Analogue 59

Analogue 59 

The Realized Human Being

Is it not important that those in whom the fullness has come to dwell completely understand themselves? Those who do not know themselves, shall never enjoy what they possess. Those, however, who do come to understand who they are, will enjoy what they have.

Realized human beings are invulnerable to captivity because they are invisible to the outer eye, for if they were visible, they could be taken by force. No one can be granted this grace, however, unless they are clothed in perfected Light, saturating their being. Clad in Light, they can move forth into the cosmos as a Completed Being from out of the Bridal Chamber.

It is crucial, then, to become fully realized before moving beyond this world. Whoever receives this gift without achieving mastery in this domain will have no mastery in any other, moving forward through these transitions in an imperfect state. Only Yeshua knows what the destiny of such a person will be.

SYNOPSIS

• Pleroma is the indwelling fullness of the divine. 
• Self-Knowledge is essential to self-realization for without it the fullness never comes to fruition. 
• Enjoyment of what one has been given is part of the experience of fullness. We are meant to enjoy our maturation into fullness of being. 
• There is a cloak of invisibility to the kosmos that is possible to possess. What does it mean to go invisible to evil?
• The cloak of invisibility also describes beings who have become light-clad through experience in the Bridal Chamber. 
• This analogue describes an essential praxis which means to be employed in this world. 
• Achieving self-mastery or full realization is to be accomplished here in time and not just in the afterlife. It is not to be deferred, but used as a spiritual goal while living on the earth. 
• There are no guarantees for deferment. Transitioning beyond this world without the full implementation of what is possible here is risky. 
• The writer does not know the outcome. Yeshua must know it. 

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COMMENTARY

The Light of Self—Knowledge

One of the most important, ancient themes found in the wisdom traditions concerns the subject of self-knowledge. We are familiar with the words, know thyself, which encapsulates the fundamental awareness that without personal self-knowledge about the true nature of one’s own being, we live blindly and an in a state of ignorance. As this analogue suggests, we never get to enjoy what we actually possess either potentially or as an actual state of affairs. It is so interesting that self-knowledge is the prelude to enjoyment, for the joy of living deeply from what one knows or has learned is essential now. In this text, such knowledge is the result of birth from the Bridal Chamber as “light clad beings.” Such individuals are no longer walking in darkness, but by means of light and are radiating light. 

A completed human, born from the Bridal Chamber, is described so beautifully and differently in this analogue. First, they are in-dwelt by divine Fullness which is the description (and nature of) Ultimate Reality. They are also saturated with Light  Individuals often speak about an experience of a great inner emptiness: they feel hollow inside or as if something vital is lacking. Here the sign of a true human being, evolving toward transcendence, is that of fulness, not emptiness. Second, this analogue teaches that a vital part of this inner fullness is self-understanding. Fullness is not blind, it sees, experiences and enjoys the reality that it knows, understanding that of which it is a part. Enjoyment of what one becomes (and possesses in the becoming), is an inner state of true self-knowing. To come to experience fullness as a condition of one’s being and to enjoy both the knowledge and the fullness itself, is a characteristic feature of inner enlightenment. It is also a state of consciousness that has traditionally been called “double awareness,” to both experience and understand the experience. 

In this new way, consciousness of the higher Self is a feature of growth into spiritual completion or maturation. It describes the apex of the journey of conscious to become what we are meant ultimately to be and know as human beings. We were designed for this level of maturation. It is like a child growing through adolescence to become an adult. He or she can look back and see the progression through previous stages, but then come to know this new stage of fullness as the realization of all that was before in light of adulthood. This is higher form of self-knowledge (enjoying the state and condition that maturity allows), which was excluded from the two previous states. 

Enjoyment of what one becomes (and possesses in the becoming), 

is an inner state of true self-knowing. 

The Cloak of Invisibility 

The individual who is clothed in the light of true self-knowledge is someone who has come to know Light by experience. This analogue goes on to describe it as a “cloak of invisibility,” making oneself imperceptible to the outer world to become mysteriously hidden by Light in important ways. In science fiction literature such garments are often described. In the imaginal realm, the Gospel of Philip envisions this possibility but also goes on to describe the processes that moves an individual towards it. As humans evolve and mature, becoming completed human beings, they put on this cloak of invisibility in a kosmos which has difficulty detecting them. 

These possibilities are being shaped by the conditions of heaven, which is the soul’s ultimate goal. Heaven has always been seen as the destiny for humankind. We may have lost sight of it and its capacities, but the divine Reality keeps putting it back into view for us, even when it remains occluded by this world. The author is not sure of the outcomes nor of the ultimate destiny for those who are yet to attain such a form of self-knowledge (nor have been able to don with cloak of perfect light). The author says that only Yeshua knows the final disposition of such beings. However, it is clearly incumbent upon each soul to attend to the process of becoming and move stage by stage inexorably towards fullness and completion, achieving as much mastery as is possible in a world of great difficulty.  

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. How do you understand or explain the term “a realized human being”? 
2. Do you sense that you are such a being, or becoming one? What signs of it do you detect inside yourself?
3. True self-knowledge seems to be a requirement for full self-realization. How would you relate the two? How are they bound together?
4. In your own words, describe a “light clad being.” Have you ever seen such an individual?
5. The two conditions of fullness and emptiness are discussed in the commentary. In the analogue the emphasis is on fullness, but Yeshua also spoke of the condition of emptiness in a positive way (Matthew 5:3, 6). Have you experienced these inner states? Describe your experience? Does each one have a positive and negative aspect? How would you describe both?
6. How do you understand the term “double awareness?”
7. How have you ever experienced the “invisibility cloak”—-becoming undetectable to the outer world? What does this mean exactly? How would you use such a spiritual state in a positive way? Could it be used for ill as well as for good?

 

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY 

AND REFERENCE

1. Self-knowledge has always been at the heart of the wisdom traditions, particularly in its occidental modes. Know thyself is a well-known and venerable maxim in Greek culture, for example. An even more significant question lies at it’s heart: Who and what is the self that it is at the center of this imperative? Self-knowledge clearly begins with self-reflective awareness. A soul knows of its own existence and begins to ask questions about existence and the self that is aware of it. Again, a deeper question is, who is asking these questions? What the self that is ultimately to know and be known? Clearly we are a multiplicity even in our simplest modes. We have personality structures, we possess an ego and masks over the ego itself. Modern psychology has described other “selves” that are named as a part of the structures of human being, for example, the super-ego, the unconsciousness mind, Freud’s id, and in other psychological structures, a multitude of other names. Sapiential tradition recognizes many of these aspects of the human soul as relevant and necessary “selves” to be known and explored. In the end, however, it relegates the truest definition of the self to be the higher Self, the World Soul, and the Ultimate Self (or Supreme Identity which is Self-awareness in the divine Mind). The instruction to know one’s self cannot be completely comprehended without taking into account the comprehensive nature of self-hood which has its ultimate source and definition in divine Consciousness.
2. The Gospel of Thomas (Logion 2) introduces Yeshua’s category of sovereignty or self-mastery. This theme is continued in this analogue which appears to be inter-textual in nature (a part of the family of semantic references that constitute the Oriental Gospels: Thomas, Mary Magdalene and Philip, for example). To achieve mastery in a field means to come to know that domain intimately and personally by experience, and all of its constituent aspects. It means also to internalize that knowledge so that everything becomes integrated into one’s full knowing. This helps to define what sovereignty means—to become a master over that field of knowledge in one’s self, using it skillfully, perhaps even playfully. Such a master is one who is adequate to the knowledge and in that way able to enjoy it. For example, a master musician who is sovereign in both music as well as in playing the violin, not only knows how to navigate the field of music and play skillfully, but is also enjoying the full experience of its beauty.
3. The theme of Light-clad beings is woven throughout this Gospel and central to its many metaphors. As has been noted previously, it gives definition to symbols found in the Hymn of the Pearl where the robe of light is available at the beginning, though the pilgrim loses it for a time on the journey into the lands of duality. In that narrative, upon completing the journey, the pilgrim once again dons the rob which is now bejeweled and full of light. Spiritual traditions say we are meant to know and wear a robe of light which also becomes the cloak of invisibility. When we start out, perhaps, we want recognition—to be seen and known. At the end of the journey, however, the reverse is true. We long to be hidden from the world. It is a strange reversal. All of it, obviously, has to do with the play between light and darkness. 
4. Realization is an interesting and multivalent word. Semantically it covers those moments when we suddenly are aware that we know something more fully than we had ever known before. In that case it is an aha-moment, when an epistemological breakthrough occurs and the veils over our seeing are lifted and we unexpectedly see. There is another meaning for this important word, however, which has to do with making something real by bringing it into reality whereas before it was perhaps only a possibility or a figment of our imagination. In this world we can become more and more real—moving from possibility to actuality and accessing the “most real thing” which is the Source of all manifest reality. 

Notes  on the Translation

• In the first paragraph “the fullness” in the original is simply “the All” or “the Totality.” 
• A realized human being is the completed human being, or one who has become complete or mature.
• The words translated as “perfected light” are probably better expressed as “perfect light.” Though the analogue suggests a process of completion until the inner light is made complete.
• “Invulnerable to captivity” translates the literal “cannot be seized.”
• The phrase “to the outer eye” is added for clarity.
• In the last paragraph there are a number of missing words. These have been filled in according to the best of understandings of modern scholarship.