Here is another New Testament "prequel," not to mention that the image of moving mountains is also used in Logion 48. The expression also seems to exist in the "Q" source material. Logion 106 is a little more pronounced than logion 48, which speaks only of two making peace with each other in a single house. Here the expression is "making the two into one." It adds to this the notion of becoming children of Adam, which here seems to be meant in terms of returning to the original decision point, to the original decision for the ego, which A Course in Miracles calls the "tiny, mad idea." Adam is the exemplar of that, as the first "individual" human being, to exist separately from God. The implication is that by making "the two into one," we return home the same way that we came, by undoing the choice for separation and duality.

As per usual, the moving of mountains would not be meant literally, but whoever has dealt with all the feelings of guilt and fear which the ego is commonly associated with, would have to understand how impossible it can seem to dislodge those mountains of fear and guilt, which are the ego's obstacles which block "the awareness of love's presence" safely from our mind. These are mountains indeed, and they can seem impossible to dislodge. And of course our experience in the world may our may not change as a result, but Jesus speaks to us symbolically about the inner process.

Making the two into one is simply another way for the undoing of the separation thought, and while it is not often spelled out in such detail in the old literature, with A Course in Miracles in hand, it is easy to see how it's path of undoing through forgiveness really leads us back to this original decision point, until we finally can choose the Atonement for ourselves, when we fully accept that the separation indeed never happened, and it was only a dream. The fact is that for us sometimes the more direct, psychological explanation of A Course in Miracles, is easier to understand than the symbolic language of old, but both have a role to play, for our lives speak to us in the language of parables, as everything in the realm of duality is a symbol, and it only depends on the guide we choose whether our experience will be one of endlessly repeating the separation (if we choose the ego), or one of restoring the two into one, if we choose the Holy Spirit as our guide.

Logion 97 is one of my favorites. Curiously it seems I had not discussed it in full before. I have sometimes guessed that one of the reasons Pursah excluded this logion from her list of 22 logia that she found easier to understand for modern readers, and which were included in Disappearance of the Universe, was simply the fact that today we don't keep flour in earthenware jars anymore, let alone see women running down the street with an earthenware jar of anything. For that matter, just like Theodore Roszak's experience with his kids, who thought a chicken came from a factory somehwere, today's kids might not know anymore what flour even is. They know pizza, or bread, cookies, cake, or crackers, but many are no longer in touch with the raw materials of cooking. So an image that was perfectly every day in Palestine of 2000 years ago, suddenly requires some thought to imagine a plain everyday image, such as the one evoked by this logion.

The image is simple enough, after running home with a jar of flour, the woman finds that it has cracked, and she only holds the empty jar, and all the flour was spilled along the way. The ego always focuses on the form, not the content, and that way you always end up with the boobie-prize - in this case holding an empty jar. So by focusing on the form of the "Kingdom" you will lose the content. That is certainly one part of the image here. Also, she had the flour all along, but in her hurry, she lost it. If you look at it that way, it is another reference to the many themes throughout the Thomas gospel that the Kingdom is not there, it's right here, you're just not seeing it. In short, all we need to do is wake up from the ego's dream, and see what's in front of our face for what it is, and give up the idea that we have to go anywhere, or do anything.

Thus the point certainly is not that she needed to get herself a better container, but rather that she did not have to run anywhere to get what she already had, but did not know or realize, and which she (temporarily) lost in her hurry. Hence the Course also speaks of: "A journey without distance to a goal that has never changed." (ACIM:T-8.VII.9:7)

The Jesus of experience is and remains a-historical, for we meet him outside of time and space. He is the Jesus who speaks to us from the Sayings of Thomas - whoever finds the meaning of these sayings will not taste death. He is the Jesus of the mystics, (and note that while a few were sainted, and some were not, most were never known!) He addresses our immortal self, and invites us to follow him. The same goes for A Course in Miracles, which is merely a more modern and profound version of his teachings, which integrates insights form philosophy, psychology, and even quantum physics, and non-dualism, and expresses his teachings in a thoroughly modern form. And yet, the teaching remains the same, being that it is fundamentally aimed at practicing what he says, "following him," without which we will never get what it is he says. Intellectual understanding is the boobie-prize, though the Course definitely does appeal to the intellect as a way of supporting us along the way.

The Jesus of experience speaks directly to our immortal self, (Your Immortal Reality is the title of a book I once read). He asks us to follow him indeed, not to copy his words without comprehension, which is what preaching is. Preaching in any form is a way to keep him at a distance from us. We are then engaged in convincing someone else of the truth of his words, in a desperate attempt to really convince ourselves, who are not following him, and do not believe what he says. As everything else the ego comes up with, this is another strategy which is self-defeating, for it merely ensures we will not follow him, and focus instead on what anyone else thinks about him or not.

The path of inner experience always remains open, in spite of all the barriers of theology, as we can see from the lives of saints, many of whom undoubtedly had a very profound relationship with him, the experience of which clearly transcends all theology, even if people would often express their feelings in the context of their day and age. So the forms vary, but if we listen to the heart, we can understand that experientially the content of love is consistent. Having said that, it does seem as if the modern teachings from the Course do make it much easier to learn and understand his thought system, but the emphasis on practice remains the same:

The promise of the Eucharist, and the Resurrection is exactly that he is present to us in our mind, as our Internal Teacher, whenever we call on him. The etymology of the name Jesus, Jeshua, means "God Helps," the Course calls him at times "the Manifestation of the Holy Spirit," to some he could be Krishna, Quan Yin, or the Buddha, and whatever works for you will do. Studying the history of what his bodily adventures may have been two thousand years ago, achieves the opposite of entering a relationship with him. It is a way to keep him at a distance, to ensure that we do not let him into the presence of the now. From the standpoint of the ego then, the studies of the "historical Jesus" are a way of making him unreal to us, and keeping him at a distance from us. For time and space are illusory experiential dimensions which are an expression of the separation. The whole experience of a past and a future is merely an example of the ego's sleight of hand, designed to rob us of the immediacy and the reality of the present by engaging our mind in a substitute reality, which we call "our life," but which is wholly illusory. The Course explains this here:

The power of the Thomas gospel and the Course is that he speaks to us directly from their pages, and by this immediacy these books appeal to us to choose him, to let him in by choosing another way but the ego. And if we had not begun to make that choice at some level, we would not find ourselves reading either the Course or the Thomas Gospel, but of course what we do with them is up to us. We could use to develop a new theory about "the historical Jesus," which has not been tried yet. Or we could choose the immediacy of our own relationship with our Internal Teacher, which the Course is designed to help us restore, as it says at end of the first section of the Preface:

Every once in a while it pays to look at the story behind certain concepts, for the meaning tends to drift if we don't properly appreciate the context. The notion of the historical Jesus is one of those. It has its origin with the Enlightenment and mostly protestant Bible scholars and philosophers. (Remember, prior to Vatican II the words "Catholic Bible scholar" were practically a contradiction in terms, because Catholics weren't supposed to be studying the Bible.) It thus represented a "new" look at Jesus, to counter the "old" view of Jesus, i.e. the Catholic version of him.

Briefly, here is how it all happened. The meaning of the term "Christian" dates from after Jesus, and was really of dubious value, because thousands of creeds considered themselves Christian. That all changed in 325 at the Council of Nicea, when the emperor Constantine to all intents and purposes poured the whole thing in a meatgrinder, and made hamburger out of it, which was then promoted as Christianity, he created the brand, and in effect put the Church in business but good. Or, to describe it a little bit more literally, he brought this council together and more or less forced the various factions to come up with one common denominator of what made a Christian a Christian - what became the Nicene Creed - and thus he forced a certain homogeneity, which had never existed beforehand, and which in all reality never existed since either, but for a while it seemed that way. After that the first major rift was the Eastern and Western churches, or Greek Orthodox, vs. Roman Catholic, which became final in the 11th century. This carries on without many further overt problems until the time of the reformation, when Luther took issue with some of the theological wild growth in the Church, and his response to what he saw was to try to go back to the literary source, i.e. the Bible. He then translated it into the vernacular, and advocated everyone's right to have their own relationship with this material, though he evidently certainly intended to be helpful with the proper interpretation. By the present time we are back where we started, for there are at least as many versions of Christianity now as there were in the centuries immediately after Jesus.

With the enlightenment, along with the progress of archaeology, Biblical scholarship became interested in the connection between textual scholarship and archaeology, realizing that it might be possible to gain a much deeper knowledge of the history behind the Bible this way. This unleashed a whole new energy that was focused on the historical basis of the tradition. Naively, many of these scholars thought that with this sort of scientific basis to their faith, they could save Jesus from Catholicism. Of course what happened over time was that Catholics also became interested and after Vatican II essentially co-opted the search for the historical Jesus. If you really get excited about all the variations on the theme, there is an excellent summary of the whole story on a website on Early Christian Writings, here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/index-2.html.

The whole endeavor has fueled controversy, instead of leading to answers. It is a further evolution within the Christian tradition, and has led only to a proliferation of theories about Jesus, which sort of compete with interpretation of Paul. The interpretation of Paul c.s. sort of won out in the past, and became Christianity. Today we have a seemingly ever expanding universe of interpretations of him based on all sorts of criteria. The variations are interesting at times, declaring him to be a myth created by Paul, or explaining him as a revolutionary, where some have Paul as a Roman spy, seeking to subvert the movement. Yet none of them have much relevance from the standpoint of anyone who decides to try and practice what Jesus teaches. The only path to him, is to follow him, not to study his worldly circumstances, and write and rewrite the history of his appearance in the world two thousand years ago. For anyone who has studied the lives of saints, it should be obvious that experience was the dominant factor, which is exactly why the Church so often had trouble with accepting saints for what they were, and became entangled in their theological acceptability.

With a slight play of words, we could say, do not let the historical Jesus delay you, or, in the words of the Course:

There are numerous statements throughout the logia of the Thomas gospel and elsewhere in the Jesus literature where images are used pertaining to money, property, rich or poor, etc. and as with everything else it is clear that he speaks of our emotional or psychological investments, and as usually he does not intend for us to take him literally. But, in spite of how many times he says that it all comes to us in parables, or pulls his hair out and wonders why we didn't understand that he was not speaking of literal "bread," we merrily continue taking him literally anyway. The way to defy the spirit of the law is to take it literally. Every good lawyer knows that. That's how you get off. You follow the letter of the law, while defying the spirit of the law, and you cannot be challenged in court. This is a basic ego trick. It is what A Course In Miracles calls level confusion, and it is the most basic defense strategy of the ego against anything Jesus says. Thus statements that speak only of the level of spirit or the mind, which is what Jesus basically addresses himself to, become interpreted in a literal way, and find reflection in the world in such ideas as Islamic banking, where you cannot charge interest, but of course that is not going to stop business, it merely means that other constructs have to be developed. Logion 95 is a typical example, for here Jesus speaks of not lending money at interest, but giving it away instead. Taken literally that seems clear enough. Except it is not what he meant.

There is however a common usage which sheds a lot of light on this expression, we speak of "psychological attachment" and of "being invested" in something in the psychological/emotional sense. That is the key to understanding this statement as it was meant. Jesus speaks of the wealth of the spirit, and encourages us to share it liberally, not looking for a specific return, that would be a typical ego-mechanism, where you are doing A to get B, and naturally you are always looking for a B, which to you is more valuable than the A you have to offer. That is the foundation of the ego's horsetrading, but it is different in God's economy of Love, where you gain by sharing. In A Course In Miracles you will find a lot of use of the concept of investing, and riches in a similar vein as in the historical sayings of Jesus. Our spiritual capital is love, the ego's capital is scarcity (remember economics, the dismal science, is based on valuations that are all based on scarcity of goods?), and in God's economy of Love, ideas grow by sharing, thus we learn to extend Love through the forgiveness teachings. Here is a summary from the Course about how to invest our spiritual capital:

-Jesus
-Jesus who?
- It's your own bro', bro.

... Now would you open the door or not?

Again, in Logion 94 which is definitely another "prequel" to the New Testament, it is all about immediacy, and that is what these logia provide by their very nature. The more you entertain a dialog with this little collection of sayings, the more this dawns on you from time to time, that their very simplicity, and the absence of the editorial context of the NT storybooks, aka. the canonical gospels, actually makes for a sense of immediacy and presence, which is really the single most important thing. It is the essential promise of the resurrection, namely that he is present to us whenever we wish, and taking up our "cross" means among other things taking responsibility for the fact that our relationship with him would be a lot better already if we quit slamming the door in his face. That realization is the essence of the path of the Course, namely to remove the obstacles to love's presence, which is our natural in heritance (ACIM:Introduction). Note please that it is the love that is our natural inheritance, not the obstacles: those are the natural inheritance of the ego. Which would you rather have? At the end of the workbook is the following quote in the voice of the Holy Spirit, which mirrors the same theme:

A familiar theme, and Logion 92  falls in the "prequel" category, for nearly identical expressions occur in Matthew and Luke and researchers think that a variant of the same expression is also to be found in the "Q" sayings tradition.

There is one thing that needs to be said about these logia. They are truly the most "original" source of how Jesus really spoke, and if you read them intensely it cannot fail to dawn on you, that he is speaking directly to you. Many people have that experience with A Course In Miracles,  and I would not doubt that Thomas Jefferson had some of the same experience when he composed his The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps Jefferson took some editiorial license which I might disagree with, but by and large he was right in almost hearing the original voice and tuning in with his intuition. As I've pointed out elsewhere this is the only thing that would explain how he could distill something that corresponded so closely to the Thomas Gospel, which was not to be rediscovered until some hundred and twenty five years later. It is an experience that has come to readers of the Thomas Gospel and to students of the Course. It is an experience that is available to anyone, for if you truly tune in with the heart, and hear the content behind the words, you are truly entering into a relationship with your Inner Teacher, in which the words are now simply an aide mémoire.

Thus, now that we're talking to him directly, listen what he has to say: "Don't give up seeking, you will find the answers. However notice how when you just started looking for me, I did not always give you all the answers you were looking for. Now that you've come closer, and I'm willing to tell them, but you're not asking." I just paraphrased the saying, making it a tad more "vernacular." To carry that just a little bit further, the whole thing might be summed up as: "Do not give up seeking, for you will find. Now that you've come this far, don't drop the ball and turn around. I'm here, ready to tell you, but you're forgetting to ask." Thus he is reminding us of the fact that we are afraid of him, and some part of us (the ego) does not want to hear him, but we should overcome our reticence, and ask him. He is there. Here follows an almost parallel passage from the Course (Note the use of the capital Him, so this refers to the Holy Spirit):

Thus in this world, the world of the ego, we cannot understand this, for if I give you a chocolate bar, you have it and I don't. The content of the gift (which is what the Course always looks at) is guilt however, for the ego is always bargaining. We give a chocolate bar with a smile, but secretly we enter a debit entry into the accounts between us, and you owe me one now. Just wait till I give you two chocolate bars... This is the purpose of this world of specifics, and this is why the Course says: The world was made as an attack on God. (ACIM:W-pII.3.2:1) For the world of specifics seeks to defy the law of the spirit, and sin, guilt, and fear shatter the peace of Heaven. But in the world of spirit, the concept of a gift is reciprocal, because it is all about the content (of love) and not about form, and a thought is strengthened by sharing it.

This reciprocity of giving and receiving in the world of spirit is the central them of Logion 88. In my book I drew attention to an important passage in the workbook, which clarifies this in speaking about the difference between the messengers of the world (the mail man, UPS etc.), and the messengers of Heaven:

Thus in the world of spirit and of the miracle, there is total reciprocity, for love flows through, it expands as it is shared. Every unforgiveness is a block to that flow, every miracle is spiritual Drano, which opens the channel. And the experience is one of choosing love, and simply experiencing that you yourself experience love whenever you for-give. So the experience is one of flow, that's why people so often feel that all I had to do was get out of the way, so that you can truly give, and therefore receive, for this experience of being in the flow, is a gift to yourself.

With the above in mind, read Logion 85, and appreciate what Jesus is telling us there:

Who then, is Adam in our story? The primordial man in the Biblical context, and therefore the archetypical first actor on the stage of the theater of time and space. In the context of the metaphysical creation sequence as per the account in A Course in Miracles, the four steps in which "the impossible" happened are:

1. The "tiny, mad idea" of the separation, i.e. the very notion that it would be possible to exist separate from our Source in God
2. The repression of the memory of Heaven, or the Holy Spirit,
   
3. The affirmation of the ego as a separate identity, which makes the separation from God real, but is bothered by guilt feelings over spoiling the peace of Heaven, which in turn is "solved" by the next step, projecting a world of the body and time and space, in which we can exist mindlessly, not bothered by our bad memories.
4. The Big Bang in this view then is the projection on the physical level of the separation thought in the mind, so that the body, living out its "story" in this world of time and space, is the embodiment of the thought of individuality. The archetype of this step is Adam.

The important thing in this process of the making of the world of time and space, is that steps 1-3 are all abstract, and occur in the mind, and that with step number 4 we accomplish the apparently complete identification with the individual existence of the false self or "ego" which now sees itself as one among a gazillion others, who completely forgot that he came from the mind which thought all of this up, which is therefore infinitely powerful, while within our limited awareness as individuals we have only very limited talents with which we try to survive in this world for a while.

Seen in this context, this saying states that we are immortal spirit in truth, and in fact, had Adam remembered who he was (as immortal spirit), he would have remembered his reality in Heaven as spirit, and thus known that he was immortal spirit also, being the Son of God. As such the statement is a reminder that we shortchange ourselves, and cheat ourselves of the reality we truly are by identifying as sons of Adam instead of Sons of God, or more precisely the Son of God. So our only mistake lies in our identifying ourselves with our role on the stage, instead of with the mind who we really are. So we've become actors on the stage of our own dream, and forgot we're dreaming the dream, and we completely identify with the panic and excitement of the actor in the story, forgetting we are the author of the story, and that we are the Son of God, only having a nightmare because we took the tiny, mad idea of the separation seriously for a while.

Here is the interview with Gary Renard, interview with Bill Gladstone on planet stone TV, as posted earlier in a pulse.