Analogue 41: The Mystery of Iconic Balance

Analogue 41: The Mystery of Iconic Balance

There are both male and female spirits, which at heart are unclean or impure. Males spirits seek to mate with souls that inhabit a female form, and female spirits seek an unequal relationship with a male form. So no one, then, is able to escape being seized by their compulsions if they have not received both the power of the male and the female in equal balance. It is in the iconic Bridal Chamber, where the bride is united with the bridegroom that this balance is attained. Outside that union, unwisely, females see a lone male and begin to flirt with him until they are engaged in sexual relations. Likewise, males who see a beautiful female by themselves will, out of lust, try to seduce and then sexually coerce her. Yet when the male and female sit side-by-side together in mutuality, neither will coerce the other nor be coerced. This only occurs when the image and the Archetype are united in mutuality. And so in this world, even where the forces are strong, they are not able to seize hold of one who has manifestly transcended both the fear and force of the flesh. This individual’s self-mastery is so precious an element that they are able to withstand the violent reactions of the multitudes that wish to seize and suffocate them out of envy. Are not such individuals able then to escape through the divine reality? Are they, then, ever really afraid?

There are, of course, those who pray frequently, “O keep us safe from the unclean and demonic forces, for we are the faithful ones!” But if they had only possessed the Sacred Spirit, nothing unclean would ever cling to them. So neither fear the flesh nor love it. For if you fear it, it will become your master, and if you love it, it will devour and suffocate you.

GospelOfPhilip 41-YouTube (recording)

SYNOPSIS

• The principles and violations of human relationships.
• Jewish views concerning the laws of purity and impurity. 
• One can detect and understand the pure by comparison when the impure mirrors its opposite. 
• Compulsion and coercion to act out a need to meet one’s own ends — this is the subversion of the sexual drive. 
• There is, however, a higher order human principle where the masculine and feminine are in balance and so the drive to dominate in unequal relationships is diminished. 
• True balance, however, cannot be achieved without it being interiorized and not coerced from outside one’s own self. 
• The sexual drive, mismanaged from the outside, is fraught with imbalances and compulsions which impel human behavior. 
• Coercion and flattery define “impurity” in human society and are set against higher sacred law.
• Equality between the sexes is seen, honored and highlighted which is also a statement against the patriarchal imbalances. 
• This is the true spiritual marriage occurring in the soul (Analogue 14), when the icon of my own being (in its psychic form) is married to the angel and they live together in mutuality. 
• The fear and force of sexuality can be transcended even in this world. This is a practice, part of spiritual rebalancing. 
• The multitude of forces in the exterior world can be transcended by an inner reorientation, which comes through the practice of “self-mastery.”
• There is a way of escaping the domination of sexual compulsion allowing mutuality between the human sexes and involving spiritual embrace. 
• This was the middle pathway of spiritual and mystical Judaism, and the practice of “tantric spirituality” within the Abrahamic tradition.
• The principle is the critical and difficult balance between fear and love—and our sexual energies are at the heart of it.
• Understood to be at the heart of Yeshua’s teaching, it was not the strategy of Gnosticism, which feared the flesh and sought to punish it. 
• Neither was this the strategy of Hedonism which allows all inhibitions free-reign, no holds barred. 
• This was also not the practice of a ritualistic Jewish piety which prayed for purity. 
• We have a need for the Sacred Spirit as holy wisdom in order to walk this balanced, middle pathway, which is never easy. 
• The dictum at the end is a proverbial concentration of this extraordinary wisdom. 

COMMENTARY

The Heart of the Mysteries

We have arrived at a place in the text where a frame is set around the main theme of this Gospel. This forty-first analogue follows from the powerful plunge into the heart of the mysteries in the previous analogue and begins to put in place a frame and context around the theme of human intimacy and sexuality as an analogue for the divine mysteries in the intimate relationship of the  divine-humanity. We need, it seems, the robust understanding with which this Analogue interprets this mystical teaching because the metaphors and issues are complicated, dynamic and delicate. This passage provides just such a broad frame of reference in a wider hermeneutical context so that we might more fully understand and contrast the tenants of this central mystery with the tangents that would violate its fundamental premises. 

Human sexuality is obviously fraught with complexity. It is equally true that each society has a set of norms and social taboos placed around the issue of sexuality and all of its relationships and behaviors expressing these complications. Such laws are not universal nor necessarily shared by other cultures. Sexual relationships used as a sacred metaphor is complex because sexuality is entangled with so many aspects of the human psyche which condition and ultimately touch the entire human social realm with its realities and distortions. Misunderstandings easily occur and the metaphor of sexual union can become contaminated with wider social and personal predicaments. The Gospel of Philip seeks to clarify what union with the divine entails using this metaphor while contracting it with those tendencies we so often experience in intimate human relationships which become easily unbalanced and exploitative. 

Human Sexual Experience

Typically, as males and females interact, they use social strategies of sexual attraction to find a mate. These strategies set up dynamics which often overpower or entangle individuals in relationships that are unequal and out of balance—where mutuality and the true care of each person is lost in the morass of narcissism and self-centeredness. These are behaviors which, in the end, take advantage of or exploit another individual. In such relationships something essential is lost. True union and balance cannot be achieved. A relationship of this nature, based upon distortion and diminishment, is created so that it does not benefit or fulfill the promise of true union nor empower the soul-growth of each individual. The Gospel text takes care to describe these dynamics in order to create the conditions for a new possibility not based on human distortion, but upon a balance that reflects the dynamics of a higher reality, mirroring human relationships on earth in terms of the Sacred Spirit. One can detect here a very discerning eye which has been developed by a careful observation of the human condition and perhaps also by a degree of deep personal experience. 

To begin, the Gospel describes what can only be called immature and often harmful attempts to attract attention from the opposite sex by using chicanery, deceit, or deception. Attraction is often achieved (or experienced) through flirtatious behavior, but then, after attracting attention to itself, puts the opposite sex at a disadvantage. If long-term human relationships continue on in this way, often they do not mature out of these modes. These imbalances are ultimately destructive because a true relationship of mutual benefit is never achieved. We perhaps know this by personal experience, or have witnessed it in our families and in the society around us. Whole industries of afternoon entertainment (soap-operas) are based on narratives of just this kind. 

Compulsions and Drives

The analogue describes these relationships as being driven by compulsions. Obviously the human sex drive is strong and if it cannot find a balanced of energies beyond pure self-gratification, then it easily falls into distortion, giving advantage to only one side of a greater mutuality. This Gospel takes the bold step of accepting and understanding equality between the sexes, going against the typical patriarchal norms of ordinary societies that privilege the male over the female. This higher viewpoint is extraordinary for its time and was achieved early on the basis of sapiential wisdom in contra-distinction to the social order persistent in the world of that era. We often feel that it is only now, in the modern world, that these insights were achieved. Clearly they were known earlier, but as it is true now, they were not followed. In contrast, they existed alongside the regressive norms and taboos which eventually took full control of western religion and became established, institutionalized and were given authority in later centuries of western Christianity.  However, before this reversion to the ordinary norms of the patriarchy, something new and surprising had been achieved, at least in thought and teaching which reflected a deeper understanding of the equality of the sex. It appears however, that this understanding was not the result of some new kind of social realization or reform, rather because of the experience of the mystical practice of union inside the Bridal Chamber. 

What mystical union meant is not explicitly spelled out here, but it is said to have resulted in a balance of energies where the power of the male and the female were brought into equilibrium so that a new inner harmony between was attained. Without that experience of balance, human sexuality easily devolves into disparities of power between the sexes, each gender providing its own examples of that discord. Coercion is the hallmark of distorted relationships. Mutuality is its opposite and one of the highest of spiritual attainments in human affairs. It said, however, to occur only when two very intriguing aspects of human being come into mutuality and union. This Gospel describes these as the marriage of the image and the Archetype. 

We might imagine that in the Bridal Chamber the Eternal Archetype 

of the individual joins with its human reflection in an embrace of oneness. This is a very deep mystery indeed, for it involves what was pre-Eternal entering into time, where a unity is achieved even while we live in what we experience as our separate selves.

A New Form of Inner Unity

These two terms propel this passage into a completely different frame of reference transcending from physical and sexual union. Intimacy within the Bridal Chamber is not about physicality but about a new unity when the image of an individual meets and embraces its own Archetypal form—(which is described here also as the Angel of one’s being). This is a vertical union which can be described better as the moment when the higher and the lower selves meet in mutual embrace. We also might imagine that in the Bridal Chamber the Eternal Archetype of the individual joins with its human reflection in an embrace of oneness. This is a very deep mystery indeed, for it involves what was pre-Eternal entering into time, where a unity is achieved even while we live in what we experience as our separate selves. These ideas will be brought into greater clarity as the text moves forward, but they are introduced here as essential elements in the experience of the Bridal Chamber where mystical union and spiritual marriage began to be known and experienced. 

Even though this appears to describe something that may seem highly abstract or unattainable, what this Gospel believes is that such a union can be experienced now in time. It is also able to challenge the abnormally strong forces and compulsions driving humanity by either the fear or force of the physical body alone. Something higher and more meaningful than mere physical existence is involved. Again these terms, appearing perhaps mundane, suggest something quite sophisticated and complex. The term flesh (used in the text) is a technical term describing how the psyche uses the physical body for its own purposes without regard to anything other than itself. A human can be compelled by theses compulsions or repelled by the fear of them. One can begin to transcend them and learn a new form of self-mastery and freedom (described as a very precious state) which is driven neither by, nor is the product of, social conditioning. 

Social Norms, Rules, and Codes of Behavior

Society has many forms of compulsion, and the social norms and reactions to any change in the conventional status of things can create, what this text describes, as a violent reaction to that which deviates from those norms. When norms and taboos are violated, there is a tendency for society to over-react either through envy or suspicion, demanding conformity. Those who have achieved self-mastery, however, are understood not to be afraid of this, escaping it because they posses insights from a reality experienced at a higher level of being or consciousness. 

Stepping aside from these experiences, and looking at them perhaps as an outsider, there are those who, in their piety and devotion seek not to be contaminated in any way, seeking instead for a state of perhaps religious or ritual purity. In contrast, there are those who pursue passion without regard to any consequences. Neither fear and loathing of sex nor its passionate pursuit through sexual conquest are balanced in any way. The result is there is no true freedom of Spirit. However to be in touch with and possessed by the Sacred Spirit is to have an inner ally that can assist in bringing about forms of inner freedom from both sexual domination or its suffocation. Fearing these energies will drive one toward their dominance over the individual, perhaps through fearful obsession. However, a compulsive expression of them will result in them devouring an individual, suffocating the Spirit which was meant to stay alive so it could enjoy this deep, mystical interior experience. These observations are a cautionary tale for all of those who seek to enter and know the experience of the Bridal Chamber. 

Bridal Chamber Teachings of the Middle Way

This deep and complicated teaching appears to come directly from Yeshua as its source. Clearly, again, this material is not easy and it also flies in the face of two tendencies in first century society. One tendency, perhaps driven by fear, was one of excessive denial and adherence to religious purity laws and codes. Ancillary to this was the fear of materiality and things physical that became central to Gnostic teachings in later centuries. Later expressions of western spirituality grew increasingly suspicious of any form of human pleasure, expressing this same bias. The opposite of these tendencies was Hedonism, which was an abandonment in principle to every pleasure without restraint. During that historical period, there was plenty of evidence that many took this path, forsaking any discipline. Yeshua appears to have claimed a middle ground, taking a pathway that led to ecstatic union, honoring the physical and material side of human experience, but elevating it into an encounter with the Eternal while at the same time recognizing the necessary physical realities of human experience. 

At the end of this analogue, there appears to be a side comment about a form of piety that prays for protection against demonic forces and evil influences. While the author does not debate this practice, he apparently disagrees that this is the most effective way to deal with negative external forces which challenge the self. The answer is not protection from without, but resilience and protection from within as a result of the possession of the Sacred Spirit—the same Spirit that Yeshua possessed. This was the means by which Yeshua resisted and overcame the forces of evil around him, not because God’s protection was external, but because he the divine Spirit as an interior defense. Spirituality, not piety, is the emphasis that Philip is putting on this point. 

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. As you read through this text and the commentary above, what strikes you as most important, intriguing, or troubling? Describe this in your journal. 
2. This text covers much spiritual, social and psychological ground, pointing in many directions. As best you can, outline the spiritual dynamics and descriptions, as well as the social aspects of human behavior, and the psychological issues that this Gospel raises. 
3. What are the social norms and taboos that contemporary western society sets around human sexuality today? How are they different from the ways that this text describes them or their implications in both the first century and in our modern era? Compare and contrast as best you can. 
4. Describe your own attitudes toward sexuality. Have you ever achieved the balances and equalities in human relationships and sexual behavior about which this Gospel is talking?
5. How would you describe and define “mutuality” between the sexes where balance and respect is at the center? How might we achieve this in our world? 
6. What do you think the author is describing as the central experience of the Bridal Chamber? Have you ever had anything close to this experience? How do you understand and respond to what this Gospel appears to be teaching?
7. Have you ever met or encountered your Angel archetype or an image of your higher Self? Do you know what your angel is? What hope, possibilities, or problems do you have with this teaching or understanding?
8. How would you define self-mastery? Do you think you have achieved it? If so, in what forms? How is it able to withstand violent forces?
9. What is your consideration about what the text describes as “unclean and demonic forces?” In your view do these exist? If so, how do they manifest themselves. 

 

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY 

AND REFERENCE

1. This Gospel text is clearly raising issues of sexuality challenging many of the norms of Jewish society in the first century. The subject of sexuality is, of course, fraught with difficulty as much then as it is today. Taboos, laws, and customs come into being around sexual experience and behavior attempting to curb or control it in some way. Attitudes developed in the ancient world that treated sexuality as a sin, a problem, or something to be avoided, suppressing it. These mores in religious traditions concerning sexuality have created great difficulties. Often they have not allowed humans to make progress or find balance without creating a sense of guilt or shame. Religious traditions have not only made sexuality a sin, but have treated women, in particular, as the offending source, and devalued feminine principles as inferior while elevating what was called male superiority in the hierarchy. These attitudes have resulted in greater and greater imbalances which, it appears, the Gospel of Philip was attempting to redress, The perspectives of Philip (and apparently Yeshua), however, were never fully accepted, much to the detriment of early Christianity, while claiming to be acting in his name and by his principles. This Gospel attempts to redress these attitudes and failures, disclosing the mysteries by which Yeshua lived and about which he taught. To this day, however, it remains a minority position perhaps because of its nuanced complexity and the challenge it imposes on the normal standards of society. 
2. Sovereignty and self-mastery are two terms which appear in the Gospels of Thomas and Philip respectively. Each of these terms suggest an inner discipline of Spirit, perhaps as a result of sustained spiritual practices that strengthen the will and stamina of an individual. More than this, however, sovereignty appears to be a state of consciousness achieved as a result of the maturation of Spirit. In Logion 2 of the Gospel of Thomas, sovereignty is a part of a process of spiritual growth that results in greater wisdom, ending in a state of divine rest. In the Gospel of Philip such sovereignty (as a form of self-mastery), is said to be fearless in the face of the challenges of human society. It makes a person able to stand up to threats made against the soul. Both of these terms suggest an inner state of being and consciousness working together as a result of expanded awareness (and possession of) the divine Presence. 
3. The Bridal Chamber, which is certainly the focus and central metaphor of this text has correspondences in the outer world: a bedroom chamber reserved for human intimacy, and within the Temple precincts the inner hidden space, the Holy of Holies, its most holy place. The most important teaching of this text is, however, that the human heart (the deepest chamber within the soul), is the truest representative of that space. This is the place of the mysteries of sacred union about which Yeshua is speaking. 

Notes ON the Translation 

• The phrase iconic Bridal Chamber translates a phrase in the original which says that the Bridal Chamber is “icon-like,” iconic, or in Greek “ikonikos.” In the Semitic tradition to which Philip clearly belongs, the Bridal Chamber is also understood to exist within a heart that is virginal. The Bridal Chamber is the heart.
• The phrase the image and the Archetype puts into modern parlance a similar phrase in the original text, “icon (or the image of God in us) and our angel” (the Angel is the image’s archetypal form as it was understood in ancient cosmologies).
• The fear and the force of the flesh could also be translated as the “attraction and repulsion of the flesh.”
• In the second paragraph, the term forces translates the word “spirits.” 
• The word suffocate could also be translated as “strangle.”