Joseph Campbell, the Gospel of Thomas, and a glimpse through the veil

[AlpineXplorer]

I used to listen to a lot of Joseph Campbell in college. I would get drunk at the bar, then come home and just drool over his taped classroom lectures. There was something in what he was talking about. Something transcendent that spoke to a part of me nothing else had touched. All that beautiful mythology reached places my Southern Baptist upbringing just couldn’t. I’ve carried so much of those lectures with me over the years.

One thing that has always stayed with me is a passage he quoted from the Gospel of Thomas, saying 113:

His disciples said to him: “On what day will the kingdom come?”

“It will not come when it is expected. No one will say: ‘See, it is here!’ or: ‘Look, it is there!’ but the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it.”

I remember Campbell emphasizing that last bit: “AND MEN DO NOT SEE IT!”

He was pointing to eternity being here and now, hidden behind the veil of time. Already present, but unseen.

There’s something about the DMT experience that points in this same direction for me. Except that with DMT... I get a glimpse of it.

Maybe.

 

[TransistorBass]

But Women can see it...... can one of them let me know what it looks like?

 

[northape]

In Buddhism, they say that the Pure Land is right here, and due to our clouded perception, we simply don't see it.
Vimalakirti Sutra is a good read on this topic and many others. You can see the same notion in Advaita Vedanta and hints of it in neuroscience.
We just create a representation of what's out there, and our picture shifts depending on the person. Sages never saw a problem with the world.
Yes, suffering is real, yet it's real only for the dream character. When you finally wake up from your slumber, the picture is different.

What does it mean for you right now? That's the question. We are all still asleep. So doing your best feels like a given.