The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
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“May my peace arise . . . within you” (Mary 8:13–14) “Peace I leave with you. It is my peace that I give you” ( Jn 14:27). (During the Savior’s farewells after the Last Supper, announcing his journey to the Father and the coming of the Holy Spirit; various sayings regarding signs and the coming of the Son of Man, cf. Mk 13:5; Lk 21:8.)
“Be vigilant, and allow no one to mislead you” (Mary 8:15–16). “Take care that none deceive you for many will come in my name saying ‘I am the Christ’” (Mt 24:4–5).
“ . . . by saying ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’” (Mary 8:16–18). “Therefore, if anyone tells you, ‘Look, here is the Christ,’ or ‘There he is,’ do not believe them” (Mt 24:23. Cf. Mk 13:5; Lk 21:8).
“Men will tell you ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is’” (Lk 17:23). On the presence of the Kingdom: “When the Pharisees asked him when the Kingdom of God would come, he replied, ‘The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say Here it is, or there it is . . .’” (Lk 17:20–21).
“For it is within you that the Son of Man dwells” (Mary 8:19–20). “ . . . for the Kingdom of God is within you” (ιδοù γαρ ή βασιλεία τοũ θεοũ εντòξ úμων εστιν, Lk 17:21).
“Go to him” (Mary 8:21). “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24; cf Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23). (After the first announcement of the Passion.)
“For those who seek him, find him” (Mary 8:22). “Seek and ye shall find” (Mt 7:7; cf Lk 11:9). (Seeking the Kingdom and the treasure of Heaven.)
“Walk forth, and announce the gospel of the Kingdom” (Mary 8:23–24). “And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:24; cf. Mk 13:10). (Of signs and the coming of the Son of Man.) “Go unto all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mk 16:15).
“Impose no law other than that which I have witnessed. Do not add more laws to those given in the Torah, lest you become bound by them” (Mary 9:1–4). “But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law . . . ” (νυνι δε κατηργήθημεν απò του νóμου, αποθανóντεζ ει ψ κατείχóμεθα, Rom 7:6).
This peace that the Teacher offers us is a seed. After it has taken root in good soil, it still must grow.47 We are not yet in peace, for this peace is a process of becoming, a work that we accomplish—or rather that we allow to be accomplished—within us. Nowhere else will it be found, and no one can sell or rent it to us. There may well appear merchants of happiness with pacifiers that can calm the troubles of our days and nights for a while. But there are no merchants of beatitude. There is only a Presence that is to be discovered, and allowed to grow, in the very core of ourselves.
This recalls the story of the woman who was looking for her lost jewels in the village square.48 The other villagers wished her well, and were trying to help her find this treasure in the area in and around the square. They had been searching fruitlessly for some time, when someone asked her: “But exactly where did you lose this treasure?”
“I lost it in my home,” the woman answered
“But are you crazy? If you lost it in your home, why are you having us help you search out here in the square?”
“And you, my friend,” she replied, “is this not what you are always doing, searching for your treasure in the streets, in the square, when it is really in your own home that you lost what you most want? Don’t you go everywhere in vain search of peace and happiness, your greatest treasure, which you have lost in your own home? In your own heart—that is where you must search. It is there that your treasure has always been waiting to be found.”
Yet another version49 of this story tells of a man searching for his lost key out in the street underneath the lamp, because the light is better there than in his house.
Many search for peace where there seems to be the most light—the light of explanations, reasons, and justifications; the relative light of our small worlds and our supposed knowledge. But the abode of peace is not to be found there. Sometimes we must venture into the darkest rooms of our house and search in certain corners of the unconscious. There is darkness that turn out to be more brilliant than our little lamps and fireflies. In the night, stars may be revealed, and they may bring the mysterious light of peace far more than the brightest neon can do.
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15 “Be vigilant, and allow no one to mislead you
16 by saying:
17 ‘Here it is!’ or
18 ‘There it is!’
19 For it is within you
20 that the Son of Man dwells.
21 Go to him,
22 for those who seek him, find him.”
Today, as in the time of Yeshua, messiahs abound. Their promises still sell well, and there are plenty of people ready to leave everything to follow them. The followers’ disillusionment is often immense, as is the suffering that ensues, which sometimes includes fatalities.
The Teacher’s warning in verses 15 through 22 is as relevant as ever. “Here it is! There it is!”—this warning against messianic pretensions could refer primarily to a person, whether a man or a woman, but it always implies a person who offers to take away our burdens, solve our problems, heal or at least bandage all our wounds, and especially, think our thoughts for us. It may also refer to a messianic ideology or movement, a magical panacea, or even a form of legislation or state decree that promises to restore everything to order.
On the other hand, there are phenomena that seem to fall in this general category yet demand special consideration, such as the numerous appearances of the Virgin, which often attract huge crowds. It seems that our history of repression of the Feminine is still unable to prevent it from breaking through in such manifestations—often during times and contexts where it is most repressed.
Interestingly, the messages of these apparitions have been quite clear for the most part: Do not become attached to their forms, but repent and return to yourself through means such as prayer or fasting; rediscover the experience of being rather than doing and accumulating things; and renew in yourself the art of giving and receiving rather than producing and exploiting. Our purpose on Earth is not to manipulate things, these messages tell us, but to meet each other in living encounters. Life is too short to be lived by exploiting each other. There is something better for us to do, and the time we have is barely enough to learn how to love one another.
And no one can learn this for us, because no matter how we may search outside ourselves for he or she who will save us from the burden of our freedom, no matter where we travel in our searching, if the message we find is authentic, it will send us right back to ourselves, “For it is within you (entōs humōn) that the Son of Man dwells.”50
It is important to note that the teachings of the apparitions, the canonical Gospels, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene all agree on this point. As long as our peace is dependent on any kind of external reality, it is not Peace; as long as our love for others and for the world is dependent on attitudes and feelings toward us, it is not Love. To the extent that our life depends on the material circumstances and conditions that constitute us, it is not yet Life. It is still within the domain of the outer person, who is destined to fall in ruins. It is still within a universe that is subject to the laws of entropy and daily decay.
Only within our true being do we find a Reality, a Life, a Knowledge, a Love, and a Peace that are not dependent. These are the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God.
This Reality is both who we are, and what we must become.
On Friday, October 29, 1943, in the midst of the Nazi horror that had overtaken Hungary, a voice spoke to Gitta Mallasz and her friends:
The created world, and the creative world.
Between the two: the Abyss.
Be sure you understand this!
<
br /> You yourself are the bridge.
It will not avail you to desire the radiance of creation,
When you, within yourself, are the bridge.
This has been given to you. 51
The correspondence between the vision the words of this voice conjure and that of the Son of Man, which we are and yet must become, is worth exploring a bit further. Years later, in conversation with her friend Patrice Van Eersel, Gitta Mallasz drew a figure representing four levels of reality (see figure 1)—we might be tempted to use the word theanthropos (theos meaning “God,” anthropos meaning “human”) for the subject of the diagram, if it were not a bit heavy and pedantic. In any case, as we see, the human being—the incomplete human—is at the center of a figure that can be seen as a bridge between created and creative (divine) realms.
Note the dotted lines in the center of the diagram. “Completion consists of transforming the dotted lines into a continuous curve joining with the other levels in such a way as to suggest a sudden metamorphosis into a single, vast and inconceivable universal consciousness,” says Patrice Van Eersel, in his own spirited interpretation of the diagram (see figure 2.)52
Figure 1
While preserving the basic vision of the illustration, I wish to add some further categories, using somewhat different terms (see figure 3). But the message remains essentially the same and may help us to understand the possibility of the birth in us of the authentic human, which is none other than the theandros, the divine-human, as Soloviev says.53
Figure 2
We know that humanity is a bridge. It must form the link between the two shores of the created and the creative worlds, the sons of heaven and of earth, the Son of Man and the Son of God. Some well-known Gnostic doctrines prefer to speak in terms of androgyne —the union of the masculine and feminine principles, but my preference shall be to follow the Gospel of Mary, and use the term anthropos (see figure 3).
Figure 3
This pattern, with ANTHROPOS at the center, recalls the structure of the brain, with its two hemispheres and their opposite or complementary functions. The corpus callosum, which unites the two halves of the brain, is thus analogous to humanness, in both its fragility and its greatness. The full potential for union of these opposites, Eastern and Western, intuitive and logical, diurnal and nocturnal, is rarely realized, either on the cosmological or the neurological level.
Let us note that we are the bridge between animal and angel primarily through the faculty of language, whether in thought or imagination, whether expressed or unexpressed. The link here is the word, or the expression of desire, beyond mere need and demand. Human beings become the bridge between plant and archangel in the heart, through the slow gesture—movement that is both supple and permeated with awareness.
We are the bridge between I AM and I am not, between the fertile void and the sterile void, through the experience that is both foreseen and unforseeable, such as the sudden appearance of a rainbow in a storm at noon. The sterile void, with its stagnant absurdity, is what Nicolai Berdyaev called the “bad nothingness.” To become a bridge between it and the fertile void, the uncreated Origin of all being, is to embrace and live in one instant both the absurdity and the grace of the human condition.
“To be or not to be” is not at all the question, for it is revealed as an expression of torment and even stupidity. To be and not to be—that is the question! This restores us to harmony both with ancient esoteric teaching and the implications of quantum physics.
Of course the description, analysis, and especially the building, of these different bridges will demand from us more extensive development. But it is when we become bridges ourselves that we have the possibility to be both fully human and fully divine, in the image and the likeness of that which the ancients called the “archetype of synthesis.”
Meanwhile, the Gospel of Mary tells us to “Go to him” (Mary 8:21), to verify each of his teachings for ourselves, and to become what he is so as to discover what we eternally are.
The next verse says that “they who seek him, find him.”54 For the Savior is this desire that makes us seek him, the dotted line that is ours to fill in. And then we can marvel at the splendor of his—and our—visage. In truth, we would not be seeking him, if we had not already found him.
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23 “Walk forth,
24 and announce the gospel of the Kingdom.” 55
Human beings are on a road. As with health, happiness is surely also found in walking. Suffering or disease (mahala in Hebrew) comes from our being arrested in such a way that we turn in circles inside the prisons of body, thought, and soul that are called pain, ignorance, and madness. When the great myths present the ways of healing as paths or experiences full of pain, we should consider this as only a stage, a pause during which the mind is temporarily bound to reflection. But this can be neither home nor harbor for the wayfaring soul of the true walker.
The ways are many, yet the Way is one. There are ways by sea, ways by land, storms and shipwrecks, buried treasures and promised lands. There are exiles and returns, Icarus-like ascents and falls, yet there are also heavenly journeys and the Assumption, which are without return. There are ways of fire where the voyager is consumed, or reborn from ashes like the phoenix, relying on the lightning flashes of the night for illumination.
All of these are metaphors to be contemplated, as well as adventures to be lived. Our goal is to keep going beyond that which confines and imprisons—yet which can never contain us—toward a sublime opening of the psyche or soul, which in the very act of accepting its limits, connects with a dimension that death cannot define.
This is why the Teacher keeps telling those whom he encounters on the way: “Walk forth!”
Recent scholarship has found that previous translations of the eight beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew are in error inasmuch as they imply a kind of passive consolation in the face of tribulations. They are instead an invitation to stand up, to arise and walk forth, no matter what pain and trouble may lie on the road ahead. When we return to the original Semitic terms underlying the Greek version of Jesus’ words in this gospel, we find that blessed should be replaced by walk forth, which restores the text’s original dynamic quality.56
Walk forth, you in whom the breath (spirit) is held back and restrained by emotions and by fear!
Walk forth, you gentle and humble ones, for your gentleness is your strength. The earth resists those who are violent, and offers herself to those who respect her. As the Indian proverb says, “Walk softly upon the earth, for she is sacred.” To act more gently is not to act more feebly or slowly, it is to act with more consciousness and love. Now we begin to understand why the earth is given as the rightful heritage of the gentle, and denied to the violent.
Walk forth, you who weep, for you shall be consoled! Chouraqui translates you who weep as those who mourn. To mourn authentically is to accept that what is past is past, an indispensable condition for going further. This does not mean we should refrain from tears or other emotions, but that we are not to indulge in them. It means to pass through them, walking forth toward a higher serenity and more sensitive maturity.
Walk forth, those who starve and thirst for justice! Yes, they shall be satisfied! Thus those who hunger and thirst must not remain static, for they are on a quest; and the quest for justice, which is also holiness, can never be final. Yet this does not imply some perpetual dissatisfaction, but the knowledge that the perfectibility of humanity and of the world is infinite, an undertaking that can have no final conclusion.
Walk forth, the pure of heart! Yes, you shall see Elohim! To see the Other, our vision must be emptied of presuppositions and judgments. Hence in order to see God, it is even more imperative that we embark on a long walk—one of distancing ourselves from our projections—even the most seductively beautiful—that we often take for spiritual experiences, even for an experience of God. But these have nothing to do with the divine Reality, for they are stil
l much too bound up with our ego and its infantile dreams of omnipotence. We may know the attributes and qualities of Being, but only the pure of heart can taste Being as it is, without qualities and in its true holiness, which is beyond all comparison.
Walk forth, merciful ones! You shall receive mercy!57 Happy are those who are able to remain sensitive to the misery and suffering of others. The future belongs to the pure and gentle, not to the rigid purists of all our fundamentalism. If the latter have the purity of angels, they also have the pride of demons, like all grand and petty inquisitors who shed blood in the name of purity, religious faith, traditional values, or race. The greatest crimes against humanity are always committed in the name of goodness and the need to preserve integrity and purity. We have yet to fully appreciate the danger and delusion of purity without mercy.
The pure of heart and the merciful are commanded to walk forth, because we can never have too much compassion for the challenge of understanding the suffering and misery of another. And we can never have a heart too pure and sensitive for the challenge of seeing another’s true potential, for both forgiving everything and demanding everything of another. “To understand all is to forgive all,” as Plato said long ago. “The more I know, the more I love; the more I love, the more I know,” said Saint Catherine of Sienna a millennium later. The more truly pure of heart I am, the more my heart sees, and the more merciful it is. And the more merciful it is, the more it sees, and the purer it becomes.
Walk forth, peacemakers! Yes, you shall be acclaimed sons of Elohim! Peace is the fruit of an artisan’s work. It is the slowest and most patient way of walking. Peace cannot be commanded by throwing money at a problem, nor by overthrowing a government. It is nothing less than the Son of Man and the Son of God being born within ourselves.
Yeshua’s earthly father was an artisan who taught him how to plane and polish the most difficult woods. This is not unrelated to the patience and love that the Teacher needed in order to plane and polish souls so that they can reveal their beauty, thereby adapting better to other souls and fulfilling their true service.