{"id":31211,"date":"2025-10-20T20:49:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T20:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/perfect-mind-the-gnostic-field-guide-to-wholeness-and-hearing-the-voice-of-truth\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T20:49:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T20:49:23","slug":"perfect-mind-the-gnostic-field-guide-to-wholeness-and-hearing-the-voice-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/perfect-mind-the-gnostic-field-guide-to-wholeness-and-hearing-the-voice-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Mind: The Gnostic Field Guide to Wholeness and Hearing the Voice of Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Perfect<\/a><\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t just a sum of parts but the product of constant division and multiplication, constantly denying the erratic arithmetic and calling our denial self. The parts we live with<\/a> are who we are, and those we cannot live with are the turbine of our suffering. The most difficult decisions in life are difficult precisely because we are unsummed, too divided to reconcile the desires of one part with those of another. We watch ourselves undergo overnight phase transitions of feeling as a different part seizes the dials of pleasure and pain that govern all human behavior, then pull the quilt of time and thinking over our head to maintain the illusion of coherence, disavowing entire regions of our own experience as if someone else lived them. \u201cDo I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.),\u201d wrote Whitman, knowing that we are each \u201cof one phase and of all phases,\u201d that within us each live the slaveholder and the slave, the woman being burned at the stake and the man striking the match.<\/p>\n

Perhaps \u201cgod\u201d is just how we name our yearning for a single truth, for an integrating voice to conciliate the contradictions, for something large and total to hold what we cannot hold. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Detail from the art in Cueva de las Manos, Argentina, created between 7,300 BC and 700 AD.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sixteen centuries before Whitman, the Gnostics \u2014 those spiritual visionaries who saw the wholeness of being before modern Christianity partitioned the body and the soul \u2014 channeled that voice in \u201cThe Thunder: Perfect Mind,\u201d part of what is now known as the Nag Hammadi Library: a set of ancient texts discovered in a jar at the foot of a cliff by two illiterate Muslim brothers in 1945. The long poem of contrasts and conciliation \u201cappears to derive from the female-centered Isis worship preceding Christianity,\u201d writes poet and ordained Buddhist Jane Hirshfield<\/a> in introducing her translation of it in Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Heart Thunder,\u201d spoken word artist Kim Rosen<\/a> brings this immortal abacus of the soul to life in a breathtaking performance, fusing the Gnostic gospel with the concluding mantra of the Buddhist Heart Sutra to the pulse-beat of a multi-instrumental orchestra \u2014 cello, percussion, piano, guitar, and vocals by musicians Jami Sieber, Wayne P. Sheehy, and Chloe Goodchild:<\/p>\n\n

\n

from THE THUNDER: PERFECT MIND<\/strong>
\ntranslated by Jane Hirshfield<\/em><\/p>\n

Sent from the Power,
\nI have come
\nto those who reflect upon me.
\nLook upon me,
\nyou who meditate,
\nand hearers, hear.
\nWhoever is waiting for me,
\ntake me into yourselves.
\nDo not drive me
\nout of your eyes,
\nor out of your voice,
\nor our of your ears.
\nObserve: Do not forget who I am.<\/p>\n

For I am the first, and the last
\nI am the honored one, and the scorned,
\nI am the whore and the holy one.
\nI am the wife and the virgin.
\nI am the mother, the daughter,
\nand every part of both.
\nI am the barren one who has borne many sons.
\nI am she whose wedding is great
\nand I have not accepted a husband.
\nI am the midwife and the childless one,
\nthe easing of my own labor.
\nI am the bride and the bridegroom
\nand my husband is my father.
\nI am the mother of my father,
\nthe sister of my husband;
\nmy husband is my child.
\nMy offspring are my own birth,
\nthe source of my power,
\nwhat happens to me is their wish.<\/p>\n

I am the incomprehensible silence
\nAnd the memory that will not be forgotten.
\nI am the voice whose sound is everywhere
\nI am the speech that appears in many forms.
\nI am the utterance of my own name.<\/p>\n

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
\nand hate those who love me?
\nYou who tell the truth about me, lie,
\nand you who have lied, now tell the truth.
\nYou who know me, be ignorant,
\nand you who have not known me, know.<\/p>\n

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
\nI am modesty and boldness.
\nI am shameless, and I am ashamed.
\nI am strength and I am fear.
\nI am war and I am peace.<\/p>\n

Give heed to me,
\nthe one who has been everywhere hated
\nand the one who is everywhere loved.
\nI am the one they call Life,
\nthe one you call Death.
\nI am the one they call Law,
\nthe one you call Lawless.
\nI am the one you have scattered,
\nand you have gathered me together.
\nI am godless, and I am the one
\nwhose God is great.
\nI am the one whom you have reflected upon
\nand the one you have scorned.
\nI am unlearned,
\nand from me all people learn.
\nI am the one to whom you reveal yourself,
\nYet wherever you think I hide, I appear,
\nAnd wherever you reveal yourself,
\nthere I will vanish.<\/p>\n

Those who are close to me,
\nhave failed to know me,
\nand those who are far from me know me.
\nOn the day when I am close to you,
\nthat day you are far from me;
\non the day when I am far from you,
\nthat day I am close.<\/p>\n

I am the joining and the dissolving.
\nI am what lasts, and what goes,
\nI am the one going down,
\nand the one toward whom they ascend.
\nI am the condemnation and the acquittal.
\nFor myself, I am sinless,
\nand the roots of sin grow in my being.
\nI am the desire of the outer,
\nand control of the inner.
\nI am the hearing in everyone\u2019s ears,
\nI am the speech which cannot be heard,
\nI am the mute who is speechless,
\ngreat are the multitudes of my words.<\/p>\n

Hear me in softness,
\nand learn me in roughness.
\nI am she who cries out,
\nand I am cast forth upon the face of the earth.
\nI prepare the bread and my mind within.
\nI am called truth.<\/p>\n

You praise me and you whisper against me.
\nYou who have been defeated,<\/p>\n

Judge before you are judged:
\nthe judge and all judging exist inside you,
\nand the one who formed you on the outside
\nis the one who shaped you within.<\/p>\n

And what you see outside you, you see within.
\nIt is visible and it is your garment.<\/p>\n

Give heed then, you hearers,
\nand you also, angels and those who have been sent,
\nand you spirits risen now from the dead.
\nI am the one who alone exists,
\nthere is no one to judge me.
\nFor though there is much sweetness
\nin passionate life, in transient pleasure,
\nfinally soberness comes
\nand people flee to their place of rest.
\nThere they will find me,
\nand live, and not die again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Couple with \u201cTo Be a Person\u201d<\/a> \u2014 Jane Hirshfield\u2019s magnificent poem about how to bear our human condition \u2014 then revisit Margaret Fuller\u2019s account of touching \u201cThe All,\u201d<\/a> the Transcendentalists\u2019 term for the totality of being the Gnostics eulogized in their gospel. <\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We aren\u2019t just a sum of parts but the product of constant division and multiplication, constantly denying the erratic arithmetic and calling our denial self. The parts we live with are who we are, and those we cannot live with are the turbine of our suffering. The most difficult decisions in life are difficult precisely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 21:40:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}