Logion 18:
Translation 1:
The disciples say to Jesus: “Tell us what our end will be.” Jesus says: “Have you then deciphered the beginning, that you ask about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is the man who reaches the beginning; he will know the end, and will not taste death!”
The disciples say to Jesus: “Tell us what our end will be.” Jesus says: “Have you then deciphered the beginning, that you ask about the end? For where the beginning is, there shall be the end. Blessed is the man who reaches the beginning; he will know the end, and will not taste death!”
Noa:
- Have you then deciphered the beginning: He is saying to be sure they understand how they became human before they try to understand what is next. Or he is saying before we try to understand what is next we must do our inner work and find who we are, our true selves/higherselves.
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Doug: I believe that Thomas has Jesus referring to the great cosmic archetype that is at the very heart of how the Infinite Creator unfolds Itself in and through manifestation. Jesus is talking about the Alpha and the Omega…that things come back to full circle but not in the same formation. The journey always involves trans-formation.
We live in a holographic universe, as author Michael Talbot asserts, and if something is true, it must be true at every level in the cosmos. All things are “holons,” or parts of this great universal hologram. Holons are simultaneous whole creations in themselves and part of a larger creation. Therefore, if we can understand 
how a holon might operate, we can also see the same operation taking place within the more expansive holon that transcends and includes. An example of this would be how the Ra group describes the Logos as a “protean entity” that is capable of constantly changing (transforming) and learning about Itself through eternal creativity of self-exploration. One way the Logos does this is through us, actually. We are the Logos having a third density, human, experience and every action, thought, and ‘distortion’ that you and I endeavor is not only for our personal growth and evolution but simultaneously is the growth and evolution of the Logos, Itself. Through our seeking and finding, the Infinite Creator enjoys more gnosis (lived experiencial knowledge) of Itself. Note here, the Ra group’s explication of this concept:
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78.20 …You may fruitfully view each Logos and its design as the Creator experiencing Itself… [Doug: Note that the Logos is a holon of the Creator; that is, the Logos is a whole being in and of itself, AND it is a part of the Creator–a cell in that Larger Body]
78.23 Ra: I am Ra. As you have noted, the creation of which your Logos is a part [Doug: “a part” of the Infinite Creator] is a protean entity which grows and learns upon a macrocosmic scale [Doug: just like a child learns upon the microscale!]. The Logos is not a part of time. All that is learned from experience in an octave is, therefore, the harvest of that Logos and is further the nature of that Logos. [Doug: Ra is saying here that creativity, self-expression, and experience of self furthers the very essence or nature of the Logos. This is pretty important, somehow being is intertwined with becoming. Artists would know this for themselves, too. Every act of art is not just a “doing” but an expression of their “being.” God is an artist!]
The original Logos’s experience was, viewed in space/time, small; Its experience now, more… [Doug: Ra is saying here that the original Logos’ (“Primal Logos”) creation was quite small and simple in comparison to billions of years of self-exploration of which we are now a part. Just like an artist starts out by drawing stick figures when they are a child (or continues drawing stick figures as an adult–if they are like me!) and then develops ever increasing skills and knowledge about how to self-express and explore. The Infinite Creator does this same thing.]
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So, as we can see above, the cosmic hologram indicates the same kind of growth on the macroscale as we holons, or sub-sub logoi (humans), do on the microscale.
Other examples of this cycle about which Jesus speaks include the archetypal story of the Prodigal Son, Adam and Eve, the spiritual and psychological development of a human.
* Prodigal Son: The son (us) is one with his father (Source) and is connected to him, living with him,etc. The son leaves his father’s side to experience life (One creates the Many). The son returns to his father and is reconnected. The son learns that he has never been disconnected since he was always held in union with his father through the father’s love. The One is the Manyness even if the Manyness don’t know it on this side of the veil of forgetting. Eventually the Manyness of God returns to the One having explored the worlds of separation for billions of years. Yet, never for one moment was the Manyness ever separate from the One as it was always held and contained within the One through Love.
* Adam and Eve: The innocent (lacking life experience) newly minted third density souls enter into third density’s veil of forgetting. Confusion abounds! It feels like a “casting out,” a “punishment,” an “exile” into the “valley of death;” thus is the experience of the Logos in third density who forgets its inherent union with all. Yet, a human who harvests to fourth density returns to a fuller gnosis of oneness and union as they enter into a density of consciousness without the veil in place. These fourth density humans are innocent again, fresh, hopeful, ready to continue their soul evolution… but they remember the sorrows and experience of third density, says the Ra group in session 16.50.
* Eminent psychiatrist, Abraham Maslow, put words to what spiritual traditions have intuited for thousands of years. He discussed that a child enters the world with some level of conscious awareness of oneness. This is the “innocent” phase of life. Then, one gains experience. If one has lived their life well, one enters a phase called the “second naivete,” or “second innocence,” which moves into unitive consciousness.
Richard Rohr, OFM, speaks eloquently about his own cycle in his daily meditation. Taken from: https://cac.org/second-naivete-2016-10-02/
Second Naiveté
Sunday, October 2, 2016
My life journey began as a very conservative pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic, pious and law-abiding, living in quiet Kansas, buffered and bounded by my parents’ stable marriage and many lovely liturgical traditions that sanctified my time and space. I was a very happy child and young man, and all who knew me then would agree. That was my first wonderful simplicity.
I was gradually educated in a much larger world of the 1960s and 1970s with degrees in philosophy and theology and a broad liberal arts education given me by the Franciscans. I left the garden of innocence, just as Adam and Eve had to do. My new Scriptural awareness made it obvious that Adam and Eve were probably not historical figures, but important archetypal symbols. I was heady with knowledge and “enlightenment,” no longer in “Kansas.” Though leaving the garden was sad and disconcerting for a while, there was no going back.
As time passed, I became simultaneously very traditional and very progressive, and I have probably continued to be so to this day. I don’t fit in with the liberals or the conservatives. This was my first strong introduction to paradox, and it took most of midlife to figure out what had happened—and how and why it had to happen. I found a much larger and even happier garden (note the new garden described in Revelation 22). I thoroughly believe in Adam and Eve now, but on about ten different levels, with literalism being the lowest and least fruitful.
This “pilgrim’s progress” was, for me, sequential, natural, and organic as the circles widened. I was steadily being moved toward larger viewpoints and greater inclusivity in my ideas, a deeper understanding of people, and a more honest sense of justice. God always became bigger and led me to bigger places. If God could include and allow, then why couldn’t I? If God asked me to love unconditionally and universally, then it was clear that God operated in the same way.
This process of transformation was slow, and the realizations that came with it were not either-or; they were great big both-and realizations. None of it happened without much prayer, self-doubt, study, and conversation. I could transcend precisely because I was able to include and broaden.
It seems we all begin in naiveté and eventually return to a “second naiveté” or simplicity, whether willingly or on our deathbed. This blessed simplicity is calm, knowing, patient, inclusive, and self-forgetful. It helps us move beyond anger, alienation, and ignorance. I believe this is the very goal of mature adulthood and mature religion.
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The point here is that what is true for the Logos beyond and before time is also true for our human lives. The reason why a person will not taste death is because by the time they have come full circle, they realize that there is no such thing as death, actually. They know that all of there smalls deaths have always led to greater transformation. All loss leads to renewal. There is ONLY transformation, not death. The Logos through the Jesus Event showed us this through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is what is meant when it is said that Jesus destroyed death. There was not a magical transaction when Jesus died and rose, but rather the Paschal Mystery–the dying and rising of Jesus–destroyed the illusion of death. What is true in Jesus is true through the cosmos.
So, the beginning is also the end. Can we see the cycles in our own lives? How has our dying led to our transformation?
Building 4th Cosmic Christ 