Analogue 26: Immortal Dye

 ANALOGUE 26

God is a dyer in the same way that colors called true or permanent are used for dying the things placed into them. This is the heart of the matter—God uses dyes that are not perishable, but are permanent—immortal colors, and plunges those immersed in it into an abundance of water.

• Whatever the problem is for humanity, however it has been defined, this analogue presents the antidote and cure for humankind’s loss of nobility described in the preceding analogue. 
• It uses the metaphor of dying a woven fabric to infuse it (perhaps the tapestry of humanity) with divine color or quality.
• We could imagine that in its current state the fabric of humanity is lackluster—dulled and without color. 
• The purpose of dying is not just to change the surface but to infuse color into the very nature of the threads themselves, leaving nothing untouched by the color or the divine beauty. 
• While some dyed colors are perishable and impermanent, God uses dyes that are indelible, imperishable and immortal. 
• This permanent color is in the living water into which a human being is plunged. 
• The first act of spiritual recovery is immersion into living water and being dyed with divine, imperishable and permanent color. Whatever goes into those waters comes out differently.  
• This is at the heart of the matter—the central core issue —of humanity’s journey.

COMMENTARY

A New Metaphor

Through the use of a very simple but powerful metaphor, the author begins to explain the divine activity and agency taken toward the well-being of humankind. It is like thread, fabric, or cloth being dyed by color that it lacked, coming out of the waters into which it was immersed, vividly different than it was before. This act is about changing the nature of the very “fiber of humankind” by bathing it in divine qualities. It is about the essence of the “essential self” which is being permanently formed in the soul. A fresh metaphor to the western traditions, it is a step in another direction from being “bathed in the blood of Jesus”: it is about being baptized into the waters of divine life and changed in essence and quality—an ultimate deification (or theosis) of humankind.  

Through the use of the analogical imagination, we are able to see ourselves as originally colorless. What color is to the natural world (bringing vibrance and beauty to the human eye), the divine elements are to humankind, giving new qualities to the core of our being and restoring our lost nobility. We are made beautiful by the divine qualities. This teaching about virtue and quality has been at the heart of sapiential tradition, and it does not have to do with changes in behavior (stopping sinful behavior, for example) but rather with taking on deeper, richer qualities and virtues that actually belong to God, our original Source. These can be added to (dyed into) our own being through divine action. When human beings are suffused with them through contact with the living waters of Eternity, these transcendent elements make human beings beautiful, bringing them to  the permanent state or station of a qualified being (a being infused with divine quality). 

Divine Quality is Humanity’s Nobility

The divine desire is to infuse qualities of being into humankind through contact with the flow of the eternal element of living water, but this requires an abundance of the living water (which later in this Gospel is said to offer hope for humankind.) This is the restoration to humankind of grandeur, greatness, magnificence and beauty that it has lacked. And in this context it is the hope that the elements of the divine virtues and qualities will be permanent, not just passing or temporary features. We are told clearly that this process is the heart of the matter. We are introduced to sacramental or sacred action where, in this world, the divine enters into the very fabric of our being and we begin to experience fundamental ontological change. 

The means for this sacred action is being plunged into living water flowing from Eternity into time. One must imagine not only water’s cleansing properties but its ability to carry the necessary colors that penetrate and permeate one’s being. The water of life itself (or perhaps, life as water) is the carrier for this change of being through the infusion of qualities that come from the divine Source. We do not need to be taken out of this world for this action to occur; instead we need to be brought and plunged into it more fully. Immersion into life has a way of conveying the divine sacrament—the grace that changes human nature, coloring it according to the highest standards of divine beauty. 

Permanent Ontological Change

There are temporary changes that humans can obviously make, but there are also permanent (or ontological) changes of being that remain permanent. When humans are plunged into life’s troubled waters repeatedly, one notices whether or not the colors fade or remain no matter what. The divine is aiming for permanence, for eternal and long-lasting transformational change, for the virtues and qualities to remain even in the midst of the vicissitudes of life. This appears to be the dying process. 

This is also “the heart of the matter” and begins to give definition to our understanding of nobility—the subject of the previous analogue. Nobility entails the ontology of being (the realm and dimension of our fundamental nature), not simply behavioral changes forced on us by the changing conditions around us. A plant or an animal may change its outer form in response to seasonal change or weather patterns (the color of an animal’s fur, for example.) But in evolution there is also something more fundamental called mutational change, a transformation at a much deeper level, from which an entirely new creature (or species of that creature) emerges. The divine aim is not simply to produce a change in our thought processes or our actions at a surface level (though these may indeed change and need to be changed), but the divine aim is transmutations at the very heart of our being. These transformations, then, are kardial in nature, made at the deep core of human beings, out of which a new nobility arises from the level of the heart (the heart of the matter). 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. When you think about what qualities give a human being an inner beauty, what can you identify? There are major or cardinal virtues and these obviously vary in different cultures and systems of thought and theology, but how would you define them? Make a list of virtues or qualities that give human beings deep color and how they relate to the divine world. You might want to explore this topic online and see what you find. 
2. This simple metaphor gives us insight into a very profound sense of how the divine work is taking place in this world. It is through sacramental (sacred or alchemical) action. How does thinking of the dying process of fabric help you to understand how God sees and treats things (especially human beings) in this world?
3. From this analogue forward, the idea of an “essential self” begins to be explored in a series of new teachings about changing the essence of a human being—changing humanity’s very ontological core. Think about what might be your essential being as opposed to your non-essential self. God appears to be interested in the former and not the latter.
4. Can you imagine yourself being dyed through life’s waters, a baptism into colors? What is that like? You have already experienced it to some degree. What have you noticed? How is hope related to this process?
5. A sacramental action in theological language is an action whereby the sacred gets into our world to do its work, bringing about transformational (or alchemical) change. The Gospel of Philip will introduce five such agents of divine action or change and the agenda of God through what we will call the Philippian sacraments. Can you name or list the sacraments of the western tradition? What has been your experience of them? Philip ties his list of sacraments not to rites in the Church but to older rites of Jewish temple worship; you might do an online exploration of the ancient temples of Judaism (both in Jerusalem and outside of it) and their ritual acts. 
6. Colors are often related to qualities and states of human being. Do you use any color coding for this? What are your favorite colors? What qualities might they represent? It might be interesting to think about the divine virtues in terms of colors and color-coding. 
7. Can you imagine a coloring book where the patterns (or images) are laid out in black and white, but then you have to fill the blank spaces with color—the colored image suddenly “pops into view” and the original pattern is now beautiful to your eye. To understand this metaphor more fully, try your hand at a coloring book (perhaps a more adult one). What do you sense from this activity? This is said to the “heart of the matter.” What does that phrase mean?

Notes for further Reference and Study

1. The nature of human being is variable, ranging from surface details like moods and temporary patterns of behavior to the structural depths of human character even beneath the personality (sometimes called the temperamental foundations) We can detect when a person’s character is shallow and fickle, which would mean that it is impermanent and constantly changing according to the impermanence of the world around it. We can also see what a person’s character is like when it is well formed, not subject to swiftly changing moods or alterations in the environment. One of the definitions of the divine Reality is that it is changeless. The divine qualities (what we might imagine to be the “character of God”) remain constant or absolute no matter the circumstances. To know that these essences in the divine nature are permanent (always available, impervious to time or to any of the anthropomorphic aspects of mood), is something fundamentally important and reassuring. Though we project all sorts of things from our own experience onto the divine Reality (particularly our changing moods and emotions), the divine qualities never change. They never lessen or fade, and from a human standpoint are eternally reliable. This of course raises the question of whether or not there is anything in the divine realm that does change, and how to interpret the apparent “changes” in the nature of God that show up in the biblical record. 
2. The sapiential teaching concerning an essential versus a non-essential self is very subtle. When we are totally enveloped in ourselves (our feelings, senses, and experiences), it is difficult to imagine that who we believe ourselves to be might not, in fact, be essential, but made up of the non-essential. The teaching here is that the divine is interested in (and focused upon) creating something in us more permanent or essential (that is, containing the divine essences) rather than in what or who we are now. Despite what we might imagine, spiritual life is about, its essence is a becoming or an unfolding. The divine focus is, of course, linked to the concept of qualities and essences, which would then define the “lost nobility” which needs to be permanently restored to humanity. Later on in this Gospel, the metaphor of the pearl will be used, which speaks of the slow formation of essence, becoming what we will perhaps recognize later as our “essential self”, while the non-essential aspects of ourselves drop away. More will be said about this in the later commentary. 
3. In this text, the sacraments are understood to be a part of the mysteries about which Yeshua spoke. They are expressed using the term musterion that Philip uses to describe certain rites occurring in the inner Temple of Being. These are obviously related to ancient rites in the first Temple of Solomon, which were also practices used later in the community of the followers of the Messiah. They are in essence deep gateways or alchemical actions that bring about changes of being through the flow of divine energy. Much more will be said in this commentary about the sacraments of Philip as they are introduced later, but here we encounter the first sacrament of living water as the metaphor of deep alchemical change (a change of being brought about by divine catalytic action). As it is described here, permanent color (beauty or quality) is infused into the fabric of being. This should be noted here as a critical way of understanding what these mysteries are as they engage human consciousness and being. Keep in mind that these are not exoteric rites (though they often have become so in institutional religion) but inward actions where the divine energies affect the human soul to bring about significant and permanent change. 
4. What the Water of Life actually is is not defined here. One could imagine it as that which makes life possible, and here life would be in its highest forms from bios (or biological life) to zoe (or divine and permanent Life—the same life-form as God). Another way of imaging this is that the experience of life is like the flow of water (as in Taoist tradition). Life itself is a flowing (out of Eternity into time) and we are plunged into, which has its permanent effect upon us. This is a further feature of the spiritual and symbolic significance of water in all of its many forms, physical and spiritual. 

Notes on the Translation

1. The terms “plunge” or “plunges” translate the Greek word “baptize” or “immerse in water”.