Analogue 46

The New Embodiment

In the days when the feminine Eve was held within the masculine Adam, there was no death, but when they were separated out from one another, then death came into existence. But if, once again, she returns inward and he receives her inside, death shall cease to be.

When the Master cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me,” he was separated below from that which was above—from what had originally been begotten together and brought forth by God through the Sacred Spirit.

But then the Master rose from death, and was as he had been before, except now he came in a body that had been perfected. He was still incarnated (embodied) in flesh, but this time in a new kind of flesh, which in our present incarnation we have not yet reached, remaining only images of what is real.

SYNOPSIS

• Perhaps this is a theological and historical aside or a further reflection on cause and effect, as well as a glimpse into how the early Jewish community viewed the resurrection. 
• Philip is in accord with the canonical accounts. They all heard the same cry from the cross, and also saw the similar appearances. Philip interprets the meaning of the cry differently. 
• The origination of death for humankind is described in ontological and metaphysical terms helping us understand the subsequent nature of human beings. 
• Interestingly this analogue presents a view of the androgyny of Adam as a double-being—unseparated, undifferentiated at the beginning. 
• Death comes from separation of the masculine and the feminine. It splits human nature into two and we cannot last indefinitely with that split. 
• The unity between the masculine and the feminine also found in the Gospel of Thomas is explained. This appears to have been another of Yeshua’s mystery teachings. 
• Yeshua experienced a sense of profound union (an integration both within himself between the masculine and the feminine and between heaven and earth), defining perhaps the true nature of the Kingdom of heaven come to earth. 
• On the cross, however, he felt and cried out against the agony of the deep separation he was experiencing, which appears to have been an inner anguish more than mere physical pain. 
• From the words uttered in agony it appears that he felt and experienced a sense of personal disintegration—outer body from inner being, split apart. 
• An explanation of his new deathless and embodied state is also said to be both misunderstood but also the future goal of possessing a body different from this one. 
• The early Christian tradition insisted on a form of embodiment as a preferred state, as was expressed earlier in the Gospel.  

Video recording link to You Tube

COMMENTARY

The Uniting of Opposites

Clearly this is a deep reflection from the writer of the Gospel of Philip based on the teachings he has learned and the mysteries he had received. Whether or not the words in this text flow directly from the mouth of Yeshua as Master is unknown. However, as in the Gospel of John, after pondering Yeshua’s message, Philip has gained insight and now understands a multitude of things that perhaps he had not grasped before. This analogue follows perfectly from the thought of many previous to it. We have entered into the domain of the transcendent-immanence along the vertical axis through the gateway which has opened so beautifully deep within the chamber of the heart. This is the starting point of the new creation. For Philip it is also here that things begin to make sense, although it is often in an upside-down way so different from the norms and conventions of conventional religious ideation with its common sense thinking. It is in that “Holy Place” (the sacred precinct within) where the union between opposites is ultimately culminated, Philip perceives the relationships that heretofore have been hidden from ordinary sight behind the veil. 

Here in the sacred Bridal Chamber, opposites are united (wedded together). Things that had previously been kept apart suddenly find a new bond in this place of union. A fresh world forms and a new form of humanity emerges out of that union. The reconciliation of all things is an alchemy forged in that chamber out of which comes the Bride and the Bridegroom into a new world. This is the vision that Philip sees, and it seems that these were the mysteries that Yeshua taught to the few which the masses could not yet hear. We are privileged now in our time to be privy to this, to be allowed inside this teaching.  

Original Separation 

In his telling of these mysteries, using the metaphors of the original Genesis story, Philip goes back to the beginnings of the creation to the deathless place before the separation when the feminine Eve had not yet been differentiated from the masculine Adam. However, as soon as that significant differentiation was made between these energies and beings, it marked the beginning of the experience of death. Separation and differentiation, as good and necessary as they might be, also brought about a profound form dying due to their division and the sundering of the original unity. From the perspective of this Gospel, it was both a necessity as well as an inevitability, based it seems in the mystery teaching of the early Jewish mystics. We are hearing these mysteries laid bare. 

In the trajectory of the spiritual evolution of humankind, the converse (and the reversal) will also come to be true. When once again the form of Adam receives back the separated Eve, a new union will commence and death will cease to be. Here a direct reference to the experience of crucifixion is made. There is a time certain for the new union to begin following that crossroads as a turning away from separation toward a new union experienced as the crisis-point of the crucifixion. Yeshua cries out from his anguished sense of abandonment (perhaps a far deeper suffering for him than the torture of the crucifixion itself). The crucifixion becomes a poignant metaphor for the millennia-long agony of humanity suffering. Its reasons are made explicit. Yeshua cries out the question to heaven, why the abandonment and the agony of suffering? At that moment a new answer emerges because a new union previously unknown is forming. That which was below, separated from that which was above along the vertical axis is brought into a new unity at the heart of love and agony. The masculine and the feminine, the above and the below, transcendence and immanence are united as one new entity forged out of all the ancient, historic divisions. This is the work of Sacred Spirit. Her mission, the work of Wisdom, is to bring about the binding force of union from out of the old separations and their agonies. 

The Resurrection Body

It is actually from that moment that the Resurrection of humanity is made manifest. Following the template of the Master himself practicing resurrection throughout his life, the culmination results in a new body, different from what it had been before—perfected, made complete and whole. Embodiment still exists, but now in a new and a previously unknown form. The body itself changes radically and dramatically as the effects of the new union take affect, but in ways that in our current state we do not fully comprehend. What we know now is just a shadow of what is to come when what is above and below, masculine and feminine, Adam and Eve are wedded together, uniting as one in one full and complete being with no separations. 

How are we to understand all of this? In what ways can this new union be accomplished? What are the conditions for this new possibility of transfigured and resurrected humanity lifted up out of agony into completion? The next analogue will begin to spell this out as well as the conditions under which these transformations are made. 

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. There are three sections in this analogue: a telling of the creation story, Yeshua’’s experience on the cross, and the nature of the resurrected body. How are they linked? What are the themes that bring them together?
2. If the first form of human being was originally androgynous and undifferentiated, why was separation into the male and female forms necessary? Even though it created death when the two components of one being were separated from each other, why might it be a necessary condition? Have you ever experienced parts of yourself being split off in some way?
3. Is the future condition of humanity also androgynous, or is it to be something else entirely? What does sacred androgyny represent? Have you ever imagined your twin self to be the opposite sex from you? 
4. The core experience of crucifixion for Yeshua apparently was not as much the physical suffering as it was the sense of inner alienation, disintegration and dislocation from the Source. It must have been even more intense than we can realize and seemed to disorient his being. He appears to have lost touch with the vertical axis altogether. This appears to be a psycho-spiritual disassociation which for human beings who experience it becomes schizophrenic—disorientation from Reality. What may be interesting here is not that Yeshua was dislocated from time, space, and human events—but experienced an inward spiritual dislocation from the higher reality that he had not previously known. Think about this and journal your reflections. 
5. The new embodied form of Yeshua appears to have been something extraordinary, not known to us in our current state. It is described as the physical form having reached perfection. If we are the image of it now, what might that future reality be? How do you imagine it?

 

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY 

AND REFERENCE

1. The cry of Yeshua from the cross appears to be both an expression of physical as well as spiritual agony. The cry is expressed in his own native tongue which makes it entirely personal and perhaps even more dramatic: Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani. It is easily imagined that one would cry out using these deeply disturbing words signifying something having been destroyed or ripped apart on the inside in the same way his body was being tortured and destroyed on the outside. These words lend a level of authenticity to this analogue and its roots into the history of Yeshua. As the analogue suggests, however, much more is going on here. The cry of separation is somehow also a universal cry of humankind itself, uttered by all who hang on the cross between the two axes. This is a compelling image of the human condition when we feel the pain of the original wound of separation from our Source—the sense of being abandoned here in space and time. In the opening words of Jalaluddin Rumi’s Mathnawi, a similar cry is uttered called the “Song of the Reed.” In that famous poem the reed playing is uttering the lament of one reed torn from its original source-bed in a way similar to the cry that Yeshua makes from the cross. Here are some of its words: 

Listen, listen 

to this story of the reed, the hollow ney, 

and its reed-flute song. 

Listen to its cry, its wail and stay to listen to

its sounds of separation and lament.

Listen to its tale,

how it was torn from its reed-born-bed—its Source

so long ago.

Listen to how it bled, 

and how its heart became an open wound,

a hole through which the music comes. 

Each soul who makes this same sad song

was also severed from its Source

and weeps in thirst and longing for return. 

O you who seek the mysteries,

this lament of yearning, 

this reed-flute song from emptiness

is the path toward union and our return. 

For the broken-openness by pain we feel 

unlocks the human breast,

and begins our journey home. 

 

1. Sacred Androgyny has a venerable history. Rooted in ancient Hermetical teaching, it describes the archetypal human in our original state before differentiation. The concepts around this image are complex and a study of its historical roots in many traditions and its archetypal references would be fruitful (it is possible to do this online). Philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria and early Christian leaders such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa continued to expound the doctrine of sacred androgyny as humanity’s perfect and original condition during the early centuries. In later Medieval Europe the concept of sacred androgyny played an important role in both Christian theological thinking and debate and well as in Alchemical teachings of that period. Influential Theologians such as John Scotus Eriugena in the West and John of Damascus in the East continued to teach the outlines of a sacred androgyny found in the writings of the early patristic period of Christian history as did a multitude of later authors like Jacob Boehme and William Blake with whom we might be familiar.  
2. The descriptions and conditions of a celestial body which was manifested in its original androgynous nature has become a subject of deep interest for many. Since the events around Yeshua’s death and resurrection put this teaching at the center of early Christian Theology, the past and future embodiment of humankind was explored and expressed in a multiplicity of visionary ways. Visions of the past and future embodiment of human beings were described in modes that indicated a radical difference from the biological embodiment that we know now, which is difficult for us to imagine differently in the future. Nonetheless, knowing that we are in transition from one form to another and that the biological form is only temporary was an essential teaching accepted in early Christianity as essential as it has been in other sacred traditions as well. Essentially the fundamental change was a body whose manifest form was more in the realm of pure energy and light than it was in materiality. This seems to be a theme repeated over and over again. 

Notes ON the Translation

• In the first paragraph of the analogue, the emphasis is not only on the separation of the masculine and the feminine (those terms being put in the translation to help clarify that issue), but also implicitly the inner (Eve) from the outer (Adam)—thus the use of the phrases, she returns inward and he receives her inside.
• In the second paragraph the focus is upon the vertical union describing what is above with that which is below. In Yeshua the two were united as a singular whole by the Spirit.
• Resurrection is the sign of the completed form where inner and outer, above and below are brought together into a new union which the newly completed body will hold together in unity. What we experience now is only a shadow (analogue or image) of what is true or real in our originality and destiny.