Nobility

There is a line in the Gospel of Philip that I have not fully grasped, perhaps, until now. It reads, “So when he revealed himself to his students in glory on the Mountain, he was no longer small, but grew great and enabled his students also to become great, so that they might perceive his nobility” (Analogue 14). The word “nobility” was not clear to me. Why that word?

We often speak about “the nobility,” or persons “noble born;” that class of royalty that is perceived as special, or carrying a inherited lineage in our world. We talked also about someone simply being “noble,” that is they carry in their person a certain quality which we identify as somehow higher or richer than the norm.

In Jean-Yves Leloup’s Compassion and Meditation he identifies nobility with the Buddhist concept of “noble being” or the Original Self—that aspect of ourselves which lies deeply at the root of our being and comes, ultimately, not from ourselves, but from the Divine Source within us.

Yeshua revealed that inner Source, that ground of being, that nobility—and made his own students discover and see it in themselves. When we stand on that ground and draw from that reserve, we become “noble beings,” manifesting the truth of our deepest nature. Leloup says that we are truly rich to the extent that we are in touch with that place within ourselves and are capable of generous self-giving from that treasury (87).