012 - YIR/PGoth - Logion 18

[Rogier van Vlissingen]

P/GoTh:

quote
The followers said to J, "Tell us how our end will be." He said, "Have you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Fortunate is the one who stands at the beginning: That one will know the end and will not taste death."
unquote


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Form:
Perfect agreement, except for the convention of J vs. Jesus.

Content:
At the bottom of p. 80 of DU, Pursah connects this statement with Logion 49, and the story of the prodigal son, as well as with the image of the alpha and omega - beginning and end are the same.

This statement ties in with statements about alpha and the omega, and in more familiar terms of the Course with the notion that accepting the Atonement means to return to the decision moment when we chose the ego, and to choose the Holy Spirit instead. The mistake of many Christian readers has been to think that this makes Jesus a gnostic. Rather the gnostics simply retained certain ideas of Jesus which may have been lost in other traditions.

[Rogier van Vlissingen]

Thomas Logion 18, DU p. 81 - Originally posted on DU Group at Yahoo, as 11035, of feb 4, 2005

18. The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?"

Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for
the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.

Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know
the end and will not taste death."

from the Patterson/Meyer translation at
www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html


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Reflection: On page 80 DU cites the parallel of the legend of the prodigal
son. Coming home.
And it refers to the fact that we have to retrace our steps back to the
beginning, to the original decision to separate from God.

As the Course points out, it all starts from:

quote
Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the
dream as separate from himself and done to him. 2 Into eternity, where all
is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered
not to laugh. 3 In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea,
and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. 4 Together, we can
laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon
eternity. 5 It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent
eternity, which <means> there is no time.
unquote (ACIM:T-27.VIII.6)

This is a capsule of the whole Course... connecting the start of the
illusion - taking the "tiny mad idea" seriously, which had "real effects"
i.e. the world and our life. And the solution is to look at that decision
with Jesus, and laugh it away again, to find again that:

quote
You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of
awakening to reality. 2 Is it your decision to do so? 3 You recognize from
your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while
you are asleep. 4 Yet the instant you waken you realize that everything
that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. 5 You do not
think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awaken to were
violated while you slept. 6 Is it not possible that you merely shifted
from one dream to another, without really waking?
unquote (ACIM:T-10.I.2)

This language brings to mind also the alchemical symbol of the worm
Orouboros, the serpent that bites its own tail, which is an ancient symbol
for the world of time and space. The Alpha and Omega are one and the same,
that one moment of decision. And by doing the work of the Course we are
undoing all our wrong choices, by learning to choose "another way" at
every turn.