Back to the Garden

About Back to the Garden

Back to the garden is a podcast dedicated to the inquiry of philosophical/theological questions and topics that have challenged mankind since the time man reached self awareness. The aim is to aid those in search for a better understanding of man's role and purpose in the universe. My starting point I share with Socrates: I am the wisest man in the world, for I know that I know nothing. Welcome! tomas (tommy) deleon

Publisher

rev. tomas de león

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Jan 2015

Latest episode

23 Nov 2025

Latest episodes

54 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   23 Nov 2025

   The Gospel of John (Part 5)

   This is the 5th, and last part of a series on the Gospel of John. We have learned many things. For starters, just as with the others, we don’t know who wrote this book. We also learned that it was the last to be written, some forty years after the first, and seventy years after the death of Jesus. From the perspective of orally handed down stories, that is a very long time for stories to be circulating. It is not hard to imagine they changed along the way before they were finally written down. To further muddy the waters, we don’t have any of the original documents. What we have are copies from a couple of hundred years later. As such some have raised the question of whether these were really the words of Jesus, or of an author trying to make his point of view known? We have no way of knowing with absolute certainty, but there are clues that Biblical Scholars can pick up for insight into this question. Many have made this effort. One such group of scholars, The Jesus Seminar, actually concluded that essentially the entire Gospel of John are not the words of Jesus. In Unity we turn our attention to the words or ideas from this book that would come from a mystic, and when we do, we do find them in this spiritual book.

2. 

   22 Nov 2025

   The Gospel of John (Part 4)

   This is the 4th part of a series on the Gospel of John. Episode one began with an overview of all the Gospels. My intention was to show both what they share, and how they differ. Among what they share is that we don’t know who wrote them. They are not eye-witness accounts. They were written generations later, in a different language. They differ, in that each portrays a different Jesus. In Mark, (the first Gospel written), Jesus is a simple itinerant preacher. In Matthew he is the Jewish Messiah, In Luke, the prophet and teacher, and in John (the last to be written) Jesus is the Cosmic Christ. In weeks two and three, we began to examine the Gospel of John from the perspective of the cosmic consciousness revealing itself through this book. From this point of view, what Unity calls a metaphysical interpretation, every character, every event, every word takes on significant meaning as some aspect of our Being, or of a transcendent idea. Some examples we covered were: “The word”, as the infinite potentialities of Being. The lamb of God, as the consciousness that removes error thought from the mind of the individual who has reached that level of realization. John the Baptist as the illumined natural man. Meaning that stage in us when we reach intellectual knowledge of a higher reality, thus begin the journey to the unfolding of the Cosmic Consciousness within. Finally, we addressed Jesus as the voice of the universal consciousness, speaking not as the Redeemer of Sin, but as the Revealer of Truth. Thus, when we hear Jesus make the I AM statements, or say to Nicodemus that he must be born again, he is not making human references, he is speaking as the divine essence within each of us.

3. 

   21 Nov 2025

   The Gospel of John (Part 3)

   Two episodes ago I started a new series on the Gospel of John. In episode one I spend some time doing “set-up work” about, not only Gospel of John, but all the Gospels. My intention was to help you understand the history of these gospels—to put them in perspective. Epiode two we dove into some of the abundant spiritual meaning in the book. Three of the major topics covered were (1) the metaphysical meaning of the person John the Baptist as the forerunner to the coming of the Christ consciousness. From Charles Fillmore we get that John the Baptist represents the “illuminated natural man”. This means that in the ever-evolving process, John the Baptist represents the stage in us when we awaken intellectually to the idea of a greater reality. The mind eventually realizes that “baptizing with water” (knowledge of the physical world), is but a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord (the coming of our greater consciousness—Spirit awareness). The prologue to the Gospel reads “and the light shineth in the darkness and darkness apprehended it not”. That is to mean that we are spirit beings, yet unaware of it. We also covered the idea that, (2) spiritually speaking, “in the beginning” is the ever present here and now. So that at any moment we want to change our mind, change our world, that becomes our new beginning. Finally we talked about (3) “the word”. How both John and Genesis 1 make clear that in the beginning there was “the word” and nothing else. I posed the question: what IS this word? Charles Fillmore writes: “The Greek word (logos) cannot be adequately translated into English. In the original it denotes wisdom, judgement, power, and in fact, all inherent potentialities of Being.” Thus, in the beginning (now) there is ever all the inherent potentialities of Being before us awaiting the unfolding of our consciousness into that awareness.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.