Obviously, I identify gnosis with the original Jesus teaching.

            What the Gospel of Thomas shows us is that the teaching was first of all a face-to-face transmission. The ‘three words’ that Jesus speaks to Thomas are, inherently, a global ‘conversionary’ transmission, whether the phrase itself intends spoken signs or a cryptic description of an experienced, non-verbal exchange. But both the context and the symbolic force of the image explicitly point to the latter, in any case – that is, whether overt words were involved, the force of the exchange was necessarily beyond words.

            But this is not exclusive to the Thomas tradition. In the emergent ecclesiastical tradition we have the ‘laying on of hands’. And the Pauline tradition, at least in its earliest phases, seems to be based on a legitimate spiritual accession commonly involved in the act of baptism.

            And these possibilities are reinforced by the recurrent image symbols of ‘chrism’ and ‘bridal chamber’ appearing throughout much of the literature.

            I find it difficult to read the contemporary research into the origins of the Jesus streams. The work not riddled with shallow or facile assumptions tends to hold narrow views that exclude all known facts outside the area of focus. And much of the work suffers from both these defects.

            That the ‘inner’ teachings of Jesus originally involved an ‘initiatory’ transmission may suggest a resemblance to the workings of the mystery cults. But this does not mean that we can dismiss this aspect of the tradition as derivative, and therefore a later accretion. The pervasive nature of the initiatory moment, as I have just described it for some of the primary streams, more than suggests that it was not only indigenous in the original message, but also a necessary function of its core.

            One of the authors I have just been reading assumes that utopianism only emerges from poverty and that the only possible transformative ideal, in the Jesus tradition, is necessarily the ‘salvational’ message of the resurrection. The worldwide utopian turbulence of the 60s did not emerge out of poverty. And Thomas shows us quite clearly the salient features of a subjective transformation not at all based on resurrection theology.

            What is important here is precisely the range of outward symbols used to describe this ‘inner’ experience. But, equally important is the range of descriptive imagery for the nature of the inner transformation itself.

            Perhaps I am naïve, but I would assume that we can assign the origins of ‘resurrection theology’ to Paul, with his experience on the road to Damascus, his preaching of Christ crucified and risen from the dead, and his psychology of the ‘new man’. But perhaps researchers have found that some or all of this is a later imposition on ‘Paul’. Paul has not been a central focus of my quest.

            The Gospel of John, of course, is generally treasured for its delineation of the psychology of Jesus – by implication the ‘new’ consciousness of the ‘Christian’ who has awakened to the ‘holy spirit’, an intimate directive spirit as distinct from the generic spirit of insight and common awakening.

            The gospel, of course, no longer emphasizes the transmitted nature of this change, since John, more than any other gospel, is specifically a community defining polemic. For the first time, perhaps, the transformative function is identified with the force of community.

            When read carefully, however, the Gospel of Thomas is more comprehensive. Like the Johannine doctrine, Thomas speaks to the inner nature of the ‘change’. ‘If you know yourselves, you will be known, and you will know that you are the children of the living father.’ (Saying 3) But Thomas also points to a changed perception of the external, in which ‘Jesus’, in some form, now pervades the world. ‘Split wood, I am there,’ says Jesus, ‘Lift a stone, you will find me.’ (Saying 77)

            Elsewhere, I have identified both the internal and the external change with what we now know as ‘objectivity’ and the experience of objectivity. And, as such, I have identified objectivity and prophecy as corollaries – both in terms of the ‘prophetic’ impulse and in terms of the historical evolution from prophecy to objectivity.

            Jesus said: Behold: I have thrown fire into the world, and I sustain it until (the whole world) is in flames. (Saying 10)

            Here we have the basis of an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in the radical definition of that adjective – a revelation, or, more specifically, an uncovering. What is ‘uncovered’ is an inner nature that transforms the experience of both inward and outward worlds. But the transformative process is historical as well as psychological. That is, we have an apocalyptic vision in its fulness without a ‘resurrection theology’ and without a catastrophic concluding holocaust.

            But my concern here is with the nature of the transmission and its history.

            If the ‘transmitted’ nature of this vision has come to rest as the core moment of ‘objectivity’ – recognizing the essentially mysterious or ‘mystical’ nature of that experience and its consequent potency as a transformative instrument both internally and externally – then the strict necessity of the transmission has ceased. We no longer require face-to-face initiation.

            But the original necessity of face-to-face transmission would explain much of the sense of strange deficit we encounter when we try to approach the earliest records of the Jesus phenomenon. Granted that early spiritual movements, generally dependent as much on the personality of the teacher as on the teachings, tend to evince similar deficits, they nevertheless either regroup under an essentially ‘philosophical’ exposition of the teacher’s purpose, or they perish.

            Perhaps we can cite the elaboration of doctrine, in the Christian tradition, as ‘philosophical exposition’, but it is actuated by dogmatic mysteries which either require ‘faith’ or beg the experiential or empirical.

            One of the peculiarities of Thomas – and therefore presumably of the Thomas tradition – are the Sayings which suggest not only that ‘the name’ of Jesus is not a necessary adjunct for the transmission, but also that the Presence which Jesus has manifested is now indigenous – teleologically, I suppose – in all serious religious endeavor.

            Jesus said : Where there are three gods, they are God. Where there are two or one, I subsist with him. (Saying 30)

            The him is presumably the practitioner or ‘seeker’.

            In other words, since the change which Jesus brought is universal and spiritually pervasive, it now invests the human ideal. At the same time, at the outset, the full presentation generally requires a transmission. But the transmission does not require the added ‘tag’ of the name of Jesus. The transmission can break free from its explicit generative source.

            Since Science not only governed my early awakenings but also was apparently the unique instrument which opened self-awareness for me – undoubtedly a more or less anomalous fact, culturally – I have to assume that the spiritual threads or traditions that have blossomed into embracing moments of consciousness for me are necessarily reflections or mirrors of that primary tradition.

            As a consequence, solely on the basis of this personal experience, I believe that the late Upanishadic traditions, the Tantric traditions, Zen Buddhism and perhaps Mahayana Buddhism as well all manifest elements of this transmission.

            Early traditions report that Thomas went to India. For much of its history, modern Biblical criticism suggested that Palestinians in the time of Jesus had no precise knowledge of India’s location, and that Thomas went east overland, perhaps to Iran. But I understand that archaeologists are now excavating an Egyptian seaport on the Red Sea, enlarged by Caesar Augustus, specifically for trading with ports in western India.