019 - YIR/PGoTh - Logion 31

Originally posted as 14837 of July 1, 2005 on DU Group at Yahoo
[Disappearance_of_the_Universe] GoTh Logion 31, DU p. 79

31. Jesus said, "No prophet is welcome on his home turf; doctors don't
cure those who know them."

from www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

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DU offers no specific comment to the above except to include it in a list
of legitimate quotes, and "prequels" to the NT.

This latter point is important, since the historians in the crowd have
gradually come to date the Thomas Gospel BEFORE Paul and the other NT
writings, so that indeed it is MORE original than the NT literature which
was declared canonical.

It is already becoming clearer and clearer that any one who seriously
tries to study the Thomas gospel in its own right would more or less have
to come to the conclusion that Jesus taught some form of non-dualistic
teaching, and certainly something very different from what NT and its
later interpreters have generally implied.
For us who were raised in this "Judaeo-Christian" culture, we have
generally been exposed to, and often directly indoctrinated with those
Christian views of Jesus and his teachings, the moral codes ascribed to
him have been incorporated in our laws, etc. At our weddings we still
declare bodies to become "as one," as if that made any sense at all. Going
back to Thomas however the typical mainstream Christian interpretation of
Jesus' teachings really won't stand up any more.
ACIM offers direct re-statements, corrections etc. of those traditional
concepts. DU is a logical corollary to that by reaching back to the record
of the Thomas Gospel, preceding as it does the heavy hand of the Pauline
editors who were associated with the dominant movement that was to become
Christianity.

What is materially important is to understand just how important it is in
our learning to "question every value that we hold," and since most of us
grew up in this world with a heavily Judaeo-Christian value system, it
should come as no surprise then that some of these "accepted truths" are
being turned on their head by Jesus in the Course, and in DU as a further
expansion upon that.

So then, this particular statement among other things seems to have often
been cited in the connection with the ego notion of the suffering Jesus.
Poor bastard wasn't even accepted by his own family. And of course
Christianity made it into an art form to imitate this suffering, human
Jesus - in FORM - all the way upto crucifixion if you could stomach it.
But certainly rejection was a great honor, and a perverse sort of proof of
truth, no less. Think Jehova's witnesses collecting their fair share of
rejection, going door to door. This statement was foremost in mind!

What might the statement mean then? Well, we should suspect right away
that the suffering/rejection part is an ego issue, and merely another way
of making myself different, but sure enough the statement talks about
differences. The critical difference is that Jesus is the teacher who is
leading us out of the world of time and space, and into the world of
forgiveness - he represents "The Disappearance of the Universe," and on
our journey the thing that holds us back most is the ego's tendency of
wanting to go back to what we knew, for we're afraid of where this fellow
is leading us. So when we're just starting to understand a bit of what
he's teaching us, we have a habit of going back to the old, and trying it
out, and if it doesn't work that justifies another attempt on our part of
rejecting him. So every time we focus on changing the form, rather than
changing the content, on changing the world outside, rather than changing
our mind, we get short circuited. So the statement points us forward,
while the ego tries to drag us backward, by proving us a failure, because
we cannot change the old, "where we came from." The whole point is that
the ego cannot come along for the ride.