19 The creative power in humans

LG19

Jesus said:
Blessed was he who was before he was there.
If you become my students and
listen to my words,
the stones will serve you.
Because there are five trees for you in paradise
that remain unchanged, summer and winter,
and whose leaves do not fall off.
Whoever gets to know them will not taste like death.

In the Old Testament, God is called “the eternal.” And only God is ‘the eternal’ there. Isaiah even lets him say:

No one is equal to me.

In Gnostics, “the eternal” is also in a human. That is meant by “it was before it arrived.”

In the traditional Jewish and Christian representation there is an unbridgeable distance between man and God. Man and God are essentially unequal. God is ‘completely different’.

In Gnostics we are directly connected to the source as humans. We come out of it. Just as a ray of light is related to the sun, so too is man related to the Source. We have “the features of the Father.” We are “the heirs of the Father.” These are expressions in Gnostic texts to indicate that we as human beings are related to the Source like a child with its biological parents.
We are one with the Eternal. You can experience that unity in mystical moments. Then it seems as if you exist outside of time. In gnostics, that state of consciousness is called the Christ consciousness, or the Christ nature.
As stated in the explanation of the prologue, according to the gnostic tradition, man has two natures. Man carries within him the nature of Christ that participates in timeless eternity. The Christ nature is the presence of the Source in every person.
The Christ consciousness is timeless. It was there before you were there, that’s how you experience it.
Jesus tells us here that there is a way to reunite the time-bound personal consciousness with the timeless Christ nature if that connection is broken. Then you are a whole person.

“Then these stones will serve you,” says this logion.

The Source is the creative force of reality. Man himself is also creative, because man inherits the creative power of Source. Pharaoh Echnaton said so:
God is the creative force in the heart of man.
And that is why we ourselves can infuse the material creation around us, as a continuation of the eternal creation process. By sanctifying ‘the stones’, the matter, from your connection with the Christ nature within you, even the stones will serve you to create the kingdom on earth. Just as clay is available to the potter, material reality, including your own body, will be of service to you in your personal meaning to your life and thereby to all of creation. If you live and act from your connection with the Christ nature within you, you yourself become an active participant in the never-ending process of creation of the entire reality.

In ancient Egypt, too, there was a belief that visible reality is an emanation from Source. In all visible forms, the Source, God, expresses an aspect of one’s own being. In this way De Bron in de roos expresses the aspect of one’s own beauty. The rose is a face of God. God reveals himself in the beauty of the rose. Anyone who is moved by the beauty of the rose experiences an intimate encounter with the Source of being, with God. The Aramean Our Father says it this way:

Source of Being that I meet in what moves me.

Not only the rose, also a crocodile, a cat, a hippopotamus, and all other animals are a face of God, was found in ancient Egypt. That is why a crocodile is holy, all animals are holy. That is why every fellow person is holy, you are holy yourself. Because every person is a face of God in her or his own way. Precisely in everyone’s unique capacity as individual human beings, each of us is a spark, a ray of light, of the divine, an emanation of the Source.

Charity in this view is not only a moral commandment, it is also the experience of the essential unity that we form together in all diversity.

Five trees

Five was the symbol of fullness at that time. In classical antiquity one speaks of the quintessence, the fifth essence. Earth, water, air, and fire were then considered to be the four elements that made up material creation. The quintessence is the all-pervading essence of these four primal elements. Earth, water, air and fire are expressions, forms, of the one quintessence.

The experience and the insight that all diversity is supported by a comprehensive unity, has many names. Here, that bearing unity is expressed in the image of the everlasting five trees in paradise. Because these trees do not change and the leaves do not fall off. They therefore symbolize the eternal that is also in man.