Gospel of Thomas - coda 17

Gospel of Thomas, coda 17

Jesus said, "I will give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart."

What is it that “no eye has seen,” “no ear has heard,” “no hand has touched,” and “has not arisen in the human heart?”  What is it than is real and given that cannot be perceived through the senses of sight, hearing, or touch or the extrasensory perception of intuition?  It is nothing that can be described but it can be transmitted from Jesus to his disciples.  It is the knowledge or experience of God, of Self, or the Kingdom of God.  I keep coming back to the terms God, Self, and Kingdom of God.  In a Gnostic sense God I One, the only One there is, but manifest in many ways.  The reality of the One is not seen in the face of multiplicity but it is the frame in which multiplicity is knowable.  Thus, the One is knowable through multiplicity but there is way to describe this Oneness that captures its wholeness.  It is beyond the comprehension of any point of multiplicity or the sum total of all multiplicities.  This Oneness is both empty, a fertile void out of which multiplicity emerges and it is full, full in the sense of presence and spaciousness, although immaterial.  The Self that I am referring to here is not the self that you and I conceive of ourselves as being as individual and culturally related persons, but is that point of reference that transcends individual and corporate identity and finds its unity in Oneness with God and relatedness with others which likewise finds its unity in Oneness with God.  Ultimately, Self and Other collapse or expand into an essential unity with the Divine Oneness.  The Kingdom of God is not a place that you enter into at a time, although it exists.  It exists eternally as an invisible realm, domain, state, reality, or consciousness of God.  It is this Oneness, Self, and Kingdom of God realization that Jesus conveys by his presence and expression to his disciples.  What Jesus transmits and initiates his disciples into is the same mind that exists within him and he exists within.  This reality is secret or hidden but realizable.  This begs the question, “how?” but the question is an expression of finite mind and individuality or cultural bias and limitation.  But from the perspective of God and Self the question is already answered only awaiting realization by the removal of veils of ignorance or remembrance of that which “I AM” is and what “I AM” has been always and always will be.  Jesus is inviting his disciples to proceed beyond belief into the reality that surpasses all other realities and which is the basis of those realities.  He is pointing beyond materiality and beyond psychology to spirituality, and even beyond that and saying that it is right here, now, everywhere, forever.