gospel of Thomas 56

Jesus said, "Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world."

This teaching from Jesus is one of transcendence. He says, if we come to understand the world, we find it dead. The material world, the physical world, the world we live in – there's something missing in it, if we look at it in purely materialistic terms. In this sense, the physical world is a corpse. Without the essence, without our spirit being recognised, everything is dead. Things might be moving, things might be happening, the world may be carrying on as it does; but if we look into it, from this materialistic perspective, we will find a void. We will find that existence, materialistically, is not really alive at all. It is a dead thing, mechanical.

But Jesus doesn't stop by saying that we find only a corpse. He carries on, and here we see something of the beauty of the spiritual path, and of personal growth in general. Jesus says, whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world. With this, Jesus is saying, we can transcend this deathly materialistic approach to life. We can go beyond it. We can go above it, to something higher, something that is not just a corpse, something that has life in it.

And how do we do this? How do we reach to a higher place? By understanding the mundane; by looking at the material world, exploring it, living it fully, as far as it can be lived. And then we come to this understanding: there is nothing there for us; it is dead.

Without doing anything else – merely from that understanding itself – we are lifted up, into a new way of being in the world: a way of being the essence; recognising the essential of all that is. Being in contact with that moment to moment, we feel truly alive for the first time.

And there is the great paradox in understanding. When we see something clearly, when we fully acknowledge it, then life moves us into a different place. And that understanding becomes redundant, no longer needed even. But the only way to reach that new place is to go through the old, deeply, fully; explore it, realise what it is, and what it is lacking.

So play in the world. Play as materialistically as you can. And you too will come to understand that the mechanical, materialistic world is nothing but a corpse, a dead thing, lacking vitality. With that understanding, we are in a space to receive the grace, to see our essence, and to live it.