There’s a quote I keep seeing shared around social media from my fellow spiritual seekers. While I’m used to seeing quotes from the Buddha, Eckharte Tolle, or Deepak Chopra, seeing this line came as a surprise. Mainly because the “spiritual but not religious” sector of the social media world tends to have a large aversion to biblical scripture, as many practitioners exploring Eastern Spirituality tend to begin their path by rejecting the predominant Judeo-Christian leanings of their culture.
Nevertheless, the quote is an interesting one, and perhaps its particular specialness stems from it being open to interpretation. The verse in question comes from Verse 70 of the Gospel of Thomas, which goes:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
As with any sacred text, there are different ways to interpret and translate this verse from its original Coptic Language, such as:
- “That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you.”
- “If you produce what is in you, what you have will save you. If you do not have what is in you, what you do not have will kill you.”
What could this mean? What is within us? Why do we need to bring it forth? Why would it destroy us if we don’t? To fully understand this quote we must understand where it came from.
What is the Gospel of Thomas?
The history of the Gospel of Thomas is a fascinating one. For at least 1700 years, the text was one of thirteen leather bound books buried in a jar in Egypt. No one even knew it existed, until the books were discovered by a farmer in 1945. I can’t even imagine such a discovery, or the surprise the farmer got when scholars began to date the texts he found, realizing they went back to the first few centuries of the first millennia. Talk about a find!
The Gospel of Thomas is composed of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus himself. You can read them all here. The verse before reads:
(69) Jesus said, “Blessed are they who have been persecuted within themselves. It is they who have truly come to know the father. Blessed are the hungry, for the belly of him who desires will be filled.”
And the one after reads:
(71) Jesus said, “I shall destroy this house, and no one will be able to build it […].”
Although the sayings are quite biblical, they are not considered canon to the New Testament. The verse in question is saying number 70. Although we refer to it as the Gospel of Thomas, the author of the document is truly unknown. In the introduction, it says that Jesus spoke these words and “Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.” The text itself is closely tied to an early movement in Christianity known as Gnosticism, and discovery of this new library catalyzed new interest in the sect.
“Gnosis” is actually one of my favorite words. If you ever wondered where that “k” in the word know comes from, it is the Greek noun Gnosis, which means knowledge, most often referring to spiritual knowledge. We see this “gno” prefix come up in words like ignorance and agnostic.
The Divine
Before we get into more modern, psychological interpretations, we must first acknowledge that these are sayings believed to have come from Jesus, and thus should be interpreted in a Christian context. In this case, the “thing” that must be produced from “within” oneself is the sacred spark of the divine. Life in this case means salvation and a heavenly afterlife. If you do not recognize the spark of the divine within, your life is essentially over. Put in a more Gnostic context, the Gnostics believed that the principle element of salvation is a direct knowledge of our hidden divinity.
Purpose
Perhaps the biggest reason this quote has been picked up by spiritual communities is it can be interpreted to mean one’s own unique purpose. Life in this case, is living true to oneself, to the unique path we are all meant to be walking. Death in this case, is not living the life we are supposed to be living.
If we discover our purpose and live it, it will lead to a path of joy and reward beyond measure. If instead we follow a path that our parents, society, or culture, tells us we should be living, it is a kind of death in itself.
This interpretation reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Sherri Mitchell,
We all come into this world with a set of instructions. These instructions guide us toward our highest purpose. They lead us to the essential truths that live deep within us. This truth is encoded into our DNA. It is embedded in our genetic memory. It vibrates within us on a cellular level. Every element of life carries this vibration. Every living being has its own vibrational tone. When these tones are combined, they form the voice of creation. If we learn to listen closely, we can begin to hear that voice and allow it to guide our steps through life. Then we can begin to attune our daily actions with our higher purpose and become who we were meant to be.
One of the best things we can do is be true to ourselves. We can discover our own unique gifts, talents, and passions. I believe we all have a unique gift to offer the world, and not just one purpose, but many that we can fulfill. This is one of the things that makes life worth living.
Trauma
The previous two interpretations look at what is “within” as a positive thing, but we can interpret the statement the opposite way. Just as Carl Jung tells us we must integrate our own darkness, “what is within us” could be trauma and negative conditioning that only creates pain and suffering in our lives. If we don’t bring forth our darkness, then it will destroy us.
The Thai teacher Ajahn Chah said that there are two kinds of suffering. There’s the kind you run away from, and the kind that you are willing to face. The first kind will follow you for the rest of your life, the second one is the only place you can find liberation and a wide open heart.
There is a strong correlation between those that experience trauma in their life and drug addiction. That’s because drug use can be a coping mechanism to numb the pain of past experiences. Unfortunately that path leads to destruction. If trauma is brought forth in a safe and supportive context, like in somatic therapy, it will save the participant’s life and future. In this way, our pain turns into medicine.
What do you think? How do you interpret this famous saying? Let me know in the comments below.
