Jesus said: The kingdom of the father is like a woman carrying a jar full of meal, walking on a distant road. The handle broke. The meal streamed out on the road. But she was unaware; she had noticed no mishap. When she entered her house and put the jar down, she discovered that it was empty.

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 97

            Among the things I find intriguing about the Gospel of Thomas, are the peculiar moments when it treats 'the kingdom' as something adventitious, something that appears almost as if without the consent or forethought of 'the father'. As I work with Thomas - as I have now for more than 35 years - some aspects of 'the kingdom' seem to become clear to me, that is, some of the more idiosyncratic understandings. Thomas does not limit the effect of Jesus to the power of his name. It seems to be understood that the historical change effected by Jesus can move out through the world without any identifying tags. And Thomas is apparently pointed in its insistence that whatever radical change Jesus effected by his life, it was effected in his lifetime and in terms of his spoken teachings and his living person. While the manner of his death is indirectly noted, it is otherwise disregarded.
            In other words, Jesus has changed the world, but the change is now something in the world, an irrevocable part of the world. 'I have lit a spark,' he says, 'and watch, I am guarding the spark until the whole world is in flames.' [Saying 10]  I have made the argument that the functional change is not only the change from prophecy to vocation - from a pivotal cultural recognition of purpose to the sense of a given personal purpose - but also from the prophetic moment to the moment of 'objectivity', the core experience of science, since, on close investigation, the two moments prove to be mirror images. Science itself, in terms of its core experience of 'validity', is not different from the unique power of the prophetic, prior to science. Both scientists and philosophers misinterpret it, of course, getting caught in the simplistic sense of the name - objectivity - perhaps, and failing to notice that the experience of objectivity transcends both fact and principle, and actually constitutes a mystical moment.
            But, if such is the case, of course, then what I have said thus far should be self-evident. But, obviously, that would also imply a great deal more. In my work, I have explored the mystical nature of the experience of objectivity, how it is a mystical experience that transcends spirit, which is only the gateway to the truly religious journey. But this is not my concern here today. If what Jesus brought about is a universal that apparently can find its place in almost any religion - and I am referring here to the experience of objectivity and not to the misinterpretations of the conclusions that have arisen from the experience - then 'the kingdom' cannot be limited to 'a' religion. In other words, 'real religion' - the individual journey posited against the universal mystical possibility - is equally universal. 'The kingdom' is not only something we create, it necessarily involves all of us. It is all of us or nothing. To exclude anyone is to lose our place. To feel free to take another human life in the name of paradise not only destroys one's self, it destroys the kingdom. But to assume the right to judge another with respect to the kingdom is the intellectual, moral and spiritual equivalent of this form of murder.
            In other words, the responsibility for creating the kingdom is entirely ours. While I hesitate to impute anything to God, since my own understanding is that God is other, entirely beyond human predication, he has given it into our power to create kingdom. But he has given it entirely into our power. As I understand it, the kingdom is a spiritual and even a 'trans-spiritual' reality. It is the realm in which our deathlessness, if such exists, can take place. That is, we can only 'save' each other, for it is only in the act of 'saving' each other that we can create the reality which is the kingdom (although, as the canonical text says, 'saving each other' begins in saving oneself). If we were to learn to do this, obviously we would create an extraordinary world compared to our present human situation. But Thomas seems to suggest that such an activity would produce the spiritual reality of the kingdom in which deathlessness itself would become possible.
            I am not naïve. Just the reverse, I am radically aware of the pervasive nature of human addiction, the core source of 'evil'. This is why any teaching that emerges from an essential expression of the kingdom can be tested according to its power to accost addiction, individually, at its source. We are first of all addicted to our 'selves'. But the 'self' is also the road to 'salvation'. This is the teaching of vocation, the teaching embodied in Thomas, the latter day corollary of prophecy, as I suggested a moment ago.
            Nor am I naïve about the nature of time. Just the reverse, I understand that time as we experience it is basically an analytical structure that we create in the process of becoming self-aware, that is, in the process of awakening to self, the precondition for our present field of experience. The awakening to self both determines the addictive response to self and defines the moment of self as a potentially unique moment of validity, a moment that the experience of 'objectivity' universalizes.
            I have had the experience that convinces me that every moment of experience is essentially 'eternal'. And, perhaps paradoxically, I had it while contemplating and as a direct result of contemplating Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, with its synthesis of the two, apparently contradictory natures of light. Einstein's insight has long been understood as a modern paradigm for the peculiar nature of the experience of science, the experience of objectivity.
            One of the prophets says, 'Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.' My dreams still tend to be dark and void, perhaps a suggestion about where we are headed at the moment, because we have lost all real concern for each other, and are willing to turn our world into a desert rather than sit next to strangers on public transportation or return, en masse, to the cities. But, in the remnants of vision, I feel more than see this odd possibility of the kingdom as suggested by Thomas.

- Jeremy