shankara
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From Nag Hammadi, where the Gospel of Thomas was found... Not possible to copy-paste it here as it loses the formatting, so the link is:
"The Thunder, Perfect Mind"
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shankara
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That would be so that people can read the text I shared, and comment if they feel like it.
Lisa
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It looks like a long text with a bunch of words thrown together to me.
shankara
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Evidently it was a text of some importance for the same group of early Christians who were influenced by the Gospel of Thomas.
Lisa
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The gospel of Thomas isn’t a book in the Bible..so it’s not really a gospel..and probably ignored by early Christians.
shankara
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Of course we are all aware of your perspective that only what was included in the current canonical Bible has any validity. I'd say that in fact the Gospel of Thomas is in a sense more valid than the other Gospels, in the sense that it is a direct record of Jesus' sayings. But I understand that for you the early Christians were people who thought like you, and I think any historical evidence one might present you would probably ignore. I think it's a little strange that you have such a problem with the Catholic Church and yet ignore their persecution of the Gnostics and intentional distortion of the Gnostic teachings of Jesus - which from my perspective would be a much more valid and insightful criticism than being opposed to the worship of Mary (perhaps a slightly distorted form of reverence for the Divine Feminine, but beyond that I see no reason to find it offensive).
Lisa
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Of course you would think that the book of Thomas has more validity, than the any of the other true gospels...always want to believe the deception rather than the truth, I guess.
My objection to the catholics is because they are not trying to say they are Christians when they really aren’t. I can’t change their past actions..but maybe I can get someone to see they aren’t Christians and Mary is a big reason why they aren’t.
shankara
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Never exclude the possibility that you yourself may be deceived, it's an important aspect of critical thinking.
Lisa
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Sure...I try to make sure that I am in the truth...however, not reading stuff that isn’t in the truth is a good start...
shankara
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Right, yes Lisa, very wise, we should limit ourselves to reading things which confirm our prejudices and prejudgements. I can't be bothered to continue this debate, because when it comes to the subject of active and intentional ignorance, I have my own fixed beliefs.
Lisa
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When you find the truth...why would you then start to read the lies?
shankara
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You are convinced that you have found the truth, therefore you label anything which conflicts with your paradigm as lies. You are not open to the possibility that there could be truths beyond what you know, and that you might refine your understanding of reality by taking on board and critically considering various ideas which at the present time you know nothing of, never mind comprehend.
From my perspective what you are doing is being intentionally ignorant, playing deaf. In fact the things you believe only make sense within the internal logic of your belief system, there are plenty of criticisms which can be made, but you don't grasp their import because you don't engage in any serious criticism of your fixed ideas. It's something like what in psychology is known as "rationalization".
Intentional ignorance like this is basically satanism from my point of view.
Lisa
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I lived a life before finding Jesus...haha, I was into all sorts of things that didn’t really help my life at all.
I answer anyone’s questions..like yours, so I do entertain criticisms..its just that I know God.
Satanism is refusing to believe in God and looking for anything else, anywhere else. Because that’s what satan does...he puts out anything and everything other than there is a God who loves you and wants you to be saved from His wrath and the only way to do that is by the blood of His Son, Jesus. Its a hard thing to admit you’re a sinner and need God’s help. We are like toddlers..we can do it on our own and in our own ways..that’s what you‘re trying to do by reading all these other things that tell you things you like better.
My first impression of "The Perfect Mind" is that it was intended as praise of the vastness of the One God in all possible forms, from knowable to the transcendent- an investigation of the power within opposing qualities. The rhetorical devices of antithesis, paradox, parallelism, and chiasmus have a very Eastern flavor:
Hear me, you hearers and learn of my words, you who know me. I am the hearing that is attainable to everything; I am the speech that cannot be grasped. I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name. I am the sign of the letter and the designation of the division.
But reading from a Gnostic source there is more to this "Thunder". Robert Price explains these scriptures were the works of the Nicolatians (cursed in John's Revelation):
"Epiphanius tells us that the Nicolaitans treasured two kindred scriptures, a Gospel of Eve and a Gospel of Perfection...
...the text came by way of revelation conveyed by a voice of thunder. Like the Gospel of Eve, Thunder: Perfect Mind seems to present itself as a self-declaration from the lips of Eve, who reflects on the paradoxes of her twin existence as the heavenly Power Eve who animated the inert Adam and as the earthly substitute she created to throw the lustful Archons of Eden off her trail when they wanted to r*pe her–and did r*pe her counterpart. In this we can see that the double Eve was another version of the heavenly Wisdom Sophia and her fallen counterpart Achamoth. She is also one with Isis, to whose votive stelae in Egypt, engraved with her self-praising aretalogies, Thunder: Perfect Mind makes explicit reference. Here we have the key to solving the riddle of the text: how the speaker can be honored (heavenly Eve) and despised (fallen Eve); virgin (heavenly Eve) and wife (earthly Eve); harlot (fallen Eve) and consecrated (heavenly Eve); childless (divine Eve) and yet the mother of many (earthly Eve), etc."
Hear me, you hearers and learn of my words, you who know me. I am the hearing that is attainable to everything; I am the speech that cannot be grasped. I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name. I am the sign of the letter and the designation of the division.
But reading from a Gnostic source there is more to this "Thunder". Robert Price explains these scriptures were the works of the Nicolatians (cursed in John's Revelation):
"Epiphanius tells us that the Nicolaitans treasured two kindred scriptures, a Gospel of Eve and a Gospel of Perfection...
...the text came by way of revelation conveyed by a voice of thunder. Like the Gospel of Eve, Thunder: Perfect Mind seems to present itself as a self-declaration from the lips of Eve, who reflects on the paradoxes of her twin existence as the heavenly Power Eve who animated the inert Adam and as the earthly substitute she created to throw the lustful Archons of Eden off her trail when they wanted to r*pe her–and did r*pe her counterpart. In this we can see that the double Eve was another version of the heavenly Wisdom Sophia and her fallen counterpart Achamoth. She is also one with Isis, to whose votive stelae in Egypt, engraved with her self-praising aretalogies, Thunder: Perfect Mind makes explicit reference. Here we have the key to solving the riddle of the text: how the speaker can be honored (heavenly Eve) and despised (fallen Eve); virgin (heavenly Eve) and wife (earthly Eve); harlot (fallen Eve) and consecrated (heavenly Eve); childless (divine Eve) and yet the mother of many (earthly Eve), etc."
shankara
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I practice Tibetan Buddhism but I'm generally quite into the Dharmic religions generally. However that doesn't mean that I don't accept Moses, Christ and Mohammed as people with genuine spiritual realization. My way of thinking is pretty clear from pretty much everything I post on here, I don't really think of myself as having an agenda but who knows, perhaps we all do subconsciously or otherwise.No offence Shankara but are you a muslim or cultist or satanist or even worse- a Barry Manilow fan?
Please tell us who and what you are so we can get an idea of what your hidden agenda is..
Generally I think that knowledge is better than ignorance and there is truth in every spiritual path. Buddhism has a lot of similarities with Gnosticism in the basic idea of practice and spiritual experience coming before belief in any particular doctrine, hence why I'm interested in this (very ancient) text (which was probably considered canonical by the early or better said real Christians).
shankara
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That's very interesting, hadn't come across that interpretation before. Generally the Divine Feminine is related with the number 2 i.e. Duality (while the Masculine is 1, Unity). I'd figured that the text was from perspective of Sophia (Wisdom), so yeah Eve could definitely represent the same force.
The whole thing about Duality is explained very well by the Yin-Yang. Yang is the ascending or masculine, spirit, Yin is the descending or feminine, matter. But there's the black dot in Yang and the white dot in Yin, which means that any ascent creates a possibility of another fall into devolution, while every fall contains the possibility of a new and stronger rising. Of course in the Yin there is also the idea of intentional descent (rather than falling), exploring the dark depths of the subconscious in order to overcome the monsters we all carry within.
In any case the Divine Feminine is just as worthy of honor as the Divine Masculine.