It's a family heirloom!
Good man!
What's your benchmark for asserting the authenticity of Thomas over the other gospels?
No, nothing to do with that at all ...
Evidence for that claim, please?
My tradition requires us to think for ourselves.
You still have not addressed the core issue: Your assumption that all personal experience is infallible.
Thomas
Thomas my friend, I never said personal experience was infallible, lol. I was just saying personal experience is a great spiritual tool we have, and exercising the spiritual centers of our body and mind are a good way to increase your spirit.
The felt presence of immediate experience is quite important. When you are near the the higher altitudes of your consciousness it is a very powerful spiritual event.
"The intense mystic altered state, producing loose cognitive-association binding, which then produces an experience of being controlled by frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. Experiencing this model of control and time initially destabilizes self-control power, and amounts to the death of the self that was conceived of as an autonomous control-agent. Self-control stability is restored upon transforming one's mental model to take into account the dependence of personal control on a hidden, separate thought-source, such as Necessity or a divine level that transcends Necessity. Myth describes this mystic-state experiential insight and transformation."
Constantine whiped out gnostic christianity. Gnostic christianity had an enlightenment element to it, more so than the post-constinian christanity that represents the sides of salvation and redemption.
But Jesus was a mystic. And mystics are not kings, and Jesus does not want to rule you like a king. He wants to set you free. I think this is the essence of what the gospel of Thomas is saying.
And please. Constantine was a murderer. Don't deny stuff like that. The Romans are the ones who killed Jesus anyways. Under their orders, because he was a threat to the established order. Jesus preached to help the poor, and yet look at all these fundamentalist capitalist neo-conservtives that spit on the poor. Like that prick Rush Limbaugh.
Constantine canon is not the official canon of anything. God did not come magically the Constantine and tell him what was real. The gospel of Thomas is as valid as any other gospel. Some Roman Emperor is not going to change that.
Thomas: 1:1-5
These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.
1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"
3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."
4. Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."
5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.
For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"
