Jesus said, “The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After having been disturbed, he will be astonished. Then he will reign over everything.”
Another translation reads, “Jesus said, ‘let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds he will be troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished and rule over everything.
Stevan Davies explains that Thomas Christianity is based upon active individual effort, not God’s gift of grace. The particular effort is not works, but search, and the search leads to a discovery that is at first disturbing and then astonishing. Thomas refers to “searching and finding” in this saying and sayings 38, 92, and 94, but never makes clear what one is seeking. But if one finds what one is seeking, one will reign over everything.
Ron Miller explains that the canonical gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John also refer to seeking and finding. In this case, finding is not the end of it. Disturbance, astonishment, and ruling follow. Miller explains that what is disturbing is that what is found doesn’t bring closure but presents a new challenge.
There is a need to save one’s self. Belief or faith in God or Christ or scripture no longer suffices to save us. Rather one is faced with the need to wake up, grow up and assume responsibility for one’s own existence. This allows one to enter into a new reality. Arriving at this point one is astonished. One discovers one’s true identity, power and heritage as children or expressions of God in the world. It is at this time we have control over our reality.
One spends much of one’s live developing physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. As one’s ego is developed, one learns to function in the world as a member of society. One internalizes one’s society’s moral code. One learns to think for oneself but within the framework society provides. One learns to have relationships with others, some competitive, others cooperative, and some combination of both, and later altruistic. One learns to balance the meeting of one’s own needs with other’s meeting there’s. One learns how to love, first selfishly, and later selflessly. One internalizes a map of reality that becomes one’s own overtime and then is altered in relationship to others. One’s religion begins as superstition and internalization of rote rules, later becoming principled, responsive and creative. One’s ego becomes more and more established, navigating one’s relationship to the world while marshalling one’s inner realities and resources for meeting one’s needs and negotiating, living, and later serving in the world.
Ultimately, one begins to seek meaning and purpose. One begins to formulate questions and seek answers; the ultimate questions being who am I and what am I doing here, what is this life I am living? How can I be happy and others be happy? In the process of doing so we exhaust our understanding. We reach the limits of our physicality. We reach the limits of our minds or cognitive processes. We reach the limits of our faith. We come face to face with our mortality and finitude, and then there is horror, there is fear. I, this body will cease to exist. I this, mind, will cease to exist. We, the world will cease to exist. This earth, and the thing we call heaven will cease to exist. This all must and will come to an end. This all will die. One’s ego, one’s identity with physical and mental phenomena must and will cease. This is disturbing, don’t you think.
But one’s search must continue beyond this disturbing discovery; this sense of ego-annihilation spoken about as the dark night of the soul, where one feels absolutely alone, not even one’s faith a comfort. Remember Jesus on the cross crying out to God, “Father, why have you abandoned me?” the final cry of Jesus’ ego, his body dying, his mind ceasing, there being nothing remaining outside his self! Then nothing!
And then resurrection! Then new life! Body-Mind-Spirit One! God and human One! You wake up to who you are! The world you live in is transformed. The earth is new, heaven new! You perceive experience, relate and otherwise live in a new way. Wow! This is what it means to be a child of God, a Christed one, anointed (by the Holy Spirit), and awakened. Conscious of whom you are you experience the joy of your being. How astonishing! And the wonderful think is that not only are you awake, others are awake, and still others can awaken to this awesome, ancient, all-encompassing, reality called God and God’s kingdom or realm. Salvation from this perspective is waking up to an in Truth.
A modern Indian sage, Sri Aurobindo spoke in cosmic terms about the emergence of a new global human consciousness called Gnostic Being, individual consciousness operating together as a global consciousness. What vision! This Gnostic Being might be a corporate Christ consciousness and might be what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of God, a condition of collective human consciousness that has developed over the ages and is continuing to develop progressively. One makes up individually, and we wake up collectively.
What is even more astonishing is that the possibility of this realm of God existing on the earth is more possible today than ever before. What was hidden from the many before as spiritual truth is being shared and understood by more people than ever before! Human consciousness has advanced from primitive, to magical, to mythic, to rational levels and is pushing beyond these to post-rational, psychic-intuitive and spiritual stages.
Back to earth, this entry into this new awakened or Gnostic way of being doesn’t take on away from life in the world, but into it in a new, awakened , enlightened , and transformed way, where the world one lives in is transformed for the good.
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