Jesus said, I shall give you what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has never occurred to the human mind. (17)
We are familiar with this idea from Saint Paul’s saying: “It is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (I Corinthians 2:9). He was quoting Isaiah 64:4: “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.”
The King James translation misses the idea a bit. The original Greek actually says: “What eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and to which the heart of man has not aspired, that has God prepared for those that love Him.” Naturally the heart of “man” has not aspired to the divine gift, because it is far beyond the grasp of the earthbound mind and heart of those entrenched in the human condition, having forgotten that they are gods and not men. (“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High” Psalms 82:6.)
It takes a moderate degree of evolution to realize that there is a realm that is invisible to the eye, unheard by the ear, untouchable to the hand and beyond the imagining of the human mind. But it takes a great degree of evolution to understand that that realm is the real world, and that we are living in a mirage, a dream–which has meaning, but is nonetheless a dream. To aspire to enter that true world and leave this world of mere appearance is a mark of nearness to the status of “the sons of God.” And that is the gift Jesus offers to His disciples, the real Christmas gift that comes to us when we are born into the real world of God.
Read the next section in The Gospel of Thomas for Yogis: The Origin is the End