MAN, TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD

When Bede Griffiths came to Winchester in 1992 to speak at the Mystics and Scientists conference, he strongly recommended a book he was reading on Christian hermeticism by Valentin Tomberg entitled Meditations on the 22 Major Arcana of the Tarot. When next in Paris, I bought the original in French and read it contemplatively over a period of months. I came across Roberto Pla's extraordinary book on a visit to Madrid last autumn, when I met Javier Lantero, who had arranged for the book to be translated into English and who himself had been deeply touched by the text. I read and reflected on it slowly over a period of months, and I recommend this to others – it is a book to which you will often want to return as a source of the living waters of truth. Many readers will be familiar with the Gospel of Thomas, perhaps the most famous of the texts discovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945 and which presents Jesus quintessentially as a wisdom teacher.

The book is subtitled, ‘A hidden exegesis of Christ's religion based on the Gospel of Thomas.' The very first words of the Gospel explain that ‘these are the hidden words which the Living Jesus spoke,' indicating important distinctions between hidden and manifest, inner and outer, esoteric and exoteric, symbolic and literal, eternal and transient, Spirit and flesh, Heaven and Earth. Other gospels also refer to hidden meanings that can only be apprehended by those with eyes to see and ears to hear; this especially applies to the parables. On a personal note, I have been deeply influenced by Swedenborg since my early 20s, and he also sought to reveal the spiritual rather than the literal meaning of Scripture, especially Revelation.

Roberto Pla Sales (1915-2004) was a musician and writer who specialised in translations and commentaries of sacred texts, including The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao te Ching and works by Shankara and Ibn Arabi. In a correspondence with Prof. Lahiry of Benares, he explains that Westerners have been deprived of ‘the beautiful realisation of Pure Consciousness that Jesus Christ set forth,' and he writes that he himself now lives ‘in adoration of That, of the Being that I am and IS.' This corresponds with the non-dual realisation (gnosis) that I am That (Tat tvam asi). This transformative gnosis is the kernel of the message of the indwelling Christ that we all essentially are, that Jesus, the fully incarnated Christ, preached and approached, the pearl of great price, the treasure, the Kingdom of Heaven within. The translator expresses his own understanding in the concluding sentence of his foreword (bold in the original): ‘Christ is no mere exemplar; he shows us, not what we should be or aspire to be, but the perfection we intrinsically are.' It is our path and task to realise, unfold and manifest the indwelling Christ, the heart of Christian mysticism, the true goal of metanoia – the mind turning in upon itself (p. 34)

In his own Foreword, Roberto explains the methodology behind his hidden exegesis, already present in the other Gospels – especially John - in the dual aspect of Christ. In the gnomic expressions of Thomas, we can discover ‘knowledge of such density as to endow them with transformative power.' This is revealed in a baptism of the spirit from above and within; ‘the Word is sown in every man who comes into this world, and dwells hidden within us.' The eternal Christ, the I Am, is always the one and the same. (p. 29) This eternal Christ is our true Being (p. 31) that can be revealed and experienced directly as Divine Presence. One of the unique aspects of this book is Roberto's extraordinary knowledge of the New Testament and the way in which he is able to draw threads together into an indivisible unity, enabling us to realise or be ‘resurrected consciousness of the Light and Life that we in essence are.' (p. 45) -

All 114 logions are translated with commentaries of incredible richness and depth, also explaining the fundamental components of the human being and their relationship to each other. As an example, here is some commentary from Logion 113 talking about the coming of the Kingdom, about which Roberto writes: ‘The Kingdom is infinite, it is eternal, it cannot come but must be discovered; for it is already present, it cannot arrive, since there is no place that it has not occupied since the beginning of time… the spirit of man is the Kingdom of God, and what we call the Coming of the Kingdom to us, the Coming which Christianity is awaiting, is in truth the opening up of consciousness to the light of the Son of Man, the light which is knowledge and life and which in essence we are and always have been, without knowing it.' (p. 705) The Coming also represents salvation through the manifestation of God in the soul, which is a decisive event of every human life. This transformation brings true freedom.

Here is another example from Logion 64, which is a version of the parable of the invited guests who excuse themselves from the feast, and is related to the most fundamental of parables, the parable of the sower whereby the Word is sown inside every person. Those who make excuses have failed to recognise the seed sown in them, and prefer to remain wedded to the things of the world (‘buyers and merchants will not enter the places of my father'). The call goes out to everyone, but ‘it is his dense awareness that prevents man from turning his attention inward (metanoia) to discover the Spirit – the one that dwells in him and speaks in tongues of fire – the seed of light sown by the Father.' The newly invited guests are those in whom the seed sown within bears fruit. Finally, there are the chosen, who have undergone ‘the mystic union of the bridegroom (the spirit) and the spouse (the soul)', and are qualified to put on a wedding garment, having made the two one in recognising the Self as knower of the known (the soul). Roberto further observes that ‘this transformation is referred to in the passage from the marriage at Cana when water (psyche) is turned into wine (pneuma).' (p. 380)

This spiritual masterpiece – surely one of the great books of the 20th century – gives readers true nourishment represented by the bread and waters of life, taking us into our own essential depths on an initiatic journey of renewal, rebirth and resurrection. The book conveys the treasures of the hidden inner teaching of Christ for our time and indeed for all time. It will continue to speak to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear down the centuries – hundreds of years from today – as the human quest to the Centre is a perennial one.