.
***
The need to
deal with one’s inner being comes up clearly in Matthew 7:5.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of
thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy
brother's eye.
“Seeing”
means here an understanding that has freed itself from its prejudices and
ignorance. It is easier for a person to see the kind of vices in another people
that he has in his own nature.
Matthew
15:7–8 emphasizes the need for understanding (heart) in writing:
Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you,
saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me
with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
Today some psychologists
might interpret this as an emotional intelligence – a kind of balanced state
between feelings and reasoning. However, the “heart” in this connection denotes
to a much higher intelligence or wisdom than what common feelings and logical
thinking represent.
The Gospel
of Luke (12:56) also brings forth the conditional meaning of ordinary thinking
and research:
Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the
sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?
By “this
time”, Luke denotes to the inner significance and nature of the present moment.
Many clever people are aiming their efforts at outer phenomenon or past events.
***
Matthew 6:5
and 6:16 warns about showing one’s religious acts to other people:
Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not
sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the
streets, that they may have glory of men. When ye fast, be not, as the
hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces that they may
appear unto men to fast.
To follow
common manners in streets and churches is not, of course, any failure or sin,
if a person does not think that by doing so he earns “heavenly credit points”
to himself.
***
Luke
17:20–21 makes a seldom-used statement:
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God
is within you.
The text
might be understood to deal with the end of times but it is quite certain that
it point to the idea that the Spirit and Divine Being are the inmost essence of
all that there is in this universe – and that it is the ultimate task of a
human being to dig and bring it forth (for himself and others).
John 3:3
denotes to the way of “bringing this forth”:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
We can find
“evidence” to this statement also in the first letter of Peter (1:23):
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
In this
letter “the word of God, living forever” does not mean only verbal expressions
but rather a direct state of consciousness that opens the (freeing) truth in
its ultimate essence.
***
Matthew
23:13 lashes with hard words the religious leaders of the time (or any time):
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go
in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
The Gospel
claims that even the leaders were not very honest in their spiritual efforts
and that they did not allow any nonprofessionals see and search the sources
that they had in their possession (if they had not yet lost them).
***
The Gospel
of Thomas (22) brings forth the need for a perfect co-operation and unity of
one’s inner and outer being – so that it could work as a temple of the Holy
Ghost:
Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his
disciples, “These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.”
They said to him, “Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?” Jesus said
to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the
outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when
you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male
nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand
in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a
likeness; then will you enter the kingdom.”
The main
point of this saying lies in likeness. The human (secular, temporal) and the
divine (timeless, eternal) beings are so different in nature that they cannot
be united unless one of them loses his former nature. Of course, this former
being must be the human part, which has identified itself with temporal
phenomenon in time and space (which is sometimes called as the original sin).
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