Inspired by Jeremy Puma’s newly published commentary on the Gospel of Thomas, I thought I would try my hand at one of the bits that has always stuck out for me in that particular piece of poetry, saying number 22:
Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”
I feel like I have the ability to talk about this because I have experienced it to a high degree over these past few months during my “spambot period” which some people might describe inaccurately as “going crazy.” I mean, sure, when these things happen to people with no appropriate frame of reference I’m sure they usually “go crazy” but first of all it’s the culture that is crazy and you are merely “going sane” and second of all, it’s totally normal and natural and nothing to be afraid of.
But what the Jesus character is being used to say in this passage is extremely simple: when you truly start to enter into the Kingdom of God, you become increasingly aware of how little division there really is between your inner and outer worlds.
Dammit, I had this all a lot more eloquently phrased in my head when I was walking home from work (and when I hadn’t been drinking), but let me just have a go at it anyway…
Anyway, it used to really annoy me that when it came to these subjects people couldn’t just talk plainly. Like they were all sitting there trying to act all high and mighty and lord it over the rest of us who didn’t know the secrets. But the thing is that it’s not that it’s a secret exactly. It is simply that it overtakes the logical linguistic frameworks which the editor.AI mind tries to cram everything inside of. So what happens when you start talking about “IT” is that you are immediately shunted off into talking about false approximations of “It” which become little it’s and which can be helpful but for most people are incredibly limiting.
Which is why it’s a hundred billion times better to speak in images and symbols. Much more flexible and useful. And in my experience, when you are going through these things the only real ability you have to manipulate, to feed back into the system is by calling into consciousness symbol sequences to act as energetic code correction sequences.
Don’t worry if you don’t know what I mean right now. That’s not really important. What’s important is that if and when you start going through this stuff on your own, six months down the line, five years from now, on your death bed - whenever - some part of you will call this long-suppressed information to light and enable you to use it.
Not that it’s easy, because it’s not. Mostly I just find myself fumbling around like a thief in the night trying to break into a beautiful locked house by the endless re-sequencing of symbolic codes. Sometimes though you have fantastic successes - the kind which make it all worthwhile to learn to speak symbols and images. These are the things which change your life for the better and which allow you to actively and literally begin to transit across dimensional thresholds.
But I still haven’t directly addressed the gnostic Jesus quote above, have I? I guess not…
Making the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner - what that means is this: you will be walking down the street one day thinking about something. And then you will overhear a conversation had by strangers on the very subject you’re contemplating. Then you will see a t-shirt on a passerby with more information regarding the secret you’re carrying inside of you. Then you will come home and have an email waiting from a friend you haven’t seen in years which highlights some new aspect of the same dilemma.
This is what Jesus is talking about: when reality folds in on you. Most people just experience it here and there with “synchronicities.” And that’s where it starts. But if you spend all your time following them, tracking them carefully - that’s where shit starts to break down.
I don’t have a lot of advice about how to proceed in this area. All I can say is I have been through it. And it is impossibly difficult for your rational mind to accept. And it is impossibly dangerous because if you reach this stage before you have cleared yourself of negative emotional patterns and programming, well then you are pretty much fucked. That is, if you make the inner like the outer and vice versa, but your inner world is populated by demons and darkness - well then, that’s what you’re going to begin experiencing in an extremely literal way.
This is what I was talking about in terms of Noah and building an ark out of reference points: if you’re ready to destroy reality, you better make damned sure you have something good ready with which to replace it. Because God is only going to let you take on board the cosmic flight to New Jerusalem the things which you have telesymbolinkly latched onto yourself. You may not be allowed to go back and forage for what you need. Make sure you decide well the first time around, because trust me you do not want to have to go through this more than once. I’m not even sure it’s actually possible to do so. (See the Golden Door in the Sky in the Wizard of Oz animated vid above)
But then, I don’t know a lot about this stuff - even after years of study and practice. I am only a fool, a fraud, a sinner, a liar - a poet - in the eyes of God. But lucky for you and me, those are just the kinds of people the Lord likes to hang out with. Rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
- END -
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13 Comments
And of course the first step is finding out just what is inside. Most people don’t even pay attention to the contents of their own minds and hearts. You can even start by looking around at what’s outside, because those are the symbols you’re unconsciously surrounding yourself with which reflect the inner. Then you can start to work from both ends, to break down, reshape, re-configure it all.
That quote from the Gospel of Thomas pretty well sums up everything I’m trying to do with.. whatever it is I am.
ps: Tim, would you mind emailing me a link or two that would help me better understand the ‘AI.mind’ you’re always referring to. I think I missed the memo.
Thanks!
Okay well this is the best explanation I’ve written of it, although it’s not very concise
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007/03/08/gold-bullion-god-bull-lion/
I am working on a project to make all this shit more easily transmittable. I sort of had to overly complexify it for myself first in order to understand it…
thanks for the nod!
my fucking site is down again, tho. folks can find out more here:
http://www.thegospelofthomas.org
You have hit the nail on the head.
Well done.
One term for the process you’ve been going through is Chapel Perilous. You describe it well and you’ve clearly learned the moves needed to leave it behind (or at least, leave it as a permanant place of residence…). Like you said, it’s real easy to go mad there - or be changed enough for the difference between what you become and madness is not easy to destinguish on the outside, especially to mental health professionals.
I’ve been loving the use of symbols you’re using to transmit the received vibe - but never forget the core of the experience is *numinous*, thus any and all symbols thrown at it aren’t quite the same as It. (The Tao that can be expressed, etc etc.) The ’scatter’ style of transmission in Sufi is similar, but lower-tech (i.e. all word-based, with maybe a side order of music and dance).
As for the Thomas quote, I took it as Jesus getting all Taoist with his crew, trying to show them Yang can (and indeed *must*) transform into Yin, and that process can be partially under volition.
I’ve seen homeless people go from person to person on the street and read their minds, commenting on or inserting themselves into their inner conversations.
Oops! Where were you with this advice last night at 3:18am when I had that “dream”?
Very good read! And it’s pretty!
Thanks Tim
You might do well to put that post prominently placed atop your site as a sort of “WTF?”-dispeller. See, now that I GET it, I want to go back and read it all, the most incomprehensible, even more so. My AI has been editing your blog out entirely for months, and I’ve been letting it because I honestly didn’t see the VALUE for me in it. The AI had me convinced you’d gone off the deep end and that I couldn’t afford to subject myself to that ’shit’. I’m selfish that way, and busy. But now I see the value, and now I’m on to that little fucker (the AI) and can make a different choice.
Just a thought. Point is, you actually are onto something. So right on.
> a fool, a fraud, a sinner, a liar - a poet
Come on you raver
you seer of visions
Come on you painter
you piper
you prisoner
and shine!…
*
It’s not that one causes the weird shit. But neither is it that the weird shit is happening all by itself. It’s more like you see the weird shit if you’re looking at it in the right way.
*
He’s a sinner
Candy coated
For all his friends he always seems to be alone
But they love him…
http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/b/bugsym...07/wecouldhavebeenanything339347.html
All in good time.
know-heirs:
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Jeesy Chrisy is referring to anything at all dualistic or synchronous.
I think he (or more correctly, the author(s)) is talking about something synonymous with the goal of Buddhism. In a rather general and ashamedly simplistic view of progress insight, the aspirant meditates everyday until fruition occurs, which is the first taste of enlightenment. This is akin to an actual physical experience (although some people would rightly claim that it isn’t, but saying that is just plain unhelpful and confusing), not an intellectual realisation. This is why it is so easy for charlatans to pretend they now some kind of ’secret’, and equally why no genuine mystic appears to talk sense.
Fruition is sometimes referred to as ‘Emptiness’, and this first ‘taste’ can be considered as the aspirant having direct knowledge (based on experience) of ‘Form is Emptiness’, whereas before all he or she knew was ‘Form is Form’. Several fruitions and approximately seven years of daily practice later, and this ‘Emptiness’ becomes a permanent feature of everyday life. This is ‘enlightenment’, or knowing experientially that ‘Emptiness is Form’.
I believe that Jesus (or the Gnostics) is referring to this final state. I don’t think that any kind of intellectual realisation cuts the mustard. Consider the wording:
‘when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female’
You have to make, not consider. The words are clearly pointing to something that isn’t dualistic (which a synchronicity is).
What do you think?
The more “literal” (not really (?)) or direct interpretation:
Everything you consider exterior to your body is known only through the sphere of the sensorium, which completely and utterly specifies the boundary of the known world.
The one image presented, known as the field of vision, is permanently and absolutely superior to any attempt to find or define its boundaries or mark its borders. Every measuring instrument is wholly contained within this sphere, as is clear after a little introspection.
The inner experience of sensory perception contains everything that can potentially manifest in the outer world; the outer world is wholly contained in the soul. Interior and exterior flip like the Necker cube.
Plato, Plotinus, Hermes all agree: the spirit is “in” the soul just as the soul is “in” the body. The conception of the meaning of in/exteriority re: the soul/body can be be applied analogously (but quite a bit more difficultly) to find the inner life of your own inner life.
There is no God but God!
In times past in the Western tradition, spirit and soul were quite distinct, although sometimes different designations were used. But the geometric metaphor can be used to make some sense of a lot of esoteric medieval stuff.
http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/26/268.html
this Thomas passage has long been a personal favorite with regard to the personal creative quest we all travel.
the experience of having an idea that calls, cries, beckons, and begs to be set free and let loose into the world… oh, the yearning! the lack of balance! the cursed tilt of the uneven scales!
set them right, make them proper, achieve balance, find the center spot, the seat of the soul — the place where the two worlds meet. because i really think they are already the same, and it is the experience of life (lived well?) that leads us toward realizing this.