Standing as One (The Gospel of Thomas)

This episode covers the twenty-third saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus says: "I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one." Here is a slightly different translation: "I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand, and you shall stand as a single one." 

This verse deals with the rarity of spiritual awakening and the nature of spiritual awakening. In discussing the nature of awakening I will explore the three spiritual stages of life leading to awakening.  

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Transcript

This episode covers the twenty-third saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus says: "I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one." Here is a slightly different translation: "I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand, and you shall stand as a single one." 

This verse deals with the rarity of spiritual awakening and the nature of spiritual awakening. In discussing the nature of awakening I will explore the three spiritual stages of life leading to awakening.  First I will talk about the rarity of what is called spiritual awakening, enlightenment or Self-realization. 

Historically spiritual awakening has been seen as rare. Once in a generation - if that. Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, "Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an increase in unrighteousness, at that time I manifest myself on earth." That does not say specifically how often the manifestation happens, but it implies a long time.  

The Baháʼí faith says that Manifestations of God - what other traditions call incarnations or avatars - occur typically every one thousand years. In Buddhist cosmology, Buddhas appear infrequently and only after the teachings of a previous Buddha have faded from the world. Christianity says there has been only one incarnation - Jesus Christ. Islam says that there are no incarnations, only prophets of which Muhammad was the last.  In Hinduism and Buddhism avatars or buddhas are rare. 

Jesus says they are not as rare as you may think! He says, "I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand, and they shall stand as a single one." He could just be talking about choosing followers here, in which case it has nothing to do with enlightenment or awakening. But today one out of three humans profess to be followers of Jesus. 

I think he is talking about people who have woken up. Those who know they are one. That is why he continues with the words that these who are chosen stand as one. I have explained before that the word stand is a synonym for awaken in the Gospel of Thomas, because when you wake up in the morning the first thing you do is stand up. 

Jesus is talking about spiritual awakening. He says that one out of a thousand people wake up to Reality. That is .1% or one-tenth of a percent. That is rare. Two out of ten thousand is 0.02% or 2 hundreds of a percent.  That is even more rare.

Yet we are not supposed to take this percentage literally. Jesus was not a statistician. That is clear in the fact that he gave two percentages: One out of a thousand and two out of ten thousand. There is a big difference between those two figures. Jesus was not quoting statistics. He was making a point that spiritual awakening is rare but not that rare. That is still a lot of people.

It seems not as rare as it used to be. It used to be that a person went into training and spent their lives in spiritual disciplines and in service to a spiritual teacher. Then maybe spiritual awakening would occur. Now it seems like spiritual awakening is happening to a lot of people. I think it is because of the internet and the ease of communication and access to spiritual teaching. 

Quite a few people have contacted me and said that spiritual awakening has happened to them. Not everyone who awakens becomes a spiritual teacher.  Most are silent. They do not even trey to communicate because they know it is impossible. In fact that is normal. As the Tao te Ching says, “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” But some know and try to communicate the best they can. 

Spiritual awakening is not just for the spiritual superstars. It is not just for Indian yogis living in caves or lamas living on a Tibetan mountaintop. This is for everyone. This is happening to ordinary people. Jesus is saying it is not commonplace, but neither is it so rare that there is no hope for the ordinary person. That is the meaning of the first half of this saying. "I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand.” 

The second part of the saying is this: “and they shall stand as a single one." That is a straightforward statement of nonduality. We wake up and realize we are all one. We stand as a single one. There is only one. When awakening happens we stand in oneness. This realization – this standing as one - is the natural culmination and purpose of being human. 

This is a good place to talk about the phases we go through to arrive at realization of oneness. There are three stages. I call them stages, but that is an inaccurate word. We do not have to go through anything to be one. The truth is that we are always one. We just do not realize we are one. So we go through three seeming stages to realize this.

First is early childhood. When we are a baby we are one. We are one with our mother in the womb before we are born. When we are born we are still one with our mother and the environment. We just do not consciously know that we are one. That is how at one with oneness we are. 

As we age in the first couple of years of life we gradually become aware of others. We realize that we are apart from our mother and other people and the environment. We move from being one to being one among many. The process of growing up is becoming aware that we are separate beings. In Christian terminology we could call this the Fall into separateness, which gives rise to a sense of alienation and anxiety. 

Christians use the word “sin,” which is understood as separation from God. The truth is because God is omnipresent we cannot be separated from God, but it feels that way.  This is the human condition. We think of ourselves as separate creatures. We have eaten to the Tree of duality, the Tree of knowledge, Good and Evil. We feel like we have been expelled from the paradise of childhood oneness with God and Creation. 

This sense of having a separate identity is the natural and normal process of growing up. All children go through it. There is nothing wrong with it. We are Being Itself, but we become aware that we are also separate beings. We do not stop being Being Itself, but we begin to identify as separate human beings. In the process of identifying with our separate human nature we forget our original nature. We forget our true nature. We forget what we really are. This spiritual amnesia is the barrier to awakening.

So at first we are one. Then we are one among many, which is often expressed as one against the many. I am reading a novel by Swedish author Fredrik Backman entitled “Us Against You” which explores this. Everyone goes through those two stages: oneness and separateness. But not everyone goes to the third stage, which is self-realization - realizing that we are both one and many, one in the many. Nonduality. This is eating from the Tree of Life.

Throughout the stage of separation we never completely forget our original oneness. It is always there in the back of our mind. It feels like déjà vu, like a memory that we can’t quite recall. This is always present behind our everyday consciousness, waiting to come to the forefront. Spiritual awakening brings this background awareness of oneness to the forefront of consciousness. After oneness is remembered, the rest of life is about integrating this into our lives and abiding in this and living from this Reality. 

Humans have created a separate reality for ourselves as individual selves, and we have believed that role is what we are - all that we are. It is like an actor playing a character in play who has forgotten it is just a role. They come to believe they really are the part they are playing. If that happened to a friend we would think they were mentally ill. Yet that is the common condition of humanity. We are playing roles in the drama of life, and we have forgotten what we were before we took on those roles. 

Spiritual awakening is waking up from the role. The character in the play does not wake up. That person is not real. There is no one to wake up. We wake up from the role. The role falls away. The lights come on. The play is revealed as a fiction. The story falls away. We remember what we really are. And we think: how did I ever forget this Reality?

The whole process of forgetting and awakening are also Oneness. Even forgetfulness is not a problem. It did not change what we really are. This is the One experiencing itself as separates ones, the One experiencing itself as the many. Out of this identification with the many comes compassion and love – unconditional love. Others are us, and for that reason we love others as ourselves because they are literally ourselves. Even our enemies are us. They just don’t remember who they are or who we are.

This is the source of nondual ethics. Morality is not about commandments and rules or even moral principles. It is knowing our oneness with all people, all creatures and the entire universe and acting from that oneness. Oneness means equality for all people and justice for all. It means generosity not only in our personal charitable giving, but in government spending. We stand as one.

That oneness is what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus says, "I shall choose you, one out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand, and you shall stand as a single one.” We stand as one, and we act accordingly in all our actions because we realize we are one. Spiritual awakening is waking up to this one reality. 

So you see, spiritual awakening is the solution to all of humankind’s problems. The spiritual life is not running away from or hiding from the problems of the world. It is the solution to the world’s problems.