Nag Hammadi Codice: The Gospel of Thomas GNOSTICISM: CHRISTIAN HERESY OR MYSTICAL TRUTH?

What’s all the fuss about Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel, The DaVinci Code? Why the television documentaries? What has stirred the Catholic Church and all of Christendom to react with outrage and denial?
Many things…

Brown’s fiction is threatening because it is believable. Like every good Who-Done-It, there’s a body, a murder and a cover-up. Only this is no ordinary cover-up. Twisting and turning, we investigate leads gone cold for thousands of years.Threatening because it supposes the apostolic church fathers flat-out lied about the known true relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the disciple who he loved best.

Over time an orthodox version of reality, with a celibate Jesus, has become accepted fact. Think of it: What we have come to recognize as inerrant scripture, was not made official until the Council of Nicea in 325 CE—over three hundred years after the death of Christ. There is lots of wiggle room in three hundred years.

See NPR Talk of the Nation, May 22, 2006 interview with Elaine Pagels, translater of the Nag Hammadi Codices, and professor of religion at Princeton: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5422695

During those years, there were other early followers of Christ’s teaching who practiced a far different understanding. These Gnostic Christians supposed that sacred knowledge is divinely inspired, and individually received. We are not limited to spiritual understanding, as translated exclusively by religious church hierarchy.

First hand accounts of biblical times, extant Gnostic Gospels, have been resurrected following their find in 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. DaVinci takes this new scholarship into consideration. Digging archeological bones in Brown’s source texts—Holy Blood, Holy Grail—The Woman With The Alabaster Jar—The Templar Revelation—The Goddess in the Gospels-- presents an astoundingly plausible truth: Divine or not, it appears Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a nice married Jewish couple, who probably had children.

High cave  above the  Dead Sea, in area where ancient manuscripts have been found.	Excavated jars, thousands of years old, like those which hid the Nag Hammadi Codices.

Reading DaVinci gave me goose bumps. But then, the whole idea that Christ was a real man, even a lusty man who loved life--and women--was not news to me. This is how I reached such a startling conclusion: When I was a young mother, I faced the death of my child. Although the circumstances may change, most of us reach tipping points which shatter our sense of self, as my son’s untimely death did for me. Waking up to a life I never imagined and didn’t want to accept, establishing a firm spiritual standpoint became my desperate need.

To deal with the grief I hired a Jungian Analyst. Every time they opened the doors, I showed up at regular church.
I joined an evangelical bible study group. Before long I became a study group leader with responsibility for my own small group of women, in addition to membership in the larger group of five-hundred. The commitment was intense, and I was grateful to find a life focus, to feel inspired, to redirect my thoughts, to stem the tide of grief.

Week after week, for six seemingly endless grief resolution years, I rolled out of bed at 5: AM. Waiting for the sun to come up, I searched for spiritual connection, and sure understanding on which to base the rest of my life. Over time, I accomplished a complete—if sleep deprived--exegesis on every single word in the Bible. Plunging both time and energy into understanding the gospel stories, I made them my own. Little did I realize: When you are open to spiritual possibility, study and daily practice is likely to initiate direct contact with mystical reality.

Staying on task, doing both psychological and spiritual processes, one morning an inner door flung wide open. Traditional Bible study and Active Imagination Dreamwork came together in an ecstatic experience such as ancient Christian Mystics, like St. Theresa of Avila, might know. Totally unscripted and certainly never dreamt or planned, Jesus and I became ONE. This Bridegroom Christ, as lover, was hinted at in my study of accepted biblical scripture…only between the lines…an implied figment of my spiritual imagination.

In both my own ongoing personal inner work and also in work with clients, I have discovered that this unitive experience is far from unique. Excavating buried emotions and bringing feelings up, out and into the light of awareness (especially through experiential psychological processes), just naturally leads to a state of transcendence, where ego boundaries fall away and we merge with all of creation.

Such a mind-blowing inner experience, permanently altered my view of reality, as these astounding moments of illumination do for everyone. But more, this gnosis convinced me that the “Jesus” who is presented in traditional Christendom reveals only half-truth. I felt cheated. I wanted to know the full truth. So began my own research into Gnostic thought. Now The DaVinci Code comes along and throws the likely cover-up out there, on a grand scale, in-your-face for everyone to consider. 

Sifting and sorting the reality-bending Gnostic Gospels is transformative work. Have you begun to personally investigate ancient truths, suggested in The DaVinci Code? It’s a wild ride.