THE END OF THE WORLD
What is the meaning of the End of the
World? The denotation is that there
is going to be a terrific cosmic calamity and the physical world is going to
end. That, as we know, is the
denotation. What is the connotation
of the End of the World? In the
Gospel of Mark, chapter 13, Jesus tells about the End of the World.
He describes it as a terrible, terrible time with fire and brimstone
devouring the earth. He says,
“Better not
to be alive at that time.”
He also says, “This generations will not pass away, but these things will
have come to pass.” These things
did not, however, come to pass. And
the Church, which interprets everything concretely, taking the denotation
instead of the connotation as the term of the message, said that, no, this did
not come to pass but it is going to come to pass, because what Jesus meant by
generation is the generation of
Now in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, part of the great mid-century
discovery of ancient texts, Jesus says, “The Kingdom will not come by
expectation. The Kingdom of the
Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.”
Not seeing it, we live in the world as though it were not the Kingdom.
Seeing the Kingdom –
that is
the End of the World. The
connotation is transcendent of the denotation.
You are not to interpret the phrase, “the End of the World” concretely.
Jesus used the same kind of vocabulary that Eastern gurus use.
In their full-fledged teaching mode they speak as though they were
themselves what they are speaking about; that is to say,
they have in their
minds identified themselves with a mode of consciousness that then speaks
through them.
So when Jesus says, “I am the all,” he means: “I have identified myself
with the all.” That is what he
means when he says, in the Gospel of Thomas, “Split the stick, you will find me
there.” This does not refer to the
one who is talking to you, not to that physical body; it refers instead to that
which he indeed, and you indeed, in fact, are.
Thou art that. TAT19
In
any of the orthodox biblical
traditions, one cannot identify oneself with God.
Jesus identified himself with God in this sense.
But God is a metaphor, as he also is a metaphor for that which we all
are. And he says in this Thomas
Gospel, “He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I shall be he.”
No the “I” standing there, talking to his disciples, physically present
before them. It is the “I” of the
dimension out of which he is speaking.
“Split the stick, you will find me there; lift the stone, there am I.”
And, of course, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
Is it above? If so, the
birds will be there before you. Is
it below? The fish will be there
before you. The
This is the sense of Zen Buddhism.
You must find it in yourself.
You are it: “Thou art that.
Tat tvam asi.”
That message from
The fundamental, simple, and great
mystical realization is that by which you identify yourself with
consciousness,
rather than with the vehicle of
consciousness.
Your body is a vehicle of consciousness.
TAT20
Think of the electric lights in a room.
You can say, “The lights – plural – are on.”
You can say, “The light – singular – is on.”
These are two ways of saying exactly the same thing.
In one case you are giving accent to the vehicle of the light:
“The lights – plural – are on.”
And in the other, you are giving accent to that which you are finally
talking about, namely, the
light.
TAT 21
With what do we identify ourselves,
finally? With the bulb, or with the
consciousness? The consciousness
would not be there if the bulb weRe not there but it is the consciousness that is
of significance here. When you have
identified yourself with the consciousness, the body drops off.
Nothing can happen to you.
You are ready to be grateful to the body and to love it for having brought you
to this realization, but it is only the vehicle.
TAT21
In the thirteenth century, because of
socially arranged marriages, solely because they had to, people were living with
spouses whom they did not love.
These were not authentic relationships.
What, we may ask, is an authentic marriage?
It is a mystery in which two bodies become one flesh; it is not a
negotiation in which two bank accounts merge into one.
TAT 21
We speak of schizophrenia, a condition
in which people are split in half; we even call this crisis a crack-up.
These divided souls plunge into the night-sea of the realities that are
down there, about which they had never known, and they are terrified by demons.
You can take this precept as a basic theological formula:
a deity is the personification of a spiritual power, and deities who are
not recognized become demonic and are really dangerous.
One has been out of communication with them: their messages have not been
heard, or, if heard, not heeded.
And when they do break through, in the end, there is literally hell to pay.
TAT 23
Myths derive from the visions of people
searching their own most inward world.
Out of myths cultures are founded.
TAT 23
Myths like dreams are products of the
imagination. And there are two
orders of dream, the simple personal dream, in which the dreamer becomes
involved in adventures reflective only of his own personal problems, the
conflicts in his life between desires and fears, driving wishes and moral
prohibitions, and similar materials that are typically dealt with in a Freudian
psychoanalysis. There is also
another dream level that can be thought of as that of vision, where one has
transcended the sphere of a merely personal horizon and come into confrontation
with the same, great, universal
problems that are symbolized in all great myths.
For example, when disaster strikes, when you meet with a great calamity,
what is it that supports you and carries you through?
Do you have anything that supports and caries you through?
Or does that which you thought was your support now fail you?
That is the test of the myth, the building myth, of your life.
Already in the eighth centure B.C., in
the Chandogya Upanishad, the key word to such a meditation is announced:
tat tvam asi, “Thou art that,”
or “You yourself are It!” The final
sense of a religion such as Hiduism or Buddhism is to bring about in the
individual an experience, one way or another, of his own
identity with that mystery that is
the mystery of all being. “Thou art
That!” Not this “thou,” however,
that you cherish and distinguish from all others.
One way to come to the knowledge of a
deeper you is to distinguish, as they say, between the object and the subject of
knowledge, identifying yourself thereby with the subject, the witness, and not
with what is beheld. For example,
“I behold and know my body: I am not my body.”; “I know my thoughts: I am not my
thoughts.”; “I know my feelings: I am not my feelings.”; “I am the knower, I am
the witness.” Then the Buddha comes
along and says: “But there is no
witness either.” You can back
yourself out beyond the wall of space this way.
And so we come to the realization of the aspiration, “Neti!
Neti!” “Not this!
Not this!” Anything you can
name is not it, absolutely. “Iti!
Iti!” “It is here!
It is here!” This oxymoron,
or self contradictory statement, is the key to what we call the mystery of the
Orient. TAT 26
Anyone who says, as Jesus is reported to
have said (John 10:30), “I and the Father are One,” is declared in our tradition
to have blasphemed. Jesus Christ
was crucified for that blasphemy; and nine hundred years later, the great Sufi
mystic, Hallaj, was crucified for the same thing.
Hallaj is reported to have compared the desire of the mystic to that of
the moth for the flame. The moth
sees a flame burning at night in a lantern and, filled with an irresistible
desire to be united with that flame, plays about the lamp till dawn, then
returns to his friends to tell them in sweetest terms the tale of his
experience. “You don’t look the
better for it,” they say, for his wings are pretty much banged up: that is the
condition of the ascetic. But he
returns the next night and, finding a way through the glass, is united entire
with his beloved and becomes himself the flame.
TAT 27
That is why our symbols have all been so consistently and persistently
interpreted as referring not primarily to our inner selves but to supposed outer
historical events. This emphasis
may be good for the institution of the Church or the prosperity of the
synagogue, but may not at all contribute to the spiritual health of the
unconvinced individual. TAT28