Analogue 30: The Image of the Pearl

 ANALOGUE 30

The Image of the Pearl

If a pearl is cast into the mud it does not lose its value, nor does it have any greater value if it is rubbed with ointment. It is of immense worth to its owner no matter what befalls it at any time. So it is with the sons and daughters of God; regardless of what happens to them they are held as precious in the Father’s heart.

• The core Self at the center of the soul, like a pearl, reveals the true value of the sons and daughters of God. 
• Its value never changes regardless of the conditions which may befall it. 
• Inner essence, not outer circumstance, is the key to spiritual value. 
• Yeshua teaches that every pearl essence is valued as precious in the Father’s heart. 
• This visionary realization is what awakens and motivates him. It is what he has learned. 
• He comes to restore the luster of the pearl essence of each daughter or son of God.

COMMENTARY

The Analogue of the Pearl

The metaphor of the Pearl is an ancient trope used by Yeshua in his teachings and by many others before and since. In this analogue he clearly articulates its spiritual significance. Remember that an awareness of the beauty and value of pearls comes directly from the part of the world in which this was written—the region of the Persian Gulf, where pearl cultivation, collection, and selling has been practiced for millennia. Today this jewel out of nature is well known and distributed worldwide, but it is unique to the warm waters throughout Asia and the Middle East. Across the ages, the metaphor of the pearl was used as a sacred teaching there and in other parts of the world. Here the analogue focuses on its sapiential significance mystically in time and metaphysically outside of time. We are the fortunate recipients of the teaching found in this Gospel, recently discovered and restored to us after being lost for centuries.

This analogue reveals how the divine Mind perceives the human soul as the precious essence of each son or daughter brought into the world. This powerful understanding is critical if we are to correctly assess our worth, essence, and the quality of our own being in light of divine Reality. Each soul is a pearl in formation. Understood in this way, out of the biologically of our own existence something comes of great and eternal value. From the temporal realm, an eternal treasure is created. Like a pearl hidden within an oyster in the depths of the sea, our own essence, deep within our physical manifestation, is known to God. No matter what may  befall it, that pearl essence remains of great value in itself, precious from the perspective of (the Father’s heart), the heart of the Source. 

The Key of the Essential Self

This meaning and perspective can be reclaimed by anyone who has lost a sense of self-worth. We do not fully know who we are (at least from the viewpoint of Eternity), nor do we know our true value (let alone our essence). It may be difficult for us to imagine that we are deemed infinitely precious to the Source of all Being and becoming, because that is a point of view outside the familiar cultural norms of our modern world. Nevertheless, it is a transcendent mystical seeing, objective from the perspective of divine Consciousness which is neither sentimental fantasy or magical thinking. It is, however, intensely personal and deeply intimate—a way for us to perceive ourselves that is typically neglected (or entirely missing) in traditional religious doctrines focused primarily on the notion of original sin, being contradicted and challenged by this analogue. 

The key truth in this sacred teaching concerns the human essence—the essential Self. Inside the human body, hidden and unseen, something else exists that is able to receive and radiate light in the same way that a pearl does. This divine, hidden feature is the soul’s true essence, which can grow larger and more expansive over a lifetime, always becoming more luminous. It is this that is sacred and precious to God.

From the perspective of heaven, no matter what happens to it through the vicissitudes of earthly experience, it remains eternally valuable. It could be buried in the mire of earth, cast into the mud, or thrown away. It does not matter. It is redeemable, and anointed with oil its luster returns and the essence is seen. In whichever condition, this analogue claims that from an eternal perspective, it would be no more nor less precious. Transcendent to everything, and despite all human attitudes toward it, this is the core value of every soul—the valuation of it by the divine mind and heart. This will never change, nor can it be taken away. 

The Hymn of the Pearl

To understand this metaphor more fully in the the context of the wisdom traditions that come out of the Middle East and Oriental Christianity, it is important to know the various parable, narratives, and visionary recitals that use this trope as the basis for an extensive spiritual revelation and transmission. The Hymn of the Pearl is one such example that has become critically important to the perspective of the Luminous Gospels and the Thomasine tradition, of which it is a part. 

In this telling from a tradition that comes from the Apostle Thomas, Yeshua’s understanding and description of the metaphor of the pearl is extended into a much larger narrative that, according to legend, was told by the Apostle Thomas in a cave the night before he died near what is now the city of Chennai in East India. It is speculation, but Philip’s Gospel may be a commentary on that very story. Regardless of the historical timeline, however, Yeshua’s teachings, Philip’s telling of it, and the Hymn of the Pearl are all part of an inter-textual family of documents and sapiential teachings in conversation with one another. This is a cultural-historical family of writings and traditions extending eastward from Palestine all the way to China and India. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. It is useful to rediscover this central metaphor not only as a recovery from the ancient past (in the teachings of Yeshua and the Abrahamic traditions) but as a contemporary way of understanding multiple layers of significance in wisdom teaching. Read the following references in the Canonical tradition of the Gospel (Matthew 7:6, 14:45-46), the Luminous Gospels (Gospel of Thomas Logia 76, 93), and if possible the Hymn of the Pearl. After reading these sources, what is your understanding of the metaphor and the significance of this analogue? Journal your findings. 
2. Using this Gospel and other references, how do you understand your own pearl-like qualities? As you reflect, how do you sense that pearl-essence of yours has been formed in the depths of your own soul-experience?
3. Can you imagine yourself as having been held forever in the Father’s heart? As a teaching widely understood and accepted in the Abrahamic traditions, how does this affect your thinking in the context of the modern world? Is this metaphorical meaning clear to you? Describe what is clear and what may still be a question or obscure about this metaphor. 
4. Can you imagine that the Pearl inside of you is your essential Self, whereas who you normally experience yourself to be is a social construct, and in that sense the non-essential you? 
5. What does your physical biology have to do with this formation? The pearl core is eternal, while the body and Earth are impermanent and passing, yet the outer world is essential to the formation of your eternal and essential Self in important ways. How do you understand these distinctions? Journal your reflections. 
6. Toward what other metaphysical concepts might this teaching be pointing? Perhaps there are other aspects of yourself which you are not aware of now but will be understood and recovered as you move forward in your spiritual evolution and unfolding. Do you have any hints of these?

Notes for Further Reference and Study

1. In the family of texts to which the Gospel of Philip belongs, so many of the same metaphors, tropes and images are shared across these writings. In some respects, the Gospel of Thomas appears to be the core text (perhaps we could say an “ur” or source-text) around which the others developed. The teachings of that Gospel are central to what we might call the Thomasine Tradition. In that corpus of documents, there are other, later Gospels and writings said to have been inspired by the teachings of Thomas. Historically it is clear that the ministry of Thomas extended through the eastern Mediterranean all the way to Persia where he traveled and taught. It is said he then continued to travel (we now understand by boat) south toward India and into what are now the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. There, legend has it, he was martyred. Stories of his life and ministry are very much alive in India today where the churches are called the churches of St. Thomas (Mar Toma). In the early centuries of that ministry, the Jewish communities along the coastline from the Persian Gulf all the way to the tip of India were centers where the Thomas tradition took root and grew, spreading from there into the larger Indian communities. For centuries there was commerce and communication between the Christian Syrians and Christian Indian communities and their memories, stories and legends were exchanged, many of which came to be recorded in the texts of the Syrian Orthodox Church which has held and treasured them into the present. 
2. The visionary recital called the Hymn of the Pearl was one of those narratives preserved by the ancient Syrian Orthodox Community for centuries, coming from the tradition of St. Thomas whose journeys took him to India. Their traditions kept alive the legends and telling of the Hymn of the Pearl which is said to have been St. Thomas’ last communication to the people of India from a vision he received in the cave where he was held prisoner on the night before he died. That cave exists today under the Catholic Church that bears his name in Chennai. The text of the vision and telling of the Hymn has been preserved in the libraries of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Syriac, a dialect of ancient Aramaic. It has been translated into a fresh dynamic- equivalent rendering by Lynn C. Bauman and is available through the Oriental Orthodox Order in the West (theooow.com). A careful reading of that text shows just how seriously this metaphor was taken in the teachings of Thomasine communities across the Middle East. Although the visionary recital of this Hymn is said to have been spoken spontaneously on the eve of Thomas’ death, it seems more likely that it was heard by Thomas as a legend from the Persian culture, where it is historically set in the telling of the tale. Thomas received and reflected on this narrative as a way of connecting to those eastern cultures to which it belonged, illustrating the teachings of Yeshua as he had received them, but interpreting them afresh in these new cultural contexts through the lens of their own cultural understandings. 
3. The core features and nature of the human self are highlighted again in this analogue. The doctrines and teachings of Sophia Perennis concern the question “Who am I, really?” We have many provisional answers which are offered by contemporary society, science and culture. According to Perennial Wisdom, most of these are either partially or totally wrong. For example, it is said in modern society that you are just a material being created by chance in a universe without meaning. Who you actually are, according to the definition of your Creator, may be entirely different from what you imagine yourself to be. The ancient teachings of Perennial Wisdom are available to help expand answers to our questions, eliminating what is false and providing answers that are sapientially true. The essence of you is not how modern society typically describes you. It lies deeper, hidden (perhaps even from you), comprising elements which are eternal and luminous. This understanding is at the heart of this Gospel which describes this deep, inner essence and how it is created. The Gospel of Philip is intent on explaining how these inner qualities and experiences relate you to the divine Reality itself. Again, these are part of the mystery-teachings of Yeshua which he apparently gave in secret to those students who were ready to listen. You may now be one such student. 
4. Metaphysically the heart (or the kardial core) of divine Reality may exist simultaneously and non-locally with the kardial center of every human being and especially the heart at the center of divinity. Understood in this way, it is the omnipresent reality of the divine Presence which is not a place but an essence that is shared with all beings (and all Being). This same heart exists in any of the many metaphysical domains. Perhaps such a concept is strange for us who live in ordinary reality where entities are understood to be discreet and separate in both time and space. Interestingly, however, modern physics is positing non-local reality, the interconnectedness of all things, and a degree of strange entanglement that unites those seemingly separate and discrete parts.