The Gospel Of Thomas As An Oracle

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This morning I woke up in the same nightmare I've been having frequently for some time now. I get trapped inside a huge industrial complex and I can't find my way outta there. I run all over the place trying to find an exit that will allow me to leave, and the only way I can get out of there is to wake up. Aaaaaiiiiiyyyeeeeee!!

The last thing I remember this morning was getting closed in by this mess screen wire, and I was reaching into my pocket to find a knife to cut my way free. I hardly ever have a pocket knife on me. Apparently, however, in this nightmare this morning, I did. I cut my way outta there.

Dream interpretation has never been my long suite. At least, not my own dreams, and whose dreams can I actually interpret but my own? If I were to attempt to interpret this long-recurring nightmare, I guess I'll say that the industrial complex is my body. I feel trapped in my body. I feel trapped upon the planet Earth.

56 Jesus said, "Whoever has come to know the world has discovered a carcass, and whoever has discovered a carcass, of that person the world is not worthy."

http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm

I have been studying the Gospel of Thomas for a long time now. Over a decade. I got intrigued by buying and reading a book called The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. I felt a deep kinship with the careactors she described the early Christians as being. Pagels described them as being like me, which in my world view is saying she described them as herself.

Years later, after the digital revolution had taken over my life, I became obsessed with participating in e-mail discussion groups of all kinds. People from all over the world exchanged views with other people from all over the world. It didn't seem possible such a thing could happen, and yet, there seemed to be a real "we" who did that. No mas.

Perhaps the main reason that e-mail conversation could happen that fascinated me was because I was around fifty years old when I bought my first computer, and had experienced the pre-digital world as if that was the ultimate frame for interpreting the way life would happen on the planet Earth.

It didn't cross my mind to look for an e-mail discussion group on the Gnostic Gospels until after I'd been participating on other groups for about five years. Then, one day I serendipitously ran across a mention of a scholar's group about the Gospel of Thomas.

It reminded me of reading Pagels' book. I Googled it up and discovered there were two groups for studying the Gospel of Thomas. One was moderated very actively (and still is) that was created for academics, and another group for a more informal, less moderated conversation.

If you seem familiar with my outlook on life at all you gotta know I subscribed to the informal group. Education, particularly self-education, is the only-est way to fly. Academians are for the most part, in my unworthy opinion, chumps. When a person doesn't know what they're subjecting to academia to be trained like monkeys for has a known end... '-)

The Gospel of Thomas e-mail discussion group has had a powerful influence on the way I view Christianity. Previous to this experience my view of Christianity didn't have much depth. I had rejected it soon after puberty screaming hypocrisy. Now I realize I was wrong.

Christianity is not hypocritical, the people who practice it are, but so are the Muslims and the Buddhists, and the Hindoos. All religions only amount to what their practitioners make of them, and the practitioners are all human, and thar's the rub.

There was no preconceived purpose in my subscribing to this GoT group. I was curious. My curiosity had been whetted by my reading Pagels' book. I did go into their conversation pretty much settled on who-I-think-I-am-is.

When I realized that it wasn't Christianity's fault that it's adherents were responsible for their own hypocrisy, and not the religion itself, I found myself desirous of acquiring a little more depth in regard to how Christianity arose, and whence it did that.

By "whence" I mean where. I wanted to know the beginnings of the Christian story. It didn't take all that long to realize it didn't start with the Jews or the Greeks or the Egyptians long before them. Like all other religions it started in the human heart. What? You haven't realized that I am is nothing if not a romantic?

The point of me studying the Gospel of Thomas is to make it into a more Christian-like oracle for myself. When I die or get senile or suffer dementia it won't exist anymore. I can't write it down for there would be no point. It's already in place and working fairly well. Now, it's just a matter of practice. Every snail has a home.

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