“To specialize oneself in order to gain temporary advantages or to be moved only by the hunger and thirst for truth beauty and goodness—here is the choice that every human being, every community, every tradition or spiritual school, must make.” Valentin Tomberg
The Enduring Nature of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty
“Goodness, truth and beauty do not lose their attraction from century to century; that, in spite of all, there is faith, hope and charity in the world; that there are saints, sages, geniuses, benefactors, and healers; that pure thought, poetry, music, and prayer are not being engulfed by the void; that there is this universal miracle of human history; and that the miraculous exists.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p67.
“There is no reason—nor is there anything given in the whole domain of biological evolution culminating in the formation of the human brain—which explains and makes the human aspiration towards truth beauty and goodness appear necessary. Every monastery and convent is, moreover, a direct contradiction to the thesis that mankind is only the product of biological evolution. All renunciation of concrete things—such as wealth, power, health and even life—for an ideal, bears witness to the trans-evolutionary and trans-cerebral reality of the nucleus of the human being.” Meditations on the Tarot, p251
The Relationship Between Goodness, Truth, and Beauty
“The beautiful is the good which makes itself loved; the good is the beautiful which heals and vivifies. But the good from which the beautiful is lost from sight hardens into principles and laws—it becomes pure duty; the beautiful which is detached from the good and loses it from sight becomes softened to pure enjoyment—stripped of obligation and responsibility. The hardening of the good into a moral code and the softening of the beautiful to pure pleasure is the result of the separation of the good and the beautiful—be it morally, in religion, or in art.” Meditations on the Tarot, p628-629.
“Miracles are fruits of the union of the whole, concentrated human being with cosmic truth beauty and goodness — with God. They are operations of divine-human magic.” Meditations on the Tarot, p210.
Goodness and Being
“One of the problems of esotericism is how to raise the level of being of a man apart from his level of knowledge—that is, to raise him on the side of good, for goodness is of being and knowledge is of mind. Man can no longer see good directly or be taught directly from good. His mind must alter first, so he must be taught knowledge or truth about a higher level of being first. But the object of the knowledge is to raise the man’s level of being.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p163.
“Goodness means acting in the right way, which may be in one way at one moment and in another way at the next moment…. Goodness is infinitely flexible, and is different at different times. A rigid associative path laid down in the associative center gives a rigid sense of what is good and bad, and it is from this that we judge others inflexibly, without under-standing or mercy.” Commentaries, p1434.
“To exalt oneself or to abase oneself, to specialize oneself in order to gain temporary advantages or to be moved only by the hunger and thirst for truth beauty and goodness—here is the choice that every human being, every community, every tradition or spiritual school, must make.” Meditations on the Tarot, p449.
“The reality and entirety of evolution consists on the one hand of the enfolding activity of the serpent, which has formed the brain and produced cerebral intellectuality, and on the other hand of the activity of the light from above, which opens the enfolded and illumines cerebral intellectuality. The serpent and the dove: these are, in the last analysis, the factors underlying the whole process of evolution.
“If you were to ask me, dear Unknown Friend, if one has to choose and take the side of either the serpent or the dove, my reply would be in the framework of the Master’s counsel:
Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew x, 16)
“i.e.: One should try to unite cerebral intellectuality with spiritual spontaneity. It is certainly necessary to think in articulated thoughts and in a discursive manner, but above this process of discursive thought there always soars the ideal! It is in the light of the ideal that one should think.” Meditations on the Tarot, p251
Connecting Inner and Outer Worlds
“Here we begin to have a great paradox. You cannot relate yourself to the internal world, which Plato called Truth, Goodness and Beauty, and which the Work calls the two Higher Centers, unless you have made a good relationship to the external world. This is referred to in the Work by the term that you must be a Good Householder towards the external world before you can begin to make a relationship to the internal world.” Commentaries, p1322.
“Our habits and our responses to things and our capacity to follow truth, goodness, beauty and duty is mediated through that World 48 sense. It’s really wired to the laws of maintaining that finite structure of selfhood and protecting oneself. So that a person who’s walking in accordance with conscience, real conscience, is always walking according to the laws of a higher realm in this realm. And in that sense becomes a beacon.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter With Evil April 2023 NC, 9:19 05d – Thurs pm Teaching Evil.
Living in Goodness, Truth, and Beauty
“Know quietly I belong, and from the basis of that quiet conviction of your own goodness, intelligence, strength of your capacity to make this contribution, to make it. So it’s the direct strengthening of that capacity within you to be here, to be confident, to be positive, to have enough trust in yourself to do what your conscience tells you is necessary. This is creating sun in yourself, and of course, the image is beautiful, because, you know, sunbathing in your own innate goodness, you get a lovely tan.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Relearning Trust Sep 2022, 26:08 RT 05 Morning Teaching.
“It’s all here at once. Everything is in movement, going nowhere, but enjoying everywhere and everything. This is creation, endless, delightful, unpredictable, unbelievable, just ‘is-ness’, playing with goodness, beauty, and truth without purpose, without plan, without judgment, in perfect peace, in the midst of activity, and no activity.
“This is [Thomas Keating] in his final vision of life—not some grim mountain that you have to climb up. And even our small self that we are, even our false self, still in some funny way belongs, but nothing is wasted. The universe, basically, from what I take out of it, as his most beautiful teaching, is that the universe does not trick us.
“We’ve been led to believe for so long on the spiritual journey, that it’s all illusions, veils, and hidings, and God is playing hard to get, and we have to destroy our essential nature, or repent it, or move beyond it, in order to be admitted into some sort of fundamental Himalayan truth. This isn’t what Thomas is saying. The universe is trustworthy.
“It’s just joyously, riotously chaotic, but there are no tricks being played, and God is not requiring you to penetrate and renounce all the conventions of your finite being in order to become a moving and conscientious and cherished pixel in this living life thought of God. All you have to do is consent and give it your best and willing shot to be here, to not grab, to not cling, to not insist, to not fear, to not separate, to grow empty-handedly into the infinite, which is coming to meet you, to hold you up.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Exploring Father Keating’s Cosmogonic Mysticism 2025, 1:56:56.
Logion 39
Yeshua says...
Your scholars and religious leaders
have taken the keys of knowledge
and locked them away.
They have not used them to enter in,
nor have they allowed those desiring it to do so.
You, therefore, must be as subtle as serpents
and as guileless as doves.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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