26 No love without openness to all that is

LG26

Jesus said: You do see the splinter in the eye of your brother but you don't see the beam in your own eye. If you remove the beam from your own eye, then you will see clearly enough to remove the splinter from the eye of your brother.

You can look at a fellow man with eyes of love. They invite the other person to come out, to show themselves.

You can also look at a fellow human being with a judgmental look. Is that one of us? Does it behave according to our own norms and values? Has it adjusted properly?

Love is: allowing a fellow person to be different from yourself. If you are not prepared to do this, you cannot see the human being in the other, nor can there be charity.

Love can only flourish in total openness to all that is. Only someone who makes peace with himself, stops fighting himself, can achieve this openness. That means in the practice of life that one disarms oneself, puts down one's armor, and is prepared to be touched, also by pain and sorrow. In the free space that this openness creates, love will present itself as the ground of existence for itself and for other people.

We can experience a meeting with a fellow man on two different levels. The one level is that of the description of reality, within which all kinds of dogmas and rules tell how to behave in certain circumstances.

An example:

The Jewish and Palestinian women from Logion 5 are each other's enemies at the level of the description. But the grief of a Palestinian mother who loses a child in that struggle is the same as the grief of a Jewish mother who loses a child. That is the other level, that of the soul. Whoever chooses the level of the soul sees the human in the sorrow of both mothers. By daring to see that and putting it above the doctrine, you yourself become human.

Another example:

Children who have died without baptism should not be buried in sacred earth, as explained in the explanation to Logion 6. If you look at your fellow man with that norm in mind, then that judgment is the bar in your own eye.

You see that those fellow people have failed because they did not baptise their child. You supposedly see the splinter in the eye of your brother. But you don't see that it is a splinter from the bar in your own eye.

'See the human being' was said earlier in logion 5. Not the human being as he is according to the agreed images and norms, but the human being that you see if you dare to open the windows of your soul. If you can look at it that way, your soul will be moved by what you see. If you then act from that compassion, your actions will be an expression of true love.

At the level of the doctrine the Jewish and Palestinian women are each other's enemies, and according to the doctrine the baptised child may not be buried in sacred earth. But the two women and the pastor put the touch of their heart above all agreements. They then act as a human being towards a fellow human being.

They have removed the beam in their eye.

And as a result, that alleged splinter suddenly disappeared in the eye of the other.

58 Realized Insight

LG58

Jesus said: Happy the person who suffered and found life

Happy the person who suffered? What should we do with that?

It must also have been a surprisingly strange statement for the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus, shockingly defamatory. Suffering was a punishment from Yahweh on sin, right? Hadn't Moses been clear about that? In the Deuteronomy Bible Book, he says that Yahweh rules life as a judge. Whoever follows him will be rewarded, whoever does not will be punished. And later Bible books are not unclear that all the calamities that strike the Jewish people time and time again are a justified punishment for disobeying Yahweh. Thus the prophet Ezekiel says on behalf of Yahweh:

I will not spare you nor pity you, but I will repay you for your walk, your abominations will come upon you, and you will know that I am the Lord.

And the prophet Hosea adds, also speaking on behalf of Yahweh:

Samaria has to pay because it has rebelled against his God. They will fall by the sword, their little children will be crushed, their pregnant women will be ripped open.

Jesus leaves this vengeful view and emphatically breaks [with] it. The New Testament tells that he mixes with lepers and other outcasts. With this he shows that nobody is excluded from the charity he calls for. Nobody, really nobody. Every person is a neighbour.

Jesus' answer to human suffering is not an accusing finger, but mercy without judgment. That is perhaps the most characteristic difference between Jesus and the Old Testament.

This logion fits in with Jesus' revolutionary new attitude towards suffering, and adds something to it. It shows that the willingness to accept suffering without judgment as part of life, makes you a whole person, "a living" in the symbolism of Gnosis.

In the previous logion we already talked about the illusion of enlightenment. You can form an image of what it is like to be enlightened and then rebuild yourself to fit into that image. Such an illusion about being enlightened can contain the idea that as an enlightened person you will no longer suffer, that you will then be above that. A release from suffering is not the commitment of gnostics. With that thought, with that idealised image of the enlightened, you place yourself outside your own wholeness as a person, outside of life, and, even more so, outside of Source.

Whoever wants to become a whole person, and as a whole person wants to coincide with Source, will have to embrace reality as a whole, with all the trimmings, without reservation.

This is called surrender. Surrender is unconditional.

Because, what is always at stake in the Thomas gospel is wholeness as a person. That wholeness cannot be achieved by amputating oneself in any way whatsoever. Not even by wanting to change reality.

Suffering is an inescapable part of being human. It is the other side of love. For example, we suffer for the loss of a loved one because we love our fellow human beings. Unconditional love can only exist in combination with the unconditional willingness to experience the pain that life sometimes inflicts on us.

Only that surrender will be able to bring man the deepest possible joy of life. If one wants that joy, one must also include suffering. Strangely enough, love and joy of life do not exclude suffering, but on the contrary. The three of them form the depth of reality.

That in order to become a whole person one should embrace reality as a whole is a point of view that often evokes protest. Because it is understood that everything should be okay. That is not at all what is meant here. That you should agree with everything is a mental judgment, not a surrender. Surrender also means letting go of that conception. Only then can you make reality appear to you as it is, in all its infinite diversity, without excluding anything from it.

Then you have found life. Then there is a willingness to be touched in the heart without conditions.

This unconditional willingness to be touched can very well result in a strong inner protest about a certain situation or course of action. You can also experience approval, for example in the form of a happiness experience. Protest and approval of the heart then form the inner guidelines for human action, and not the judgments imposed from outside. Such a protest or a consent from the heart is not a mental judgment. They are the result of emotional openness. Those experiences are the messengers of the soul, see Logion 65.

It's something you have to deal with, act upon. Those are the assignments that are handed to you by life itself.

In the Christian tradition, suffering has unfortunately fallen under the spell/charm of sin and martyrdom. The suffering of Christ in particular has become dominated by penance.

One can also read the story about the descent of Christ on earth with the willingness to accept suffering in a different way. Not as a historical reality, but as a meaningful myth. Then that story is also about the acceptance of suffering as part of reality. The otherwise so mysterious silence of Jesus in his condemnation to the death on the cross suddenly becomes very meaningful. That silence acquires the meaning of the unconditional surrender to life as a gateway to the resurrection from spiritual death.

61Self-image and the true self

LG61

61a Jesus said: Two will rest on a bed; one will die, the other live.

61b Salome said: Human, who are you? You sat down on my couch and you eat from my table, as if you were representing someone.

Jesus told her: I come on behalf of an equal. I was given of what is my father’s.

Salome said: I'm your student/pupil.

Jesus said: That is why I say: Whoever is one will be full of light, but who is divided, will be full of darkness.

61a

In the previous logion, Jesus said "Find a place of rest for yourself." This logion is a continuation of this. What happens when you have found a place of rest for yourself?

At the place of rest the false self will die and the true self will wake up. The false self, that is the image that you have made of yourself and that you mistakenly think you are. You are not. The true self, that is your true personal identity that will emerge if you dare to let go of your false self.

So that is the opposite way of the previous logion. A Samaritan was on his way there to become a legalistic Jew. "Don't," Jesus said there. If you are already such a person, if for example you have been eaten by "a crowd" who paint you a self-image of you, you have to go back to becoming a human again. And you do that by seeking that inner place of rest and surrendering to it. There your false self dies, and you become a living, a true human being. The place of rest is the grave of the false self. Then there is the resurrection from spiritual death.

Listen to the story of Heinrich, a German child soldier, who is summoned in 1944 to help defend the homeland. When he arrives in the barracks, he not only receives a soldier's uniform as clothing, but his spirit is also uniformed. His spirit is also clothed in Gnostic terminology, but with ideas. He is told that he is an Aryan, a noble moon. He receives all sorts of enemy images from other people.

Heinrich believes all of that. He now therefore believes that he is an Aryan with a noble task of saving humanity from the Untermenschen. That image of himself as an Aryan-with-noble task is his false self. That self-image is part of the Nazi ideology. In the same way we all form an image of ourselves during our upbringing. And we think we are that image. When we say "I" we mean that image. Heinrich shares his false self as an Ariel with all other people who also think they are Arians. And the enemy images also apply to other people in groups. Such an image of yourself and others makes blind to the own unique self, but also to the self of the other. To overcome that blindness you need to let go of your false self-image. In the absence of the false self, the true self will present itself "naturally." This process requires that you create an inner "place of rest," a safe place in your consciousness. From there you can learn to see your own constructs about your identity and let them go. See also logion 54 about this.

Seeing your image constructs is the beginning of redemption.

61b

“(Wo)Man (human) who are you?" That the question is remarkable. Is asked by a woman named by her own name, Salome, just like Mary Magdalene in Logion 21. In most Logions, it is "the students" who ask the questions set. "The students" are never mentioned by name, except Peter in logion 114.

"The students" usually perform as a group the rhetorical function of the ignorant who ask the right questions to give Jesus the opportunity to give the enlightening answers. But that's different here.

It is remarkable first of all that Salome appeals to Jesus with "human." And then she asks "Who are you?"

To understand that question, we must go back to Heinrich's example given above. Heinrich thinks he's an Aryan. He will also introduce himself to his fellow men and they will see him that way, and he will certainly demand that of them. This not only affects himself, but also his fellow human beings are unaware of his true nature as a person. They only see his social mask. They do not see the human being in him. He's dehumanized.

Salomé addresses Jesus here with "human." She looks through the social mask of Jesus. She sees him as a "human son", a person without a mask. But who is he if he doesn't have a social mask? How can you know someone without a mask, without a social framework?

She also gives a preliminary answer:

It looks like you're coming on behalf of someone.

It seems to her as if Jesus is not himself, but as a kind of ambassador, he discards himself to speak on behalf of a superior, on behalf of God, for example, like the Old Testament prophets.

But Jesus makes it immediately clear that it is not like that. He says:

I come on behalf of an equal.

An equal! Prophets are not God, they are not God's equal. They are merely the mouthpiece of the divine. Jesus is not a mouthpiece. He is essentially like the divine. Salome now understands what Jesus means, and how special that is. She wants to be his student. But Jesus immediately warns her, just as he did with Thomas in Logion 13. If she would make a distinction between her and Jesus, if she thought that only Jesus was divine and she was not, she would be divided in that way. Because then she places her divine core outside herself. Then it will be divided into itself. As a result, she will create darkness over her own true self, just like Heinric By deifying Jesus and making himself unequal to him, she will die in a spiritual sense and become a corpse. If she relates to herself what she has seen in Jesus, then she too will be one with her true self, her own humanity. Then she too will be a living one. She too is here on earth on behalf of an equal. As a human being, as the unique human being Salome, and not as an unworthy woman, for example, she is one and the same as the Source. Just like Jesus. And then she takes to heart what Jesus says in Logion 108:

Whoever drinks the words from my mouth will become like me, and I will become like them.

2 Second Promise: You will be like a king

LG2

Jesus said: Let he who searches continue searching until he finds and when he finds he will be shocked and being shocked he will wonder and he shall be king over the All. And as king he will regain his peace.

Gnostics is not a belief, we said in the explanation of the previous logion. But what then? Gnostics is a way. The Gnostics were called "the people of the road" in their time. You can also say that the gospel of Thomas and other Gnostic texts are a kind of travel description. The texts tell you, according to the gnostic Valentinus, where you come from and where you will go:

Whoever has gnosis, knows where he came from and where he will go. He knows, as someone who was drunk has become sober again, and, having come to himself, has put his affairs back in order. (Gospel of Truth 16)

In the previous logion you were told that you will not taste death if you find the meaning of the secret words. The Thomas gospel is also a kind of adventure novel about an exciting search for a hidden treasure. You will only be able to find this treasure if you continue to search diligently and not give up too quickly. Keep looking, this logion says. Also be prepared that you will be shocked when you find it. Being 'shocked' or 'stunned' (Greek: ekplèxis) by a story is a traditional, positive appreciation in Greek classical rhetoric of a good argument, for example of a Sofist defending a defendant before a court. Saying to the audience that they will be "shocked" is a way of claiming: listen, this is an argument that will provide, with the help of arguments, an insight that you did not have before, so that you will see that the facts of a case completely different than you originally thought. Moreover, it will be so natural with what you actually already knew that you will be surprised that it only now penetrates you. That of course also applies to the previous claim in Logion 1 that you will not taste death. You may have thought that eternal life is promised there after physical death, but no, that turned out to be meant differently. Now it is claimed that you will be like a sovereign prince sitting on your inner throne, ruling over the All, once you have found it. That is not wrong either. What does that mean now? The inner kingship is a common theme in the Western mystical tradition. The Roman Catholic Church Father Bishop Chrysostomos (347 - 407), for example, spoke about the "royal quality of the soul, which possesses itself". Thérésa van Avila speaks about "the throne in the inner palace".

It was also a general theme in classical antiquity, that royal quality of the soul. That quality was called with the word autonomy. That comes from the Greek words autos = self and nomos = law. A king used to be a legislator and judge. An autonomous person is therefore a king in the sense that he sets himself the law but also judges himself. A morally autonomous person is his own legislator and his own judge.

Whoever, as said here, will be like a king is therefore someone who judges himself, according to self-imposed laws.

In his book "The ascent of Mount Carmel" the mystic Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591) says:

There is no law for the righteous anymore because he is himself a law.

This autonomy was even seen as an important characteristic of Christians in early Christianity, and not only in Gnosticism! Bishop Chrysostom wrote:

Beloved, we have no power over your faith, and we do not command these things as your lord and master. We are appointed for the preaching of the word, not for power, not for absolute authority. We fulfill the function of advisers in the service of your own interest. The counselor gives his own opinion, and does not force the listener, but leaves this complete freedom of choice to what has been said. The counselor can only be blamed for not saying what was said to be said.

Chrysostom had the misfortune to be a contemporary of Augustine of Hippo, Saint Augustine in the Roman Catholic Church. He saw nothing in this liberty. By Augustine, Chrysostom was banned. Chrysostom died poor and lonely.

There are all kinds of good reasons to believe that the spiritual freedom confessed by Chrysostom was a characteristic of early Christianity, because it was precisely that freedom that offered the opportunity for charity. If we wanted to love our neighbour as ourselves, it requires a will decision. Such a decision can only be taken by a free person. However, Christianity later modeled itself on Augustine, with man as a sinful being, incapable of any good and inclined to all evil, as an unfree slave to his sinful nature. The Gnostics, the Christian freethinkers, were persecuted as heretics and finally, with the mass murder of the Cathars in the thirteenth century, removed from Western history. In the Thomas Gospel, the royal quality of the soul, that is, spiritual freedom, is seen as an essential aspect of the Gnostic path. But that freedom is not an end in itself. It is only a condition for something else, for something that really matters, namely the life practice of love.

Love and freedom as an inseparable couple

Because of that royal quality, it is surprising to know what the word Christ originally means. It is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for "anointed one." With that word the kings were referred to in the Jewish tradition. They were an "anointed of the Lord." But that word was also used as an indication of the future Messiah the saviour of the Jewish people. That saviour of the Jewish people was supposed to be a king, so was the expectation, but then a worldly king. In Gnostics, "the Christ" lives in within a human itself. And that means not only that human are there own saviour, their own Messiah, but also that human are king over themselves.

So you can also read the word Christ nature as "the royal quality of the soul."

At the time the Thomas Gospel was written, the view that autonomy was the royal quality of the soul was a general theme in classical culture. This autonomy was seen as a natural quality of the human soul. What is Thomas saying here? If we go the way of gnostics, we will learn to connect on that path with that natural, universal human quality of the soul, the Christ nature, or the royal autonomy, the spiritual freedom.

And why would that be? Because then we can freely impose the law of love on ourselves. Just as the personal nature of human and the Christ nature form twins (see the prologue), freedom and love are also regarded as an inseparable couple in Gnosticism.

Love is not obediently following commandments.

Love is the moral touchstone of a free human.