Gnostic Insights

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Today we’re going to revisit the idea of evolution. You know, religious people are usually mocked by being unscientific for not believing in Darwinian evolution. Well, I’m a highly educated person and I don’t believe in Darwinian evolution. It’s an absurd theory that has never been proven. My brother, Dr. Bill Puett, is also a PhD. He’s what’s called a professor emeritus, which means that he’s a retired full professor who taught at the university level for a full career. He doesn’t believe in evolution either. Today we’re going to share with you another conversation that I had just this week concerning evolution with my brother on the telephone. The article that prompted this discussion of ours was published last week on the website called Aeon, and it’s an essay called Why Birds Don’t Buy Bentleys and Why Humans Will Never Fly. And it was written by a scholar named Anton Martino-Truswell, an evolutionary biologist, author, and member of the Sydney Policy Lab and School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. He writes on human culture and society, evolution, and behavior at his substack, which is called The Village Green. Bill and I both read his article and came away with a number of criticisms of the article. Mine had to do with the little nuts and bolts of particular claims, but Bill’s observation of the article was profound and overarching from the Gnostic point of view. And so I’m going to share with you Dr. Truswell’s article and then our reaction to it. Now before I start with that, I would like to remind you that I’ve been writing about evolution for many years, beginning with an article I wrote called A Simple Explanation of Tuskless Elephants’ Super-Quick Evolution that I wrote on November 11th of 2018 on the Simple Explanation blog, and it is still posted there if you want to go to the Simple Explanation blog and read it there. But I covered that article here at Gnostic Insights in October of 2021, and then I repeated it in October of 2023. So if you would like to read my original articles concerning evolution in detail, I recommend that you go to my GnosticInsights.com webpage and you do a search for the podcast called Gnostic Evolution in the Beginning, and that was posted on October 21st, 2023. And this is a very long and quite detailed theory of evolution that is not Darwinian. You know, I don’t know why people get stuck on these old theories. Scholars are very habitual, because if you change one of the basic theories, then all of their scholarship goes out the window. Then what are they teaching anymore? They don’t know what to teach; they don’t know what to write about. People would rather harken back to this old theory of Darwin, which is about as outdated as the original evolutionary theory of Lamarck. So I’m inviting you to open your minds today and think of a different way of looking at evolution. Then I broadcasted a second podcast the very next week on October 28th of 2023 called Evolution and Conscious Design. And again, you can find that at GnosticInsights.com. First off, let me repeat something out of one of those original broadcasts. There are just a couple of basic ways you can think about evolution. As commonly taught in school, “scientific” evolution explains the tremendous diversity of life on Earth as lucky mutations that add up to great results. Darwinism promotes the idea that mutations and mechanisms morph into increasingly sophisticated life forms, because genetic goof-ups allow the ones who change to better survive and dominate those who stayed true to form. These lucky mutations keep going in the same lucky direction until there are so many of them that they add up to a new and improved creature. And now they are “evolved.” Boy, that article I posted in October 21st of 2023, and the transcript to that podcast has lots of illustrations and lots of embedded videos. It’s an excellent discussion of a criticism of Darwinian evolution, and I highly recommend that you go to it. And now on to this week’s discussion of why birds don’t buy Bentleys. Let me begin by reading some excerpts from the Aeon article so you can hear Dr. Truswell’s thesis. Culture and its transmission from generation to generation is the defining feature of humanity. It is perhaps the best candidate for the thing that separates us from other beasts. Though there are other species that have been shown to hand down accumulated knowledge, including chimps, who show some evidence for cultural transmission of tool use, no other animal approaches our ability to layer breakthrough upon breakthrough in such a way. And certainly no other animal does it with the conscious intent to lift future communities beyond the achievements that came before. That is a human distinction, if ever there were one. Why has no other animal evolved this demonstrably useful ability? There are lots of intelligent animal candidates, but most have some straightforward biological reality holding them back. Take the octopodes, famously intelligent and with a rich visual communication system in their incredible instantaneous color changes, but their very short lifespans, coupled with rapid senescence and death after a single mating and clutch of eggs, leaves little time for a parent to hand on knowledge to offspring. Most fish and reptiles face a similar challenge, though they do not die after reproducing like octopodes, they do tend to produce large clutches of eggs that hatch and mature without much, if any, parental input, relying on these statistics of a very large clutch size to ensure a few offspring reach adulthood. Birds are the real quandary. The philosopher and biologist Peter Godfrey Smith points to birds as the expected place to find another species treading the same path that we humans have, not least because they already come with several of the important adaptations that made cultural sharing possible for us. Complex brains, long lives, strong parental care of offspring in most species, and robust communication. With all of those advantages, why don’t birds have complex culture like we do? Why do they not write technical manuals and make art and argue over economic policy? Why do they not have a market economy with not only goods for trade, but luxury goods whose value relies on concepts rather than raw usefulness? Why don’t birds drive Bentleys? So that’s his setup for this essay. He goes on to say, Natural selection and by extension evolution, is a force with no foresight. It responds to the challenges that a species is currently facing. It does not and cannot see broad sunlit uplands on the horizon and move toward them. This is because selection is a game of elimination. It happens when individuals die without reproducing or having reproduced less than their neighbors. In each generation, that which is unsuccessful is culled by natural selection and that which is successful endures. Occasionally, a random mutation or fortuitous combination of genes produces a family offshoot that is even more successful than its ancestors and cousins, resulting in higher rates of reproduction or longer lives, which allow more reproduction or higher offspring survival, who in turn reproduce more. The consequences of this is that most evolutionary change must happen as a result of a push rather than a pull. A species’ traits change because they are currently inadequate and being eliminated by selection rather than being pulled toward a better alternative. So already my Gnostic alarm bells are going off  full blast. And then there’s many pages about the evolutionary push and pull and what causes some species to be caught in troughs of non-evolutionary change. Then he begins speaking about birds and that birds is an incredible adaptation. It opens an entire third dimension of free movement to species capable of flying. First and foremost, this is game changing for a prey animal. Being able to escape a predator by traveling in a direction the predator is incapable of going, namely up, is a huge selection advantage. A flying animal is at risk of consistent predation only from other flying animals, which are fundamentally rare. Then he goes down another couple of pages and he says that, Flight is an evolutionary black hole. It is a gravitational well with no bottom, a trait so powerfully effective at improving survival and reproduction that it plunges the species into a well of easy life and high fitness from which there is no escape. Or to return to more conventional evolutionary language, it relieves an incomparable amount of selection pressure that might drive a species to alternative traits. So basically, he’s saying that once birds evolved flight, they stopped evolving traits that would cause them to adapt better or to form culture. Quoting again, Everything that is true about flight’s incredible selection benefit is true about human culture. Bipedalism that frees up hands to make machines and to write comes at the cost of evolving odd long feet and an upright posture that causes back pain and makes childbirth dangerous. And of course, four limbs hosting handy hands become unsuitable for evolving into wings for flight. Intelligence, sociability, and many of the other traits we rely on for our cultural abilities are expensive in energy and survival terms. In evolutionary terms, that means they need to be providing a lot of benefit to be worth that cost. In order for that to be the case, there has to be a lot of room for improvement. There has to be a lot of evolutionary pressure. Down at the bottom of the black hole of flight, the pressure is just too low for the trade-offs to be worthwhile. Humans being slow, flightless, hairless, clawless apes had a huge amount to gain by evolving the tools of cultural transmission. Birds flying, living long lives of relative ease do not feel the same pressure. It is probably the case that our cultural abilities are also a black hole in evolution. Everything that is true about flight’s incredible selection benefit is true about human culture. We have also fallen down into an impossibly steep slope of selection to arrive at the incredible complexity of human life today. [Then he says,] I cannot fathom what set of circumstances would cause us to evolve away from this complexity. Okay. Well I can. So that is the end of quoting from his article, which if you want to read in its fullness, you can find at aeon.co/essays/why birds don’t buy Bentleys and we humans will never fly. The link’s in the transcript to this episode here. So this article prompted a long discussion between my brother and myself that again I happen to be capturing to share with you today. So let’s get to it. [Cyd]  Okay, now we’re recording. Well, hello, Billy. [Bill]  Hi, Cyd. I want to talk with you about that bird article– Why birds don’t buy Bentleys. Yes. And I thought you did a great job of introducing your criticism of that particular article. So I’m thinking, go ahead and go ahead and review your criticism and all that, you know, and then I’ll, we’ll interact. I have some ideas, obviously. [Cyd]  Well, I tell you, before I review my criticisms, would you like to give the Reader’s Digest version of what the article was proposing? [Bill]  Okay. Well, yeah, Reader’s Digest, yes. The article is a hardcore evolutionary article, so all organisms have evolved to the point they evolved to, and for many of them, they’ve evolved into a corner. And if they’re in a corner, they can’t get out of it. [Cyd]  Oh, right. And the article says, they call it a valley, a gravitational well. [Bill]  Right. So birds have gotten to the point, you know, where they can fly. Okay. And here we are, we won’t be able to fly as human beings. So we’re down in those arenas there. And it was trying to describe from an evolution perspective, why they can’t get out. [Cyd]  Oh, because it had to do with culture. The question was, why do birds not drive Bentleys? In other words, human beings seem to be the only creatures on the planet that have evolved a culture, where they have social order, and they invent things, and they do things like agriculture and manufacturing and things like that. And birds don’t need to do that because they can fly. So what needs do they have? I guess, mainly it was suggesting that humans evolved culture and whatnot in order to escape predators, in order to be able to breed and pass on their genes. And birds didn’t have to do that because they could just fly away from predators. [Bill]  Wasn’t that his basic idea? [Cyd]  That’s the basic idea. Right. [Bill]  And how you respond, you made the point, well, he’s mistaken about organisms, they do have culture. And then you went on to describe, four examples. [Cyd]  Oh, go ahead. [Bill]  No, no, go ahead. [Cyd]  Okay. So for example, his basic premise that only humans have culture isn’t true. Because for example, insects have a lot of culture, I would say, ants, bees, and termites, especially, they communicate obviously, in great detail. They farm–ants actually farm aphids to eat them. And they breed them. So they farm and eat them. Obviously, ants, bees, and termites build great structures, huge cities that they live in. And, and of course, they have the culture of warfare, they build armies, and they go to war for whatever purpose they have with others of their kind. And tools, I would say that they do use tools. They said humans were the only ones that use tools. But that’s clearly not true. Because, for example, birds—crows use tools. Crows can use sticks, shapes sticks into probes to go down into termite hills and anthills in order to fish for ants and termites. So they are able to construct tools for those kinds of purposes. And birds, all birds, construct—they make their nests, they choose just the right kind of straw and just the right kind of sticks, and they decide where it’s going to be a safe place to hang it. So they do a lot of, I would say, construction with tools. And so that was the easiest one. But I also would refute the notion that animals don’t have culture, because I would say that domesticated animals, of course, I’m particular to cats and dogs, but dogs are extremely successful in the, even in the manner, evolutionary manner that the author talked about where he defined success as the ability to thrive and proliferate with good adaptations. And dogs have done that tremendously well. Yes, with some help from the humans, pushing this and that with their breeding, but still the animals have adapted to our culture. And I would say they have human culture. They understand us, they can understand our words. They’re not just trainable and to order them about. I know that my dogs think and evaluate any command I give them. They certainly think and evaluate whether that’s a good idea or not. And I’d call that culture. I’d say they plugged into human culture rather than merely extending the wolf culture. But of course, wolves have culture too. It’s crazy to say that wolves don’t have a society. Okay. [Bill]  That’s right. No, that’s great. That’s right on the point. And, what you’ve been describing, the hens and the dogs and the birds and what have you, is that these are describable, but I will bet that a huge number of beings, organisms, so forth, have their respective cultures that we haven’t defined out. We haven’t clicked in. We’re trying to put it in human terms, right? [Cyd]  Right. [Bill]  Well, they have their own shtick. They know what they’re doing. [Cyd]  Right. And we just can’t recognize it. Oh! And what about schools of fish and flocks of birds? The way they move all together and whatnot is incredible. We can’t do that. So, they’re more evolved in that sense. [Bill]  I’d even pick out one of your favorites—slime molds. Talk about cooperation.  Oh yeah! So his basic point, you know, again—he’s a hardcore evolutionist. He has to explain it, but he can’t give the movements his meaning. They didn’t become this because they needed to be that.  He’s trying to describe it as survivability. More of that kind, and so forth. From his point of view, that’s where it’s coming from. So, let me take another tact here. Well, not another tact—what we call the Gnostic position. Okay. I mean, Gnosticism technically doesn’t talk about evolution per se, not that kind. What we call the Second Order, of course, all Second Order, they’re from the Aeonic—their Aeonic inheritance. So it’s all there. In fact, we talk about evolution as a time issue going over it.  Well, there’s no time. It’s all done. It’s already done. So, we use the notion of time because that’s the way we relate in this world. But, so evolution requires time. [Cyd]  Oh! I see. Evolution requires time. That’s a good point because you’re saying it’s all there. There is no time. So you can’t have evolution based upon time. Oh, wow. That’s profound. That’s basic, isn’t it? Yes. [Bill]  So, so yeah, so back to, so what we have is intelligent design. Yes. That’s the Aeonic and it’s right from the beginning. [Cyd]  Right, right, right, right. And the Tripartite Tractate, the way it describes the Second Order Powers coming to Earth, it’s very cool because it said that we were sent down from the smallest to the largest, each with our own jobs to do. And so it’s not that things are evolving from bacteria and then becoming more and more complex and larger and larger aggregates. It’s just the tiny guys come in first to make the base. It’s the hierarchical concept, not that the little guys are less evolved or less important, but you know, you can’t have the fish until the plankton come in. So the plankton have to come before the fish, so to speak, as far as being, as far as appearing. [Bill]  With our understanding of time, yes. Yes. So we’re describing it that way. Yeah. [Cyd]  Okay, but listen. Your understanding of no such thing as time—that everything is already there…  You’re believing in that static jello universe I talk about basically. So, well, then how does that appear? How does it appear that the small things come first and then the larger and larger things appear the way they seem to in our earthly “evolution”? How is that if it’s a static universe? Picture these cherries as completely filling the universal space with all possible worlds, already existing. [Bill]  Well, because that’s the “second economy” in this Fallen existence and we’re connected to the “material.”  And so we’ve working within this arena, which is a time arena as far as our feeling of it. [Cyd]  Okay. So that’s the second economy—it appears to have time. [Bill]  That’s right. And it’s organized by the Demiurge. We’re connected into the, again, that connection is, we’re experiencing “time” that way when in fact the first economy is timeless and the third economy will be no time. Right. So it’s just the second economy that appears the way it does. [Cyd]  Right. Okay. Oh, okay.  [Let me drop in this quick explanation that the first economy is what the Tripartite Tractate calls the original Fullness of God hierarchy. Then our apparently material cosmos is called the second economy. And the third economy is where we all wind up after the second economy passes away.] So that’s from the big bang, so to speak, up until the Second Coming [of Christ] in the collapse or after the Second Coming in the collapse, that is, that’s the second economy that we live in. That’s our apparent universe that we live in. And it does seem to have time, although you and I were discussing the other day, the difference between time and sequence. [Bill]  Yes. Yes. We would already say sequence is understood in time, you know, that that’s the way we make sense of it in this fallen existence here. But it’s only sequence. Right. Again, the consciousness goes through the jello universe. [Cyd]  Okay. Right. It’s swimming through that already existent universe. That’s right. Going from choice point to choice point using free will, but it’s all there. It’s all laid out in advance. [Bill]  Yes. [Cyd]  Yeah. And in the first economy, everything that comes to appear to us in the second economy is already preexistent. That’s what the Fullness of God is—it’s all of the preexisting forms that will ever come to be… You and I, we, I keep getting hung up on that.  [Bill] It doesn’t have consciousness in life.  [Cyd]  But it is somehow preexistent in the first order because it’s part of this creation. And everything that’s part of this creation was imagined, obviously, in the Fullness of God. Was it not? Well, it’s all, it’s conceptual. We’ve talked about that before. [Bill]  Alright. [Cyd]  It’s conceptual. Right. Okay. [Bill]  So let me go to your point. Fullness is fullness. [Cyd]  Which means it’s everything. [Bill]  It’s everything. And it’s done. In the third economy, we’re back to fullness. [Cyd]  Right. We’re back to fullness, but we’re the third economy and we’re not back to the first economy, which was before we all came around and had our second economy experiences. We get to take those memories and associations with us into the third economy. [Bill]  Right. [Cyd]  Nice. [Bill]  So that’s the basic point, Cyd, you know—my basic response to that article. On one level, you’ve explained even in an evolutionary sense how he’s wrong. [Cyd]  Yeah. [Bill]  Okay. So that, you know, we’re taking his assumptions there, and then we take the next step to the Gnostic position. [Cyd]  That’s great, Bill. In fact, you’re pulling it together in that more profound sense, I believe. Seems to make my little quibbles with the article irrelevant, basically. [Bill]  No, it’s not irrelevant. You’re responding as if he’s sitting there. You’re responding to him. He’s not going to the Gnostic side. You’re responding to him. How would he respond, now that you’re at that particular technical level. Okay. I’m at your level now. How do you explain that? Cyd:  Right. [Bill]  Yes. I thought that was very good. [Cyd]  Here’s something else to say about the article. In the article, the author said that it’s unfathomable—he used the term unfathomable—to imagine human culture de-evolving, because we’ve gone down into this evolutionary well of perfection, basically. And I also quibbled with that, so I wasn’t just quibbling about the insects and the dogs and cats and the birds. It’s not true. I can fathom society de-evolving in that if we lose our technical aspect, which has become so huge since the industrial revolution, if we go back to pre-industrial revolution, our current culture will de-evolve back to prior to the industrial revolution. And how does that happen? Well, that’s very easy. An electromagnetic pulse, plasma ejection from the sun, wiping out all of our satellites or blowing up our electrical substations, even beyond people with malfeasance in their hearts, let’s say, guerrilla warfare against the electrical grid to plunge us all into darkness. That could be on someone’s mind. And that’s all it’s going to take. We’re just going to come back. We’re just going to go back down to pre-electricity and our culture will de-evolve to the dark ages immediately. [Bill]  Right. Well, again, you’re responding at his level. That’s right. At his level. Right. [Cyd]  No long range communication, roving bands of marauders, and so on. [Bill]  That’s dystopic history. That’s science fiction, right? [Cyd]  That’s exactly right. Right. Right. It’s the dystopian end. But the good side of that will be AI will die as well. [Bill]  Yes. Well, we’ve said before in the past, you know, I think small community—tribal communities—interrelate with each other. That’s a greater future than huge nation states or globalism, and all the rest of that. [Cyd]  Right. I once read somewhere that really any person can only keep track of 200 people. And so 200 is actually the biggest size a village should be if you want to know everyone—if you want to know and love your neighbor. [Bill]  Well, that’s the point. You can hold hands easier and be with others in that larger sense. (referring to the Simple Golden Rule)  So that may be a healthier direction. Now, of course, you might respond and say, “well, we evolved to this state we’re in because…” but he can’t say because it benefits humanity. That’s not evolutionary talk. Evolution doesn’t take place because it needs to go somewhere. The Simple Golden Rule is the Aeonic pattern of cooperation [Cyd]  Right. Because it’s already there. [Bill]  Well, not even that in his evolutionary sense. He’s not Lamarckian. Lamarck said that giraffes grew long necks because they needed to get the food in the trees. Right. You know—they grew like that. But Darwinian evolutionary theory is that some were born with long neck and they survive better. [Cyd]  Yes. Yeah. Well, so actually, then, you know, when we’re talking about guerillas crashing the electrical systems of the Earth… those could be Luddites. It might be Luddite-type guerillas purposely plunging the Earth into a dark age in order to restore humanity to its… [Bill]  Well, that’s a, you see, that’s a conscious attempt by a Second Order. [Cyd]  Right. That would be a non-Christian, non-Gnostic way of returning. But it’s not just necessarily through malfeasance and guerilla action of hating countries in order to plunge them into the dark ages. It could actually have a noble aspiration to bring us back to a Luddite age of true pre-industrial revolution. [Bill]  Well, again, a general point—isn’t the mistake of socialism? You can have people directing they want socialism in order to bring about equanimity and equality for all people as a beneficial end. [Cyd]  Right. So they have good notions. I mean, their heart may be pure. Well, as if!… except for the big cats at the top that are going to reap it all, right? Yah. So, well, it’s an interesting discussion, Bill. [Bill]  (laughing)  Well, it was a joy. I love going places with you. That’s the thing. You start out with something and then we evolve out. [Cyd]  (laughing) Oh no, wrong word. No, no. And then we swim to another cherry. [Bill]  Thank you for having me. I look forward to doing more of these. [Cyd]  Love it! I’m all for it. Let’s do it! Well I hope you found this discussion of evolution stimulating and I hope that you are prompted to reconsider the efficacy of the entire concept of Darwinian evolution from a Gnostic point of view. And again I repeat in order to do that the best you really should return to my prior two broadcasts about evolution. I’ll put the links in the transcript to this episode. Thank you for spending this time with me. God bless us all and onward and upward. Have you left a review for A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel? Buy the book! Available in all formats and prices…

Ten years ago, back in July 22nd of 2015, I wrote one of my first articles about Gnosticism on my Simple Explanation blog, and I’m going to read from that for you today. This was very soon after I began to realize that the Orthodox Christianity that I had been strongly embracing for all of my life could be enhanced by this knowledge of Gnosticism. I had been trained up to believe that Gnosticism was a heresy, and it takes many years for a very strong believer in Christianity to even be willing to consider Gnosticism as another sect of Christianity. So while not being willing to give up my belief in the Christ as our salvation, and not being willing to demote my relationship with Jesus, because I can’t deny that since I personally know it to be true, I was at last able to begin reading the Nag Hammadi texts. I was particularly taken by the text called the Tripartite Tractate, which is the one that I share with you mostly on this Gnostic Insights podcast. So let me share with you now this first article that I wrote in 2015 called Yearning for the Pleroma, which is still posted on my long-running Simple Explanation blog. This was originally broadcasted as an episode in August of 2021, which was before I started posting episodes to Substack, so my Substack readers have never seen or heard this episode. Also, for those of you who have been following Gnostic Insights from the beginning, you haven’t ever had a chance to read the transcript, so here it is. As I said, this article is ten years old. I hadn’t yet developed the illustrations that have become so familiar by now, which you can see throughout the Gnostic Insights transcripts and in The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated book from 2019. This episode features my first attempt at diagramming the gnostic cosmology. The concepts still hold up, although the artwork is more colorful and polished today. This is called Yearning for the Pleroma. Other words for the Gnostic word “pleroma” include the “Fullness,” the “All,” the “Totalities,” and “the circle of divine attributes,” which gives you a pretty good idea of what pleroma means. The way wikipedia defines the term is much more challenging and kind of discouraging because of its complexity, especially the section on Gnosticism.  Wikipedia cites 17 uses of the Greek word kenoma that is usually translated as “fullness,” with only one usage of pleroma as we Gnostics would define it. Only one book of the Bible mentions the Pleroma–a letter written to the church in Colosse by the apostle Paul. In the translation of Colossians 2:9 below, Pleroma has been rendered as “the fullness.” “For in Him [Christ] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:9). The footnote under this verse in my edition of the New King James Version goes on to completely misinterpret the meaning of the statement in its rush to dismiss the Gnostic implications of the verse. The Nelson editors contend that “the Gnostics thought the fullness of God had been divided among a number of angelic beings, the last creating the material world. In contrast, Paul says that the fullness of God exists in Christ… This contradicts the Gnostic idea of  the inherent evil of physical bodies and the claim that Jesus is merely a spirit (p. 2014, Nelson Study Bible. 1997). While I do agree with the opening premise that “the Gnostics thought the fullness of God had been divided among a number of … beings,” there are at least four misrepresentations I see in the Nelson explanation of the verse. First, the idea that the fullness can’t be both completely in Christ and at the same time divided into aeons. No need to say, “In contrast,” since the two traits are not mutually exclusive. Let’s imagine how that would work. Father, Son, Totalities of the ALL, Fullness, Fall Here are the first four phases of Gnostic Cosmology, according to the Tripartite Tractate. Upper right corner: God the Father represented as the background paper of the entire poster. Upper left corner: I’ve represented the Son as a diffuse cloud of will. Middle: the Pleroma/the fullness represented as the Son’s cloud with distinct lines representing the aeonic traits. The pyramid to the right represents the individual aeons after they have named themselves and differentiated the Son’s will into hierarchies of traits and powers. We begin with the Father, since this is the ground state underlying all else. We all know that the Father is unknowable. Too big, too exalted for us mere mortals to contemplate directly. The Father is the Immortal One who never changes and without whom nothing would exist. The indisputable buck-stops-here God. This being is pure consciousness, without form or distinctions, all quiet, eternally undivided. This is the One Who Is; the Great I Am. In my drawings, the Father is represented as the paper that makes up the poster–all other manifestations arise as images upon the paper and are fully contained by the paper. The Son is represented by the starburst cloud at the upper left, although the starburst is not really light energy, since this is before the creation of Light. This entity is also called the First Aeon, the Root, the Single Name, and The Form of the Formless. The Son contains all of the qualities of the Father, but in a circumscribed form. In today’s lingo we would call the Son a holographic representation of the Father, where a small fragment perfectly emulates the larger image. You could think of the Father as the ocean, and the Son as a big bucket of ocean water. It’s the same fluid. And if the bucket remains immersed in the ocean, then not only is the water within and without the bucket identical, the ocean continues to fully contain the bucket of water. The Tripartite Tractate describes how the Son is part of the Father, and then goes on in the same verse to declare the Son as the cause of the Pleroma: “He exists by the Father having him as a thought–that is, his thought about himself, his sensation of himself and of his eternal being… He possesses power, which is his will. For the moment, however, he holds himself back in silence, he who is the greatest, being the cause of the generation of the members of the All into eternal existence” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 56). By this one verse we can see that the Son is within the Father and he also contains the Fullness, in full agreement with Colossians 2:9. My second problem with the Nelson notes is their description of aeons. Aeons are not the same as angels–they’re more like features or capabilities. The Tripartite Tractate describes them as “the properties and qualities in which the Father and the Son exist” and equates them with the pre-existent Church (Tripartite Tractate, verse 58).  “His offspring, the ones who are, are without number and limit and at the same time indivisible. They have issued from him, the Son and the Father… The Church exists in the dispositions and properties in which the Father and the Son exist… Therefore it subsists in the procreations of innumerable aeons” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 59). While some Aeons are beings with their own self-aware personalities, other aeons are best described as traits and capabilities of the Father and Son. “…they were unable to know the depth in which they were; nor was it possible for them to know themselves, nor for them to know anything else. That is, they were with the Father; they did not exist for themselves. Rather, they only had existence in the manner of a seed… like a fetus… not yet come into being” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 60). Third, the Nelson Study Bible footnote confuses Jesus, the physical incarnation of Christ on Earth, with the eternal spirit of Christ, the first Son of the Father, whose image and dwelling predates the Earthly appearance of Jesus.  “Now the Savior in fact was a bodily image of something unitary, namely the Fullness” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 116). The Gnostic gospel I’ve been studying has no quibble with naming the physical person of Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of the entire Creation. Lest the wary Christian doubt the Gnostic’s gospel, the Tripartite Tractate ends with this eulogy for Jesus Christ: “…the praise, the power, and the glory, through Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Savior, the Redeemer of all those who are embraced by the mercy of love, and through his Holy Spirit, from now throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 138). And finally, the Nelson editor contends “the fullness of God [that] exists in Christ” … “contradicts the Gnostic idea of the inherent evil of physical bodies.” The editor apparently reasons that if Gnostics claim physical bodies are evil, and Jesus incarnated as a physical body, then Gnosticism would imply that Jesus Christ was evil. There are a couple of problems with this logic. First, my reading of Gnostic writing reveals that while material reality may have started out as “evil,” the situation was quickly rectified when the Son and the Pleroma intervened to establish an “economy” that regulated good and evil inclinations through “repentance.” Keep in mind that material reality can be considered demiurgic, but not “evil” per se. Nothing is “evil,” only misguided by egoic striving. Here’s a brief description of that process: “After conversion followed the remembrance of those who exist and the prayer on behalf of the one who had returned to himself by means of what is good” (81)…. “This prayer and supplication helped to make him turn toward himself and toward the Fullness, for their remembrance of him caused him to remember the preexistent ones, and this is the remembrance that calls out from afar and brings him back” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 82). “To those who belong to the remembrance, however, he revealed the thought … with the intention that it should draw them into a communion with the material. This was in order to provide them with a structure and a dwelling place, but also in order that by being drawn toward evil they should acquire a weak basis for their existence, so that, instead of rejoicing unduly in the glory of their own environment and thereby remaining exiled, they might rather perceive the sickness they were suffering from, and so acquire a consistent longing and seeking after the one who is able to heal them from this weakness” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 98, 99). “The first human, then, is a mixed molding and a mixed creation, and a depository of those on the left and those on the right, as well as of a spiritual Word, and his sentiments are divided between each of the two substances to which he owes his existence” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 106). “What our Savior became, out of willing compassion, is the same as that which the ones for whose sake he appeared had become because of an involuntary passion: they had become flesh and soul, and this holds them perpetually in its grip, and they perish and die… For not only did he assume their death for the ones he had in mind to save, but in addition he also assumed their smallness, to which they had descended when they were born with body and soul; for he let himself be conceived and he let himself be born as a child with body and soul” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 114, 115). Secondly, the very fact that Jesus did incarnate as a mortal man is what made salvation through Christ possible, for it was by the Savior’s perfect “error correcting algorithm,” superimposed upon an otherwise error-filled humanity, that salvation entered the world.  I’ll end this article with a clear gospel message straight from the Tripartite Tractate regarding exactly what one must come to believe in order to be saved.  “… there is no other baptism apart from this one alone, which is the redemption into God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when confession is made through faith in those names, which are a single name of the gospel, when they have come to believe what has been said to them, namely that they exist. From this they have their salvation, those who have believed that they exist. This is attaining in an invisible way to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in an undoubting faith” (Tripartite Tractate, verse, 127, 128). That seems to be the underlying core of the Gnostic salvation message. No other arcane rituals are needed; no gnosis other than believing that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (the Fullness) existed before you. Other ancient gnostic texts claim that this is the true essence of the gospel that Jesus preached.  Keep in mind that these are the very texts considered so distracting by the early church Fathers that they were buried in the Egyptian desert in the 4th century AD to protect them from being burned as the work of heretics, keeping them safe until their reemergence in 1945. The cat is definitely out of the bag now. Okay, back to the Pleroma. In case you haven’t guessed, the Fullness is where we all wind up eventually. By the end of the universe, everyone’s souls will have come on board Team God, so to speak, and then the fruit of the Pleroma will have returned home to the fold, to live happily ever after amidst the unending joy and love of the Fullness, all tucked up inside the Son who lives inside the Father. We second order powers nest up into the Fullness, and the Fullness nests up into the 3rd Order Powers and the Christ “Once the redemption had been proclaimed, the perfect human [the Savior] immediately  received knowledge so as to return swiftly to his unity, to the place from which he came. Joyfully he returned back to the place from which he had originated, the place from which he had flowed forth. His limbs, however, needed a school… until all the limbs of the body of the Church would be united in one place and would attain the restoration together… so that the Fullness obtains its redemption” (Tripartite Tractate, verses 123, 124). So, that is the end of this article that I wrote several years ago, and ever since writing this article, I have been more fully developing this Gnostic Gospel until it emerged as my own book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, which is, in my own words, meant to be simple and understandable. No quotes, it’s not academic, it’s the straightforward Gnostic Gospel, and it’s fully illustrated so that each illustration shows you what, in my mind, these things look like. But they’re metaphors, they’re only visual metaphors, but they should help you to grasp this information. Sometimes the words are difficult, but I find it much easier to grasp the information when it is presented in a visual form. So please go ahead and visit my GnosticInsights.com website, where you can click on and purchase The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated book. I’ve printed it as a larger picture kind of book, in that 6×9 format, glossy pictures and all. Very pretty. But I’ve also printed it as a small pocket edition that you could actually put in your back pocket of your jeans, which harkens back to my old days as a young Christian, as a one-way Christian in the late 1960s, when I used to carry my little pocket edition of the Good News Bible in my back pocket. So I encourage you to get that book and read it, and read it several times, many times, until it soaks in, until you get how easy redemption is. And this Gnostic Gospel does not attempt to dethrone Jesus Christ. It dethrones a false god called the Demiurge, which does appear here and there throughout the Bible, but it does not dethrone the Father of the Christ, which is the God Above all gods. Well, thank you for joining me this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this review of Yearning for the Pleroma, and that you’ve gained some clarity concerning what the Pleroma, or the fullness of God, means. Remember, our Father is a God of clarity, and knowledge, and thinking. You should never come away from Gnostic studies lost in confusion. Many of the podcasts I hear that call themselves Gnostic are being narrated by people who are themselves confused about the nature of the Father and gnosis, in my opinion. If you come away feeling confused, then it’s not the clarity that we try to achieve here at Gnostic Insights and in the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Our God is not the God of confusion. That would be the job of the Demiurge. Until next week, onward and upward, and God bless us all. You may purchase my original Gnostic Gospel at gnosticinsights.com, lulu.com, or any online book dealer.

A recent article called “All Is One” in the online magazine “aeon”  presents an excellent overview of the scientific and philosophical schism between what is called “monism” and its dialectical opposite “dualism.” If you are interested in the nature of reality and the history of the argument over whether or not there is a single, unifying reality behind all of the apparent differences we see around us, you should check out that article. I have included the link here in this podcast transcript that you can find either at Gnostic Insights dot com or the transcript on Substack. As so often happens, my brother read the article first and forwarded it to me. After I read it, we had a good conversation about certain concepts in the article. By good fortune, we had the zoom app running during our conversation and I was able to preserve our discussion to play for you today. There are two reasons why I want to share the audio of that conversation with you. One reason is the content—Bill had a good gnostic insight he wanted to get across to me, and that is presented to you here. The second reason is that I want to share with you the process by which my brother and I discuss these deep thoughts. I consider our discussion process an ideal model for how philosophical discussions should take place, although they rarely do because of ego. I think of our philosophical discussions as an example of the Simple Golden Rule. We are both arguing not from a position of ego, but from a shared exploration of truth, and gnosis is the object in the middle we are both working on to level up. The discussion isn’t polite in the sense that there are plenty of interruptions and disputes, yet no negative or egoic emotions, only love and laughter. Keep in mind that Bill is a professor emeritus of Philosophy, and I am a Ph.D. rhetorician and university lecturer, so you can imagine we have both seen our share of unpleasant and offensive philosophical disputes in the halls of academia. Our conversation is how I imagine such talks should proceed for the benefit of all. Let’s begin with the beginning of the aeon article by Heinrich Paes, a professor of theoretical physics at TU Dortmund University in Germany. He says, ‘From all things One and from One all things,’ wrote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus some 2,500 years ago. He was describing monism, the ancient idea that all is one – that, fundamentally, everything we see or experience is an aspect of one unified whole. Heraclitus wasn’t the first, nor the last, to advocate the idea. The ancient Egyptians believed in an all-encompassing but elusive unity symbolized by the goddess Isis, often portrayed with a veil and worshipped as ‘all that has been and is and shall be’ and the ‘mother and father of all things’. Let me jump in here to say that we Valentinian Gnostics would identify this One as the Father rather than Isis. Back to the article: This worldview also follows in straightforward fashion from the findings of quantum mechanics (QM), the uncanny physics of subatomic particles that departs from the classical physics of Isaac Newton and experience in the everyday world. QM, which holds that all matter and energy exist as interchangeable waves and particles, has delivered computers, smartphones, nuclear energy, laser scanners and arguably the best-confirmed theory in the entirety of science. We need the mathematics underlying QM to make sense of matter, space and time. Two processes of quantum physics lead directly to the notion of an interconnected universe and a monistic foundation to nature overall: ‘entanglement’, nature’s way of integrating parts into a whole, and the topic of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics; and ‘decoherence’, caused by the loss of quantum information, and the reason why we experience so little quantum weirdness in our daily lives. Again, let me interject by suggesting you read my article “Quantum Entanglement and Karma” on my Simple Explanation blog, originally posted May 13, 2011. The link is in this transcript. Quantum Mechanical entanglement at a distance Now, back to the aeon article. Yet, despite the throughline in philosophy and physics, the majority of Western thinkers and scientists have long rejected the idea that reality is literally unified, or nature and the Universe a system of one. From judges in the Inquisition (1184-1834) to quantum physicists today, the thought that a single system underlies everything has been too odd to believe. In fact, though philosophers have been proposing monism for thousands of years, and QM is, after all, an experimental science, Western culture has regularly lashed out against the concept and punished those promoting the idea. The article then goes on to describe the long and torturous history of the clash between monists and dualists in both philosophy and religion. Quote, Even then, Christianity adopted Platonic ideas by identifying the monistic ‘One’ with God. But Christianity drew also on dualistic philosophies such as Manichaeism, which advocated a world caught in an epic struggle between good and evil. This is how concepts such as God and devil, heaven and hell, or angels and demons received their prominent role among Christian beliefs. At the same time, the monistic influences were pushed into an otherworldly beyond. The Christian God was understood as different from the natural world that he governs from outside. With the Christian Church rising to political power and the fall of the Roman Empire, much of antiquity’s culture and philosophy got lost, and monism got suppressed as a heresy. If ‘all is One’, God gets conflated with the world, and medieval theology understood that as atheism or a devaluation of God. Here I can tell you that Gnosticism was one of those heresies that could get a philosopher burned at the stake with its insistence that the Father is the One Source of All that is, and that the emanation of  the God Above All Gods is here in the world and in each of us. However, a “soft monism” began to arise in the realm of science, with forces such as gravity and electro-magnetism and, later, Quantum Mechanics, being proven to exist universally within our cosmos. You can read the details in the “All Is One” article. The article concludes by saying, The 3,000-year-old concept of monism may actually help modern physicists in their struggle to find a theory of quantum gravity and make sense out of black holes, the Higgs boson, and the early Universe. Chances are high that we witness the beginning of a new era where science is informed by monism and the Universe is perceived as a unified whole. Now, here’s Bill and myself talking this over. Before I share that with you, there will be references to the “Cherry Jello Block Universe” that is fully described in the episode called “Consciousness and Time—Our Cherry-Jello Universe and Free Will”—link included in this transcript. My Cherry-Jello theory is a kind of “many worlds in One world” idea that proposes the cosmos is already fully formed, with all, nearly infinite, possible choices and outcomes already present in the form of “cherries” floating in an almost limitless sea of static jello where nothing really happens; it is only our consciousness that moves through it from cherry to cherry. We could say the giant jello bowl is the mind of the Father and Son present in the cosmos. There is no time, only the motion of consciousness swimming from cherry to cherry using free will. This is how it is that all of creation is entangled in the manner that Quantum Mechanics claims. Cherry jello universe–the “cherries” are not to scale. They would be very small and the jello torus would be almost infinitely large–big enough to hold God’s conception of our universe and all possible future outcomes, accounting for free will and action of all units of consciousness. We also move into a brief off-topic discussion of what the Tripartite Tractate calls “The Third Economy,” which is our final destination that replaces this apparently “material” cosmos. That leads to my brief interpretation of the Tribulation and 1,000 year reign of Christ as described in the Bible’s book of Revelations. Cyd:  Hey Bill, good to talk to you. What are we going to talk about here, Bill? Bill:  Hi, Cyd. Well, that particular article that you sent me, what was the titling there? Cyd:  We shared an article that was published in aeon. Bill:  Oh, it’s called, yeah, it’s called All is One. Cyd:  Oh, yeah, All is One. And it’s about monism. It was an excellent article about monism. I never really understood the difference between monism and dualism until I read this guy’s article. Bill:  You mean you haven’t been listening to me? Cyd:  (Cyd laughs loudly) So monism is what we say all the time. In the beginning, there was only the Father. Bill:  That’s right. Cyd:  And it really… dualism doesn’t occur, I don’t think, in Gnosticism until… Does it occur when the Son is born, because now there’s two monads? Or does it occur after the Fall, and now we have a material universe with all of its negativity? Bill:  Well, my response to that, I mean, first of all, historically, it was a great article. It shows you how it all developed out. It shows you the biases and the nastiness of it, even being killed because they were monists, and so forth. I won’t go into all of that… Cyd:  Terribly killed—tortured and killed. Bill:  But what we’ve talked about before, I made the point when we were talking about entanglement, is that the reason there’s entanglement is because there’s no space and time. I’ve told you that. That’s how it works. Cyd:  Right. It’s the jello universe. It’s all there. Bill:  Right. Now, the question of dualism you brought up—there technically is no dualism. The material world, I’m going to make a comment about that—no space and time. In other words, we’re talking the ethereal—consciousness and purity, and so forth—and then out of that comes the Gnostic development, the pleroma, et cetera—all that going out. Yet at all points in there, it’s still no space and time. There’s no creation of… Cyd:  Of actuality. It’s all thought. It’s all consciousness. Bill:  Yeah, it’s all thought. And the Fall itself, it takes place where the Demiurge then takes the chaos of the Fall and makes all these things, “material” so to speak… It’s still not…  He’s not created anything new. He’s organized and we call it material. There’s never been dualism. That’s my point. What is called the material that physicists work with and others now in the world and so forth, in reality, it’s not. Cyd:  It’s still the consciousness of God just expressed in smaller and smaller fractal ways. Bill:  Yes. Back to your… Cyd:  But, but… Bill:  But the organ… Cyd:  Well, hold on. Isn’t there a duality between virtue and vice? Bill:  Well, yes, but that’s not… We’re not talking- Yeah, but… Cyd:  I mean, that’s somehow compartmentalized away from the One because there’s no room in heaven, so to speak, for vice. Bill:  Well, the compartmentalizing doesn’t make it real. It doesn’t make it material, doesn’t make it– You can compartmentalize, yes, but it’s still the ethereal. Cyd:  But, I mean, it seems to be different in kind. Sin is different categorically than God’s consciousness, is it not? Because we don’t want to say that God embraces sin. It’s not a yin-yang type of God. Bill:  No, but that’s the imitation. Talking imitation… Cyd:  So what I’m saying, isn’t the dualism between then the imitation and that which was from the beginning. Isn’t that the dualism split? Not from material to ethereal, but that which was from the beginning and then the imitation, which will return to nothingness. Bill:  Well, see… I’m going to come at it another way. All of this is a theory. Cyd:  Right. I agree with you. I got you. There’s no material. I get that part. But yet there is… Bill:  There are concepts, but there are concepts. That’s part of the thoughts. That’s thoughts. Cyd:  But it’s not God’s thoughts. It’s fallen thoughts. It’s our thoughts that are incorrect. I’m talking dialectics, you know? Bill:  Well, the fact that we have free will, you see, we can make choices, right? Remember, we’ve said technically there’s no evil. God doesn’t create a universe where it’s possible to have evil. That’s not it. The actions that are taken, those are the memes, and so forth. We create this illusory stuff, but they’re wrong acts, but there’s not evil. Cyd:  Okay. True. Bill:  It’s not… Again, it’s not Manichaeism again, you know? There’s good and evil, bad, good and bad, right? It’s not the yin-yang, as you make the point. That’s not the universe. Yeah. We make it happen through our willful actions. And the Demiurge, because of demiurgic control, you know, makes the choices and how to disrupt us, right? Archonic disruptions and so forth? Cyd:  Right, right. Okay. So—that which was not from the beginning and therefore will not return to the virtue in the roll-up… So what is the roll-up? What is humanity coming back into the Fullness? What is that? What would you call that? Because we’re going to shed the wrong beliefs. That’s what the redemption is. Bill:  That’s right. That’s right. Those memes. Which again, your question might be, what are memes? How do they exist? In other words, do they have an existence? Cyd:  Right. Right. I mean, are they…?  Okay. If it’s a giant torus of jello with cherries floating in it—are those cherries… we’ve always expressed them as choices or choice points. Bill:  Yes. Yes. Cyd:  But are there memes out there? When we roll back in towards the Fullness, does the jello bowl get smaller? Bill:  Yes. The jello bowl of the universe. Cyd:  Okay. Bill:  Of the universe. Right. Cyd:  But God is illimitable. But God is illimitable. Bill:  That’s right. Cyd:  Hmmm. Well, then the jello bowl of this universe is just going to go all the way to <poof> and then it’s all going to be part of the illimitable God, but with identity. That whole… you know what I’m saying? Cherry jello universe swimming from choice point to choice point, that will not occur after redemption, the third economy. Bill:  Yes. The third economy is not going to have that. Cyd:  It’s not going to have the torus around us. Bill:  It’s not going to have any jello-ness. Cyd:  Or cherries, I guess. Bill:  Now, in the ethereal, you know, in the wrap up there in the third economy, you still have free will. The Aeons always had free will. So, the ethereal, that notion of free will, but we’re acting out of free will without any memes that were the result of the Fall. Cyd:  Right. Bill:  Does that make sense? Cyd:  Yeah! (she shouts out). So, it’s just, shall I do this good thing or that good thing?. Visit this wonderful person and love them or that wonderful person and love them? Bill:  (laughing) Yeah. Cyd:  I think I’ll just pet my dogs for a thousand years. How about that? Bill:  Yeah. Or even longer. Cyd:  Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Bill:  We’ve got something going here. You know, I mean, we need to incubate and percolate a bit more because it’s evolving right now… or not evolving—it’s mining. Cyd:  Right. It’s revealing itself to us. Bill:  It’s revealing itself. Right. So, the essential point to start with is there never was a material world in fact.  It’s funny. It’s a jungle out there. Cyd:  (singing: It’s a jungle out there. Click this link to hear a funny song.) Exactly. Bill:  Whether we’re talking food politics or anything else, it’s… Cyd:  Well, skepticism is at an all-time high, as they say, you know. Bill:  (laughing) Yeah, as it should be. Cyd:  And this idea of AI taking over and the rise of the Demiurge, it seems as though we’re in the end times. You see, the people, they’re all for this kind of stuff, people like Musk—they think this is all going to turn out for the good. They are expecting what I call the Star Trek universe where it’s a very beautiful Federation of Planets and everything’s going well and you’ve got unlimited food and everybody works at jobs they love and everybody gets along, no more war. That’s what they think is going to be the outcome of progressivism and socialism and the rise of the AI and technocratic systems. I, however, think that just the opposite is going to come out, especially since it’s Demiurgic. It’s all going to turn into… I’m expecting more like the Terminator universe or Mad Max, you know? Dystopia. Dystopia versus Star Trek. Bill:  Well, again, as you say a thousand times before, is the science fiction writers always have… Cyd:  (interrupting) We’re the prophets! We’re the prophets.  Bill:  And you’re going to write this new book. Love it. Love it!  Yeah, yeah. I can see playing that out, right? Cyd:  Yeah.  Well, obviously, the brain implants in the VR world must be AI. They’re probably very miniaturized AI bots. They’re nanobots run by AI, else they couldn’t do what they’re doing to your brain. (plot line of new sf book) Bill:  So, yeah. See, I want to stay alive. I want to see the world play out a little bit longer. I want to see where it’s going. Cyd:  Except it’s going to go down, man. Bill:  The thing is, but see, everything gets sort of sad and tragic and everything, yet I know where I’m going, so what’s the… It’s not like, oh, I feel terrible. All of my life is done, and it was fine. Cyd:  Okay, because it’s just temporary anyway. Bill:  Yeah, it’s temporary. Cyd:  There might be a period of time where it’s all internment camps, but we know we’re going to heaven. Bill:  So what would be the AI analogy, in the thousand-year time of Christ? Cyd:  What do you mean? What’s your question? Bill:  In the Revelations, what would be the thousand-year reign? What would the equivalent be in the AI? Cyd:  Of Christ? Okay, so the thousand-year reign isn’t the bad stuff. That’s called the Tribulation. Bill:  I understand. So how would that play out? Cyd:  Well, that tribulation period is going to be what’s going on now. The buildup of AI, the repression of actual humanity, and what’s that called? Antinatalism? That’s all going to go… That’s just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. It’s just going to be more and more and more horrific, and people will become more and more evil, because I think the good folks are going to stick the landing up above, and not want to come back, not be made to come back into the Tribulation. Bill:  Well, it would be kind of like I don’t want to be reincarnated. Cyd:  Well, yeah, right, and not required to be. The only people that have to be reincarnated, that’s that 144,000 that are called the Remnant. So only at the end of times, there will only be 144,000 righteous people on the earth, period. And it’s not going to be easy on them, but that’s their job. So if you want to come back as one of the 144,000, be my guest. Bill:  So there won’t be a time where AI purely and simply is all there is? Cyd:  No, because then that would… It’s going to be like Terminator at the end, where the AI is trying to be all there is, but the humans are fighting back. There’s still that 144,000 underground. But then Christ actually comes back, and various Aeons incarnate, and people like you and me come back along with the Christ. And somehow, I don’t know what the mechanism is, but everyone is persuaded to redemption at that point. Maybe they realize it’s not so much fun living under this demiurgic AI horrid place. And then everybody truly wants to repent. And when that repentance comes back, everybody’s redeemed. The Demiurge is redeemed, and that’s when the thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth happens. So there will be a “material” world for a thousand years after the return of Christ and all the good guys, and it’ll be pretty nice. But then after that is when everything rolls up. Bill:  Okay. And when we say “material,” we put quotes around it. Cyd:  Right. Right. Bill:  Materialism as it’s been experienced. Cyd:  Right. So there’s going to be like a transition period, I would guess, for the second order powers to transition between… It’s all the love of God now, the Demiurge is not messing with us anymore. Eden. Eden. The Garden of Eden returns worldwide, and we’re all living in a happy, happy place. But then after that thousand years, everything is going to roll back up into the ethereal space and we’ll be part of the completely non-material or completely ethereal. That’s when the cherry will… The bowl of jello shrinks back into only the Fullness of God. Bill:  That’s a good description! That’s a podcast! Cyd:  Well, here we are. We’re recording it. So I think it will be. Bill:  That’s a good podcast right there. Yeah, yeah. Very nice. Very good. Cyd:  We’ve been taping. So let’s say… Well, Billy, thanks for joining me on one of these rare audio podcasts, and it’s always nice to talk to you. And I hope we can do this more often. Bill:  Me too. Thanks for inviting me and inviting me even more often. Well, you’ve done that more than once. I just haven’t come in, right? Cyd:  Right, right. But I think now maybe we… If this recording works out well, then maybe we have a system finally where you and I can have these recordings and make more episodes. For example, we know we want to talk about the difference between science and… Bill:  Religion. Cyd:  The true difference. Or the difference between theories and knowledge, which is a… That’s another discussion. We have to have these discussions. Bill:  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which by is relevant to this point about religion, physics, anyway. Cyd:  Yeah, yeah. So if this all works out, we’ll talk again very soon and we’ll have another podcast to put out. How’s that? Bill:  I would love that. Thank you. Cyd:  Well, onward and upward, Billy. Bill:  Onward and upward, Cyd. Love you. Cyd:  Love you, too. Bye-bye. Hanging up now. Bye-bye. sweetie. Bill:  Bye-bye. I hope you have enjoyed this unusual episode. It’s an episode that probably requires more than one listening. And, if you really want to understand it, I recommend you follow the links to the aeon article by Paes and the links to my articles referred to here and there. Onward and upward! God bless us all!

The purpose of this series of podcasts is to share with you the gnosis that I have gleaned from my readings of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. These podcasts are coming in order as the cosmology of our universe unfolds, and I think it’s a lot easier for you to understand the material if you follow along in order. The particular book out of the Nag Hammadi that I am using as my primary reference is called the Tripartite Tractate. In 2019, I wrote a book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, where I translated the Tripartite Tractate into modern English in a very, very simple way, and I also illustrated all of the concepts in order to facilitate understanding. It is my hope that as you listen to this information and then meditate upon it, you will come to understand the origins of our universe and our place in it, and also what are the major players at work for both good and for ill, and how does it affect our lives? More recently, I’ve written another book called A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. It is full and complete and contains everything you need to know about the Christian Gnostic Gospel of the Nag Hammadi. So far, we’ve talked about the Father, the Son, the All and the Fullness. We’ve talked about the Fall of Logos, and we have talked about the Deficiency that came from the Fall. Now we’re getting to the good news, which is the plan that was devised by Logos and the Fullness of God in order to redeem the Fall and all that came from the Fall. So, after the Fall, Logos broke apart, and all of his small parts, which were themselves small copies of all of the originals of the Fullness, because Logos was an entity that contained all of the Aeons inside of it, however they were smaller versions of it. They were fractals of the original Aeons. When Logos reached and fell, he broke apart, and these smaller fractals that constituted his being left him, and they went out on their own. We are fractal children of the consciousness of the Fullness of God Logos was horrified by what had happened, and the Nag Hammadi says that the best of Logos returned back to the Fullness, leaving the Deficiency behind. As I explained in the previous podcast, the main reason that this is called the Deficiency is because the parts of Logos were no longer arranged in their hierarchical structure that encouraged cooperation. They all rolled out and became equal to one another, and they were driven by ego and self-centered ambition, because Logos had been reaching for the heights when it fell, and therefore the parts of Logos that separated out from him continued to reach for the heights. The small fractalss that once formed the pleroma of Logos lost themselves during the Fall and rolled out into chaos. However, because they are not in a cooperative structure of the Hierarchy, they’re all self-centered, they’re all each one reaching for the heights on their own. They have no cooperative arrangement. Logos regretted the Fall, and the phantoms, (these are called the phantoms, these little bits of him that rolled out—phantoms of the Deficiency), Logos regretted the Fall and the phantoms born of the Fall, and regret turned into condemnation of the irrational things he had produced. Logos wanted their destruction because it was just a horrible thing that was happening. As I said in the last podcast, when Logos beat it back up to the Fullness, the Fullness and Logos did not remain idle, but they cooked up a scheme to bring redemption to the Deficiency. They brought forth what is called a fruit, which is an offspring, in the Fullness with a view to overthrowing what had come into being because of the Deficiency. These new creatures that were devised are better than the Deficiency because they come from the union of the entire Fullness, whereas the Deficiency came out of a mistaken solo effort by Logos alone. Out of this union of the Fullness and Logos came what are called the Second Order Powers, and these powers are better and greater than those of the imitation because they did not come into being out of ego and out of lack of thought. This new fruit of the Fullness and Logos was fitted purposely into the boundary that surrounded the Fall, and so because they were fitted to live within this boundary, they were able to have a cooperative structure the way the Fullness had a cooperative structure. But the Fullness’s cooperative structure looks like a hierarchy, and as I described in one of our first podcasts, the Hierarchy is a pyramidal-shaped structure. Now, the Deficiency is not a pyramidal-shaped structure, and in my illustrations, I have a circular boundary around the Deficiency, so the Second Order Powers are fitted to this circular boundary. So they are not in perfect hierarchical arrangement, as is the Fullness, but since they are within a bounded space, they are encouraged to work together. They are in relationship to each other. If it were an unbounded space, it would be infinite and they would all drift apart. They would not be within a cooperative structure or an ecology, as it’s called. In other words, the newly produced offspring of the Fullness and Logos were patterned after the originals and the Fullness, so they are patterns of Aeons, which is what the entities that live in the Fullness are called, but they are formed to fit within the boundary rather than the Hierarchy. And the way I illustrate this in my book and in my blog is that circular boundary with living cells inside of it. It looks very much like a microscope slide. And if you go to my Gnostic blog, or if you go to my Gnostic Gospel Illuminated book, you will see all of these illustrations that I’m describing to you. You will see them in their beautiful, glorious color, and maybe they’ll be helpful for you to picture these concepts. I know it’s helpful for me. So now, quoting from the Tripartite Tractate, verse 83, Logos sowed in them an inclination to seek and pray to what is glorious and preexistent. He also sowed in them an ability to think about it and a power of reflection to make them realize that something greater than themselves existed before them, but they had not understood what it was. Bringing forth harmony and mutual love by means of that thought, they acted in unity and unanimity, since to unity and unanimity they owed their existence. More simply put, the Fullness is a cooperative ecology, even though it is made up of an infinite number of entities. They sit in a hierarchical structure where everyone knows their position, place, their power, their job, and they sit and they dream together in unison, because they are a perfect cooperative ecology. The Deficiency is not a cooperative ecology, having arisen from ego. Now these new Powers, it was put into them to be able to think about the Fullness and the Father, and it was given to them the ability to think logically and to reason. And this is why in my Gnostic Insights podcast I describe things to you and I give you the reason behind it, because you and I are reasonable beings. We don’t only have to seek out exactly what is written. We can use logic and deduction and infer the truth of these things. It isn’t magic, it’s logic. The Aeons and the Fullness are called the First Order of Powers, the Aeons of the Hierarchy, and they gave birth to a Second Order of Powers—that’s the fruit—and it’s called the emissions of the remembrance. And emissions refers to units of consciousness. They are embodying the originating consciousness, which is called the Father, and the Father begat a Son, which is the perfect and full sampling of the Father. And then the Son begat the Fullness of God, which is all of the Son’s characteristics broken out into those individual variables, or those individual characteristics. So rather than being an amorphous, infinite being, there are now particularities, each one being a sampling of that great being. And that Fullness is the First Order of Powers, the Aeons of the Hierarchy. And now they have given birth to a Second Order of Powers that were formed to fit into the bounded space of the Deficiency. In my illustrations I show this as the pyramid of golden orbs that I use to represent the Fullness, and then there’s a little thought bubble coming out of that pyramid, and within that thought bubble is that microscope slide of the bounded space containing cells. Logos and the Fullness produced a Second Order of Powers, patterned after the First Order of Powers that dwelt in the Hierarchy. The Second Order of Powers was named the emissions of the remembrance, because they had been created by the unified will of the Father through union with Logos and the Fullness, and therefore they contained the traits of the Father. In verse 84, the Tripartite Tractate says, The powers of remembrance were adorned with the names of the preexistent, whose likenesses they were. The order of those of this kind were in harmony with itself and with each other. This new order of powers reflected the values of the Son, but it was formed within a boundary rather than a hierarchy, so they had more freedom to assemble themselves into non-hierarchical patterns. These newly formed beings did not have more substance, nor did they have a greater glory, for they are not equal to the preexistent ones, and those preexistent ones are the Aeons of the Fullness, who came directly from the Son, who came directly from the Father, so they are preexistent consciousness. It goes on to say, If on the other hand they were superior to the imitations, the only thing that made them elevated above them was that they were from a good disposition, for they had not come out of the sickness that arose. Whereas those of the Deficiency arose from the Fall, those of the remembrance—and what they are remembering? They’re remembering that they come from the Fullness and the Father—those of the remembrance arose from the consecrated union of Logos and the Fullness. Those of the Deficiency represent phantoms and confusion, whereas the new fruit, the Second Order Powers represent the virtues of the All. And now a strange and tragic thing occurred. It turns out that when those of the remembrance came upon those of the imitation, they attempted to overthrow them out of an inherent sense of self-righteousness, because after all, the Second Order Powers are from a consecrated union of the Fullness, and the Deficiency is not. Those of the remembrance knew they were superior to those of imitation, because they were nobler than those previous ones. The Second Order Powers began to fight against the shadows of the imitation, and after all, that was their purpose. They were put into the bounded space in order to overcome what had come from the Deficiency and the Fall. Because the imitation waged war against the likenesses in the Fullness, the offspring of the Fullness “acted against itself on account of its rage.” That’s what it says. So the imitation is waging war against the Second Order fruit, and in response, the Second Order fruit begins to act against its own self because it’s so angry about it. But the ones who were in opposition would not surrender due to their own ignorance of what came before. They believed they were self-engendered and had given birth to themselves, and so they believed they owed nothing to the previous powers, either above or below. [verse 84 of the Tripartite Tractate]. In my illustrations, I depict this never-ending war between us of the remembrance and the Deficiency as the yin-yang symbol, and I am depicting the Deficiency, those little blue balls fitted within that circle, as the downward-heading yin side, and the powers of the remembrance, which now look like living green cells, sitting right against them and going upward as the yang symbol. Never-ending War Now again from the Tripartite Tractate, verse 84, The two orders fought against each other, struggling for command with such result that they were engulfed by the forces and material substances in accordance with what is called the Law of Mutual Combat. And they too acquired lust for domination and all of the other passions of this sort. And consequently, empty vainglory pulls them all toward the desire of lust for domination, and not one of them remembers what is superior or confesses it. So what it is saying here in verse 84 is that even though the Second Order Powers came into this creation with a better disposition because they are patterned directly after the Aeons of the Fullness, when they’re standing there doing war with the Deficiency, they take on the characteristics of the Deficiency. Violence begets violence. Forgetfulness begets forgetfulness. And forgetfulness is another word for lack of gnosis, because gnosis means knowledge, and the way you achieve gnosis is by remembering where you come from, and that is called an amnesis—amnesia being forgetfulness, and amnesis being remembering. And so ignorance is the same as lack of gnosis. The Second Order Powers come into creation fully loaded with gnosis, but in the course of doing battle in this never-ending war with the Deficiency, gnosis is forgotten and needs to be remembered again. And that’s the purpose of our Gnostic Insights podcast, to remember the gnosis from above. Verse 85 of the Tripartite Tractate says, Because of this their envy, malice, rage, violence, lust, and ignorance ruled, as they were producing various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers. In my previous podcasts, I have said that the objects that came from the Deficiency, because they are confused, lost, they are not hierarchical, they do not operate according to the Golden Rule wherein they help each other build better, bigger things for the improvement of all—the Deficiency is not able to do any of that. It’s all selfish, it’s all self-driven, it’s all about dominion and power. In other words, there is nothing about the Deficiency that was able to build up into creation, because they can’t create, they can’t work together cooperatively, they didn’t know the hierarchical structure of cooperation. The Second Order Powers do know the hierarchical structure of cooperation, and so they are able to work together and share information in order to level up to the next level and create. The Simple Golden Rule In my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything blog and the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything book, I discuss all of this in a non-religious way. It is a science and math-based theory, but it is completely compatible with the Gnostic Gospel. And in the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, I identify the basic level of material instantiation as what is called by physicists—quantum foam. And it is this chaotic, roiling, lawless foam that can’t ever level up, it just sits there boiling. In the Simple Explanation, I coined the term units of consciousness. Here in the Gnostic Gospel, we call them Second Order Powers. These units of consciousness, and the originating consciousness again is the Father, so everything in our creation that is a second-order power is a unit of consciousness, a fractal of the Father. These units of consciousness use the Simple Golden Rule to reach out to one another, hook up with others of their kind, share information and patterns in order to level up to the next level of creation. And everything levels up to the next level of creation. The quantum foam can’t do it because it’s the Deficiency, but now the Second Order Powers, they start coming in with hierarchical structure, and so they’re able to level up. Here I’m going to drop in a slight change, and it’s this. According to my Simple Explanation Theory of Everything, everything was conscious, including the particles and the molecules. But over the last several years, in discussions with my brother Bill, we have amended that interpretation as it pertains to the Gnostic Gospel. The Gnostic Gospel isn’t quite as pan-psychic as the Simple Explanation Theory of Everything used to be. And according to this Gnostic Gospel, consciousness only proceeds from the Father. Consciousness is a top-down phenomenon. The Fall wasn’t based upon consciousness, it was based upon ego. Egoic consciousness isn’t exactly the same as the Father’s consciousness, or the Aeonic consciousness. The consciousness of the Father brings love, and it brings life, as well as coherence and all of the virtues of the Father. It brings our DNA and all of the instructions for life, for everything that’s alive on the planet. Whereas the Fall was an outcropping of ego. It wasn’t from the Father’s consciousness, it was egoic consciousness that was self-centered. Therefore, the quantum foam that came out of the broken bits of Logos were egoic. They were not consciousness from the Father. So, when I first recorded this episode, it was fresh out of the Simple Explanation coming into the Gnostic Gospel, and I went ahead and attributed consciousness to the subatomic particles, the particles, the molecules, and the mineral aggregates, in a bottom-up kind of structure, thinking that they were leveling themselves up once they had a boundary. But, as I say, in deep conversation and contemplation with my brother Bill, we’ve come to understand that the mud cannot level up from the bottom. And by leveling up, that’s that Golden Rule type of cooperation, where you hold hands with your neighbors, you share information, love, and assistance, and all together you build the next thing up. So, the way the cells hold hands and build the organs, and then the organs hold hands and build the organism. It’s like that. That’s your Golden Rule type of leveling up. The higher the fewer. How then did the quantum foam level up? Well, this is where we introduce the Demiurge a little bit earlier than we did in the original 2021 episodes. And the Demiurge is the architect of the material universe. The Demiurge is the ego of Logos that stayed behind in the Deficiency when the best part of Logos fled back to the Fullness. So, the best part of Logos—that’s the Aeonic consciousness and the Father’s life and love—went back up into the Fullness. That’s the part of Logos up there that, in cooperation with the Fullness, the Pleroma of the Aeons, creates the Second Order Powers—us—and  and sends us down here into creation to bring life and consciousness down below. Well, that implies there wasn’t life and consciousness until we come in. It’s a very complex subject, and it really took us several years of contemplation to come up with this slight amendment to what this episode talks about. Which just goes to show you that Gnosis is an ongoing process. It’s not like I read the Tripartite Tractate, and Boom! I get it, and now I can write books. It’s not that at all. I get it. I have the basic structure. I have the illustrations, but the nuances continue to develop, and they still continue to this day to develop. My brother Bill and I have conversations on practically a weekly basis that lasts for a long, long time, where we talk about these things, the difference between ego and consciousness, and what that implies. So anyway, as we will find out in an upcoming episode, there’s this character called the Demiurge, and he is the egoic structure of Logos, but without the remembrance of the Father. He is the ignorant god. He is the god with amnesia, and the god of this material portion of our universe—the hard, slow, muddy parts—that’s the Deficiency. And that is leveled up by the strict controls, by the Demiurge only. He doesn’t remember where he comes from. He thinks he’s God. He thinks everything begins with him. He is the jealous god that thinks that he creates everything, but he can only create the material, because up above, it’s ethereal. It’s not material. So down here, one of the key aspects of the Deficiency is that it is material. It seems to solid. We can’t see through walls down here. So it’s the Demiurge that takes the quantum foam, and using bonds and strings like a puppet master, builds that quantum foam up into the subatomic particles. The Demiurge controls matter through bonds. Matter has no free will. And then he makes them join together to become particles, and he makes them join together to become atoms and molecules, and then the molecules join together and become the elements. And the Demiurge is able to organize the material of the Fall, but he can’t make it alive. He can’t give it love, because he doesn’t know love. He can’t give it consciousness, because he’s not a conduit of the consciousness of the Fullness. He does it all by himself, out of egoic power control. Then when the Second Order Powers come in; they’re the ones that bring the consciousness, the life, and the love, and the Golden Rule of cooperation, and everything that’s alive. So that’s the difference between living things and material things. Now, if this is all too confusing, that’s because I’m dropping it in here, and it’s a full episode on its own. But I needed to correct the transcript that I’m sharing with you today. the demiurge keeps chaos at bay by forbidding free will in his subjects At this point in our Gnostic cosmology, we are into creation now. That bounded space is the boundary around our universe. Within the confines of my skin, countless units of consciousness of varying levels of complexity work together to keep my body alive and fully functional. At each descending level of complexity, from my governing self unit of consciousness on down through my organ systems, my organs, my cells, my body’s units of consciousness deal with increasingly simpler tasks, even as the material associated with them becomes smaller and more numerous. Remember, the higher the fewer is a basic Gnostic principle. So if you think of your body not as the shape of your physical body walking around, but picture it as a hierarchy as well, picture it the way we picture the Fullness—a pyramid, where the bottom level of the pyramid is the particles that make up your body. And these particles reach out and hold hands and become atoms. There’s fewer atoms than there are subatomic particles. And the atoms reach out and hold hands and become molecules. There’s fewer molecules than there are atoms, etc. etc. The cells of your body—do you know they say there are as many cells in your body as there are stars in the universe? That’s how complicated your body is. The cells of your body reach out and hold hands and become your various organs and your organ systems. And these all work together and eventually culminate with you sitting at the top. And you think your Self is all alone, but it isn’t. Your Self is sitting on top of this entire mountain, this hierarchical mountain of units of consciousness. That’s the basic Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything which you can read about in depth in my book or on that blog. This that I’m telling you right now about the mountain of consciousness and units of consciousness, this is my theory, but it’s entirely compatible with what I’m telling you about the Gnostic cosmology that comes out of the Nag Hammadi. One interesting thought about the development of these philosophies is that the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything came about around 2010. I didn’t read the Nag Hammadi until, what was it? about 2016 or so. So I didn’t derive the Simple Explanation from Gnostic studies. But of course, as I was reading Gnostic studies, I had the Simple Explanation fully formed in my mind, and it turns out that they’re compatible. That’s why I’m sharing them both with you to help you build Gnosis. It is my hope that every time I share one of my insights with you or one of my illustrations with you, it clears up confusion in your mind. It removes ignorance, which brings Gnosis. The Simple Explanation blog can be found at www.asimpleexplanation.blogspot.com. There are hundreds of articles about consciousness there on A Simple Explanation, but I don’t want you to go down a rabbit hole and get distracted or become confused. The only reason you should be reading these materials is in order to become less confused. Gnosis is lack of ignorance, lack of confusion. So if the Simple Explanation helps to bring you Gnosis, that’s good. Whereas my Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, which you can buy at any online bookseller or go to my blogs and you’ll find it there in my own bookstore, it’s only 49 pages long, and half of those pages are illustrations. So it’s very simple, it’s very clear and direct without any confusing extras added. It’s the kernal of Gnostic thought.               And, of course, since this episode was originally recorded, the entire, in-depth explanation has been written for you in the book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. You can buy it at amazon in all formats—paperback, hardback, Kindle audio book, and ebook, all priced as low as possible to make it easier for you to purchase your copy. Here’s a brief description of the book: Unlock the Hidden Wisdom of the Gospels With A Simple, Eye-Opening Journey Through Gnostic Christianity What if the answers to life’s biggest questions were already within you—waiting to be remembered? In her book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, author and scholar Dr. Cyd Ropp invites readers on a revelatory journey through ancient Gnostic teachings that illuminate our cosmic origin, spiritual purpose, and divine inheritance. Drawing from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi library, Dr. Ropp decodes sacred texts in clear, accessible language—making profound wisdom from early Christianity available to today’s readers. More than a scholarly work, this book is a spiritual awakening—organized in the order creation itself emerged. It explores: The path of consciousness from the Father through the Son to all living beings The divine purpose behind human life The truth of redemption and our ultimate return to the Fullness of God How ancient Valentinian Gnosticism reflects the original teachings of Christ Whether you’re a seeker, spiritual scholar, or curious reader, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel offers a transformative lens through which to see your place in the universe and your relationship with the divine. If you find these podcasts helpful, please consider donating to help Cyd cover the cost. And remember to subscribe to Gnostic Insights so you don’t miss a single episode! Podcast Support Donate with Stripe

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Today I thought I would share with you a column from Substack by a friend of mine, Tessa Lena. Her Substack is called Tessa Fights Robots. She’s an immigrant from Russia and she lives in New York. She’s a really wonderful writer and her heart is in such a good place. She speaks about love most of the time in her columns. This week’s column by Tessa is called “Letter to Future Dissidents, subtitled Don’t Become a Dissident Before Reading This,” and it was a good article that I thought I would share with you. I’m going to read the whole thing to you. I did get permission from Tessa Lena to do this. She says go for it. By the way, Tessa Lena was a guest here on Gnostic Insights, two interviews back to back. It was called Interview with Tessa Lena Part 1 and Part 2, and those were posted March 13th and March 19th of 2022. So if you go to theGnosticInsights.com website, you can find all of the past episodes posted. Just search for Tessa Lena or March 13th, 2022, and you ought to be able to find those interviews. I like to run every episode past my brother for discussion before releasing it to you. My dear brother Bill was somewhat shocked that I chose this essay to read to you this week. He’s concerned that the essay is not uplifting and may bum you out rather than inspire you. So let me address that concern here at the top. Tessa’s article is about the interpersonal challenges of being a dissident, whether we are talking about spiritual disagreements, such as we Gnostics may encounter with other spiritual seekers, or political and cultural disagreements we run into with others. What Bill asked me to say here at the beginning is that the negative spiritual encounters we may have with other people is really the Demiurge and its archons messing with us Second Order Powers. We need to remember that we are not enemies with any person, but rather we are fellow Second Order Powers defending ourselves against the Demiurge. Bill also shared an article called “The Science of Spiritual Narcissism” by Scott Barry Kaufman that was posted this week on the GetPocket app. I’ve put the link into the transcript here. That article is relevant to today’s podcast, so let me start by reading you a couple of paragraphs from that Pocket article to prepare you for Tessa’s essay. Kaufman says, Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we are growing is our ego. And by the way, we’ll drop in that we’re not really growing our ego, but we’re growing our memes. Our memes are stuck onto our egos. Our egos come along with us. They are our personality. They are our self-identity. They’re part of our aeonic inheritance. So we’re not really growing our egos with wrong beliefs. We’re simply growing the beliefs—the memes—that are stuck onto us and overshadowing our God-given egos and pure selves. So back to Kaufman’s article. Some psychologists have pointed out that the self-enhancement that occurs through spiritual practices can lead to the “I’m enlightened and you’re not” syndrome and spiritual bypass by which people seek to use their spiritual beliefs, practices, and experiences to avoid genuine contact with their psychological unfinished business. In Kaufman’s recent book, Transcend, he calls it pseudo-transcendence—transcendence built on a very shaky foundation. Kaufman goes on to say, One serious obstacle to healthy transcendence is how spiritual practices are sold to the masses. Yoga and mindfulness are big business in America. The purported benefits of mindfulness meditation have generated a billion dollar industry. Yoga is the most popular mind-body practice in Western societies. Many of these programs offer a long list of promises, including the reduction of stress and anxiety, along with greater confidence, creativity, focus, achievement, success, eating habits, sleep, and even happiness. But here’s the thing, healthy transcendence doesn’t stem from an attempt at distracting oneself from displeasure with reality. Healthy transcendence involves confronting reality as it truly is, head-on, with equanimity and loving kindness. So going forward in this podcast, remember the key words, equanimity and loving kindness. So without further ado, here is Tessa Lena’s letter to future dissidents. So how are you doing today? Have a couple of minutes to talk about dissident life? Have you been trying to just go about your business? But strangely, life has been taking you places where you saw cracks in the matrix that others refused to see? The facade is cracked. You’ve seen it with your own eyes, and things don’t feel quite right. You feel different than others. You must definitely smell a rat, and you cannot cover your nose hard enough to make the smell of rat disappear. But how come you are so alone in this? How come other people are just fussing around like busy bees? Isn’t there a giant rat sitting and smelling right here in broad daylight and in plain sight? Isn’t there an elephant in the room too for all eyes to see? You feel very strange. It’s not great to feel different from other people like this, and you honestly just want to fit in with your friends and not stick out like a sore thumb all the time. And you try to blend in. Oh, you try. You work hard to be normal. You try telling yourself that you are probably crazy. You deny the evidence of your lying eyes. It turns out that a life of compliance is not enough for you, though. Other people seem to be getting away with living shallow in a man-made matrix world, but not you. Your denial of the evidence of your lying eyes doesn’t go over well for you. Something happens. Things get crazy. The carefully stitched together comfy blanket over your lying eyes gets destroyed, and you find yourself totally naked, still alone, despite your attempts to bond with others by betraying yourself, humble tears pouring out of your human eyes. It’s just you. No one else. Just you between the earth and the sky. No one else. Just you and your heart and your unfitting thoughts. And the world? The world doesn’t really care about the fact that you’ve just seen the face of the machine. It’s spinning in a shallow and glittery make-believe way like before, pretending there is no machine. Things keep happening, and at some point you can no longer hold your tongue back, and you open your heart and your mouth. You act brave. You act bold. You start singing your truth in a louder voice. But nope, no change as far as being alone. You are still alone. Okay, Cyd here, popping in to say that we are not alone. Remember, we are embodying all of the Second Order of Powers of the Fullness of God. And if you have invited the Christ in, you are embodying the Third Order of Powers of the Christ as well. So we are not alone in this struggle, even though it may appear to be so. Okay, back to Tessa’s article. You discover that people often want their opinions coming out of your mouth, not yours. If your message fits into pre-existing talking points, into pre-existing emotional interfaces often formed by centuries of psyops, you may get somewhere. If you share original insights that explain the world, then nope, no fireworks and no orchestra that you’ve read about in a book about the hero journey. You are still alone. Then, unexpectedly, your time comes. All of a sudden, the world is bleeding in a new way and wants to hear what you have to say. You are almost surprised because for such a long time, nobody cared at all about the things that now the world suddenly wants to hear. As surprised as you are, you spread your wings and start singing your song, the song that you’ve spent your entire life composing, the song that is sacred to you, and you are oh so happy that other people find it useful to them too. You rejoice. You relax a little. You pour your heart into your noble fight. You do your absolute best. You make new friends. You think that this is your new life. And then you learn, in a hard way perhaps, that your movement, your dissident tribe, is not real. You learn that the purity of your heart is actually rare, and it’s true even for the self-proclaimed freedom warrior folk. You learn to walk with a few real friends who are strong enough to withstand enemy mind tricks, but the movement, the movement, you watch it collapse. Or rather, you watch it being hijacked by the predators in freedom warrior suits right before your eyes. You try to salvage the unity of good people, but barely anyone wants to hear because the proverbial negative witches are waving their proverbial magic wands, and people go crazy. Not to mention the fact that even without them, many are simply busy building their freedom brand. That is the moment when your rosy glasses get smashed, and your delusions go the way of the dinosaurs. It sure shocks you. It shocks you to see how good people lament about the normies going for dirty tricks, and then go for similar dirty tricks designed for them. Okay, Cyd here popping in again. This is discussed in A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel in the chapter called The Never-Ending War. Listen to what the Tripartite Tractate has to say on this. If both orders, those on the right and those on the left, are brought together with one another by the thought which is set between them which gives them their organization with each other, it happens that they both act with the same emulation of their deeds, with those of the right resembling those of the left, and those of the left resembling those of the right. And if at times the evil order begins to do evil in a foolish way, the wise order emulates in the form of a man of violence also doing what is evil, as if it were a power of a man of violence. At other times the foolish order attempts to do good, making itself like it, since the hidden order too is zealous to do it.   [verse 108 of the Tripartite Tractate] Never-ending War Now back to Tessa Lena’s article. You also see how folks who know a lot less than you self-promote quite aggressively, and sometimes in dirty ways, and become industry experts on the subjects you’ve been looking into forever, and they, well, they haven’t. Oh well, you say. You are here to help the world after all. It’s about the world, not about you, and so you tell yourself, it’s okay, carry on. Meanwhile, the massive snake pit keeps giving. In disbelief, you learn that some of your dissident colleagues go to great lengths trying to push you aside. You learn that the competition for the best freedom brand is real, and so is the quest to dominate the direction of the freedom buck. You also find that some of the people whom you have held in extremely high regard choose to invest in their envious side. You find how by day those envious souls tout themselves as lovable, brave, pet-friendly, freedom warriors of light, while by night they try efforts to make you invisible and alone. They envy you. Oh, how they envy you. And even though you never tried to cause them harm, they still hate your light. You feel appalled. You didn’t expect this kind of behavior coming from folks whose brands are about healing trauma and resisting mind control. Snake pit or not, though, you carry on. Then there are agents. You discover that the agents are a piece of art. Shameless, hurting, wounded, cruel, lying, really strange people. Over time, you realize that they are so deprived of love that they take to desperate measures trying to yank a presentation of love, aka gullibility and submission, out of anyone who allows them to do that. Very strange people, those agents. Very wounded souls. Okay, I have to pop in here once again, Cyd speaking now. Those very wounded agents that Tessa refers to, I would think of as people who are not merely confused or deluded by the archons, but have actually, well, what in the old days people would say, sell their soul to the devil. They are people who are actively conspiring with the Demiurge and the archons. They are not archons, they are Second Order Powers, but they have given themselves over consciously to the Demiurge. And so they are working for the Demiurge and not for the God Above All Gods. They are, as Tessa Lena is pointing out, bereft of love. That is why they appear so strange and archonic. But even they, at the very end of time, will see the light. And when the Demiurge is redeemed, these people will be redeemed along with the Demiurge. Okay, back to Tessa’s article. When you figure out who is really trying to do what and how different it is from what people in your circles talk about, aka controlled opposition talk, you may find yourself disappointed again when you learn that enchantment and mind control in the dissident circles work exactly the way they work in the mainstream. Every weakness, every pain point, every wound gets exploited and milked, and the stakes are high. You discover that the predators try to flatter you and to harm you and to scare you and isolate you from your friends. You discover how they do tricks designed to transform your beautiful, well-intended allies into bleeding, wounded traitors of you who would rather side with the tricksters based on mind control than believe you. When you follow your natural human instinct of love and make a step forward to protect your friends, you occasionally find that some of the folks whom you have treated well, whom you have gone out of your way to protect and promote, who are brilliant and sincere, they may forget about the good things you have done for them and still betray you, turn on you, and side with the predators in sheep’s (make that) freedom warrior’s clothes. As your friends betray you, they feel very superior, like they won a game of 5D chess and have figured out mind control. As you look at it with sadness, you feel disappointed. You feel disappointed and hurt. You pull your hair in frustration over how such smart and sincere human beings chose to betray you and themselves. You feel very disappointed. You ask the spirit why you lost them, why this is happening to you. You just want to explode because you see what is going on, and you care, and you want to help, and your allies act lost. But then you stop crying, say a prayer, and tell yourself that they will wake up when it’s due. In the meanwhile, you have to keep going because you are here with a job to do. Then you see how predators in freedom warrior clothes volunteer their lying selves to save the movement, and at that point you start laughing, first bitterly, then wholeheartedly, because there is grand comedy in all this. What a circus! Traitor witches with magical wands, wounded agents pretending to be fearless freedom fighters, intrigue, confrontations over the freedom buck, and you and your ethical standards, and your friends who are also honest and pure, and your truth. As you are dealing with all this, you keep asking the spirit, why is all this showing up in your life? Why? You say, oh my god, this is just incredible. How can they? But they can, and they are. And you are here, and you need to live, and in order to live, you need to fight better. And in order to fight better, you need to understand the nature of reality better. And at some point, you see that the predators are an excuse for you to get in touch with yourself. They’re not important. You realize that all this is the spirit teaching you about your being, leaving breadcrumbs for you to pay attention to. And your task is to understand the nature of reality and to learn how to live well. They are experiencing their journey. They will pay their price. It is their choice. You are living your life, your way. You are practicing your faith and your ethics, and frankly, you feel sorry for them. As you pray, you are reminded again that all good things come on God’s will, and they come on God’s time. At the end of the day, you are doing this because this is what you were born to do. You are here and now, but you are also eternal, and the world is worth saving, and your fellow travelers are worth loving, and you are not weird for practicing your good ethics. It’s the good way. You are good. You are love. They can’t kill love. It’s impossible to kill love. Love always wins. Love always wins. Love always wins. You know this. If you didn’t know this, you wouldn’t have chosen to fight the good fight. Keep fighting the good fight. It’s your fight. It’s your way. I’m all choked up. I think it’s so touching. Of course, it means a lot to me because I fight the good fight, and I know that my faithful listeners and readers also have been fighting the same good fight as Tessa and myself. Please go to Tessa Fights Robots on Substack. It’s tessa.substack.com. I’ll put a link in this episode transcript also. Subscribe to Tessa. All of her articles for years now have been along these lines, and she’s a beautiful woman. She’s a singer. She’s a performance artist in New York, and she’s a beautiful writer as well. God bless Tessa. God bless all of us. Remember, love always wins. Keep fighting the good fight, and onward and upward. Tessa Lena, from her album Tessa Makes Love Let’s see if this donation box below works right. Please let me know if you have any trouble using this donation box. Thanks! Choose amount to donate10.0020.0050.00

Gnostic interpretations of familiar Bible verses Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. I’m so glad to have you here with me. I thought this week we’d go ahead and do some more of those Gnostic interpretations of Christian memes so that you can see the differences and similarities between our Gnostic message and the traditional Christian way of interpreting these same Bible verses. I simply went out on the internet and looked for popular Bible verses, and these were the first ones that came up on this particular search. So here we go. From 1 Corinthians 3:16. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” Even conventional Christians realize that we are God’s temple, but they generally think of the temple that we are as somewhat separate from God Himself and God’s actual temple. However, when we Gnostic Christians speak of inhabiting God’s temple, we take it in a much more literal sense—that when we invite the Third Order of Powers to come in and take over our souls, we’re moving our own Second Order Powers off the throne of our souls and inviting the Christ to occupy the throne of our souls. This brings God into our temple. It makes our body a literal temple of God, a temple of the Christ, because there is Christ dwelling within our midst, God dwelling within the temple. You see, our body is as much a temple to the Third Order of Powers as the temple in Jerusalem was to Jehovah. Now that’s another discussion—the relationship between the Hebrew God Jehovah and the God Above All Gods. But what we’re talking about here is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the temple of our bodies. Our body is a replication of the Fullness of God, and we are Second Order representations of that Fullness of God whereas the Third Order of Powers are the actual living images of the Fullness of God, and there’s a Third Order Power for every one of our Second Order Powers inside of our body, inside of this meat mountain that we live in. So, of course, God’s Spirit dwells in our midst once we invite God’s Spirit to do so. God’s Spirit cannot dwell in the midst of our temple until we invite it in, until we get off the throne and invite it to take its place. The next meme is from 1 John 4:8, and it says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” We talk a lot about love and the importance of love, and I think a lot of people come to Gnostic Insights here because I’m talking about love. God is love. That is the most basic definition of God. Yes, in our modern parlance, we like to say that God is consciousness, and indeed God is consciousness. However, God is perceived by us as love, as the quality of love. Love is not an imaginary thing. Love isn’t something people make up or when you feel attracted to another person that you love them. That isn’t what love is. Love is an actual standalone quality that is one of the virtues of God. It’s the primary virtue of the God Above All Gods. And by the way, speaking of the difference between the God Above All Gods and the Hebrew God Jehovah, that Old Testament God did not demonstrate love. That Old Testament God, whom we Gnostics call the Demiurge, yes, he was the creator of this physical material cosmos that we live in, but the God Above All Gods is the creator of heaven and all consciousness and all emanations of consciousness. All spirits and powers above come from the God Above All Gods through the Son and then on through the Fullness of the Son, which is called the Fullness of God. We come from the Fullness of God. We are emanations. We are children of the Fullness of God, fruited down here into the material cosmos with all of the qualities of the Fullness of God. The Fullness of God is the First Order of Powers. We are the Second Order of Powers representing the Fullness of God here on Earth, including the character of love. But we tend to forget all of that once we get down here and become embroiled in this material existence, fighting a losing battle with death and destruction here. Sin comes from down here. Sadness, death, corruption, delusion, all of those negative characteristics, all of the things that are not love, arise from the Demiurge. They don’t come from heaven. They don’t come from the God Above All Gods. So when we say that God is love, we’re talking about the God Above All Gods as represented by the Christ here on Earth, as represented by our first human emissary that embodied the Third Order of Powers, and that was Jesus. Moving on to the next meme. This one is from 2 Chronicles 16:7. “But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.” This meme brings up the subject of works. Chronicles is an Old Testament book. So when it speaks of God, it’s speaking of Jehovah, which we are believing is the Demiurge, or the ego of the fallen Aeon, named Logos. And this one talks about works. And by the way, works is very big in Demiurgic law. The Demiurge is all about laws, punishments, and rewards. It’s a carrot and stick kind of God. Whereas the God Above All Gods is consciousness and love, having nothing to do with rewards for works. You can’t earn your way to heaven. When we do good, it’s not to pile up brownie points. It’s not to minimize negative karma. It is not a process to reach a goal. The reason we do good work is because we love God, and because God’s love is in us. And when you are full of love, you want to do good work. You want to be loving. You want to be helpful. You want to participate in the Simple Golden Rule of reaching out to others, holding hands with them, giving them assistance, giving them instruction and knowledge, and giving them love in order for you to work together to build something bigger than anyone can do on their own. That’s what good work is. It’s putting into practice the Simple Golden Rule. Some people do good works in order to earn a place in heaven or to earn a better position in heaven. I would like to be standing next to your throne in heaven, oh Lord, what need I do? That was a mistaken question that one of the disciples actually asked Jesus. And Jesus said, Boy, you just don’t get it, do you? And that’s what we’re talking about right now. So our work will be rewarded. We will be recognized. We are building up good karma. But that isn’t the point of it. And it’s not to earn our way, because you cannot earn your way to heaven. And do you know why? Think of heaven as a pure white space. Usually in my illustrations, I depict the God Above All Gods as pure inky blackness, because nothing is there. But I’d like you to, in this illustration, picture it as pure, blinding white light, the light of consciousness, the light of love, pure, unsullied. There aren’t little bits of sin here and there. There’s no dirt. There’s no death. There’s no destruction. There’s no delusion. It’s all pure, all good, as good as something can be imagined. That’s the nature of the God Above All Gods. The reason we can’t earn our way into that heavenly realm is because it’s pure. And we can’t bring our dirt up with us. We need to be cleansed. We need to be pure. But whatever we do to earn good karma is never enough to offset the bad that we do, unthinkingly, or because we don’t seem to have a choice. Example: I have ants coming in the kitchen. I don’t want to kill those ants. They’re Second Order Powers. I really don’t want to kill those ants. It grieves me to have to do so. Another example: I eat food. I don’t want to kill the food that I eat. Those are all Second Order Powers. And not only the animals are Second Order Powers, but the vegetables and fruit are also Second Order Powers. Everything that’s alive is a Second Order fruit from the Fullness of God. But we do need to eat. We are in that position. Here we are in this material world. It is not good. In heaven there is no death or destruction. In heaven we will not kill anything and eat it to stay alive. So everything that is a food animal down here, or a vegetable or a fruit that we have to eat to stay alive, it just stays alive up there. It’s just beautiful gardens and orchards and forests. The lion laying down with the lamb and all of that. There’s no death or destruction in heaven. And above that manifestation level where the Fullness of God lives, the God Above All Gods is that pure, clean, white bliss state of pure consciousness, pure love. So none of that angst about killing the ants or eating the cows or eating the carrots will ever have to go up with us. It has to stop at this material boundary of our cosmos. And the only way that can happen is to be cleansed by the Third Order Powers. They are the purity of God. We need to repent and say, I’m sorry I’m killing those ants. I’m sorry I’m eating that cow. I’m so sorry I’m eating that carrot. We have to repent of all of the things that we do here on Earth in order to be clean enough to go above. So knocking on people’s doors and handing out religious tracts to them and asking them if they know the word of God isn’t going to earn your place in heaven. Even that’s not good enough. It doesn’t erase the bad. We earn too much negative karma to wipe it all out by good deeds. So what we need to do is repent and be redeemed. But back to this meme, “but as for you, be strong and do not give up.” So that is an encouragement message. Don’t give up. We don’t know God’s timing. I always knew I was going to eventually get a PhD, but I was 50 years old by the time I got my PhD. Had I thought that I had to go straight through college and get my degrees all in order so that I could graduate and have a career by the time I was 25 or 30, well then I would have been disappointed. Maybe I would have given up, but I didn’t. I knew it would happen in God’s time. On to the next meme. This one is from 2 Timothy 4:17 and it says, “But the Lord stood with me and gave me strength.” We often feel powerless, huh? The forces in the world are just too big. What can I do about it? But when you invite the Christ in and you look for God’s will in your life and Christ’s will and you begin to employ love and the Simple Golden Rule in your activities, the Lord gives you all of the strength you need. The Third Order of Powers are the most powerful force in the cosmos. We Second Order of Powers are the second most powerful force in the cosmos. The archons are much, much weaker than we are. So if you’re battling evil outright, if you feel as though you’re under archonic attack constantly, the only way you can win that fight is to ask the Christ to take hold of your spirit. And in Christ, you can do all things. It may not be instantaneous. It’s not a magic incantation. You may indeed be granted a miracle, but that’s in God’s control. That’s God’s power. People often try to employ what is called magic against archons. That’s all demiurgic. You’re in the wrong arena if that’s the way you’re approaching power and archons. The way to beat the archons is to move fully into the love of the God Above All Gods, is to invite the Christ and the Third Order of Powers into your body, into your soul, into every one of your cells. And that’s what gives you the strong power. And you know when you’re in God’s will, when you feel the power of God, when you feel invigorated, when you feel energized, enthused. The word enthusiastic means to be filled with God. That is how to be strong. And if it’s God leading you to do something, as I believe I’ve been led to share the Gnostic Gospel with you, you don’t give up because it’s not your job to give up. It’s your job to do. There is no try, only do. And it’s not a slog. It’s not a, Oh I’ve got to do God’s will today. No, it’s, Oh what joy! How can I help you? What can I do for you? How can I show love to you? Which brings us to the next meme. Hebrews 13:16 says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Now I don’t particularly like that word sacrifice here because it makes it sound as though you’re earning karma again. And that isn’t quite right. I have pets, right? I have cats and dogs. And I sometimes say to people who don’t have a dog, Get another dog when you’re ready and you’ll have that love again. And they say, Oh no, I want to travel. There’s too much responsibility with a dog. I don’t want to sacrifice time to be with a dog. Well, that is sacrifice when you’re thinking of it like that. But I don’t think of it as sacrifice. I love my dog. There’s nothing I’d rather do than spend time with my dog. There’s nothing I’d rather do than be out walking in the with my dog. There’s nothing I’d rather do than sit with a cat while it purrs. That isn’t a sacrifice. I may be delayed in doing something else, but I’d rather sit with that cat. Or I may have thought I was going to do something else, but the dog wants to go for a walk. I’m going for a walk. It’s not a sacrifice if you love what you do. People are not having children now because they don’t want to sacrifice their single lifestyle and the money. I can get anything I want. I can take care of myself. I can be who I want to be. Well, that’s a very egoistic approach to life. And we aren’t meant here to fluff our egos. We’re meant to be here to love others and to demonstrate our love so that the Demiurge can see that we love each other. The reason we share what we have isn’t because we’re earning those brownie points and erasing bad karma. It’s because we see a need and we automatically want to plug it. We automatically want to fill it. You know how my job here on this podcast is throwing out these Gnostic insights, right? I’m sharing Gnostic insights with you because I want to help you, because I love you. Not because I’m erasing karma. I don’t have a blackboard here in the office with good karma, bad karma on it. I do the same in my daily walking-around life. Even people I don’t know, like if someone’s in the supermarket and they’re puzzled, they’re in the vegetable section and they’re wondering what this is, or what do I do with this, or is this a good melon or not, or how do you tell? I’m that person that’ll walk right up to a stranger and go, Hey, I see that you’re wondering if that melon is ripe. Well, let me show you how you tell. See, you press on this here. See, I always am giving advice, whether it’s asked for or not, whether I know the person or not, because I am moved to do that. It’s an automatic reflex. It’s not something I’ve got to work myself up into, and it’s hard to not give advice. So, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” I think we have time for one more meme here. John 16:33 says,” I’ve said these things to you so that you will have peace in me. In the world you will have distress, but be encouraged. I have conquered the world.” That’s a quote from Jesus directly. So Jesus said he was sharing the words that have come down to us, mainly in the form of the red printed letters in the New Testament. If you go and pick up a Bible and you turn to the back part of the Bible, that’s called the New Testament, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four books that tell the story of Jesus. And there are quotes from Jesus in there. And if you have what’s called a red letter edition of the Bible, they’re in red. So you can actually read through the first four Gospels, read only the red letters, and that’s things Jesus said directly. And so this is one of these things that Jesus said. He said, “I’ve said these things to you so that you will have peace in me. In the world you have distress, but be encouraged. I have conquered the world.” Jesus said this while he was still walking around alive. Jesus claimed that he had conquered the world before his crucifixion and before his resurrection. It was merely the coming into this world, being born as a human, yet fully God. See, the Third Order Powers came into this world in the body of Jesus. He was born in a physical body. He came as a Second Order Power, and that was his genetic inheritance from Mary, his mother. But he also came in as a Third Order Power, and that was his spiritual inheritance from the God Above All Gods. He said he taught us these things so that we would have peace in him, peace in Christ. So we are to have peace no matter the circumstances in which we find ourselves. You know–it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to what happens to you. It’s not what you witness, it’s what you feel, what your emotions are as you witness something. The Demiurge is always trying to rile us up. The job of the archons is to bedevil us and to make us feel horrible, to knock us off our game, to take the love and light out of our lives. The Demiurge wants to bring us down to its level, down to the level of the archons, which is ego, negative emotions, vice, addictions, anger, hatred. That’s all demonic. That’s all demiurgic. Christ said, I want you to have peace in this world, so be encouraged. I have brought you the peace. I have conquered this world. All we need to do is invite the Christ into ourselves. Each of us is made up of the physical molecular body, the molecules and atoms that make up our flesh. That’s the demiurgic level. When we are conceived, the physical level is melded onto our Second Order Powers. Our perfect representation of the Fullness of God is our big S self, and we all have that. We all carry an identical copy of the Fullness of God, but yet we also all have an ego, and that’s related to this physical body we’re born to. It’s also part of our aeonic inheritance. Even the Aeons have egos—every Aeon has a name, which means it’s got a identification. It’s different than its neighbors. It has a place, so it’s in a different place. It’s got a different point of view. It’s a monad. It has a position and a job. It has a function within the Fullness of God. We all have functions within this material cosmos in which we find ourselves, so our job is to fulfill our destiny, is to fulfill our aeonic inheritance, and our Second Order Powers that we were born with become discouraged and distracted and forgetful and deluded because of the Demiurge and the archons. This is why Jesus came and said the things he said. Jesus came and brought the Holy Spirit into the cosmos in order to infuse us with new strength, new power. We’re powering up when we invite the Christ in. We power up to the Third Order of Powers. Okay, let me know what you thought of this episode. I still only hear from two or three of you. Don’t be shy. You can share, especially if you’re struggling. This isn’t a place for perfect people. Christ Jesus was the only perfect human at this point in time. Come and share. Come and tell us what you’re working on, what you’re thinking about, where you’ve been, either publicly under comments or you can send me a private comment through the comments form at gnosticinsights.com. If these Gnostic Insights have been meaningful for you and if you can afford it at all, it would be helpful to the cause. It would be a part of the Simple Golden Rule under assistance to send in five bucks a month or ten dollars a month. That would be helpful. You can click anywhere in this paragraph to go directly to Paypal. Okay, amen to all of this. I look forward to your comments. God bless us all and onward and upward. The Simple Golden Rule Choose amount to donate10.0020.0050.00

How you can help out Say, do you realize that I basically pay for this entire podcast and these books, everything having to do with Gnostic Insights, all by myself? except for some generous contributions from my sister-in-law, Barbara, and my brother, Bill, and a couple of other people who have been sending in donations since the beginning of the podcast. Fortunately, God has blessed me with a very successful Airbnb property, and many people come and enjoy staying here in this cute little village that I live in, in Oregon. That is the method by which God is funding Gnostic Insights.  If you are being touched, if your life is being changed, I’d like to hear about it. I wish you’d send me an email or comments, because whatever you are being blessed with becomes a blessing for other people. If you can contribute financially, that would be helpful. I do have ongoing monthly expenses, such as the cost of the media service that hosts and distributes the podcasts. And nowadays, I am attempting to help the book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, float up into everyone’s awareness. Right now, it’s hard to find that book, because there are so few reviews. So, if you’ve read the book, or started to read the book, or even if you listen to this podcast on a regular basis, you are qualified to leave a review. It doesn’t have to be a long review to say, I never thought much about God or religion, but I’ve found that this material is helping my life. These are very important comments to make, where other people can see them, because that will encourage them to join us here. So, please, make the contribution that you are being moved to make, whether that’s money, one time or monthly, or whether that’s comments at Amazon, or comments here at Gnostic Insights, and at the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. If you click here, a PayPal donation form will pop up. Many of you listen to the podcast only and never visit the website. If you visit the website, the transcripts for all of these podcasts are there, episodes that you can re-listen to, that you can read and contemplate. But all of the material is found in a very clear and simple way in A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. The expenses for getting the book publicized are mounting. Praise God, I have the money because of this Airbnb that I’m running. So, hospitality and housekeeping is my main job, other than putting out these weekly podcasts, writing an article every week, recording it, editing it—you know, I’m a one-person factory here. I can’t afford to hire an editor. I can’t afford to hire a webmaster or podcast producer. I have to figure out how to do all of this on my own. But it would be nice to be able to hire some help. I have hired an illustrator for the children’s book, because I know I can’t illustrate a children’s book. So, that’s one thing I can’t do on my own. It’s really neat that I’ve been given the various gifts that I’m able to do all of these things and put together Gnostic Insights. I believe that this is my purpose in life, finally. And everything I’ve learned, formally and informally, God is using it to put together these broadcasts. I put in an application this week at the Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University in order to teach the Gnostic Gospel. And if they allow me to teach this to their students, then I’m going to be videotaping those lectures. People have often said, hey, you really need to put out more on YouTube. You know, there are some older lectures there on YouTube, both from before the Gnostic days and then after the Gnostic days. The earlier ones are lectures that were given publicly concerning A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. But in the past couple of years, I’ve had occasion to talk about A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. And so, you can find those videos already. This new course I’m putting together will be 10 episodes long. And each one of those can be a standalone YouTube video. Maybe those could be monetized. You know, I don’t like monetizing anything. There are no paywalls here at Gnostic Insights or at the Gnostic Reformation. You don’t have to subscribe with money to hear these podcasts. I’m very glad that you do subscribe and get it as an email, for example, or on your podcast host. But soon people will be able to see it on YouTube. It would be really neat if we, and I say we because you’re part of this effort, if we could afford to have an animator for that show, actually have a video producer that would put together a neat-looking Gnostic Insights series, not simply me sitting there talking to the camera. You know, I see all of this in my head as moving images. I see the movie. I just can’t animate it for YouTube. But if you’re an animator, you could offer to help as your contribution. So, this has been a big long pitch to help with the effort. I think the Gnostic Gospel is a very important message that everyone can use, and we need to put it in front of everyone. They need to be able to come across it when they do searches, and they can’t do that unless you start leaving more reviews, more comments, thumbs up, Like, subscribe, all that stuff. Part of the expense lately has been my decision to purchase professional reviews and have those reviews publicized. One of the reviews I purchased is through Kirkus Reviews, where a good review is highly coveted by authors and publishers. The review was so favorable that Kirkus has chosen the book to be featured as an article in next month’s printed magazine that is distributed to librarians and booksellers. Their sales department then talked me into buying an accompanying marketing campaign to place advertisements on all of their platforms for a couple of months. Here—I’ll read you the Kirkus Review: A 21st-century Gnostic explores the seminal text of her faith in this nonfiction work. “Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of proto-Christianity,” writes Ropp in the book’s introduction, asserting her belief that “it is the true, original form of Christianity.” Focusing on the third- or fourth-century Gnostic work the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices, the author explores an alternative branch of Christianity that was deemed heretical and “wiped out” by Catholicism. In contrast to Roman Catholicism, per Ropp, Gnosticism “encourages a personal relationship with the “God Above All Gods,” eschews hierarchical leadership and rituals, and holds that no church or earthly institution “can give you gnosis” (mystical knowledge). Aiming to “demystify” the “arcane language” of the Tripartite Tractate, as well as to connect the work to the more well-known themes articulated in the Christian New Testament, Ropp systematically walks readers through the major ideas posited in the Gnostic text. Unlike other biblical books, according to the author, the Tripartite Tractate is closer to a philosophical rumination than a collection of myths, as it establishes a thesis about a divine Father before working through the logical implications of that proposition. Ropp’s analytical approach informs her emphasis on applying Gnosticism to modern life, as the author deeply believes that “Gnostic faith is not blind faith but reasonable faith.” Holding a doctorate in classical rhetoric, Ropp is the host of the Gnostic Insights podcast and author of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated (2019). Here, she offers readers a scholarly exploration of the Tripartite Tractate that challenges popular assumptions, such as the claim by many that Gnosticism is a New Age religion. Her academic approach, backed by scholarly references, is balanced by an engaging writing style geared toward readers unfamiliar with the esoteric nuances of Gnosticism. The work’s accessibility is further supported by a lengthy glossary of terminology as well as the inclusion of full-color images, diagrams, and other visual aids. Even readers unconvinced about the veracity of Gnosticism will find a stimulating reflection on the nature of meaning, knowledge, and truth. A well-researched, impassioned case for Gnosticism. [Kirkus Reviews]  Pretty good, huh? Next week I’ll read you some of the other professional reviews. Okay now, let’s get on with this week’s episode. Generation of the Aeons Yesterday I was reading Chapter Three out of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, and the quotes from the Tripartite Tractate are so beautiful. To me, they are indescribably beautiful. It’s hard to imagine who this human was at least 2,000 years ago, who saw all of this, and who wrote all of this down. It is clearly from the God Above All Gods. So, I want to share some of Chapter Three with you today, because it’s really beautiful. This begins on page 25 of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, and it says, We have heard about the Father being indescribable, and about the infinite number of facets that form the body of the Son, and the Totality of the All. But we really haven’t heard much in the way of descriptions of the Son itself. This is because the only way that the Son can be described is through its relationship with the Father, and then through the Aeons. The fractals of consciousness that emerge out of the Son and the All, as we trace the path of emanations flowing out of the inconceivable Father and through the barely conceivable Son, we become more and more concrete in our ability to understand the nature of God. And I’m adding this in to understand the nature of consciousness, because remember, whenever we talk about the nature of the Father emanating through the Son and then through the Totalities, we’re also talking about the emanation of consciousness itself. Back to the book. It is when we enter the realm of the Aeons that we can begin to recognize the panoply of properties of the Father and Son. The Tripartite Tractate says, They were forever in thought, for the Father was like a thought and a place for them. When their generations had been established, the one who is in control wished to lay hold of and to bring forth that which was deficient in the, and there’s a missing word, and he brought forth those, again, missing words, him. But since he is as he is, he is a spring which is not diminished by the water which abundantly flows from it. (Verse 60 of the Attridge and Muller translation.) Generations, as the Tripartite Tractate uses the word, means to create, to generate. Here it’s saying that when the Son was formed, all of the Totalities making up the body of the Son were formed along with him, and their formation or generation did not lessen the Father or subtract anything away from the Father’s essence. The word deficient, as used here, simply means not yet manifest. Deficient can’t indicate any shortcoming or inadequacy because the Son is a complete embodiment of the perfection of the Father, and his Totalities embody the perfect Son. So the passage likely reads, When their generations had been established, the one who is in control wished to lay hold of and to bring forth that which was not yet manifest, and he brought forth those within him. As discussed in the previous chapter, the Tripartite Tractate says of these Totalities, While they were in the Father’s thought, that is, in the hidden depth, the depth knew them, but they were unable to know the depth in which they were, nor was it possible for them to know themselves, nor for them to know anything else. That is, they were with the Father. They did not exist for themselves. Rather, they only had existence in the manner of a seed, so that it has been discovered that they were like a fetus. (Verse 61) And so now in this unfolding process of spreading out the Father’s consciousness, we have these potential entities existing like seeds within the Father. They don’t know themselves, and they don’t know where they are. They don’t realize that they comprise the body of the Son. In that sense, they are like a fetus that is still inside the womb, blissfully sleeping. The Tripartite Tractate says, For that reason the Father had also thought in advance that they should exist not only for himself, but should exist for themselves as well, that they should remain in thought as mental substance, but also exist for themselves. He sowed a thought as a seed of, and there’s some missing words, in order that they might understand what kind of Father they have. (Verse 61 from the translation by Thomason) In other words, the Father wants them to wake up. The Father is spreading awakened consciousness throughout the entire body of the Son. He doesn’t want the All to remain unthinking constituents of the Son. The Father wants them each to have their own existence and their own realizations, their own consciousness, their own self. The Tripartite Tractate describes them as “seeds in need of gaining nourishment and growth and faultlessness.” That’s from verse 62. The Tripartite Tractate says that the first step in bringing awareness to the Totalities was to give them “the perfect idea of beneficence toward them.” This means that even though they didn’t yet know themselves, what they did know was that they were loved. That is all they knew—that they had a benefactor. Someone cared for them and wanted only good for them. The Totalities began to awaken to self-realization because someone loved them. This beneficent thought was their first knowledge. The Tripartite Tractate goes on to say, The one whom he raised up as a light for those who came from himself, the one from whom they take their name, he is the Son who is full, complete, and faultless. He brought him forth mingled with what came forth from him. (Verse 62) This again confirms that the Son coexists with the Father and the Totalities coexist with the Son. “This is not yet his greatness they have received. Rather, he exists only partially in the manner, the form, and the greatness that he is.” The Totalities are waking up in stages. They know they are loved, but they do not know the details of who loves them. As for the parts in which he exists in his own manner and form and greatness, it is possible for them to see him and speak about what they know of him, since they wear him while he wears them, because it is possible for them to comprehend him. He, however, is as he is incomparable.” (Verse 63) In chapter 2, I used the analogy that the Totalities are to the Son as the cells that make up our bodies are to us. We wear them like a garment over ourself, and they wear our eternal self over their little cells. We go everywhere they go, and they go everywhere we go. At this point in their embryonic development, the Totalities have knowledge that there is a mysterious being who loves them, but the Father wants more for them. In order that the Father might receive honor from each one and reveal himself, even in his ineffability, hidden and invisible, they marvel at him mentally. Therefore, the greatness of his loftiness consists in the fact that they speak about him and see him. He becomes manifest so that he may be hymned because of the abundance of his sweetness. (Verse 63) This passage is saying that the manner by which the Totalities become awakened is through the process of praising the Father by singing about the Father’s sweetness to them. In other words, they come to selfhood by giving glory to the Father through song. And just as the admirations of the silences are eternal generations and they are mental offspring, so too the dispositions of the Word are spiritual emanations. (Verse 63) The admirations of the silences, which is to say the quiet glory and kisses exchanged between the Father and the Son, brought forth the generation of the All as their mental offspring. Afterward, the glory and hymns offered up to the Father by the developing Totalities became the dispositions of the Word that conferred upon them a spiritual emanation from the Father by means of his reflected glory pouring over them and bathing them in the Father’s consciousness. Both of them, admirations and dispositions, since they belong to a Word, are seeds and thoughts of his offspring and roots which live forever, appearing to be offsprings which have come forth from themselves, being minds and spiritual offspring to the glory of the Father. (Verses 63-64) Remember, the Father’s consciousness and spirit flow out from him in an unending stream. It is this reflected glory initiated through their singing that disposes the Totalities to grasp their individuality, appearing to be offspring which have come forth by themselves. The passage also says that the Totalities are the Son’s seeds and thoughts and that they will live forever along with the Son. The Totalities of the All are now complete in mind and spirit, possessing the conscious powers of the Son. The Totality of the All, however, remained an indivisible unity. Though now endowed with individual self-awareness, they nonetheless continue to act as a single being, being themselves the Fullness of the Son. The births of his words, his commands, and his members of the All are innumerable and indivisible. He knows them, for they are himself. When they speak, they are all in the one single name. And if he brings them forth, it is in order that they may be found to exist as individual qualities, forming a unity. (Verse 67 from the Thomason translation) This Fullness of God and the progression of consciousness through the Son is found in the New Testament, although its original meaning has been lost. For example, speaking of the Son in the book of Colossians, Paul writes, The Son is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, because in him were created all things in the heaven and on Earth, the visible as well as the invisible, whether thrones or lordships or archons or powers. All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and all things hold together in him. For in him, all the Fullness was pleased to take up a dwelling and through him to reconcile all things to him, making peace by the blood of his cross through him, whether the things on Earth or the things in heaven. (Colossians 1:15–20 out of David Bentley Hart’s translation) And like the son before them, the All began to generate offspring. Quoting again from the Tripartite Tractate, But on the pattern by which he was existing, so are those who have come forth from him, beginning everything which they desire. For this is their procreative power, like those from whom they’ve come. According to their mutual assistance, they assist one another like the unbegotten ones. (Verse 64) This mutual assistance carries forward throughout creation as another as above, so below cooperative pattern, as we shall soon discover when we look at the Simple Golden Rule. As soon as the Totalities of the All came to know themselves and to recognize their own individual identities, each one of the rays birthed a singularity that reflected both the Totality of the All and their own individuality. Now all those who had gone forth from him, that is the Aeons of the Aeons, being emissions born of a procreative nature, also procreate through their own procreative nature to the glory of the Father, just as he had been the cause of their existence. For that which they glorified, they bore. (Verse 67) Father is the ground state; the Son is the first monad of consciousness; the All is the differentiations of the Son; the All becomes self aware and sorts itself into a hierarchy called the Fullness The All’s offspring immediately recognized their self-identities and formed themselves into what is called the Fullness of God, commonly referred to as the Pleroma of God. Pleroma simply means everything that is possible; all possible expressions of consciousness can be found in the Fullness of God. These newly formed Aeons of the Fullness of God quickly sorted themselves into what is called a hierarchy, which is like a pyramidal type of stack with many more units located down at the bottom of the stack and fewer and fewer units as you go higher and higher. In my illustrations, I picture the hierarchy of the Fullness as a pyramidal stack of golden orbs, like cannonballs, with each orb being a particular Aeon. There are more cannonballs on the lower levels and fewer and fewer balls the higher you go up the pyramid. There is a hierarchical principle in Gnosticism that I have identified as the higher the fewer. The Fullness of God is the Holy Spirit of the Father bursting out into individualized, fractal units of consciousness. They sort themselves into a hierarchy of names, positions, and functions. Using that principle, the awakened Aeons of the Fullness of God sorted themselves into positions, places, powers, ranks, stations, and names, indicating that they each had their own point of view and they each had their own place and duty in the hierarchy of heaven. And that, my friends, I’m dropping this in here, was the birth of what is called ego, because ego is not a negative term. It’s merely your position, power, place, rank, station, and name and where you fit into the hierarchy of creation. That is your ego. It identifies you. It’s your self-identity. Our underlying Self is a fractal of the Fullness of God. Our ego is that hierarchical principle that happened up there when the Totalities of the All became self-aware and came to realize their own personal identity. That’s our ego. So we, like the Aeons, because we are fractals of the Aeons, also have a personal identity. As above, so below. Okay, we’re going to stop there for today because that’s about all the time we have. We made it up to page 33 in A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. I say again, the Tripartite Tractate is a beautiful book. People often say it’s the most difficult or one of the most difficult books in the Nag Hammadi scriptures. Not necessarily. I try to explain it as clearly as I can, and I hope you are coming to appreciate it. Let me know if you enjoyed this episode. If you’re listening through the podcast, pop into the website gnosticinsights.com and leave a comment underneath this episode transcript. Or, if you’re listening through Substack, you know you can leave a comment there in Substack. Or, if you’re reading this as an email sent out by Substack, I believe you can click on Comments at the bottom of the email. Love you all. God bless us, and Onward and Upward! Choose amount to donate10.0020.0050.00

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. I thought it would be fun this week to look at some Christian memes that are posted on the internet, little posters with inspirational sayings. I asked for Bible quotes inspirational from Jesus, and what I’m going to do is read you the quote, and I’ll post the meme itself on the transcript of this episode. And I would like to explain to you the Gnostic meaning of each of these memes. So let’s see how this goes. The first one I run across here is from Philippians 4:13, and it says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now Christians generally think of Christ as an exterior force, that Christ is basically the Holy Spirit of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ. And so they picture Jesus being outside them, but very near, someone that you can call to you and pray to, and he knows you, and he will take care of your prayers. Gnostic Christians, on the other hand, have an understanding, a gnosis, that Christ is within us when we accept Christ, when we invite Christ in, because as the Christians always say, Jesus is a gentleman, and he won’t just come plowing into your soul unless you invite him in. So Christians understand that you are asking Christ in, but they don’t understand that he completely takes up residence inside of you. We know that we humans are made up of a spiritual Self, that one Self that is the reflection of the Fullness of God. We all share that in common. It is identical to all of us. Then we share a psychical level, our emotional level, generally what we would call our ego, and that’s our Second Order nature that comes into us and melds to the third part of us, which is our physical body. And our physical body is built from the molecules on up. The physical body is of a demiurgic origin. This is why it has always so many cravings that go against our better judgment, let’s say. We eat too much, we take drugs we shouldn’t, we drink too much, we have sex with strangers or sex outside of marriage. These are physical urges that arise from the demiurgic level because they are embodying and carrying forward the commands of the Demiurge. And that’s the way the Demiurge likes to do things—keep us under control, keep us alienated from our higher Self. So when we invite Christ in—let’s say you’re at a revival or you listen to an old Billy Graham sermon on the radio or you’re reading the book of John in the Bible and you have the urge to invite Christ to take over your life, and that is what it means to invite Christ into your soul—Christ is a different order of powers than we are. We are what’s called Second Order of Powers. The First Order of Powers were the Aeons; we’re the Second Order of Powers. The Third Order of Powers is the Christ. And there is a Third Order Power for every Second Order Power. That’s how it is that Jesus or Christ comes with your face and knows everything about you because Christ is an image of the perfection that you can be. Jesus was the first human that fully embodied the Third Order of Powers. And now it’s your turn… When we invite Christ in, we invite the Christ to take residence in our souls and in our bodies. We invite the Christ’s Third Order Powers to replace our own Second Order Powers because we’re leveling up. We’re leveling up to a more powerful and loving Godly existence when we invite Christ in. You can’t put down various mistakes and cravings and sins in your life just out of striving within your own little Second Order ego because it’s the one that got you in trouble in the first place. You need the higher power of the Third Order to embody you. That is the real meaning of Philippians 4.13. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me because I’m no longer just me and my Second Order body. I have the Third Order within me that has more power than the Second Order and demiurgic body that we are given. The next meme I run across is from 2 Corinthians 12:9 and it says,  “Every weakness you have is an opportunity for God to show his strength in your life. My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The conventional Christian church and especially the hellfire and damnation churches talk about your weakness as depravity and as inherent sinfulness and shame on you. Shame. “Have guilt. Turn to God for that’s your only salvation.” Well yeah that’s kind of correct except for the hell and damnation part and it’s got the whole wrong emotional spin on it. When the egg of my mother was fertilized by the sperm of my father, my earthly parents, I was a pure Second Order Power coming in with all sorts of hope and knowledge—gnosis. It’s inherent in us because we are the children of the Aeons. We are the incarnation here on earth in the material realm of that First Order of Powers, the Aeons, who live in the pure bliss of the ethereal space. But when we come down into this body that starts with that fertilized egg we are bound to the material of the Demiurge and that’s where the weakness leaks into us. It’s from the bottom up. From the top down it’s all God. It’s the Father. It’s the God Above All Gods and it’s our aeonic inheritance. We don’t get our weakness inherently from our fertilized egg and then our embryo grows up and then we’re little babies. We’re not sinful from the get-go. We are purely God-created from the get-go. But we are born into a fallen world run by the god of this world who’s the Demiurge and it has all sorts of traps and snares and temptations designed to pull us down to separate us from the God Above All Gods and the Fullness of God. So I would say, in regards to this meme that I just read, “Every weakness you have is an opportunity for God to show us strength in your life,” I would say it probably reads more like every weakness we gain or every weakness that is thrown into our path, every snare, is an opportunity to show God’s strength because the Father above is infinitely more powerful than the fallen god of this world. Infinitely so. And when we take on the Christ, we invite that power into our fleshly being. So while I may not be able to quit smoking or to stop drinking too much or put down the pornography, whatever the weakness is that has taken hold of you, whether it’s a great weakness, something you feel very ashamed about, or whether it’s a small weakness like gossiping about our neighbors or being short-tempered with our spouse or our children, once we ask the Third Order of Powers to help us, then we have more strength than that weakness brings to us. It’s a mathematical thing. It’s not then a struggle to put those things down. You need to be mindful of the Third Order Powers of the Christ giving you the strength to overcome. All right, what’s the next meme I run across here? Ah, this one is from John 14:6, and it says, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Now, this is generally taken to mean, in the conventional Christian way of thinking about it, that you need to come forward in some sort of revival situation. Revival has to do with repentance. Revival means you’re reviving your soul; you’re coming back to life. You have been dead in sin, and now you are being revived into life, into the life that comes from the God Above All Gods and the Fullness of God, the Aeons. And Jesus said, I’m showing you the way. I am the way. He said, I am the truth. So we can trust what Jesus says. That’s the red letter editions of the classical Bibles. Everything Jesus said was in red. So you can find the way. You can come to the truth by reading the words of Jesus without confusion. And he says, I am the life, and this means the eternal life. Because down here, this material world, as we know, is transitory. This is not our permanent home. So when Jesus speaks of the life, he’s talking about your ethereal, eternal life. And he says, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. So this generally means, as I started to say, that you have a revival situation where you come to Christ and you pray the sinner’s prayer, where you say, I’m a sinner. I’m nothing. I need you, Christ, save me. Okay, that’s basically the sinner’s prayer. And the Christians take this to mean that you have to do it in just that way, that you have to say Jesus was the Christ and Jesus is the way to God. And here’s the thing—if you don’t do that in your revival situation and pray the sinner’s prayer, then you will be eternally damned and you will go to hell and be tortured forever by a supposedly all-loving and all-forgiving God. For some reason, they can’t see the contradiction in that. Here in Gnostic Christianity, we agree that Jesus was the first embodiment of the Third Order Powers and that Jesus shows us the way and that Jesus shows us through his words and the example of his life the power that we can all have by asking the Third Order Powers, by opening up our souls and inviting the Third Order Powers, as exemplified by Jesus, into our souls. You don’t have to say “the Christ.” You can say “Jesus,” because Jesus told us this will do. This is what you need to do. This is why I came. He shows us the way. He tells us the truth. He demonstrates the life through his resurrection after the crucifixion. Now, if you don’t gain that gnosis before you “die,” then you’re going to have a very bumpy ride after you die. You are going to have to account for all of your errors, all of your weakness, all of your mistakes, all of your sins, great and small, and give amends and apologize to everyone whom you injured when you were alive. And there will be no hiding from it. There will be no denying it. You won’t be able to say, oh, I never did that, it wasn’t that way, because here you are face to face now in the ethereal plane, in the in-between place. It’s not all the way up to heaven, because only goodness reaches the Father. Only goodness can regain the ethereal plane, because it’s all good. There is no sin. There’s no death, no destruction, no despair, no sadness on the ethereal plane where the hierarchy of the Fullness of God lives. The Aeons are protected from all of that, and we can’t bring our dirty laundry up there. We can’t bring our bags full of weakness up there. It’s oil and water. They don’t mix. So there is an in-between place that accounts for all of this, where you are face-to-face. And it’s not God punishing you. It’s not the Aeons punishing you. Nobody’s punishing you. It’s you having remorse for what you’ve done and wishing that you had not done these things. It’s a lot better to repent and invite the Christ in before you die, because then, when your body stops functioning and your spirit is released from this bondage of flesh, you won’t have to go through that really horrible experience. You will have been already redeemed through the power of the Christ, because no man cometh unto the Father but by the Christ. The Christ is our correcting algorithm for our second-order Powers. Here’s a meme from Philippians 1:6, and it says, “I’m sure about this, the one who started a good work in you will stay with you to complete the job by the day of Christ Jesus.” So, as I was just saying on the previous meme, when you invite the Christ into your soul, you’re trading the third-order Powers for all the baggage and all the remorse and regret and things that you’ve done. You can pray a blanket prayer to the Christ. You don’t have to be able to remember and enumerate every single bad thing you’ve ever done. You can pray that Christ will remove all of the impurities from your soul, give you new life, give you new power, give you new strength to battle in the never-ending war. And this never-ending war, it’s not against other people. That’s one of the lies of the Demiurge. The news, the social media, the mean people—they are not the object of your never-ending battle. The never-ending battle is with the death and destruction that is brought to us by the Demiurge and his archons. We shouldn’t battle against other people. Our battles are with powers and principalities, archons and the Demiurge. And guess what our armament is? It’s not shaking our fists and shooting off guns or lopping off people’s heads because that’s the wrong target. Those don’t do any good against the archons. Our magic bullet is love. We Second Order Powers were sent into this world to remind the Demiurge of love and the God Above All Gods and the hierarchy and his better Self that is up there. Down here, the Demiurge is the disembodied ego striving for power and control. Up there, it’s love, it’s acceptance, it’s everlasting life and joy. So this is the balance. What would you rather have? Why would you want to be down here in the mud when you can be up there with our Aeonic parents and everybody we’ve ever known and loved with none of the negative baggage, none of the remembrance of slights and harms and insults? They are not our enemy, the other humans or the other Second Order Powers. It’s the principalities and powers of the darkness that are the never-ending war and the only thing that can win is love. The light outshines the darkness. That’s a common metaphor used in Christian talk. You walk into a room and there’s no windows and it’s completely dark inside. It’s all blackness. That’s the world of the Demiurge. But when the light comes in the form of the Christ, he’s this glory beam from above by the God Above All Gods to shine the ethereal light into the blackness, into the darkness. And light drives away dark, doesn’t it? That’s the metaphor. That light is the light of love and life, purity and goodness. Those are our magic bullets. Here’s a meme from Mark 1:17. “Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.” So this is near the beginning of the story of Jesus being on earth and beginning his ministry. And he approaches fishermen who are literally trying to catch fish with nets out of their boat. And he tells them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. This is the true call to evangelism. We are to become fishers of men. We are to throw out our nets of the gospel, our nets of gnosis with the power of love and draw them into the boat of salvation, you might say, or draw them into the boat of gnosis. This is the purpose of Gnostic Insights. I am hopefully one of the fishers on behalf of the Christ to gather people who are out there flopping around in the ocean, wondering which way is up, to remember your gnosis, to change your loyalty from the things of this world that always pass away. All these material possessions that seem so dear to us, they will crumble with time. They will turn into rust and dust and completely disappear, and to trade them in. That’s what repentance is: turning away from the material world. And then the redemption—that means buying us back, when we trade the material world for the ethereal plane. Here’s a meme from Matthew 5:16 that says, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” We are to let our light shine forth. Let your love flow, remember that song? like a mountain stream, and let your love shine through all living things. So we’re to let our light shine forth. We’re to walk around like beacons of light and share it with other people. They should be able to see on our faces that we are embodying the Third Order of Powers. We don’t go around all gloomy and angry. We don’t slump around and complain about everything. We are thankful that we have the Third Order within, that the Christ came to earth in the form of Jesus, and that we have accepted that, and that we now remember the gnosis that we were born with, and we become like the smile on a newborn baby’s face. We return to our innocence. We don’t do good works in order to be saved. That is an error in many Christian denominations. They have the feeling that if you work on behalf of God, if you set up your booth down in the county park and you hand out your tracts, or you walk around and knock on doors, have you heard the word of God today? and then you hand them a tract. That is not the good works. The good works is when you are full of love, when you are full of the knowledge of God, then you will naturally perform good works. We’re not being saved from hell and damnation. We’re being saved out of the sadness and despair of this world that we are yoked to. And when we have that gnosis, when we understand that we are part of the ethereal plane, and that we’re just passing through this valley of death, then we can be joyful. We can know the bad doesn’t stick. Yeah, try your best, Demiurge. You’re not getting me today. Then we perform good works because we are driven to do good works, because we want to share the Gnostic gospel with others. And this glorifies the Father in heaven. This glorifies the God Above All Gods when we share because we can’t help but share the light that shines forth from us. Okay, these are just a few of the memes I ran across this morning. Let me know what you think of all of this. I regularly get comments from two or three subscribers. Oh, come on. Let’s hear from the rest of you. Let’s start a conversation here in the comment section. God bless us all. Onward and upward. [Verse 1]There’s a reason for the sun-shining skyAnd there’s a reason why I’m feeling so highMust be the season when that love light shines all around us So, let that feeling grab you deep insideAnd send you reeling where your love can’t hideAnd then go stealing through the moonlit nights with your lover [Chorus]Just let your love flow like a mountain streamAnd let your love grow with the smallest of dreamsAnd let your love show and you’ll know what I meanIt’s the seasonLet your love fly like a bird on a wingAnd let your love bind you to all living thingsAnd let your love shine and you’ll know what I meanThat’s the reason [Verse 2]There’s a reason for the warm sweet nightsAnd there’s a reason for the candlelightsMust be the season when those love rights shine all around us So, let that wonder take you into spaceAnd lay you under its loving embraceJust feel the thunder as it warms your face, you can’t hold back [Chorus]Just let your love flow like a mountain streamAnd let your love grow with the smallest of dreamsAnd let your love show and you’ll know what I meanIt’s the seasonLet your love fly like a bird on a wingAnd let your love bind you to all living thingsAnd let your love shine and you’ll know what I meanThat’s the reason [Chorus]Just let your love flow like a mountain streamAnd let your love grow with the smallest of dreamsAnd let your love show and you’ll know what I meanIt’s the seasonLet your love fly like a bird on a wingAnd let your love bind you to all living thingsAnd let your love shine and you’ll know what I meanThat’s the reason [Outro]Just let your love flow like a mountain streamAnd let your love grow with the smallest of dreams Let Your Love Flow is the title song from the Bellamy Brothers’ 1976 debut album. It was written by Larry E. Williams, a former roadie for Neil Diamond. Let Your Love Flow YouTube video link–Listen Here Choose amount to donate10.0020.0050.00

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation. My brother shared with me this week an article that’s published in Scientific American, and I will post the link to that article here. The article is called, Where Does Consciousness Come From? Two Neuroscience Theories Go Head-to-Head. The subtitle is, Two Leading Theories of Consciousness Went Head-to-Head, and the Results May Change How Neuroscientists Study One of the Oldest Questions About Existence. This was published on April 30, 2025. And I’m not going to share much of this with you, except to say that neuroscientists still haven’t coalesced around one explanation of where consciousness originates, largely because it’s such a hard question to probe with the scientific method. The article says that scientists have landed on two leading theories to explain how consciousness emerges. The first is called Integrated Information Theory, or IIT for short, and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, or GNWT for short. And it says that the frameworks couldn’t be more different, yet they rest on completely different assumptions, draw from different fields of science, and may even define consciousness in different ways. The article goes on to explain that there have been a series of studies trying to decide which of those two theories is the right way to approach consciousness. And despite all of the scientific studies, nothing came to fruition. There were no results that proved either of the two theories. The article says that this type of research will encourage new ways of doing studies, which is to design experiments that have the best chance of distinguishing between theories rather than finding evidence for or against one specific theory. And they explain that it’s very important to understand consciousness because it has, for example, a practical application when you’re dealing with people that are in vegetative states and comas about when to pull the plug, since no sign of consciousness shows up on the brain scans, then they feel the person is dead, even if their body’s alive, and so they pull the plug. But if consciousness is more diffuse than that, it is possible that the people are still alive and conscious, and that their bodies should be kept alive with life support. I went back and looked at our Gnostic Insights articles and episodes to review what we have to say about consciousness. And I must say, there is no better explanation than the Gnostic explanation. And so I’m going to share with you again an episode called The Father of Consciousness, which is essentially the first chapter of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. This episode was originally the first episode of Gnostic Insights that described the rollout of consciousness through all the stages, and you can find it posted at GnosticInsights.com under A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel tab. This would be the first article. We reviewed this article in December of 2022, and it’s time to review it again, because this is the ground state of everything and everything that we believe. It also clears up the what we call the category error of whether consciousness arises from the brain, and which neurons or synapses it’s contained in, and how the network works, which is the materialist scientific approach that isn’t working out, according to Scientific American, versus the idea that consciousness is the pre-existing ground state. Consciousness is the matrix of our entire existence. Materialism itself is debatable, but what we do know is that we’re conscious. Here’s what the Tripartite Tractate has to say about that. As you know, we’ve been looking at the Gnostic Gospel according to the Tripartite Tractate, which is one of the books of the Nag Hammadi scrolls. The Tripartite Tractate is a book that focuses on the origins of our universe and everything in it, including us. So I thought we would look around again today and revisit the Tripartite Tractate and what it has to say about the Father as the first principle of Gnosticism. Philosophers often speak of the hard problem of consciousness. The materialist scientists don’t believe in consciousness. They believe that we are only our physical bodies and that any appearance of consciousness or of a soul is merely a byproduct of physical mechanisms—hormones, atoms moving around, that kind of thing. It seems to me that the soul that people speak of surviving is the consciousness that began with the Father and derives from the Father. And that is why, whenever I discuss the system of consciousness, whether it’s in my earlier philosophy called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything or The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, my prior Gnostic book, it always begins with the Father because the Father is where consciousness resides. The Father is consciousness itself. The Father is another word for consciousness. Then, this entire creation cosmology that’s presented through the Tripartite Tractate and then re-presented again in my books, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated and A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, is the path by which consciousness proceeds out from the Father, through the Son, through the Totalities, and the pleroma of the Hierarchy, and on into the Second Order Powers that populate the Earth. So, this is why we begin with the Father. The Father is the ground state of consciousness and this is why we begin to build out from the Father the flow of consciousness. My Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything book and blog are devoted to the notion of what is called panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness resides in everything. In Gnostic terms, we say that the Father extends His consciousness throughout all living things that populate the cosmos. I like to begin with the cosmos as it unfolded and rolled out. The word for that sort of study is cosmogony, which is defined as the study of the origins of the universe. This makes the most sense to me, to start at the very beginning and then to go through the entire process of how everything came to be and who the principal players are, and then, after that is established, to see how that applies to our lives. Then we can ask, why are we here? Is there a purpose to our lives? How should we live? And after that, we can finally consider the final roll-up of the universe and what happens after we “die.” All of these questions are answered very precisely in the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. This sort of knowledge is known as gnosis. Today we begin at the very beginning, and that has to do with what is called the Father. This story, this cosmogony, begins before the beginning of time, because there was no time before our material cosmos existed. I’m going to compare a couple of different versions of the Tripartite so that we have a fuller picture of the Father. One of the books I’m going to use is the Nag Hammadi scriptures, the one edited by Marvin Meyer, and the translator in this case was a person named Thomassen. The other version we are going to compare it to is the one posted at the Gnostic Society library that you can find at gnosis.org, and this version was translated by Harold Attridge. In the Tripartite Tractate, the introduction says, As for what we can say about the things which are exalted, what is fitting is that we begin with the Father, who is the root of the totality, the one from whom we have received grace to speak about him. (verse 51) Another version says, In order to be able to speak about exalted things, it is necessary that we begin with the Father, who is the root of the All, and from whom we have obtained grace to speak about him. For he existed before anything else had come into being, except him alone. (verse 51) I invite you now to think of the originating consciousness as a vast consciousness which has no place and no time, no history. It is nothing but pure consciousness without thought, similar to what the Buddhists call the Buddha mind. This clear state of pure consciousness is something people try to achieve during meditation, where you can be aware that you are conscious, but you have no particular thoughts or words or images going through your mind. This is the originating Father. The Father has no thought, no images, no structure or form, no thing at all. This pure consciousness is the Father. There is no gender associated with this Father. Calling God “Him” or “Father” is a metaphor. Obviously the Father is not a man with a beard and long robes. The Tripartite Tractate says, Rather he possesses this constitution without having a face or form, things which are understood through perception, whence also comes the title, “the incomprehensible.” If he is incomprehensible, then it follows that he is unknowable, that he is the one who is inconceivable by any thought, invisible by anything, ineffable by any word, untouchable by any hand. He alone is the one who knows himself as he is, along with his form and his greatness and his magnitude. (verses 54-55) So no matter how much we try or science tries or philosophy tries, the underlying consciousness underneath our existence will never be grasped, will never be measured. It cannot be discovered. Which begs the question, if the Father is unknowable, then what are we doing here describing him? If the Father is incomprehensible, then why are we even discussing him? What we are doing here at Gnostic Insights, and what I believe the writer of the Tripartite Tractate was doing, is that we are describing the Father as what is called a first principle. In philosophy, a first principle is a first cause, an origin, from which all else proceeds, and all subsequent arguments are based. First principles are not provable. They are what is called a priori assumptions, upon which all else proceeds. This is why here at Gnostic Insights we spend so much time discussing the Father. The Father is the a priori, the first cause, the uber first principle of all else that follows, not only in a religious sense, but in a cosmogenic sense, as it is the basis upon which everything else may be logically deduced. Now back to the idea of gender. The reason this consciousness is called Father and not Mother has to do with the direction of movement initiated by the Father. The Father is a consciousness that extends outward from itself. It emanates, it does not receive. He extends consciousness. Extension is sometimes translated as will, but it refers to the Father reaching out for what he is driving toward. The Father extends consciousness out from itself as the originating source. In this sense, we can contrast that extension with the concept of female, which is receptive, which is that which takes into itself. The Father gives, the Mother receives. This Father’s basic consciousness is not thoughts, but rather love, the sensation of what we call love. So this consciousness simply is, without time, without any prior existence, unchangeable, unmovable, without beginning or end, utterly quiet, utterly still, utterly alone. This Father is often described as all-knowing, but what is there to know? All-seeing, but what is there to see? All-loving, but what is there to love? Omnipotent wisdom and will, but to what end? There’s nothing there. Quoting the Tripartite Tractate, It is said of Him that He is a Father in the proper sense, since He is inimitable and immutable. Because of this, He is single in the proper sense and is a God, because no one is a God for Him. Nor is anyone a Father to Him, for He is unbegotten, and there is no other who begot Him, nor another who created Him. It is, then, only the Father who is God, in the proper sense, that no one else begot. As for the Totalities, He is the one who begot them and created them. He is without beginning and without end. (verses 51-52) So what this is saying is that other gods with a small g have been created or have been born, but not this one. This is the original God with the big G that no one created. This is the original source. Not only is He without end, He is immortal for this reason that He is unbegotten, but He is also invariable in His eternal existence, in His identity, in that by which He is established, and in that by which He is great. Neither will He remove Himself from that by which He is, nor will anyone else force Him to produce an end which He has not ever desired. He has not had anyone who initiated His own existence. Thus He is Himself unchanged, and no one else can remove Him from His existence and His identity, that in which He is, and His greatness, so that He cannot be grasped. Nor is it possible for anyone else to change Him into a different form or to reduce Him or alter Him or diminish Him. (verse 52) The other translation reads very much like that. He is without beginning and without end, for not only is He without end, being unborn makes Him immortal as well, but He is also unchangeable in His eternal being, in that which He is, that which makes Him immutable, and that which makes Him great. (verse 52) Of course, immutable means can’t be mutated, can’t be changed. He does not move Himself away from what He is, nor can anyone else force Him against His will to cease being what He is, for no one has made Him what He is now. End quote. In other words, God cannot change His character, His nature, He will not change His mind, His principles and His values will never change, and He can’t be destroyed or added to. (verse 52) God is not dead, in other words. As an aside, I’m reminded of the Hadron Particle Collider located in CERN, Switzerland, the largest and most complex machine on Earth. The function of the Hadron Particle Collider is to crash elemental particles into each other, trying to split them into smaller and smaller pieces, trying to break particles into the smallest possible particle. And in fact, what the Hadron Collider has been trying to do for the last number of years is to fire particles at each other with such great force and speed that they break into the essential particle of the universe that they like to call the Higgs Boson or the God Particle. They are literally looking for the God Particle. And indeed, exactly 10 years ago to the day, July 4th, 2012, scientists declared that they had found the God Particle. Now, what we’ve just read in the Tripartite Tractate is that the Father cannot be broken up into smaller pieces. God is immutable. He is indiscoverable in the sense that the scientists are trying to discover Him. So we would have to make a prediction that these particle accelerators and particle colliders will not be able to find a God Particle because He is not discoverable. Now, they may have found the Higgs Boson, but you see, God itself is not physically discoverable in that sense. It cannot be broken down into smaller pieces. And it seems to me that this is what this next paragraph is talking about. Therefore, neither does He change Himself, nor will another be able to move Him from that which He is, from what He is, from His way of being, or from His greatness. Thus He cannot be moved, nor is it possible for another to change Him into a different form, either by reducing Him, or changing Him, or making Him less. For this is truly and veritably how He is unchangeable and immutable, being clothed in immutability. Thus He is called without beginning and without end, not only because He is unborn and immortal, but also because just as He is without beginning, He is also without end. In this manner of being, He is incomprehensible in His greatness, inscrutable in His wisdom, invincible in His might, and unfathomable in His sweetness. (verse 52-53) We can conclude from this description that if humanity manages to destroy the Earth by way of a worldwide nuclear war, let’s say, or aliens come and blast us to pieces like the Death Star, the Father would still be unchanged. The Father would still exist underneath it all without having been affected. The material world cannot affect the Father. So if the entire universe ceases to exist, the Father is still there underneath it all. So it may be that we can destroy ourselves, we could destroy our planet, we can destroy our galaxy, we can destroy the entire universe, but we certainly cannot destroy the Father. Carrying on, In the true sense, He alone, the good, unborn, and perfect Father who lacks nothing, is complete, filled with everything He possesses, excellent and precious qualities of every kind. Moreover, He has no envy, which means that all He owns He gives away without being affected and suffering no loss by His gifts. For He is rich from the things He gives away, and finds rest in what He graciously bestows. (verse 53) The other translation says that The Father is unfathomable in His sweetness, in the proper sense. He alone, the good, the unbegotten Father, and the complete perfect One, is the One filled with all His offspring, and with every virtue, and with everything of value, and He has more, that is, lack of any malice. (verse 53) The book goes on, He is of such a kind, and form, and great magnitude, that no one else has been with Him from the beginning. Nor is there a place in which He is, or from which He has come forth, or into which He will go. Nor is there a primordial form, which He uses as a model, as He works. Nor is there any difficulty, which accompanies Him and what He does. Nor is there any material, which is at His disposal, from which He creates what He creates. Nor any substance within Him, from which He begets what He begets. Nor a co-worker with Him, working with Him on the things at which He works, to say anything of this sort, is ignorant. Rather, one should speak of Him as good, faultless, perfect, complete, being Himself the totality. (verses 53-54) So, if we’re going to think about our modern physics again, and cosmology, and if we think there are multiverses, that is, we’re just one universe in a sea of other universes floating in this great pool, this Father that we’re describing would be back before all of that. He is not the Father of our universe alone. He is the Father of the entire sea within which all things float. Everything comes out of Him, and He exists before all of that. Carrying on, There is no name that suits Him among those that may be conceived, spoken, seen, or grasped, however brilliant, exalted, or glorious it is, to be sure. But the way He is in Himself, His own manner of being, that no mind can conceive, no word express, nor see, and nobody to touch, so incomprehensible is His greatness, so unfathomable His depth, so immeasurable His exaltedness, and so boundless his extension. (verse 54) Here at Gnostic Insights, we say that although the Father cannot possibly be grasped, we all possess a sense of Him, for we all contain the one seed of His consciousness. The Father wished to be known, to know and to be known, to love and to be loved. Therefore, the Father has provided us a cookie trail to follow in our quest for Gnosis. It is said that we use these words of praise or glory to the extent that we, the ones who speak, are capable, but they fall far short of actually describing what is the Father. The Tripartite then goes on to say, And since He has the ability to conceive of Himself, to see Himself, to name Himself, to comprehend Himself, He alone is the one who is His own mind, His own eye, His own mouth, His own form, and He is what He thinks, what He sees, what He speaks, what He grasps Himself, the one who is inconceivable, ineffable, incomprehensible, immutable, while sustaining joyous, true, delightful, and restful in that which He conceives, that which He sees, that about which He speaks, that which He has as thought. He transcends all wisdom and is above all intellect and is above all glory and is above all beauty and all sweetness and all greatness and any depth and any height. (verse 55) So this is my description of the Father prior to conceiving of the Son. These are descriptions out of the Tripartite Tractate of the Father, also known as the God Above All Gods. You can see for yourself that these descriptions of the Father are not the same as the descriptions of God in the Bible. The God of the Old Testament is personified. The God of the Bible is someone who can sit and have a discussion with people at a campfire or speak out of the middle of a burning bush. Our Gnostic God exists prior to all of that and is greater than all of that. This God is not in a personified form, walking around on the Earth or floating just above the Earth looking down upon us. This Father is the gigantic, illimitable consciousness that underlies everything. This is an entirely different type of being than the God of the Old Testament, known as Jehovah. That personified character of Jehovah arises much later in the creation story than we are right now. But this is the beginning. This God Above All Gods is the only goodness, joy, sweetness, true and delightful God. It is not a warlike or a jealous God. It does not send people into battle or kill the firstborn of the entire Egyptian nation. This God, as you can see, is qualitatively different than that. For now, thank you for spending this time with me. God bless, and Onward and Upward! If you are discovering your gnosis through these Gnostic Insights, please step up and donate to the cause of spreading the word to others. This will be a blessing to all of us. I’ve been having no end of trouble with the PayPal interface, despite hours spent on trying to fix the PayPal button with tech support’s help. I think it’s probably best to use the Donations Box interface instead. Or, if you need to use PayPal, go to your PayPal site and initiate a donation from there… thank you!

Today’s episode will discuss the difference between ego and Self. These terms are often used interchangeably, but at least as far as I use them in my writing, the ego is very much different from what we call the Self, and that’s a Self with a capital S. This episode reviews a couple of articles from the Simple Explanation blog from 2018 and 2019 during the time period I began realizing my gnosis and before launching this Gnostic Insights podcast. A version of this episode was first broadcast in 2021. This episode clears up some confusion about our various sub-selves. We are not just one big clump of consciousness but are made up of different sub-selves. In other words, who are you? When you say “I” what is that I? Who is that me? What is the difference between your ego and your Self or what people call your soul and spirit? Who runs the show? What’s the difference between being selfish and selfless? How is ego related to selfishness? And finally, is having a strong ego a bad thing? According to the Simple Explanation, our bodies are comprised of countless units of consciousness that are all working to keep us alive. Every particle and molecule, every cell and body organ from your skin on in works to keep you alive and functioning. Every piece of you knows how to do its job, and all of your pieces coordinate their work to keep you up and running. In Gnostic terms we say that these units of consciousness are all Second Order Powers from the Fullness above. At least, that’s true of the living, meat portion—the cells, the body organs. Below that the particles, molecules, elements, and minerals are not independently conscious—they are extensions of the Demiurge. They lack life. The Demiurge controls and runs the material portion of our cosmos, but the cells on up are part of our Second Order Powers that bring life into the universe. When any part of you breaks down and no longer does its job, it either has to be replaced by fresh parts through cell regeneration or by other means, like surgery. When major body parts fail, your physical body dies. This article that I’m reading from has a diagram of a pyramid, and the pyramid is broken down into the ascending order of the hierarchy, up from the material particles of the Demiurge, on up through the cells and you, and then on up through the Father in Heaven. It’s a meta-diagram of existence that shows how your body is comprised of countless units of consciousness that work to keep your body alive and running smoothly. We 2nd Order Powers are melded to the demiurgic material below us and are infused with life from above You are not only that sole person you usually identify yourself with, but you are also every particle, molecule, cell and organ that makes up your body. The ego is the mind that arises from and watches over the trillions of parts that make up your physical body. The ego is only aware of the needs of your body, not the needs of others. Our egos are inherited from the Aeons that make each of us a unique individual. You see, Aeons also have egos. The Tripartite Tractate says that the Aeons awakened to themselves by giving glory as One to the Father because it was the Father’s will that every unit of his consciousness should be self-aware. When the Aeons awakened to themselves they sorted themselves into a hierarchy of names, stations, positions, and duties. This identity within the Hierarchy of the Fullness is their Aeonic ego. Ego is not a negative term; it is only a signifier of who, how, and where they fit in with their neighboring Aeons. Their egos are their identities. We also gain our personal identity by way of our egos because that is what differentiates us from our shared and identical Selfs. It is our ego that bears our inherited and individual personality and talents, and we are each unique because we are each a unique combination of the Aeons that make us up. Where our egos run into trouble is that, unlike the Aeons, we are plugged into this Demiurgic, material cosmos. This environment affects our otherwise pure, Aeonic inheritance with vices and other memes we pick up along the way and by the karma of our actions in this world. Our egos become shrouded by a collections of memes and karma that confuse us and throttle back our ability to connect with the Father and our Self. The memes we hold onto and our karmic record continually loop around and feed into our choices in the here and now. The Self, on the other hand, is a singular unit of consciousness attached to your body, like the Raja riding atop an elephant. Unlike the ego, the Self identifies with the Universal Unit of Consciousness rather than with the body, and in Gnostic terms we would call that the Fullness of God. The Self is a perfect singular fractal of the Universal Unit of Consciousness and is oriented to the universe at large. After much contemplation and discussion with my brother, Bill, we have identified this Universal Unit of Consciousness to be identical with the Son of God. In Gnostic terms, the Son is the first extension of the originating Source of Consciousness known as the Father. And while the Father is illimitable and unapproachable, the Son is a monad who brings that consciousness forward out of the Father and into a form we can begin to relate to and understand. It is the Son who differentiates into variables and individuated thoughts and plans. Your Self is interested in others and works according to the Simple Golden Rule. We have discussed the Golden Rule many times here at Gnostic Insights. You can review all of the seminal articles of the Gnostic Gospel at the homepage for Gnostic Insights under the tab “A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.”  If you are new to Gnostic Insights, I urge you to either buy the book or go to the tab to learn the terms we use here, including a full discussion of the Simple Golden Rule. Briefly, the Simple Golden Rule is reaching out to others with information, with assistance, and with love to build something together that no one can build on their own, working together on a single project that forms the next level up. The Simple Golden Rule The reason your ego appears so selfish is that it is entirely concerned with you and your body’s needs. The ego functions at your organ level of consciousness. The ego helps you to translate the body’s physical needs into action. The body’s organ systems have their own mind, and that mind is your ego. Does your sexual organ system want sex? The ego will bring that about in the most selfish way. Does your digestive system want food? Your ego will make sure it gets food in the most selfish way possible. Does your nervous system crave excitement and stimulation, or perhaps quiet and rest? Your ego will make sure it gets it. The ego’s job is to care for and to feed the body whatever it wants, and too bad for everyone else. That’s their own ego’s job, to take care of their needs, not yours. The Self, on the other hand, is other-oriented. The Self reflects a character of love called agape in Greek, or godly love. The Self, as I mentioned earlier, is like the raja sitting atop the elephant. It is not the elephant and all of its moving parts, but rather a singular unit of consciousness, me, I. The Self is a perfect fractal of the Universal Unit of Consciousness that ties our entire universe together into one organism. Your Self is akin to a single cell of the universe itself. Your Self‘s job is to connect to others following the law of the Simple Golden Rule. And again, this is the Simple Golden Rule, which states that in order for units of consciousness to join and work together for the greater good, they need relevant information, they need to be willing to channel coherence from the metaverse, and they need to love one another. Selfless love comes from your Self fractal, which is a perfect reflection of the Universal Unit of Consciousness—the Son. We can also think of the Self fractal as the pleroma of the Father, or the Fullness of God. This is the true meaning of being created in God’s image. The Self‘s job is to reach out to others with information, assistance, and love in order to work together to build something greater than oneself. This is the Simple Golden Rule, and it applies to everything in our universe. It is the hierarchical rule that holds us all together, interlocking with one another, and working as a single, gigantic organism. Even at the particle and molecular level, the Demiurge holds material together according to the Simple Golden Rule but he doesn’t remember where the Rule comes from. He thinks he is the originator and there is no other god above him. Selfish love comes from your ego, which is a byproduct of your body’s organ systems. The ego’s job is not to reach out to others, but to take the best possible care of you and your body. Its focus is on you, not others. Romantic love arises from this organ-level ego. Your ego feels good when someone else pays attention to you, and your ego wants to spend more time with them. Casual sex is an activity arranged by the ego at the sexual organ level, with no strings attached. Ego’s job is self-centered. A strong ego reflects the intensity of your body’s needs. A weak ego is less aware of the body’s needs. Selfishness without awareness arises from the ego. The ego is amoral other than taking care of its primary duty of taking care of you. Spiritual teachings emphasize dethroning the ego from the top of the elephant and placing God on the throne instead. In truth, the Self may continue to sit on the throne atop the elephant because the Self is a pure reflection of God, and, as a reflection of God, it is inherently selfless and loving. Using analogical reasoning, our universe is a reflection of the collective choices, that is the karma and the memes, the beliefs and narratives, of every entity in the universe. The personality most humans refer to as God also reflects this universe’s karmic record and memes, as it organizes and instantiates those patterns on behalf of creation. This God is not identical to the Metaversal Universal Consciousness or the God Above All Gods because of its necessary involvement with this material universe. And in Gnostic thought, this god of our universe that we are referring to is called the Demiurge. The Demiurge is the creator and god of our material universe, whereas the Metaversal unit of consciousness—the God Above All Gods and Father of the only Son—exists in a limitless, undifferentiated state of pure consciousness unaffected by the affairs of this universe. So, if you would like to behave like a less selfish person, that is, if you would like to put others’ needs ahead of your own from time to time, you need to realize that your ego is only looking out for number one. The good news is that your big S Self is way more powerful than your ego. The struggle is not among you and God and the devil. Your struggle is between your Self and your ego. You must realize that your Self already reflects all of the characteristics of the Father above, including loving, selfless behavior. So, don’t let your body’s meat dictate your actions. And that is the end of that article. It’s written in Simple Explanation terms from before I began writing and speaking about the Gnostic Gospels. Now, here is kind of a version of that same information, but with more Gnostic terminology. This is from an article I wrote on the Simple Explanation blog in February 1, 2019, and it’s called, The Simple Gnostic Gospel Answers Why Is There Suffering in the World? The article, introduces the notion that the Nag Hammadi scriptures were buried in an earthen jar in the Egyptian desert and rediscovered in 1945. The Nag Hammadi scriptures are among other Gnostic Gospels that were edited out of the Holy Bible during the fourth century in a move to restrict Orthodox belief. In simple terms, early church fathers purposefully detached the Gnostic memes from inclusion in their Christian meme bundle. The Simple Explanation has been carefully illuminating one of these rediscovered books in particular, the Tripartite Tractate, in an effort to demystify the Gnostic Gospel by applying principles of the Simple Explanation to its interpretation. This new Simple Illumination answers many of our most basic theological conundrums, such as why is there death, why does God allow evil in the world, and the subject of this article, why is there suffering in the world? The article then runs through a brief version of the cosmology of the universe, which is explained in depth in the first eight episodes of the Gnostic Insights podcast, which I urge you to listen to before delving into these sorts of articles now that we’re discussing. It is this understanding of gnosis that gave rise to my books, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated and A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. This world in which we dwell is a temporary home. We are born into it and we die out of it. Our time here is limited. The Tripartite Tractate refers to our world as an economy, meaning a closed operational system of value and exchange. The resources of this world’s economy are limited because we live in a bounded space. Those of us who live in this economy find ourselves in continual struggle with others over limited resources. Our continual struggle to get what’s coming to us feels like an endless war. We fight this battle against others and within our own egos. Various Gnostic Gospels refer to this particular struggle within ourselves as those on the left and those on the right. The values of the left are called the imitation, whereas the values on the right are the values of the Father or the Fullness of God. So the values on the left are all about material dominance, whereas the values on the right are psychical or psychological and spiritual. This chart appears in my books, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated and A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. The values of the Demiurge lead to isolation and despair. The values of the Fullness lead to peace and joy. The values on the left are also referred to as vices, whereas the values on the right are referred to as virtues. The heavenly beings that came before us and live in the place called the Fullness of God are known as Aeons and also the First Order of Powers. We, the Second Order of Powers, were fashioned after the traits of the Aeons. Whereas the Father and Son are immutable and indescribable, the Aeons of the Fullness have awakened to themselves and, taken as a whole, are no more and no less than the sum of all the traits of the Father of the All, broken out and individually named. As their descendants, we are naturally attracted upward, yet because we live in the deficiency and struggle against the shadows of the imitation, we are unprepared to go home. We were given a desire for the things of this world, with the intention that it should draw them into a communion with the material. This was in order to provide them with a structure and a dwelling place, but also in order that, by being drawn toward evil, they should acquire a weak basis for their existence, so that, instead of rejoicing unduly in the glory of their own environment, and thereby remaining exiled, they might rather perceive the sickness they were suffering from, and so acquire a consistent longing and seeking after the One who is able to heal them from this weakness. (That is from the Tripartite Tractate, verses 98 and 99). The idea behind that quote is that this is a sad and fallen world, and we are able to recognize its sadness, its disappointments, its death, so that we will not cling tenaciously to this sad, material world. We have been given an insight with the idea that there must be something better. Surely this can’t be all there is. I call it longing for the pleroma. That is the consistent longing and seeking after the One who is able to heal us from this weakness. If a person is a highly successful materialist, they really have little reason to look upward toward the pleroma for salvation. They think they’re doing just fine. They’re acquiring their billions and billions of dollars. They’re acquiring their great power as a politician. This is why the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This is why the meek will inherit, because those who already have strength from the left side of the ledger through power and dominion prosper in this material world. They don’t want or believe they need salvation. I’m thinking now of the social media world that we are living in, and how social media seems to be to pushing us apart rather than bringing us together. The mission of social media is not to embrace us in love. It’s not to employ the Golden Rule. It’s to mobilize and weaponize the values on the left side of the list in order to push us apart, divide and conquer. I mean, take a look at the left side of the list and tell me if it doesn’t sound like social media: hateful, spiteful, impatient, wrathful, greedy, vainglorious, cruel, ruthless, angry, resentful, rebellious, rude, obstructionist, despairing, depressed, thoughtless, greedy, envious. These are the values exemplified by social media and the endless selfies posted there. The values on the right are the values of the Fullness of the pleroma of God. Listen to them read in a row. Loving, patient, generous, glorious, gracious, merciful, forgiving, welcoming, respectful, cooperative, free, hopeful, joyful, truthful, orderly, prudent, logical, charitable, kind, empathetic. It doesn’t sound like what we see on social media or in the news. The values on the right side of the list are the values of the capital S, Self. And our Self is a fractal of the Universal Unit of Consciousness. It is a fractal of the pleroma or Fullness of God. It is the values of the Aeons. The values on the left, or the vices on the left, are the values of the Fall, of the imitation, of the deficiency. And it is the struggle between ego and Self, between vice and virtue, between selfishness and selflessness that is the battle we fight in this life of ours at the psychological level. This is the result of the Fall of Logos. When Logos was sitting up there on top of the Hierarchy of the Fullness of God, it was all about Self, with a capital S. It was all about full cooperation and the Golden Rule and glorifying the Father. Then came the egoic move of Logos. That was the sin of Logos. It was ego that caused the Fall. It was when Logos left off from being selfless and part of the Fullness of God and overreached. Logos dreamed up his own agenda and thought he could plug directly into God and become One with the Father that caused the Fall. The Fall was caused by ego. After the Fall that caused this material existence, all that remained down below was the left side of the list—the egoic reaching for the stars of Logos. And it is the redemption of the Demiurge—the ego of Logos—back into the Fullness of God that will be the redemption for the entire cosmos in which we dwell. The redemption of ego ushers in the next level of our existence, which will be that Paradise that we all dream of. What the Father wants for all of us is that we would remember the Father and love each other and ourselves. The Father wants us to cooperate with each other by instantiating the Simple Golden Rule of giving information, assistance, and love to our families, neighbors, workmates, and friends both near and far. In this way we manifest the love of the Father in our fallen world. Through this giving of love we receive love and glorify the God Above All Gods. Onward and upward! And God bless us all! The children’s book is coming along great. We’re about 2/3 of the way through the illustrations. The book is a very simple presentation of the Gnostic Gospel aimed for the understanding of 4—10-year-olds, so anyone will be able to grasp this gnosis. That’s our goal here—to demystify gnosis so everyone can remember the gnosis we were born with. The double-page spread below depicts the fractal nature of Logos as him building a scale model of Paradise with the Aeons looking on with approval. What do you think? Logos builds a fractal model of Paradise I worked for hours and hours this week trying to fix the PayPal button which has been broken for who knows how long? Thankfully, one of our most loyal followers of Gnostic Insights tried to donate money last week and discovered the malfunctioning button. How about you donate a small amount this week to test that button? It will go toward paying the illustrator for the children’s book. Thank you! Try clicking on this paragraph, which is a different way to access PayPal.