The Spirit of the Truth rises above literal teaching, speaking from Good.
“The disciples did not understand and only later some of them grasped the idea of the whole drama of Christ enacted visibly before them—namely, the inevitable crucifixion of a higher level of Truth at the hands of those on a lower level. The destruction of psychological Truth by literal truth is the continual drama of human life.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, p46
“The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up. John the Baptist could not understand that this meant the psychologically deaf, blind, etc. But this level of understanding in religion has always existed—the understanding only of the harsh, literal truth, the understanding of the external man, who keeps the teaching of the Word of God on an earth−level and by so doing destroys not only its beauty but its very meaning.” The New Man, p146
“John the Baptist represents the literal teaching of the Word of God. He represents the great literal class of such people whom, in the person of the Baptist, Christ defends, since they are the starting−point of all else, and speaks about with such great and obvious care as if they presented a problem very difficult to solve. John the Baptist believed in Christ when he met him, but, as was said, towards the end he is shown to have doubted. And this is the true psychological picture of those who, being grounded in the external side of the teaching of the Word and its harsh literal meaning, meet with the internal or higher meaning of it and are unable to comprehend it and fall back in doubt—and, indeed, feel offended, because they can no longer feel merit, no longer feel themselves better than others. Yet it must be understood that the literal meaning of the Word of God must be guarded.” The New Man, p146
“Christ is speaking from Good and not from literal Truth: and the Pharisees condemn him and hate him because they hold only to the literal Truth. Truth about a higher level can be taken as Truth at the level of Good a man is at—at his own level. A man then sees this Truth, that is designed to lead to a higher level of Good, in terms of the level of Good he is at. If his level of Good is self−interest and self−love, he can twist the higher Truth to suit his vanity, as do all Pharisees in every age. That is, he can entirely misconceive its meaning. What is called the Word of God in the Gospels is Truth about what is necessary for the reaching of a higher level of Good—that is, what is necessary for inner evolution, for all inner evolution is reaching higher Good through knowledge. The problem of the relation of Truth and Good thus becomes clearer. A new level of Good in Man cannot be reached directly. It can only be reached by instruction about how to reach it and instruction must take the form of Truth about this higher level of Good. That is, it must come, first of all, in the form of knowledge which a man must learn and apply to his life.” The New Man, p61
“If Truth, if knowledge, does not lead to the goodness or use of it, which is its genuine partner, for what reason should we seek to study any Truth or knowledge? Knowledge is endless unless it leads to its own goal, which is its goodness. Good is the culmination of Truth. So Jesus as Good stands at the culmination of Truth, where it passes into the perception of its Good and find its true union. Here, as such, he performs always the miracles that transform Truth into Good—and so he cures the halt, lame, withered, blind—that is, all those who stand only in Truth and cannot even begin to see that all doctrine, all Truth, all knowledge, must lead to Good to have any meaning. To follow knowledge alone, for its own sake, is to misunderstand not only the meaning of life and of oneself, but of the Universe. For the Universe, understood psychologically, is both the Truth of things and the Good of things. When a man acts from the sense of the Good of whatever Truth he knows, he acts directly from his will—from what he wants—for we will Good but think Truth.” The New Man, p73-74
Logion 46
Yeshua says,
Among those born on Earth,
beginning from Adam to John the Baptist,
no-one has reached a higher state than John -
and you should bow in honor before him.
Yet I tell you this:
whoever of you becomes a little child
will not only know the kingdom,
but will be raised to a state higher than John's.
Read more Impressions on the topic of Good.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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