The Gnostic CrucifixionMead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Religion
The Gnostic Crucifixion
Mead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Gnosticism; Jesus Christ -- Crucifixion
19. The outer story was centred round a dramatic crisis of death on a
stationary cross--a dead symbol, and a symbol of death. But the inner rite
was one of movement and "dancing," a living symbol and a symbol of life.
This was shown to the disciple--indeed, as we have seen, he was made in
the Dance to partake in it--that he might know the mystery of suffering in
a moment of Great Experience. He saw it and became it; it was shown him in
action. He had seen sorrow and suffering, and the cause of it had been
dimly felt; but its ceasing he did not yet know really, for the ceasing of
sorrow could only come when he could realize sorrow and joy, suffering and
bliss, simultaneously. And that mystery the Christ alone knows.
20. Let the disciple then first see the suffering of the man through, not
his own, but His Master's eyes. He will first only see the mystery, grasp
it intellectually; he will not as yet realize it. When he realizes it,
there will then be bliss indeed, for he will begin to become the Master
Himself. And the Master is the conqueror of woe--not, however, in the
sense of the annihilator of it, but as the one who rejoices in it; for he
knows that it is the necessary concomitant of bliss, and that the more
pain he suffers in one portion of his nature, the more bliss he
experiences in another; the deeper the one the deeper the other, and
therewith the intenser becomes his whole nature. His Great Body is
learning to respond to greater and greater impulses or "vibrations."
The consummation is that he becomes capable of experiencing joy in sorrow
and sorrow in joy; and thus reaches to the gnosis that these are
inseparables, and that the solution of the mystery is the power of ever
experiencing both simultaneously.
21. It may thus to some extent become clear that what is asserted of the
Christ in the general Gospel-story is typically true and yet is not true.
Those who look at one side only of the living picture see in a glass
darkly.
If we could only realize that all the ugliness and misery and confusion of
life is but the underside, as it were, of a pattern woven on the Great
Loom or embroidered by Divine Fingers! We can in our imperfect
consciousness see only the underside, the medley of crossing of threads,
the knots and finishings-off; we cannot see the pattern. Nevertheless it
exists simultaneously with the underside. The Christ sees both sides
simultaneously, and understands.
22. But the term that our Gnostic writer chooses with which to depict this
grade of being is not Christ, but Word or Reason (Logos). This Reason is
not the ratiocinative faculty in man which conditions him as a duality; it
is rather more as a Divine Monad, as Pure Reason, or that which can hold
all opposites in one. It is called Word because it is the immediate
intelligible Utterance of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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