The externally existing world is the womb in which my senses develop to discern the deeper reality of the internally existing world. Hindus and Christians alike speak of the “twice-born” or “born again”, meaning those who have grown ears to hear and eyes to see the internal reality in the external appearance. Those who have been born to truth.
But like every womb, the external world is also a cage. It is an appearance all too arresting to dull or slumbering senses. A metaphor all too involved, concealing rather than revealing the truth it is meant to convey.
The external world is a reflection in the mirror of the body-mind. As long as my senses remain confused, I roam a labyrinth of surfaces without depth. I grow weary, pursuing the distant appearances of realities present only within me. I run the perimeter of my cage, frantically seeking a way out, all the while winding the shackles tighter around my neck.
Only with the awakening of my senses do I perceive that the way out of the womb-cage cannot be found, for I myself am that way. Scales such as “internal” and “external”, “metaphor” and “truth”, and “self” and “world” fall off my eyes, and I see.
May we all taste newborn freedom,
Simeon
Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is inside of you. And it is outside of you. “When you become acquainted with yourselves, then you will be recognized. And you will understand that it is you who are children of the living father. But if you do not become acquainted with yourselves, then you are in poverty, and it is you who are the poverty.”
—Gospel of Thomas, 3
Suggested Reading
The Gospel of Thomas: The Gnostic Wisdom of Jesus by Jean-Yves Leloup
“In this new translation of the Gospel of Thomas, Jean-Yves Leloup shows that the Jesus recorded by the ‘infinitely skeptical and infinitely believing’ Thomas has much in common with gnostics of non-dualistic schools. Like them, Jesus preaches the coming of a new man, the genesis of the man of knowledge. In this gospel, Jesus describes a journey from limited to unlimited consciousness. The Jesus of Thomas invites us to drink deeply from the well of knowledge that lies within, not so that we may become good Christians but so we may attain the self-knowledge that will make each of us, too, a Christ.”
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How to Enter Heaven Here & Now
This piece on the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart invites a reconsideration of what it means to be “born again” as a transformation of seeing.
Clicking in, I gasped to see the image you chose for this reflection, Simeon -- I've just completed reading the fine novel 'Piranesi' (2021, Susannah Clarke) with its layering of realities and its introspective peeling away of mysterious perceptions. So much shifting of the ground 'contained' within an apparently infinite yet ordered dreamlike setting. I enjoy the effect of these interwoven threads winding through my responses -- the artwork you offer here, the resonance of the novel it evokes, these quotations you've selected from the Book of Thomas, and the pleasing paradoxes of your own written contemplation. All working together, creating a complementary dynamism that 'tells' me things wondrous and True as I read 'Womb-Cage of the World.' Thank you for this delight.