Verse 1 _ These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death." The Living Yeshua is speaking in secret, within, behind your heart. Christ dwells there within you, and when you go within, Christ will speak the secret teachings to you and lead you in the path of awakening. To listen and hear, you must be silent. You must empty yourself of yourself and let the Christ-Spirit fill you. Dying to yourself, you must be conceived and reborn of the Holy Spirit as the Living Yeshua. Indeed, you must experience the same conception, gestation, and birth as the Living Yeshua so that you also might be his twin, born of the same birth from the Holy Virgin, Mother Wisdom.
Only in this way can you receive the Light-transmission from the Master and become a Gnostic yourself. Everyone is the Living Yeshua. The ordinary person is ignorant of this, but the apostle of God knows it and lives according to the Truth and Light revealed through experience. Likewise, the kingdom of heaven is here and now, within you and all around you. It is present within everyone. The ordinary person does not have eyes to see it, but the Gnostic perceives it and so dwells in the kingdom of God here and now. Logos (Word) and Sophia (Wisdom) are to be found within everyone and everything, and so also within you. There, within your secret center, at the core of your being, is the Holy One of Being.
The Christ-self is your true self, the self of every self and soul of every soul. All are united with him in the Sacred Unity that is God, the Father- Mother. Through him, the Holy Spirit indwells the whole of Creation. Knowing this, you will not experience death. This is the truth that is contained in these sayings or verses, the essential reality of which they speak. The secret is openly spoken, but who can listen and hear and so receive it? Written or spoken, the secret remains a secret until it is part of your own experience. The teachings are received only when they are your own experience. Then they become a living initiation-a Light-transmission.
This is the aim of the mystic, that he or she should directly experience the Living Yeshua and become as the risen Christ. What will death mean to that one who experiences Messianic consciousness and dwells in the kingdom of God while in this life? Indeed, death will not mean what it means to the ordinary person, for that one is not so self-identified with mortal name and form, but knows oneself as an immortal Spirit, a bornless and therefore deathless Spirit. Likewise, this person knows that the kingdom of heaven is present within and all around, always-that upon death one''s experience of Christ will continue in a more subtle and sublime form, having shed the physical body. With this knowledge, death is no longer death and the adversary has no power over the soul, whether in this world or in the world to come. Such a person is awakened and therefore free, having a continuity of awareness throughout all states of existence. Death will come, as it has for all prophets and saints, but it will just be an appearance of departure-a transition to another mode of existence, no more or less real than falling asleep, only to dream and awaken again. Death, for the Gnostic, is not an end as much as a new beginning. Ultimately, death has no substantial reality, but is merely a natural moment of transition.
Knowing this changes everything. Meditate upon it and you will see! Grace accomplishes this awakening and the transformation that follows it. Nothing one does accomplishes this self-realization. Yet spiritual practice and spiritual living are the conditions that allow Grace to act, without which it is unlikely that the Holy Spirit can work within and through oneself to accomplish the great work. More profoundly, spiritual practice and spiritual living are, themselves, the goal or attainment sought; so that in practicing and living according to the Truth and Light, one naturally awakens and receives the Light-transmission. It is not so much a matter of receiving something that one does not already have as much as it is creating the conditions necessary for the Word (Logos) and Wisdom (Sophia) to pour forth from within oneself. Hence, it is letting the Christ-self that is already present deep within come forward and live this life. Spiritual practice and spiritual living do just that.
Practice living as Christ and you will see! Verse 2 _ Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all." You must seek in order to discover the Spirit and Truth and must continue seeking until you realize the Spirit indwelling you and know the Truth in your own experience. It is not enough that another person has discovered the Truth. Each individual must seek and strive to discover it and so engage in the Divine labor of salvation of one''s soul, that is to say, the awakening and liberation of one''s soul in conscious union with God. This seeking is the sacred quest for the Holy Grail, which is not a physical relic or holy cup outside of oneself. Rather, the Holy Grail is a purified and consecrated heart, soul, mind, and life; it is oneself open and sensitive to the Christ-Spirit so that one lives the life of Christ.
The Grail is the heart in which the Lord dwells, the person who has discovered an innate Spirit-connection and who lives within. It is the Christ-self, the Logos and Sophia of God, the inner or higher self that is one''s secret center and holy root. Now these are just words, concepts in the mind. The nature of this sacred quest is such that you may have a word, name, or concept of what it is you are looking for, some idea of what it is, how and where it may be found. Yet, in fact, you do not know what it is you are looking for, how, where, or when it may be found. Whatever idea you may have of it is more likely a hindrance or obstruction to finding what you seek, misleading rather than helpful. When seeking is based upon preconception, precondition, and expectations, upon who and what you think you are and who and what you believe reality or God to be, then seeking itself becomes an obstruction and what is sought cannot be discovered. If you go looking for something that does not exist or go seeking in a way or in a place it cannot be found, then, indeed, you will not find it.
At the outset, you must understand that the very nature of God is different than anything you might conceive and that you yourself are not who or what you might think you are. Whatever your preconceptions, preconditions, or expectations, the reality-truth-continuum is yet more and cannot be contained or comprehended by the linear reasoning mind or dualistic consciousness. God will forever be a mystery, the nameless and unknown. God is completely other than what we might think. Discovering this is a troubling thing, shaking one to the core! To draw near to the Lord is a deeply troubling thing, for I must become no-thing, empty of myself, that the Lord might enter and the Holy Spirit fill me. God is No-thing (Ain) and I must become nothing to enter into union with the Holy One of Being If you think you are something, if you think you are a substantial and independent self-existence, a solid or fixed entity, it is greatly troubling to discover that your secret center is no-thing, that you are empty of any substantial or independent self-existence. Discovering this, however, you then realize that this is the very nature of everything in existence. You discover that everything is impermanent, that everything changes.
Reality is empty of any substantial and independent self-existence. There is only the Holy One of Being, the One- Without-End (Ain Sof). Yet in this gnosis, the prophet or apostle of God attains dominion over the all, for everything is the magic-display of the Divine mind, the mind of Christ. There is another sort of troubling that may come with the dawn of higher awareness and drawing near to the Lord. In the Sacred Unity that God is, you encounter absolute and ultimate perfection, the primordial emptiness that is at one and the same time Divine fullness. Before the perfection of the Lord, your own imperfection is glaring and stark in contrast, a profoundly troubling thing to discover and, indeed, painful. Drawing nearer to the Lord, you discover how very far away from God you are. This is the cause of the dark night of the soul of which the mystics speak in their journey.
Anyone who seeks must be willing to endure the trouble that comes with finding, willing to endure the dark nights of the soul and the ordeals of initiation. A mystical death precedes a resurrection; a descent into the depths precedes every ascension. The Living Yeshua has opened the way before us and revealed the path to us. We also must die and be reborn,.