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A Gnostic Commentary on Bertrand Russell's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

A few days ago my brother shared a thoughtful essay with me, written by Maria Popova, called “The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior.” Popova’s essay praised Bertrand Russell’s acceptance speech for his 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature. Russell could easily be called the foremost philosopher and all-around intellect of his day. Russell’s acceptance speech, which can be read in full in the book “Nobel Writers on Writing,” is considered one of the finest speeches ever delivered on the human condition.

My brother Bill and I spent some time discussing Popova’s essay and the four points put forth in Russell’s speech. We noted that the topics of the talk covered concepts explained in my own Gnostic studies, which I will now share with you. Ah, if only we could have sat and conversed with Russell face-to-face! Perhaps we shall do so someday in Paradise. In the meanwhile, this article will cover Russell’s points and give you enough Gnostic cosmology to understand my response.

In his acceptance speech, Russell claimed that desire is the primary motivator of all human activity. He then outlined four specific desires that cause people to behave the way they do: acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power.

Regarding acquisitiveness, Russell concluded that, “However much you may acquire, you will always wish to acquire more; satiety is a dream which will always elude you.” From my Gnostic perspective, we can never be satisfied with what we have because no matter how much we have it falls short of our riches in Paradise. In fact, this cosmos in which we dwell is actually called “The Deficiency” by neo-Gnostics such as myself. Let me explain.

According to the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi scriptures, we humans, as well as all other lifeforms, were placed here on Earth to bring light and life to the Deficiency. The Deficiency, which is to say our 3-dimensional time-bound, material universe, came about as the result of a Fall from another dimension called The Pleroma, or The Fullness. The Pleroma is the home of the first created entities known as “aeons.”

In order to understand humanity, we must first understand the aeons. In the very beginning, there was only consciousness, known as the Creator, or “The Father.” Then consciousness had a thought, and this thought created an offspring referred to as “The Son.” This Son contained all of the attributes of the original consciousness, but in a limited form—the way a bucket dipped in the ocean contains a sampling of the ocean. The moment the Son arose from the Father, the Son had thoughts of its own. Each thought of the Son was its own discreet slice of the Son, and the sum total of all of these slices equaled the totality of the Son. These slices are the attributes called “aeons.” Some aeons are personalities, some aeons are formulae, some aeons are forces. Together, all of the aeons add up to the original Son, itself a constrained form of the infinite Father.

Prior to the Fall, the aeons of the Fullness sat in perfect equilibrium in their hierarchy of ranks, stations, and names.  As facets of a single entity, they were a congress of one accord, meaning they agreed on everything and they cooperated together while they dreamed a shared dream of Paradise. 

Like the Son of which they were a part, the aeons of the Fullness manifested wisdom, which is the ability to reason with logic and prudence. The aeons also arose with a thirst to seek after the originating consciousness of their Creator and a desire to remain aligned with the Father’s Will. And finally, the aeons were all creative geniuses, able to dream up a fully functioning mental Paradise where whatever they willed in the Father’s name happened. In this manner, they designed a blueprint of our universe.

In their desire to give glory to the Father, that is, to remain aligned with the will of their Creator, aeons of the Fullness followed these three, simple rules:

1. Give glory to the Father, not to the Fullness. Aeons were to remain aligned with the Son and not shift their focus to the Fullness as a whole.

2. Give glory to the Father, not to individual aeons. Aeons were to remain always mindful of the Father and not to give glory to themselves or their talented individual neighbors.

3. Give glory to the Father to the best of your own ability. An aeon was to give glory from its own location in the hierarchy. They were not to sidle up next to an aeon who appeared closer to the Father in order to borrow that aeon’s station to give better glory. Rather, the individual was to develop its own voice and talents.

The highest aeon in the hierarchy of the Fullness carried within itself all of the attributes of all of the other aeons. It was a perfect, fractal representation of the entire Fullness. According to the Tripartite Tractate, this final aeon beheld its own glory and mistook itself for the entire Fullness. This aeon then tragically launched itself out of the Fullness in an attempt to reunite with the Father’s originating consciousness. As this reunification was not possible, the aeon Fell and fractured into pieces. It is these small pieces of the Fallen aeon that seeded our material Universe.

“Thus, the free will with which the members of the ALL had been born caused this one to rush forward to give glory to the Father” on its own.  “And before he had yet produced anything to the glory of the Will and in the union of the members of the ALL, he acted presumptuously, out of an overflowing love, and rushed forward toward that which surrounds the realm of perfect glory.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 76]

In modern terms, we could say that the aeon fell from the imaginal realm into another dimension. Alone in that new dimension, the talents, personalities, and algorithms of the aeon disintegrated and formed the raw ingredients of our material universe.

The Fallen one imagined it could singlehandedly build the Paradise dreamt by the Fullness because it understood all of the plans and possessed all of the necessary talents. However, without the willing support of the Fullness, its constructed Universe fell short of actualizing the Paradisal blueprint.

“What issued from his presumptuous thought and his arrogance had existed from something that itself was deficient; because of that, what was perfect in him left him and went upward to his own” in the Fullness, leaving the “sicknesses” behind in the darkness. [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

“From the faltering and division came oblivion and ignorance of oneself and of that which is.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 77]  Presumptuous thought and arrogance replaced wisdom.

No, we humans are not these blind, fallen phantoms that arose from the broken body of the aeon. We are the offspring of the aeons who remained in the Fullness, sent here to clean up the mess from the Fall. We “Second Order Powers” were sent to Earth to overthrow what had come into existence from the Fall. By sheer profusion of diversity, the cosmos came to be populated with Second Order Powers who each remembered Paradise, the Fullnesses, and their Creator.

Unfortunately, this material realm has the profound effect of causing us Second Order Powers to forget our origins and our mission of redemption. Instead, we find ourselves constantly doing battle with the Deficiency on all levels--physical, spiritual, and emotional--and, due to the Law of Mutual Combat, we have taken on many of the characteristics of the Deficiency, forgetting all about the job we were sent here to do.

That is Gnostic cosmology in a nutshell. I urge you to read my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated," for an easy-to-follow explanation.

Now, back to Bertrand Russell’s acceptance speech.

Regarding acquisitiveness: Because this material plane was created as the result of the aeon’s Fall as it was reaching for the realm of perfect glory, the bits and pieces that form our universe carry within their essence the desire to reach upward for glory. Which is to say, they always want more. And, because these bits and pieces originated within a perfect dream of Paradise, whatever the phantoms build here on this fallen plane fails to satisfy. Likewise, we Second Order Powers, trapped in this Endless War with the Deficiency, have our own dim remembrance of Paradise that causes us to be disappointed in the things we acquire here in this material realm.

Russell’s next human desire is rivalry, which is even stronger than acquisitiveness. Rivalry, as Russell used it, is more than competition—it is the desire to bring ruin upon one’s competitors. We can easily see this desire to destroy the Other in the hateful politics gripping the world today. Said Russell,

“The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.”

This drive to bring ruin to others reflects, in Gnostic terms, the antithesis of love. Rather than reflecting the abundance of love that first motivated the Fallen one to forget its neighbors in the Fullness and rush upward to glory, the Fall produced shadows of the traits of the Fullness and this aeon, so that the heavenly virtues of the Fullness were inverted and only vices remained here below in the shadows. 

“Those who came into being from the presumptuous thought resemble in fact the Fullnesses of whom they are imitations, though they are phantoms, shadows, and illusions, deprived of reason and light, belonging to this empty thought, being nobody’s offspring.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

Vanity is the next vice addressed by Russell. Popova points out in her essay that our culture’s excessive social media narcissism is a newly enhanced development of Russell’s observations about vanity. As Russell noted,

“Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying “Look at me.” “Look at me” is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It can take innumerable forms, from buffoonery to the pursuit of posthumous fame.”

This vanity, in Gnostic terms, arises from the “presumptuous thought” that drove the aeon’s Fall in the first place. The Fallen one beheld its own beauty and decided that itself was all that mattered. The shadows and phantoms that arose from the aeon’s ashes thought they were the most beautiful things.

“Those who came into being from the presumptuous thought resemble in fact the Fullnesses of whom they are imitations, though they are phantoms, shadows, and illusions, deprived of reason and light, belonging to this empty thought, being nobody’s offspring. . .  In their own eyes, however, they are great and powerful beings, more beautiful than the names [of the aeons in the Fullness], though they are only their shadows.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

It should be noted that the vice of vanity is an inversion of the aeons’ second rule of giving glory, where the aeons were not to give glory to themselves. Vanity is giving glory to oneself instead of to the Creator. The purpose of “giving glory” is to remain centered on the object of adoration. Giving glory to oneself strengthens the ego. Giving glory to the Creator focuses attention off of ego and onto the Originating Consciousness. Giving glory is a virtue; glorifying oneself is a vice.

“In their own eyes, however, they are great and powerful beings, more beautiful than the names [of the aeons in the Fullness], though they are only their shadows.” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 78]

Finally, the fourth desire driving human activity is love of power. Love of power is a lynchpin of agents of the deficiency, who always seek dominion over others. This is how Russell describes love of power:

“Love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power… Many people prefer glory to power, but on the whole these people have less effect upon the course of events than those who prefer power to glory… Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.”

Russell went on to say,

“Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.”

So while love of power can easily be recognized in Presidents and the CEOs of corporations, it applies equally well to the petty tyrants and bullies found in every school, business, bureaucratic office, and family. The vice called love of power puts oneself in the position of God and reflects a belief that one’s self is worthy of dominion over others. This is a common delusion of agents of the Deficiency, growing as it does from the root of ego and presumptuous thought.

The Tripartite Tractate puts it this way:

Those of the Imitation do not know the hierarchy of the Fullness, nor do they have assigned roles and places there. Lacking the ALL’s cooperative design, they exist in a state of perpetual disturbance, driven by self-centered ambition, “exalting themselves in lust for dominion, each one of them according to the magnitude of the name of which he was a shadow, fantasizing that he would become greater than his fellows” [The Tripartite Tractate, v. 79].

Russell spoke of a few more vices, including an “intoxicating love of excitement” and novelty, which he feared had little outlet in modern society.

“Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting…” 

Russell may have heartily endorsed our videogame and VR entertainments, which allow ordinary people to do extraordinary things, including extreme violence with no harm to others. More than a vestige of the hunter lifestyle, this love of excitement and novelty often plunges us into the worst of vices—the type that start out as just a bit of harmless fun, but wind up tethering the user to deeper and longer incursions into the strange. Aside from ensnaring the unwary into vices such as alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, and anonymous sex with strangers, these indulgences for the sake of novelty and intoxicating excitement are an enormous waste of time and energy in the vain pursuit of a Paradise that is out of reach. They are also corrosive to the spirit of the Second Order Powers and distract from the mission at hand, which is to battle with vice in the Endless War with the Deficiency while bringing love and restoration to the cosmos.

We don’t know where Russell came up with his observations about human desire. It is interesting that    Gnostic cosmology so neatly answers his observations, for Russell was avowedly antireligious, believing that whatever good religion engendered, it did more harm than good. The Gnostics who wrote this cosmology would have begged to differ.