The Tao of Christ
The Tao of Christ is a podcast which explores the mystical roots of Christianity, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, which church historian Evelyn Underhill called the Unitive Life, which Richard Rohr calls the Universal Christ, and which I refer to as Christian nonduality, unitive awareness, or union with God. This is the Tao of Christ.
The Tao of Christ
The Fire of Awakening (The Gospel of Thomas)
This is the tenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes." Another translation puts it slightly different: “I have thrown fire upon the world, and look, I am watching till it blazes.” What does this saying in the Gospel of Thomas mean? Spiritual awakening is fire. The world as we know it is consumed as if by fire.
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This is the tenth saying in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes." Another translation puts it slightly different: “I have thrown fire upon the world, and look, I am watching till it blazes.” This is another saying in Thomas that has parallels in the synoptic gospels. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus says, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” That is pretty similar.
What does this saying in the Gospel of Thomas mean? To correctly interpret this passage in the Gospel of Thomas we need to see what fire means in the Gospel of Thomas. The word is used four times in Thomas. It is used first in our verse. Three verses later Jesus takes Thomas aside and speaks to him privately. The other apostles want to know what Jesus said to him. Thomas replies, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you." So it is a means of destruction there.
Three more verses later Jesus says, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war.” So here it is not just destruction, but the conflicts that accompanies it. That is very similar to what Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke in the parallel verse. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus says he came to bring fire on the earth, then he continues, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”
The last time Jesus uses the word fire in the Gospel of Thomas he says, “Whoever is near me is near the fire, and whoever is far from me is far from the kingdom." Jesus equates his presence with fire and with the Kingdom of God. So in the Gospel of Thomas fire seems to be about three things. It is the presence of the Kingdom of God, which brings about destruction and division. So let’s look at this more closely.
Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes." We have seen a lot of fires in California recently. Here in New Hampshire I hear about house fires, which always seem to increase in the winter as people try to stay warm. Early in the winter I had to have my chimney relined in order to prevent a chimney fire, which are very dangerous here where we burn wood for heat.
Fire is a symbol of destruction. Yet that destruction is also purification. They go together in biblical imagery. The prophet Malachi says about the Day of the Lord, “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” The first letter of Peter talks about the trials we endure and says, “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
It is reasonable to think that destruction and purification are aspects of fire in the Gospel of Thomas. It is very similar to the metaphor of death and resurrection. Forest fires are followed by a resurrection of the forest. Years ago we took a family trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was shortly after forest fires had caused lots of destruction there. But already we could see signs of life resurrecting from the ashes.
Spiritual awakening is fire. The world as we know it is consumed as if by fire. I immediately think of Blaise Pascal’s spiritual awakening which is called The Night of Fire. He wrote a brief account of it and sewed it into his jacket so it would always be near his heart. In that account, after giving the date in 1654, he writes:
FIRE.
GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob
not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
GOD of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Your GOD will be my God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.
Spiritual awakening is the destruction of our world. Yet at the same time that destruction is also the revelation of the Real World, the Kingdom of God. That was certainly true in my life. As I deconstructed my Christianity, it felt like everything I knew and loved was being destroyed. Yet when everything is gone, what remains is the Real. When everything is destroyed, that which cannot be destroyed is revealed.
In the canonical gospels the parallels passages are connected to an apocalyptic end of the world. Christians take that literally. They believe that that the earth and history will literally come to an end. And in a sense it does! But not in the way that most Christians think. The world as we know it comes to an end in spiritual awakening. Adyashanti wrote a book entitled, The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment.
That is what Jesus was talking about in our passage when he said, “I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes." His teaching ignites a fire under the illusion of this world. That began in his earthly ministry. That is why it says in Thomas’ gospel that he has already cast fire upon the world and is guarding it or watching it until it blazes.
That is different from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus says, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” In Luke’s gospel it is not yet kindled. The kindling happens sometime in the future in some cataclysmic event. That is because the New Testament gospel writers bought into the apocalyptic worldview that was popular from the second century BC until the first century AD. They saw the end of the world as an historical event. It is actually a spiritual event that happens here and now when we wake up from the old world to something entirely different. That happens in every generation.
Spiritual awakening is the destruction of the old self, the little self, the false self, the ego. That psychological self created this world that we think we live in. When the psyche comes crashing down, so does the world it created. We see Reality. When we try to communicate that Reality to others, they won’t believe it. They do not like it because it means the end of their world, the end of their religion. So they attack the messenger. That is what happened to Jesus.
It happens in the church today. Conservative Christians are my fiercest critics, because the message of nonduality destroys their religion. It invalidates their worldview. And they are fiercely wedded to their so-called Christian worldview. In spiritual awakening all worldviews – including the Christian worldview - collapse because they are all products of the human mind. The fire of Awakening is destruction that exposes Reality as it really is.
Spiritual awakening is not a one time event. That is why Jesus says in this verse that he not only ignites the fire, but watches it. He says, “and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes” or “I am watching the fire.” This fire of awakening is an ongoing process that we can watch unfold.
It often begins dramatically with an experience that can be dated, like Pascal’s Night of Fire. I can date the beginning of awakening to a summer day in 2012. This shift in awareness can dramatically occur at a particular date. But it continues for the rest of your life. A seeding breaks through the surface of the ground into the sunlight on one particular day. But that is not the end. That is just the beginning! The plant continues to grow and produce a harvest, like we saw last time in Thomas’s version of the Parable of the Sower.
Jesus ignited the fire of awakening in his teaching ministry, where he proclaimed the nondual Kingdom of God. That was perceived as a destructive message. The ruling class rightly were afraid of his message. It caused division in the Judaism of his day. So the political and religious leaders decided to get rid of this dangerous character. They executed him.
But of course they could not destroy that which cannot be destroyed, which was his message and the Reality that he incarnated and represented. So the eternal Christ remains. And whoever gets near Christ – the real Jesus and not the fake one of cultural Christianity – gets near fire and near the kingdom. And if we are lucky – if we are recipients of divine grace - our lives burn away and only the Reality that we call the Kingdom of Heaven remains.