The willfully ignorant are wont to follow this inclination that leads back to the animal they were but can no longer be, because it allows escape from the trials of self-knowledge and the demands of discrimination. Not wanting to know is the most powerful and destructive of forces, ultimately resulting in that self-indulgent cowardice that alone makes it possible for people to allow and participate in all the injustices and crimes of the world.
Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse for committing a crime, so is choosing to be unaware of another’s suffering no excuse for inaction, for it is a willful ignorance that can only exacerbate our stupor of cowardice and irresponsibility as long as it continues.
Here the Gospel of Mary is closest to the traditions of India, which teach that the root of all evil is ignorance. It is ignorance that enslaves us and makes us indifferent, and indifference is the wretched climate surrounding all comfortably numbed consciences.
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19 The soul answered:
20 ‘Why do you judge me, since I have made no judgment?
21 I have been dominated, but I myself have not dominated.
22 I have not been recognized,
23 but I myself have recognized
24 that all things which are composed shall be decomposed,
25 on earth and in heaven.’ ”
The human psyche has always been adept at finding excuses. “She made me do it, God,” as Adam said. It can use virtually anything, invoking God, the Devil, childhood trauma, genes, or destiny. What is the source of this frantic need to believe oneself innocent? It is not as if the only alternative to this were some threat of a guilt-ridden, masochistic conscience. The alternative is simply a bit more lucidity, courage, and awareness—knowledge of our ability to respond and our responsibility for our acts, words, desires, and life. But even a little more lucidity seems to be too much to bear for a petty ego swollen by a psyche teeming with memories.
“The soul answered:
‘Why do you judge me, since I have made no judgment?’”
It is true that the soul, or psyche, cannot discriminate by itself. It is only by virtue of the nous acting within the soul that discrimination is possible, for only through the nous can the soul receive the vision of what is and what is not.127 The unregenerate soul has forgotten that it has only to turn toward the light of the nous in order to have access to a different climate where innocence means, instead of ignorance, wholeness and harmony of actions and words and of knowledge and being, even though our knowledge is always partial, and our realization of being is never perfect.
“‘I have been dominated, but I myself have not dominated.’”
Here the psyche recognizes how it has been dominated by circumstances, events, environment, and conditioning. It sees how it has been more the plaything than the player in the events of its life. Stating that “I myself have not dominated” is a recognition that we have not been in control of the game.
This reveals the profoundly passive disposition of the soul—a sublime disposition when it orients itself to the higher power coming through the nous, but an unhealthy passivity when “I myself have not dominated” becomes an escape or an attempt to excuse one’s complacency with “At least I haven’t done any harm—I was just the victim of circumstances.” This can only lead the psyche downward to ever-flimsier rationalizations and ever-baser instincts.
And yet:
“‘I have not been recognized,
but I myself have recognized
that all things which are composed shall be decomposed,
on earth and in heaven.’”
Here is revealed that flash of lucidity, that spark of nous that some mystics have called the finest point of the soul. This is knowledge of emptiness, and of the vanity of all things in time. Nothing escapes the metaphysical lightning-flash of such a soul.
Everything on earth and in heaven is of the created realm, and therefore impermanent, with no being in itself. As the Latin version of the opening of the Gospel of John says, Sine ipsum, nihil. Without the Creator, nothing. Without the information of the creative Logos, nothing can truly exist. In the very core of its alienation and false identities, in the darkest heart of the stupor that typifies this climate of ignorance, the psyche has the possibility of seeing its own sheer nothingness. This paradoxical evidence, this total disillusionment, is also the beginning of liberation, for it is the doorway to selfless love, unattached to illusions. It is this love that will strengthen the soul so that it will be able to deal with its own turbulence in the fourth climate, which is an intensified recapitulation of all its previous trials.
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1 “Freed from this third climate, the soul continued its ascent,
2 and found itself in the fourth climate.
3 This has seven manifestations:
4 the first manifestation is Darkness;
5 the second, Craving;
6 the third, Ignorance;
7 the fourth, Lethal Jealousy;
The psyche’s insight into its own nothingness has enabled it to leave the third climate of Ignorance, where it risked falling into unconsciousness. But curiously, the next trial awaiting it after this insight is not some mood of despair or horror, as one might suppose from the symbol of darkness. Instead, the soul travels henceforth into an atmosphere of ever-increasing wrath and rebellion.
According to some modern psychologies—which recognize no higher dimensions of the kind exemplified by nous and Pneuma—anger is a completely logical and normal reaction to being confronted with one’s own powerlessness; and being nothing is of course unacceptable to a psyche whose desire is to be something at any price.
This anger is like that of a child faced with its own inability to lift a weight that an adult finds easy to handle. If the child can accept being simply a child, there will be no anger.128 Likewise, if psychic activity can accept being simply psychic activity, and if a creature can accept being simply a creature, no problem of wrath or revolt will arise. But when the psyche does not accept the limits of its own activity, it becomes like the child who wants to be an adult or the creature who fancies itself in the place of the Creator. The soul is engulfed in a climate of demand, complaint, agitation, and violence, a caricature of authentic action and a cacophony of war drums for a meaningless spectacle.
The soul generates sound and fury so as to maintain its illusion of existence, but it is like scratching at a violin and calling it music. This illusory existence is accompanied and fed by manifestations that are known all too well. The soul, dwelling in ever-darker shadows, may take perverse pleasure at cursing a God whom it holds responsible for its misery, and mires itself in all sorts of attachment and envy. It is forever tallying its inventory of fancied needs and deprivations of being. And since these become far more important to the soul than what it already has and truly is, it becomes more complacent in its ignorance, rather than making a minimal effort to study and inquire so as to discover some understanding and meaning in its life.
We have previously encountered the first three manifestations of wrath, analyzing them as climates where the soul of Miriam risked getting lost. But they also resemble the demons mentioned in the canonical Gospels, from which she is delivered by the Teacher’s love.
The fourth climate, containing seven levels, we will call Wrath. This was considered by some ancient traditions to be the worst of all demons, because of its power to thoroughly alienate the soul, which can then no longer own or recognize itself. The soul is no longer accessible—it is possessed, in the true sense of the term.
After someone experiences a fit of anger, we often hear him or her say things like, “I don’t know what came over me,” “I didn’t realize what I was doing . . . I wasn’t myself,” or “It was as if I were possessed.”
Possession is a word that applies especially well to the fourth level of this fourth climate: Jealousy. The Gospel of Mary uses a term even more specific: Lethal Jealousy. But isn’t all jealousy u
ltimately lethal? And what of that jealousy attributed to God himself? Indeed, it is connected with his wrath, as can be seen in this passage from Deuteronomy:
You shall not follow other gods [ ...]
For your God YHWH is a jealous 129 God inside you.
Beware lest the wrath of YHWH your God be inflamed against you,
and exterminate you from the face of the earth.
We may recall that the doctrines of certain Gnostic sects do not consider this wrathful Old Testament deity to be the true God, but rather a malevolent demiurge, the demonic creator of a corrupted world. He is the Evil Spirit of all the bad climates that excite emotions such as jealousy and anger.
Is the god who speaks in Deuteronomy really the same God who tells Moses I AM THAT I AM? Or is it really Satan, the obstruction to Being, who is the jealous and wrathful one? It actually matters little for our purposes here. In either case, we are dealing with an outward projection of subjective psychic energies onto the cosmos and a certain tendency toward objectification and materialization.
The projection of jealousy and wrath onto God can also be interpreted as a more advanced stage of psychic evolution than it might seem. In such projections the soul is in some sense able to recognize the presence of Being in those manifestations that it fears. It discerns light in the darkness, strength in anger, and love in jealousy.
If we recognize no positive aspect whatsoever in such negative manifestations of Being, we risk even greater alienation. Evil is totally separate from good, and therefore unredeemable. This returns us to a dualistic perspective that sets up the forces of darkness against the forces of light. Evil is given more than its due, becoming a power equal to that of God. But this dualism of the good God and the evil demiurge is something that the soul is striving to overcome in its voyage.
In biblical thought the jealousy of YHWH is sometimes interpreted as a manifestation of his love, inasmuch as one imagines him to be like a father or mother who is jealous of the well-being of his or her children—like parents who cannot bear to stand by idly and watch their children lose themselves in deluded acts and ways of living that are bound to make them unhappy.
In fact, this is spelled out in the very next passage of Deuteronomy:
You shall keep the commandments of YHWH your God, his instructions and the laws that he has prescribed for you, and you shall do what is good and just in the eyes of YHWH so that you may be happy [ ...] 130
YHWH becomes jealous when humans seek peace and fulfillment along paths where they are sure not to find it and through illusions that they take to be reality. Though they may experience many pleasures and comforts on these paths, they will not find authentic happiness, which can only be based on a loving and faithful relationship with Being. Thus disillusionment and suffering are inevitable.
The wrath of God can thus be seen as a symbol of a kind of immanent justice, or, as the Teacher tells us, “the result of your actions.”131 We can see this at work in all kinds of events, from the banal to the historic—from the wrath inherent in alcoholism that results in cirrhosis and the wrath of a crooked businessman leading him to prison, to the wrath in a society or culture resulting in an atmosphere of violence and war and our vast collective folly and unconsciousness that results in all kinds of earthly and heavenly consequences.
Seen in this light, certain writers years ago were justified in referring to Chernobyl as the wrath of God. Perhaps the proverb “We reap what we sow” might at times mean that we get the kind of God we deserve.
If we look, surely we can find something valuable to learn from such climates of wrath and jealousy. If, while we still have time, we are able to discern the pattern of causes and effects that have brought us into this climate, we can gain the insight that reveals actions toward our salvation, or at least our greater health and well-being.
But the Gospel of Mary does not really address a cosmic jealousy or wrath resulting from the unrecognized goodness of Being—rather, it speaks of a psychic climate of lethal jealousy that consists of the desire for exclusive possession of that to which we are attached, whether it be a child, a lover, or a piece of property.
We are attached to a reality that we fundamentally refuse to share. And if we are unlucky enough to have this reality escape from us, wrath is never far away. Sooner or later it will compel us to lash out, either at someone else or at ourselves. Whatever we may pretend, we fundamentally feel what we have lost to be our rightful, permanent, and inalienable possession.
Entering into authentic relation with what is dear to us and feeling and expressing such a deep-rooted refusal to share amount to a truly lethal attachment—one that finally kills off every form of relationship other than possessor and possessed.
Feeling jealousy in personal relationships always reduces others to objects—to things rather than other human beings. It excludes the possibility of meeting another as a free subject who may meet and share with still more people without losing anything of the intimacy that is unique to the dyad. The real meaning of a vow of fidelity is not intended to lead to dependence and/or alienation, but to affirm that one is capable of a fidelity that both allows and supports the complete fulfillment of another’s freedom. During the ritual of marriage in the Orthodox Church, each person crowns the other. Each of the two participants never places any sort of cord around the other’s neck, and the wedding ring is a symbol of alliance,132 never of bondage.
There can be true alliance only between natures that are free and that recognize this freedom in each other through their life and behavior together. Such maturity and sovereignty are rare, because they can be achieved only by those who have been liberated from the climate of lethal jealousy that, as the enemy of mutual trust, poisons all human relationships. When trust between two beings begins to erode, it is not only jealousy and wrath that begin to take its place, it is also death.133
Jealousy is fundamentally murderous in the sense that it is incapable of respect and recognition of the living Anthropos in another. It ultimately reduces both others and ourselves to the level of mere matter, our lives to only a momentary volcanic eruption that leaves behind nothing but dead ashes and sadness.
This being said, we must not forget that, as suggested by the symbol of the jealousy of YHWH, there is another possible meaning for wrath. In certain exceptional contexts human beings are capable of manifesting what is called righteous anger, as exemplified by the Teacher driving the money changers out of the temple: “You shall not make my Father’s house into a marketplace!”134
Yeshua is thus jealous of this space consecrated to peace and prayer, for those who use this temple have a responsibility to protect it from inner and outer influences that would debase it. His wrath is essentially directed against the calculating aspect of our mind that makes us restless and prevents us from savoring a moment of surrender, a moment of complete faith in what Life has in store for us, in spite of all our doubts and trials—a moment that is like a sweet and refreshing oasis in the midst of the most hostile climate.
For Miriam of Magdala, this oasis has both a name and a face. The memory of this Logos and the evocation of its face gives a spring to her step, even as she crosses the burning deserts of her soul.
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8 the fifth, Enslavement to the Body;
9 the sixth, Intoxicated Wisdom;
10 the seventh, Guileful Wisdom.
11 These are the seven manifestations of Wrath,
12 and they oppressed the soul with questions:
13 ‘Where do you come from, murderer?’
14 and ‘Where are you going, vagabond?’
This passage through the ordeals of different climates recalls the words of Paul to the Ephesians: “We were one of those who live according to the cravings of the flesh, serving its impulses and guilty thoughts, so that our nature had become the slave of anger, just like the others.”135
As with the canonical Gospels, we must avoid interpreting Paul’s use of the word flesh as
a synonym for the body; which is the “temple of the Spirit.” Instead, it refers to the psycho-noetic human being who has become cut off from his or her spiritual roots and potential, and is reduced to mere physicality. This produces a creature who rejects any sort of amenability to a Creator, and who may appear to be self-sufficient, yet is cut off from the Source. To live within the confines of a humanity reduced to mere flesh is to live with a constant sense of powerlessness in the face of reality and death, and this again leads to the climate of wrath.
Thus the Gospel of Mary offers the same message as Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. The sixth and seventh climates come still closer to texts attributed to Paul, especially a large section of the First Letter to the Corinthians.
Before encountering the true Sophia, the Wisdom of YHWH, the Being That Is What It Is, we must also meet and unmask false wisdom. This is the wisdom called “fleshly” in the language of Paul, the wisdom whose powers are so highly esteemed in the eyes of the world. Since these powers include tremendous cunning and guile, they are able to gain widespread respect. But in reality they are inflations, forms of vanity and intoxication the very nature of which is to propel us into states of mind, or climates, where elements and powers come into play that are not our own. This is like the frog in La Fontaine’s parable who thinks it can become as large as a cow by swelling—until it finally bursts.
This is the intoxication of the worldly wise who hide behind their brilliant facade of words the ruins of their ethics, the hollowness of their hearts, and the fraudulence of the very wisdom they claim to possess. For it is written in the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians:
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene Page 13