His teaching is liberating, but it is also demanding. If you are sick, you must stop blaming your early childhood, your parents, society, the Church, the “evil world,” and so forth—and stop blaming yourself as well! This is the great teaching that recurs in the other gospels as well: “Do not judge. For your own judgment will judge you.38
Observe, be attentive, see what can be done; but do not waste your time, your energy, and your soul with any sort of blame. You are the result of your actions and attitudes, and it is only through them that you can be transformed and hope for a better life.
Even death—or what you imagine to be death—is the consequence of your actions and attitudes. That which you call death is the expression of a disordered intellect that has long ago identified your self with your mortal body, along with its thoughts, emotions, and mortal attachments. As we said earlier, this disordered perception is the fruit of your corrupted nature.
“[W]hat you do takes you further away.”
Something important is being communicated here, and it implies a deep and transformative questioning of ourselves. Are the things we do—with regard to our work, relationships, lifestyle, attitudes—bringing us closer to Being? Or are they taking us further away? Do our actions awaken the Good in us, where truth, goodness, and beauty are One? Or are they inclining us to live more and more with bitterness, aversion, lies, ill will, and violence? Is all that we do bringing us closer to the Son within us, to intimacy with his and our Origin in the breath of the Spirit? Or does it take us further away, toward exile from our true identity, so that we become slaves to circumstances—whether favorable or unfavorable—and thereby cut ourselves off from our true Life and Source, which in every instant give us our being?
In sum, are my actions the expression of Being, or are they a caricature of it? Are they a manifestation of it, or a repression of it?
Do my acts express my word?
Does my word express my thought?
Does my thought express my desire?
Does my desire express my being?
Does my being express the Being That Is What It Is (YHWH),
the I AM that calls me to be?
This is not some mundane examination of conscience. It is conscience (or consciousness) itself, the consciousness of myself as a path—either a path of return, or a path that goes further and further away.
It can be an act of presence in which everything becomes strangely present regardless of whether the content is agreeable or disagreeable, for this is the very presence of the Being that constantly creates all being.
But it can also become an act of absence in which everything becomes strangely absent, a wasteland of missing Being. In this mode everything, however stimulating or entertaining, has the stale taste of exile deep down. Whether the content is agreeable or disagreeable is of no real importance because everything ultimately feels empty of meaning. This is the path that can take you far away from home, sometimes indulging a belief that no return is possible, that home does not exist, and that meaninglessness and absurdity are inherent in the human condition.
The choice here is mine alone: How shall I use my intelligence and my imagination?
The Teacher himself made it clear: Your unhappiness is the consequence of your actions, and your actions are the consequence of your choice—what you do takes you further away. As Paul of Tarsus put it: “Instead of the good you desire, you do the evil you do not desire.”39
“Those who have ears let them hear.”
Nothing and no one can compel those who do not wish to understand. Once more, the Teacher confronts us unsentimentally—yet in fathomless love—with our own freedom. It is not we who make the path; it is we who give it direction. This is our true power: We direct our path right into the heart of sickness and suffering, toward the Good.
Perhaps the world has no meaning in itself—it is given to us to discover one. This of course requires courage. But more than anything else, it requires imagination—that sublime imagination that may be glimpsed in certain thoughts hastily dismissed as crazy by those who ignore them, or heard in certain poems, in certain angelic messages . . . and in all of the great sacred texts.
[Page 8]
1 “Attachment to matter
2 gives rise to passion against nature.
3 Thus trouble arises in the whole body;
4 this is why I tell you:
5 ‘Be in harmony . . .’
6 If you are out of balance,
7 take inspiration from manifestations
8 of your true nature.
9 Those who have ears,
10 let them hear.”
Ignorance, a sickness of the heart and the mind, is accompanied by attachment, which is a sickness of desire. It is at once a blockage of true desire, and an inflation of emotional desire—a fixation upon some object in which desire imagines it will find fulfillment and repose.
The Teacher speaks here of attachment to matter. If we take this to mean all that is composed, and that will someday be decomposed, then he is not just talking about attachment to our house in the country or our stock portfolio. He also means attachment to a person or people, to a country or society, or to anything that we make into an object belonging to us. This is what Yeshua is speaking of in other gospels, when, for example, he warns against looking upon a woman with lust. For with this look a man does not see the woman herself, but a mere object of possible pleasure. It misses the subject that she is, as well as any true relation—infinitely richer than that of possession—that might be established with her.
Our ideologies and beliefs are also subtle forms of matter in this sense, for they are composed of images and concepts. Attachment to these may be far stronger than to people or to objects of lust and may take us further away from our freedom, making us dependent and generating the “passion against nature” spoken of in these lines.
It is important to note that nowhere is it implied that matter, people, or objects are bad or harmful in themselves. It is our attachments and our passions40 that are against nature. For the Teacher, it would seem that it is not our true nature to attach ourselves to that which we know to be transitory and impermanent. It is natural, in this sense, to love beings and things for what they are: a “radiant dew,” as the prophet Isaiah said—one that can reflect the rising sun, and bring us great joy. But attachment and the desire to perpetuate that which was not made to last can be seen in this light to show simple stupidity, if not insanity.
“Thus trouble arises in the whole body.” Even before we take the trouble to think about it, our body already knows quite well that its cherished treasures will be taken away. When a physician tries to reassure a dying patient with false optimism, trouble arises—the doctor’s attempts creates a kind of schizophrenic double bind that can engender more suffering than before. The body knows very well what its ultimate destiny is, and a person in this situation is in need of a different kind of word, addressed to something other than that which is ultimately destined to be decomposed.
The Teacher never preaches any sort of belief system. Instead, he reminds us of facts that are both hard to hear and good to hear: Attachment and passion against nature only add soul-troubles to our body-troubles. His aim is for us to abandon this state so as to return to our true nature. As Saint John of Damascus, an early Christian father, phrased it: “Conversion is the return to what is with nature from what is against it.”
To look at an object, a person, or a landscape with love and without attachment, with no desire for appropriation of it, is to see it more clearly. This clear seeing also allows the gift to appear, revealed to us through the object, person, or scene. Nothing is owed to us, everything is given to us. We were not created to possess, but to “be with . . . ” This has implications that challenge all our usual notions of responsibility, for these ideas are generally developed within the context of our notions of ownership.
To think that we can really possess any object or person—even our own bodies, our
own thoughts, or our own lives—is an illusion. This illusion is the cause of trouble, the fundamental insecurity that undermines our greatest riches, our dearest loves, our highest thoughts, and our deepest devotions. Because it sets up a relationship of power and dependence, it is the opposite of true relationship, which is in harmony with all that is:
this is why I tell you:
‘Be in harmony . . .’
To be in harmony is to be in a conscious and loving relationship with what is. Here, there is no willing or desiring of particulars, for that would imply a fixation on an illusory separate part of the flowing totality in which we live. Harmony means to have a musical relationship with the world, to enter into resonance, to be in tune with all that is.
To enter into resonance with the world is a long work of attuning that demands a quality of listening—an all-embracing, extraordinary attention to being. Is it others, and the world, who should attune to us (as we are so often in the habit of demanding)? Or is it we ourselves who should attune to them?
The Teacher seems to be telling us that it is indeed our task to enter into resonance with whatever environment we find ourselves in, and even to tune into our adversary, before it is too late:
If you go to the altar to make an offering, and remember
something that your brother holds against you,
set aside your offering, go first to be reconciled with your
brother, and then go make your offering.
Act quickly to be in accord with your adversary, while you are
still on the way with him.” 41
And of course he goes even further than this when he tells his disciples to love their enemies, to tune into them so as to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect,”42 or “merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”43
But how are we to be in harmony with our enemies? And how do we attune ourselves to forces that want to harm or destroy us? Certainly this is not a teaching that is telling us to simply give in to these forces and let them have their way. Such adversaries must be confronted in all their violence—but without adding to it, without provoking new violence. To “be in harmony” with our enemies is to skillfully allow their violence to pass through us without contaminating us. Just as in the martial arts, this attunement to our attackers can then awaken a consciousness in them that could help them to get out of the trouble they are in.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”—those who abide by this old principle have not yet attained the higher law of harmony. But still less is it attained through escapism or cowardice—“To him who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one also.” These words are often misunderstood. It is important to note that it is not the same cheek that is being offered again—that would indeed suggest some form of masochism or morbid acquiescence. Offering the other cheek means presenting an entirely new and unexpected way of dealing with the problem. It means to oppose violence with consciousness, to look the other in the eye, to regard the other as subject like oneself, and to refuse to be a predictable object. To be in harmony is to enter into resonance with other subjects, with other liberties. But this cannot happen without friction and conflict. Is it even possible?
Certainly it is easier for violins than for human beings to be attuned to each other. This is at least partly because we are “out of balance,” as the Teacher says. Before trying to harmonize with the world and with others, it is surely necessary to be in harmony with yourself. How can an instrument that is out of tune with itself be tuned to other instruments, regardless of whether or not they also need tuning? To care for one’s instrument, to harmonize head, heart, and body, is the first condition for any possibility of harmony with others. If people have no inner peace, how are they to find it outside of themselves? If the different quarters of our inner Jerusalem are not united, how can we possibly accomplish this in the outer Jerusalem? In each of these quarters there is a cult that claims superiority over the whole city. In human beings, it may be emotion, reason, or instinct that becomes such an inner cult, attempting to dominate the entire composite human. Yet this composite was created for harmony, for a communion in which each part is there to serve the others.
Harmony may manifest when oppositions suddenly discover themselves to be quite complementary, so that discordances themselves are integrated into a higher order of harmony where it is at last recognized that each is contributing to the symphony of the All.
When your instrument is out of tune, when you are surrounded by discordance, and you find yourself in disharmony (perhaps to the extremes of fear, contempt, hatred), then “take inspiration from manifestations of your true nature,” or, as it might also be translated, from images of your true nature—but in the imaginal, not the imaginary, sense of the word.
When you are out of balance, simply acknowledge it instead of indulging in it—or worse, justifying or blaming yourself.44 Allow yourself to be inspired by manifestations of the fully human and incarnations of the peace and harmony that we know is possible in ourselves.
In this particular context of Yeshua as divine manifestation within the human, Paul of Tarsus described the Teacher as “the Image of the invisible God.”45 To take inspiration from such an image is more than just receiving positive feelings from an icon, for this icon is a window into the invisible, where we see what humanness is capable of, where we see the incarnation of love that is our true calling. As John the Evangelist said, “If Yeshua had not come, there would be no sin.” In other words, if we had never been able to know of an authentic human being, we would be ignorant of the fact that we are not yet human. If we had never seen a human in true health, we would not know that we are sick. If we had never seen a truly balanced human, whose desire is properly oriented, we would not know of the disorientation of our own desire.
“If you are out of balance,
take inspiration from manifestations
of your true nature.”
In fact, this is an exercise advocated by all the great spiritual traditions. It is essential for anyone who would truly engage in a spiritual path, yet it may take different forms, such as spending time in the company of wise and holy people or visiting special places where their presence is felt; and taking inspiration from the actions and attitudes of those beings who incarnate our own true nature and manifest what is both completely human and fully divine in us—those whose inner truth, beauty, and goodness are the signs of the forgotten God who dwells within us.
This passage concludes with the Teacher’s recurrent phrase reminding us that these signs are especially for those who dwell in wholehearted attention and thus know how to look and listen deeply to slow and subtle gestures:
“Those who have ears,
let them hear.”
[Page 8, continued]
11 After saying this, the Blessed One
12 greeted them all, saying:
13 “Peace be with youâ€"may my Peace
14 arise and be fulfilled within you!”
Note that this is the only passage where this gospel refers to the Teacher Yeshua as the “Blessed One”—the embodiment of bliss.
This is a good place to pause and consider the following propositions:
Pleasure is the delight and fulfillment of the body (soma).
Happiness is the delight and fulfillment of the soul (psyche).
Joy is the delight and fulfillment of the spirit (nous).
All of these delights and fulfillments are the reverberations within a created being of uncreated Bliss, a more or less limited participation in the Being of the Blessed One. In this sense, all pleasure, happiness, and joy are relative, yet they are also sacred.
Bliss is the delight and fulfillment of the Holy Spirit (Pneuma) in humankind, and it is this blessing that the Teacher embodies. He engenders pleasure, happiness, and joy through reflections of the light of the blessing that fills him. When his peace and equanimity arise and are fulfilled within us, these are the closest, most intimate reflections of
the secrets of his quickening life.
Though the Teacher emphasizes the trouble (tarakhe) that arises from our ignorance, he emphasizes even more the arising of his peace.
“Peace be with you—may my Peace
arise and be fulfilled within you!”
The preceeding pages show that this peace is first of all eukrasia (harmony, literally “good mixture,” “good proportions”), or, more precisely, balance. The injunction to “be in harmony” could also be translated as to “be well-balanced” (so-ōpe etetnētnhēt). This invites the disciples to be eukratoï, those who are balanced and at peace in body, soul, and spirit.
This experience of krasis (mingling or mixing) is dealt with in the Hippocratic medical tradition. It explains all bodily and psychic suffering as a lack of harmony (anarmostein) among the composite elements of the human being. But the peace offered by the Teacher goes even further than a state of harmony, balance, or wholeness (shalom in Hebrew also refers to this state, for to wish someone shalom is to wish them to dwell in wholeness). The peace of the Teacher is his very Presence, and is none other than permanent contact with the divine and joyous Source of breath itself.
This peace is the Father who in Spirit engenders the Son in us. It is not a physical or a psychic peace, for either one of these is always more or less dependent on favorable circumstances. Instead, it is an unconditional peace that no one and nothing can take from us ( Jn 14:27):
“I leave you my peace,
I give you my peace,
I do not give it to you as the world gives it.”
The world offers pacifiers, reassurances, euphoria; it does not offer “the peace which never passes,” for this peace is the Other. It is the I AM, the presence of Being that remains through whatever good or bad times are being lived.
At this point it is useful to recall the parallels between the Gospel of Mary and the canonical Gospels, based on the work of Anne Pasquier.46 [Note: Italics in the following chart are Leloup’s.—Trans.]
GOSPEL OF MARY NEW TESTAMENT
“Peace be with you” (Mary 8:13). “Peace be with you” (Lk 24:36; Jn 20:19, 21, 26). (During the first appearances of Jesus after his resurrection.)
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene Page 6