The Kingdom Within and Without
The Teaching
If your leaders say to you, “Look, the kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.
Commentary
This saying didn’t survive canonical selection, and one can see why. It removes the institution as intermediary. The Kingdom is not a future destination requiring doctrinal correctness; it is the ground of your own being, available now.
The Sufi path of fana, self-annihilation in God, arrives at the same recognition through the opposite movement: losing the false self to discover the true one.
‘You are the poverty’, ignorance of your own nature is the only real deprivation. This is Maya in Hinduism, the illusion that keeps us from seeing what we already are.
Themes
Connections 16
Travelled
Christianity reached Gnosticism by 100 CE. The same milieu. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostics (c. 180); the Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic character is itself disputed, shares sayings with the Gospels.
Travelled
Christianity reached Gnosticism by 100 CE. The same milieu. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostics (c. 180); the Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic character is itself disputed, shares sayings with the Gospels.
Unsure
Hippolytus (c. 225) reports Brahmin doctrine alongside the Gnostic schools he attacks. Indian influence on Gnosticism is argued.
Unsure
Transmission between Gnosticism and Sufism has been argued, not shown.
Unsure
Close parallels have been argued (Conze 1967; Pagels 1979). A route through Alexandria’s trade with India is possible, but undocumented.
Unsure
The Gospel of Thomas was lost from late antiquity until 1945, though some of its sayings also survive in the canonical Gospels.
Unsure
Close parallels have been argued (Conze 1967; Pagels 1979). A route through Alexandria’s trade with India is possible, but undocumented.
Travelled
Christianity reached Gnosticism by 100 CE. The same milieu. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostics (c. 180); the Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic character is itself disputed, shares sayings with the Gospels.
Travelled
Christianity reached Gnosticism by 100 CE. The same milieu. Irenaeus wrote against the Gnostics (c. 180); the Gospel of Thomas, whose Gnostic character is itself disputed, shares sayings with the Gospels.
Unsure
Hippolytus (c. 225) reports Brahmin doctrine alongside the Gnostic schools he attacks. Indian influence on Gnosticism is argued.
Travelled
Gnosticism reached Neoplatonism by 260 CE. Plotinus wrote against Gnostics who came to his seminar (Enneads II.9).
Unsure
Transmission between Gnosticism and Sufism has been argued, not shown.
Unsure
No documented reading of Gnosticism by Alan Watts.