Mysticism & Gospel of Thomas – No. 51 – The New World

Verse - The New World

His disciples asked him, "When will the dead rest, and on what day will the new world come?" He said to them, "This world that you are waiting for has already come, but you do not recognize it."

Comment

What individual disciples expect from the future, that is, in the temporality and spatiality of the external world, is "already there", namely as the eternal presence and reality of the inner world. But he who looks outside does not recognize it. The new world, the realization of the Kingdom of God, does not come as something that is not now, on some future day. It is always there as an inner reality and waits for people who become aware of it and, in awakening to themselves, reveal it to the outside world.

The rest of the dead

And likewise, the rest of the dead is not a problem of time and place, but a question of being awake. It is reality for those who have recognized that the peace of the Eternal is now in them, that they are deeply at rest and are safe. In order to rest in this peace and silence of God, we do not first need to pass through the gate of physical death. Because the kingdom of God is within, at the core of our inner being, it is no closer or further away from us after the death of the outer being than it was before.

Therefore, the time and place when we should become aware of the kingdom of God is not just after death, but here and now, where we have the task and the opportunity to experience it in awakening to our sonship as God and also to bring us to revelation.

We do not need to die first to reach the resurrection. Here and now, in self-reflective meditation and right living, we should and can awaken to the Christ within us, to the knowledge of the true meaning of our existence and to the truth that sets us free; for Christ in us is "the way, the truth and the life".

Here and now we can reach the bright new world and the certainty that a poet - student - expressed: I sought God - and did not find him. I cried out and begged for light... Then, as I went back, crying, something gently touched my shoulder: 'I am here! I have been looking for you and I am with you!'... And God went home with me.