The Song of the Pearl - I

The world’s mythologies seem to agree that humanity once lived in a perfect world: Paradise. The names we use are unimportant if they mean the same thing. So what happened? We find two explanations. One is that humanity sinned; as punishment we were expelled from Paradise into a harsher world. The other is that humanity was tempted to realize special pleasures or powers it hoped to gain in a realm it couldn’t see; once we descended into that lower realm, we got caught and entangled. In essence the two stories are the same. To sin is to want and grasp a lesser good. Both in the Christian and in the Hindu models, the same motives have the same consequence. Welcome to the Vale of Tears in one case, Welcome to the Wheel of Karma in the other. Notice that in both cases a vast community is involved. We see this most clearly in the Christian doctrine in which the guilt of the original couple clings to all of their descendants. The only rational way to see this is to assume that Adam and Eve stand for humanity as a whole. And let’s not get excessively rational. These are myths and we must understand them at the poetic level. Debates about sin clinging to DNA, for instance, are out of place; they’re not poetry but quibbling. Notice also that in both cases the lower state is due to individual decision; descent or exile is chosen by a free act of the will.

There are, however, two other myths on offer. Today they are minority views—and the views of very small minorities at that. One is the Mazdean (Zoroastrian) belief according to which we are here because we volunteered to take part in an act of creation. God willing I’ll get to that one in another post. The other is that we were sent in order to develop, rendered in the terminology of obtaining a great prize. In both of these myths we are innocent as we set out. In the other two models we are already guilty on arrival, even as “innocent” babes. In all of these models—whether innocent or guilty as we come—we can fail in our mission and, if we do, we remain in the realm of darkness. That realm of darkness is defined in different ways: in Christianity it is hell, in Hinduism and Gnosticism it is another life, in Mazdaism it is life with the dark force that represents one polarity of existence. Here I want to give a sketch of the last, the developmental model.

That model is succinctly rendered as the Song of the Pearl, sometimes as the Hymn of the Soul, found in one of the apocryphal books of the New Testament, The Acts of Thomas, embedded in that book but dating from an earlier time. You can read that song here. To reach the actual text, search for “108”; that search will put you at its beginning within the book. The song is quite short and easily read and there is the benefit of getting the information at first hand. But I will summarize it.

The story concern the son of a king who, in early youth, is sent from the “East” [read Paradise] down to Egypt in order to fetch a great prize, a pearl held by a devouring serpent. The child is stripped of its ceremonial garment and clothed in a yellow garb, provisioned and sent down. The child is guided at first but, at the borders with Egypt [read our world] he is left to himself. He remains conscious of his past until he partakes of the local food; it causes him to forget his real status (son of a king) and his glorious past home. He falls into a deep sleep from which he awakens only when at last a special letter, aimed at awakening him again, reaches him. This then causes him to remember why he came to Egypt and what he had to do. He proceeds to obtain the pearl by charming the serpent into sleep, obtains the pearl, and begins the trip home. Arriving there he strips off the filthy garment he had worn in Egypt [his body] and puts on the bejeweled garment of his native land [the spiritual body]. In due time he presents the pearl to the king.

The Song of the Pearl is usually classified as a Gnostic myth, but one finds it in various forms in Sufic and other traditions as well. Having reached us in the Acts of Thomas, it was obviously also valued by the early Christians.

Let me now add three personal reactions to this tale—and to models of development in general. These are summary in nature. I’ll use a future post to look at the myth in some detail. It takes more space than I have here.

First, let me strip away the mythical form and simply assume that a soul-community, an “order of the soul,” has discovered that life in the harsh confines of the material order is capable of educating souls—meaning to “draw out,” to realize hidden potentials. If we take that to be a plausible concept, namely that souls can be educated and improved, and that certain environments and experiences can further that development, the model starts sounding reasonable. But that model only becomes acceptable if we further assume that the majority of souls on earth will benefit, will gain something real from the process. This is not difficult to accept. The vast majority of people are decent—they live, struggle, and pass on. The degrees of improvement would vary, as they do in all models of education; and some few would fail.

Second, I would point out that near-death experience reports tend to confirm this model. They do not confirm all models in the same way. In many NDEs, the individual, wishing to go on and to realize the obviously superior values available on that side of the Borderzone are told that they must return; their time has not yet come; they have things still to accomplish. Some individuals also know this and return on their own accord, not because they’re urged.

Third, this model features a good deal of interaction between this realm and the higher one, the “East.” The soul is sent from there with appropriate provisions. It is guided on the way down, it is assisted while down here (although I’ve omitted that from my summary), it receives an enlightening “letter” from above. My own experience and observation is that communications, of sorts, do reach us here in various forms, most notably but not solely by means of intuitions and inspired revelations.

More on this in future posts.