In Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; It's within

[Guest guest]

shriadishakti , " jagbir singh "

<adishakti_org> wrote:

>

> On December 9, 1996, at 5:45 a.m. Kash was again asked about his

> previously mistaken `out-of-body' belief. He still insisted

> that it is impossible to believe that one is within the body —

> even after being enlightened by the Great Adi Shakti that

> everything is within the Sahasrara!

>

> In other words, despite his misconception being corrected by the

> Great Supreme Spirit, he still could not feel or remember this fact

> whenever he entered his own Thousand-Petal Lotus. He still thought

> he left his body and went out into the Universe to the place humans

> call the Kingdom of God. According to Kash, it is impossible for

> one to know that they are in their own Sahasraras. It is impossible

> to feel the Kingdom of God within the human body.

>

> It is just impossible to comprehend, while being within the

> Sahasrara, that this gross physical world exists outside! In

> other words, on Earth it is impossible to comprehend the subtle

> spiritual Sahasrara within. It is just as difficult within the

> Sahasrara to comprehend that this gross physical Earth exists

> without.

>

> On October 9, 1997, at 19.00 p.m. he was asked if the Spiritual

> World was as real as this Earth, i.e., was it as tangible as

> watching television, talking with his family and all the normal

> activities that makes physical life so conscious and real. He

> replied that not only is the Kingdom of God really real, just as

> this physical world, but also " better, quieter and more peaceful. "

>

 

According to the renowned historian Elaine H. Pagels the Gospel of

Thomas " does not tell the story about the life and death of Jesus,

but offers the reader his `secret teachings' about the

kingdom of God.

 

This book opens with the lines, " These are the secret words which the

living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them

down. " Then there follows a list of the sayings of Jesus. ... Some of

these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew and Luke —

Jesus said, " I have come to cast fire on the earth. " Or " Behold, a

sower went out to sow, " and so forth.... Others are as strange and

compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying number 70,

which says, " If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring

forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you,

what you do not bring forth will destroy you. " The gospel opens as

Jesus invites people to see....

 

The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and

criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that

appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, " If those who lead you

say to you, " look, the Kingdom is in the sky, " then the birds will

get there first. If they say " it's in the ocean, " then the fish will

get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of

you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you

will know that it is you who are the children of the living father. "

 

In this gospel, and this is also the case in the Gospel of Luke, the

Kingdom of God is not an event that's going to be catastrophically

shattering the world as we know it and ushering in a new millennium.

Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior

state; " It's within you, " Luke says. And here it says, " It's inside

you but it's also outside of you. " It's like a state of

consciousness. It's hard to describe. But the Kingdom of God here is

something that you can enter when you attain gnosis, which means

knowledge. But it doesn't mean intellectual knowledge. The Greeks had

two words for knowledge. One is intellectual knowledge, like the

knowledge of physics or something like that. But this gnosis is

personal, like " I know that person, or do you know so and so. " So

this gnosis is self-knowledge; you could call it insight. It's a

question of knowing who you really are, not at the ordinary level of

your name and your social class or your position. But knowing

yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that when you know

yourself at that level you will also come to know God, because you

will discover that the divine is within you. " 1

 

According to the Catholic Church the " divine plan of Revelation is

realized simultaneously " by deeds and words which are intrinsically

bound up with each other " and shed light on each other. It involves a

specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually.

He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that

is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word,

Jesus Christ. " 2

 

 

1. Elaine H. Pagels, PBS and WGBH/FRONTLINE, 1998

 

2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Interdicasterial Commission), Catechism

of the Catholic Church