There are people that think that we live in the best imaginable world. They are convinced that mankind is on the right track. They believe in the false appearance and see progress everywhere. One day, mankind will have a theory of everything and all problems will be solved. Although they know better, they stick to that hope. They feel free but do not realise how imprisoned they are. They have learned that fright, troubles, pain and sorrow are a normal part of their lives. They cling to their apparent certainties. They seclude themselves from what they do not want to see en do not want to hear and so they are seeing blind en hearing deaf.

In a country where from childhood all willows are cut back, no man can form an idea of a willow as it could have been, if it could had turned freely into the tree is was intended to be. In a world where all children are polled and trimmed in their freedom from childhood on because they have to learn to live in this society, no man can imagine a man as he was intended to be. Man has no idea of an independent, free man. At one time, man has been like that, free and only dependent on nature.

Now, people live imprisoned in their convictions, traditions, believes and habits, dependent on others, culture and nature. By doing so, they have constructed an artificial, virtual cage. The bars distort their sight on reality. Therefore, mankind lives in an unfair, dishonest society in which the rich become richer, the poor become poorer and where nobody knows the right direction. Because everybody is convinced of the idea that there is no way back only progress is an option without anybody knowing where this progress will lead.

Always, there have been people that managed to escape from the cage requiring a lot of pain and struggle, sometimes forced by circumstances, sometimes because they thought that there should be more than the lives they lived and they started to search for another world. If you are on the right track, even without knowing the goal, life should become simpler all the time and perhaps simplicity is the ultimate aim. If you are on the wrong track it becomes more complicated continuously until you are strangled in it. In his Allegory of the Cave Plato describes how people get disturbed if they leave the world of shadows in the cave and behold the light. In all cultures, the same metaphor exists and for that reason, there has to be a nucleus of truth in it. Those that stayed in their blessed contemplation are called mystics. Others, who returned to the cave and were indignant with everything they saw, were called prophets. Humankind has known many prophets. No one of them has been able to show the way out to the ones in chains. Perhaps, they all lacked an overview of the consequences of their discovery. Perhaps, they were not able to show the way out unequivocal. Or, did they always get the worst of the establishment and is he right when Plato writes: "if anyone would try to free them and lead them upwards would they not kill him if caught?"

Around 2000 years ago, someone escaped from the world of shadows and came back to tell those who stayed behind of the real life and to show them the way out. At that time, they claimed he had risen from dead, became man or had awoken. Nowadays, people would claim he had reached enlightenment. He had experienced that righteousness is the condition to reach simplicity and blessedness and that it is difficult to live as a righteous in an unrighteous world, as a living amongst the death. The righteousness and compassion with the chained ones demands you to go back. He preached a completely different way of life and not a different way of thinking.The story is that the establishment killed him, his words are misunderstood and that they turned his life into a religion. Humankind took possession of the messenger and did not understand the message. If somebody has seen a beautiful theatrical performance he can tell about it enthusiastically, but he would better show people the way to the theatre. His metaphors of the unspeakable made his message unclear. The experience is not expressible in words. For that reason, he gave people the opportunity to take his words figuratively and his life literally.

In fact, he was an ordinary man who dedicated himself completely to a just world. He was convinced people would follow him, would become like him and would return to the simplicity and blessedness in mass. To a world of love and without power. He had seen through society as being a colossus with feet of clay and expected to bring down Goliath like David by hitting him between the eyes where the intellectual capacity is nested. He had expected that still during his life justice would spread among mankind like a tidal wave. He realised how threatening his message was to the power of the men in power, the knowledge of the scholar, the property of the rich and the fake wisdom of the clergy. And, nothing has changed since. Still it is true that a camel will pass sooner through the eye of a needle than a man clung to his properties will become righteous.

The words of the teacher of righteousness, some people call him "Jesus", are probably best and least distorted preserved in the gospel of Thomas. The question remains if "Jesus" is not merely a metaphor of the Logos, the conscience or the inner voice, and if the personification "Jesus" has been used merely as a vehicle to carry the message. Ultimately, it does not matter because it is the message and not the messenger that counts. After having been passed on orally over time the words have been written down by disciples, who clearly did not understand the essence, which has lead to some strange and incomprehensible changes. It must have been a very simple message and yet scientists have studied the texts for decades without being able to decode the message.They devote their attention, so to speak, to the treasuremap, and fail to sett of for the search of the treasure.

Only someone who has freed himself of the world of shadows too can understand the message of the statements. Could it then be that you do not have to be educated but wise to understand it? Stripped of the mystical and gnostic distortions and with only the signposts on the road remaining the maxims are indeed very simple. The words preach a radical and non-violent revolution through a return to the origin, back to basics, where the end will be like the beginning again. Did he realise that the effect would be a collapse of the whole society, of all structures of power and that eventually no stone would remain on the other? Although the message uses the terminology of that time indeed, the contents are timeless and concern mankind. Briefly summarised it comes down to:

"Do NOT to others what you do NOT want them to do to you".

It is new that the others include children too because that no longer justifies our way of educating them. The second elucidation is that creation is put on a par with the Father who flows through the whole creation. Therefore, creation includes the other too. That deprives us of the justification to abuse creation and to destroy it. Spinoza wrote that God and Nature are one and the same and that it comes to the same thing.

What the teacher envisaged was for every man to become like him, one world with only enlightened, blessed people, enjoying themselves, the others and creation. One true community of whole people. In the world he envisaged happiness, freedom and the paradise are unconditional and within reach for everybody. In today’s society all this is conditional and an utopia, unreachable for anybody. People still did not dare.

-- anonymous (....@76492048374.com), November 18, 2004

Answers

Yeah i agree with you

People made of Jesus some kind of crazy legend and made a religion out of his life while they still don't understand the essential of his teachings

-- Superjew (...@...com), November 20, 2004.