Sri Shantananda Saraswati
Om May no harm be done Here, May this desire be motivated by Love. May what is not beneficent wither to obscurity.
 
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The Gospel of Thomas (also known as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas) is extra to the canonical gospels in the New Testament of the bible. It was discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. Scholars speculate that the works were buried and hidden after the declaration of a strict canon of Christian scripture, where any works that were not selected for inclusion in the new testament were ordered to be destroyed. Scholars have proposed dates of composition as early as 60 AD and as late as 250 AD as a collection of sayings of Jesus.
Our Commentary on Verse 028 of Thomas Gospel.
These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.
Gospel of Thomas saying 28 - The world is intoxicated.
Jesus said, "I took my place in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh. I found all of them intoxicated; I found none of them thirsty. And my soul became afflicted for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight; for empty they came into the world, and empty too they seek to leave the world. But for the moment they are intoxicated. When they shake off their wine, then they will repent."
"I took my place in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh”
Jesus is talking of his worldly birth experience from the knowledge, consciousness and bliss of the Absolute. Jesus made himself known through his questioning of the priests, which was his appearance in the world.
"I found all of them intoxicated”
The intoxication Jesus refers to is with the material objects of desire. Through his desires man obtains wealth, fame, status and pleasure. Material satisfaction can be intoxicating to the worldly.
"I found none of them thirsty”
One can be hungry for material satisfaction or one can thirst for higher knowledge. Jesus came offering divine truth and revelation but he found people were too preoccupied eating from the world than to drink his words.
"And my soul became afflicted for the sons of men”
The sons of men were those born into the material world with material desires and understanding. They believed it was their duty to work and thrive to gain material wealth to increase their family. These sons of men were afflicted with the delusions of duality. They saw others as competition for wealth and closed their ears to anything that challenged their material ways.
"because they are blind in their hearts and do not have sight”
True love for the truth of the divine can only come from the heart. It is the through the heart that divine truth can be seen. This heart is not the one associated with softness. The heart that intuitively knows the truth is fearless and can access divine understanding. But this heart can be isolated ”blind in their hearts” by ego and a closed mind.
It is to this intuitive heart that knows, that Jesus’ words would speak to. Jesus laments the condition he found of mankind.
"empty they came into the world, and empty too they seek to leave the world”
Empty of divine knowledge and understanding is the condition brought about by our original desire for worldly experience. This desire for a material life experience caused our conscious forgetting of our divine unity to enable our conscious memory of a birth into the world.
Unless or until, through the hearing of Jesus’ words or the opening up of our intuitive heart to a glimpse of the Divine Absolute, we will remain empty ”empty too they seek to leave the world” of divine truth but full of material desire.
"for the moment they are intoxicated. When they shake off their wine, then they will repent”
Jesus knows that eventually people’s material desires become jaded ”shake off their wine.” It is through Grace that such people become despondent over the loss of purpose, and growing sense of unease at a life wasted ”they will repent”. Only then they come to sense the presence of something more real and permanent. In their search for the real they allow their intuitive heart to open, then the words of Jesus can be heard.
All verses of the Thomas Gospel.
Ohm peace, peace, peace.