Non christians: what do you think about Thomas?

Well StonerBill ~ I think that such a truth existed once upon a time, but we inherit remnant directions of how to connect with the most important element ..... the divine creative force that "is within". The full body of the "true knowledge" was pretty much destroyed by the christian church purges etc however there are still available remnant clues to such gnostic works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Dead Sea scrolls, Nag Hammadi Library etc as well as other ancient religions such as those of Sumeria, Egypt, Greece.
I think that because the early christian church destroyed as many enlightened souls and as many gnostic manuscripts as possible, the actual process by which gnosis was attained was lost. Except for that method by which any one individual can attain it by application, and that is found in the clues as already posted.
I repeat the phrase "know the truth and the truth will set you free" because I truly believe that it was a clue for all mankind to take close heed that there is a deception at work, and that deception enslaves mankind by denying him access to the Divine Principle that lives within each and every one of us. Take note that religions direct prayer and attention away from the inner creative source/living principle and toward an exterior world/universe ruling deity.
The "truth" I believe comes when we connect with this inner aspect of "self" (the kingdom of god within), and is revealed in a living way rather than by any accumulation of knowledge per se. And that is another aspect of the "truth' that sets us free ~ it acts on our behalf when we ask, seek, or knock for it to open. That is to say, by focus of our attention upon it, it responds to our needs. The christians call such responses "miracles" or "answers to prayers", but I believe that "miracles" are more a matter of fact for those who seek to find the Living Principle within.
Know the truth and the truth will set you free is also a whole truth in itself. The statement has many aspects, each opening further as you search like petals of a living flower or an ever expanding fractal, as you may now better understand. Because it is a living principle, it aligns to us as we align to it, opening further the more we seek to find. It also instructs us to seek the truth, not the lies! This means that lies abound, but truth can be found amongst them. when the truth is found, it will be known, and a known truth is very different from a believed "truth", or a "told" truth, or an "accepted" truth. The genuine truth will be known, not said, so it must be a personal discovery. That is why people searching for the truth disengage from groups and religions and the like; because it is a personal journey and a personal discovery. In the end, it is just you on your journey in eternity. That is truly worth knowing.
Keep at it!
Hope that makes some better sense of it for you.

 

yes

but it would be nice to have more people on teh search as well, more people to share what each as learnt along their journey however big or small..

i like to inspire people but the more i try, the more i realise that you cant really inspire someone to take this journey, you have to wait until they have inspired themselves, and then you can simply impress on eachother what you have learnt

 

Plato said something to the effect "Tranascendant reality can be experienced, but I don't know if that experience can ever be transmitted succesfully to another person".


Makes sense too if were talking about something that transends words and words are all we have to communicate with.

 

this pretty off topic, but in a nut shell, what is the difference between transcendentalism and hinduism?

 

unfortunately Thomas is left out of protestant bibles so i haven't read it... i might need to go purchase a cheap catholic bible, because there are several books that are left out.

 

catholic bible is no better. catholics are the ones responsible for the majoirty of the changes in teh bible! (not saying theyre good or bad changes, so dont any of you catholics come and shit on me)

just use the internet.

thomas is everywhere. many translations.

buy a book if you want, but you dont need to, in order to read it whenever.

Colours, hinduism is a complex religion concerning re-incarnation, where we continue to come back to earth in a new form until we have developed our inner selves to perfection and then go to nirvana; and incarnations (of god - obviously not called god) where god manifests as different beings for the sake of worship and communication to humans, and integration of supernatural into natural world.
transcend is a concept of many eastern religions that are based on personal growth, and not adherance to an established set of goals, as the western religions are based on.

as in it is based on descovering truth as opposed to accepting truth.

'transcendentalism' is the movement which occured when people decided they werent content with accepting the truths they were given, and strived to transcend orthodoxy and descover truth about their beliefs. the early 'transcendentalists' where christian, but they did not agree with accepting the model that the church put forth, and wanted to seek answers to the new age questions based on civilisation much different to that described in teh bible and such.

this is what i have picked up, im sure someone else can give a better description, more accurate, maybe ive said something wrong, i dont know much about them.

at any rate, theyre completely different to 'hinduism'

 

it just seems that the transcendalist oversoul is a lot like the ultmiate reality of hinduism. Or maybe transcend is broader than just belief in an oversoul, but im talking mainly about emerson and thoreau's transcendentalism

 

the Catholic bible (the vulgate) has a few books that aren't in the standard christian texts but I'm not sure if Thomas is one of them.

I'm using a book called "the Other Bible" published by HarperSanFranscico.

It's got all the gnostic gospels, the dead sea scrolls, the christian apocrapha (the early christian writtings that weren't canonised), the jewish Pseudepigrapha, basically just about everything that was left out of the bible and the torah.

there are alot of websites that have the complete gospel of Thomas. It's pretty short, only 114 sayings.

One thing about the gospel of thomas is that it doesn't seem to be trying to get you to believe anything about Jesus himself except that he said some things that might be worth listening to.

It doesn't seem to be trying to get you to believe in anything, it's more of a manual for experiencing something.

 

yes, because words mean a differnet thing for every single person. the concern MrRee has, that his words will always be interpreted differently to how he intends them, is this concept, i believe. as is my concern of people taking translations of jesus' sayings as if they are something solid, something that they should learn directly. people taking the bible literally. its utter foolishness, for humans interpreted jesus' words, and then other humans interpreted those human's words and so forth and so on. teh words can only be used as directions as to where to seek knowlege, and i believe this is why jesus used parable as his main teachign style, for it is the most effective way to convey ideas. if he conveyed them literally, they would make absolutely no sense to most people. he also uses many different analogies to represent the same basic things. it is the most effective way of communicating ideas impersonally.

 

which is what makes it so powerful!

 

Exactly.

All you have to do is look at the primary mistranslation that most of modern christianity is based on, the openning verses of the gospel of John.

Most versions read: "In the begining was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God".

If you translate the ancient greek precisely and take into account the accepted definition of "Logos", as it was used by greek and Hellenised jewish philosophers it would read:
"In the begining was the power of God that creates and orders the universe,
And the power was with God, and the power was a god."

taken to the extreme (and what would religion be without extremes?)
you could say one trans is talking about a book and the other is talking about something more like the force from star wars.

 

Here's a good place to read all the gnostic gospels (Thomas included) http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

 

there! read them!