After more than a millennium lost in an Egyptian desert, might the uncensored message of Jesus finally be heard by modern spiritual seekers?
Nonduality is the state of being that recognizes there is nothing more than the one reality. From this awareness, comes the realization that god and person cannot therefore be separate. The history of Christianity is the belief in dualism: heaven and hell, sin and redemption, an individual spirit separate from God. Did Jesus actually teach this however? There is evidence to suggest otherwise, as shown in the Gospel of Thomas, a scripture that was discovered almost entirely intact in 1945.
The sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas have been a conundrum to many biblical scholars, who have approached them from the traditional dualistic Christian viewpoint. Robert Wolfe, the author of Amazon's top nonduality book, Living Nonduality, investigates, from a nondual perspective, the history and meaning of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas -- revealing perhaps the true nondualistic nature of Jesus' original teachings.
Readers already familiar with The Gospel of Thomas may not have come across these insights into its nondual teachings. Readers already familiar with nonduality, might not have realized that the teachings of Jesus, as uniquely recorded in the Gospel of Thomas, speak to nondual awareness.
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The Bible is filled with dualistic thinking--there are the saved and the unsaved, believers and non-believers, the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the bad, etc. This dualistic thinking is very strong in the Church (and, of course, the whole world). This so obviously leads to judgment and condemnation of others. It makes loving others very difficult. It really is true that it is hard, if not impossible, for any of us to love someone we see essentially different from, and other than, ourselves. It was with this background that Robert Wolfe's The Gospel of Thomas: The Enlightenment Teachings of Jesus shines a new light on a nondual Jesus.
Having studied the Old and New Testament for many years, I was delighted to read Robert Wolfe's book on the Gospel of Thomas. It is both thoughtful and scholarly. As Robert effectively demonstrates the non-dualistic nature of this Gospel, for me it truly represents good news.
-- JS, Florida, retired Catholic priest.
