Knowledge of the heart: Pagels excerpt #6

Pagels writes in Why Religion? “The Gospel of Truth, then, is all about relationships—how, when we come to know ourselves, simultaneously we come to know God. Implicit in this relationship is the paradox of gnosis—not intellectual knowledge, but knowledge of the heart. What first we must come to know is that we cannot fully know God, since that Source far transcends our understanding. But what we can know is that we’re intimately connected with that divine Source, since ‘in him we live and move and have our being.’

 

“. . . this is myth as Plato told it: imagination revealing the deeper truths of human experience. So, the speak concludes, ‘If, indeed, these things have happened to each one of us,’ then we can see that this mythical story has real consequences.

 

“On the other hand, when we recognize how connected we are with one another and with ‘all beings,’ this author says, we may ‘say from the heart that you are the perfect day; in you dwells the light that does not fail.’ And recognizing this, in turn, impels us to act in ways that acknowledge those connections:

“Speak the truth with those who search for it . .  support those who have stumbled, and extend your hands to those who are ill. Feed those who are hungry; give rest to the weary . . . strengthen those who wish to rise; and awaken those who are asleep.

 

“Is this really Paul’s secret teaching? We can’t know for sure. As we’ve seen, some scholars agree that the renowned Egyptian teacher Valentinus wrote this gospel, since its language resonates with a famous poem that he wrote, and with the few fragments of his teaching that survive. Did the author receive Paul’s secret teaching orally, handed down in succession from a disciple named Theudas, who received it from Paul? Maybe so, since that’s what Valentinian tradition claims; alternatively, its author may have drawn on Paul’s letters to write it himself.

 

“I’ve come to love this poetic and moving story for the way it reframes the gospel narrative. Instead of seeing suffering as punishment, or somehow as ‘good for you,’ this author sees it rather as Buddhists do, as an essential element of human existence, yet one that may have the potential to break us open out of who we are. My own experience of the ‘nightmare’—the agony of feeling isolated, vulnerable, and terrified—has shown that only awareness of that sense of interconnection restores equanimity, even joy.”

 

Pagels, Elaine. Why Religion? (pp. 203). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.