83 The unreality of the images

LG83

Jesus said:
People know the images,
but the light that is in them,
remains hidden in the image of the light of the father.
He will be unlocked,
but his image will merge with his light.

This is a warning. You may have believed in an image of God and you thought your image was God himself. That image is only an image; every image is a pretty good-looking counterfeit of something that actually exists.

If you believe in an image as if that image is the real existing self, then you put the real existing in the dark.

If you believe in ‘an image of the light of the father’, then, oh irony, the really existing light will be hidden by the belief in its image. And the light in you will also not be able to shine.

Well, that you can see. As was spoken of earlier.

The warning here is that you ‘must’ be prepared for a painful disappointment on the spiritual path of gnostics. All those beautiful images and stories to which you may have been so attached, in which you sincerely believed, will lose their reality content along the way. And that is the intention. The images and stories will fade in the light of reality, in your own surrender to the real thing.

In another way, those images and stories also regain a new meaning. They do not exist by themselves, but they have become a sign, a reference to something else that can be known in experience. And that is their right to exist, nothing more. But that makes sense. The map is not the journey, but a means to prepare for it. The recipe is not the meal, but teaches you what to do to reach your goal.

The gospel of Philip (67) says it this way:

The truth did not come naked into the world but dressed in symbols and images. The world cannot receive the truth in any other way.

There is rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is definitely necessary that one is born again by the image. What is the resurrection and its image? You need to stand up through the image. What is the bridal room and its image? It is necessary that one enters into the truth through the image – that is the restoration.