From miser17@epix.net Wed Jun  3 00:42:15 1998
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:11:02 -0400
From: Michael Davies <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Thomas 24

I ws just sitting around amusing myself by reading Quantum
Electrodynamics and what do I find but a little bit on the history
of the theory of sight. 

"early philosophers thought that light originated in the eyes, reaching 
out like the beam of a lighthouse, or like the stick of a blind 
person, to 'feel' the nature of the world at large. Empedocles, who 
lived in the fifth century BC ... described how Aphrodite had 
fashioned the human eye out of the four elements, held together by 
love. She kindled the fire of the eye at the hearth fire of the 
Universe, so that it would act like a lantern, transmitting the fire 
of the eye out into the world and making sight possible. .... Euclid,
who lived from about 330 BC to about 260BC worried ... about the
speed with which sight worked. He pointed out that if you close your 
eyes, then open them again, even the distant stars reappear 
immediately in your sight, although the influence of sight has had to 
travel all the way from your eyes to the stars and back again before 
you can see them. Strange as these ideas seem to us, they do not 
apear to have been seriously challenged (except maybe by
Lucretius) until the end of the first millenium after Christ."

This is the first I'd heard of that idea. Anybody know anything?

Think on this:

GTh 24b)   "Whoever has ears, let him hear. There is
light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole
world. If he does not shine, he is darkness."

Now, what you have here seems to be a commonsense (then)
statement about the nature of sight. You see by virtue of the
fact that your light illuminates the world. 

Matthew 6:22-23
"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole 
body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body 
will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness,
how great is that darkness! 

Here we find the idea of "the light within you" having two possible
modalities: darkness or light. Strange.

Luke 13:34-36
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, 
your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your 
body also is full of darkness. 

Here the "eye is the lamp of your body" presumably means 
that the eye radiates light into the world. What seems to be
of more interest to Jesus is "the light within you". The
light within a man of light. 

>From the Thomasine perspective this sort of thing is worked
out in an interesting way. The world known to you is produced
by your light (standard antique optics). Thomas 77a on this:  
Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them
all. It is I who am all things. From me did everything come forth, and
unto me did everything extend." 

You produce the world for yourself. 
77 then is a statement that can be made by any sighted
person... when you illuminate the world everything comes forth and
extends back to you. It doesn't take much imagination to discover
that if your light (which is part of you, after all) is reflected 
back to you from the world, then you have produced the world
and are the world as you know it. This isn't "mysticism" but
optics!

However, there are two forms of light "light" and "darkness." 
And there are two forms of world:

113) His disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?"
     <Jesus said,> "It will not come by waiting for it. It will
not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather,
the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men
do not see it."

So, how do you "see" the Kingdom of the Father? You see it
by lighting up the whole world IN A PARTICULAR WAY different
than the normal way. Perhaps the normal way is described as
"when the light within you is darkness." When a man of light
lights up the world it is the kingdom of the Father. So the
light/kingdom within produces the light/kingdom outside.

Luke 17:20-21 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the 
kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God 
does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 
`Here it is,' or `There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within  
you." 

or Thomas 3 "the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you"

So, as Jesus would have it, the light within illumines/produces
the Kingdom outside. Kingdom isn't any particular place, but
everywhere. 

Steve