gospel of Thomas 15

Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father."

If you follow conventional orthodox religion, you'll take this sort of saying of Jesus very literally. One who is not born of a woman – you will believe that some messiah has come into being on this planet, somebody in a human form who was not born the normal way.

But that is not what Jesus is trying to say here. After all, Jesus himself was born of Mary. Mary is a woman. So what is Jesus saying here? When you see one who is not born of woman … that one is your father.

In every human being, there is the ordinary manifest human aspect. And many people live their entire life from that space, as if that is all they are. It is a beautiful aspect, the human aspect, rich and varied, allowing uniqueness and diversity. But it is not everything that we are. We are also the divine. And the divine aspect within us is not born of a woman. The divine aspect within us is the absolute. It is our connection with all that is – our essence, the essential part of us.

And this essential part has a completely different feel, different quality, to the manifest human aspect. And when we get in touch with this divine essence – that is within us, that is part of us, that is one aspect of our being – when we get in touch with that, we are living fully. We are being in the world, both in a manifest form, and also as the unmanifest, as the essence.

And some come to dwell in the essence so fully that they begin to exude an unfamiliar air, a certain something that can't quite be named. They have an energy about them which is a little unusual. And so, if you see such a person, you may feel they are different, they come from a different world. The feel of them is different to most people. So such a one, we can say poetically, was not born of woman. Of course, the physical form, the body, was born of a woman just like anyone else. But their essence – the essence is our direct connection with existence. It is timeless and eternal. So in this sense, one who is living in the essence is not born of a woman.

Jesus goes on to say, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship such a person. Well, that's not our style in modern Western societies at least. But the gist is this: you should look to such a person for inspiration, to find the essence within yourself. For it is there, waiting.

That one is your father, Jesus says, of such a person. The Father – another way of saying God. But it's not that that individual is your Father, or is your God. It is just that by dwelling in the essence, that person is expressing godliness. And this godliness – the essence within – is the source of everything. It is the great space within which creation occurs. And it is that creation itself.

So seeing such a person, we can feel some of this. We can feel the closeness of divinity. We can feel the closeness of enlightenment. We can feel the closeness of the Buddha within ourself. For all these words are but different ways of saying the same thing. That which cannot be put into words is here within us. And it is a gift beyond all gifts.