THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS

Excerpt from

Sunday Service, November 5, 2006

By Aeptha

I have been guided to talk today about the Gospel of Judas. This Gospel has only relatively recently been translated and published, but its message, as with many of these new Gospels that are coming forward, does not seem to be recognized. I recently read a newspaper article that said that the Gospel of Judas could potentially have quite an impact on the religious community. But one way to avoid the whole issue is just not to deal with it. We all know that strategy, and it is called denial. We all have our mechanisms for not rocking our world, right? I don't think it’s any accident that the word in Tibet for identity is “that which we hold rigidly”, and to introduce concepts like those brought forth in the Gospel of Judas is something that, for some people, would challenge their sense of identity because it challenges what we have decided is the paradigm of reality.

It is hard to say when the Gospel of Judas was written, but anywhere between 50 to 150 CE.  Some estimate that this gospel was probably originally written in about 80 CE and this particular copy was one that was transcribed in about 250 CE because, as we know, they were copied over and over again. The Gospel of Judas is associated with the Gnostic gospels, and Gnosticism, as we have discussed before, was very active in the early Christian community, and subsequently died out by 250 – 300 CE; actually “died out” as in “overpowered”.

I have come to find out that Iscariot was probably the town that Judas came from because with the exception of the upper class, most of the people did not have last names. There were many Mary’s and many Judases - it was a fairly common name. This particular gospel espouses something that many people who have studied the esoteric traditions have heard before, which was that Judas Iscariot, as portrayed in this Gospel, not only did not betray Christ, Yeshua, in the traditional sense that we have come to interpret this betrayal, but also that Judas, not unlike Mary Magdalene, was actually considered one of the shining disciples, one who saw the truth and one who Yeshua took into his confidence and taught the deeper Mysteries.

Judas is mentioned in the text of the four Gospels in the New Testament of our Bible twenty-nine times, and all twenty-nine times it is in a very negative connotation.  But in the Gospel of Judas we see a Judas that not only recognizes who Yeshua is in a way that the other disciples do not, but he also gets the message that is being taught by Yeshua in a way that the other disciples do not grasp, that the other disciples, in a sense, are blind to. And as a result Yeshua not only acknowledges Judas, but also takes him aside, as was said in the Gospel of Mary, to teach him even deeper in the hidden Mysteries.  And it was at Yeshua’s request that Judas went forward and did this so-called betrayal.  This was arranged and agreed-upon.

Now the interesting thing is that from the Gnostic perspective this wasn’t arranged and agreed upon so that Jesus could be crucified and resurrected, because from the Gnostic perspective the implication of having something or someone outside of yourself that is charged with your salvation is not what was taught. You can see why Gnosticism wasn't exactly held in high regard in what came to be the traditional church, which placed the power outside of yourself.  In Gnosticism and in the way this Gospel reads, it says to you that salvation is within, that it is attained through self-knowledge, through self- knowing; and it is not only through sensing the truth, but having the courage to follow the truth. And that is part of the reason that it was proclaimed in this particular Gospel that eventually Judas also ascended, because Judas could see the truth, and responded to the truth within.

I am not standing here saying to you that this Gospel is true. I’m also not standing here saying this Gospel is false. I sound like a politician, don’t I? What I am saying to you is that the tenets, on which so many in our culture and other cultures hang their hats as the scaffolding of absolute truth, is what is being challenged here.  That is what makes us blind. We do not have the eyes to see because we have let our culture – and we are all part of the mass cultural hypnosis – form our truths. As the shaman would say, we're part of the dream. We are the dream-builders that have created this dream that we all agree is real, and then we act accordingly. We have all agreed!  And part of my passion, as you know, is to knock over the sacred cows, because it is through the challenging of our beliefs that we learn to say, “What if?”

Our culture is immensely influenced by the very expressions of what we call Christianity, and yet many of us are not even aware that Christianity has a myriad roots in a myriad of belief systems. In our country’s Pledge of Allegiance we all say “one nation under God”, and “under God” was not put in there until the 1950’s.  Do you know why?  Because our forefathers recognized the potential danger of defining God in the way that we tend to do, because we become rigid and controlling.  What God? Whose God?

In Zen Buddhism there is the teaching of what is called the beginner’s mind, and the initial steps are not so much about learning as about unlearning, because there are so many tenets that we have been immersed in and that we have agreed to, and we are not even conscious of the agreement, but we act upon this belief.  And so the development of the beginner’s mind is to unlearn what has been taught. And you know that sounds really good on paper, but when we are challenged in this way and are told, “You don’t know anything”, we become indignant. “Yes, I do, how can you say that!  I know a lot.”  “Well, no you don’t. You don’t know anything” – and in that is freedom. Freedom comes from saying “I do not know” because only then can you learn, because that is the ultimate move into a state of humility and surrender, the surrendering of the grandiosity of our ego, which is all about control.

I read something recently that impressed me: when we live in our ego we live on the boundary, we don't live in the center. We live on the periphery of our being, and we move on this periphery and we think it is real. We react from the periphery. And when somebody challenges our periphery, challenges our identity, we react from our defense mechanisms. This particular writer is a Franciscan monk who runs a center for development in New Mexico and he has had hundreds of people from all different traditions come through his doors.  And he goes on to say that everyone says they want to go to their center.  You know you say, “Oh yes, I want to go the center of my being. Tell me how to get there.”  And his response is that the only way you can go is to be led. “What do you mean led? By gosh I'm a strong individual; I don't need anybody to lead me. Just show me the book, I’ll lead myself.”  Why is that?  Because we want to believe that we know or if we read a book we can find the way. That is the voice of ego.  Our ego has a sense of individualism which says, “I don't need to be led.”  The proverbial “I”.

Over and over again in the Nag Hammadi gospels - the Dead Sea Scrolls - as well as in the New Testament, there are references to having the eyes to see. In fact the healing ministry in the New Testament begins with the healing of someone who is blind, and ends before entering into Jerusalem with someone who is blind. We are blinded by our attachments; we are blinded by our insistence that we know; we are blinded by our rigidity; we are blinded by our unwillingness to embrace the relationship of life within ourselves. The nature of our relationship with life is an experience of duality, light and dark, comparison and separation.  It is a life that even by nature of our vision sees in contrasts.

In the Gospel of Judas he was told very clearly that he would become hated and defiled and that he would be the thirteenth and he would quickly be replaced, so that there would then be twelve. And in the Gospel Yeshua says that this is how it is going to come down and it is not going to look good for Judas, it is not going to turn out well – and be glad!  I like Judas’ response, which was, “And how bad is this?  And what is going to happen after it is bad?”  There is a key here, and part of the implication of this particular passage of the Gospel of Judas is that he will be taken off the wheel of life and death, in other words off the cycle of the twelve zodiacal signs, because he will no longer go through a gradual awakening, but he will awaken fully, because he has the eyes to see. He will see clearly and cut through the illusions, and therefore he will be the thirteenth, he will be taken out; and not only because he had the eyes to see, but because he followed the truth.  And he would be defiled and condemned for that because the world does not want him to see. The world is blind, and hates and punishes those who have the eyes to see. And Judas was told, “Be glad, be glad.”

There is something that occurs over and over in the Nag Hammadi texts, although it wasn’t ultimately translated out into most of our versions of the New Testament.  When Yeshua begins a teaching he starts with a phrase that is indicative of authority, and it is “Amen I say to you”. Now those who have studied the Egyptian mysteries know that “Amen” is a reference to Amun, the hidden one. Amen means the hidden one, because when you have clear sight you see that which is hidden.  We associate the eyes with true sight but our eyes tell us what we believe is real, and this is through the reflection of light and dark - that is how we see, right?  We see as a result of duality. We see as a result of comparison. When you have the eyes to see that which is hidden, you see beyond the role of comparison, beyond the role of duality.  You see to the truth of Oneness and you will be persecuted for that. That is the message in the Gospel of Judas. And that is the message that occurs in many ways, over and over again, in all traditions.

 It is very difficult for some of us to understand that we do not have the eyes to see.  In other words there is a bigger picture that is unfolding and it is arrogance to proclaim that we know what it is. On the other hand, just as Judas was called to affirm the truth in an action that would not be understood, and was told it would not be understood, so we are also called to hold to a truth.  One expression of our mass hypnosis is that we, as individuals and as a group, cannot and do not make a difference. But we are called to recognize, believe in, and know our center; and not live on the boundaries which our ego and society tells us is real, for then we react and act from those boundaries; but from our center we will have the eyes to see, and through that sight, respond.

Have the courage to be open-minded, to learn, to grow, and to change. I think that is the ultimate act of transformation, because transformation occurs in a space that is called the liminal moment, and liminal is a state that occurs when we are taken out of our comfort zone. Societies used to actually create liminal space by ritual and ceremony. They would take people and literally put them in transformative states, in a space that would challenge the way that they saw the world, because it was recognized that even in the openness of these societies they were becoming entrenched in the way that they saw the world. And going into this liminal space would challenge their perceptions, and then they would come out of that and it would give them an opportunity to take a different stance in their community, to be in their community in a different way.  Liminal space is created by us, for us, in many different ways. It can be by putting yourself into a culturally diverse situation where you're not entirely comfortable; it can be by reading something like the Gospel of Judas, particularly if it goes against your entrenched belief systems; it can be by having the courage to relinquish control of everything and everyone.

 It is said that in that liminal space there is a point of tension where your sense of control is challenged to the point that you choose to let go, and you fall out of your identity, and you fall into the arms of God. And so in this time in which messengers are coming forward in a myriad of ways, let us have the eyes to see and let us have the ears that hear.