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At the Source

Chapter 38 of the Gospel of Thomas for Awakening

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Jesus said, Many times have you desired to hear these words which I am saying to you, and you have no one else to hear them from. There will be days when you will look for me and will not find me. (38)[Nancy Johnson: “When you have no other to listen to, days will come when you shall search, but never find me.”]

Inner yearning

We all come into this world with a destiny that is known to us on the subconscious level, and which often trickles up onto the conscious level. Recently I was at a spiritual center and a man asked me how I became a monk. When I told him I had received an intuition about being a monk when I was four years old, he laughed and told me that when he was six he saw a photograph of Rocky Marciano in a stack of old newspapers and instantly knew that he was going to become a boxer–and did so very successfully. This destiny is what the Bhagavad Gita calls swadharma: the path each person is meant to follow to further their evolutionary development. For me it was monastic life and for him it was the boxing ring. Though seemingly poles apart, for each of us it was the same: destiny.

This being so, we often feel impulses from deep within that are messages from the higher mind pointing us to our intended future. That is why Jesus tells the disciples that previously they had desired to hear the teachings he was then giving them. Actually, the wisdom he imparted was already within them in seed form awaiting to be awakened. The highest learning is really a remembering of what we have always known but forgotten when coming into this material world. We are not convinced of truth, we recognize it. The only purpose of a true spiritual teacher or teaching is the enabling of us to open our spiritual awareness and, as Jesus said: “Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old” (Matthew 13:52).

No other teacher

There is no place in spiritual life for false modesty and displays of humility that mask one of the worst forms of spiritual pride: the desire to be thought humble and without ego. Therefore Jesus tells them quite plainly that he alone can teach them that which their souls have been longing for. At the age of twelve he had proven that the spiritual authorities in Israel had nothing to teach him, and had gone to India where over the course of more than a dozen years he learned the wisdom he had returned to teach to any who would listen.

We can wander for lifetimes in confusion and dead-end byways if we do not find a teacher who can not only tell us the truth, but can show us to way to know those truths for ourselves by teaching us the way to open the inner omniscience possessed by each one of us in potential form. This inner power is the “image and likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26) that is the very nature of every sentient being. Jesus was such a teacher as were and are all the enlightened masters throughout the ages. Krishna, Buddha, Jesus and others of their status still are guiding disciples to the Light that is their true Self.

Looking in vain

We must understand and experience the real, ever-present nature and presence of those great master-teachers. Those who were used to only being with the physical embodiment of Jesus, and had not opened their own spiritual sight and become aware of his inner being along with theirs, after his departure from them looked for him in vain and lamented that they had lost the source of their needed guidance.

The same thing happened in the twentieth century with the disciples of Ramana Maharshi in India. He kept telling them through the years that they must not obsess and depend on his physical presence, but gain their own inner realization, otherwise they would be desolated at his death and be without a guide. And it happened just as he said. Fortunately some of them then got busy and found guidance and wisdom within, but others simply formed a personality cult and kept on obsessing on his past physical embodiment and blinded themselves to his abiding spiritual presence. As he had told someone: “They think I am leaving [dying], but where would I go?” He knew himself as the omnipresent Inner Reality which they also were.

Buddha said: “Only turn around and lo! the Other Shore.” It is the same with the great masters. If we will turn within and call we shall surely find them, or they will send us external assistance in the form of their true disciples who are themselves progressing to equal their beloved masters.

The message is clear: the inner search is everything.

Read the next article in the Gospel of Thomas for Yogis: The Religion of Ignorance

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Chapters in The Gospel of Thomas for Awakening

  1. The Open Secrets
  2. Seeking Is More Than Just Finding
  3. Seeking the Kingdom Realistically
  4. The One Goal
  5. From the Seen to the Unseen
  6. What Jesus Wants Us To Do
  7. Eat Or Be Eaten
  8. Fishing Wisely
  9. The Inner Field
  10. Guarding the Flame
  11. What Will You Do?
  12. Who Shall Lead?
  13. The Unspeakable
  14. When Virtue is Vice
  15. Father in Heaven; Father on Earth
  16. Divine Discord
  17. The Divine Gift
  18. The Origin is the End
  19. Original Being
  20. A Mustard Seed
  21. Disciples of Jesus
  22. How to Enter the Kingdom
  23. Unity of Vision
  24. Where is Christ?
  25. Love and Protect
  26. Seeing
  27. The Fasting and Sabbath of the Spirit
  28. How Jesus Saw the World
  29. Hidden Treasure
  30. One
  31. The Power of Unbelief
  32. Spiritual Strength
  33. Speak It Out
  34. The Blind
  35. The Secret of Spiritual Security
  36. Live Carefree
  37. Unashamed Before God
  38. At the Source
  39. The Religion of Ignorance
  40. Within God
  41. Spiritual Gain and Loss
  42. Move On
  43. Challenging the Master
  44. The Source of Good and Evil
  45. Great in the Kingdom
  46. Impossible Duality
  47. Peace That Moves Mountains
  48. Back to the Source
  49. Children of the Light
  50. Here and Now
  51. Seeing Yet Blind
  52. Outer Ritual or Inner Growth?
  53. Infinite Transcendence
  54. “Hate”
  55. True Understanding
  56. Wheat and Weeds
  57. Finding Life
  58. Live and Die Not
  59. “Lest Thou Also…”
  60. Who Will Die; Who Will Live
  61. The Path of Unknowing
  62. Awakened by Death
  63. Turning Ourselves Away
  64. Gullibility
  65. The Rejected is Truly Accepted
  66. All–and Nothing
  67. The Blessings of Persecution
  68. Life or Death Lie Within
  69. Admission
  70. Not a Divider
  71. Seeking the Harvest
  72. Thirsting in Vain
  73. Who Shall Enter?
  74. Unfailing Treasure
  75. The All Speaks
  76. Well-dressed Ignoramuses
  77. True Blessedness
  78. A Duplication
  79. Balancing the Inner and the Outer
  80. Near and Far
  81. Seeing the Unseeable
  82. Seeing Your Unknown Side
  83. Our Forefather Adam
  84. Blessed Homelessness
  85. Doubly Wretched
  86. Onward and Upward
  87. Twofold Life
  88. The Yoke of Christ
  89. Knowing the Unknown
  90. Asking and Hearing
  91. Give Not…
  92. Seeking and Knocking
  93. Right Generosity
  94. The Expanding Kingdom
  95. The Fulfilled Universe
  96. Taking Stock
  97. The Spiritual Family
  98. Three Debts
  99. Father and Mother
  100. Exoteric Religion
  101. Ready for Invasion
  102. Penitential Discipline, Anyone?
  103. Daring to Know
  104. Ending Duality
  105. “I Love You More…”
  106. At the Source
  107. Finding the Hidden Treasure
  108. Having Come to the End
  109. Immortal and Above the World
  110. Body and Soul
  111. Where is the Kingdom?
  112. Male and Female?
  113. In Conclusion
  114. Glossary
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