Sermon #3 --- The Gospel of Philip 2
Two weeks ago we introduced The Gospel of Philip with these words from Wikipedia:
“Although it may seem similar to the Gospel of Thomas, scholars are divided as to whether it is a single discourse or a collection of Valentinian sayings. . . . . Many of the sayings are identifiably Gnostic, and often appear quite mysterious and enigmatic.”
Several commentators insist that the work is a catechesis, a religious instruction given to a person in preparation for Christian baptism or confirmation, typically using a catechism.
A catechism is a summary of the principles of Christian religion in the form of questions and answers, used for the instruction of Christians.
Whether we will discover a unifying thread in Philip remains to be seen, but certainly the first eight verses are one unit: they are concerned with displaying an overview of a cosmographical hierarchy involving definitions of proselyte as opposed to a Son of God, (a Man of Truth), and deploring the perishable over the imperishable. This theme is carried on and developed over the next twenty-six verses.
Last week we left off at a consideration of God the True Father and God the Mother. This was an extension of the pairs of spiritual qualities we have been discussing since the first verse of Philip. Going on, the author compares the proselyte level of spiritual enlightenment to winter, and Divine Sonship to Summer.
“7. Those who sow in winter reap in summer.
The winter is the earthly, but the summer is another
eon. Let us sow on the Earth in winter so that we may
reap the harvest in summer!
Therefore, we should not pray to God for the winter,
because the winter is followed by the summer.
But the one who tries to reap in winter will not really
reap but only pluck out the sprouts.”
The metaphor of the preceding section is explicated in the following commentary:
“In warm regions, people sow in winter, not in spring as it is done in cold regions.
The Greek word eons denotes spatial dimensions; among them are those called hell, paradise, the abode of the Creator.
In “winter”, i.e. while we are on the Earth, we have to
work in order that in “summer” we live in sufficiency and bliss of the highest eons.”
It is interesting how the metaphors of Heaven and Earth are mixed with Summer and Winter—Winter is the time of hardship and struggle, but also the time of planting, preparation for the fruition of summer—birth into new life, on Earth as flowering crops, in Heaven as flowering spirituality. In this light the Christmas celebration can be thought of like this: the SEED of the Christ consciousness comes into the world at its darkest hour in preparation for the harvest of summer deeds and events in the Fields of Elysium. Is it any accident that Jesus is said to have been born in Winter and died in the Spring? Does it matter if His body was actually born in Winter or not?
The author goes on to exhort:
“8. The one who does not follow this — will not reap
the harvest. Moreover, such one will not only be without the harvest, but will have no strength in the Sabbath.”
Another mixed metaphor appears here, as Summer and Harvest are equated with the Sabbath—the day of rest. Remember that in Hebrews the author had much to say about Rest in the Lord. The poetry of this section is rich in a complicated overlay of radiant images, each shining through the last.
To summarize this first foray into The Gospel of Phillip, just let me say that the cosmological hierarchy presented in these first few verses represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the complex mystical doctrines we will encounter in this very deep, very enigmatic book. I look forward to sharing more of this material in weeks to come. For now let us cherish this one thought: to be born of the Truth is to be born of the Spirit—to the author of Phillip Truth and Spirit are one and the same. Let us cleave to the Abode of God-the-Father, and claim His estate as the birthright of a Son of God.
Moving on in a different vein, the author reflects on the role of Jesus in creating the Holy Family:
“9. Christ came to “ransom” some: to liberate, to
save. He “ransomed” strangers making them His own.
Afterwards, He set apart His own — those whom He
ransomed by His will.
He laid down Himself (on the Path of sacrificial service) when He Himself willed it — not only when He revealed Himself to people, but from the very day of the Creation of the World, He laid down Himself.”
[Sidebar: The idea of the predestined sacrifice of the Christ from the beginning of the world is an ever recurring motif in all the gospels, and it is crucial to understanding how a Son may bring others to the Abode of the Father, thus creating more Sons. Remember from the opening of Philip:
“Those Who came from the Truth are as They were initially.”
Which is not too far from John 1:1-5
“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
Thus having established Jesus’s precedent established before time began, the sacrifice is spelled out. Back to Philip:]
“He was embodied, and afterwards He — when He
willed — withdrew Himself. He was in the hands of robbers and was taken captive. He liberated Himself and saved also those who were regarded as good and bad in this world.”
After this brief acknowledgement of Jesus’ participation in terrestrial life, we move on to another discussion of the polar opposites with which we were concerned at the beginning of the chapter: proselyte vs Man of Truth, slave vs Son, Winter vs Summer, etc..
“10. Light and darkness, life and death, right and left — are brothers of one another; they are inseparable (in worldly people). Because of this, among them — the good are not good, the bad are not bad, and their life is not life, and their death is not death. So, one should begin with separating all these in oneself. Those who have detached themselves from everything worldly become whole, eternal.”
Notice that William Blake’s Theory of Contraries is here reprised in the sentence, “Light and darkness, life and death, right and left — are brothers of one another; they are inseparable (in worldly people).” Blake, among others, has maintained that life is made up of the harmonious blending of light and dark, good and evil—both are necessary for existence. HOWEVER Blake did not attached the qualifier,
“(in worldly people)”—
Blake gives the impression that good and bad go together ad infinitum, but Philip clearly indicates that life and death are brothers of one another IN WORLDLY PEOPLE, implying that other-worldly people, or, you might say, SUPER-worldly people have transcended this dualistic dichotomy, detached themselves from earthly concerns, and live in an holistic, eternal world, in which the tension between opposites does not exist.
We are discussing two different levels here. The author of Philip seems determined to drive home the point that two levels of consciousness are residing side by side, and the sanctified Christian resides in the higher of the two abodes.
One commentator has paraphrased the section like this:
“The one who has entered on the spiritual Path has to separate in oneself the true, eternal, and valuable for life in the highest eons — from the false, which belongs only to this world. Then one has to cultivate in oneself the first and get rid of the second.
Those Who have accomplished this become eternal in the Divine eons.”
This is a hard lesson to take in, when so many of us spend our
lives struggling to strike a balance between the light and the
dark. So many of us are transfixed by the false sense of
self-importance the world reflects back upon our efforts at
self-recognition; too easily we get convinced that all our
conflicts and compromises are real, when one trip into the Cloud
of Unknowing would make plain the folly of all this to our
hearts and to our minds as well.
The next passage refers to earthly things as a great DELUSION.
This expression is reminiscent of the Hindu term “maya” which
stands for the ILLUSION of material reality. The expressions
are precisely analogous and interchangeable.
Notice, also the opposite pairing, transient vs eternal. The author
of Philip is determined to press home the point that on Earth we
have two possible reference points, the lower and the higher, and
that we ought always to focus our attention on the higher.
Remember, also, that if this were such an easy thing, we would
not have to be reminded of it so often:
“11. The importance attached to earthly things is a great delusion, for they divert our thoughts from the One Who is eternal to that which is transient. And in this case, the one who hears about God does not perceive (behind this word) the Eternal, but thinks about the transient. In the same way, behind the words the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Life, the Light, the Resurrection, and the Church — people do not perceive the Eternal, but think about the transient, unless they have already cognized the Eternal (through personal spiritual experience). These words are only misleading to worldly people. If they were in the (Divine) eons, they would not use these words among worldly concerns and things, because these notions are related to the (Divine) eons.”
There are two red-letter sentences here that I want to emphasize. The first is this:
“people do not perceive the Eternal, but think about the transient, unless they have already cognized the Eternal (through personal spiritual experience),”
In this sentence, two expressions stand out: “cognized the eternal”, and “through personal experience”.
The word “cognize” is of extreme interest because it refers to a special type of understanding. The dictionary does not give an especially tricky definition: to know, to understand; but the sentence the dictionary uses to illustrate the word implies a special nuance:
“The philosopher claims that we can never cognize—in a fundamental sense—anything.”
I think the expression “in a fundamental sense” should be appended to the definition of the word cognize: to understand in a fundamental sense. Thus, to “cognize” the eternal means not merely to understand in literal terms, the eternal, (a feat which would be manifestly impossible), but to achieve an internal apprehension, an identification, a taking in of the resonance of the eternal, to understand in a way that transcends the word “understand”. To cogitate refers to an activity of the BRAIN, but to cognize in a fundamental sense means to mobilize energies in our perceptual apparatus which operate beyond the powers of the brain to contain or comprehend.
And how do we cognize the eternal? Through PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I have said this many, many, many, many times: the ultimate index of spiritual truth is personal experience. Personal experience cancels out every power of the brain to articulate, verbalize, to prove, or otherwise approximate what we know. Thus, to repeat the paragraph from Philip:
“people do not perceive the Eternal, but think about the transient, unless they have already cognized the Eternal (through personal spiritual experience)”
People—which people do not perceive the Eternal? The people who have not already had a PERSONAL EXPERIENCE of the Eternal. In other words, no amount of dogmatic training can create in the person a cognition of the Eternal—only the birth of the individual INTO the Eternal can do that.
The second red-letter section I wanted to emphasize is:
“These words are only misleading to worldly people. If they were in the (Divine) eons, they would not use these words among worldly concerns and things, because these notions are related to the (Divine) eons.”
“These words (ANY WORDS, especially words like Eternal, and God) are only misleading to worldly people.” This brings us back to the idea of “PARABLE”; worldly people (the peasants, the pagans) cannot be ministered to with the same vocabulary as the initiated because these words, without the reference point of personal experience, mean totally different things to the uninitiated. As William James says,
“As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.”
I don’t think Jesus would refer to the people as crocodiles and boa-constrictors, but I think you get the point-- language makes slaves of us by leading our minds into misinterpretations which lead our bodies into wrong action. For instance, some people confuse the attitude of “pride” for the attitude known as “self-respect”. How can we have self-love without self-respect, you say? I say, again, the word “respect” is often based on outward signs, definitions, requirements, and, moreover, the conditioning of our attitudes toward ourselves by social (moral?) conventions, conventions which may have once been based on truth, but which have often become perverted traditions whose vitality has been drained out, over the centuries, by false pictures of the self—pictures generated by mundane concepts which are no longer illuminated by personal spiritual truth. Thus, self-respect is nothing more than PRIDE parading around in a dinner jacket. Moreover, self-respect often does not come from a sense of self, but from an outer false ego formulation that is defined by society, not by an inner self perception.
There are so many words like “Pride”, “Allegiance”, “Freedom”, “Justice”, etc., which may be turned, by the verbal pyrotechnics of Satan, into the most hideous deformities. To the uninitiated, words which refer to Eternal identities are misrepresentations; and to the initiated, all such words are not even part of their working vocabulary:
“they would not use these words among worldly concerns and things, because these notions are related to the (Divine) eons.”
Going on, Philip gives us an idea of the kind of vocabulary the initiated would use—or NOT use:
“12. One name is not uttered among that which is
worldly — it is the name that the Father grants to a Son. It
is above all. This name is the Father. The Son would not
have gotten this name if He had not become the Father.
Those who bear this name know this, but They do not
speak about this. But those who do not bear this name do
not know Them.
Names in this world are invented because it is not
possible to cognize the Truth without them.
The Truth is one, but It is presented as Multitude.
This is for our sake: to lead us to the cognition of the One
through love for Multitude.”
I love this section because it reiterates a point I have made time and time again: the use of words to articulate spiritual reality is a game destined for failure, but we do it anyway because:
“Names in this world are invented because it is not
possible to cognize the Truth without them.”
It is not possible to COGNIZE the Truth without names, and yet it is not possible to EXPERIENCE the Truth with them. Words occupy a kind of Limbo position in the cosmography—we can’t live with them, we can’t think without them. Thus, words must be thought of as an aspect of the Christ Consciousness —MEDIATORS between the false and the True. Again:
“The Truth is one, but It is presented as Multitude.
This is for our sake: to lead us to the cognition of the One
through love for Multitude.”
The word “Multitude” has a special meaning, explained here:
“This sentence speaks about the United We — the Totality of All the Perfect Ones Who flowed into the Primordial Consciousness and Who represent Its Essence.”
As C.S. Lewis reminds us, when we surrender our own will to God’s Will, we become more ourselves—HERE, the totality of the Primordial Consciousness is comprised of a MULITITUDE of Perfect Ones who have flowed TOGETHER in to a SINGLE CONSCIOUSNESS. What is the tie that binds us all together?We must give the only answer we know—LOVE.
Notice how cognition always precedes love in this spiritual declension: thus do Aquinas' and C.S. Lewis' both affirm that "Right reason" is an important component of spiritual progress. This passage is not saying that there is no Truth expressed in words, it is saying that words are an important preliminary to nonverbal understanding.
I've often contemplated the humanity of words. Words are essentially abstract because they represent something in an ideal or an archetypal way—in the mind; but they also are refer to things out there in the physical universe, the material universe. Hence, the expression “Word of God Incarnate” is such a power-packed concept because it leads us to contemplate the union of spirit and flesh, synthesized in the divine personality of Jesus.
The images expressed in painting, poetry, and dance, almost universally refer to physical realities. Pictures (even imaginary pictures, if they are seen with physical eyes), and words (even abstract words like soul and God, if they are understood with the lower, literal mind), must have material referents or they would not exist. It is the WORDS involved in reading that feed the left brain’s appetite for truisms, and promotes self-centered behavior in the service of the ego, that is not even ultimately in service of the self. At the spiritual level, verbal structures no longer serve the intellect—higher mind must take over—a mind state where words can no longer signify a verbal referent; in this mind state, object has become subject, literal consciousness has become self-consciousness.
We have spoken many times of the deception of words: words so often engender cases of mistaken identity--lies disguised as truth, sent by Satan to distract us from the real truth clothed in the Cloud of Unknowing. But we need words to create apprehendable mental images--to cognize them- to share partial knowledge with our worldly brothers(multitude). Still, the goal line, in the race toward spiritual enlightenment, is the dissolution of verbal structures in the Cloud of Unknowing. You might call the Cloud of Unknowing what Philip calls it: the Bridal Chamber. It is really necessary to enter this rarefied environment to experience Divine Love. The beauty is that our minds can somehow hold onto the big toe of rationality, while losing most of itself in the Cloud. Thus it is that Reason reports back to our sequential, literal understanding, (memories In Time), events that truly unfold Outside Time.
Reason is an aspect of human consciousness that has one foot in the carnal, by virtue of the material referents that all words must have, and one foot in the Eternal by virtue of the abstractions which are the stock in trade of any reasoning process. Screwtape expounds on the role of ARGUMENT in the process of COGNIZING Spirit:
“It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that.
Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.
The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result! Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real."”
The role of REASON in spiritual evolution is complex. We know we cannot trust our thoughts, but we cannot achieve any cognitive apprehension without them. C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy tells how it was a train of reasoning that led to his Christian conversion, and yet he repeatedly warns us not to take our verbalized thoughts too seriously. I think one of the hardest things for intelligent people to give up is the assurance that their thoughts mean something. When Socrates declares that the wise man admits he knows nothing, he is making an intensely difficult statement. It is REALLY HARD to know nothing.
The next passage from Philip mentions the fact that false Truths can be used to lead the people down a wrong path—that false Truths can be used to enslave the people:
“13. The earthly rulers wanted to deceive people,
since they understood that people have the same origin
with the really worthy. They took good names and gave
these names to bad things in order to deceive people and
bind them to the bad in this way. And now these earthly
rulers suggest to people that they keep away from the
“bad” and cling to the “good”. These earthly rulers strive
to make formerly free men slaves forever.
14. There are powers which give (power) to people,
not wishing to save them. They do this (in order to subjugate them). People, wishing to be saved, made sacrifices. But a reasonable one (understands clearly that) sacrifices are not necessary and animals should not be offered to deities.
In fact, those who offered animals as a sacrifice
were themselves like animals (by the level of their development)…When a sacrifice was made (animals were offered to deities). Though animals were offered alive, they died. But the one who offers oneself dead to God — (verily) will live.”
These sentences,
“There are powers which give (power) to people,
not wishing to save them. They do this (in order to subjugate them).”
refers to the public propaganda machine that all governments have used, since time immemorial, to keep the people in line and obedient to the status quo. Recently we talked about various types of group PRIDE. In instilling group pride, institutions employ various types of self-aggrandizing phraseologies which are meant to promote parochial loyalties which are socially defensive, and do not operate in service of the self. You may be sure that Satan is at the bottom of a lot of this stuff.
Commenting on this last section concerning animal sacrifice:
The issue of animal sacrifice is related to the larger issue of false gods. We read in Hebrews about the weakness of animal sacrifice, when Jesus' sacrifice was of his blood. I have been reading, in St. Augustine's The City of God, about all the plethora of Latin gods that were prayed to by a population whose attention was divided between a vast number of minor gods whose provinces extended from the weather to the left toenail. Indeed, this might be the worst aspect of polytheism: that seeking gods in everything, may obscure the focus on the Christ Consciousness, and thus make God visible in nothing. I think there is little wrong with seeking little corners of sanctity in our daily duties, like doing the laundry, but let us not miss the big picture
Here, the last paragraph needs to be commented on:
“When a sacrifice was made (animals were offered to deities). Though animals were offered alive, they died. But the one who offers oneself dead to God — (verily) will live.”
The fact is that man is not a body. Man is a consciousness,
a soul. So, it is wrong to say that man is dead if the body has died. It is the body that died, but the man did not.
One can also consider death of man (as a soul, i.e. spiritual
death) in the sense implied by the words of Jesus: “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead!” (Matt 8:22; Luke 9:60).
But in this part of His Gospel, Philip means another death
— the death of one’s lower individual “I” implies the
realization of the Higher I, i.e. Mergence of the developed consciousness with the Creator. Such a person attains the Eternal
Life in the Abode of the Creator in Mergence with Him.
Back to Philip:
“15. Before Christ came, there was no bread of Heaven.
It was like in paradise at the time of Adam: there
were many trees — food for animals, but no wheat — food
for man. Man used to feed like animals. But when a Christ — Perfect Man — comes, He brings the bread from Heaven so that people may eat human food.”
Interesting expression—human food—the implication is that human is not of this world—to become human (as opposed to animal, another dichotomous pairing) is to become divine. People without the true knowledge about their predestination and the Path, live a life quite comparable to the life of animals. God, through a Christ, gives them spiritual food appropriate to humans.
“16. The earthly rulers thought that what they did they
did by their own power and will. But in reality the Holy
Spirit in secret accomplished all that through them — accomplished as He considered appropriate.
They also sow everywhere the true knowledge, which
existed since the beginning. And many people see it while
it is being sown, but only a few of them recall about it by
the time of the harvest.”
Commentary:
“The Holy Spirit directs the acts of people when necessary, but people usually are not aware of this. He, among other things, creates — through vicious people— difficulties in the form of temptations and enticements (such as false doctrines) for other embodied people. This is done for the sake of their intellectual development. After all, they are sent here to learn, and not just to live.
The meaning of our lives on the Earth consists in our self-development, which must go in three main directions: intellectual, ethical, and psychoenergetical. And our Teacher is God. Diligent students, after graduating from this School, are invited by the Father, if they are worthy of this, to His Abode to merge there with Him forever. But remedial students remain forever “repeaters”, become slaves of this world.
The time of the “harvest” is the end of the world: the
School is closed, the worthy students move to the Abode of
God-the-Father, enriching Him with Themselves; the lot of the rest is the outer darkness: destruction, death of the souls.
… A special comment has to be made concerning the use of the pronoun They with regard to the Holy Spirit in this fragment. This is not an error: the Holy Spirit is indeed an aggregate of former humans who attained in their development the right to be in the Highest eons.”
To summarize the main points of this section of Philip, we saw that:
“Christ came to “ransom” some: to liberate, to
save. He “ransomed” strangers making them His own.
Afterwards, He set apart His own — those whom He
ransomed by His will.”
“Light and darkness, life and death, right and left — are brothers of one another; they are inseparable (in worldly people).”
“People do not perceive the Eternal, but think about the transient, unless they have already cognized the Eternal (through personal spiritual experience).”
“One name is not uttered among that which is
worldly — it is the name that the Father grants to a Son. It is above all. This name is the Father. The Son would not have gotten this name if He had not become the Father. Those who bear this name know this, but They do not speak about this. But those who do not bear this name do not know Them.
Names in this world are invented because it is not
possible to cognize the Truth without them.
The Truth is one, but It is presented as Multitude.
This is for our sake: to lead us to the cognition of the One through love for Multitude.”
“There are powers which give (power) to people,
not wishing to save them. They do this (in order to subjugate them).”
Thus, as a catechesis, in preparation for holy baptism, this section of Philip encourages the proselyte to engage his higher self and enter the abode of the Father through reason, and avoid the false truths of institutional propaganda (meanwhile proclaiming a Christian brand of propaganda that is ultimately equally false). Only personal spiritual experience is legitimately true—only personal spiritual experience enables us to join with the MULTITUDE.
Let us pray:
Jesus, these knotty questions occupy our minds with trivial pursuits, while the Love of God reaches out to us with enfolding hands. Let us continue fighting for understanding in this losing battle, because at the end of strife there is rest in the Lord. Amen.
