Many Christians are attracted to the truth of nonduality. It resonates as true at a deep spiritual level. Deep speaks to deep, as the psalmist says. But they are wary because it does not seem to fit with what the Bible says. Scripture has a powerful hold on Christians, and we hesitate to stray too far from its authority for fear of drifting away from the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” as the Letter of Jude puts it.
What most Christians do not realize is that the books that we have in our Bibles are just a fraction of the many gospels, letters, apocalypses and other Christian writings that were written in the first and second centuries, all claiming to be of apostolic origin. First and second century Christianity was very diverse and used writings that we would today call nondualistic.
The earliest of these is the Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas is as old as any of the gospels in our New Testament. Many scholars believe it is earlier than Matthew, Luke or John, and possibly older than Mark’s gospel. It is collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, reportedly remembered and recorded by the apostle Thomas, called the Twin.
It is likely that the Gospel of Thomas includes authentic sayings of Jesus that are not found in our traditional four gospels. This episode explores many of those “lost sayings.”