Saying 106
Jesus said, “When you make the two one, you will become sons of man, and when you say, ‘Mountain, move away,’ it will move away.”
In saying 22 above, Jesus uses the phrase “when you make the two one” to emphasize the reality of Oneness and the illusion of separation as an essential factor in unlocking access to the Kingdom of God. Here, he returns to this idea of “making the two one” as a catalyst for becoming “sons of man” and for unlocking the kind of faith that can move mountains.
There is a disagreement between scholars regarding the use of the phrase “sons of man” which Jesus never uses in this Gospel in a positive way. In the New Testament Gospels, Jesus is often found using the phrase “son of man” about himself in a Messianic/Prophetic sense, but in Thomas the only use of this phrase [found in saying 86 above] is a negative one where Jesus says that those who are merely “sons of man” [literally “sons of Adam”] are children of the physical realm where the illusion of separation is accepted as reality.
With this in mind, scholars like William G. Duffy suggest that the term here should more accurately be read as “Sons of God.” His argument is that, throughout the Gospel of Thomas, the phrase “sons of man” is used only twice to refer to the unenlightened ones [especially in saying 86], and that Jesus never refers to himself in Thomas as “the son of man” or even as uniquely the Son of God [as if he, alone were the only one who deserved such a title].
In fact, Jesus often refers to those who see the Truth of Oneness as “sons of the Living Father” [saying 3], “sons of the Living One” [saying 37], and refuses to be called “Master” [saying 13]. Therefore, Duffy suggests that a later scribe may have balked at the use of the term “Sons of God” to refer to anyone other than Jesus and changed it to the term “sons of man” to soften the impact.
Perhaps Duffy is right in this case and the saying is more properly understood to be a reference to “Sons of God” who see reality as it really is and understand that the two are really one. Once they begin to see the Universe clearly and reorient their minds around the idea of Divine Unity, they realize that obstacles [like physical mountains that stand in our way] are an illusion.
This realization gives us real power over the world around us. When our eyes are open to the fabricated world of separation, we become awakened to the reality that all things are One with the Divine. We realize, like Neo in the film The Matrix that “there is no spoon”, and that what we see around us is a projection of our own minds. Waking up to this truth is what makes us into the “Sons of God” who have eyes to see things as they truly are.
What’s needed for this transformation of perception to take place is to “make the two one.” In other words, to see that there are not two [or distinct] objects or people in God’s Kingdom, but only one divine reality where everything flows from the Source and is connected to the Source.
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My book on the Gospel of Thomas, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas”, releases on Tuesday, April 23 on Amazon.
Available on Kindle and Paperback HERE>
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.” He hosts the Second Cup with Keith podcast, and co-hosts the Apostates Anonymous podcast, and the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast.
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