gospel of Thomas 70

Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you."

With this verse, from the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is back on top form – enigmatic, mysterious, paradoxical even. These are words of a master. It is worth dwelling on this verse; sitting with it; feeling the truth of it.

And the first half is simple: that which is within you will save you if you bring it forth from within yourself. This is the nature of salvation. It has always been thus. And it always will be. We are not saved by other people: by messiahs, so called saviours; by masters, teachers, no. Our salvation comes from within.

And everyone has what it takes. For salvation is enlightenment. It is our true nature to be in that state. It just needs to be uncovered. All we need do is bring it forth from within ourself.

And what is it that we need to bring forth? This true nature of ours – our buddha nature – it is the essential part of who we are, our essence. And it is our natural being, a beingness, without all the complications of the ego. And of course, this essence is within each of us, waiting to be unearthed, waiting to be brought forth into the world. So do not think that someone else will save you. Do not turn to Jesus and call him a saviour. That is not the role a master plays. You will save yourself.

The second half of the saying is rather more subtle: that which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you. It sounds rather strange, almost nonsensical. And yet, we tend to live our lives looking outwards at the world and seeing everything out there as separate from ourself, to which we have to respond. We see some pleasurable things, but we also see threats, dangers.

And once we have this attitude that we are separate from those things outwith us, then we start to build defences. We put layer upon layer of masks onto our being. We form a persona, an identity. And we identify with all this complex psychology. And all of it is supposedly helping us respond to those things that are not within us.

And Jesus says that which is not within you will kill you. It doesn't need to physically kill you. By identifying ourselves with the ego we are already dead. We've missed life. And so, just by having this attitude – those things that we believe to be not within us, those things we believe to be on the outside – they have killed us. We are not truly alive anymore. We are living in the strange fantasy world of the ego mind, with its obsession, on personal, individual little stories.

So if it were true that those things we see on the outside are not within us, then they will kill us in this strange roundabout psychological way. But why does Jesus add on the end, if they are not within you? He says this because actually everything you see on the outside is within you. We are not separate from the rest of existence. There is no dividing line. There is no me and you, separate.

Furthermore, those things we see in other people that we dislike – that we feel threatened by – those attributes are being projected from our own shadow, our own unconscious, onto other people. So every time we see a certain characteristic in someone else and judge them for it, we are really judging our own unconscious mind.

So those things are within us. And the fact that we have dis-identified ourself from them, is also killing us. We are becoming fragmented, broken up. And our salvation lies in integration and becoming whole once more. And that requires us to rediscover those hidden parts of our own mind, to acknowledge them, to accept them. And once we have accepted these dark things that lie hidden within us, they lose their power. And no longer do they kill us.

So by saying those things that are not within us will kill us, if they are not within us, Jesus is saying, actually, they won't really kill us, because they are within us. And once we accept that, there is no more any problem.