Seeing Through Solid Words: Using Gebser’s Concept of Transparency to Understand a Gnostic Poem Expressing Integral Consciousness

Abstract

It is difficult to express integral consciousness using ordinary language because of the inherent tendency of language to separate and distinguish. Jean Gebser, in The Ever-Present Origin, suggested concepts such as transparency and diaphaneity as ways to access integral consciousness, and the Gnostic text The Thunder, Perfect Mind (TPM) is written from the perspective of a being with integral consciousness. I use Jean Gebser’s concepts of transparency and diaphaneity to explicate TPM, an enigmatic, paradoxical poem in the Nag Hammadi Library. Because TPM is written from the perspective of an integral being, one who is All-of-It (i.e., paradoxical completeness rather than a consistent but incomplete persona), the poem calls the reader to embody such a perspective of being All-of-It, thereby enabling one to get beyond the limitations of either/or languaging and thinking by apperceiving the transparency of experience in space and through time