From the Beginning

I have not written anything for a while, but I am feeling as if I would like to revisit – with an intent to become clear on something this year. So to move into this, I am going to make a couple of comments with reference to the first passage from the Gospel of Thomas. 

1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

At first glance, this saying appears to reinforce a message which I have heard many times previously; suggesting that somehow ~ somewhere ~ there is a divine, eternal world or a realm; that which is beyond all the conflicts and suffering of the material world – ergo, Heaven. 

Today, this saying is not making any sense to me. Is it possible that the mode of interpretation to which it refers, does not emanate from a world of thought, belief, dogma, imagination, ideas? As if it did, how would it explain ‘not tasting death’? That which is of a world of the temporal is by necessity immersed in a process of transformation; perceived as an interplay between that which is emerging and that which is ceding or is engaged in an experience of life – or death.

It is not possible for interpretation to exist within anything other than a world of the temporal – it is of the mind or is thought about all that exists and which attributes meaning and significance to all that it encounters. How can it be possible for that which is of thought, is thought, to not experience death? The only explanation I can give to this is that it is not the thinker per se which glimpses what it means for death to not exist, but it is the being and which thought moves through. 

“I think and therefore I am” – I exist, I am … something – always there is being and then follows thought. If I identify with thought, then all that I think about myself must inevitably change – but if I identify with being, then I am free to float in a sea of thought, of ideas and not get caught up in any one stream that narrows any vision of what I am. Is this not what some have referred to as ‘indifferent’ or ‘dissociated’ or even ‘transcendent’? Perhaps if I do not commit to anything - if I do not become or allow my passion to give rise to anything, then I do not experience disappointment, failure, shame? Ah, but is that not death of a sort? Is that not opting out of life by design - by choosing not to engage? 

How else am I free to interpret what has been said? What if I don’t ‘interpret’ at all – if I don’t use or engage with mind, with thought about – what if instead I choose ‘to know’? Can I even choose that – surely I either know something or I don’t? What is the nature of knowing? How do I distinguish it from all that I have learnt in the world? Did I come into the world ‘knowing’? If that is true, then what is the purpose of mind and of thought, given that it might have led me astray – not more clearly into truth or reality as I had believed, but away from? 

Why is there a stream of consciousness which is seemingly at odds with reality – if being is reality and thought is a ticket away? How does thought serve what is? Its only purpose can be to provide experience – so what would life be like without experience? Would I even know that I am ‘the knower’ – do I arise in order to know that I am? There is a difference between dissociating from thought and conflict which prevails – and realising that thought is what is moving through me – there is silence before sound – not at odds at all but complementary in fact.

It is interesting, and somewhat amusing to me now, in that I have just read my last blog which I posted in July of last year and I find that it is honing in on and describing something which I have been writing about today – time has elapsed perhaps, the choice of words may differ, but intention is the same?