The kingdom of God is within you, says the teacher in one of the gospels, or among you, for the Greek can bear either sense and the fellowship believes it was meant to bear both. In the sayings gospel found at Nag Hammadi the teaching is sharper. If those who lead you say the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds will get there first. If they say it is in the sea, the fish will get there first. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known.
The fifth teaching of the fellowship is that the kingdom of heaven is not a distant country to be awaited but a present reality to be entered, and that the place of entry is the human heart.
The Essenes and the Temple
The desert community had a peculiar problem. They were priests, Sons of Zadok, whose whole identity was bound up with the temple in Jerusalem, and they held that temple to be defiled. They could not sacrifice there. They would not. And yet the Law commanded sacrifice.
Their solution, recorded in the Community Rule, is one of the great moments in the history of the inner life. The council of the community, the Rule says, shall be established in truth as an eternal planting, a holy house for Israel, a most holy dwelling for Aaron, witnesses of truth for judgment and the chosen of grace to atone for the land. The community itself became the temple. Their prayer became the sacrifice. The offering of the lips and the perfection of the way were accepted as a sweet savor of righteousness. Without a stone being laid, the holy of holies had been rebuilt in a company of men in white linen eating bread in a mud-walled hall by the Dead Sea.
The first followers of Jesus did the same thing and said so: you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whether they learned it from the Essenes or came to it independently, the two movements made the same move at the same moment in history: they took the holy place out of the building and put it in the person.
The Heart as Temple
The fellowship teaches that the heart is the temple, the mind is its priest, and the body is its outer court. This is a picture and not an anatomy, but it is a useful one. The outer court is where the people gather, where the animals are brought, where the ordinary business of life is done; it must be kept clean, but it is not the holy place. The priest goes in and out, tending the lamps, offering the incense, speaking for the people to God and for God to the people; he must be sober, disciplined, and attentive, but he is not the Presence. The Presence is in the inner room, behind the veil, in the dark, where no image stands and no word is spoken.
Most of us live in the outer court. Some of us have trained the priest. Very few have gone in. The Essene way, the fellowship holds, is a training in going in: the washing is the cleansing of the court, the study is the training of the priest, the silence is the entering.
Already and Not Yet
The Essenes expected the kingdom to come in history, soon, with a war and a new Jerusalem. It did not come as they expected. The fellowship does not mock their expectation; we have our own. But we note that even they, waiting for the kingdom, had already entered it. Their hymns say that God has raised the poor one from the dust to the everlasting height, to stand in the company of the holy ones, to enter the community with the angels. They were in the desert and in heaven at once.
This is the teaching. The kingdom is coming, and the kingdom is here. The one who waits for it without entering it will wait forever. The one who enters it without waiting for it will mistake his own small peace for the healing of the world. The Essene held both, facing the sunrise.
In Practice
The fellowship's practice for the inner kingdom is the Still Lamp, the sitting in silence by which the student learns to pass the veil. But there is a simpler practice, suitable for any hour. Wherever you are, in a shop or an office or a traffic jam, say inwardly: the kingdom is here. Then look. Do not look for anything in particular. Simply look, as if the place you are standing were the holy of holies, because it is. The fellowship has found that this changes nothing and everything.