One thing I really love about The Gospel of Truth is how poetic the text can be. This is especially true in Chapter 11 which reads like a verse from Rumi or Gilbran.
“Now their works lie scattered,
but in time Oneness will make the places full.
In Oneness all will return to themselves,
within knowledge purifying themselves from multiplicity into Oneness,
devouring matter within themselves like fire,
and darkness by light,
death by life.
If indeed these things have happened to each one of us,
it is necessary for us to think
about all things so that this house
might be holy
and tranquil in the Unity.”
This is the beautiful poetry of the mind at rest in non-duality and at peace in the realization of pure shared Divinity and Humanity.
Chapter 12 continues like this:
“It is like people who moved from house to house. They had some jars that were not good in places and they broke. And the owner of the house suffered no loss, but she rejoiced for in place of the bad jars there were full ones that were perfect. For this is the judgement from above which has come from above and has judged everyone. It is a double-edged sword, drawn and cutting on this side and that. The Word [LOGOS], which was within the hearts of those who speak it, came into their midst. It is not simply a sound, but it became embodied.” (12:1-7)
If we follow the train of thought from the end of Chapter 10 forward, what the author seems to be saying is that, as appearance [illusion] dissolves in union with Oneness, our works [our empty attempts to know the Unknowable One] lie scattered and broken like those jars that were imperfect.
Yet, in spite of this desolation of brokenness, what remains is the fullness of Oneness.
This is where we “all will return to [ourselves] within knowledge [of the Father], purifying ourselves from multiplicity to Onenes…” as light devours the darkness and as life overcomes death.
This process, which is eternal and inevitable for all things, requires us to turn our attention to the reality of Divine Oneness “so that this house [our true self] might be holy and tranquil in the Unity [or the Oneness].”
Those “people who moved from one house to another” [or from one person to another] carried jars of wisdom and insight that were imperfect and incapable of holding the fulness of Truth [the overwhelming beauty and wonder of Divine Oneness] and so they cracked and broke.
This is merely a rephrasing of what was said at the end of Chapter 10 and the beginning of Chapter 11. Their works, their broken jars, their attempts to know the Unknowable are finally shattered on the ground, but the “owner of the house suffered no loss but she rejoiced knowing that…there were full ones that were perfect.”
In other words, the weak and broken jars are what allow the true and perfect ones to appear. When our wisdom fails, and when we finally abandon our attempts to know the Unknowable and surrender ourselves to the futility of “knowing” the Divine in the intellectual sense, what floods into our senses is the unmistakable awareness of the experiential knowledge of the Unknowable One who has been within us, and surrounding us, and everything, everywhere, all this time.
Our broken jars are necessary. Our letting go and giving up are what helps our eyes to see the perfect jars that we have been carrying around inside of us all along.
This is when “The Word [LOGOS], which was within the hearts of those who speak it came into their midst..[because] it is not simply a sound, but it [has become] embodied” within each of us.
And so, when this caterpillar worm emerges from the cocoon and spreads those newly formed wings, we see that:
“A great disturbance happened within some of the jars, for some were empty and others half full, some supplied and others poured out, some purified and others in pieces. All ways were shaken and disturbed because they had no order or stability [they had no proper place in the Divine Order of Unity].” (12:8-9)
Now, we can see, not through a glass darkly, but through new eyes of transformation, the unmistakable truth about our imperfect jars.
We see that some were empty, and some were half true, and others were poured out and others were purified.
Now we can understand what we could not understand before.
The shaking and disturbance had to come so that all things could be revealed in the Oneness.
When this happens, “Transgression [the personification of our great Error] …was anxious, not knowing what to do. She suffered, and mourned and tore at herself for she did not know anything. And [intellectual] knowledge [or epistime], which is the destruction of her and all her bounty, came near. Transgression is empty. There is nothing within her.” (12:10-13)
All of this takes place as a natural process within each of us who strive to know the Unknowable One and find ourselves undergoing the great transformation of our minds from darkness to light, and from death to life.
What happens next is what we have all been waiting for.
**
The newest book from Keith Giles, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon. Order HERE>
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.”
He co-hosts The God Squad podcast, and the Heretic Happy Hour Podcast.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In