In December of 1945, some fellas (a type of Egyptian Bedouin) they moved with its camels for close to a cliff called Jabal al-Tarif, that limit the river Nile, in High Egypt, not very far away from the modern city of Nag Hammadi. They were seeking a type of natural fertilizer in the area, called sabak. In the foot of Jabal al-Tarif they began to dig around a stone that it had dropped in the slope, and, without they wait, they found a storage pitcher with a recipient stamped in the superior part. One of the fellas, called Muhammad Ali Samman, broked the pitcher with a pick in the hope of finding something valuable, maybe a small treasure. He should have been being a so much disappointed when seeing that, instead of gold, in the pitcher there were only fragments of papyruses. He had discovered thirteen papyrus books (codexes), the one that today called Nag Hammadi's library.

Besides other valuable works, among these papyruses it was something very interesting: the so called Gospel of Thomas (Thomas' Gospel), that is a collection of sentences of Jesus that one judges to have been compiled by Judas Thomas, The Twin. Before this discovered exceptional, the specialists of the Gospel already knew some references of the parents of the referring Church to a document denominated Thomas' Gospel.

Cirilo of Jerusalem, in his Catecheses 6.31 affirmed that the Thomas that wrote this Gospel was not a follower of Jesus, but a maniqueist, a gnostic and mystic follower of Mani, a heretic master . Other testimonies of the priests of the Church refer more obviously to elements of this Thomas' Gospel coming from the Nag Hammadi's library, as, for example, in the work of Hipolitus of Rome entitled Refutation of All the Heresies. Beyond of those testimonies of the called priests (fathers) of the Church, we have fragments of three Greek papyruses - found in a lot of garbage in Oxirronco, current Behnesa, in Egypt -, published in 1897, and that contain sentences of almost identical Jesus to the found in the Gospel of Thomas of Nag Hammadi, written in Coptic language. These papyruses were representatives of Greek editions of the Gospel of Thomas. Unlike the other Gospel, canonical or apocryphal, the Gospel of Thomas doesn't expose narratives about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but it link specifically to the sentences uttered by Jesus. Among them, I highlight the one that it proceeds:

Jesus said: " If its leaders tell to you: ' See, Kingdom is in the sky ', then know that the birds of the sky will precede you, because they already live in the sky. If they say for you: ' Kingdom is in the sea ', then the fish will precede them for the same reason. Before all, you must to discover that The Kingdom is inside of you, and also out of you. Just when you know youselves, you can be known, and then they will understand that all you are children and sons of the alive Father. But if you if they don't know you same, then you live in the poverty and they are the poverty ".

The Gospel of Thomas, logia (sentence) 3.

It is notable the likeness among the content of this sentence of Jesus with the maxim adopted by Socrates, lent to the porch of the Temple of Apolo, in Delfos: " Man, knows to yourself and you will know the universe ". In equal it forms, Buddha said that only the knowledge of itself took to the illumination, in the same way that Lao-Tse said that just the knowledge of the order inside of itself it took to the understanding of the So. In the same way, the Greek orphics spoke about the evolutionary process as a taking of conscience that are gods for we be children of God. We don't just have nor the perception, nor the conscience of this.

In according to Stephen Mitchell, when Jesus spoke about Kingdom of God, he in fact was not saying or prophesying an easy perfection and free from dangers, as they interpreted to its bel-pleasure some doctors of the theology, or I eat they still make it some leaders of institutionalizad religions, mainly the one of apocalyptic style. He was speaking about a spirit state, as it is well demonstrated in many of its parables, as, for example, the one of the woman that loses a coin and it reviews the whole house in its search and, when it finds it, she leaves to run calling the neighbors and saying: come and be happy with me, because I found the coin that had lost. She found something seemingly very simple, something that was always well close to her... This spirit state can be as simple and poetic as the flight of birds in the sky or the lilies in the field. He is not out, but he is out and inside of us, at the same time. In some cases, he is much inside than it is out. Everything is tied up to everything. Everything is a, although in our mental sphere it seems to be many: " In my Father's house there are a lot of habitations ".

We were Born with a little of the happy perception of this Kingdom and we maintain it while the culture - the half - it doesn't remove it of us, corrupting us. " If you do you as a child, you will enter in Kingdom of the Skies ". The ones that wrap up in soo much with the material concerns they have certain difficulty in entering in this spirit state, because they are possessed by its ownerships and they are so imprisoned in its powers and in its social fantasy, that, for them, it is almost impossible desapegarem-if of them and they have the freedom of they BE far away from the weight of demonstrating they HAVE. " Not that is easy for anyone of us " he/she Writes Stephen Mitchell, " But, if we need to vivify the memory, we can always sit down to the our children's foot. They eat they didn't still develop very strong a notion of the past and of the future, they know how to accept of open chest and with full trust the infinite abundance of the present ". For the children, the time runs in a different way that for the adult. Our reality is molded by our faiths. If we feared to the clock, if we stick to the past and if we frightened ourselves with the future, we can never live the present.

In a certain way, to enter in Kingdom of God means to feel that something that takes care of us to each instant exists, in the same way as it feeds the birds of the sky and it dresses the lilies of the field, with infinite love. Something that Jesus called Abba - Dad. A father very different from the patriarchal and revengeful God of the Armies of the Old Testament. Perhaps a Father-mother... Which of you, if your son asks you bread, he will give it a serpent, or an scorpion if he asks you fish? Because if you, that are imperfect you know what to give of good for your children, as but your Father, that is in the skies "!

All the Masters of the humanity, in all the times and places, always pointed for the need of we live the present as the only reality again: " Don't worry about the day tomorrow..."., said Jesus.

The passages of the Gospel in that Jesus speaks about a Kingdom of Heaven in the future they cannot be authentic transcriptions of Christ's thought, to not to be, as speech Stephen Mitchell, that Jesus had double personality, as if they were faucets of hot and cold water. These passages of an external kingdom for coming, very probably, have been insert in the Gospel by pupils, or for pupils' pupils. Since Jesus didn't leave anything written, everything that know of him it is of Monday or third hand. These pupils were still full of the Jewish tradition. Passages that speak about Kingdom of God as something that will come in the future exists to the bubbling in the prophets, in written them apocalyptic Jewish of the first centuries of ours it was, in the texts generally very patriarchal of Paul and of the primitive Church. They are replete of a hope passional, exclusivist, and, as it aimed Nietzsche, of an amargurado resentment against " them " (the powerful ones political and economic, the heretics). But all this is fruit of an intellectual interpretation, and not of the existence of the spirit state or of the cosmic conscience experimented by Jesus. An existence that was lived fully by a Francisco of Assis or for a Mahatman Gandhi.

Stephen Mitchell speaks, with a lot of property, that Kingdom of God " is not something that will happen, because it is not something that, temporalily speaking, it can happen ". It cannot appear in a world as a volcanic eruption - my Kingdom is not of this world " - it is " a condition that doesn't have plural, but just of singular infinites. Jesus spoke about the people ' entering ' in Kingdom, and that the children were already in him (...). If we stop of looking at forward and back, the one that he told us was, we can be devoted to look for Kingdom that is well under our feet, well before our nose; and, when we find it, victuals, clothes and other necessary things will also be we given, just as they are it to the birds and the lilies. (...) This kingdom is as a treasure buried in a field that is our soul; it is as a pearl of great value; it is as r eturning home. When we found it, we found ourselves, we turned in the owners of an infinite wealth (...)", it is for this reason that all the true mystics speak in they be lost in God. " I and the Father add a ", because our personality is just a changeable mask, but the self, as Jung would say and it is the closest part of the divine, in us. True Jesus is the revolutionary - because peaceful - Jesus of the Sermon of the Mountain, Jesus among the children, Jesus that it admitted women, publicans and lepers among its followers, a man that he became empty of the common mundane desires, became empty of doctrines and rules - all the useless intellectual apparatuses - and he/she/it let to fill for the life, as they demonstrate it its parables, where the kingdom is the field, it is the party of nuptialses, it is the net thrown to the sea... Because he left everything that is selfish and it started to feel the WHOLE - the Tao, as Lao-Tse would say -, he stopped being merely somebody, to be also everybody, everyone: " All this that you do to one of these teeny ones, will do to me ". Because it admitted God in sí, its personality is as a magnet that attracts the whole ones. The more they approach of him, more they sit down the purity of its heart. A heart that is as a fourth clear and roomy: " Come to me everybody vóis that you are afflicted and overloaded, and I will alleviate " you. The people or the possibilities open the door and they enter. The room receives the whole ones the time that you/they want, without imposing rules besides the one of the love. It is very different from a heart full of you belong, of faiths and of certainties, whose owner sits down behind the door shut up with a weapon in fist, as they make it the Churches of all the denominations.

Jesus also recognized the spiritual truths that they were said for the humanity's other Great Masters, in all the times. At least it is what indicates the tone of its teachings. It is as soon as it is explained the great similarities between its teachings and the one of Buddha, for example, that was born more than 500 years before Christ.

Jesus emphasized the importance of the evolution and of the personal transformation: Don't surprise of me to have said: Is Necessary for you to be born again (John, 3. 3-7)". it Recognized the immortality of the soul, as all the great masters: " In fact, Elliah must come and to reestablish all the things. Me even so I tell you: Elias already vein and they did of him that you/they wanted! Ahd his pupils understood that belonged to John the Baptist about who he spoke " (Matthew, 17, 11-13; Marc, 9, 11-13). Well, like Elias it didn't return in a celestial carriage to Jesus' time, and as " the pupils they understood that it belonged to John the Baptist about who he spoke " to them, Elias and João have to be the same person... For now, everybody knew the history of João's birth - in fact, the angel that appears Zaccarias says that the boy " will go ahead of the Mister in the spirit and in the Elias's power" (Luc, 1. 17).

Being like this, Elias's only real possibility to have come back to the earth as John was the that he reincarnated like John, well-known like the Baptist, Jesus' cousin... This idea in the reincarnation, known at the time and in Jesus' area with the confused name of resurrection (Matthew, 16.13-15), it was family to countless philosophical systems of the era helenística, and it is found in Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato, being retaked by Amonius Saccas and for his pupil Plotinus and, already in the Christian era, by Orígenes of Alexandria, one of the parents of the Church. This faith stayed atuacted more or less during the first centuries of the Christianity to that the temporary and political interests turned it in a heretical faith. This happened in the Council of Constantinople, in 533 of ours era. Christ also undermined the prohibition of Moses of not invoking the deads, because we know about its visible encounter with two killed (Matthew, 17. 14-21; Luc 9. 37-43) - own Moses, and Ellias (John had already been decapitated to this time) -, in the phenomenon of transfiguration... it is interesting to notice the behavior of some sects of fundamentalistic base that accept everything to the foot of the letter that is written in the Bible but, when they arrive in these parts of the Gospel, they INTERPRET what is written in the way that more it suits them to deny the reality of these facts, that when they don't invoke its largest ally in subjects than the embarass, that is to say, the " demon ", to say that they are wrong the other ones, the ones that accept the reincarnation or the life after the death and that are possessed of the spirit of the evil, and not them, detainers of whole the knowledge on the absolute.... " Oh of you, doctors of the law... " because they are full of pride, and they are as " Blind men to guide other blind " ones.

Bibliography

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Translated in 07-11-1997

Copyright (C) 1996 by Carlos Guimarães

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