Analogue 3: The Metaphysical Hierarchy

Video Introduction to Analogue 3 by Lynn Bauman

ANALOGUE 3

The Metaphysical Hierarchy

 

 

Those who sow in winter, reap in the summer. Winter symbolizes the world-system (the kosmos), and summer, the Great Age, (the Aion), the realm of transcendence. Let us sow, therefore, in this world that we may reap in the summertime. For this reason, we are not asked to pray for harvest in the wintertime, but for the summer, which comes from winter. If one tries to reap in the wintertime it only uproots the field, and there is no harvest. This approach is fruitless since nothing emerges in the winter, and, as a result, in that other realm—the true Sabbath—the fields become barren.

 

 

Synopsis

 

• The implicit metaphysics of the wisdom tradition and the wisdom of Yeshua—traditional metaphysical principles behind Yeshua's wisdom teachings and his seeming.

• Traditional metaphysical principles (deep structures) behind space and time—basic understanding that the future is already at work in the present moment. This is the basis for all spiritual work that combines the horizontal with the vertical axis.

• This analogue expressed an embedded structure and the contemporaneous nature of transcendent Reality versus the serial nature of temporality. In temporal reality seasons are serial. In eternal reality they are contemporaneous—the summer season is already NOW, it is not future.

• We are always at work in both realms whether we are aware of it or not.

• True spiritual work in this world is agricultural in nature—planting and harvesting—which take place within the field of human souls (or even perhaps within the original garden, the homeland of collective humanity).

• The seeds of eternal life are being planted in the ground of Being.

• Planting and harvesting are going on simultaneously and contemporaneously but in different realms, the winter is embedded in the summer. These seasons are of course metaphors of multidimensional reality.

• This activity involves both movement and rest. We are moving and working in the winter, and mysteriously we are also resting in the Ultimate

• Realities of summer in the Eternal Now, which holds the work and fruits of our labor from the winter’s work.

• Sapiential activity takes place in both dimensions—planting here and harvesting there (laying up treasure and storing it there).

• This is the work of “seeding the universe” — with the seeds-beyond- biological life and are meant to germinate here and come to completion there.

• We could call this another, more ancient, understanding of panspermia—seeing the universe not just with biological life, but divine Life.

COMMENTARY

 

This Gospel, like the Gospel of John, begins with a deep dive into realities that are quite beyond our normal perceptions—into transcendent and imminent realities that evade ordinary ways of thinking and experiencing. A principle feature of our experience on earth is time itself. We know time on a moment to moment basis, and we have memory of our experiences in time like a river moving out of the future into the present moment on into the past. Modern physics has called time “the fourth dimension,” which of course combines with the three dimensions of space. Together they constitute the warp and woof of our space-time experience and reality as human beings on this planet.

 

 

The Metaphysics of the Gospel

 

The wisdom traditions teach that our ordinary definitions and descriptions of space-time, while perhaps true scientifically, are metaphysically limited. Ultimate Reality includes many more dimensions than the four we normally experience. They also teach that there is more than one kind of time (the linear temporal sequence that we typically know in this dimension), There is the experience of what can be known of as the Eternal Now. This is, of course, difficult for the human mind to fathom since we are time-bound to the cycles of Sun and to the planetary rotations in out solar system located in this sector of the galaxy. Modern physics plays with time and space according to the principles of General Relativity, which stretches and changes time in ways that are strange to our normal perceptions. It also posits the existence of other unseen dimensions that are implicit to our explicit reality (in the way that David Bohm explained implicate and explicate reality). Sacred traditions, however, go beyond even those concepts and introduces us to other categories of temporality such as timelessness: an understanding of the Eternal Now where all times and places exit all at once and in the same moment. These understandings are part of what are called traditional Metaphysics.

Interestingly, this ancient text of the Gospel of Philip uses these metaphysical understandings at its beginning to expand our sense of time beyond the temporal into the transcendental, use it the concept of two realms being embedded inside one another. Using the simple analogue of summer and winter time, it introduces new categories of thought concerning time. According to this Gospel, these are not sequential, but simultaneous. Summer and winter are metaphors for multiple realms and realities that we need to understand as we work upon the earth, but often do not. These concrete terms (summer and winter time), are very typical of Semitic discourse in explaining transcendent realities, appearing to be the precise way Yeshua himself taught his students. These two terms, understood metaphorically, were the way he explained the many mysteries that lie beyond our normal experience and perception of space and time.

 

 

Agricultural Metaphor

In this analogue, in addition to these seasonal metaphors, Philip also uses the agricultural activities that occur during these two seasons—planting and harvesting. We understand that little or nothing is harvested in the wintertime, only in summer (and perhaps also in the fall). But in many places around the globe important planting is done precisely in the winter months. For example, winter wheat is typically planted when the fields are cold and appear to be fallow. During this cold season wheat is sown so that as the earth warms, it begins to sprout and even show itself. Later on, as the seasons change and the weather becomes warmer, it comes to full fruition. In the full sun of the summer months it grows tall, greens completely, and then turns golden, when it can be harvested.

This analogue makes the point that if you were to harvest winter wheat before it is fully ripe and golden, it not only ruins the wheat but destroys the field, so that when the time for harvest actually comes, everything is wasted and torn apart. Nothing comes from that activity. This is an obvious point in agriculture, but it is not so obvious to us in spiritual activity. We are often only interested in seeing immediate results, well before their time and readiness.

Using these simple metaphors, this text becomes metaphysically sophisticated. It teaches that our whole life-span on earth is actually an experience of wintertime. We have lived here in what might be called a “spiritual winter.” If you understand this, then all the activities while you are living here in this season are actually a meant only as a season of planting. Sowing seed now is your task. This is meant to be our main work.

Harvesting obviously follows planting sequentially. In linear time it is a future event and we must wait for it, but in this analogue something strange and mysterious is proposed. The Gospel of Philip suggests that summertime already exists metaphysically in another dimension. It is not sequential at all. Summertime is actually going on in a parallel realm concurrent to wintertime in this one. To visualize it we might embed the circle of wintertime in a much larger circle of summertime which encompasses winter as a great fullness, realizing what has been planted is already showing itself in the realm of Summer. To understand this more clearly, imagine that as something is being planted here in wintertime, it is in the process of coming to full fruition, ready for harvest in summertime in what this text calls the Great Age (which we might understand as the Eternal Now—where all things are already present and existing together).

  

Time and Eternity

All of time existing all at once in the Eternal Now is a difficult concept to imagine. It is metaphysically complex and a spiritually sophisticated understanding of what is really going on in both time and eternity. Eternity, in this case, would not be vastly extended amounts of time going on and on for ever and ever into the future, but is an Age where time as such is not sequential at all, but everything that exists is immediately present and real. What was done in the winter-time sequence, therefore, would be fully realized and already available in the summer of the Eternal Now, which suggests its other meaning as a the true Sabbath time (the realm of eternal peace and rest).

This teaching is, of course, one of the greater mysteries of traditional wisdom. Yeshua apparently understood it, and this description is perhaps the only way he could teach and convey it. At the very least, this is the means by which Philip presented it to his own students. To fully understand the message of the Gospel of Philip, it is necessary to grasp these two important metaphysical categories of temporality and eternity, and then understand their relationship and what takes place within and between them. This understanding will allow us to move forward into even deeper mysteries being taught in this Gospel text.

These distinctions will also affect the way we think about our work (as well as our meaning and purpose) in the world. They will help us understand that we must not always look for or demand outcomes and results here in space and time, but patiently await their fruits which may never be fully realized here or at all (perhaps much to our disappointment). They are, however, already appearing or alive within Eternity. Here we are to tend the work of planting and gardening with care and love, watering and providing a kind watchful eye over what shall eternally be. This shift in perspective allows us to experience more of the state that rests its demands in outcomes larger than our own. Is is the state of rest called Sabbath, which is also a trusting state, and one that is able to practice loving-kindness and equanimity toward all because the summertime of the Great Age holds everything in its fullness.

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND PRAXIS

1. It is important for you to carefully understand the metaphors that are being used here. How does the explanation in the commentary strike you? Does this diagram of the embedded circles or hierarchies explaining transcendence and temporality makes sense to you?

Transcendence & Temporality

2. Can you imagine that the actual condition of life in space time is like living in the winter? How do you experience wintertime? What is it like to live in the winter? It need not be necessarily terrible of course, but it is limited. There are some activities that you can do in the wintertime, but typically we think of our outdoor activities expanding through spring and summer seasons. Contrast these in your experience. Now apply them to the two dimensions of temporal space-time experience and to the realm of transcendence which often seems far off and distant to us.

3. Using the agricultural metaphor as an explanation, what does planting in this world actually entail? Are there other activities that need to be done before planting? What are they? After planting is there any activity? Journal your observations.

4. Can you imagine that if you are planting here in the realm of time, maturing and harvesting is taking place, present or already accomplished in the realm of the Great Age (or the Eternal Now)? What difference would that make to the way you think about your lifetime now on earth? Would it change your worries or anxieties in any way?

5. Try to imagine and describe the spiritual or metaphysical summertime.

How do you imagine it? Journal your sense of this. If you can, share and discuss with other students engaged with this text your observations and imaginings.

6. Spend time with the images provided in the gallery of the illuminations for Philip to help you explore and understand these complex metaphysical categories. What do you see in these images? How do they help to illumine this text? How do they help you understand metaphysics in a more personal or practical way? Journal your observations after spending contemplative time with the images in the practice of Midrash or personal Visio Divina.

7. Think about how you would explain all of this to someone who does not live with or understand the categories of metaphysics transcendent to space and time.

Notes

A. In the teaching of traditional metaphysical principles, a deep structure is said to be hidden behind the dimensions and surface structure of the space and time. We can at least postulate these hidden realities in the same way we do unseen dimensions in contemporary physics at the micro-level and astrophysics at the macro-level. A basic rule of the Philippian metaphysics implicit in this text is this: the future is always working in and surrounding the present moment. An understanding of this is a principle of all spiritual work in this world.

B. A deeper, embedded structure of time is actually the contemporaneous fullness of time that constitutes ultimate Reality. In the reality we know now, we constantly experience the serial nature of temporality as it flows, seemingly, in one direction. Time and events pass linearly: past, present, future. In metaphysical understanding Eternity is timeless. All time is simultaneous present and available. In temporal reality seasons are serial. In eternal reality they are contemporaneous -- the summer season is already NOW, it is not future, but we who live in the world are doing our work in both realms.

C. Spiritual work in this world could be thought of as a form of gardening which involves planting and harvesting, taking place within the “field” of the human soul. Our work is not with objects but with living beings where we are tending the garden of the soul, but also occurring within the dimension of space and time. The seeds of eternal life are being sown and planted in the ground of human being. This involves both movement and rest. We are moving and working in the winter, and we are resting in the Ultimate Realities which are the fruits of our labors in the summer of the eternal now which holds the work and the working. Planting and harvesting are going on simultaneously and contemporaneously but in different realms, the winter is embedded in the summer. These are, of course, metaphors.

D. The term Sabbath (the sacred day of rest in the Jewish world) indicates, again, that this is a text coming from the Jewish world with its rites and rituals. If we consider that this word also has reference to the ending of the first creation after the six days of work, we might understand that the author is suggesting the realm of rest after completing the new creation, presages the one that is arising out of the hard work that has been done in the wintertime in that same creation. Earth experience is the seed bed for the fruits and harvest to be enjoyed in the ream of Eternal Rest. But the analogue raises this question, could that Realm, as this text hints, also know barrenness because of a futile strategy to do something in this realm that is not possible?

E. In the early texts using the Greek language (and implicit in Coptic because it uses the Greek language as a part of its syntactical structure and semantics), there is a distinction made between chronos (chronological time) and kairos (the right moment for something to occur). Chronological time is simply sequential time following the cycles of day and night, month following month, and year after year. “Kairotic time” (to perhaps coin a new phrase) means to become aware of when it is the right time to do something. With children, we wait for the teachable moment. Often we can also sense when the optimal moment arrives to do something, where the least effort will have the greatest effect. Something like that also happens in spiritual work. When is the right time to do spiritual planting, for example. When is the right time to act, work, speak or make the next move? In the spiritual realm this involves a kind of inner knowing or spiritual intuition that the heart knows an the mind may not completely understand. These categories may come into play as we contemplate this Gospel text and how to work with (and in) both temporality and transcendence.

F. Analogues 48, 60, 63 are in some respects related to this one. Mark these for future reference.

 

 

Footnotes to the Translation

 

• In this meditation the contrast is between winter; the system of this world (the kosmos, or systemic-evil as it is used by Paul in the New Testament), and summer; the world of transcendence (the aion, the Great Age transcendent to, but containing, space-time).

• Concerning prayer in this age, the original text suggests that it is entirely inappropriate to be made to pray so that harvest will occur in the winter. Philip then gives all the reasons this is so. The implication is that we want to see results in this world, but striving for harvest (visible results) now is counterproductive, or fruitless and negatively affects the Greater World.

• The world of transcendence, the Great Age, is also called Sabbath, the place of repose, or rest. That world, where harvest occurs, is in contrast to this one where the labor of sowing is our responsibility.