gospel of Thomas 85

Jesus said, "Adam came into being from a great power and a great wealth, but he did not become worthy of you. For had he been worthy, he would not have experienced death."

In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, Adam was the first human being. And he lived in the Garden of Eden, where everything was perfect. And he had come from God: that is the great wealth, the great power; that is the source of all that is.

Unfortunately, according to the legend, there was a fall from grace. And this happened when Adam, and Eve too, were tempted by a serpent to taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden them to taste. And Eve tempted Adam with this. So Adam ate the fruit, and came to know good and evil. And with that, humanity fell from grace. Adam and Eve were no longer living in that garden of Eden. They began to cover their genitals with fig leaves – the first clothing, and that is also a sign that we had gone astray.

I don't like this legend at all. For starters, it is maligning serpents; and also blaming women for seducing. And in that blaming of a woman lies the origins of the implicit belief that if women desire sex, it's a bad thing. If a woman and man are attracted to each other sexually, it is because the woman is seducing the man. This is a terrible message, which has caused more suffering than anything else in the whole history of humanity. It is slowly being corrected by new age and feminist movements. But to uproot thousands of years of ingrained mass belief – to tear that out of the mass consciousness – does not happen easily.

But here Jesus does not blame the serpent, and does not blame Eve. He is critical of Adam, and rightly so. Now this, of course, is a legend and should not be taken literally. But we can see, nonetheless, that almost every human being alive today is living with moral judgements of good and evil. And with these judgements, comes the feeling of guilt and shame.

I've already mentioned our sexuality, which is one of the primary areas where we have been conditioned to feel shameful. There is nothing shameful about sex, nor about our beautiful bodies. And the sooner we let go of that conditioning, the better.

Somewhere along the way, though, we have fallen for this idea of morality. And with that morality, comes the feeling of free will and being in control of one's destiny and life.

All of this started with Abraham, way back in the mists of time. But it is a tragedy for our species. And Jesus does not talk in this saying about good and evil. But rather he talks about death. He says Adam was not worthy of you. If he had been worthy, he would not have experienced death. What does Jesus mean by this?

Don't start imagining that you could live forever. No. Your physical body will die, like that of every other living being on the planet. And the matter that makes up your body will be redistributed, to countless other beings, around the planet. And similarly, your consciousness will return to the source, the cosmic consciousness, the pool whence it came. But there will not be any you in that. You will have ceased to exist. Everything that you hold dear as an individual will cease when you die.

But if, like the lucky ones, you experience liberation prior to your physical death, then when death comes, it will not, in any way, be a problem. You have already died psychologically and that's the difficult part: admitting the simple truth, that you are not separate from the rest of life, from the rest of existence; that you are part of an organic whole. With this realisation, this enlightenment, many things will be let go of, including your belief that you are, in some way, sinful, and that things in the world are good or evil. This is not the way the lucky ones feel the world, nor think about it.

So follow the implication in this little saying from Jesus. Don't be like Adam. Don't live in this morass of ugly morality, as a separate being, believing yourself to be cut off from God and the rest of life. That is not the way things are. Drop that illusion. And you too will be worthy of life.