Gospel of Thomas offers the reader Jesus' `secret teachings' about the Kingdom of God

>
> iii) The Comforter must bring all aspects of Jesus' teachings to
> remembrance (John 14:26). Obviously they must concern unlocking
> the deep secrets of Jesus' parables, of which the Kingdom of God
> within tops the list;
>

Anthony Buzzard, The Kingdom of God: Present or Future? questions the lack of knowledge regarding this central theme of Christianity: "Yet the voluminous discussions of the meaning of the Kingdom of the God, the heart of the Gospel preached by Jesus, and therefore the Christian Gospel, continue to leave the impression that the subject is complex in the extreme, indeed that the truth of the matter is virtually beyond recovery. An enormous amount of scholarly energy has gone into analyzing the biblical and non-biblical evidence in an effort to explain what Jesus taught as His central theme. Can it really be that our New Testament records provide no clear idea of what Christ and the Apostles meant us to understand by the Kingdom of God? Nothing less than the Gospel message of salvation is at stake."

>
> On December 9, 1996, at 5:45 a.m. Kash was again asked about his
> previously mistaken `out-of-body' belief. He still insisted
> that it is impossible to believe that one is within the body —
> even after being enlightened by the Great Adi Shakti that
> everything is within the Sahasrara!
>
> In other words, despite his misconception being corrected by the
> Great Supreme Spirit, he still could not feel or remember this fact
> whenever he entered his own Thousand-Petal Lotus. He still thought
> he left his body and went out into the Universe to the place humans
> call the Kingdom of God. According to Kash, it is impossible for
> one to know that they are in their own Sahasraras. It is impossible
> to feel the Kingdom of God within the human body.
>
> It is just impossible to comprehend, while being within the
> Sahasrara, that this gross physical world exists outside! In
> other words, on Earth it is impossible to comprehend the subtle
> spiritual Sahasrara within. It is just as difficult within the
> Sahasrara to comprehend that this gross physical Earth exists
> without.
>
> On October 9, 1997, at 19.00 p.m. he was asked if the Spiritual
> World was as real as this Earth, i.e., was it as tangible as
> watching television, talking with his family and all the normal
> activities that makes physical life so conscious and real. He
> replied that not only is the Kingdom of God really real, just as
> this physical world, but also "better, quieter and more peaceful."
>

According to the renowned historian Elaine H. Pagels the Gospel of Thomas "does not tell the story about the life and death of Jesus, but offers the reader his `secret teachings' about the kingdom of God.

This book opens with the lines, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Then there follows a list of the sayings of Jesus. ... Some of these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew and Luke — Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire on the earth." Or "Behold, a sower went out to sow," and so forth.... Others are as strange and compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying number 70, which says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The gospel opens as Jesus invites people to see....

The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those who lead you say to you, "look, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the birds will get there first. If they say "it's in the ocean," then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father."

In this gospel, and this is also the case in the Gospel of Luke, the Kingdom of God is not an event that's going to be catastrophically shattering the world as we know it and ushering in a new millennium. Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; "It's within you," Luke says. And here it says, "It's inside you but it's also outside of you." It's like a state of consciousness. It's hard to describe. But the Kingdom of God here is something that you can enter when you attain gnosis, which means knowledge. But it doesn't mean intellectual knowledge. The Greeks had two words for knowledge. One is intellectual knowledge, like the knowledge of physics or something like that. But this gnosis is personal, like "I know that person, or do you know so and so." So this gnosis is self- knowledge; you could call it insight. It's a question of knowing who you really are, not at the ordinary level of your name and your social class or your position. But knowing yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that when you know yourself at that level you will also come to know God, because you will discover that the divine is within you."

Elaine H. Pagels, PBS and WGBH/FRONTLINE, 1998

"Today we are celebrating the opening of the Sahasrara (Kingdom of God). On this day I must say it was a great happening that took place on all the humanity. It was such an achievement, which I never realized before. Now I can see that without Self-Realization it would have been impossible to talk to people. Then this happened! I thought that how I will talk to people about it because no one would understand Me and it would be a big mistake on My part to say something about Sahasrara because even about Sahasrara (Kingdom of God) nowhere in the scriptures something was described. It was absolutely an ambiguous description I would say where people could not even have thought there is a Realm beyond Sahasrara, and one has to enter that Realm where is the Reality. That time what I saw around Me was darkness and unless and until there are many Lights, people will never realize that how important it is to have Light."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Cabella, Italy - June 9, 1996

"Without breaking the Sahasrara we could not have achieved the ascent en masse... To keep Sahasrara open should be very easy if the western brains could understand and be aware of your Mother. When your Mother is the Deity of Sahasrara the only way to be able to keep the Sahasrara open has to be complete surrendering....

The area of the Sahasrara is the realm of God. When the Brahmarandhra opens fully then the heavens open within yourself. The Kundalini, which has risen up and given you Realization, creates the opening by which the Divine starts pouring all its subtleties inside your brain...

All of us can achieve that state of Nirvikalpa... After Nirvikalpa you cannot come down."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Vienna, Austria - May 4, 1985

"So one has to understand that evolutionary process is absolutely free, without any effort and you can't pay for your evolution. It is spontaneous. Like you have this Mother Earth and you put the seed in it, then it sprouts by itself. What do you do? Nothing. It is spontaneous and that's what exactly happens to you, that spontaneously you achieve that state of the Spirit....

So science cannot answer many questions and one of them is that why are we on this Earth? What is the purpose of our life? What is the goal of our life? What is our identity? This question is not asked and, if asked, they cannot answer. They cannot answer this simple question, "Why are we on this Earth?" But one has to know that we are on this Earth to become the Spirit, to enter into the Kingdom of God. This is our purpose. That's why we are here and then to be the instruments of that Divine Power, which is All-Pervading."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Philadelphia, USA - October 15, 1993

"You cannot force on the organization of God anything. He is on His own, His organization is on His own. Only thing you can do is to enter into His Kingdom and become a part and parcel of that blissful domain.

You would never like to change it either. It is so wonderful. It is so protective, it's so loving, is so gentle, so kind, so compassionate, that you would hate to change that organization, but we do! We try to organize God.

For people who think that is the ultimate you have to seek, it's all arranged to enter into the Kingdom of God. The time has come. This is the Day of Resurrection. These are the days of Resurrection."

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Hampstead, UK - July 22, 1982

>
> So many souls can and will be saved by the truth spoken by the
> Comforter, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, by bringing humanity towards
> Jesus and His teachings. They must be brought to remembrance that > before Jesus departed He promised that a Paraclete will one day be
> sent by Him, a divine personality who will glorify Him, and will
> guide mankind into all truth. The main signs and characteristics of
> the Comforter are as follows:
>
> i) The Comforter must abide with the believers forever (John 14:16).
> This is only possible if the Comforter remains within each and every
> human for the rest of the natural lives and beyond i.e., for all
> eternity;
>
> ii) The Comforter must testify on the behalf of Jesus (John 15:26).
> This is only possible if the Comforter is human too i.e., meeting,
> speaking, explaining in detail, as well as answering questions, in
> languages humans can understand;
>
> iii) The Comforter must bring all aspects of Jesus' teachings to
> remembrance (John 14:26). Obviously they must concern unlocking
> the deep secrets of Jesus' parables, of which the Kingdom of God
> within tops the list;
>
> iv) The Comforter must reprove the world of sin, and of
> righteousness, and of judgment i.e., issue warnings of impending
> judgment to a world full of sin and ungodliness (John 16:8);
>
> v) The Comforter must at all times guide and speak the truth of
> events that are coming (John 16:13). Obviously the truth, directed
> exclusively to a world of sin and ungodliness, has to be absolutely
> unprecedented, radical and explosive;
>
> vi) The Comforter must glorify Jesus and declare all that the
> later wants delivered to humanity (John 16:14). This task of
> informing humans on a global scale requires many, many years to
> accomplish;
>
> vii) The Comforter -whom the Father will send in Jesus' name, and
> teach all things and remind humanity of everything Jesus has said-
> will be the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). Thus the personality
> enlightening humanity of Jesus' teachings will be both the Comforter
> and Holy Spirit sent by God Almighty in Jesus' name.
>
> Shri Mataji is the Comforter, the Helper or Paraclete who has for
> more than three decades glorified Christ and-through Her Divine
> Message of the Last Judgment and Resurrection-guided mankind into > all truth. All who receive their second birth by the Spirit (Self-
> realization) experience today what Jesus' disciples experienced
> two millennia ago on the day of Pentecost. The awesome,
> fundamental difference between both phenomena is that the
> present experience of the Holy Spirit manifesting within humans was
> promised by Lord Jesus ..... and is taking place all over Earth.
>
> This truth is irrefutable as hundreds of thousands have felt it. The
> tens of thousands of SYs who continue to meditate on the Holy Spirit > within feel it on a daily basis. Yet they do not have the courage
> and conscience to truthfully tell others, pretending it is all
> about the subtle system. But did Jesus send the Comforter just to
> teach about the petty subtle system, a subject that countless
> teachers and gurus are teaching too? Or did Jesus send the
> Comforter to complete His teachings and reprove the world of sin,
> and of righteousness, and of judgment; an exclusive honor and
> prerogative accorded to no one else?
>

Archives of FAQs and Articles on Shakti/Last Judgment/Qiyamah
Homepage