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Wheat and Weeds

Chapter 57 of the Gospel of Thomas for Awakening

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Jesus said, The kingdom of the father is like a man who had good seed. His enemy came by night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The man did not allow them to pull up the weeds; he said to them, ‘I am afraid that you will go intending to pull up the weeds and pull up the wheat along with them.’ For on the day of the harvest the weeds will be plainly visible, and they will be pulled up and burned. (57)

For many ages throughout the world, whatever the spiritual tradition might be, a question has persisted: “Why is there both good and evil in the world? Why do good and evil people live together on the earth, seemingly in equal status and fortune, and the evil often being the more fortunate? How can this be if God is truly good?” The answer is contained in that question itself. The situation is itself a manifestation of the goodness of God.

The world is not a kind of artificial structure meant to be beautiful and impressive–or even perfect to the observer. Rather it is a vast field of evolutionary life on infinite levels and grades in which each evolving consciousness (spirit) is finding its way upward to ultimate perfection. This is an agelong process whose length and course is determined completely by the individual spirit. Duality being an essential element of relative existence, naturally there will be a moving back and forth from that which facilitates evolution and that which hinders or reverses it. That, and that alone, is what determines good and evil. Good advances evolution and evil slows, stops or reverses it. It is not a matter of God’s arbitrary will, but the will of the evolving entity itself as it passes from form to form on the evolutionary scale.

Problems arise on both the paths, upward and downward, but since the impulse to evolution is within the very essence of the spirit, self-correction will eventually occur. This is a most important fact. If long enough time passes, even though it be for countless creation cycles, the goal of perfection as an awakened god within God will be reached permanently.

Do Jesus’ words give a picture of the world created by God but maliciously flawed by the Devil or Satan? No. There is a negative force that many identify with those names, but that, too, is a necessary and inherent part of creation. For a very full explanation of this, see The Second Coming of Christ by Paramhansa Yogananda.

The whole idea of this parable is that it is the nature of the world for there to be positive and negative, light and dark, good and evil. Neither must be interfered with (though good can be encouraged and evil discouraged once the evolving being has reach a degree of self-awareness). Rather, they must be left alone until that which is good and true in each individual has been realized and that which is evil and false has been eliminated–cast out and burnt in the fire of divine realization (consciousness). No person will ever be rejected or burnt, only that which is extraneous and not-self. The spirit shall be released into perfect freedom.

“Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ” (Revelation 12:10).

Read the next article in the Gospel of Thomas for Yogis:  Finding Life

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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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