The Esoteric Gospel of Matthew 12:31-35

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 12, Verses 31-35 reads: 
 

31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

 

32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

 

33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.

 

34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

 

35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

It Shall Not Be Forgiven

Here we encounter the hardest and the darkest words to be encountered anywhere in the Scripture. Jesus tells us that there are sins-- or, rather, one sin-- which cannot be forgiven, either in this world, or in the next world.

At least, that's what he appears to be saying. The word translated as world is "aoni," which actually means "age." Of course, the English word "world" originally refers also to an age, and has the connotation of both a duration of time and a human culture. We will go wrong if we understand Jesus to be using the word "aoni" to mean the same thing we do when we say "planet." 

That said, He is certainly telling us that a particular sin will either never be forgiven, or not forgiven until long ages have passed. What is that sin?

Blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost

On the surface, we are simply told that anyone who speaks ill of Jesus (the words used mean "speak against") will be forgiven, but no one who says anything bad about the Holy Ghost will be forgiven. Now, this is another case where if we take the surface meaning literally, we end up with a cosmic absurdity. It simply cannot be the case that if someone says "That Jesus guy sure is a big stupid jerk" he'll be forgiven, but if he then says "And the Holy Ghost is a big jerk too!" he goes to Hell forever. Not if we also want to have a God with a level of maturity exceeding that of the average 10 year old, anyway!

Here-- you saw this coming, didn't you?-- I'd like to turn to Plato for a bit of guidance. In both the Republic and the Phaedo, Plato suggests that there are some among the dead who are not permitted to return to the Earth, but must remain in the Underworld forever. 

Discussing the fate of the Dead in the Phaedo, Plato writes:

...when the Dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each severally guides them, first of all, they have sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither well nor ill, go to the river Acheron, and embarking in any vessels which they may find, are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and having suffered the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, they are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds, each of them according to his deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out.
 

Note the two crimes which he specifies as condemning a soul permanently. Put simply, they are massacres and desecrations of holy places. 

The punishment for souls who commit such crimes is to be hurled into Tartarus, forever. Tartarus, note, is not the same as the kingdom of Hades, which is the proper abode of the Dead. In pagan Greek religious thought, Tartarus is a dark realm in which the Giants and titans that rebelled against the Gods are imprisoned. In the Iliad Homer tells us that it lies "far, far away, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth, the gates whereof are of iron and the threshold of bronze, as far beneath Hades as Heaven is above Earth." This is where the souls of those beings that have rebelled against the divine order of the Cosmos are imprisoned. Bear that in mind. 

The Lemurian Deviation

Now let's take another detour, into one of the weirder and more interesting theories to come out of the Occult schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Yes, I'm going to talk about the Lemurian Deviation. According to this theory, at one time in the dim past a human civilization existed on a continent called Lemuria, now sunk beneath the Pacific Ocean. Now, this civilization may have been technologically primitive-- or not, we don't know-- but they were magically quite advanced, a fact which proved their undoing. At some point, the magicians of this civilization discovered what may, to them, appeared to have been a source of power in the form of beings hidden away from our universe. Chances are, these beings lied and claimed to be very powerful; such is their nature. In any case, the Lemurian magicians broke into the prison and let its inhabitants loose. Of course, the result was not more magical power, but the destruction of their civilization. The oceans rose, the landmass on which they dwelt sunk beneath the waves, and-- what is far worse-- demons gained access to human consciousness.

Why do I think this relates to the unforgivable crimes described in Matthew 12 and in the Phaedo?

Two Forms of Evil

If you pay attention, you'll notice that human beings are capable of two kinds of evil. Even our worst crime-- that is, murder-- comes in two different forms. There are some murders which are sudden outbursts, crimes of passion-- a street fight goes wrong, a man finds his wife in bed with another man, and so on. These are evil deeds, and Plato is clear that those who commit them are punished in the next world. But they can be forgiven after a time.

Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not irremediable—who in a moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or, who have taken the life of another under the like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, parricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian lake, and there they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to be kind to them, and let them come out into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for that is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.
 

I personally find it both very interesting and very intellectually satisfying-- whether or not it is literally true-- that it is their victims' forgiveness that a murderer must obtain in order to be free of punishment in the next world. In any case, the thing about these sorts of crimes is that, whatever else we can say about them, we can understand them. 

Certain crimes we cannot understand.

I'm not going to ennumerate them here. Frankly, these topics creep me out, and in order to describe them to you I'd have to read about them, which I greatly prefer not to. Let us, for now, suggest a difference between murders that fall under the heading "crime of passion" and those that fall under the heading "serial killer"; and between great slaughters which are necessary in order to enter into a war justifiably entered into and the sort of horrific massacres of innocents which characterized 20th century regimes like those of the Bolsheviks or Khmer Rouge.

It's my view that the first sort of evil is natural to human beings and the human experience -- We make foolish decisions by letting ourselves succumb to wrath or lust or jealousy, passions we share with the other animals. The purpose of this stage of our journey is to overcome such things, and so it is natural that they are still with us. The second sort of evil is not natural; it is worse than animal, and it only became possible when we made contact with the demonic plane.

In the case of the first sort of evil, one can imagine a soul, suitably purified, able to re-join the ordinary order of the Cosmos. This, I believe, is the meaning of Jesus's blasphemy against the Son of Man. 

In the other case, the soul has quite clearly aligned itself with those beings with whom we were never meant to have contact; the demons, the Giants, call them what you will. It is no longer fit for any association with ordinary existence, and must be locked away in Tartarus through the ending of this Age and the Age to come, for the safety of all Creation. What becomes of it in the fulness of time is a mystery. 

The Nature of the Holy Ghost

Finally, it's worth considering what it says about the nature of the Holy Ghost. If I'm right, then the Holy Ghost literally is the divine order of creation, the Life of the Cosmos itself. Or at least, this is one of the images under which we can comprehend the Holy Ghost-- His true nature, as experienced by Himself and by the Son and the Father, is another mystery.