gospel of Thomas 50

Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'"

Here Jesus must have been talking to his disciples and encouraging them to go and talk to others. I guess they were feeling rather nervous about the idea. The disciples must have been asking Jesus, but what if people ask us awkward questions, how shall we answer them? And here Jesus is giving the answers. It's a bit of a strange thing for a master to do. I would have just said, don't worry, trust that the right words will come. But Jesus has given us a little bit more, to taste, to delve into. Let's look into this saying.

The answer to where did you come from?, according to Jesus, should be, we came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest. Where did you come from? This question pops up in all spiritual traditions. It's one of the basic things, isn't it? Where did we come from? Of course, we generally think nowadays in rather bland scientific terms. We know all about DNA. We know all about reproductive biology, and evolution, and physics, everything right back to the Big Bang. We somehow feel we know. But ultimately, that's not where we came from. And we can feel it for ourselves, if we are being honest.

So Jesus says we came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord. This is it, isn't it? – the light. The light, the truth, the essence, the oneness, the great source; the creative potential of existence, from which everything comes into being. We also come from that place. We are part of that place. Call it existence, call it the source, call it God – call it what you will – but we, too, have come from there.

And Jesus goes on, if they ask, is it you?, say, we are its children, we are the elect of the living father. And this is also a difficult question. I would probably have answered it rather differently. Is it you? Yes, we are that. We are the essence, and we are the manifest too. We are both.

But here Jesus is putting the focus on the manifest. This manifest being is from the essence. It's from the source, from the living father, as Jesus puts it. And let's be clear about this – forget the original source, forget some creative force that was finished at the time of the Big Bang. No. That from whence we came is living right now. It's living within us. It's eternal. And it is a living thing, always creating, never-endingly. So we are its children. That is, in our manifest form, we are like children. We are the offspring. We are the manifestation of the unmanifest. This is what Jesus is saying.

He says we are the elect, the chosen ones. Again, I don't much resonate with this word elect. But of course, as previously discussed, only a few come to realise the truth of their being, and so they are the lucky ones. Those are the words I would use, rather than elect – the lucky ones. We are the lucky ones of the living father.

And the third question Jesus gives the answer to, what is the sign of the father in you? Jesus says, it is movement and repose. Ah, this is so beautiful – movement and repose. They are opposites, are they not? Repose is stillness, opposite to movement. And yet, the sign of the essence, the sign of existence within us, is both of these things.

It is movement, the manifest movement – physical movement, but also the movement of the mind, thoughts, emotions, everything that we feel ourselves to be, as human beings, all of that is movement.

And repose – that great rest. Here Jesus doesn't just mean when we are physically at rest, or even just when our minds are also at rest. But there's a deep point within us which is always in repose, which is always still, always at peace. And that tranquil centre of our being is our link with the unmanifest, with the living father. So it, too, is the sign of the father in us. We are everything, and we are lucky to be everything.