Jesus and the Lost Goddess by Timothy Freke

Author:Timothy Freke [Freke, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-307-56586-0
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

In the Cosmos But Not of It

The psychic and pneumatic initiations combine to teach us how to be ‘in the cosmos but not of it’. To help us understand what this means the ancients likened life to a play.47 A modern version of this analogy would be watching a film. Our present problem is that we completely identify with the hero of the movie. That’s great in the enjoyable bits, but when things get exciting we are really terrified. We actually believe we are going to get horribly done in by the bad guys. The pneumatic initiation leads to the reassuring revelation that we are not actually in the film at all. Yet to simply be a disinterested witness of life is as crazy and unsatisfying as sitting in a cinema constantly reminding oneself that the film is fantasy. That defeats the whole point of the film. In the same way, withdrawal into detachment defeats the whole point of life.

There is a third possibility, however, which is a marriage of the two understandings. We abandon ourselves to the drama of the film, yet retain an implicit awareness that it is only a movie. This is, of course, exactly what we do when we go to the cinema, and it enables us to enjoy the film, even the scary bits. Small children often can’t watch frightening films, because they believe them to be real. In the same way the spiritually immature are so completely swept up with the drama of life that they are full of fear. But the realization of Gnosis enables us to be ‘in the film but not of it’, and so appreciate it unreservedly.

Free from fear, we are able to enjoy the extraordinary show we have laid on for ourselves without souring our pleasure with constant anxiety. We can take the risks that living demands, because we know that whilst our eidolon struts its stuff on the stage of the world, winning and losing, suffering and celebrating, laughing and crying, we are the witness who watches.

There is one important respect in which the cinema analogy breaks down, however. To sit in a cinema is, in itself, not particularly pleasurable, but to commune with Consciousness is to bathe in the bliss of our being. To experience the rich variety of experiences offered by life is a wonder, but to be conscious of the Mystery of God is to have found the source of all joy. Plotinus explains:

‘Consciousness has two powers. First to know its own contents. Second to know that which transcends it. The first way of seeing belongs to Consciousness when it is sane. But the second is Consciousness in love, transported and drunk with nectar. Satisfied and fulfilled, it dissolves in contentment. Better to be drunk than too solemn for such delights.’48

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