Analogue 69

Analogue 69 

The Liberation of Enlightenment

Ignorance grounded in confusion is the mother of evil. Anyone working out of ignorance is not, was not, nor will ever be a true being. And yet, if truth is fully revealed, even these can be brought to perfection. Truth, like ignorance, if it is held in secret remains at rest within itself, but if it is manifest outwardly, then it becomes known and is superior because it triumphs over ignorance and liberates us from confusion. The Logos said, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” It is ignorance that enslaves us, and enlightenment which liberates us. When we come to recognize the truth, we shall discover its fruits within our hearts. If we unite intimately with it, we shall reach ultimate fulfillment.

At present we are surrounded by the visible manifestations of creation. Some call these strong and valuable, while what is unseen or unknown is deemed weak and contemptible. The truth is, however, that what is manifest is weak and inferior, while what is unseen is powerful and praiseworthy.

Yet it is from the unseen world that the mysteries of truth are revealed through iconic images, but the Bridal Chamber itself remains hidden for it is the Holy of Holies.

SYNOPSIS

• Truth experienced personally becomes wisdom. In outward manifestation it is spiritual practice at work. 
• How to understand the practice of the contraries is essential to the truth found in the Gospel of Philip. 
• The Philippian Gospel’s definition of evil is different from the Pauline sense of transgression resulting in sin. 
• In the human condition, confusion leads to ignorance which expresses itself as evil. 
• Ignorance or its opposite (full and direct knowing or enlightenment), determines the interior condition of a human being. 
• Truth and wisdom guide us out of ignorance and onto the path of understanding and insight. Union with them lead to fulfillment and liberation. 
• Truth-wisdom is meant to “un-confuse” us, bringing clarity, awareness, and true self-knowledge. 
• Freedom from enslavement, compulsion, and coercion is its ultimate goal. 
• The text quotes the Gospel of John where Yeshua is said to give outward expression to the Logos. 
• The Logos becomes the key that unlocks the doorway out of the condition of slavery into freedom. 
• The paradox of the seen and the unseen, the unmanifest as distinct from the manifest, challenging the senses. 
• The practice and use of iconic images through contemplative seeing takes place within the Bridal Chamber.  
• Truth that is never manifested or realized in space-time, remains at rest. It is latent and potential but without action and work. When it is manifest, it begins to overcome the power of ignorance and confusion. 

You Tube recording

COMMENTARY

Ignorance as the Mother of Evil

Going directly to the root of the human condition, the Gospel of Philip addresses the root-cause of evil and distortion in our world. As this Gospel describes it, confusion based in ignorance is the heart of the matter and is said to be the source of all evil. This sapiential vision is both comprehensive and focused. It is ancient and contemporary at the same time. Having lived through the last few centuries of disturbance and horror in the human world, we can perhaps readily hear these words with clearer certainty. We may now be more fully prepared to discuss the roots of evil, and to trace them back to their origins. In some fundamental way, however, this Gospel contradicts common theological positions held in western Christendom, centered on its doctrines of original sin. This dogma is, of course, based in Pauline teaching, but expounded throughout the centuries by later theologians like Augustine and Anselm. In subsequent centuries, both Catholic and Protestant theologians amplify the implications of this historical notion. 

In the theologies of the West, it is said that the tragedies of world history  are the direct result of the wrong moral choices made by our ancestral parents, which marked them (and our own souls) forever making it impossible to ever fully recover. Ever since this “fall” from innocence, we have been tainted by their disobedience. Their fall has irrevocably contaminated each human being, the whole of humankind, and its entire history. Their original guilt overshadows us all so that we each continue to express an innate and irresistible tendency to sin, which describes our perpetual condition of total depravity. According to these doctrines, there is no real possibility for redress from the guilt and shame of this original act. The result is a permanent psycho-spiritual wounding that cripples humankind forever. Without radical, external remediation we will never recover, but die in our sins.

The Gospel of Philip sees differently. Ignorance, not original sin, is the mother of all evil. The underlying cause of suffering in the human condition is not an inherited trait or weakness, nor is it an innate tendency to do evil caused by original sin. Instead, it is the loss of an ability for true knowing (and thus the absence of truth), resulting in our collapse into a state of ongoing ignorance and confusion. Humans act in ways that create evil because they are ignorant of the truth, and are thus confused about what is right and wrong. They are held captive by the evils that arise as a result of ignorance. Humans, therefore, “fall short” (which is the true meaning of the word hamartia) of their own true nature and easily miss the goal (or target) of completion and ultimate realization. The antidote, however, is not an atoning sacrifice for sin, but the full revelation of Truth—unveiled and revealed to each individual. To keep truth hidden is a crime against humanity. Truth that is set free, however, overcomes ignorance, bringing liberation. As the analogue says, it is ignorance that enslaves us, and enlightenment which liberates us. It is a relatively simple formula, unburdened by the convolutions of the doctrine of original sin and appears to be powerful in its effects. 

Enlightenment as the Cure

Recognition of truth that is already resident within and around us becomes, perhaps, the first form of awakening—a recognition of an inner Light that begins with the lifting of a veil of blindness. These descriptions seem deeply related to other central teachings of Yeshua concerning an inner turning (the metanoia of reorientation). Triggered by the intimacy of the divine Presence, we are invited to turn and recognize the light present to and streaming toward us from within. Light is the cure for the disease of ignorance. Although we may for a time live in an environment of darkness and become existentially blind, we are not fundamentally creatures of the dark. We are creatures made of and for light and meant to know it. At the close of this Gospel, humans are described as beings of Light. This is the central message of the Gospel of Philip. It is not one embedded in shame, but full of hope.

We live in a world filled with an excess of confusion based largely on our own disordered perceptions. We perceive the outer world as more powerful than the more hidden, inner realities within us. We see the external world as more real (or the most real thing), while the interior is deemed unreal, or sometimes as even mere fantasy. This analogue says, however, that this is a basic misapprehension. What appears strongest or most real in our eyes is truly weak because it lacks greater reality. Conversely, what appears to be weak and fanciful is far stronger than we can imagine. We live and are guided by these confusions, but the Logos comes to reverse our perceptions, giving us a revelation that can liberate us into true knowing and deep insight. The goal of the Logos is to give knowledge by direct perception, bringing about a transposition in ordinary human understanding and shaking our foundations. The result is a new fruitfulness and freedom within our being. 

The spiritual goal in the work for humanity is to reach both ultimate fulfillment and complete enlightenment.

The Praxis of Liberation

Liberation from ignorance is not a doctrinal matter that must be believed. It is a spiritual praxis that must be experienced directly. Light and understanding do not concern themselves with a system of beliefs; rather, they help us break through into an experience of a direct perception of the patterns of reality created by the Logos. We were born among these patterns. We see their outer realities around us in the forms of creation. In our confusion we believe the outer forms to be ultimate or final. The truth, however, is not available to our outer perceptions, but they can only be known fully or directly as we experience all their inner relationships. 

Much like knowing how to bake a loaf of bread, or to fix a car, the reality (or true essence) of both cannot be fully perceived in the final product or at their surfaces. What has gone on during the mixing, rising and baking, or the mechanisms that have been repaired or changed beneath a car’s shiny, exterior surface, is its underlying reality. That is where the truth of things ultimately resides. To be a good baker (and to know the reality of bread-baking) you have to go behind the scenes and know the patterns and processes of baking, and learn them by heart. To be a good mechanic you must know the many mechanisms underneath the hood and have a working knowledge of how they each relate to one another. This appears to be true about everything. Outer surfaces are not the truth of things. They represent an incomplete knowledge that if taken to be the ultimate truth, may lead an individual astray. Ask the Logos (the baker, the maker, and the designer) to give you a complete understanding of things. Such knowledge is liberating. 

Transcendent and Hidden Knowledge

In the spiritual work for humanity, the goal is to reach both ultimate fulfillment and complete enlightenment. We are not simply here to enjoy ourselves but to be liberated from darkness and grow into the light of full knowing and its ultimate fulfillment. To use the previous metaphor, we are meant to be both eaters of the bread as a form of enjoyment, but even more importantly, to be bakers of the loaf. We are here both to enjoy the driving experience of the car, but also more importantly perhaps, to know how to fix and maintain it. These are higher states of knowledge, liberating us from dependence on others into a freedom of independence within ourselves. 

What is the source of such transcendent and hidden knowledge? Perhaps we have sought it by exploring the external surfaces of the world (which indeed is a domain for human exploration, and not to be ignored). We are, however, given access to something more inward—a place for deeper exploration beyond the world’s exteriors and surface structures and with an instrument of exploration that far more precise. The place of inner experience is the secret chamber hidden within, the cave of the heart. In this Gospel, it is also called a place of intimacy known as the Bridal Chamber. It is the most holy place, which cannot be easily detected by outer observation, but only through the secret explorations of the “spirit knowing Spirit” (I Corinthians 2:1-16). Of all places available to us, it alone remains hidden at the foundational levels our being, but not inaccessible. This chamber is our entry point into the divine mysteries whose realities are bathed in light. 

By going inward, we are released into liberation and into the mysteries of Being itself. In that space, truth is conveyed not through words (alone), but through the iconic images which are the patterns and templates themselves which the Logos uses to create the realities we know and inhabit. Iconic images and their meanings are revealed there, and we are privileged to be able to go in, perceive, and receive them.                          

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. In this world, how do you define evil? Where do you notice it to be most present? Evil is clearly not just one thing, but defines aspects of the human condition that diminish wellness and wholeness in the human community. If you can, outline the layers and dimensions of evil at work in the world as you see and understand them.
2. There is a big difference between defining the roots of evil as ignorance or defining it as acts done that are caused by original sin. How are these different? When you think about human causation, where do you stand in the argument between them?
3. How does truth liberate us and ignorance hold us captive or enslave us? Have you ever noticed this to be true in your own experience? What have you experienced about blindness and ignorance and waking up into truth?
4. If (and when) you woke up, or came into a more truthful relationship with reality, what were the fruits of it that you discovered in that awakening? How did it bear fruit in you?
5. The argument is often made that what is true or real is what you can see or detect with your outer senses, or what you can prove logically through the rational mind. Do you know anything that contradicts this notion? In your knowing, are there things that contradict or are outside this? What are they?
6. What do you know of the unseen worlds and their realities? What are you certain about that is beyond sensory awareness or rational verification?

 

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY 

AND REFERENCE

• Inner knowledge, called esotericism, has always been at the heart of the revelations of sacred tradition. Obviously exoteric structures hold religious reality in place in the outer world, but what is kept most deeply and more hidden in religious traditions are spiritual processes going on inside a religion (or within a person). These are things which ultimately bring true knowledge and enlightenment through direct knowing. This esoteric reality is often called its mystical tradition that brings liberation. Truth or knowledge contained in external doctrines, however, often enslaves, holding a person captive to dogmatisms and fundamentalisms which in the end occlude the Light. The anatomy of a sacred tradition is a complex thing. The analogue of a wheel has been used to explicate it. The outer rim provides the necessary rigidity that keeps a sacred tradition stable and moving across the hard and difficult surfaces of the world. The power that drives this wheel forward, however, is inward, at the center, whose axis exists along another plane of reality. What carries the energy of the axis (its driving force) to the surface of the wheel are the spokes, which are passageways from the central source of power to the outer surface. These, however, often remain hidden behind the surface structure of the rim. This religious anatomy describes the axial source of power, its esoterica pathways from rim to the center of power, and the obvious surfaces of the outer rim of a religious tradition. The whole of the wheel is bound together and works as a whole, and if any part is missing the wheel collapses. It is, however, the energy and will of Spirit that both empowers and directs the vehicle moving forward. 
• Ignorance, resulting in confusion, is the mother of evil. This assertion is at the heart of an understanding of the human condition that is both a diagnosis and the means to the cure. If the diagnosis is different (original sin resulting in an ontological flaw) then the understanding of the remedy will obviously be quite different. One can look at the theological systems of both western and eastern Christendom and understand just how differently they approach both the diagnosis and the treatment. This is very helpful. Imagine, then, the possibility of a mis-diagnosis and the application of a cure that, in the end, does not help the patient at all, but actually worsens the sickness. This appears to be the point of view guiding the teachings of this Gospel. A mis-diagnosis has exacerbated the situation and amplified the sufferings of humankind. A better understanding and diagnosis, and the right application of the “original medicine” of Truth (which Yeshua said sets us free) provides release from suffering. 
• Patterns from the Logos have/ been examined throughout this Gospel. What is important to note is that the patterning described in this Gospel is not an abstraction, but, as is also true in John’s Gospel, is a living being who manifests the pattern and is in deep relational exchange with the whole created order. To know the Creator of the order, to understand its governing principles, and to live by them is a form of liberation. This can be illustrated through the mechanisms of modern technology. An individual can purchase a complex machine of some kind and know its general purpose. To truly use it effectively, however, it is crucial to read the instructions first, assemble its part.