I.
With the discovery of an other self, an other soul, an other mind, an other thought –
closer to your self than your “I” ; Space opens itself to an existence which consists
in a dialogue, in a continuous exchange.
But the site has become silence – the world recedes, and no longer affirms itself
in thought, in sensation, in mind, in soul, in self – opening itself to another place,
revealing an absence of reality.
Silence dissolves our relationship with reality objectified – that which engage the senses
and the mind, to make true and affirm objects as the anchors for the real.
The affirmation of the Word became Flesh does not consist in a deterioration or denial
of Spirit: rather the Spirit lifts up, and lifts in – the Body to its own context.
It’s place is Silence, the Incarnation, wherein history expires.
Without object the senses and the mind becomes completely subordinate the Other,
since they no longer maintain a passive observation of things as Being.
The Cross dissolves the world – with the Incarnation it was fixed to the context of
the Logos, with the Crucifixion the Logos no longer serve as context for the world,
which is why, additionally, the denial of it becomes central to the exoteric religion;
Christ, anointed. New world, New age, New man – a progression towards the Logos
through which everything came into being, through whom it returns to its origin,
and with which it resurrects into being which surpasses the vicarious meaning which
came into being because the world did not receive it, yet it became alive and a source
of light to the entirety, so dimmed and darkened by refusal in ignorance, in Man.
On the other hand, exoteric religion allows the world to be projected upon the Logos, attaching an
ontological “ground” upon a pre-cosmic Being, baptizing it Pantocrator and Rex Mundi;
witness an infant carried out from the womb and sacrified on an altar which is this
earth, this soil, upon which our feet are planted – to a Divinity which is turned into a moral investment,
value to family, value to institution, value to tradition, value to continuity through the
naming and numbering of days,hours,minutes. If you say of a golden calf you have crafted
in the perfection your craft allows you, that it is well-crafted, that is beautiful in kind,
that it’s form evokes thoughts of , for instance, the arrangement of nature, the power
of fertility, the accumulation of worldly riches – you perform no blasphemy in your words,
if you name it God and leave behind everything which raised your gaze, which informed
you directly, which lives in and through you – you perform apostasy, you complete blasphemy.
We exist, at every moment – at the boundary between the predicament of a sleeper and
the predicament of someone who has attained wakefulness. We have, each on
his own, received a responsibility to fulfill a function, a role, within this dream; ours is the plight , our
ancestors, our tutors – our confidential trusted ones inform us – to maintain the present order of things.
It appears that we are dependent upon this order of things, while upon closer inspection – it
draws all its power, all its authority, all its «truths» from the abandonment we have allowed,
of these, in their root which is our selves.
We are told that ours is not the right to ask wherefore – for, this is the aggressive assertion of ages and generations past , we know of nothing better – they are confident that we do not want to
increase something lesser or worse. It is easy to be confused about the value invested into the suppression of conscious inquiry and the informed exercise of human volition, because this system is based upon corruption, upon fraud, upon manipulation and the suppression and obstruction of subtler truths.
This conceited Kosmos is created upon that particular premise, it is sustained by such arrangement and continues to exist through such coercion and by a most subtle violence.
Invoking the reality of Spirit, I must observe that the system is dependent on its charges, its victims, its slaves and servants, its entire court – and cannot sustain itself for a moment even had
it not been for theft from the Spirit. Having allowed myself to transgress against the Zeitgeist and its current overlords, its “gods” dwelling in intellects of all sizes and formats – by mouth, by tongue, by fingers, by mind – by testimony and action, I have smashed the delicately carved idol of Baal in his own court, and I have, as Elijah did, suggested to his high priests, «let your god sue, if it is within his power».
Now Baal is dust, he will not sue, as he will not lament, or even object – but it is quite possible you will.
II.
Unless you spend a nanosecond in this unspoken, forbidden compartment of reality you would have no
opportunity to compare, nor would you possess the ability to evaluate your situation within this our counterfeit. In this ignorance you are a slave to this your predicament, your entire
being serves one purpous and can do not better; providing fuel to the pyre, feeding this dream
and it contributes to the continual enumeration of reasons to stay. A hand clasps your windpipe
and keeps squeezing, suggesting you should consider your mortality and the
great fearful ignorance you have of death and its countless consequences.
Whether you are pulled by your unappeaseable appetites, your libido, your “inner child” and its
incredible obsession with recognition – or naked fear, it amounts to the same, you act before you know what you are doing, you act before you have determined who is you and what it means, you act
before you truly see where you are,you act before you know what the action does to you, to the other and to the world. There is absolutely no distinction between these and the laceration caused by a whip,the shock caused by a stick, the crunching of bones caused by a rack.
Returning to our discovery of the Other, and the clearing of Time and Space, the emptying of the
battlefield, the dispersion of the crowd of voices,attractions, “Ten Thousand Things.”
This discovery is necessary for any orientation to take place – without the Other there is nothing and
no-one to lift you out of your predicament; to your ear no voice, no sound, no word would arrive, only
the noise of the undifferentiated consciousness in which you are unable even to distinguish yourself
from any thing or being or condition, within a torrent, entrenched in a deep well.
The images this condition provokes does not suffice to describe this condition – and this condition in and of itself is not available to any comparison to anything particular prior to it being diagnosed, seen. Paradoxically,
that which would motivate any sound will to escape is only readily perceived and understood after it has
been confronted and transcended, to the degree a soul, a mind, a thought – in some way could see it,
grasp it, inspect it.
In sequence we have the erection of the Cross,anterior to which is the antechamber of a trial, a judgment, a procession – the Crucifixion – and Burial. With the Burial, we have loss and mourning – not on account of oneself, but on account of Another; this Other, close or distant ; friend,stranger or foe; receives a host of absences, becomes hollow, finally a hole, a sore, a scar, a wound – in the Soul, and finally becomes invisible. After the image disappears, the voice starts to become slight and all other perceptions grasp upon him atrophy.
Finally he becomes Silence.
Christ became Silence.
This appears to be a lamentable observation. We have received a whole culture because of it, it appears we are trapped in a stupor, convened around an empty grave.
As we have observed already – the World would eternally affirm itself as World, as whole, containing everything and everyone there is, over which it exercise absolute authority, being itself the norm (that is why mystics feel compelled to break it in order to harvest the blood-dripping,horrible legal consequences of such a crime) of all norms (it can see, that is) ; the grave as norm gave up spirit, gave up psyche, gave up flesh and blood, finally gave up bones and dust and ashes – the grave as world presented Death as the shepherd and governor of all living things, for each decrease in the concrete,personal and intimate – it appears to have raised its throne higher into the heaven of heavens.
The Acts of John pares down and dissects this whole appearance of things:
The disciples are by Jesus invited in – to a mystic dance, that revolves around the axis which is the place of descent and ascent – manifestation into this world of appearances, and the restauration of the souls into the world of the real; of which he says;
“
The root is buried deep in the appearances of things, in this way, whoever falls under the thrall of ignorance about his condition is unaware that he is suffering, neither that it has come to pass nor that it has an end is comprehended by him – our modern and secular reaction to suffering consist in a rationalization: we choose to consider suffering as a more or less integral component to life, even the subtle violence to the soul that strips it of all d
ignity, all self-esteem, all holiness – which dangles the souls over the very edge of perdition – the further away it appears from our person, the less real it becomes, there are even those in the name of religion declare of our immediate condition that it is “all good”, and that the mere pause of hesitation, or indeed, sane cognitive processes setting in, thus questions God, and thereby performs blasphemy.
These appearances work their own charm, they even provoke the creation of intricate theologies of uncommon subtlety and beauty, in language embrodied and gilded like a baroque cathedral, most certainly, but they are seldom declared heretical, even in this day and age. Rather they have become a norm of norms, a privilege of those who today, philosophically rather than by jurisdiction , hold the concept of authority to repress and fight other theologies, indeed, other souls,
other minds and other thoughts.
This our text, the Acts of John, has been declared arch-heretical, treated thus, and made into the exemplar par excellence of the Docetic Christological heresy. It does sit well as that, as long as its contents are alleged to be what they are not, as long as it is not read and studied – as long as the voice which speaks mystically from its pages are not heard.
The account of this dance wherein the mystery embodied in the process which Christ initiated and completed, went to the
grave with those who received it – which is to say, its contents, and that of the mystery of the Cross, participates – in a particular truth which is seldom had in scripture (certain of the Upanishads, especially Katha Upanishad, comes to mind), that is received, always, in an initiatory context. That the descent of the Logos is needed so that men may know their own condition addresses an understanding that is also found in Prologue to the Gospel of John , man receives the light because the world rejects it, it becomes light and life in every man that comes into the world – so that Man is the Light of the World, understood in its proper context it speaks to the opportunity and duty of sentient beings, to be a presence of the Light that does not come from the world, but rather is a Light in the Darkness.
Man is thus lifted up, through the descent of this Light, which is shared with him through the becoming of the Logos, who was before the beginning.
In the appearance of things, however, embedded in “Ten Thousand Things”, Man is indistinguishable from the World – and the crucifixion only produces debt in all generations, since it is done instead of that of another, and another; in the appearance there is a balance to be made, there is a serious discrepancy between Man and God and Universe which cannot be made without the spilling of the blood of an innocent.
For all intents and purpouses, it looks like a gesture, an empty one; since there is no comprehension, and thus no meaning, and absolutely no truth, no wisdom to be had; unless it is the cautionary “do not do it again” a parent tells a small child caught with its fingers in the cookie jar. Before all of that comes to pass, Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was – as the words came tumbling, so he became –
as the Gospel of Phillip suggests:
“Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in
which they would be able to see him. He appeared to them all. He appeared to the great as
great. He appeared to the small as small. He appeared to the angels as an angel, and to
men as a man. Because of this, his word hid itself from everyone. Some indeed saw him,
thinking that they were seeing themselves, but when he appeared to his disciples in glory
on the mount, he was not small. He became great, but he made the disciples great, that
they might be able to see him in his greatness. “
To one a righteous man, to another a wise teacher, to a third angel – and so forth, and Thomas, according to the Gospel of Thomas, are completely unable to say with his mouth what he is. It is, as is much repeated in Apocryphal Christian literature from the first centuries – a mystery which encompasses and transcends comprehension, received according to the visionary capacity of the recipient, in a form which is nevertheless received and appropriated to understanding, in an individual.
As long as there is any shape or form compared to the mysterious presence within light, within silence – it cannot be fully
received into us; the Cross casts the Logos into a grave, the grave voids its incumbent into absence,
the rumor is deflected by idle ears; as human beings in the world, but not from it – that is to say, human strangers,
we suffer ( meaning, we go through) the same predicament; so, in the world of appearances, where our Wisdom
has been trapped – it can be said that we are nowhere to be found, we are nobody, the mirror is blank; death overshadows
us, forgetfulness buries us, nothingness claims us.
Christ became Silence, whenever souls,minds and thoughts are directed towards the Christ they transgress against the boundaries which caused them to do so – they can recoil at this recognition, in which case they will hear a whole orchestral score of testimonies from such souls as their own, affirming and praising their decision to give in to it – or they can become Silent themselves.In themselves, becoming Silence.
III.