John 14, I Am Path, Reality, and Life, Revised From "The Practice of the Way"

 

Don’t let your heart be upset; put your trust into God and into Me. There are many homes within the house of My Father; yet if not, would I have told you that I am going to fix up a place for you? And if I should go and fix up a place for you, I am coming again and I will receive you from here to Myself, so that where I am you also would be. And you know the Path to where I am going. Th’oma says to Him, “Mar, we don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the Path?” Yeshua says to him, “I am Path¹ and Reality and Life; no one comes to the Father if not through Me. If you knew Me by experience, you also knew My Father by experience. And from this point you know Him by experience and have seen Him.” Filippos says to Him, “Mar, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Yeshua says to him, “I am with you for this much of a time and you haven’t known Me by experience, Filippos? The person having seen Me has seen the Father; how then are you saying, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you trust that I am within the Father and the Father is within Me? The words which I tell you I don’t talk from Myself, but the Father making His home within Me does His works. Trust Me that I am within the Father and the Father is within Me; but if not, trust because of the works themselves. Amen amen I tell you, the person putting his trust into Me the deeds which I am doing that person will also do and will do better than these, because I am going to the Father; and whatever thing you would ask with My name this thing I will do, so that the Father would be glorified with the Son; if you should ask Me anything with My name I will do it.

If you love Me, you will keep these commands of Mine; and I will request from the Father and He will give to you another Advocate, so that It would be with you into the eon, the Pneuma of Reality, which the order of this world can’t accept, because it doesn’t observe It neither does it know It by experience; you know It by experience, because It makes Its home by your side and will be within you. I will not drop you like orphans, I am coming to you. There is still a little time and the universe is no longer a spectator of Me, but you are a spectator of Me; because I am alive you also will be alive. On that day you will know by experience that I am within My Father and you are within Me and I am within you. That person having My commands and keeping them is the one loving Me; and the person loving Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will make Myself visible to him.” Y’hudah, not from Kerioth, says to Him, “Mar, what has happened that you are intending to make Yourself visible to us and not to the universe?” Yeshua answered and said to him, if someone loves Me he will keep tMy logos, and My Father will love him and we will come to him and we will make a home by his side. The person not loving Me doesn’t keep My logos; and the logos which you hear isn’t Mine but of the Father who sent Me.”

“I had talked to you about these things while making My home by your side; yet the Advocate, the Holy Pneuma, which the Father will send with My name, that One will teach you everything and remind you of everything which I told you. I let peace fall out of My hand to you. I am giving you the peace which is Mine; not just like the order of this world gives am I giving it to you. Don’t let your heart be upset neither let it be cowardly. You heard that I told you, ‘I am going and coming to you.’ If you were loving Me you would have been rejoicing that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than Me. And now I have told you before the happening, so that when it should happen you would trust [Me]. I will not talk a lot with you any longer because the head of the order of this world is coming; and he holds nothing by means of Me, but so that the universe would know by experience that I love the Father, and I am doing in the way just like the Father commanded Me. Get up, we are going from here.”

1Yeshua’s disciples would later be known as “Followers of the Path” or “Way.” Interestingly enough, this brings to mind the Eastern concept of the Tao, which literally means, in Chinese, “way, road, or path,” similar to the Greek οδος. However, like the Greek λογος, it also refers to the underlying principle of the universe. The Tao, like St. Paul described of God in Romans 1, is nameless and ineffable, but can be understood by observing nature and the flow of nature, and can refer to both itself and the practice of it.