Docetism, so-called, was reviled by the emerging Christian orthodoxy. I am here to suggest that it may be fruitful to take a second look at what it is all about.

Some of the dialogue you will find there is absolutely fascinating, and in a sense it makes you wonder why the Christian Orthodoxy was so dead set against information of this nature, which clearly was very popular in the Johannine communities. If the symbol of Jesus does play a role for you at all, one of the very recognizable sentiments is that nobody would recognize him if you met him on the subway, and he would probably end up being pushed under a bus some place, and die unknown. So what is it then within us which does recognize Jesus when it matters? What is it that made these apostles in the conversations reported in the acts of John so certain that they'd seen Jesus?

None of this will make any sense from a standpoint of Newtonian physics, which is the knee-jerk frame of reference for most people, for in that context bodies are different, and moreover "reality" rests on the ability to discriminate deterministically between different bodies and things in the world. And it is their differences which determine their reality in this sense. Such is the way of the world, a world of differences. But in God's world, sameness is the law because it is the world of spirit, and not of the five senses, so it is a world of like knows like, and the thought of differences has no meaning. So when people report seeing Jesus, or experiencing him, if it is genuine, there is this gentle but unshakable inner knowing, a recognition of the real thing, because he represents who we are in truth, and he will appear to us in whatever form is most useful to us (including no form!). It may be just a thought, a voice, an intuition, along with an inner certainty that transcends the certainties of the world. For the seeming certainties of the world are all transient in nature and therefore not certainties at all. My fingerprint is good as long as my finger is not chopped off, or otherwise damaged. My iris scan is good until my eye is damaged, etc. etc. nothing lasts. And the world does not and cannot know who I am, because the only practical answers are by proxy, yet I am none of those proxies, and I survive all of them. But the world of spirit is the world of eternity. There is no death. And self recognizes self, no matter what the form, and will also be quite able to recognize the essence in many different forms, and therefore the docetic stories are quite perceptive and instructive, and a good suggestion that many of the so-called apocryphal writings are potentially of great value.

Within the Thomas material there are several Logia where this theme of recognizing Jesus is touched on, in a wide variety of ways such as Logion 24, Logion 31, Logion 52, Logion 57, Logion 66, Logion 67, Logion 72, Logion 90, Logion 99, Logion 108, Logion 110, Logion 111. It may pay to think about why all of these in some fashion do have a bearing on recognizing Jesus. One thing to notice for sure is that none of them say: "I'm the tall, dark handsome guy with the sunglasses, the red t-shirt, and blue jeans." He will appear to us as is most helpful to us at the time.

Theology is what emerges after the witnesses are dead. It is a speculative framework that purports to make sense of otherwise incomprehensible, if not somewhat disturbing events, which are felt to be pregnant with meaning, but now the rational mind takes over to make sure that the meaning is edited to its liking. Thus theology about Jesus really starts with Paul who never actually met him in life at all, which is not to suggest that meeting him in person would be any guarantee for an understanding of him. But still, within the historical framework, it is clear that the Thomas Gospel is that last extant document which reflects only things Jesus said, although it may contain some embellishments. But, if it is 65% solid, as the edits of Pursah in Gary Renard's Your Immortal Reality suggest, it still stands head and shoulders above the rest of the New Testament literature, which is 90% anything but Jesus's words, and when it is, it probably is only 50% reliable.

Theology is thus on a macro level what we also do on a personal level, namely to take direct intuition, and clutter it up with rationalizations to the point that eventually it means something else, but somehow we convince ourselves that we should follow the rationalizations and not the intuition, and it takes us forever to find out that we ourselves are the architects of our own quandary, and if we had truly followed the pure intuition, we might not be in the predicament we find ourselves in at any particular point. The Course says about this "The Holy Spirit speaks to me throughout the day," (ACIM:W296), though it also says "Only very few can hear God's Voice at all." (ACIM:M12.3).

This constant ego-based temptation to mess up the present and give it a different spin is the real topic of Logion 52, where the disciples tell Jesus that 24 prophets in Israel have spoken of him, and he rebukes them that those prophets spoke of the dead, and so they're ignoring him who is standing in front of them in the present. In short again, we drag in our interpretations and projections from the (ego-)past, and thereby we clutter up the opportunity we have in the present to make what in the ACIM context is the choice for "another way." In everything the "monkey mind" has to say, the now is obfuscated by its projections and rationalizations, and it ends up just like it did with Jesus in the New Testament, that he does not get any say in saying what it is he said. It's other people telling him what he said, just like in the clutter of the mind, we obliterate the authentic inspiration with our own ego thoughts. In short our ego invariably clutters up the present with the past, and thereby insures that the future will be a rerun of the same old ego soap opera:

The healing of this tendency is stated in Miracle Principle 13:

As of right now I've introduced an Errata section at the bottom of the front page to this blog site, so that I can post any important errata in the book. Besides some small items, of which I've been collecting a list, the most serious item was an error in the table in Index 3, and this seems to be the most practical way of making that information available to the reader.

This is one of the fascinating theme that seems to get more and more attention recently, and certainly the material on Gary Renard, on the website of Walter Simkew is very interesting, because it brings up several interesting questions. Walter Simkew is a doctor, and clearly a very meticulous researcher, but he remains stuck in the model of reincarnation as a reality, which turns matters on their head. One of the key questions he discusses on this page is very tough to explain if you stick to that view point, but much easier to understand if you come from a standpoint of the primacy of the mind, in which case there is hardly any difficulty at all.

The premise is that Gary Renard and Michael Tamura both have recolections of being both Roger Sherman and the Apostle Thomas, which is puzzling if you think that a soul does in fact incarnate in a body. I had written something about this earlier, under the title of Multiple Thomases and other Curiosa because I wound up being with Gary when he was on a TV panel with yet another person with recollections of Thomas. It makes sense once you think of it the other way around. If you think of it that we are caught up in a giant multiplex cinema, the hologram of space and time, all of which is the result of the one thought of separation, then it begins to make sense, we can wander into one movie or another, we can be actors in different movies, and we can even be viewing ourselves in several roles at once. Seen from that point of view, it is intuitive we've all played multiple roles, so we could also both have played the same role. The trick of identification which is necessary to make the error real, is to identify ourselves with one role, instead of all of them. At that point we've entered the battle of the survival of the fittest, etc. This is what the ego thought wants us to do, to think that what we ARE is one of the characters on the screen, at which point we lose our mind by fully identifying with the adventures of that character.

If we realize that the "lives" we lead, are merely roles we act out in the mind, and that the mind is merely shuttling between screens in this cosmic cineplex, which is the time-space hologram, we come to realize that there is no "incarnation" but merely a "local experience," (Einstein's expression) through identification. On the other hand we can also make it even more real, by using past life memories to make ourselves more important. Notice how interested people are in finding out how they were certain celebrities in another life, etc. as if that were important. We're all good actors, and we played all the roles, we were Anthony AND Cleopatra, Caesar AND Brutus, not to mention a sutler in the Roman army somewhere, or a prostitute, a murderer, and a saint. So just like in a dream at night, we're all the characters on the stage, though we identify mostly with just one. We're also the audience. And so it is that the usefulness of past life memories, in whatever roles, is not to make ourselves important with past lifetimes as Kings, and Queens, great inventors, or very holy saints, but even if the roles are Judas, Hitler or Genghis Khan, to use them as more forgiveness opportunities, because they help us recognize patterns that are important tools to us, which we use to maintain the state of war, instead of joining with Jesus in the view above the battleground, and letting it all go.

And in terms of the Thomas Gospel, statements which relate to this are such as Logion 99 which is the often misunderstood statement of Jesus about his mothers and his brothers standing outside, to which he responds that his mother and his brothers are whoever does the Will of God. His point evidently is that we are not our roles in the world, and what unites us is not blood ties as families on earth, but the love of the Father we all share, and by consciously choosing to abide in that love, we will also realize our brotherhood with all people.

So, a sense of humor is part of the cure, as taking things too seriously is our biggest problem a lot of the time. One dear friend and teacher constantly reminds me of this by calling me 'Harpo,' particularly when I take things too seriously. What Jesus suggests in the passage from the Course which I quoted above, is that the serious consequences and "real effects" of the "tiny, mad idea" can be dissipated by joining with him in laughter, which is the best cure for taking them seriously, for that is what our ego wants us to do. Never mind how hard we try we cannot put eternity out to pasture by pretending otherwise, nor can we fire God, or kill him off, despite all our imaginations to the contrary. That literally is a joke, a cosmic joke, a world that does not exist.

Slowly I'm working my way through Ian Kershaw's massive biography of Hitler. And in spite of all the reading I've done on WW2, plus listened to endless stories of what life was like under the German occupation in Holland, and then later the liberation of course, I am learning new things. Remarkable is it to me to realize for instance how in politics there is always a flip flop that says if you can't hack it at home, start a war - find an external enemy and go for it. It should be great for popularity, provided you win, which always seems easier when you start, then once the conflict is fully under way. The reverse also applies, and it is noteworthy to realize how the Nazi regime, which was based on cheap emotions of nationalism, victimhood, and hatred of anything "foreign," including unvarnished racial hatred, turned up the volume on the persecution of the Jews in direct response to the failures in the Russian campaign in 1941/42. Thus was an easy scapegoat found, and the attention diverted from the failures of the regime. This is just one more demonstration of how the ego thought system works, at any cost the guilt (ultimately always over the murder of God), needs to be placed outside of me. As long as I can blame anyone else for all that's wrong with the world, particularly my loss of peace, we can fool ourselves into believing our own innocence. As Ken Wapnick always points out, the first cry of a baby, really means "I didn't do it," and secondarily of course that implies my parents are to blame for this.

Now the theme of the crucifixion does not show up in the Thomas Gospel, however some relevant circumstantial notions do show up. In Logion 1 there is mention of "not tasting death" if we understand what Jesus teaches, and e.g. in Logion 13, there is the notion that the apostle Thomas represents to the other apostles that if he told them what Jesus taught him one on one, they'd stone him. So there is the notion that the world (including the apostles) really do not want to hear what Jesus teaches. Hence it is no wonder that he would end up being crucified. And it is no wonder that we want to blame someone else for that also. Anyone, really, but the Jews were just convenient, though there was no historical basis for blaming them, as it was evidently the work of the Romans. This way, Jesus' evident unconcern with religious traditions and teachings in his emphasis on the teaching of love and forgiveness which he represented, was made by those who came after him into a break with Judaism in a way which he never seems to have advocated, he merely did not take man-made rules very seriously, and invited his disciples to a path of inner freedom, and a Kingdom not of this World. That message was immediately destroyed, and made into a message of hate and divisiveness, where the distinction between Jews and Christians, which Jesus had never made, came to be emphasized more and more, and a formal religion was made of a simple teaching of truth. And so a teaching of love became a religion of hate.

Now Nazism was merely a very good example of what hate leads to, and the way it was acted out was an example for all time. And hate is the basis of the crucifixion - my brother is different from me, thus the sonship is many and not one. And so, ultimately, as long as we believe Jesus is different from us, we are once again committing ourselves to the crucifixion. Hatred is the division of the sonship into anything other than oneness, and any judgment or grievance we hold against anyone will do. Nazism, as the poster child for the evils of judgment, sets the gruesome example by actually acting it out on an unprecedented scale, but so does every war, every murder, and every thought of condemnation, even if it is not acted out. Forgiveness as the core teaching of Jesus is merely the daily practice which can serve to undo the thought of murder, and as we do so we can join Jesus in the resurrection.

To want to choose Jesus, we need to really understand that the ego is that thought of murder, as gruesome as the worst regimes that ever were, and worse. For the only way we are motivated to give it up, is because we finally "get" what it's up to, and we just won't play anymore, but as long as it holds one grain of attraction for us, we continue the thought system. One of the most insightful books in that respect just after the war, was a booklet by a Catholic priest and psychotherapist, titled Hitler within (Max Picard, Hitler in uns Selbst, 1946). He was one of the first to point out that the problem was not the Hitler of history, but the Hitler within, who keeps on making the choice for hatred. Next to that, there was a fascinating little book by Wilhelm Reich, The Murder of Christ, which despite the strange contortion of focusing on bodily functions, is really powerful in its understanding that the crucifixion is not a one time event, but is a continual choice, which we constantly reinforce, until we are ready to make a choice for the essence of who and what we are. Fortunately there is an alternative, of making the choice for love, one forgiveness lesson at a time. It may take a while, but the outcome is as certain as God.

The following material is a contribution by Rick van Vliet, which was originally posted in a discussion group on the Thomas Gospel, and it offers a rather interesting way of looking at the remarkable correspondences of the so-called Jefferson Bible, with the material in the Thomas Gospel. As I've argued elsewhere, I might agree with Jefferson's selections some of the time, but on the whole it is totally remarkable how he intuitively picked a consistent picture of the teachings of Jesus out of the extant materials in his time, and indirectly almost anticipated the facts that would be borne out 130 years later by the discovery of the Thomas Gospel.

------- Quoted message -------

Thomas Jefferson's Bible, The Gospel of Thomas, & the Nature of Dunghills

Introduction:

Thomas Jefferson said most of the Christian Bible was a dunghill, with a few diamonds of genuine Jesus sayings. His great life work, delayed  until his retirement, was to write his own version of the Christian Bible. It's called The Jefferson Bible, and he threw out over 90% of  the Christian Bible.

"In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurgos, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of ... or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse  by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages."

Statistics:

So, Thomas Jefferson considered over 90% of the New Testament a dunghill, what percentage of the Thomas sayings in the Christian Bible did Jefferson consider a dunghill? He thought less than 10% of the Bible was genuine, what percentage of the Thomas sayings paralleled in the Bible did he consider genuine? 1%? 10%? 20? ...
No, about 71%. Thomas Jefferson nailed it.

.#                   //'d in Bible - # in Jeff - %in
First Third.     21 .......         15 ...       77.8
Middle Third  20 .......         10 ...       66.7
Last Third..    14 .......           7 ...       66.7
total.......        55 .......         32 ...       70.5

This is organized by the way the Jesus Seminar sorts our sayings in the Five Gospels. Some sayings have more than one part, those parts are what's counted. Direct parallels only, no Cf. Cross referenced to the list on:

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbtab.html The 10% of the New Testament is hearsay that is roughly checked.

Summary:

Jefferson only kept about 10% of the New Testament, but he kept 71% of the Thomas parallels in it.

He kept 79% of the first third of Thomas that wasn't secret and contains all the Law/Jewish parallels.

Good job Tom!

Appendix:

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbtab.html

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbsyl.html

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Jesus-Without-Miracles1dec05.htm

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/

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Note: in my book I correlated the work of the Jesus seminar with the Pursah version, and on that basis the results would vary slightly, but the overall outcome remains totally remarkable.

In the introduction to her new book, One Again, Linda McNabb likens the process of forgiveness to her experience as a personal organizer, who helps people sort out the worthwhile from the worthless, the wheat from the chaff. And this is the process of "following Jesus" as it is described in the language of the Gospel literature. (He did not mean going to church, for there were no churches. People simply came together to share their experiences, and in the middle eastern world this meant leaving your house, and going outside to talk with the neighbors, the Greek word for it in the Bible, which very tendentiously is translated as "church" was ekklesia, a "calling out," a gathering. In today's terms it would be perhaps a Meetup in a diner somewhere.)
The point of the process is that what's worthwhile is kept, and everything else goes by the wayside. In terms of the Thomas Gospel this process is indicated without a lot of explanation, by e.g. Logion 76, where the point is to keep the pearl and discard the rest. That is one way of putting it. In the Course, Jesus summarizes it very clearly a few paragraphs down from the one quoted above:

Linda's book is yet another retelling of the legend of the prodigal son, or if you will, the prodigal daughter in this case. She sums up beautifully how "I was born insane and it went downhill from there" and recognizes in retrospect that the "insanity" is the very notion that we could be an individual and separated from God our Source, the "tiny, mad idea" of the Course. But as long as we keep acting out the thought of separation, there's no saying where we might end up. Or, as Ken Wapnick would joke, nice kids would stay home in Heaven with daddy - no reason to come and hang out here in the insane asylum. Linda shares the experiences of  her descent to hell, with the themes being very much in common with many of us, with all the common idols of the postwar generations, starting with sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Granted, many of us may not have experienced the extremes that Linda has, but that is irrelevant, it is her willingness to share the process which can be helpful to many, since most of us are in deep denial of how miserable our lives really are. But then she continues, and describes her process of her way out.

The story of how she came across the work of Gary Renard in her journey is priceless also, for surprise, surprise it shows up at just the right moment in her process, and helps her deepen her inner work of forgiveness, and understand it in a larger context. None of us start the way home, unless and until we begin to realize that this ain't working, or in the classic language of Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford, "There must be another way." That is when we meet the stranger on the road who seems to have the answers which we suddenly know were what we were really looking for all along, and so begins the homeward bound journey, when we know that we share one and the same goal with all our brothers, namely to find the way home.