For historical reasons, I will leave my earlier blog where it is at https://acimnthomas.blogspot.com but I will now continue here.
It has been 10 years since the publication of Closing the Circle, in May of 2008. The original blog was very much about the immediate feedback to the book. It also explored wherever my attention wandered in the aftermath of the book, inspired by the material. Since then Gary has in effect rounded off his Disappearance of the Universe trilogy, starting with The Disappearance of the Universe, “DU” for short, where the first explorations of the sayings from the Thomas gospel can be found. In Your Immortal Reality, “YIR” for short, he elaborated further on the position and meaning of the Thomas gospel (GoTh) and his teacher Pursah provided a slightly edited full version of the Thomas gospel (PGoTh). The trilogy closes with the book Love Has Forgotten No One, LHFNO for short, which beautifully rounds out the series, which serves as a popular introduction to A Course in Miracles, as seen through the eyes of one who is learning it.
For me the Pursah version of the Thomas gospel was a revelation, for it resolved some of the inner contradictions of the sayings in the Nag Hammadi version of the Thomas gospel, which was the ‘most complete’ version we had. The fact remains that, while clearly the Thomas gospel dates from very shortly after the death on the cross of the historical figure Jesus, it also was subject to some corruption in the tradition, and it seems intuitively obvious that the Pursah rendition completely resolves those issues.
The upshot is that the Thomas gospel is as close as we will get to Jesus historically, and the Pursah version has a strong claim of legitimacy because of its inner consistency. Regular biblical scholars would have trouble with the provenance, but as an individual student, you absolutely have the liberty of trusting your intuition in this regard and to ask Jesus yourself. At the end of the day, the message of Gary’s books goes beyond simply giving the Thomas gospel new relevance for today, for the real issue is the living presence of Jesus in our lives when we realize that Love has in deed forgotten no one. Therein lies the foundation of the lifelong practice of A Course in Miracles.
