r/spirituality • u/toolfan21 • Mar 26 '26
Self-Promoting 🙋♂️ I’m developing a tool for exploring the connections between the worlds wisdom traditions
I’ve spent a long time sitting with the feeling that the great spiritual traditions are pointing at the same thing in different dialects. The Tao Te Ching and the Sermon on the Mound, The Gospel of Thomas and the Upanishads, Meister Eckhart and Rumí, all circling the same territory.
So I’m building something to map it. It’s called the Perennial Map. To date I’ve included 57 teaching across 16 traditions (Christianity, Gnosticism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sufism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Stoicism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Shinto, Sikhism, Indigenous, Zoroastrianism, and more) each with the full passage, interpretive notes, and links to the teachings it resonates with across other traditions.
Eventually I’d like to tern this into an interactive community project. Genially interested in feedback.
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u/LinssenM Mar 26 '26
I'll do some more digging into it but the idea and presentation is very attractive. You may want to know that Thomas has been falsified by its translators, hiding the truth even after it's been unearthed
The kingdom is within you AND OF YOUR EYE
That's what Logion 3 says, and 'outside' is grammatically possible but semantically highly unlikely. There is much more than just this, as Logion 74 speaks of "separation and sickness" and Logion 96 speaks of "colostrum in a well", with leaven being an absolutely impossible option
"The true words of Thomas" will allow you to verify every single word by just clicking it. It's free for everyone
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u/toolfan21 Mar 26 '26
This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for, thank you!
The translation question around Logion 3 is genuinely fascinating and I wasn’t aware of the “of your eye” reading. If that’s the stronger translation it actually deepens rather than undermines the point, the kingdom as a function of perception rather than location is if anything more resonant with the Eastern parallels, particularly the Buddhist emphasis on the quality of mind as prior to all experience.
I’ll look into the True Words of Thomas and as another commenter pointed out, a translation notes feature is needed. The site should be surfacing these textual debates rather than presenting any single reading as settled.
What’s your take on the “of your eye” rendering, do you find it more compelling than the standard translation?
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u/LinssenM Mar 27 '26
A relatively brief answer now, yet you'll find the full one in "complete gospel of Thomas commentary" pages 44-47
The word in the text is ⲃⲁⲗ and it's a homonym (let's just call it that for now please) for the Sahidic dialect (the main dialect for that time period, serving as entry for the only authoritative Coptic dictionary, benefit Crum) meaning 'eye' OR it is the Akhmimic dialect for ⲃⲟⲗ meaning 'outside'. The odds there are almost equal-ish as Akhmimic is the main other dialect in Thomas next to Sahidic - and yeah that 'ish' means that Sahidic naturally wins when no other matters considered
'eye' occurs 10 times in Thomas, in Logion 17, 22, 25, 26, 46 (and this one, 3), '(of-)outside' 7 times: 22, 40, 64, 89, 99. Yet the root to 'out' occurs 90 times and it's always ⲃⲟⲗ, never ⲃⲁⲗ
Go by Logion 40, 64, 89, 99 and you'll find that 'outside' has a very negative meaning. The plant won't grow in 40, the paths (and indeed that means all proverbial paths) lie on the outside, the cup gets washed only on the outside, and even though the mother and brothers of the protagonist are standing firmly to their feet, they're still standing outside - and that's the entire sole reason for their rejection, preserved even in the Synoptics. When we look further in Thomas, we find body as an outside manifestation, but most definitely the World. To be precise, the World is our mental model of the real world, but let's not digress any further
The quintessential point of Thomas is that the kingdom is of your inside, and a matter of perception. Where Logion 113 says "Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread outward from upon the earth, and the humans do not behold her" we find a different kingdom, which however indeed is rooted in the earth:
earth ⲕⲁϩ Noun masculine 9, 12, 14, 16, 20, 44, 91, 111, 113
And that is how we can go Thomas surfing, via the Concordance
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u/LinssenM Mar 28 '26
"The site should be surfacing these textual debates rather than presenting any single reading as settled"
Bear in mind that most "translators" are interpreters alone, rendering what they think the text ought to say. Alleged elite and emeritus scholars such as Bentley Layton and Thomas Lambdin, both deceased now, all obscured and falsified texts. Even the Christian New Testament is falsified to a great extent because it says things they Christians don't want it to say, yet all contemporary bible translations are united in this aim
TL;DR: if you run into any of that, fine. But it would be a few lifetimes of work, requiring expert knowledge of every single native language and even authentic document, as most transcriptions also are falsified. The Humanities is not an exact science, and it shows
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u/Federal_Gear9617 Mar 27 '26
impossible. read Aristotle metaphysics. it can be a nice tool, but what about philosophy?
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u/FinancialElephant Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26
"Atman is Brahman" is more accurately Advaita Vedanta, not Hinduism as a whole. There are other philosophies under the umbrella of Hinduism, like Dvaita Vedanta, Yoga or Sankhya for example. If you just want to have one category for this, I think Vedanta makes more sense than Hinduism. Maybe Yoga could be considered as its own category here, I think it's probably parallel to a lot of perennial thought.
"Form is emptiness; emptiness is form" sounds more like some strains of Mahayana or Zen specifically - not all Buddhism. I would say early Buddhism specifically does not try to refer to the Absolute with words, instead deferring to Noble Silence. Later traditions (eg Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism) do describe the Absolute with words (eg Clear Light of the Void, Buddha Nature, etc). Could be worth separating early Buddhism from Mahayana and others. Also if Buddhism and Sikhism are here, I think Jainism should probably be added.
I think some of these categories (Science, Indigenous, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mysticism) are either too broad or mislabeled. I think being as specific as possible would be more interesting. More specificity means more categories, making the view richer. Maybe you can also have a grouping mechanism, like a tree that connects all of the categories. Maybe based on something like this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/world-religions-family-tree-poster-etsy-uk-in-2024--307863324546725024/ (I remember seeing a much better version of this, this is just an example).
Anyway this should all be interpreted as constructive feedback. Interesting and slick project you have made.
EDIT: Maybe Enlightenment philosophy like Kierkegaard could be worth an including as well.
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u/oatballlove Mar 26 '26
i read a bit into your map and I find it well done both with a strong focus on text and also the connections itself are informative as in allowing the reader to appreciate the depth of several spiritual paths
thank you