Saying 22 — Becoming Like Children
Thomas Saying 22's teaching on entering the Kingdom by making the two one is one of the most radical descriptions of non-dual awareness in the Gnostic canon.
Gospel of Thomas Saying 22: 'Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples: These infants being suckled are like those who enter the Kingdom... When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same... then you will enter the Kingdom.' This teaching of unification — making the two one — is the Gnostic path toward liberation: the dissolution of all binary oppositions (inside/outside, above/below, male/female) into a primordial unity that precedes division. The infant being suckled symbolizes this pre-differentiation state — before the social self with its categories, oppositions, and identities has crystallized. The Gnostic path is not forward into greater complexity but backward (or inward) toward the original undivided wholeness. This resonates powerfully with non-dual contemplative traditions across cultures: Advaita's recognition of non-separation, Zen's 'original face before your parents were born.'
When you make the two one... then you will enter the Kingdom.
Philosopher Ken Wilber's 'integral theory' — which seeks to integrate all apparent opposites (masculine/feminine, interior/exterior, individual/collective) into a unified framework — is a contemporary secular elaboration of the same integrative vision that Thomas Saying 22 articulates as the condition for entering the Kingdom.
Nag Hammadi Library