gospel of Thomas 43

His disciples said to him, "Who are you, that you should say these things to us?"

[Jesus said to them,] "You do not realise who I am from what I say to you, but you have become like the Jews, for they (either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree."

Hmm, I'm a little surprised that this verse made it into the Gospel of Thomas. There's some dissension here. The disciples are a bit annoyed with Jesus. Who are you anyway, they are saying, that you should talk to us like this? Jesus must have been a bit harsh with them. We don't know what he'd been saying, but the disciples obviously were a bit unhappy about it.

And this is always the sign of a good master – that he's not afraid to say harsh things to the seekers. The master has compassion. And for those people in the street who are not yet seeking, he will not be harsh. But once someone is seeking the truth, then sometimes they need to be shaken up. They sometimes need to be given tough disciplines. And they sometimes need to have the truth spoken very directly, in a way that we wouldn't normally speak to each other in polite society. Jesus must have been saying something in that way.

In Zen Buddhism, the master has a stick, a physical stick, a piece of wood. And if one of the monks is dozing off, a bit sleepy, not attentive enough, whack! The stick comes down on the monk's back when he least expects it. It's a shock, and the monk is suddenly alert again. Or, if that same monk is on the point of a breakthrough, then sometimes the Zen stick is used at just the critical moment, to finally shatter whatever remains in the mind as an obstacle, and bring the monk to a moment of intense reality. It's a harsh method. But the monks put up with it. They trust the master. And disciples, on the whole, trust what the master is saying.

But here Jesus' disciples have been tested a little too far. Who are you, that you should say these things to us? They're beginning to whinge. Jesus replies, You do not realise who I am from what I say to you. There's a lot in this. One who is unenlightened, cannot realise who the enlightened one really is. They may have hints somehow – there's a nuance, a hint of a flavour about the master, there's something special there. But the unenlightened ones have not seen it in themselves, and until you have seen it in yourself, actually, you won't be seeing it in others, not even Jesus.

And you're not going to realise it from words, whatever Jesus is saying. The words themselves are not going to show who he really is. He is truth. He has gone beyond the person, the personality, the individual, the separateness, that most people are living in. And once one has gone beyond all that, then one feels oneself to be something else. In fact, one doesn't feel oneself, in the small separate way, at all. There is just the feeling of truth and beauty and wholeness. That's all that's left. There's no I in it.

But language is not quite up to conveying that. And that's why the words never will carry the truth. You do not realise who I am from what I say to you. Jesus is fully aware that the disciples do not really know who he is, and they will not know who he is until they know themselves.

Do you know who you are? I doubt it. If you did, you probably wouldn't be listening to this. But it's great that you're trying to find out who you are. Carry on looking. You may not be there yet, but if you have the commitment, perseverance, and courage, then one day you will know who you are. And then you will also know who Jesus is. Until then, you won't really have a clue – just as his disciples had no clue, when he was talking to them with this saying.

And then Jesus goes on – another harsh criticism of the disciples – you have become like the Jews, for they either love the tree and hate its fruit or love the fruit and hate the tree. Yes, not just the Jews, all organised religions fall into this trap. The tree is God, it's the unmanifest, it's the source from which everything comes. And the fruit is the manifest world. It's the day-to-day reality of life, for us here on planet Earth.

And of course, most people get a bit fed up with life, sooner or later. It can be great, but normally for the unenlightened ones, suffering is just around the corner, if it's not here in the moment. So most people begin to hate the fruit. And that's really the reason for turning to the tree. They can love the tree, they can love God, but hate everything about their life, still. This is not enlightenment. This is escape. You're trying to escape from what is, by worshipping a god.

Or the opposite can be true. You can really love the fruit, you can really be hedonistic, and be enjoying the material life so much, that all this talk of God is utterly unacceptable to you. You hate it. You hate everything to do with spirituality. You've lost yourself in the pleasures of the material world, the sensual world. You're enjoying money, fame perhaps, everything that money can buy – sex, food, the best hotels in town – everything is available to you, if you are living in a material way, with enough drive in that direction. But then God is utterly loathsome to you. You will not hear any talk of it. You will reject everything to do with spirituality. You will be loving the fruit and hating the tree.

And this is the way of unenlightened people the world over. They fall into one camp or the other, with all their energy either dedicated to materialism, or the opposite: as an escape from the suffering of the material world, they begin to worship a god, and pretend that none of the manifest world exists.

Neither of these is the way of the enlightened ones. The enlightened ones live in the world, ordinarily. Both the tree and the fruit can be loved. What purpose is the tree without the fruit? It is pointless. And of course, the fruit cannot come into being without the tree. So you will know you are at home, when both the ordinary things of the physical world, and your divine essence, are both delightful to you.

But the disciples of Jesus had not quite reached that point yet. And here he is using a Zen stick to point that out.