Analogue 45a

Analogue 45

The Manifest and the Un-manifest

In the ordinary world, if something appears to be absent or is not manifest to us (to our ordinary senses), we imagine it to be outside of or beyond this world. Conversely, if something is known and obviously present to us (if we can perceive it), we define it as being a product of or caused by other things in the horizontal world in some material way. But imagine if these categories are entirely insufficient to define reality. These are simply our categories, based upon the senses, imposed upon our world. In our reality, that which fails to be detected by the sense cannot be said to exist—at least in materialist philosophy. The truth, however, is that much of what we know to be reality, exists beyond sensory awareness. From the viewpoint of this Gospel multiple conditions (seen and unseen, manifest and un-manifest) exist and neither condition excludes the other. If we allow an exclusion (or fail to recognize an excluded dimension) that would merely be a diminution of reality and thus a form of what this Gospel calls a form of “darkness” and not the fullness of everything present everywhere. Only at the core of one’s being, beyond the senses and beyond the rational mind, can this fullness be known where everything is in communion not only with the Source, but with everything else. To the Source everything in existence is fully present, which can also be identified as a “placeless place” that is available to and includes all things (the All). Strangely, from Yeshua and this analogue’s perspective, this “place” is accessible within. 

What is further described in this analogue is a glimpse into the form of contemplative prayer that Yeshua practiced directly from this perspective (the unity of all things in the All which is placeless). Notice that there are very clear directives to this practice and that it involves not only the center of one’s being but is also an engagement there in which we are fully awake, aware and in dialogue (this is Yeshua’s experience of contemplation). It appears that Yeshua’s practice, though contemplative, was not silent or featureless in the normal way we think about it—as the cessation of all thought. Instead, it appears to be a form of active attention to and relationship with the divine Presence in which there are ongoing dialogical exchanges. 

At his coming, the mission of Yeshua was to create a path and a doorway to the interior world, allowing humanity back inside, not only into the core of their own beings, but to an inner experience of intimately knowing their own infinite Source.

Contemplative Prayer at the Center

In this analogue we are being directed in how to engage the Presence at the center of our being by deliberately going there, shutting the door to all distraction, and remaining in a state of mutual in-dwelling. There we begin a deep dialogical communion (or exchange) with the Source of All and with the fullness that is always present at our core. We are asked to be in relationship to (and in intimate communion with) the Source from which all things have come, knowing that it is inside and available to us. In that “placeless place” the universal and infinite is present to the specific instance of the finite. This describes a metaphysical mystery that can be known by anyone, but as this analogue suggests, many human beings are locked out of this place—their own true inner core so that for them the Source is far away. They are mired or lost and wandering in an external world, or enslaved by an exoterism that will not let them go. They have no access to the interiority of things which is paradoxically the infinity of things. The sad truth is that they are kept at a distance from their very own souls. 

At his coming, the mission of Yeshua was to create a path and a doorway to the interior world, allowing humanity back inside, not only into the core of their own beings, but to an inner experience of intimately knowing their own infinite Source. He made a way for interiority to exist, creating access to the esoteric world and its realities. Those who were caught in the outer world, he welcomed and safely brought inside, back to the heart of things. This is a very unique way of talking about the Good News and the mission of Yeshua, which is typically not the phraseology of the western theological tradition. His mission was not about salvation from sin, as it has been described in the West, but about the reconciliation of all things through a union in which the transcendent-immanence was and is the ultimate Reality. These esoteric theological categories, originally recognized, became almost entirely lost in the exoterism of the western theology. 

Mystics, of course, like Yeshua have always known about this interior pathway that leads to the Infinite. In conventional religion, however, that doorway had been shut for far too long by external religious authorities and institutions and Yeshua knew this and so made an interior immanence a way into Transcendence available to All. This was Yeshua’s primary objection to conventional religion. Interiority had been lost or abandoned, and so he came to make the outside like the inside, bringing the esoteric to the exoteric world of religion—interiorizing his tradition of Judaism. It was a bold move and one that could only be done by someone who knew what the heart and practice of such a possibility was. Yeshua’s mission flowed out of his contemplative practice, the one described so vividly in this analogue. 

You Tube recording Analogue 45a

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. If the previous analogue took us to the heart of the mysteries in Yeshua’s wisdom teaching, then this analogue brings us to the central core and principles of Yeshua’s own praxis and inner experience based on the metaphysical principle of Oneness or the Unity of Being. In your own words describe that spiritual practice in words that help you to both understand and explain to others. What was Yeshua’s contemplative practice?
2. How would you describe the common category errors made when we attempt to see or understand the vertical axis from the standpoint of living primarily in the realm of the horizontal. Is that a viewpoint that you yourself have held at any time in your life?
3. How would you explain or describe the teaching concerning transcendent-immanence?
4. Why is “outer darkness” a good description of being in a realm where the regions and domains are not held together in unity or oneness? Has this been true for you? How have you experienced it?
5. Yeshua talked often of his own dialogical exchanges with the Source (the Father). What do you think these exchanges were about? What did he learn from them?
6. Notice how the esoteric realities are lifted into the light, and the way to the Source-as-Center is opened up by Yeshua. When he said he was the Way or the Path to that Reality, imagine that he was talking about this journey into the deep interior of your being, the place where the higher and the lower meet, where the inner and outer are brought together into relationship and balance. 
7. Have you ever experienced being locked out of something or somewhere, and could not get back into something important to you? What were your feelings in that moment? Do you feel locked out of transcendence or the deep place inside yourself? If that doorway is open to you, how are you able to come inside?
8. If this analogue is describing the essentials of mystical experience, how have you known this experience in the past or presently?

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY 

AND REFERENCE

1. In this analogue, traditional metaphysics and contemporary science meet in interesting ways. Traditional metaphysical formulations are very sophisticated systems of thought that are found throughout the great sacred Traditions existing in the Vedic and Abrahamic branches of religious tradition. In each of these there is an understanding (and description) of a multi-dimensional universe which co-inheres in a Unity of Being that includes all reality. On our level of experience in time and space most of these dimensions are hidden from view (unmanifest as material forms, and when they are, typically they are analogues of higher dimensions and realities). Something similar is discussed in contemporary physics by such figures as David Bohm who speaks of the manifest as explicit reality and the unmanifest as implicit reality. This same viewpoint is the perspective of this analogue. Ultimate Reality is one, but it is made up of many domains and dimensions all of which are part of a universal Whole containing all and to which each domain and dimension is connected. In the traditional sciences of metaphysical tradition Consciousness and Mind are said to permeate and animate the entire field and its many dimensions connecting them as a living reality. For an introduction to metaphysics and metaphysical tradition see Alan Watts’ The Supreme Identity (1972) and Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Knowledge and the Sacred (1981).
2. The explicit contemplative practice of Yeshua is stated very directly in this analogue. It is a form of what we might call centering prayer (or prayer at the Center) understood within a Jewish frame of reference. Yeshua counsels an individual to go inward, toward the center of one’s being, enter the chamber there, and, shutting the door to the outside world, begin a dialogue with the Presence who dwells at the core (at the level of the heart). This is a very explicit description of a contemplative practice of prayer involving a form of intention, movement, attention, direct knowing, and dialogue—described quite differently from the way Centering Prayer has been taught in the modern era. It appears to be expressive of traditions in the Middle East today understood as invocation or the Invocatory Methodology of the Abrahamic traditions. This method is used to “call upon the Name of God” through direct invocation (known as dzikr, or Zikr in later Islam). Elements of this same teaching are present in the canonical Gospel tradition in Matthew 6:6, and extensively throughout the Psalms. In this analogue, however, it is amplified, giving greater instruction and description both to the place and nature of the reality that one finds there. 
3. Locked on the outside of things, in the exoteric world, unable to enter even the depths of our own being and its interior spaces may be an apt description of the human condition. Typically, we modern humans take the external world to be all there is to reality, and therefore we are stranded in a world where everything is simply surface structure and exteriorized. Interiority is lost and the outer world consumes all of our attention. This description appears to be much more accurate when we express everything in terms of the notion of Original Sin and the flawed moral nature, character and behavior of humankind. Such a description is fundamental to western theology, coming from the Pauline corpus  the Augustinian theological traditions. Here in the Gospel of Philip, the problem is not described as sin, but being locked outside of our inner depths. Yeshua makes a way for us to journey to our own interiority. This is a much different theological position from the Occidental Christian world, but one that is held in Oriental Christianity. 

Notes ON the Translation

• The phrase schism between them translates the word for destruction or fracture. 
• The hidden or secret place might then be thought of as the Bridal Chamber itself. It is also the place of Fullness, the pleroma in the Greek language. 
• The place of transcendence is actually “no place” for it is not situated specifically in space or time, but it is the point or place of origins, and, as this passage suggests. It can, however, be found within.
• In the last paragraph the terms outer or external world, as well as inner place or world are made clearer by adding the terms “place” and “world.”