Gospel of Truth — 3

Gospel of Truth — III

Last week left off our survey of Valentinus’ Gospel of Truth with this thought:

“He registered them first, having prepared them to be given to those who came from him. Those whose name he knew first were called last, so that the one who has knowledge is he whose name the Father has pronounced. For he whose name has not been spoken is ignorant. Indeed, how shall one hear if his name has not been uttered? For he who remains ignorant until the end is a creature of forgetfulness and will perish with it.

If this is not so, why have these wretches no name, why do they have no sound? Hence, if one has knowledge, he is from above. If he is called, he hears, he replies, and he turns toward him who called him and he ascends to him and he knows what he is called. 

[Sidebar: Appreciate for a moment the passionate poesy of this passage: “If this is not so, why have these wretches no name, why do they have no sound?” Are we to conclude from this that wretches cannot make noise, or are we to relate to the language metaphorically and interpret the word “sound” as a paradigm of all human utterance? An Archetypal resonance with THE NAME? 

Going on:]

“Since he has knowledge, he does the will of him who called him. He desires to please him and he finds rest. He receives a certain name. He who thus is going to have knowledge knows whence he came and whither he is going. He knows it as a person who, having become intoxicated, has turned from his drunkenness and having come to himself, has restored what is his own.”

Notice the expression, “He registered them first,”; registered them? Where do Christians get REGISTERED? At the DMV—Department of Mental Veracity? Department of More Visions? Department of Multiple Vacuities? Well, the current discussion centers around the IDENTITY of the devotee as it is WRITTEN IN THE BOOK. There is a lot of talk about THE BOOK here, and it leads to an episode dealing with the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical text written in a secret numerological code— (each letter has a numerical value, and each numerical value has a higher meaning; the system is similar to the I Ching, in that numerical patterns hold within themselves secret messages from the cosmos). 

Thus, one of the mysteries, embedded in the Gnostic system, is the secret knowledge hidden in the Kabbalah, the power of the Word, the Name, The Book. (One wonders: when did Christian scholars STOP reading the Kabbalah? Surely any educated Jew of this PRE-BIBLICAL era was familiar with the Kabbalah, and having no Gospels of Jesus, yet, would have considered it just one more holy book, not the dirty old Jew book it has become. It is all about the naming—attaching WORDS to things, and pondering the significance of those WORDS.) Consider the phrase, “So that the one who has knowledge is he whose name the Father has pronounced.” Imagine God in the Garden of Eden pronouncing the name, “Adam”. At that moment Adam became Adam, not some potential existing in the abstract, Adam, materialized spirit, (or is it spiritualized matter?). And, having been named himself, what was Adam’s first commission from God? To NAME the animals. It is as though the animals did not exist until Adam named them—brought them into cognitive focus. The Thought equals the Being. (I think therefore I am.) The name contains some kind of essence that is precious to us. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the play about the Salem Witch Trials, the hero has just about finished confessing to being a witch, so he can be forgiven and re-enter his life, but at the last moment he changes his mind because he is not willing to sign his name to the confession. 

Naming is important to us—it gives things the only kind of reality we can understand. We understand with language. As Kierkegaard says, “We experience forwards, we understand backwards. Consciousness requires reflective action.” We participate in the eternal now of the Inarticulate, Unknowing Present, but we remember, appreciate, and understand in the language of words and images attached to a flow of psychological time. Somehow, the review is more important than the direct experience. I have movies of me performing, or playing with my kids, etc., and I have a better memory of the event, seen from the camera’s perspective, than I do of my own inner recollection as seen from MY perspective. This idea touches on one of our recurring themes: that spiritual progress requires incarnation; what the body learns here, develops the depth of spirituality up there. Somehow the articulate language makes the material universe possible. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was God.”

Speaking of language, there is much elegant phraseology in Valentinus, but he definitely has trouble with his pro-nouns. I have attempted to make this part of the opening paragraph more intelligible by inserting the proper noun where the confusing pro-nouns get entangled, to whit:

“Since he (the initiate) has knowledge (of God the Father), he (the initiate) does the will of him (Jesus the Christ, the Logos) who called him (the initiate). He (the initiate) desires to please him (Jesus the Christ, the Logos) and he (the initiate) finds rest. He (the initiate) receives a certain name.” 

I find this to be resonant with spiritual significance. “Receives a certain name,” is music to my ears, because it encapsulates the paradox of human existence, i.e., we strive for an inarticulate spiritual state, but we need physical things (words) to get us there. We spend our lives trying to reconcile mundane existence with spiritual reality, and we use a lot of words doing this—indeed, literally expressed doctrine may be the single defining attribute of any philosophical system we refer to as a “RELIGION”. All Mankind is of one mind, and all religious experience is the same, and yet, for centuries, for the sake of some eccentricity of doctrinal semantics, people have killed each other and destoyed each others’ civilizations. The NAMING is therefore significant not merely because it confirms the devotee’s presence in the mind of the Father, but it pronounces his identity with a WORD—a NAME, a literal referent to an abstract reality. As spiritual beings we exist here and now and forever, but, once we are named, we enter the sequential flow of time.

I believe this interpretation is confirmed by the following statement:

“He (the initiate) who thus is going to have knowledge knows whence he came and whither he is going. He knows it as a person who, having become intoxicated, has turned from his drunkenness and having come to himself, has restored what is his own.”

Thus, indirectly, the initiate is referred to as a “person” (the use of the word “person” is significant) who knows “whence he came and whither he is going”; it is as though the NAME generates the activity: it defines the direction, the velocity, and the amplitude of the spiritual quest. It is the devotee’s KNOWLEDGE of the Father, and the Father’s knowledge of the devotee (whose name is written in the book) that motivates movement along the spiritual path. A little knowledge of the Fathers leads the devotee to crave ever deeper knowledge of the Father, as the devotee reunites with the Father and becomes conscious of his own divinity. Notice the expression, “and having come to himself, has restored what is his own.” How important is the NAMING relative to the BECOMING?

Another precious precious phrase is:

“He knows it as a person who, having become intoxicated,”

Here, the illusion of time and space is metaphorically referred to as a state of drunkenness. The madness that attends the drug experience is a descent into the Dark, Carnal, Satanic energy; not only can it ground us in the physical, it can mire us in the physical. The drunken state is like a veil spread over the seeing eye of consciousness (this, by the way is where the word “evil” comes from: energy veils.)—the drunken state is like a veil spread over the seeing eye of consciousness; it creates a thick, translucent fog that throws abstruse shadows of shapes, up on a dirty yellow wall—what we think is real is false, and yet the voice of true reality sings its lonely note, unheeded in a cacophony of false doctrines. 

Then:

“He knows it as a person who, having become intoxicated, has turned from his drunkenness and having come to himself, has restored what is his own.”

In this case, turning away from the drunken illusion is the equivalent of recovering the forgotten memories of the Divine Self. With this transition comes transformation. Recovering from carnal forgetfulness restores the lost self to its transcendent state, and recovers all that was “his own”. In new age literature there is a lot of talk about the divine birthright that is owed to all men; we see ourselves as fragments seeking to reclaim our lost knowledge of the Father by turning back toward Him, instead of away toward Nothing. As children of God, we deserve to claim this birthright as we restore to ourselves what is, and always was, our own.

The next paragraph is grammatically confused as well—one is not certain who “HE” is; the paragraph begins with, “He has turned many from error,” which sound a little like Jesus, but in the preceding paragraph, most of the time “HE” refers to the initiate who is acquiring divine knowledge. Therefore, the implication is that, in emulation of Jesus, the initiate may also minster to the people and “turn many from error”. If this is true, it must be admitted that there is a subtle evangelistic overtone attached to this evolving spiritual doctrine Valentinus is outlining.

The other “HIM” in the paragraph is the “him who surrounds every place, whereas there is nothing which surrounds him.” Clearly this refers to God the Father.

“He has turned many from error. He went before them to their own places, from which they departed when they erred because of the depth of him who surrounds every place, whereas there is nothing which surrounds him.” 

In our every discussion of the Pleroma we have described a place that is within the Fullness of God, but we also have mentioned a place that is OUTSIDE the Fullness. If we think of the Pleroma as a consciousness state, it is not hard to imagine the devotee leaving the Pleroma out of forgetfulness. It is interesting that, even in our error of forgetfulness of God, God still remembers us: “He went before them to their own places, from which they departed when they erred.” It sounds like God even ANTICIPATES our forgetfulness because He goes before us. Thus, are all the doings of us lower creatures dictated by FATE—God the Father’s foreknowledge of all things inside and OUTSIDE the Pleroma, inside and outside time. This is, indeed a wonder.

“It was a great wonder that they were in the Father without knowing him and that they were able to leave on their own, since they were not able to contain him and know him in whom they were, for indeed his will had not come forth from him.” 

In this paragraph, many choices are being made: the fact that the devotees may leave the Pleroma “on their own” implies free will. However, in error, the will of the sinful devotee did not come forth from the Father’s will. Thus, we arrive at a conclusion we have come to before—free will does not exist because the effort of will exerted by the devotee AWAY from the will of the Father is not freedom but slavery. Free will leads to slavery; the only true freedom, the devotee may enjoy, is to be found in the alignment of his will with the Divine Will.

Many words have been written on the subject of free will. Here are a few:

The following is taken from The Myth of Sisyphus: regression in service of the ego, written by Aldussault. I think you will find it in agreement with Valentinus’ proposition that: 

“Hence, if one has knowledge, he is from above. If he is called, he hears, he replies, and he turns toward him who called him and he ascends to him and he knows what he is called.” This is just like what Aldussault says, below: “the source of creativity is the self, but the self that lives outside the ego.”

"Creativity and sensitivity to one’s experience of freedom and joy are activities that are built, or discovered, outside the agency of the ego.  In that way we often hear people talk about channelling another source, or being inspired by a muse.  In fact the source of creativity is the self, but the self that lives outside the ego.  The ego need not be dismantled in order to tap this source.  It is just that one needs to learn to NOT rely on old egoic positions and instead be ready to capture ideas that are free floating and less tied to convention. The source is the divine in us.  It is the great “I AM” of creation and we exist as co-creators.  It is not up to the universe to bring us joy.  It is our task, indeed our purpose in life, to bring joy to the universe.  We live in the paradise that we create by flowing down stream, or we are condemned like Sisyphus to be rolling the boulder of life forever uphill."

If you lean on Jesus and you will always get some support, on this downstream progress toward Paradise, but, as C.S. Lewis says in The Screwtape Letters, you must ultimately do it all on you own:

“To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-- creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because he has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.

Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs-- to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” 

Thus, the will of Man and the will of God are always commingled such that the traffic from lower to higher is fluid; the devotee should not be able to tell when he is in transition from one level to another, except that he will always be able to know which level he is transitioning to. I say, at some point you must do it on your own, but your own is always deeply ensconced in the Will of the Father.

From Rudolf Steiner’s Reincarnation and Immortality, (The Supersensible Being of Man. Lecture given at Basel, Switzerland, January 12, 1916):

“What lies beyond death is really not connected with us at all, but is nevertheless carried out by us. It is characterized by being performed out of love: this is the truly free action. We therefore have to say that what enters us as inspiration by way of our intuitive thinking, has no connection with our body. And what works imaginatively has no significance for the moment, but only after death. These two factors, having nothing to do with the body, are the real forces that work in the true, free act of will in the human being. The profound mystery is that when we investigate the free will we find that nothing mortal in the human being carries out the actions, but we find that free actions are carried out by the immortal part of man."

I love this section because it clearly associates free will with timelessness. Thus, one interpretation of the term “free will” suggests that human will is blind and forgetful because it directs the devotee AWAY from the Will of Father, while Steiner’s elegant definition of “free will” puts it in the realm of the supernatural. Placing FREE WILL in the timeless dimension negates the whole notion of FREEDOM by placing Will in the hands of Fate. What is willed outside time, is acted out in time; thus, all our choices, choices which seem to us to be made in the present, are inexorably bound to a pre-ordained Fate. The immortal Man carries out his free actions articulated by time but not rooted in time.

The next section goes into the secret writing of the Kabbalah:

“For he revealed it as a knowledge with which all its emanations agree, namely, the knowledge of the living book which he revealed to the Aeons at last as his letters, displaying to them that these are not merely vowels nor consonants, so that one may read them and think of something void of meaning; on the contrary, they are letters which convey the truth. They are pronounced only when they are known.

Each letter is a perfect truth like a perfect book, for they are letters written by the hand of the unity, since the Father wrote them for the Aeons, so that they by means of his letters might come to know the Father. While his wisdom mediates on the logos, and since his teaching expresses it, his knowledge has been revealed. His honor is a crown upon it. Since his joy agrees with it, his glory exalted it. It has revealed his image. It has obtained his rest.”

How interesting is the sentence:

“So that they by means of his letters might come to know the Father.”

How Divine forms manifest in the physical to reveal cosmic mysteries! The very letters of the holy text are imbued with light. The letters, the words, the hidden symbologies bring the mind to a climax of understanding that explodes the definitions of verbal understanding and propels the devotee into the Cloud of Unknowing. But this transformation is motivated by the Word, which was God, incarnate in the body of a young Jew.

Going on:

“His love took bodily form around it. His trust embraced it. Thus the logos of the Father goes forth into the All, being the fruit of his heart and expression of his will. It supports the All. It chooses and also takes the form of the All, purifying it, and causing it to return to the Father and to the Mother, Jesus of the utmost sweetness. The Father opens his bosom, but his bosom is the Holy Spirit. He reveals his hidden self which is his son, so that through the compassion of the Father the Aeons may know him, end their wearying search for the Father and rest themselves in him, knowing that this is rest.”

There are so many expressions here that deserve cherishing:

“His love took bodily form around it.”

Interesting expression: “took bodily form AROUND it;” an image of love surrounding a tangible form, suffusing it with life. How we love to be embraced by our loved ones, and feel the energy of love at close quarters, flowing through us together.

“His trust embraced it.”

Here, the embrace is encouraged by trust—the belief that the loved one is safe and secure from all alarms, leaning on the everlasting arms.

“Thus the logos of the Father goes forth into the All, being the fruit of his heart and expression of his will.”

There are two concepts here that deserve comment: “fruit of his heart”, and “expression of his will.”

The “fruit of the heart” is every good thing in the mind of God brought into manifestation. The heart is a garden where love blossoms from every flower. Remember that, earlier Valentinus spoke of Jesus’ crucifixion as a fruit:

“He became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father.” 

Jesus’ crucifixion is described as “a fruit of the knowledge of the Father.” The harvesting of this fruit was pre-ordained since before the beginning. Thus, is the suffering of Jesus justified in the inexorable bonds of Fate. This Knowledge, this fruit, is Knowledge not unlike the fruit that blossomed from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.  

From Brons’ The Gnostic Account of the Fall and the Creation of the Material World we read:

“As a result of the new harmony established by "Christos and Holy Spirit", a new, unpaired Aeon, Jesus, is created, who is the "perfect fruit of the Pleroma", and expresses in his being the attributes of all the other Aeons.”

Notice that the perfect fruit of the pleroma expresses the attributes of all the other Aeons. Thus the Fullness of the Father is replicated in the Fullness of the Son. Of this Fullness of the Son, Valentinus says:

“It supports the All. It chooses and also takes the form of the All, purifying it, and causing it to return to the Father and to the Mother, Jesus of the utmost sweetness.”

Notice the repetitious use of the word “form”

“His love took bodily form around it.”

“It chooses and also takes the form of the All.”

A little farther down the page:

“As one's ignorance disappears when he gains knowledge, and as darkness disappears when light appears, so also incompleteness is eliminated by completeness. Certainly, from that moment on, form is no longer manifest, but will be dissolved in fusion with unity.”

I don’t think it is going too far to suggest that “form” and the “word” are analogous referents to the same thing. We need forms (words, expressions, templates) to give our spiritual explorations focus, but we must accept the fact that eventually these forms lose their power to serve us, as we transcend the literal referents, the skeletons upon which we hang our vibrating spirits, and dissolve our articulated ego structures in fusion with unity.

As an artist I am constantly engaged in stringing together inherited forms into anomalous patterns which reflect the integral physical structure of the universe, but which also liberate spiritual IDENTITIES from their fixed positions as potential energy, thus generating a flow of kinetic energy into the physical; the Person of the Son powers through a webwork of abstract forms, like Frodo slashing through the spiderweb, releasing pure spiritual energy into material manifestation. 

Oftentimes the destiny of a created artwork may take on a life of its own, and this destiny may cause the work to dissociate itself from the life of the artist, its creator; but, irregardless of the destiny of the artwork itself, the effort of an artist’s act of creation, reveals, to his inner self, personal insights; obtaining these insights is a mere collateral effect of spiritual manifestation, but they help the artist construct a spiritual doctrine in himself, a doctrine built out of personal experiences, expressed in any language that is handy, preferably the language of his particular art. In contemplating the infinite, as encapsulated in his created artifacts, the artist becomes one with the infinite; wooed, by its spiritual representations, he enters into an altered consciousness state—the same consciousness state we come to through meditation. The world gets the art, and the artist gets his best self purified in the crucible of creative fire.  The artist prays, the world gets the prayer. Such a deal. 

As Robert Frost says, in Choose Something Like  Star:) 

“Say something to us we can learn

By heart and when alone repeat.

Say something! And it says "I burn."

But say with what degree of heat.

Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.

Use language we can comprehend.

Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,

But does tell something in the end.”

Another beautiful Valentinus expression is:

“The Father opens his bosom, but his bosom is the Holy Spirit. He reveals his hidden self which is his son, so that, through the compassion of the Father, the Aeons may know him, end their wearying search for the Father and rest themselves in him, knowing that this is rest.”

Here the power of the poetry carries the reader into an imaginative dimension; “The Father opens his bosom, but his bosom is the Holy Spirit.” What a lovely visualization— to see the bosom of God opening to reveal a hidden self. What must this hidden self look like? With what face does the faceless Divine choose to represent Himself, to our material eyes, in this material dimension? Valentinus clearly proclaims, “He reveals his hidden self which is his son.” Conveniently, we have many many graphic realizations of what visual artists have  concluded was the physical face of Jesus. Is the face of Jesus what we see when we look inward? Or does God reveal the Son in other than pictorial language? I suppose the apostle Paul got it right when he said:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Notice that Paul and Valentinus both emphasize the idea of being KNOWN. The name in the book materializes the spirit of the devotee, which name is read and given substantial reality by the Father. Paul sees a shadowy, vaguely formed representation, while Valentinus looks forward to eliminating the FORM altogether:

“After he had filled what was incomplete, he did away with form. The form of it is the world, that which it served. For where there is envy and strife, there is an incompleteness; but where there is unity, there is completeness.”

Notice that the Fullness, the completeness, exists in an inarticulate, formless state where worldly envy and strife no longer exist—because there is no longer any containment for these limited modes of consciousness, but only room for Unlimited consciousness. Limited consciousness gives rise to error, forgetfulness, and evil, while unlimited consciousness creates unity. Notice that the words “incompleteness”, “ignorance”, and “error”, are all subsumed under the same identical definition; furthermore, these consciousness modes all exist in the Non-Being, Non-God, OUTSIDE the Pleroma. 

It’s a little funny, from a philological point of view, that existence OUTSIDE the Fullness is Evil, and existence INSIDE the Pleroma (the ALL) is actually the true Pleroma. How can something exist OUTSIDE the ALL, in addition to the ALL? I think, from what I have put together of Valentinian philosophy thus far, that God can exist as Himself, still, Outside the Pleroma, but man exists in a non-existential state outside the Pleroma. I think that God exists outside the Pleroma, through knowledge of Himself, but, to Man, this knowledge is HIDDEN until he returns to the sheltering environment of the Pleroma. 

Saint Augustine talks a lot about beings that were created out of God, as opposed to beings that were created out of nothing—that is, beings that were created from inside the Pleroma, and beings (or you might say ENTITIES), that were created out of the nothingness OUTSIDE the Pleroma. I have no comment on that subject, but clearly the issues of existence and non-existence are on Valentinus’ mind along with lots of other definitions of spiritual activity.

Going on:

“Since this incompleteness came about because they did not know the Father, so when they know the Father, incompleteness, from that moment on, will cease to exist. As one's ignorance disappears when he gains knowledge, and as darkness disappears when light appears, so also incompleteness is eliminated by completeness. Certainly, from that moment on, form is no longer manifest, but will be dissolved in fusion with unity.”

This passage makes apt metaphors of the idea of “knowledge” represented by “light”, and “ignorance” represented by “darkness”. The darkness disappears when the light appears. Form is dissolved in unity.

What is this “knowledge”? It can’t be the kind of knowledge that can be learned from a catechism—it must be knowledge gained from direct contact with the Father; knowledge of experience of abstract entities, components of the Fullness. As knowledge of the Father grows, our point of reference expands outward to encompass the Fullness of God, the love that passeth all understanding.

This concludes this week’s survey of a portion of The Gospel of Truth. Next week we will see Valentinus expand on some shepherd parables. 

Let us pray: Jesus, we thank You for your willingness to devote yourself to our petty needs. We thank You for the Love that draws us together—we thank you for the face that clarifies Itself in the Light of Knowledge, the Knowledge that clarifies Itself in an ocean of silence. Amen.