22nd November 2006
“According to the normal way of thinking about the Christian religion, we cannot identify with Jesus, we have to imitate Jesus. To say “I and the Father are one,” as Jesus said, is blasphemy for us.
However, in the Thomas gospel that was dug up in Egypt some forty years ago, Jesus says “He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I shall be he.”
Now, that is exactly Buddhism. We are all manifestations of Buddha consciousness, or Christ consciousness, only we don't know it.
The word “Buddha” means “the one who woke up.” We are all to do that — to wake up to the Christ or Buddha consciousness within us.
This is blasphemy in the normal way of Christian thinking, but it is the very essence of Christian Gnosticism and the Thomas gospel.
Civilizations are grounded on myth. The civilization of the Middle Ages was grounded on the myth of the Fall in the Garden, the redemption on the cross, and the carrying of the grace of redemption to man through the sacraments.
The Christ story involves a sublimation of what originally was a very solid vegetal image. Jesus is … the tree, and he is himself the fruit of the tree. Jesus is the fruit of eternal life, which was on the second forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden.
When man ate the fruit of the first tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was expelled from the Garden. The Garden is the place of unity - of non-duality of male and female, good and evil, God and human beings. You eat the duality, and you are on the way out.
The tree of coming back to the Garden is the tree of immortal life, where you know that I and the Father are one.”
........from nonduality.com
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