gospel of Thomas 91

They said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you."

He said to them, "You read the face of the sky and of the earth, but you have not recognised the one who is before you, and you do not know how to read this moment."

We have lost touch with many of our innate, intuitive capabilities. We have created a complicated lifestyle that requires so much focus and attention on material things: Where do I catch the bus? What time do I need to meet someone in the coffee shop? If we look at our lives, they are so full of these trivial events, which nevertheless tie up much of our awareness. Our time is spent thinking about such things.

Jesus says to his disciples, you can read the face of the sky and of the earth. In those days, life was a lot simpler. Many of the people were probably farmers, and they knew how to read the land and the weather. But even then, Jesus was saying, you don't recognise a buddha when he sits before you. You don't know what an enlightened person looks like. And partly because of that, they had no way of reading the moment – that moment of intimate connection between an enlightened one and a seeker.

And this difficulty persists to the present day. And as our outer lives have got more busy and more complicated, the difficulty has grown. We are way too busy thinking about things that are not to do with spirituality. To progress on the spiritual path, we need to make time to be still and silent. And with such practice, our feel for the moment will return. Our intuition will grow strong again. And we will know innately – not through thinking; just through a direct, intuitive knowing – we will know when a master is before us. And we will feel when things are changing within us, mysteriously. We will not understand the process, but we will know that it is happening. And we will trust it. And all of this will help immensely on our spiritual journey.

But here Jesus is saying, you haven't reached that point yet. You don't know what is before you. And this is often the way. An enlightened one can immediately recognise another who is in the same state. He can tell where someone is on their spiritual growth. It's like an adult who has worked with many children. Looking at a child – her age, what she's doing, how she's behaving – the experienced adult will know what has come before and what is to come in the future; how far that child has progressed with her growth.

And so it is with masters looking at seekers: the enlightened one can very easily see where the other people have got to. But those disciples, those seekers, don't have that same level of experience and awareness. They see someone sitting in front of them, who might perhaps seem to be in a little bit of a different space to other people. But that's all, that's all that the seeker can tell, until that intuitive sense, of presence, of enlightenment, has returned to their being.

And perhaps it's unreasonable to expect things to be otherwise. For how can a child know what it is to be an adult? Nevertheless, if the seeker is to imbibe as much as possible from a master, then the seeker needs to be completely open, intimate with the master, not hiding behind a mask, not pretending to be other than he or she is.

And to drop these defences is a difficult thing. But it becomes very natural to drop the defences when one has this feeling: this feeling of the moment. Yes, in this moment, something mysterious is happening; there is a process involving me and the other; and it feels healthy; it is a growth. If one can feel this – without needing to understand it intellectually, just to feel it and trust it – then the defences can come down. And in that space, in that space there is transmission. In that space, the flame in the disciple will burn strongly. And miracles will happen.